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 fact, in 1997 when we started our small business magazine in Southwest Florida, few owners had websites, let alone an online marketing strategy. In 2009, most small businesses do have websites and the term, ‘content marketing,’ has gone from obscure to fashionable. How to go from clueless to compelling to transform prospects into buyers When I say fashionable, I mean that the usage of the phrase has skyrocketed 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: Monitor and interact with conversations that take place within your niche markets. 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 simple and powerful.

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 the All-Important Elevator Speech 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

This week, several client meetings reinforced a vital truth: Content marketing isn’t an arcane theory taught in expensive graduate schools that only billion dollar companies can use. In fact, great content marketing is much more about brains than big bucks. What came through loud and clear was that content marketing requires discipline, patience, and persistence, but it doesn’t require an Those client conversations took me back to lessons learned from more than a dozen case studies we featured in Get Content Get Customers . It’s particularly gratifying to watch so many

You can dramatically increase the impact of your content marketing by thoughtful repurposing of the information and resources you developed in order to create the newsletter itself. Tags: Content Marketing In Print Knowledge Center Marketing Basics News Online Tips & Mini-Guides eNewsletter When you publish a monthly print or electronic newsletter that targets an important audience segment, you probably invest heavily in generating the content that will make this newsletter relevant and valuable to its readers. That is obviously critical.

New Crowd Sourced E-Book Is Also a Brilliant Example of Content Marketing Because all of us are smarter than one of us, you will find lots of value in the new e-book, Key Content Marketing Trends and Predictions for 2010 – which even includes my own fearless prediction on content marketing. Aside from its intrinsic merit, this e-book is a perfect example of content marketing at work. The genius behind this e-book is Ambal Balakrishnan. She has turned crowd sourcing into an art form.

Proving again that our readers like to dig into a variety of topics under the broad content marketing umbrella. how to create effective elevator speech to drive your content marketing using content marketing to survive the recession making an eBook The topics range from : low cost research as killer weapon

We often talk about the need to develop a content marketing mindset. To have meaningful social media impact, you must provide a critical mass of content that will position you and your organization as thought leaders within your market niche. Tags: Blogging Content Marketing Knowledge Center Marketing Basics News Online Social Media Tips & Mini-Guides Trend It’s much more powerful than those young whippersnappers–Twitter and Facebook This requires companies to think like publishers.

Inspiration from ‘Visual Blogger’ Mark Smiciklas of Intersection Marketing In the case of the Intersection Marketing blog from Mark Smiciklas, he manages to do both consistently. have written before about the importance of adding visual elements to content so it was particularly gratifying to find that Mark Smiciklas had represented my article, Six Steps to a Successful Small Business Content Marketing Strategy simply and clearly with a big graphic accompanied by five bullet It’s hard to make things easy. And, it’s even harder to be amusing

Be sure to keep these essential content marketing elements in mind as you craft your social media release—and your broader strategy: Don’t let the social media tail wag the content marketing dog. Tags: Content Marketing News Online Public Relations Social Media Tech Tools Tips & Mini-Guide Jump Start Your Online Public Relations for Free They call it public relations for a reason.