10 Content Strategy Questions Every Organization Must Answer
Sound strategy — whether corporate, business, marketing or content — comes from asking the right questions, with why being chief among the questions you should ask. Well, effective execution of your strategy requires that you ask (and answer) the right questions too. After all, a strategy is only as good as your organization’s ability to execute […]
Wise Content Strategists Ask “Who” 10 Times
Content is a team sport. One that requires commitment, cooperation and collaboration — not only within your core content team but across organizational silos. You can’t do it all alone (and you wouldn’t want to!), so it’s important to know who will own each key element of your program. And to know who, you need […]
49 Free Stock Photo Sites Content Marketers Will Love
As a content marketer, you know the value of finding just the right image to bring text to life — even when you don’t have the budget for original photography. Luckily there are dozens of sites that publish free photos for use by web developers, content creators, bloggers and designers. But with so many sites to […]
Are Marketers At War With Consumers?
Do you view marketing as an act of brute force against the consumer? The odds are that your knee-jerk response is,“no.” But the language you use when you talk about marketing may indicate otherwise. Is your marketing-speak peppered with words like target, campaign, preempt, and penetrate? We choose the language we use for specific, if sometimes […]
Nine Content Marketing Tools Your Competition Isn’t Using (Yet)
There’s hardly a shortage of tools that claim and aim to make content marketers more effective, efficient, even more creative. Some aim to automate the entire content marketing lifecycle while others pinpoint a specific pain point (from visual design to better analytics) — and while the big boys like Contently, NewsCred, Percolate and Kapost will […]
Three Ways Content Marketers Can March to the Beat of a Different Drummer
Tomorrow marks the official start of the 2015 drum corps season. While that probably means very little to most of you, I enjoy finding inspiration in unusual places and have often found that this youth activity is a breeding ground for business lessons. So this year, I’m taking a look at how some of the top […]
Content Interruptus
Old habits die hard. At first, digital delivered a revolutionary way to disseminate and digest information. Then it became so overrun with interruptive advertising that the average consumer developed an acute case of ‘banner blindness.’ Social media held out hope that businesses could be more human, connect communities and create organic, authentic engagement. For most marketers, social […]
What’s Not to Like About Facebook’s Content Play?
By now, you’ve probably heard the news that Facebook is in talks with a select set of media companies about the possibility of publishing their original content directly inside the social network’s platform. The New York Times reported on its own involvement in these discussions (very meta), citing the allure of improved access to Facebook’s […]
5 Tips for Avoiding Communication Breakdown
If you haven’t heard the audio of AOL chief Tim Armstrong firing an employee during an all-hands meeting that was ostensibly meant to reassure nervous workers after the company announced its plans for scaling back its network of hyper-local Patch portals, you can check it out at Business Insider. Approximately two minutes into his prepared remarks […]
Can Mass Media Moguls Become Micromavens?
A recent Nieman Journalism Lab post by industry analyst and Newsonomics author Ken Doctor inspired GigaOM contributor Matthew Ingram to posit that the future of mass media depends on the ability of traditional media companies to embrace the power of “small things.” Actually, it’s Doctor that makes that assertion, with Ingram expanding on Doctor’s news-centric take to […]
