In 2007, the mention of content marketing brought as many blank stares from small business owners as the mention of a website did 10 years before. In 2009, most small businesses do have websites and the term, ‘content marketing,’ has gone from obscure to fashionable. For example, the number of visitors to our website who arrived because they had done a search for ‘content marketing,’ has increased by a factor of How to go from clueless to compelling to transform prospects into buyers In fact, in 1997 when we started our small business magazine in

But, if you use it well, you can make a measurable difference in your content marketing strategy. Here are six easy ways for Twitter to strengthen your content marketing efforts: Because effective content marketing is as much about conversation as it is an outbound messages, you need to maintain a dialogue with customers, prospects, and industry thought leaders. You may be wondering why something as seemingly simple as Twitter causes so much confusion and consternation among business people. Perhaps, it best likened to a tool like a hammer which is simultaneously

But, she’d just got entranced by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for websites. Change your style of delivery according to the content. Tags: Content attention Audience storie Reference: Hartley J and Davies I “Note taking: A critical review” Programmed Learning and Educational technology, 1978,15, 207-224 cited by John Medina in Brain Rules Keeping audience attention is more important and more difficult than grabbing audience attention .

It’s all about creating relevant and compelling content that transforms you into a thought leader who can become a trusted provider That is ultimately how you convert visitors into buyers Of course, this is gospel for me and many content marketers. But, it is still poorly understood by many marketers and SEO practitioners who swear that cramming a ton of “search engine friendly” words That’s the key word from veteran SEO expert Heather Lloyd-Martin SEO is not about creating a website sausage overstuffed with key words and phrases.

It’s been a very good year for content marketing. In fact, visitors searching our site for the phrase “content marketing” increased by 85% in 2009 over 2008. Social media certainly loomed larger in the past 12 months but interest in content marketing strategy accounted for the majority of the most popular posts. How To Create Here is the Cliff’s Notes bullet point version with more detail and links to the full articles following: 5 Reasons an eBook Should be a Core Component of Your Content Marketing Strategy

search on YouTube and a few seconds later, I had found video footage of Bill Clinton talking about Kiva. iStockphoto has a good selection and a search on stock video brings up many other websites. Tags: Content documentary Michael Wesch presentation video YouTub Michael Wesch studies YouTube the way David Attenborough studies insects and lizards. Along the way he’s developed a superbly engaging presentation style.

We often talk about the need to develop a content marketing mindset. Social media is information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It’s It’s much more powerful than those young whippersnappers–Twitter and Facebook This requires companies to think like publishers.

The just released study on business use of social media from the folks at Business.com is must reading for content marketers who are active, tentative or hesitant about social media. For listening/research purposes, Google search and alerts dominate with Twitter and Yahoo search coming not too far behind. Yahoo search at 35% If you’ve been dragging your feet on social media, it’s time to take both of those feet and jump right in. Their research, 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study makes it clear that even small business owners need to take social

Your website is a primary location for product and service information for which your customers are searching. Moreover, it should follow the content marketing mandate of customer centricity. That is, your website must reflect an understanding of what’s most important to your customers in the way that you present content about who you are, what you sell, and why your visitors should care. Of course you need a website. But, you need a lot more to succeed.

Your video marketing objectives may include greater visibility, enhanced credibility or expert status, higher search engine rankings, increased brand awareness or all of the above! Later, you can repackage the content as a CD or DVD product for sale. Tags: Content Marketing Knowledge Center News Online Tech Tools Tips & Mini-Guides Trends Video lou bortone onlne video video content marketing Stand Out from the Marketing Crowd Thanks to Lou Bortone , video marketing guru for this guest post In an over-crowded and hyper-competitive marketplace,