A Note to the Sophisticated Marketer Why Should I Be Reading This Guide? Why Does My Business Need a Content Marketing Strategy? Lay a Solid Foundation The Essential Tools for Managing and Producing Content Mapping Content Throughout the Buyer’s Journey Going Global: Take Your Content Beyond Borders The Big Rock:Your Stepping-stone to Content Marketing Success Thought Leadership: 3 Types and 3 Companies Doing it Well Carving up the Turkey Publishing on LinkedIn Use LinkedIn to Deliver a Meaningful Content Experience Let’s Get Visual! Expand the Reach of Your Content Activate Employees for Content Sharing and Amplification Tap into Influencers for Content Amplification Prove the Value of Your Content Marketing Conclusion: Not More Content But More Relevant Content 31 Sophisticated Content Marketing Thought Leaders to Follow Guide to CONTENT MARKETING 51 56 64 70 78 83 87 91 96 i ii 2 6 16 23 28 36 44 98 And as a sophisticated marketer, you’re probably aware that the world doesn’t need more content —it needs more relevant content. Relevancy is the linchpin to finding and keeping your audience engaged. You also know that you need to understand how every aspect of marketing—from demand generation, email and social to PPC, PR and everything in between—fits together to help your organization reach its goals. By orchestrating the use of both modern technologies and tried-and-true marketing techniques, the sophisticated marketer can achieve new heights. This guide was written with you in mind: the sophisticated, multi-dimensional marketer. In it, you’ll find everything you need to know about content marketing in general and on LinkedIn, written both strategically, and instructionally. It’s your one-stop shop to understanding what works when it comes to marketing with content—and will help you be on the bleeding edge of all things content marketing. Ready to dive in? Read on! Jason Miller, Senior Manager, Global Content Marketing, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. A Note to the Sophisticated Marketer You likely don’t need convincing that content marketing is vital to the success of an integrated, full-funnel marketing strategy. In fact, content marketing is helping fuel the success of businesses of all sizes, in many industries. And that success is being spearheaded by sophisticated marketers like you. i In the digital world, content underpins most—if not all—of your marketing efforts. Why do you create content? You create content because the buying process has changed and content is the way you now start conversations and engage prospective buyers. And that means you shouldn’t create any content that doesn’t address a problem or offer an innovative twist on an old approach. Content marketing is about publishing content in a variety of forms, in the channels where your audience spends time so you can address their interests and concerns. Do this right and you’ll attract, engage and convert more prospective buyers on the path to purchase. Your focus today should be about how to win big with content marketing. That’s because content marketing is no longer a nice-to-have —it’s a must-have and an essential part of an integrated marketing approach. It builds awareness, drives interest, and ultimately helps generate revenues. Like all our Sophisticated Marketer’s Guides, this one is a labor of love. We created it to provide a definitive resource for everything a marketer needs to know about succeeding with content marketing. Don’t think of it as an instruction manual— think of it as strategic guide with lots of input from top thought leaders and LinkedIn marketing experts combined with the expertise of the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions team. We call this The Guide for Sophisticated Marketers because we feel it’s time to take content marketing to the next level, moving beyond theory to enlightened practice. It’s time to get real results with your content marketing, and this is the guide that will help you. Why Should I Be Reading This Guide? Unless you’re living under a rock, you know that content marketing is a critical component of every marketing strategy. ii Why Does My Business Need a Content Marketing Strategy? 1 2 In a very short time, content marketing has found its way into the common vernacular of B2B marketers in companies of every size across just about every industry. 1: Content Marketing Institute, B2B Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends— North America 2-3: Ibid And with good reason: Content is the fuel for demand generation and a full-funnel marketing approach. It enables all the programs that marketing spends time and money to create with the goal of driving awareness, generating demand, and converting prospects to customers. In other words, it’s the key to effective branding, search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, display advertising, PR, events and more. Here’s what the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) found in its latest survey of the content marketing scene: of B2B marketers plan to increase content marketing spend in the next year3 of B2B marketers are using content marketing1 of B2B marketers are creating more content than they did one year ago2 70% 86% 55% What is Full-Funnel Marketing? Full funnel marketing is about using content to stay top of mind with prospects throughout the buyer’s journey. In the upper funnel, you’re reaching your target audience, even when they are not in the market for your offerings. In the lower funnel, you’re nurturing prospects until they are ready to purchase. 4: Ibid 5: Earnest Agency, Vital Statistics for B2B Marketers 6: Oktopost, LinkedIn for B2B Lead Generation: Why, When, How of B2B social media leads come from LinkedIn 80% While not every marketer approaches content marketing from a strategic perspective, those that do see better results. The CMI study found that 54% of the most effective B2B marketers have documented their content marketing strategy.4 So what does this have to do with LinkedIn? It turns out that 85% of B2B buyers believe companies should present information via social networks.5 And the companies that answer this call are reaping the rewards. 80% of B2B social media leads come from LinkedIn6 and 50% of LinkedIn members report they are more likely to buy from a company they engage with on LinkedIn. In fact, 43% of marketers say they sourced a customer through LinkedIn. This guide will show you how to use content marketing to deliver results for your business. of marketers say they sourced a customer through LinkedIn 43% of LinkedIn members report they are more likely to buy from a company they engage with on LinkedIn 50% of B2B buyers believe companies should present information via social networks 85% of the most effective B2B marketers have documented their content marketing strategy 54% 3 4 If you were starting a content marketing program from scratch, where would you begin? I would focus on one key type (audio, textual, visual), one key platform (blog/ website, iTunes, Twitter) and consistently deliver content over time. Focus on a defined niche and a well-defined audience where you can present yourself as the leading expert in that niche. In your eyes, what is the biggest difference between content marketing five years ago and content marketing today? Five years ago, most everything was experimentation and campaigns. Although this is still the case, more organizations are defining a real, integrated content marketing strategy and approach as a key part of their marketing process. In other words, this is serious business. At the same time, some who started off with lackluster results have become disenchanted and need to take a fresh look at the approach. If you are tasked with hiring a content marketer, what is the #1 attribute you are looking for? Attitude is always number one. Are they a fit within the organization's culture? Second, do they understand the practice of publishing and building an audience over time? I prefer to work with people who have worked in publishing and media over marketers in general. Tell us about a brand that has impressed you with its content strategy and execution. I love what Jyske Bank has done in Denmark, building Jyskebank.tv. They've been able to move from pure advertising into building an audience and asset that has positioned Jyske as a clear industry leader and a brand worth talking about. When you think about the future of content marketing, what excites you most? It's democratic. Anyone, anywhere, with any budget can develop a valuable audience over time and make an impact. In other words, there are no excuses for not doing this well, as long as you have a plan and execute against that plan. You're known as the 'Godfather of Content Marketing.' How did that come about? Ha...a couple of blog posts started to refer to me in that way about five years ago. At first, I thought it was just funny. Then, we (at CMI) started to play into it and at the start of Content Marketing World 2012 I was introduced that way in my opening keynote. We just "leaned" into it. Whatever works, right? Joe Pulizzi on content at large Founder, Content Marketing Institute 5 Lay a Solid Foundation 2 According to AdAge, nearly every CMO is under more pressure to deliver measurable ROI.7 And with content marketing becoming entrenched in businesses of every size across nearly every industry, more marketers are being held accountable for tying content to revenue. That’s why it’s critical to understand how your content will help you move prospective customers along the path to purchase. Put another way, it’s important to track and measure how well you are answering prospects’ questions at every stage of their journey—and ultimately converting them to customers. Put a Stake in the Ground Start by documenting what you hope to achieve with your content marketing. Is it raising brand awareness? Driving higher quality leads? Establishing your organization as a thought leader? Better engaging prospective buyers? Through testing and learning, content marketers can progressively improve their results. So they need a solid foundation in place to support all that experimentation. 7: Advertising Age, CMOs More Accountable In Proving ROI, Yet Lack Resources To Execute, October 20, 2014 6 A winning content marketing strategy focuses on creating and sharing helpful relevant content that inspires, educates, solves problems and sometimes entertains. 8: Content Marketing Institute, Developing a Content Marketing Strategy 7 If you truly embrace the principles of content marketing, then your goal is to answer every question your prospects pose as they try to make a purchase decision. With that in mind, you will associate many goals with your content, likely aligned with the different stages of the buying cycle. At the start of the cycle, you’ll be focused on generating awareness and interest, perhaps by positioning your company as a thought leader in its field. At the next stage, you’ll be focused on helping buyers understand and compare their options—with the goal of zeroing in on those who are truly looking to buy and can benefit by using your solution. In other words, you’ll be focused on generating high-quality leads. Finally, you’ll want the most fitting prospects to choose your solution—and perhaps do so more quickly over time. Trying to drive higher quality leads? Perhaps you should measure the change in funnel velocity or time to close. Want your organization to raise its profile as a thought leader? Perhaps track the number of speaking engagements and executive-level meetings you secure. Once you start measuring the effectiveness of your content, your most relevant and engaging content will surface to the top. In other words, you’ll be clear about the content that resonates with your audience and triggers them to take action. The point is to capture any and all goals and determine how you will measure the effectiveness of your content marketing. In other words, your goals dictate your metrics. You can’t determine your content goals if you haven’t defined your content marketing strategy (which is true of 50% of B2B companies8 according to CMI). Plus, CMI’s research found that those with a documented content marketing strategy: Are far more likely to consider themselves effective at content marketing Generally consider themselves more effective in their use of all content marketing tactics and social media channels Decide What Content to Produce Figuring out the topics to cover is a matter of understanding what information your buyers want and need. And you find that out by developing buyer personas, which are composite representations of your ideal buyers—the people you must engage and convert in order to make a sale. The first step is to identify your ideal customer. First, which company types make the most fitting targets for your offering? Once you’ve defined the right company types, focus on pinpointing the people within those target companies that will be involved in the purchase. Interview a sampling of existing and potential customers, as well as anyone within your company that interacts with your customers, to learn about: • Top-of-mind issues • Their typical workday • Their decision-making process • Purchase motivators • Information needed at each stage of the buying process • The language prospects use to describe their problems and aspirations • Where they turn for information Follow the “Five W’s” of Interrogative Investigation Who? Consider each member of the B2B buying committee. Why? Discover a reason why a prospect would buy from your company by understanding what the buyer wants to achieve or overcome. When? What information do buyers need at each stage of the buying journey and what will trigger them to move from one stage to the next? What? What content—and in what format—can you provide to answer buyers’ questions? Where? Where do your prospects turn for information during the research and decision-making process?9 9: Forrester, B2B Buyer Journey Mapping Basics, May 25, 2015 8 Pair this with insights gleaned online, such as conversations taking place in relevant LinkedIn Groups, to uncover additional, germane trends. A solid, well-researched persona will highlight the topics your prospects care about most and inform the content you need to produce for the entire buying cycle. The goal is to understand what questions potential customers ask as they move from top to bottom of the funnel. Make sure you find out the language they use to describe their challenges and aspirations, the keywords they use as they search for information, and their top sources of information and inspiration during the decision-making process. Go a step further and find out what motivates them to make a change and what triggers a purchase. All of these insights will help you develop content that resonates with your target audience and ideally spurs them to take action. Put another way, the more deeply you understand your prospective buyers, the more clarity you’ll have about which topics to cover—and the easier it will be to deliver relevant information. You can then shape those topics into an editorial calendar that will serve as your guide for staying on track over an extended period of time. SEO and Content Marketing were Meant for One Another Content fuels your search engine result rankings and SEO helps that content get found. As Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing says... “Think of SEO this way: If a customer-focused content marketing program is the sandwich, then SEO is the mayonnaise. It touches nearly everything and enhances the overall flavor of the sandwich, but on its own, it’s not very appetizing.” 9 Own the Conversation Ultimately you want your prospective buyers and existing customers to view your business as the experts on a certain topic. In other words, you want them to see you as “owning the conversation.” To help organizations get in the right mindset, Jay Baer of Convince & Convert asks, “What’s your one thing?” In other words, what’s the topic you on which you can share lots of expertise and offer an interesting perspective? As long as this topic is top of mind for your audience, you’ve found the sweet spot. As we mentioned earlier, you identify the topics that will resonate with your audience—in other words, the burning questions—by developing a deep understanding of your prospects through buyer personas. At the same time, conducting effective keyword research to identify hot topics and develop the most relevant content is key to establishing your company as the authority on a topic. Here are ways you can find out what is keeping your prospective buyers up at night: • Hire a pro like www.moz.com or the very smart folks at www.toprankmarketing.com • Go it alone using a tool like Ubersuggest or Buzzsumo 10 Search engines are tasked with serving up the most relevant answer to a search query. Your job as a content marketer is to provide that answer. 11 First Be Helpful If you truly embrace the concept of content marketing, you will develop content to help prospective customers make their purchase decision rather than develop content focused on a hard sell. It’s a subtle—yet critical—nuance because the right mindset is essential to succeeding with content marketing. We know you are in business and need to help your company achieve its goals. Moreover, “nearly nine out of ten respondents (89%) to the 2015 Benchmark Report on B2B Content Marketing and Lead Generation said their primary high- level objective for investing in content marketing is to acquire new customers.”10 We’re not advocating that you toss aside all thoughts of making money. It’s simply that instead of focusing on making a sale at every turn, you should focus on helping…the sales will follow. 10: Starfleet Media, The 2015 Benchmark Report on B2B Content Marketing and Lead Generation 11: Altimeter Group, altimetergroup.com/2014/12/a-culture-of-content/ A Culture of Content is an Engine of Content 11 Vision Creativity Risk/Willingness to Fail Evangelism Governance Education & Training Technology Senior Leadership Content Leader Business Units External Partners Employees Paid Owned Earned “When content becomes an ingrained element of an enterprise’s culture, the culture functions like a well-oiled engine, producing, circulating, and begetting content, creating numerous efficiencies in the process.” —Altimeter Group Cultivate a Culture of Content Marketing colleagues Collaborate with marketing colleagues throughout your organization—including those responsible for branding, social PR, and global marketing—to identify opportunities for cross-pollinating content plans. Internal thought leaders Identify thought leaders within your organization who are prolific writers and recruit them to drive a relevant conversation with your target audience. Freelancer writers Freelance can act as an extended part of your internal team, and foster creativity while inspiring new ideas. Outside agencies Agencies can do the same as freelancers but at scale and usually offer a wider scope of offerings (such as design and SEO). One consistent finding year after year across content marketing surveys is that many marketers lack the time and/or skills to produce all the content needed to engage prospects at every stage of the buying journey. But you don’t have to go it alone. Build a team by calling upon a mix of resources: Select the Best Mix of Resources Remember, content marketing is not a siloed effort. In fact, you can realize a multiplier effect by embracing a team approach that calls upon experts both within and outside the organization to support your content marketing efforts. Marketo and Kapost have rounded up a plethora of best practices on building a content marketing machine. 12 Remember: A team approach is essential to content success. That means you need to break down the silos between the folks responsible for demand gen, social, and PR and work as a cohesive unit. Working this way can dramatically boost the impact of your individual efforts. If you were starting a content marketing program from scratch, where would you begin? I've started a few content marketing programs from scratch. And started at the same place every time: keyword research. Start by thinking like the target audience, quantifying the questions they ask Google, checking out the sources that show up in the top position in Google, understanding the categories and structure of the content that gets ranked and shared. Anyone can do this research. Then you have to build a content marketing destination that is best structured to answer those questions. In your eyes, what is the biggest difference between content marketing five years ago and content marketing today? Content marketing five years ago was the realm of rebels. We stood and saw the waste going into advertising and promotion and said "enough." There was a small and passionate group of early evangelists like Joe Pulizzi, Ann Handley, Jay Baer, Lee Odden, and Andrew Davis. And there was a small group of early adopters like Marcus Sheridan, Todd Wheatland, Joe Chernov, Amanda Maksymiw, Julie Fleischer, Tim Washer, and others who led the way. Now, you have titled positions inside large corporate brands. People with “Chief Content Officer” and “VP of Content Marketing” behind their name are driving real maturity in the content marketing landscape. If you are tasked with hiring a content marketer, what is the #1 attribute you are looking for? The one thing I look for is anyone with a track record of creating content at scale that gets people to read and share without breaking the bank. It starts with great content (publisher mindset) but you also have to understand budgets and political constraints (management and operational expertise) and how to measure what works (analytics). Ok, that was more than one attribute so I'll try to combine it into one trait required for effective content marketing: Know how to create great content at scale that doesn't break the bank and performs well in a measurable way. 13 Tell us about a brand that has impressed you with its content strategy and execution. I love this question. I have so many content brands that I follow and admire. Let's start with the best modern content marketing example, American Express and their OPEN Forum. VanWinkles.com by Casper is my new favorite. The team at Intel is doing great things with Intel IQ. Adobe's CMO.com is awesome. L'Oreal's Makeup.com is great in the consumer space. Cleveland Clinic's Health Hub for the healthcare folks out there. Zillow is doing a great job targeting home buyers. CapGemini's Content-Loop.com is one of the best examples of how to convert readers into leads. These are a few of my favorite (content marketing) things. Michael Brenner on content strategy and the editorial calendar CEO, Marketing Insider Group and Head of Strategy at NewsCred 14 Why does so much content miss the mark? My most retweeted tweet is "Behind every piece of bad content is an executive who asked for it." And we all know this is true. Most people want to do meaningful work. But for some people, "meaningful" means "what my boss asked me to do.” Businesses struggle with being ego-centric by nature. Add the mass of good people blindly following bad leaders and you get the mass of crap we see today. We are all responsible for solving this problem. Behind every piece of great content is a marketer, publisher, author who passionately and empathetically sought to help his or her audience. But how do you teach empathy to an executive who has none? The answer is fear. You have to show them that if you don't create the best answer to your customers' questions, someone else will. How important is it for marketers to use an editorial calendar, especially as it relates to syncing across functions? Editorial strategy requires a commitment to publishing content that an audience actually wants, within a small group of topics, and then committing to publishing on a regular and consistent cadence. The best content marketing brands publish every day or more on each topic they commit to covering. I think the strategy, the commitment and the cadence are more important than the calendar. My one rule of content marketing is to make sure there is an appropriate balance of helpful vs. promotional content. One final point: Managers shouldn't make editorial decisions. Editors should. Brand content editors should advocate for quality and customer focus. And manage the calendar and those contributing to it. Michael Brenner on content strategy and the editorial calendar CEO, Marketing Insider Group and Head of Strategy at NewsCred The Essential Tools for Managing and Producing Content 3 Once you’ve figured out the topics you’re going to cover and who is going to create the content that answers all your prospects’ questions, you need a plan and tool to keep it all organized. An editorial calendar helps tame the chaos, keeping everyone on the same page and on track when it comes to the content you need to produce. In addition to making it clear who is responsible for what and when, the calendar helps align efforts across marketing, sales, demand gen and the events group. That means you don’t duplicate efforts—and everyone can take advantage of each other’s content. You can use free collaboration tools like Google Docs, or go for a purpose-built tool like Kapost or Skyword if you need to manage lots of moving parts. Stay on Track With an Editorial Calendar It’s hard enough to keep track of a few content projects just using email. Imagine doing the same for tens or hundreds of content assets when you’re taking an integrated approach to content, working closely with colleagues in different roles. 16 • When pulling together an editorial calendar, it’s a good idea to feature a healthy mix of content types—this keeps your content engine fresh and prospective customers interested over the long haul. We are big fans of the blogging food groups as originally coined by HubSpot’s Rick Burns. Here’s our updated take on the five essentials: Keep Things Rolling With a Mix of Content The Blogging Food Groups: • A healthy serving of meaty posts (research and analysis) • A side of vegetables (thought leadership articles) • A serving of whole grains (how-to and influencer posts) • A condiment or two to spice things up (bold statements) • Every once in a while a sweet dessert (light-hearted, viral-worthy content) 17 Tools to Give Your Content Wings A powerful, intuitive software platform to manage all your marketing in one place. A software platform that enables large enterprises to manage their social media marketing, social advertising, content management, collaboration, advocacy and social media monitoring. A social software platform that allows large companies to manage their online social media presences, build social media campaigns, and analyze social media performance. Remember, you can supplement the content you produce with third-party content that you curate. By bringing in the voices of respected industry leaders to the conversation you are seeking to own, you add credibility to your own efforts. Plus, you can do more with fewer resources as you strive to establish your brand as the trusted source on a topic. This is where tools like Curata come in handy. We’ve covered some basics about developing and promoting your content, but what about truly breaking free from the content pack? As Ann Handley —author, marketer, and Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs—says, “The biggest missed opportunity with content is playing it too safe.” She advocates that content marketers focus on bigger stories, braver marketing, and a bolder voice in order to create memorable content. Here’s what this boils doWn to: • Bigger story: goes beyond your company and product to truly engage your audience • Braver content: ignores the status quo and uses a truly unique tone of voice • Bolder voice: uses a truly unique tone of voice that draws your audience in (think honest and empathetic) Take Intelligent Content Risks 18 For many content marketers, this means throwing caution to the wind and stepping into previously unexplored territory. But taking that leap and experimenting with your content can be well worth it. Here at LinkedIn we took such a risk with our Attention is Currency eBook featuring the insights of best-selling author Brian Solis and the one-of-a-kind visuals by cartoonist extraordinaire Hugh Macleod. With this eBook, we embraced a fun and unique approach to storytelling to help marketers understand how they can earn and retain attention through remarkable content. And the results speak for themselves —it’s been one of the best performing pieces of content we’ve ever produced. LeadMD, a marketing automation and CRM consultancy, is blazing new content trails with its Monsters of Funnel eBook. In this fun and humorous eBook, LeadMD injects rock-n-roll attitude and shares the wisdom of a “monster lineup of rock star marketers.” While at Marketo, Jason Miller of LinkedIn helped dream up the concept for The Big Marketing Activity Coloring Book, inspired by a coloring book embedded in the concert rider the Foo Fighters would give to music promoters. This eBook showcases 30 pages of “pure, unadulterated marketing fun,” as Marketo puts it, with a game of marketing automation mad libs, a content marketing word search, and a matching game (associating influential marketers with the titles of books they authored). The Big Marketing Activity Coloring Book has been downloaded tens of thousands of times since its release in 2011 and has been tied to over $500,000 in revenues for Marketo.12 We’ve already mentioned a few times the importance of considering SEO as you research topics and develop your content. Here’s why you need to take notice: Google continually tweaks its search algorithm and the last few updates have signaled a shift away from keywords and a focus on serving up quality content. By quality content, Google means relevant content. In fact, Google is so determined to serve up quality content that it offers a course in how to develop it. Whereas SEO used to be relegated to an elite group of technical marketers who focused on keywords, today’s SEO experts must bring a more strategic and content- centered approach to their efforts. At the same time, content marketers must better understand and consider how SEO (and SEM) affect their initiatives. Why SEO Matters 19 12: https://contently.com/strategist/2015/05/06/how-the-big-marketing-activity-coloring-book-fueled-marketos- insanely-lucrative-lead-gen-machine/ 20 If you were starting a content marketing program from scratch, where would you begin? The first thing I would do is hire a strategist, someone who can set the course for the content marketing program. Five years ago I would have said start with a writer, start with someone who can jump in and start creating content, but I don’t think we can do that anymore. We need to think about why we’re creating what we’re creating. We need to think about how we’re going to connect with customers, and where we’re going to connect with them. All these questions need to be answered before we can put pencil to paper, pixel to screen. In your eyes, what is the biggest difference between content marketing five years ago and content marketing today? First, we’re long past the days when creating content for search engines is an effective practice. We need an audience-centric point of view first, and that comes from a strategist. Second, quality matters a whole lot more than quantity these days. It used to be that publishing regularly was enough to boost you in search rankings and customers would find their way to you. We’re beyond that now. You need to be creating content that has real empathy for the audience you are trying to reach. If you are tasked with hiring a content marketer, what is the #1 attribute you are looking for? It depends. If it’s a marketing department of one, I would definitely look for a strategist first. I would need someone who understands the “why” behind the content and is able to articulate the plan so that they can sell it to the boss, the client, or whoever you need to convince. If we’re assuming the strategy is in place, and we have an audience-centric plan that makes sense, I would hire a writer over anybody else. Ann Handley on writing best practices: bigger, braver, bolder Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs 21 Tell us about a brand that has impressed you with its content strategy and execution. I really like what my friend Steve Sheinkopf is doing at Yale Appliance, right here in the Boston area. Yale Appliance redeployed almost all of its marketing budget away from advertising. His content strategy has been extremely effective, and he’s done it by simply answering his audience's questions. You wouldn’t think there would be a whole lot to say about lighting fixtures and appliances, but he’s killing it. The reason why he’s killing it is he looks at his data, he figures out what his audience needs, and he creates content that meets his audience’s needs. Another brand in a completely different industry is REI. I love their Black Friday #OptOutside content program, which started as a social media campaign and has now expanded into a year-long program. The reason why I love it is because it has such empathy for the people they are trying to reach—the people who have no desire to stand in line for a deal when they could be enjoying the outdoors. What does "bigger, bolder, braver" mean to content marketers and what steps can they take to ensure they are breaking through the noise? Bigger means telling a bigger story that puts your company in the larger context of what people care about. It’s not about you, it’s about what you do for others, so it’s really about putting your product or service in the context of your audience’s lives. Bolder marketing means you upend the status quo. You tell a story that hits on the specific challenges of a specific audience, but no one else is talking about in the right way for that specific audience. Finally, braver means taking a braver tone of voice. In a sea of mediocre content, a brave tone can be a big differentiator. You built a tiny house where you spend time writing and being brilliant. What advice do you have for marketers on finding their "tiny house"? (laughs) Metaphorically a tiny house is just a place where I can be hyper-focused on what I’m doing. Really what it does is eliminate distractions. It’s literally a tiny house that has four walls, a floor, a ceiling, electricity, an internet connection, and that’s about it. It gives me the tools I need to do my job but at the same time it eliminates other distractions that are inherent to my life. I think eliminating distractions holds true for all marketers. Whatever it is you’re trying to do, make that a priority and find a way to block out everything else. Ann Handley on writing best practices: bigger, braver, bolder Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs 22 Mapping Content Throughout the Buyer’s Journey 4 The ultimate goal is to reach and then nurture prospects to drive them toward becoming a customer. As a marketer, it’s helpful to think of your prospects’ decision- making process on their path to purchase. The reality is that the buyer now controls the research process. And because prospects aren’t likely to reach out to your organization at the start of their search, it’s important to market across the buyer’s journey so you can engage target prospects through multiple digital marketing touch points. In line with our goal of keeping things simple, we recommend dividing the buyer’s journey into two parts: early stage and later stage. Focus on reach in the early stage In the early stage, you “reach” your target audience with brand messages via content marketing, display, and other tactics. Your focus is on building favorable awareness and recall of your company among prospects who are currently unfamiliar 23 So what is the point of all this content? Remember: though many prospects will not convert to customers at this stage, your efforts here will make it easier to engage them once they reach the later stage. with your brand or not currently in the market for your offerings. In other words, you are trying to gain mindshare with those not ready to purchase. With that in mind, your brand-building activities should include a mix of online and offline marketing strategies—so you can reach prospects wherever they may be spending time: • Investing in public relations can help you secure earned media for your company, enhancing your credibility • Engaging in content marketing and social media can introduce your brand to new audiences and further boost awareness • Filling your company blog with helpful and illuminating posts about your industry can gain awareness for your brand • Promoting your content on social media can help expand the reach of your blog posts and other content • Targeting display advertising at prospects is a proven way to introduce your brand at scale In the later stage, you “nurture” prospects that have expressed an interest in your product or service. Your goal is to educate and influence them once they are aware of your brand but before they are ready to engage with a sales representative. Later-stage nurture also includes nurturing after a sales conversation but before a purchase. A terrific way to do this is by encouraging buyers to interact with and explore your website, landing pages, and social channels to learn about your solutions. By focusing on educational outreach, you can maintain contact with these prospects until they are ready to take the next step. Once prospects are familiar with your brand and have learned about the solutions you offer, they may convert without any further prompting—or they may not. You can continue guiding the latter to purchase by employing the following: A strong keyword-marketing strategy Whether you take a paid or organic search marketing approach, make sure prospects continue finding you as they conduct research related to your company, industry, and offerings. Nurture in the Later Stage Ways to Drive Early-Stage Prospects Into the Later Stage Drive site traffic using search, social media, and advertising Offer engaging content, such as blog posts, white papers, eBooks, videos, and webinars Gate valuable content in exchange for contact details Continue engaging prospects with compelling, relevant content offers and information 24 Email marketing To nurture prospects that have shared their contact information, you can customize your emails based on the prospect’s demographics, website behavior, and previous engagement with your brand. Newsletter signups and product trials At this point, you are likely nurturing a group of highly targeted prospects ready to convert—they may just need a nudge to finally make the purchase. Using data and sophisticated tools, you can discern the following about your prospective buyers: • What kind of prospects are visiting the corporate website • How they are responding to email marketing • What they are doing on social media • What content they are reading • What paid search terms they are responding to Then, using always-on programs—such as corporate websites, display advertising, search engine marketing, content marketing, and social media—you can keep your brand front and center with prospects until they’re ready to buy. 25 If you were starting a content marketing program from scratch, where would you begin? I'd always start with a blog. It's easy, low- cost and a great way to start getting your content chops working. Try for a weekly cadence if you can. Figure out your content sweet spot—where your audience's information needs and your own authority and expertise overlap—and stay within it. Then aim for one, big, chunky, high-value piece —maybe an eBook, SlideShare or video. Make it really, really good: It will be the bedrock of your content brand. Then pimp the living daylights out of it. And commit to getting better and better and better. In your eyes, what is the biggest difference between content marketing five years ago and content marketing today? Five years ago, just doing content for your prospects was enough to make you stand out. Now it isn't. Everybody's doing it. That's the bad news. The good news is that there are so many ways to do it better. The content production platforms are better. The content distribution options are legion. The analytics apps are more granular. Marketing automation is slicker… But the single biggest difference? Now there are lots of fantastic, smart people with real, front-line experience who are ready to help—like Ann Handley, Joe Pulizzi, Lee Odden, Jay Baer, Marcus Sheridan… the list goes on. If you are tasked with hiring a content marketer, what is the #1 attribute you are looking for? Curiosity. No, empathy. No, a passion for content and the subject matter itself. No, an eye for a story. If forced, at gunpoint, to pick just one: empathy. Content that understands its audience will be good content. Content that doesn't can't be. Doug Kessler on global content and scaling Creative Director & Co-Founder at Velocity Partners 26 Tell us about a brand that has impressed you with its content strategy and execution. So many! Can I do three? HubSpot built a business on content. It’s a firehose of useful, helpful stuff and they've built a major subscriber (and fan) base on it. Everyone cites Red Bull but it really is amazing that they could turn a foul-tasting speed drink into a formidable media brand. And I love what Adobe is doing with CMO. com—a proper media play that's owned by a brand but doesn't force its brand messages on its readers. You recently published a great post on why case studies suck. What steps can B2B content marketers take to evolve the traditional case study? That post was by Irene Triendl, one of Velocity's copywriters. (No, you can't lure her away, we've chained her to the desk and shower her in praise—a killer combination). Her main point is that case stories should be great stories first and powerful cases second. The case study genre is so bound by convention that it's been strangled of any sense of surprise or delight or fun. This is tragic because cases can and should be one of our most powerful weapons. B2B content has a stigma of being boring. How can B2B marketers ensure they are connecting with their audience on an emotional level? I love this question. The importance of emotional resonance in B2B came to me embarrassingly late in my career. Now, I know that it's hugely important (but still very infrequently practiced). One route to emotion is to ask a chain of 'why's. To get to the deepest reason that your company does what it does. The things that make it worthwhile working there. Another is to follow up on the stories that your work creates. The people it touches. You want to avoid being too saccharine but don't shy away from the heart stories. B2B marketers obsess about the rational at the expense of the emotional. The bests stuff combines both. Doug Kessler on global content and scaling Creative Director & Co-Founder at Velocity Partners Going Global: Take Your Content Beyond Borders 5 28 If you work for a company with a worldwide presence, adopt a global mindset when it comes to content marketing. When you start a content project— especially a major one—include your geographically dispersed colleagues from the get-go. Think of these colleagues as influencers, ones who can help get your content in front of—and consumed by—your audience in every location. Unfortunately, most US-based content marketing managers overlook their global counterparts until late in the game. The impact of that oversight is last-minute scrambling to try to pull off a global launch on time and on budget. Make geos part of the process Don’t just tell your global colleagues what you plan to do—include the folks responsible for marketing in your different geos from the start. Gather their input on time frames for translation, and thought leadership and case studies that will resonate best with their local audiences. That said, use universally global images and references whenever possible. And collaborate with your colleagues to determine who will be responsible for localizing and promoting the asset in each geo. This is vital to targeting your content campaigns for local audiences around the world. Simplify, simplify Your marketing colleagues may want to personally localize your content asset. But to streamline and simplify the process, encourage them to work with the same agency you used to develop the original asset. This minimizes the likelihood that someone will drop the ball so to speak. Just be sure to give each geo a minimum two weeks to translate and localize the asset once it is finalized. And remember: no matter how competent your US agency, you’re almost guaranteed to run into translation errors when working with international translators—which can quickly become frustrating for all involved. A good idea is to take the content as far as you can and then find a local translator, such as Cloudwords. Go to the source Any geos that choose to localize and translate the content themselves will need the original source files from the agency that developed the asset for you. With that in mind, find out from the start if the agency will charge for these files and the process for sharing those with your colleagues. Prime the pump on launch day The morning of your content launch, send an email to everyone involved with an overview of the content asset and launch plan and a thank you for their involvement. Include a few social sharing messages and ask everyone to share the content with their social networks. And remember to keep different time zones in mind. Celebrate as a group It’s fine—and wise—to measure the metrics for the launch and demand-gen efforts of each geo. Just be sure to bubble those individual stats up to a global view that demonstrates you are all working as a single team. Planning to take an asset global? Follow these tried-and-true best practices: 29 30 If you were starting a content marketing program from scratch, where would you begin? It really helps if you've done some sales work for a while. This puts you in touch with your prospects' hopes, fears, pain points and questions they need answered. As always, empathy is required! Our first step is to create the content marketing mission statement. This is focused on the same prospects, but with broader topics. This will sharpen our focus and set the direction for everything that follows. Just fill in these blanks: Our website, email and social media accounts are where... AUDIENCE X finds... INFORMATION Y for... BENEFIT Z. Once we have that documented, we can start listing out our main topics. This is one of many lists we're going to create. Here's a list of lists that we'll be working from: • Topics we plan to publish (including the key phrases we plan to target) • Influencers we plan to collaborate with (they are experts in our topics and they have serious followings) • Networks we plan to be active within (this likely includes a few LinkedIn groups) • Publications we'd like to write for (they have the attention of our audience already) • Formats we plan to use (blogs, video, infographics, podcasts, etc.) Soon we'll have places to capture and collect the ideas and structure for all of our future efforts. Wrap it all up in a publishing calendar and turn up the activity levels to the highest sustainable level. Finally, we need a good mousetrap for our cheese. The website has to do a lot of important things... Support all kinds of future publishing initiatives 1. Must be search optimized with no technical SEO issues 2. Must be set up to make analysis easy 3. Guide visitors toward the desired actions, including newsletter signup. Our long-term plans involve an ever- growing email list. Once this is all in place, we're ready to start publishing and promoting content. Andy Crestodina on measuring success Strategic Director at Orbit Media Studios, Inc. 31 In your eyes, what is the biggest difference between content marketing five years ago and content marketing today? Back in the day, there were more green pastures. It was easier to get traction in larger, more general categories. Now, competition for attention is more intense in more industries. It's more difficult to win attention for bigger topics because marketers and brands have already moved in, claiming the advantage in all three content marketing channels. • They've built the domain authority through links (search optimization) • They've built a large list of subscribers (email marketing) • They've built a following on online networks (social media) The best content marketers combine search, social and email marketing. But it’s not too late. The things that make it hard to compete against them will eventually make it hard to compete against you. The advantages that you build in content marketing are durable and cumulative. You will eventually be a force to be reckoned with yourself. The key today is to pick your battles. There is still plenty of opportunity to win an audience if you niche down to a more specific, less competitive topic. They're smaller, but the pastures are still green. If you are tasked with hiring a content marketer, what is the #1 attribute you are looking for? They are "center-brained." The best content marketers are both creative and analytical. They have the ability to combine art and science. They have the basic creative capabilities (concepting, writing, basic design) but they also know how to test these ideas and measure results (using tools, crunching numbers, analytics). The best content marketers switch back and forth between the big writing ideas and the little details of editing. They are resourceful and multi-disciplinary. They also read a lot. Content Development Analyticsfollow subscribe awareness consideration action! lead / customer SearchSocialEmailAndy Crestodina on measuring success Strategic Director at Orbit Media Studios, Inc. 32 Most marketers are looking to improve content measurement. What's the low-hanging fruit in terms of content measurement? There is one very important but often missed bit of data in analytics. It's "top path" through your website. If you know this, you can do a bit of user flow analysis and quickly discover what to do next in your marketing. Think of it this way, if your website was a city, there would be a highway of visitors flowing through it. But if you don't know where that highway is, you don't know how to guide traffic. You don't know where to put the billboards. So take a look at the Audience > Users Flow report. It will show you where people start and where they go next. You'll quickly discover where people are dropping off, where they're turning around and going backwards and where the biggest roads are running. Just glancing at this report may trigger the following questions, ideas and actions: • Are my most compelling messages visible to people who follow the most popular path? Or do I have that amazing video testimonial tucked away on a back street? • Are there labels in my navigation effectively guiding visitors to the right places? Or are they jumping around, looking for answers to their questions? • Are the majority of people leaving from a certain page? Maybe that page is a weak link in my marketing. • Have I even looked at these top pages in the last few months? They probably need to be polished up. Andy Crestodina on measuring success Strategic Director at Orbit Media Studios, Inc. 33 Many marketers have no idea that there are problems that cause visitors to leave. Instead, they spend their time trying to get more visitors. The bucket is leaking and they keep running to fetch more water. Spend a little time improving your site for your current visitors and every future action you take getting more visitors will be more effective. Conversion optimization should come before search optimization. As Barry Feldman taught us, your website is the mousetrap, your content is the cheese. Fix your mousetrap first, then go make some cheese. Lead Generation Website User Flow Home Home Service About Service Blog Post About Contact Thank You Andy Crestodina on measuring success Strategic Director at Orbit Media Studios, Inc. 34 Where is measurement heading? What does it look like for marketers moving forward? The number of social media tools available is constantly increasing. But this isn't true with analytics. Yes, there are a few tools that fill in the gaps of Google Analytics, but most of what you need is right there in Google Analytics. And it's getting better all the time. Five years from now, we'll all be using just a few tools for marketing analysis: • Google Analytics (website activity) • Your social ad platform analytics (impressions, Click-Through Rate) • Your marketing automation platform, email service provider, or CRM (open rates and connecting specific visitors to website activity) It will be possible to connect all the dots. The possible insights and actions will be very powerful. But the skills in the industry won't keep up with the technology. Finding people who can set this up and then squeeze insights and actions from it will be more difficult than ever. Recruiting for marketers with analytics and marketing automation skills will be fierce. Andy Crestodina on measuring success Strategic Director at Orbit Media Studios, Inc. 35 The Big Rock: Your Stepping-Stone to Content Marketing Success 6 36 It’s easy to get overwhelmed at the thought of developing content that keeps prospects engaged and interested down that (sometimes lengthy) path to purchase. That’s where a Big Rock comes into play. Keep things simple Start with a single piece of content that can power your demand-gen engine for months on end. We call this a Big Rock— it’s your stake in the ground and helps set you apart from the competition. The Big Rock is a piece of content that shows you truly own a topic or conversation. This is a substantial content asset (think 15, 20, 30 or more pages). Move from thinking like a publisher to actually publishing like one by putting out a “book” on your topic. Before we go deeper, consider this startling finding: according to SiriusDecisions, up to 70% of content created by B2B marketing teams goes unused.13 That’s a disturbing statistic that every serious content marketer needs to get serious about changing. The first step is to ask whether or not to create a content asset. • Can you back up your decision with data? • Is the content going to solve a problem or answer a pressing question for your prospects? • Can you infuse a thought-leadership angle into this content by offering a fresh perspective on a hot topic or on a status-quo approach to business? • Can you reap SEO value by creating this content? If you can answer “yes” to one or more of these, then you plan to produce content with a purpose instead of what Jesse Noyes of Kahuna (formerly Kapost) calls “random acts of content.” In other words, you can confidently move forward knowing you’ll be publishing a relevant piece of content—your Big Rock, if you will— that will serve you and your audience well, both now and in the future. You fill a Big Rock with all the wisdom and insights you have to share on the topic, leaving you with a hefty piece of content that makes it clear you know what you’re talking about. Then you promote it left and right using all the tools at your disposal (think PR, sponsored content, native advertisements, to name a few) to milk this piece of content for all it’s worth. Done right, your Big Rock can be the engine behind months of leads. of content created by B2B marketing teams goes unused The Big Rock is your ticket to creating more relevant content. It’s your chance to publish the end-all-be-all on an issue or topic that matters a lot to your target audience. 37 13: https://www.siriusdecisions.com/Blog/2013/May/Summit-2013-Highlights-Inciting-a-BtoB-Content-Revolution.aspx Now for some sources of inspiration... Answer the Number-One Question on your prospects’ minds Using a combination of keyword research, insights from your colleagues, and a survey tool, you can generate a number of potential topics and questions to make the theme of your Big Rock. Find the one topic that allows you to own the conversation, the one that will likely drive quality traffic to your site. Then write the book on that topic. Here at LinkedIn, we wanted to answer the burning question, “How do I successfully use LinkedIn for marketing?” That was the inspiration for The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn. Pull from the blog If you publish a blog, you very likely have a Big Rock waiting in the wings. Identify five or more blog posts that follow a theme and stich them together into a Big Rock. Sequence your blog posts as chapters, write an intro and conclusion, throw in a case study or two along with some influencer interviews and quotes, design the cover, and voila!—you’ve produced a Big Rock. We rounded up posts from our Hybrid Marketer blog series to put out an eBook called The New Era of the Hybrid Marketer, a 55-page “own-the- conversation” piece on multi-dimensional marketing in the B2B world. Flip the content funnel Want to get even more mileage from your existing content? Look no further than your case studies. While these are traditionally bottom-of-funnel content, they can be served up earlier in the funnel when positioned and packaged the right way. Pick an overarching theme, choose five relevant case studies and bundle them together into Success Stories. This is a quick and easy way to flip bottom-funnel content on its head. Remember: For all the nitty-gritty details on how to create distribute and promote your Big Rock, look no further then "Creating Your First Big Rock: A Step by Step Guide for Marquee Content." 38 39 If you were starting a content marketing program from scratch, where would you begin? I would identify a specific topic that I can “own” in the market that meets the following criteria: 1. A topic that my audience is interested in. 2. A topic that no other competitor “owns” yet (by marketplace competitors, or publishers covering this topic). 3. A topic that relates to my brand and the value proposition of our product or service. 4. And if I plan to curate content as well, a topic where other people are publishing content. These days most companies are already doing content marketing, so I don’t think they are starting from scratch. In those cases, I would start with data by measuring what has worked, and what hasn’t across all stages of the funnel—from sharing, to consumption, to marketing pipeline impact, to sales pipeline, and ultimately revenue. And then figure out what worked well, and see how I can do more of it. In your eyes, what is the biggest difference between content marketing five years ago and content marketing today? Content marketing has advanced significantly along three main fronts: People: Five years ago, the typical CMO’s response to the question “What’s the priority of content marketing within your organization?” was “What’s content marketing?” Today, leading CMOs have put content marketing at the top of their priorities list for 2016. As proof of this, investment in this area continues to grow each year, and over 43% of companies have an executive in charge of content marketing. Process: Although much work is still needed in the area of content marketing process, it has no doubt progressed in five years. Content marketing processes are beginning to advance from the old state of being stuck as a disparate set of tactics executed by small, disconnected teams. Companies are beginning to put in place the organizational structure and processes to enable a collaborative effort for creation and curation of the best content that a company can provide for its audience. Leading companies now understand the potential impact of content marketing on awareness building, lead nurturing and sales enablement. However, there is still a long way to go. Technology: There has been a mind- numbing proliferation of technology vendors and solutions to address the needs of content and digital marketers. Curata’s content marketing tools map has increased from 40 vendors to over 130 vendors in its most recent version. A new movement is now in place to build a more cohesive and useable software platform that will build upon marketing automation and sales automation platforms to enable content marketers to drive more impact across their organizations: The Content Marketing Platform. This platform is a software solution that helps marketers be more successful in driving awareness, leads and revenue from their content. It enables a data-driven, scalable and multi-channel approach across four content process areas: strategy, production, distribution (publication and promotion) and analytics. Pawan Deshpande on Content Curation CEO of Curata 40 If you are tasked with hiring a content marketer, what is the #1 attribute you are looking for? Empathy. Good content marketers can empathize with their audience and can therefore understand what topics they should create content on, what tone of voice to use, and what channels to promote the content on, just to name a few. How important is curation? How can marketers use curation to supplement their content strategies? We define curation as follows: “Content curation is when an individual (or team) consistently finds, organizes, annotates and shares the most relevant and highest quality digital content on a specific topic for their target market.” Curation is a natural and necessary extension of content creation. That is, as great as your content may be, your audience wants to learn from other experts and differing perspectives. Content curation enables marketers to bring the best of what the Internet has to offer its audience to provide third-party viewpoints, while simultaneously reducing the resources needed to fulfill their audiences’ content appetite. The ultimate benefit of curation (and content marketing)? You build engagement and trust with your audience, so that when they’re ready to make a purchase, they turn to you as a potential source. More specific benefits related to content curation: • Improve search engine optimization • Establish credibility as a thought leader • Streamline lead nurturing • Support lead generation • Provide fuel for your content engine—e.g., eBooks, blogging, social curation Tips for marketers to do a better job of using curation to supplement their content strategy: • Use a content marketing mix of 75% created and 25% curated content • Curate from a wide variety of online sources to provide diverse insights for your audience • Add the human touch to your curated content—e.g., organize it, add your own insights to the content through annotation • Establish a microsite on a specific topic that’s of relevance to your audience, using your created and curated content to feed that microsite • Curate insights from your industry’s thought leaders—a great influencer marketing strategy • Be ethical about how you curate—e.g., provide clear attribution to the original source, only bring in a snippet of the original content Pawan Deshpande on Content Curation CEO of Curata 41 What are the top metrics to use for measuring the impact of content marketing on your business? Consumption Metrics: These are the more traditional metrics that marketers use to measure content. Page views, unique visitors, email opens and clicks, average time on page, asset downloads. Retention Metrics: Return rate, bounce rate, unsubscribes, follower count. Sharing Metrics: Social media shares, likes, email forwards. Engagement Metrics: Comments, session duration, depth of video viewing. Lead Metrics: New leads generated, existing leads touched, funnel conversion rates. Sales Metrics: Pipeline generated and touched, revenue influenced. Production/Costs Metrics: Time to publish, content throughput, content backlog, production cost/piece or post. Determining the success of your content marketing efforts will help you better manage related resources as well as demonstrating its impact on the business to other folks in your organization. Tell us about a brand that does an excellent job of incorporating content curation into its overarching strategy. What are they doing well in terms of workflow and measurement? Verne Global, a wholesale supplier of ‘green’ data center space, is successfully educating the global market about green data centers by providing valuable content (created and curated) that demonstrates the benefits of how total renewable energy can be leveraged to slash corporate IT costs. How? Verne Global has created a microsite, Green Data Center News, a robust news and opinion site that has established Verne Global as the leader in green data centers. Today, the Green Data Center News site is the leading referral site of qualified prospective customers to Verne Global, with approximately 15% of traffic sourced from the site to Verne Global. This natural marketing evolution occurred seamlessly and effortlessly as a result of using curated content to supplement and complement their own created content. Lenovo provides an app, Lenovo Companion, on all Windows 8 Lenovo PCs and tablets globally. The app enables users to manage their system health, access Lenovo Support forums, find customized accessories and check the status of their warranty. It also features original, Lenovo- written content to help users learn about the unique features of their new device. Lenovo uses content curation to complement their created content, and also to address the daunting task of creating all original content for its global users, including translating this content into multiple languages. Today their global content team is curating local content across seven different languages, with plans to expand this effort. Results? The average daily visitation to the app has increased 113 percent and repeat visitation has increased 143 percent (compared to the averages of the previous version of the app). Lenovo Companion is the highest performing of all the Lenovo- developed Innovation Apps. Pawan Deshpande on Content Curation CEO of Curata 42 RingLead RingLead helps companies to clean, protect, and enhance prospect and client contact information to support reliable business intelligence and maximize the return on CRM and marketing automation investments. RingLead is using content marketing metrics to demonstrate pipeline impact and drive change in their content strategy. For example: • Using a data-driven content marketing approach, identified one eBook that drove $180,000 in sales pipeline. • Uses content marketing analytics to shape future content strategy. For example, one type of blog post stimulates social shares, another type generates a lot of website visits but low shares, and a third produces a high number of leads with a low number of visits. Decided to do a mix of these three types of blog posts, to produce higher shares, visits, and leads. • Determined that their eBooks are good for lead generation and their guest blog posts are better for “buzz" and brand awareness. Pawan Deshpande on Content Curation CEO of Curata 43 Thought Leadership: 3 Types and 3 Companies Doing it Well 7 Be strategic about producing content: use thought leadership to satisfy your audience’s information needs and position your organization to stand out in the crowded marketplace. While you need to develop and publish different types of content, thought leadership plays an important role in your content marketing strategy. As Laura Ramos of Forrester Research said, “Business buyers don’t buy your product; they buy into your approach to solving their problems.” At its core, thought leadership is about sharing insights and ideas—and a unique point of view—that provoke new ways of thinking, spark discussions and debates, and trigger action. And this is critical for setting your company apart and inspiring your audience to follow and pay attention to your brand. After all, in an age when buyers are overwhelmed by the deluge of irrelevant content, thought leadership content stands out as truly valuable. Consider how one company took this approach to make a big and lasting impression with its audience. We’re talking about the Gold Medal Flour Company and how it created an iconic character in Betty Crocker. In 1921, the company ran a contest for its customers: Complete a jigsaw puzzle, mail it in, and receive a pincushion shaped like a sack of flour. Gold Medal received thousands of responses. Unexpectedly, many of the responses were accompanied by cooking questions from struggling homemakers. Believing its audience would better relate to a woman giving cooking advice, the all-male management team at the parent company Washburn Crosby created Betty Crocker. This character then served as the inspiration for the company’s “Big Rocks.” As platforms for Betty Crocker, Washburn Crosby created a cooking show on the radio that drew a million listeners each week, along with a cookbook—both of which were world firsts and paved the way for decades of industry dominance. B2B content marketing falls into three major categories: • Product • Industry • Organizational Here are examples of each. 44 When it comes to B2B content marketing, thought leadership falls into three major categories: Product thought leadership: how-to’s, best practices, and strategy about how a product (or service) can transform a business Industry thought leadership: a fresh point of view on news, trends and the future of the market, offering ideas for new ways to achieve success Organizational thought leadership: leading with company culture, talent development, and other internal advantages 45 Leading With Products Marketo —a leading marketing automation solution provider—creates content that illustrates how its product transforms the way marketers work and turns marketing from a cost center into a revenue driver though a concept it calls “engagement marketing.” The company shares lots of best practices and how-to’s, often in the form of its comprehensive Definitive Guides that help convey its ownership of a range of marketing-centered topics. Marketo even uses its Company Page on LinkedIn to underscore its thought leadership. With a page banner that reads, “Welcome to the era of engagement marketing,” the company highlights how it helps marketers connect with their customers on a strategic level. Steering Indusry Discussions Symantec has positioned itself as a thought leader in the software security space by establishing itself as an authority on all things security. To that end, it shares Company Page updates that spark conversations about industry trends and events. In the process, the company has gained over 232,000 followers (as of December 2015). 46 47 Establishing a Winning Culture It may surprise you to see something about an organization’s culture in an eBook about content marketing. But when thought leadership and culture are in sync, a company’s content gains wings. Let’s break it down: a successful organization starts with a great company culture, which is the sum of its values, vision and guidelines. These define the business and the organization’s vision and uniqueness. And these are the same elements that should be mirrored in the company’s thought leadership. Here’s an example of how this plays out. For nearly a decade, Moz—one of the most recognized tech brands—has lived by a set of core values collectively referred to as TAGFEE. The company’s founder, Rand Fishkin, embodies these principles. Consider Rand’s Whiteboard Friday sessions, which consistently provide the search marketing community with strategies, tactics, and tools for improving their digital marketing strategies. In these sessions, Rand comes across as transparent, authentic, generous, fun, empathetic and exceptional (i.e., TAGFEE). And because he largely serves as the face of the company, through his adherence to these guiding principles, he has helped establish a company culture that serves to draw in a base of loyal and adoring customers. When it comes to excelling at thought leadership, take cues from the playbooks of these three companies that are doing it right! And see how more top companies create and foster their culture on the SlideShare #culturecode campaign site. If you were starting a content marketing program from scratch, where would you begin? All marketing starts with the customer. Understanding what buyers need is essential for architecting a content marketing program that is relevant, meaningful, and effective at driving new business. The most successful content marketing is a cycle of content informed by customer insight that when implemented provides even more data provides even more data for further insight and further content marketing performance optimization. In your eyes, what is the biggest difference between content marketing five years ago and content marketing today? Five years ago content marketing for many companies was simply about creating more content. As the practice of content marketing has matured, more marketers are creating higher quality content that not only provides self-directed buyers with answers to the questions that lead them through the sales process, but also content experiences. Visual content, more creative storytelling, and interactive content contribute to experiences that inform and create an emotional connection with buyers. Brands are still creating more content, but it's held to a higher standard by customers. If you are tasked with hiring a content marketer, what is the #1 attribute you are looking for? Genuine passion for creating content and marketing. I recently polled the team at TopRank Marketing on what it takes to succeed at the agency. The most frequently used attribute shared was passion. Without genuine interest in the content process and all that goes with content marketing, it is very difficult to produce the quantity of quality necessary to succeed. 48 Tell us about a brand that has impressed you with its content strategy and execution. Of course I'm a big fan of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions' content, but I'm biased. I've been impressed with Google's "Think with Google" and content marketing program. They do a great job of creating really useful content in multiple formats, tools, and resources. They're also continuously updating the effectiveness and aesthetic oftheir content, which shows they're paying attention. I also think HootSuite, BuzzSumo, and Buffer do a great job. Lee Odden on a hybrid of PR, event marketing and SEO CEO at TopRank Marketing 49 You are known as a jack of all trades. As marketing leaders look to expand upon their content, social, PR, SEO, event, and influencer marketing strategies in the years ahead, how can they tie it all together to ensure the whole is greater than the sum of the parts? I am? :) Sophisticated marketing starts with a solid strategy and to create a smart plan for achieving marketing goals, it's essential to capture insights from customers. When marketers understand customer preferences for content discovery, consumption, and engagement, a more effective strategy and tactical mix can be created. Where do you see influencer marketing in 5 years? How about next year? Much of influencer marketing is about advocacy and more B2B marketers will look at influencers as partners. Everyone is influential about something and because of ubiquitous connectivity and the ability to publish anywhere, anytime, people are more empowered than ever to grow their networks. In the future I see a democratization of content creation through content relationships with famous influencers (brandividuals) and niche influencers alike. There's upside to content co-creation for both brands and contributors. The influencers get exposure to the brand community and the brand gets exposure to better quality content shared with an entirely new audience. I think content platforms and planning tools will integrate better with influencer marketing tools to leverage influencer insights in the content marketing process. From topic ideation to quote sourcing to measuring the performance of influencer content sharing, an integrated solution will provide brands with an effective means to increase content quantity, quality and reach. Lee Odden on a hybrid of PR, event marketing and SEO CEO at TopRank Marketing 50 Carving up the Turkey 8 51 A Big Rock does more than help you lay claim to a topic—it’s the jumping off point for more relevant content. Certain prospects are going to consume quite a few of your content assets as they research their purchase options. According to IDG Enterprise, buyers download an average of seven informational assets during the purchase process. I t ’s also no surprise that the 2015 TechTarget Media Consumption Report shows that, the higher the price of the solution being considered, the more assets buyers consume on the path to purchase. In fact, SiriusDecisions found that 75% of B2B buyers rely more on content to research and make B2B purchasing decisions than they did a year ago. Instead of creating content for content’s sake, create content that helps your prospective customers. Your Big Rock is the perfect starting point. Once you’ve created a Big Rock, your job is to get it in front of your audience. Remember, not everyone will download your Big Rock…some people may prefer to read a short blog post or glance over an infographic. Others may prefer to scroll through a SlideShare. Still others may want to tune in for a webinar that walks them through all your insights. Your job is to get it to them in the format they prefer, in the channels where they spend time. 75% of B2B buyers rely more on content to research and make B2B purchasing decisions than they did a year ago 52 Fortunately, your Big Rock is perfect for chunking into smaller, derivative content assets. Call this repurposing your content or “carving up the turkey”. Whatever you call it, it’s about getting the most bang for your content buck and making sure all your sage advice and expertise finds its way into prospective customers’ hands. A good content marketer can reimagine a single Big Rock in many different formats. The bigger the rock, the more ways to slice and dice it into content derivatives. And the broader the topic of your Big Rock, the longer the shelf life for the Big Rock and all those turkey slices. Next work out the details for the campaigns and initiatives that will feature all this content across all channels where your prospects will encounter it. And don’t forget—with your Big Rock and all those content slices, you can quickly populate the resource section of your website. More importantly, all those ungated slices are going to point back to your Big Rock. And if your Big Rock is gated, you can collect lead information in exchange for the download. Think about how you can break apart your Big Rock into smaller assets—everything from stand-alone blog posts and Q&As to attention- grabbing infographics and SlideShares. By lifting these “slices” directly from the Big Rock, you can quickly churn out content with minimal effort. 53 If you were starting a content marketing program from scratch, where would you begin? I’d begin with understanding my audience. My vehicle for doing this is personas —whether buyer, customer, end user, advocate, etc. Doing the work to interview, learn from, and research your audience is the primary factor that should drive a content marketing program. Without this knowledge, the relevance needed to drive engagement and intent based on matching context at every stage will be elusive. In your eyes, what is the biggest difference between content marketing five years ago and content marketing today? Five years ago, content marketing was about “becoming a publisher.” Today, marketers realize that becoming a publisher is only step one. They’ve begun to realize that publishing without a strategy is ineffective, limiting the performance of their content marketing programs. The same is true for the need to understand their audiences and the recognition that this information should drive that strategy. Pushing out content you want to publish is a lot different than executing a successful content marketing program that connects with customers by delivering meaningful experiences that are contextually relevant. If you are tasked with hiring a content marketer, what is the #1 attribute you are looking for? Empathy for your audience and writing chops tie for the top attributes. While you can teach refinements to writing skills, without empathy for buyers and customers, your content will be missing that secret sauce that compels people to stop, pay attention, and continuously engage. Tell us about a brand that has impressed you with its content strategy and execution. Two of my favorites are CSC for their ability to scale and Wake Forest Innovations "Wake Forest Innovations" for the quantifiable results achieved by a small team. I wrote about both of them last year when they were nominated for Content Marketer of the Year by Content Marketing Institute. Vishal Khanna from Wake Forest Innovations was awarded Content Marketer of the Year. Ardath Albee on personas Marketing Interactions, Cintell 54 There's no shortage of content marketers who believe in the power of personas, yet haven't put personas into practice. Where do you recommend they start? I’m one of those who believe in personas. There are two things to consider—the first is the creation of active personas that inform content marketing strategy. The second is gaining an understanding about how to apply the information in an active persona to your content strategy. Start by doing the work to create a persona. Start with one. Create a proof of concept program that you can benchmark against your content marketing programs that are not persona-driven. Prove the value, refine your approach, and then iterate to include additional personas. One of the biggest things to remember is that personas are a content multiplier. Where you may have one general nurturing program today, three personas will mean you’ll need 3X the content you have now. Make sure you have the resources and capabilities to expand your approach or you’ll bury your content marketing team. That’s when publishing for publishing’s sake happens. And that kills the effectiveness of your programs. Next, when you’re building the persona, keep asking “how will this information feed our content marketing approach?” Get rid of everything that doesn’t inform that. For example, in B2B knowing that a persona earns $150k per year and lives in the suburbs with a German Shepherd is not helpful. However, knowing that they tend to average 14 years in their career and are very detail oriented will help you determine the tone and style for your content. In your experience, how do the most effective content marketers approach personas differently? First, they know that effective personas need both qualitative and quantitative research and should be based on input from buyers, customers, and lost prospects. They also involve other functions in persona development, getting buy-in across the organization. Second, they don’t make the fatal mistake of putting them in a folder on a server and leaving them to languish. They put their personas to work by relying on them to feed them through the line of the story they share with each target segment. And third, they update them regularly because they understand at the rate of change in today’s marketplace what was true yesterday may not be true tomorrow. Ardath Albee on personas Marketing Interactions, Cintell Publishing on LinkedIn 9 56 It’s one thing to develop content—it’s another to get it seen by your target audience. The professional publishing platform on LinkedIn offers a prime opportunity to post your company’s original content and showcase your expertise. As the world’s go-to content publishing platform for marketers, LinkedIn is a powerful resource. Through LinkedIn, marketers like you can directly engage professional members with relevant content and experiences. Think of it as “publishing with a purpose.” By using LinkedIn to build relationships with the world’s professionals, you can reach your goals at every step of the buying cycle: • Generate awareness • Establish though leadership • Drive targeted website traffic • Generate leads and pipeline • Create advocacy That’s because you will boost the impact of your content when you publish it in a professional context. And you’ll amplify that impact through the social sharing that happens naturally on LinkedIn. The Facts About LinkedIn Publishing Nearly 2 million unique writers publish more than 130,000 posts a week About 45% of readers are in the upper ranks of their industries: managers, VPs, and CEOs, for example Top content-demanding industries are tech, financial services, and higher education 57 You can publish both short-form and long-form content on LinkedIn. Short-form content such as articles, images and stats helps you gain followers, while long-form content helps spread your ideas. You simply use the intuitive blogging tool embedded into the LinkedIn platform to publish new and previously published content on LinkedIn. 58 Write often and publish when it’s timely. Use a current event or news in your area of subject matter expertise as an opportunity to share your insights and perspectives. Write what you know. What tricks do you employ every day to make your work life easier? What failures have helped turn you into a success? What inspired you to do what you do? Use the details from your life to help others be better in theirs. Use links to drive site traffic. Link images and keywords back to your company blog or Big Rocks for increased traffic and referral traffic back to your site. Beware of listicles. While fine for raw clicks, we have found they don’t encourage engagement. Clear beats clever in a headline. Use puns and jokes sparingly since a misinterpretation or misunderstanding might keep someone from reading your post at all. Send 5-10 headlines to friends and colleagues and ask them, “Which headline would you click on, assuming you didn’t know the author of the post?”. Share! After publishing a post, share on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and let your friends, colleagues, and employees know so they can amplify the reach. You can also tweet your post via LinkedIn Pulse. Join the Writing on LinkedIn Group and tap into the reimagined LinkedIn Pulse app. Get ahead with inspiration on something sharp to talk about every day. Articles posted with the tool are searchable by keyword in LinkedIn’s post search box. Plus, posts that are viewed enough times can get picked up by Pulse, the news app and content brand for LinkedIn. And when that happens, you can quickly grow views, comments and shares. Want more hints on how to crush it on LinkedIn as a writer? Follow these proven practices: Three Reasons to Publish Long- Form Content on LinkedIn 1. The content you publish is attached to and becomes a part of your LinkedIn profile and positions you as an expert and thought leader. 2. You can create an always-on strategy with your C-level team, subject matter experts and employees by delivering your message with credibility and authenticity. 3. Your posts have the potential to be featured on LinkedIn Pulse and recommended to a much broader group of members. Symantec boosts engagement and visibility One of Symantec’s core objectives is to become the world’s authority on Information Protection Security with IT decision makers. As a result, Symantec saw an opportunity to have their executives and Subject Matter Experts publish on Linkedin. Recognizing a need to extend beyond their network to reach their desired audience, Symantec also sponsored several posts to drive relevancy. The results? It saw a 73% engagement rate with its brand on LinkedIn, and moved from #3 to #1 as the most relevant voice with IT decision makers. “Publishing on Linkedin was a pivotal moment in showcasing not only our company re-branding efforts, but our thought leadership as the information protection authority.” —Eric Stieg, Enterprise Social Strategy, Symantec Applico raises brand awareness As a small consultancy competing in a market with much larger players, Applico needed to drive awareness in the marketplace by sharing their narrative. Also having just gone through an organizational re-brand, they saw original content creation as a means of re-positioning their value prop. The company’s approach was to identify seven externally facing SMEs who posted a total of 15 posts over two months. This increased total engagements with the Applico brand on LinkedIn by 29×, leading to Applico becoming the most relevant voice on LinkedIn among eight other competitors. 59 The ROI of Publishing on LinkedIn And don’t just take our word for reasons to publish on LinkedIn. Here are just two of the many businesses that have freely shared the impact of doing so. Cultivate a Culture of Content “Publishing on LinkedIn is helping us close deals. We’ve had several potential clients tell us that one of our posts on LinkedIn has changed the way they think about their own business and made them want to work with Applico." — Alex Moazed, CEO, Applico Inc. Impressed with these results? Pin up this handy table so you always know how to kill it with content on LinkedIn! 60 L I N K E D I N C O N T E N T M A R K E T I N G TACTICAL PLAN OPPORTUNITIES WHAT TO SHARE OBJECTIVES KEY METRICS ACTION ITEMS • Whitepapers • eBooks • Case Studies • Industry Articles • Helpful How-To Content • Brand Awareness • Lead Generation • Thought Leadership • Event Registration • Page Followers • Post Clicks • Engagement • Inquiries & Leads • Event Registrants • Post 3-4x a Day • Engage With Followers Via Post Comments • Change Cover Image Every 6 months • Company Videos & Presentations • Infographics • Webinar Decks • Lead Generation • Brand Awareness • Thought Leadership • SEO • Views • Leads & Inquiries • Linkbacks & Embeds • Upload New Content Weekly • Highlight Decks on Profile Page • Group Content into Playlists • Add Lead Forms • Professional Expertise & Experiences • Industry Trends • Lessons Learned • Thought Leadership • Post Views (& Demographics of Your Readers) • Post Likes, Comments & Shares • Profile Views • Publish Whenever You Feel Passionate • Recommended: Bi-Weekly or Once a Month • Company News • Blog Content • Industry News & Research • Case Studies • Webinars • Eye-Catching Visuals & Statistics • Lead Generation • Brand Awareness • Thought Leadership • Engagement Rate • Impressions • Inquiries or Leads • Company or Showcase Page Followers • Run 2-4 Sponsored Updates/Week • Run For 3 Weeks, Then Test & Iterate • Select Compelling Visuals • Share Links To Lead Forms & Add URL Tracking Code • Avoid Self-Promotion • Use as a Catalyst for Thought Leadership & Community • Spark Conversations About Industry Trends & Challenges • Ask Questions to Crowdsource Sentiment • Thought Leadership • Number of Group Members • Number of Discussions • Quality of Conversions • Number of Profile Views • Number of New Connections • Create a Group for Your Company • Ask for Opinions & Provide Insights • Monitor Submissions Daily • Highlight Top Contributors • Promote Group on Social Media 1HR. DAILY 1HR. WEEKLY 30MIN. DAILY 30MIN. DAILY 20MIN. DAILY LinkedIn Company & Showcase Pages LinkedIn SlideShare Publishing on LinkedIn LinkedIn Sponsored Updates & Direct Sponsored Content LinkedIn Groups Here's Your Printable Plan for Killing it with Content Marketing on LinkedIn 61 If you were starting a content marketing program from scratch, where would you begin? Content is one of the first things you do when you start a company. My favorite quote on content marketing of all time is from Jon Miller, CEO and Co-Founder at Engagio, previously co-founder at Marketo: “We wrote our first blog post before we wrote our first line of code.” But even before that, if you are starting a company from scratch, I think we can all agree that knowing your audience comes first. Knowing who they are, what they care about, and why they buy is step one of any marketing program. If you’re in the B2B space, rather than starting with buyer personas, I recommend starting at the company level to build your ideal customer profile (ICP) – who is the ideal company, THEN who is the ideal buyer. This allows you to get hyper-specific to make sure your message resonates with the right customers. Otherwise you’re trying to sell to everyone. After you’ve created your ideal customer profile, drill down into the types of people within those companies you need to talk to. In your eyes, what is the biggest difference between content marketing five years ago and content marketing today? Five years ago the message was, “go create lots of content consistently.” Today, I would argue that it’s not about creating a cadence if you have to sacrifice quality to achieve it. This doesn’t mean we need to move away from bite-sized chunks. It means we were wrong about the quantity game. B2B consumers want deep, rich content that helps them do their job better. The lens we use to view results is also different. For example, it’s okay to produce something really cool and not put a reg form in front of it and measure the number of leads. Actually, it’s almost better to let the content run free. It’s not just the top brands hosting webinars, shooting video and publishing eBooks. These are the table stakes. Everyone is. To stand out, create that amazing piece of long- form, quality content and let it run free. Accessibility and convenience can be an advantage. For example, a CIO is NOT going to fill out a reg form—let them get to it. Your brand equity will increase as a result. If you are tasked with hiring a content marketer, what is the #1 attribute you are looking for? This may sound surprising but I would say: "The ability to find or create a story anywhere, anytime." I like ex-editors because they are always seeking the bigger narrative. Craig Rosenberg on marketing and sales alignment Co-Founder and Chief Analyst at TOPO Inc. 62 Tell us about a brand that has impressed you with its content strategy and execution. Airbnb. I am not sure whether they would actually call it a content strategy as much as their web strategy but their blog content reminds me of those travel magazines that inspire you to travel. And it is delivered with elegant design. I am also intrigued by how their actual product is the content. An amazing treehouse in Costa Rica is both their product and content. Very intriguing. You recently said that the key characteristic of high-growth companies is the ability to truly understand business data and process. The one thing I have noticed about the best-run, high-growth companies has been that they understand how everything in the revenue chain (marketing to close) works to affect the other. They identify smart milestones across these processes, track them, and then optimize them. Content IS part of this plan. Now remember, the key is "smart milestones"—so what is the content strategy intended to do? For example, it's ok to say that the goal of your blog post is to track the number of visits. It's ok because smart companies have built a machine that helps move people to the next step. For example, Hubspot wants you to read their blog post and then sign up for more content and from there sign up to learn more about the product and so on and so on. Now let me contradict everything I just said. I am starting to get excited about ungated content that you just let fly on the internet. Whitepapers with no registration form, long form blog content… I am seeing companies "let it" fly, which is un-trackable. But guess what, it’s hugely valuable. I have walked into sales meetings and the prospect has my long form post on their computer. I walk in with instant credibility. Content did that. Un-trackable content did that, and I think it may be worth a ton more than a download. What commonalities are you seeing among companies that have achieved an effective relationship between marketing and sales? The key is "effective relationship”. Marketing and sales will always have friction and that friction can be good if there is a leader who can channel friction into positive activity. If not, it devolves into a fractured relationship that can't be repaired. The relationship can be managed by collectively agreeing on milestones and using the milestones to determine the health of the business. For example, instead of saying the leads are "bad", have a definition to quantitatively define a "good" lead. That helps eliminate fighting. Craig Rosenberg on marketing and sales alignment Co-Founder and Chief Analyst at TOPO Inc. 63 Use LinkedIn to Deliver a Meaningful Content Experience 10 To succeed with content marketing, you have to reach and engage the right audience at every stage of the buying cycle. Without a doubt, your website should serve as a repository for all the content you publish. But your company’s online presence is limited in its reach. When you apply proven SEO principles to your LinkedIn Company Page, you can see amazing results: a well-optimized Company Page can show up on page 1 of the search results.13 64 CUSTOMERS S ALES LEADS PROSPECTS BUSINESS SALES CYCLE 13: Forbes, New Research: 2014 LinkedIn User Trends (And 10 Top Surprises) LinkedIn offers a unique platform for sharing content with the world’s largest professional network on the Internet: more than 400 million members in over 200 countries. You unleash the real power of publishing on LinkedIn by combining subject matter expertise, Company and Showcase Pages, employee amplification, and Sponsored Updates for an always-on thought leadership engine (more on this later). Let’s say your CEO publishes a thought leadership article on LinkedIn. You then publish it on your Company Page or Showcase Page—or both—and ask your employees to share with their networks. You can further extend the reach of the post using targeted Sponsored Updates and Direct Sponsored Content. 65 Hootsuite posts helpful content—such as A Guide to Social Video—to answer its audience’s burning questions. Symantec uses its Company Page to build creative stories and inspire conversations with customers. Moz publishes blog posts designed to teach its prospective buyers. Here are a few examples of companies doing this well No wonder companies promote their content through more than 7.2 million Company Pages. By sharing relevant information and useful insights, they spark vibrant discussions and engage prospective buyers. Your Company Page is an ideal central repository for your content. Think of it as the Mothership—the source from which all your content goodness emanates. It’s often one of the first pages that LinkedIn members visit when looking to learn about a company, making it the perfect place to feature your latest and greatest white papers, eBooks, and how-to content. Build a following with your LinkedIn Company Page 66 Combine the reach of your Company Page with the ability to get more granular using Showcase Pages and you’ve got a powerful one-two punch. Go Deeper With LinkedIn Showcase Pages Microsoft maintains over 20 Showcase Pages, each designed to appeal to—and serve relevant content to—a certain segment of its audience. Similarly, Cisco offers more than 10 Showcase Pages, allowing its followers to view the topics and content of most interest to them. Showcase Pages allow you to serve content to distinct audiences based on their interest in a specific brand, business unit, or initiative, offering a terrific opportunity to directly engage the right people in the right context. In other words, serve broad content on your Company Page and get more segmented through a Showcase Page. At the same time, you can point people to other relevant content by curating articles from industry news, trends and content from LinkedIn Influencers. By doing so, you show that your perspective isn’t trapped within the four walls of your company and that your ultimate goal is to educate anyone interested in the topic. In other words, it’s a way to demonstrate that you’re a credible source of expert guidance and focused on being part of a bigger conversation and helping others. 67 If you were starting a content marketing program from scratch, where would you begin? I'd work hard on getting to know my audience, studying my competition, and formulating a strategy around what would resonate before I ever took to the content creation itself. But, from that point, everything would be experimentation and evolution based on what I learn. Every audience and every platform are different. I suspect that, depending on how unique the new audience I was going after was from my current audience (of mostly marketers and tech folks), it might take me some serious time to get good at finding a sweet spot. In your eyes, what is the biggest difference between content marketing five years ago and content marketing today? A lot has changed, but I think, more than anything else, the last five years have reduced loyalty and attention to almost unrecognizable levels. No one subscribes to just a few feeds or just a few accounts on social media. No one's messages have a shot at reaching 60 or 70% of their audience—even the audience that's opted in and said "I want to see what you're sharing." All of the social networks have substantially reduced reach. Email deliverability and open rates continue to shrink. RSS readers are barely alive anymore. Earning your audience's attention five years ago was relatively easy (or at least, much easier) if they'd already connected themselves to you. Today, that advantage is gone—a subscriber doesn't mean what it used to, and I doubt it ever will again. Every new message you want to send will have to pierce the cacophony of noise that overwhelms us in the digital age. If you are tasked with hiring a content marketer, what is the #1 attribute you are looking for? Empathy. Great marketers have immense empathy for their audience. They can put themselves in their shoes, live their lives, feel what they feel, go where they go, and respond how they'd respond. That empathy comes out in content that resonates with your audience. Tell us about a brand that has impressed you with its content strategy and execution. I was very impressed by Airbnb's foray into neighborhood guides. It's brilliant in that it doesn't try to compete head-on with traditional travel content, but does serve Airbnb's unique audience and unique value in a great way. Rand Fishkin on SEO Wizard of Moz at Moz 68 In your opinion, what is the baseline of SEO skills content marketers should have? I think a content marketer actually needs more SEO skills than marketers in nearly any other position (with the obvious exception of SEO specialists themselves). That means understanding keyword research and how to do keyword targeting, how search engines generally rank pages, some of the technical aspects of SEO around indexation and crawling and how content on the same domain can boost that site's authority and ranking potential, etc. Given that content marketing isn't just about producing content, but about earning traffic to it as well, SEO should be a cornerstone of any content marketer's repertoire. What current SEO opportunities will content marketers be glad they acted upon two years from now? 1. Better content > more content. This is one that's tough because A) many teams and managers and clients still want a certain number of pieces rather than aiming for fewer pieces of higher quality and B) quantity is how content marketers get their reps in—it's how we practice our art and get better at it. The reason this matters so much is that engines are starting to learn which domains people prefer to put those domains in front of them more and more. If you fall behind this curve, and a substantive portion of your content doesn't interest, excite, or engage visitors, you could quickly find yourself in a negative spiral of a feedback loop that lowers your aggregate rankings long term. 2. Schema and rich snippets. This one's obvious because it not only drives up click- through rates today, but is likely to have more and more influence and opportunity over time. If you get good at it now, you can expect a string of returns. 3. Link outreach and link-earning content. Many of us keep hearing how link building is dead, and it's something I've said myself. But the need for links is not dead, and it doesn't even appear that links are getting less correlated with high rankings. So links are still something we need, but classic, old- school, manipulative and low-quality link building is diminished if not gone. Thus, we need to produce content that naturally earns links and content that's likely to earn links once we do the right kinds of outreach. Then we need to do that outreach! The best part is that if you get good at link earning and link outreach now, you'll rank and earn visibility and those links will compound and earn you more and more rankings over time. Rand Fishkin on SEO Wizard of Moz at Moz 69 Let's Get Visual 11 70 • Every human is a visual thinker: 75% of the neurons in our brains process visual information. • Articles containing images see 94% more views than articles without. • Visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text, and graphics create specific emotions that can be tied to the brand. • 40% of people will respond better (and faster) to visual information than with plain text. • Posts with videos attract 3 times more inbound links that text-only posts. • 44% of followers are more likely to engage with brands if they post pictures. • Posts with images are also liked twice as often as text-only updates. In other words, content without a visual element will only reach half of the potential audience—and generate less than half of the potential engagement. It’s not smart to rely solely on written copy to reach your prospects and customers—the visual is the new headline. Here’s why every smart content marketer needs to find the right mix of words and visuals. Aids decision making Is more persuasive Longer overall impression Simply put, if you don’t tap into your audience’s visual side, then you are missing huge opportunities to connect. Visual language aids decision-making, is more persuasive and leaves a longer impression than simple text. In fact, it’s vital to include a visual element in every content asset and campaign. Doing so differentiates your content from all the copy- heavy content out there. Plus, it makes it much easier for your audience to get a snapshot of your main points—and easier for you to draw them into the bigger conversation. Skip the stock photos While it’s true that visual content can better engage your audience, it’s also true that the wrong imagery can alienate the people you are trying to engage. In a world in which people are craving authenticity, give it to them in the form of real-life photos. Just make sure you aren’t compromising on quality—a blurry, low-resolution image does not impress. Choose images wisely If you’re a sophisticated content marketer, you develop and refer to buyer personas as you create your content. Use this understanding of your target audience to select images that will resonate. Compliment your copy Use images that relate to your topic. Go a step further and use images that add value by helping readers better understand and digest your written information. Never go image-less Alright, it may not always be possible or practical to include an image in every content piece. But it may be worth your while to do so. A study by Blog Pros found that the 100 highest-ranking blogs included at least one image for every 350 words. Be mobile-friendly It goes without saying that a growing number of business professionals consume content on their mobile phones. So make sure your images render well on these devices. Best Practices for Imagery 71 72 Here are three examples of how top brands are using visuals on LinkedIn. Learn From the Best 1. Forbes ranks as one of the most influential global brands on LinkedIn, and it’s clear why: most posts it publishes contain a relevant visual element. In many cases, these visuals are intended to convey an emotion, like an image of a frustrated employee. In this case, the content convinced more than 50 members to comment and like the post just within LinkedIn. 2. Microsoft, another influential global brand on LinkedIn, creates visual elements using content from its employees. The #ICreatedThis campaign highlights the work of Microsoft team members in various departments, and introduces them to the audience through visual content. 3. Mashable is yet another influential global brand on LinkedIn, partly because it uses illustrations and image composites to supplement its written words. Much like the Forbes posts, these visuals convey emotions and ones that might not be immediately understood by just reading the copy. 73 In chapter 7, we referenced Rand Fishkin of Moz and his Whiteboard Fridays, which are video blog posts featuring Rand on an SEO-related topic. Don’t Underestimate the Power of Video According to Rand, “the practice of filming 40+ videos each year and the familiarity it created among those who saw it with Moz and with me built something inexplicably powerful. I think video, and Whiteboard Fridays specifically, is a huge part of what created the brand of ‘Rand as thought leader’ (ugh, that’s an awkward sentence for me to write—please don’t take this to mean I have any kind of ego or high opinion of this. Like I said, it was accidentally successful, not some genius strategy).” Remember, the mechanisms you use to deliver and promote your content are content in their own rights. Your emails and landing pages can also generate better results if you dress them up with compelling images. And since your emails and landing pages need to work in tandem, make sure there’s synergy between the images you use in each. Don’t Forget Emails and Landing Pages 74 A few practical tips: • Use JPEGs or GIFs in email to ensure the highest likelihood of images displaying properly in any email client. • Develop your emails so they look good even with the images turned off since some email clients do not automatically display images. • Test your emails and landing pages to see how they appear on mobile devices. Start by simply adding images to your LinkedIn posts (you’ll stand to increase comments by 98% in the process). Next, reimagine your existing content in more visual formats. Can you create an infographic or SlideShare deck from a white paper? Speaking of SlideShare…consider it a must-have for your content marketing strategy. SlideShare is not just a place to post your slide presentations—it’s a social channel where you can establish your brand as a thought leader and authority around topics and keywords. You can even create a company page on Slideshare and connect it to your Company Page on LinkedIn. That means any presentations you post on SlideShare will appear as a LinkedIn update. Just remember: Shoot for 10-30 slides and an average of 19 images. While at Marketo, Jason Miller—Global Content Marketing Leader at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions—and his team converted a white paper into a self-guided visual journey and posted it to SlideShare. While the white paper had generated 18,000 views, the same content packaged differently on SlideShare drove 350,000 views in six months. How to Get Started 75 Before you start panicking, do not think you now need to create a bunch of visual content from scratch. Here are other free or low-cost tools worth your while: Canva: Create a variety of content type while collaborating with others. PicMonkey: Edit photos directly within a web browser. Pixlr Editor: Take advantage of simple to advanced features for editing and sharing photos. Haiku Deck (which integrates with SlideShare): Easily create presentation decks. 76 And image databases you may find useful: Creative Commons Pixabay PhotoPin DotSpin 77 Expand the Reach of Your Content 12 If you develop content but no one sees it, what’s the point? Don’t just post your content and hope prospective buyers stumble upon it—promote your content to make sure they find it. As a marketer, you know content and promotion go hand in hand. So you’ll want to take advantage of a new form of promotion that is quickly gaining steam when it comes to engaging digitally savvy prospects who spend time online: native advertising. The biggest appeal of native advertising may be its unobtrusive nature—it appears in the content stream that your prospects are already consuming. In other words, it’s focused on attracting attention by providing content in the context of the user’s experience. And effective native ads amplify your reach: according to research from IPG media Lab and Sharethrough, native ads are much more likely to be shared than a banner ad. In 2014, over $4.6 billion was spent on social media advertising and 35% of that was for native ads. By 2017, it’s predicted that nearly $11 billion will be spent on social media advertising—and native ads will account for 58% of that. Simply put, you need to work native advertising into your marketing strategy. 78 What could your native advertising look like? A Sponsored Update on LinkedIn A lead form that pops up on a SlideShare slide A video that someone can view before reading an article 79 Sponsored Updates are native to the browsing experience. Because they appear directly in the LinkedIn member’s feed—whether on their desktops, tablets, or smartphones—they do not interrupt the stream of content. You can target your Sponsored Updates using criteria such as location, company size, industry, job function, and seniority. That means you reach the right people at the right time with the most relevant content. Plus, Sponsored Updates appear alongside the high-quality content that members are already consuming—including news analysis and thought leadership—leading to a positive association with your brand. Within a minute or two of publishing your Sponsored Update, you’ll see continually updated impression and engagement metrics. As a result, you can track how well your posts hit the mark and instantly fine- tune your strategy. Here’s a tip for boosting engagement: sponsor two to four updates at any time to maximize your reach to your target audience, and run each campaign at least three weeks. Then proactively optimize or retire the updates that aren’t delivering the results you hoped to achieve. And give serious consideration to your calls to action (CTAs). Clear CTAs—ones that tell people exactly what they’ll get and what they’ll learn when they click—will drive more clicks and conversions to gated content. LinkedIn Sponsored Updates LinkedIn Sponsored Updates Are a Powerful Way to: Raise awareness and shape perception. Send Sponsored Updates to your target audience to rapidly increase awareness and shape the perception of your brand, products, and services. Drive quality leads. Generate quality leads by sharing insights that professionals seek. Watch that content spread via the peer sharing that occurs naturally on LinkedIn. Build relationships with the world’s professionals. Publish your content with Sponsored Updates to create value and establish trust that sparks ongoing conversations and deeper customer relationships. While it’s smart to develop content with buyer personas in mind, it’s even smarter to test the response to your content to figure out which assets to prioritize and which to relegate to the back burner. On LinkedIn, you can use Direct Sponsored Content to personalize and test content in the newsfeed without first creating posts on your LinkedIn Company Page. In fact, because content doesn’t have to start on the Company Page, different business units can try content specific for their audience with the Company Page administrator’s approval. And because you can send personalized messages to specific audiences, you can test and retest a variety of content in real time until you get it right. In other words, you can conduct A/B tests across audience segments and optimize content for specific audiences. LinkedIn Direct Sponsored Content: Test, Personalize and Control 80 We did just that when promoting The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn. As you can see in the images below, we aimed different Direct Sponsored Updates at different parts of our target audience. And because we tailored the messages to resonate with each distinct audience, we saw great results. 81 1 Personalize your message and offers to your target audience to boost your performance Set up a test of different updates to reach different audiences. Sponsored Update 1: Targeted to CMOs These insights can help you drive transformational change to your business. [link to white paper landing page with tracking tag 1] Sponsored Update 2: Targeted to Marketing Directors Need to demonstrate the ROI of your marketing efforts? These insights can help. [link to white paper landing page with tracking tag 2] Sponsored Update 3: Targeted to Social Media Managers Social media managers: Get the insights you need to drive the engagement you want. [link to white paper landing page with tracking tag 3] Big Rock Content Example: B2B Marketing company XYZ has recently launched a new piece of research and is publishing updates to LinkedIn to drive marketers to download it. Website management platform Pantheon lowered lead acquisition costs and increased conversion rates using Direct Sponsored Content. The company wanted to reach Drupal and WordPress developers with decision-making authority, and was able to narrow down to that audience using the advanced filtering capabilities of LinkedIn. It then ran a triple campaign featuring three streams of Direct Sponsored Content: one for Drupal developers, one for WordPress developers, and one for agencies. In addition to keeping the cost-per-new- name low, Pantheon enjoyed higher-than- average click-through rates, with few wasted impressions. “Across the board, we’ve seen a higher click-through rate from LinkedIn, and a higher conversion rate from our landing pages. The right people are seeing, clicking on, and converting from our ads.” —Emily Winslow, Pantheon’s Online Marketing Manager. 82 Activate Employees for Content Sharing and Amplification 13 If the goal is to make sure your content goes far and wide, then it’s common sense to tap into your employees. By encouraging your employees to share your content, you can significantly increase content reach. And if your sales reps are connected to the right decision makers, you’ll get more of your content into more of the right hands. At the same time, harness your employees’ subject matter expertise to further establish thought leadership. A smart approach is to identify a handful of subject matter experts who commit to posting long-form content 1-3x per month. You can augment this with third-party content you curate. All employees—not just those who author the content— should share these internally authored posts with their wider networks. By coordinating your social media and content marketing strategy across business lines, you can support your organization’s overall narrative—i.e., the conversation you want to own—with employee contributions as the foundation. To make all this as easy as possible, you can use Elevate, a LinkedIn product that helps your employees be social and helps you measure the impact on hiring, marketing, and sales. With Elevate, you can keep your employees supplied with a steady stream of quality content to share across LinkedIn and Twitter. And you’ll see how their sharing activity directly impacts your business, including traffic to your site, leads to your sales team, followers to your Company Page, and new hires. 83 84 Ready to harness the power of your employees? Here’s an easy formula for making the most of your in-house expertise. Select Content Coordinator Identify 5+ Authors Publish Posts and Cross-Promote Employee Sharing and Amplification Feedback and Iterate Help curate and revise content that will support your narrative while coordinating social media strategies across business lines. Example: Social media manager, Third-party content partner Empower content-creating thought leaders at your organization to drive a relevant conversation with your core audience. Use these voices to elevate their own reputation as well as that of the organization. Example: Sr. Director of Product Marketing, CIO Publish 1-3x/month. Publish more frequently to build an audience more quickly. Cross-promote posts through both author and company social channels to ensure relevancy and maximize reach Encourage re-sharing among employees to curate message across their networks. Leverage LinkedIn Sponsored Updates to amplify brand among target audience Use instant feedback from author’s profile (Shares, Likes, and Comments) and Company Page analytics to track performance. Use these insights to iterate your approach and understand what content resonates best with your audience Give your employees a few basic principles to employ and their content will yield better results: Guide Your Employees Toward Editorial Excellence 85 Use images wisely People are more likely to click on posts containing images; a good rule of thumb is to place a strong image at the top of the post. Here’s how to find rights-approved images. Reel them in with your headline While compelling headlines are a must, choose clarity over cleverness: remember, the post has to deliver on the promise of the headline. Here’s good guidance on picking headlines. Be authentic. To cultivate trust with readers, be authentic by: • Putting forth an opinion • Using personal anecdotes • Creating insights and sharing knowledge • Setting up the post with a clear intro, and explaining your terms • Steering clear of jargon and acronyms • Writing with the goal of sparking a conversation 86 Tap Into Influencers for Content Amplification 14 If you subscribe to the content marketer’s philosophy that you need to flip your view from outside-in to inside-out... ...then you’ll recognize the importance of including influencers in your content marketing strategy. Aligning with recognized experts boosts your organization’s credibility and helps build your presence on a much larger scale more quickly than you could do on your own. Put another way, including their wisdom in your content adds third-party validation to your content and gets you noticed by these gurus. Better yet, if these thought leaders like the content you’ve produced and feel it will resonate with their audiences, they’ll share it with their extended networks. In other words, they’ll amplify the reach of your content. 87 88 Identify relevant thought leaders by searching Buzzsumo on the top influencers in your space or by topic. Click on the Influencers tab and then enter a search term. You can filter by their roles: bloggers, influencers, companies, journalists, and regular people (yes, that is really a category). You can also see what content is performing well, most shared content and what is currently trending. You can even see an analysis of content (such as average shares by social networks and content length), and a list of top authors. Thats not all. You can also follow an exclusive group of Influencers on LinkedIn. From C-level executives and entrepreneurs to world leaders and philanthropists, these Influencers contribute unique business insights and spark thought-provoking discussions on a range of issues. Displayed via Pulse, the LinkedIn Influencers program is a source of truly original content. But more importantly, it’s meant to inspire, inform and make you a better marketer. And you can directly engage with any of these Influencers, either by “Liking” a post or jumping into a conversation about a post. In addition to joining in rich conversations, you will see which Influencers and topics are driving the most interest—perhaps sparking an idea of your own for a post or content asset, or triggering the decision to curate an Influencer’s content. How to Identify the Right Influencers 89 Cultivate a Connection If you don’t have an existing relationship with a recognized expert, start building one by engaging with them. You can do so by sharing their content and commenting on their blog posts. This is how you tap into the power of reciprocity as Robert C. Cialdini established in his touchstone classic—Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion— humans feel compelled to give back once they’ve been on the receiving end. Invite Them to Participate When it comes time to develop your content asset, you can either quote from publicly available resources you find online or solicit influencers to participate. Perhaps the first time around, you insert existing quotes or stats in your content and email the expert with the final publication and a note that you featured them in your content. And make it easy for these influencers to share your content— suggest a possible message they can send, highlights from the asset, and even Tweets. If you or someone in your organization is connected to recognized thought leaders, reach out and invite them to contribute to your latest content project. Explain the topic, why you think their participation is important, when you plan to publish and how you’re hoping they’ll pitch in. Remember: a bit of ego stroking never hurts so be sure to emphasize what you respect about this expert and why you believe your audience will care to hear his or her perspective. If they agree to participate, send 3-5 questions for them to answer. If you are soliciting input from more than one thought leader, keep a few of the interview questions consistent and then throw in one or two that zero in on each influencer’s area of expertise. You’ll end up with more than one perspective to include in your content, and can easily publish a series of blog posts featuring the thoughts of each contributor. Prove the Value of Your Content Marketing 15 91 Once your content marketing engine is humming along, you need to measure the impact. Is your goal to raise brand awareness? Track new page followers. Are you trying to establish thought leadership and engagement? Measure the number of post likes, comments and shares. Remember: it may be easier to measure lower funnel results, but you need the upper funnel to drive tomorrow’s buyers into the lower funnel. At the start of this eBook, we emphasized the importance of defining your content marketing goals so you can select the most relevant and fitting metrics to track. Do you need to generate demand? Pay attention to CTA click-throughs, inquiries and leads. Full Funnel Goals and Tracking Metrics Goal Reach your audience at scale to build awareness and a positive impression of your brand Track Awareness Branded search Brand recall and Lift Website and referral traffic lift Page views, pages per visit, and time spent on site lift Subscriber/opt-in lift Engagement (open rate, shares, likes, comments) Bounce rate decline Unique visitors lift Inbound links lift Goal Nurture prospects until they’re ready to make a purchase Track Leads (organic vs. paid) MQLs/Sales Accepted/ Opportunities (SAO) Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) Costs per lead Qualified lead velocity rate (i.e., growth in qualified leads) Form fills Revenue Returning Visitors Close rate Retention rate and/or customer lifetime value and/or upsell/cross-sell Assuming you have defined your goals and relevant metrics, you need to take advantage of the tools that can help you track and measure the results. This helps prove the value to the boss and makes it easier to secure budget going forward. It also helps you pinpoint what is—and is not— working so you can produce more of the former and less of the latter. You can make use of various paid and free tools to track and gauge the impact of your content both offline and online. When it comes to content you distribute via the LinkedIn platform, we provide a few ways to gain insight into its performance: Profile Analytics Track Comments, Shares, and Likes to see who’s engaging with your content How you rank Track how trafficked your profile is among Connections, Colleagues, and Comparable Members Audience See what types of professionals are following you Content Marketing Score Gauge your share of voice in the marketplace 92 3 Metrics for Sponsored Updates Success Here are three key metrics to measure the impact of LinkedIn Sponsored Updates: 1. Content engagement 2. Leads 3. Cost per lead 93 Fortunately, the Content Marketing Score from LinkedIn ties all of this outreach together so you get an integrated view of how your efforts are paying off. Think of the Content Marketing Score as a gauge that helps your company, product and brand groups understand the impact of their content marketing efforts on LinkedIn. The Content Marketing Score provides this insight by: • Highlighting the audience(s) consuming your content on LinkedIn • Quantifying your company’s content presence and engagement on LinkedIn In other words, it tells you if members within your target audience are engaging with your content. And it can show you how you compare to your competitors. You can even see a breakdown of how you’re performing across the different areas of LinkedIn—whether by Groups, updates, or posts. The most effective content marketers reach their audience in multiple ways across LinkedIn via Groups, company updates, employee posts, Sponsored Updates, and influencer posts. See How Your Content Ranks 94 Turn Insights Into Action While all that information is valuable, it’s useless unless you act on it. And the Content Marketing Score makes that possible by recommending how you can adjust your content strategy to achieve the best results possible. Suggestions may include experimenting with new ways to increase your follower base by utilizing LinkedIn Sponsored Updates, encouraging employees to publish more posts, or focusing on your content relevance. Simply put, the Content Marketing Score from LinkedIn: • Analyzes who engages with your content • Compares you to your peers • Suggests how to improve your score To receive your custom Content Marketing Score, please contact your LinkedIn account executive or account manager. +1 +1 +1 95 Conclusion: Not More Content But More Relevant Content 16 96 With content fueling every aspect of your marketing, it’s clear why content marketing has become such a priority. Succeed with content marketing and you effectively enable an integrated, full-funnel marketing strategy. Your challenge now is to deliver relevant content at every turn. The advice and ideas in this eBook should help you do just that and we’ve gathered them in this handy checklist for easy consultation at any time. Document your goals and determine how you will measure the effectiveness of your content marketing Identify your ideal customer and develop buyer personas Decide what conversation you want to own and pinpoint the topics to cover Develop an editorial calendar and map content throughout the funnel Think global from the start as you determine what resources you’ll need to create, publish and promote your content Produce a Big Rock to fuel your social and demand generation, then carve it up into turkey slices Publish LinkedIn Company and Showcase pages Don’t forget visual content Amplify your reach with LinkedIn Sponsored Updates, A/B testing, influencers and employees Measure your results and tweak your content for maximum impact 97 31 Sophisticated Content Marketing Thought Leaders to Follow 17 98 31 Sophisticated Content Marketing Thought Leaders to Follow Ann Handley Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs https://www.linkedin.com/in/annhandley @annhandley Doug Karr Marketing Technology Entrepreneur, Consultant, Author, Speaker and Blogger https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglaskarr @douglaskarr Andy Crestodina Co-Founder / Strategic Director of Orbit Media Studios, Speaker, Author https://www.linkedin.com/in/andycrestodina @crestodina Ardath Albee B2B Marketing Strategist, Author of Digital Relevance (2015) and eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale https://www.linkedin.com/in/ardathalbee @ardath421 Joe Pullizi Founder at Content Marketing Institute https://www.linkedin.com/in/joepulizzi @JoePulizzi Michael Brenner CEO, Marketing Insider Group and Author of The Content Formula https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbrenner @BrennerMichael 99 Lee Odden CEO at TopRank Marketing https://www.linkedin.com/in/leeodden @leeodden Heidi Cohen Chief Content Officer at Actionable Marketing Guide https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidicohen @heidicohen Michael Stricker U.S. Marketing Director at SEMrush https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-stricker- 945b2b24 @RadioMS Pam Didner Global Content Marketing Strategist | Fortune 100 Senior Marketing Expert | Author | Speaker | Adjunct Instructor https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamdidner @PamDidner Barry Feldman Turn On the Power of Online Marketing | Content Marketing Consultant | Copywriter | Blogger & Podcaster | Speaker https://www.linkedin.com/in/feldmancreative @FeldmanCreative Doug Kessler Creative Director, Co-Founder, Velocity Partners Ltd https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougkessler @dougkessler 31 Sophisticated Content Marketing Thought Leaders to Follow 100 Pawan Deshpande CEO of Curata, Content Marketing Software https://www.linkedin.com/in/pawandeshpande @TweetsFromPawan Alex Cheeseman Head of International Strategy at NewsCred https://uk.linkedin.com/in/alexcheeseman @mralexcheeseman Todd Wheatland Author, Speaker | Content Marketing, Social Media, HR, Employer Branding, SlideShare | Head of Strategy at King Content https://au.linkedin.com/in/wheatland @ToddWheatland Ekaterina Walter Marketing Innovator; Bestselling Author; Speaker; Sprinklr Evangelist [MBA, PMP] https://www.linkedin.com/in/ekaterinawalter @Ekaterina Robert Rose Content Marketing Strategist, Author & Speaker https://www.linkedin.com/in/robrose @Robert_Rose Jon Miller CEO and Co-Founder at Engagio, previously co-founder at Marketo https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmiller2 @jonmiller 31 Sophisticated Content Marketing Thought Leaders to Follow 101 C.C. Chapman Experienced Marketing Consultant, Writer, Photographer & Keynote Speaker https://www.linkedin.com/in/cchapman @cc_chapman Chris Brogan CEO, Owner Media Group, New York Times and Wall Street Journal International Bestselling Author & Business Advisor https://www.linkedin.com/in/cbrogan @chrisbrogan Sonia Simone Chief Content Officer at Copyblogger Media, LLC https://www.linkedin.com/in/soniasimone @soniasimone Darren Rowse Blogger, Speaker, Author, Podcaster and Online Entrepreneur https://au.linkedin.com/in/darrenrowse @problogger Brian Clark Founder and CEO of Rainmaker Digital https://www.linkedin.com/in/copyblogger @brianclark Neal Patel Head of Human/Social Dynamics at Google https://www.linkedin.com/in/nealhpatel @neilpatel 31 Sophisticated Content Marketing Thought Leaders to Follow 102 Jonny Rose Head of Content at idio https://uk.linkedin.com/in/jonny-rose-426aa334 @98rosjon Kristi Hines Freelance writer, ghostwriter, content marketer, and business blogger | HubSpot Inbound Marketing Certified https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristihines @kikolani Matt Heinz President, Heinz Marketing Inc—sales acceleration, demand generation, pipeline management, customer lifetime value https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattheinz @HeinzMarketing Justin Gray PaidSuite, LeadMD, Inc., Greyson Organics, LLC https://www.linkedin.com/in/leadmd @Jgraymatter Shane Snow Journalist, geek, and bestselling author | Cofounder of Contently https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanedsnow @shanesnow Maria Pergolino Senior Vice President Marketing - Apttus (Previously at Marketo), Demand Generation & Account Based Marketing Leader https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariapergolino @InboundMarketer 31 Sophisticated Content Marketing Thought Leaders to Follow 103 Chad Pollitt Co-Founder, VP of Audience, Marketing Speaker & Author, Adjunct Professor, Top 20 CMO Influencer & Former Army Commander https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadpollitt @ChadPollitt 31 Sophisticated Content Marketing Thought Leaders to Follow Today, LinkedIn members number more than 400+ million of the 600 million professionals on the planet, representing the largest group anywhere of influential, affluent, and educated people. For more information, visit marketing.linkedin.com