“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.
‘Which road do I take?’ she asked.
‘Where do you want to go?’ was his response.
‘I don’t know’, Alice answered.
‘Then’, said the cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.’”
— Alice in Wonderland
Does finding your way with content marketing feel like you’re living a personal version of Content Marketing in Wonderland?
Consider this: Over 90% of B2B and B2C marketers are on the content marketing path in 2014 according to Content Marketing Institute’s annual study. But did you know, only 44% of B2B marketers have a documented content strategy? Less than half have it documented where and how “they want to go”.
A strategy answers essential questions about why, for who and how a marketing program will achieve stated business objectives. While that makes sense, it might not be as easy to implement as it sounds.
Luckily we’ve tapped 12 content marketing experts and thought leaders from content savvy brands speaking at the upcoming Content Marketing World conference to offer more helpful advice than the Cheshire cat.
From the underpinnings of Content Strategy to considerations for global content, this eBook includes advice from some of the top thinkers and doers in the Content Marketing industry including:
- Rebecca Lieb @lieblink
Analyst, Altimeter Group
- Alan Porter @alanjporter
Content Marketing Manager, Caterpillar Inc.
- Rick Short @RickShort21
Director of Marketing Communications, Indium Corporation
- Paull Young @paullyoung
Director of Digital, charity: water
- Jascha Kaykas-Wolff @kaykas
Chief Marketing Officer, BitTorrent
- Jen Dennis @jendennis2000
Content Strategy and Marketing Consultant
- Gurdeep Dhillon @gurdeepd
Vice President, Customer LoB Marketing, SAP
- David Jones
Publications Manager, John Deere
- Brian Kardon @bkardon
CMO, Lattice Engines
- Jesse Noyes @noyesjesse
Senior Director of Content Marketing, Kapost
- Jeff Charney @jeffcharney
Chief Marketing Officer, Progressive Insurance
- Bruce McDuffee @brucemcduffee
Senior Manager, Content Marketing, Boeing
An underlying theme to this year’s Content Marketing World conference is “Beyond Story Telling” – to open marketers up to new ideas and what’s next.
There’s no doubt, that story telling plays a major role with successful content marketing. But there’s a lot more to it than that, from creating a strategy to audience development to visual content to finding the “real” ROI of a content marketing program.
That’s why my digital marketing agency, TopRank Online Marketing and Content Marketing Institute have partnered to create this new series of eBooks themed with one of the most imaginative stories of all time: Alice in Wonderland.
We’ve collected insights from over 40 major brands and thought leaders into a series of 4 eBooks and infographics as well as interviews and quotes that will inspire you with all-new ideas, strategies and practical advice to help make your content marketing world a successful one.
Building a Content Marketing Strategy is the first in a series of 4 Content Marketing eBooks featuring a selection of the 2014 #CMWorld speakers. We hope you find the content valuable and stay tuned for additional content marketing resources from this group of experts – rich in experience and practical, actionable insights.
Following Building a Content Marketing Strategy, the next eBook in the series to publish will be #CMWorld eBook: Building An Audience Development Strategy for Content Marketing featuring content marketing expertise from experts like Ann Handley, Jeff Rohrs, Scott Abel, Scott Stratten, Scott Monty, Brian Clark, Heidi Cohen, Leigh Blaylock, Adele Ravella and Jonathon Colman from Facebook. It publishes next Monday August 11th, you don’t want to miss it!
I’ve been attending the Content Marketing World conference since it started 4 years ago and I can tell you, it’s an event that has helped my business tremendously. From content knowledge, to networking, to content creation and overall industry involvement – it’s one of the best marketing events you could attend in 2014.
I am very happy to work with the team at CMI for the 3rd year in a row on the conference eBook project. Very few conferences produce an asset that brings so much value to all involved, from marketers in the industry to the speakers, to the event itself. Plus the conference eBooks are another great example of how a content marketing event promotes itself using, wait for it, content marketing!
Also, a BIG THANKS goes out to our #CMWorld eBooks sponsor, Curata – a leading content curation and content marketing software company.
Want to Know More?
I will be giving a presentation at Content Marketing World September 9th at 3:30pm (Content + Influencer Marketing = A Powerful Way to Grow Your Business) on how to connect with industry influencers to co-create amazing content to grow your business. I’ll be sharing some of the strategies and tactics I used to create influencer eBooks just like the one above.
Susan Misukanis, my business partner and I are also giving an industry lab workshop: Content Marketing for Technology and Software companies on September 11 with guest speakers from Dell (Connie Bensen), LinkedIn (Koka Sexton and Jason Miller) and Pam Didner, previously with Intel and author of the new book, Global Content Marketing. If you work in the tech/software world, this lab is going to ROCK!
These eBooks are just the tip of the iceberg for what you’ll find at the largest Content Marketing Conference in the world. If you’re thinking of attending the Content Marketing World Conference in Cleveland, OH Sept 8-11, I can save you $100 off of the registration if you use the code: TopRank.
