The Ultimate Guide to Launching a Print Custom Magazine

By Joe Pulizzi | Published: September 3, 2010

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For the past three years, social media has taken center stage for corporate marketers. In talking with many senior marketers, there was a drop everything mentality, meaning that many strategies within the integrated marketing realm were left on the sidelines while companies scrambled to figure out social media tactics, assign resources and determine why anyone would use Twitter.

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to talk with marketers all over North America about their marketing plans and struggles. Of course, I heard the usual about social media, content creation, email and lead generation. To my surprise, though, there was talk about print. … continue reading “The Ultimate Guide to Launching a Print Custom Magazine”

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How to Use Content Marketing to Cross Sell Your Current Customers

By Russ Henneberry | Published: September 2, 2010

What is it up to now? Ten times more expensive to generate a new customer than to keep an existing one?  50 times? 100 times?

Regardless of the number, we are all well aware that the most important asset to any business is its existing customer base.  Of course, just retaining those customers is only a portion of the value they can provide to the bottom line.

Existing customers have already made a purchase.  This makes them very likely to buy new offerings or existing offerings that they were not aware of.  This is also known as cross selling. … continue reading “How to Use Content Marketing to Cross Sell Your Current Customers”

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Stuck for Content Ideas? Here’s How to Get (Nearly) Instant Relief

By Thomas Clifford | Published: September 1, 2010

Have you ever struggled to write something? Man, I sure have.

Maybe you’ve got a few ideas brewing for your editorial calendar.

Maybe you’re even noodling on some ideas gathered from your web analytics.

But for whatever reasons, coming up with content ideas is dreadfully painful.

Hey, it happens. … continue reading “Stuck for Content Ideas? Here’s How to Get (Nearly) Instant Relief”

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Branded Words: How Do You Talk to Customers “After the Sale”?

By Kevin Lund and Eileen Sutton | Published: August 31, 2010

When someone decides to become a customer, it’s your handshake moment to welcome them aboard. They’re filling out your online forms. Getting your emails. Reading your welcome packet. Who are you? What’s your tone? How do you talk to them in this moment? Does your brand voice sound like a real person making contact, or is the voice cold and artificial?

Recently, we worked with a global bank we’ll call Gigantor. The bank wanted to reinvent itself. They wanted “big” to feel “small.” Because banking is now mobile, Gigantor was passionate about making customers feel welcome, about making the global “conversation” more real. Here’s what came out of it. … continue reading “Branded Words: How Do You Talk to Customers “After the Sale”?”

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The Anatomy of a Great Web Persona

By Brian Massey | Published: August 30, 2010

Melanie is your market research with an attitude, your analytics in a skirt. Bill is the voice that rings through the headsets of your customer support people, unwavering in his desire to get what he wants. Amy is that segment of your house list who got distracted before she finished ordering online.

None of these people exist, but they are powerful guides for any business that wants to grow in an age of digital content. Melanie, Bill and Amy are touchpoint personas, and they can walk right into any meeting you have and “lay down the law.” They know what they want, and they are your ally in getting the resources you need to deliver.

Read on to learn why a touchpoint persona is so powerful and to figure out what information you should include. … continue reading “The Anatomy of a Great Web Persona”

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How to Outsource Audience-Focused Story Ideas

By Britta Alexander | Published: August 27, 2010

No one knows your audience better than you. You also know how time-consuming it is to build an editorial calendar, brainstorm a story idea list, attach the right sources to that list and write assignment letters. If you haven’t outsourced that job yet, it’s probably because you think it can only be done internally. I’m here to tell you that with the right tools in place, an experienced content provider can bring a list of qualified story ideas and sources to you. Here’s how. … continue reading “How to Outsource Audience-Focused Story Ideas”

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Assembling a Project “Dream Team” for Content Marketing

By Angela Vannucci | Published: August 26, 2010

The Miami Heat has Wade, Bosh and James. What super-star line-up can your clients expect on their content marketing project team? Bringing together talent that meets the objectives of the project is key to long-term success. Having the wrong players in the wrong positions can put your organization on the sidelines.

Here are four simple questions to ask when putting together a project “Dream Team.” … continue reading “Assembling a Project “Dream Team” for Content Marketing”

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Make Your Content Do Double Duty When Writing to Multiple Audiences

By Dianna Huff | Published: August 25, 2010

As a B2B marketer or content creator, your job is to create pieces of original content that address the needs/concerns/challenges of your audience. As you know, however, the B2B sales cycle, which can be quite complex, often includes more than one “audience” type as buying decisions are made by teams of people: the purchaser, the end users, the internal champion, the department head, etc.

So what happens if you’re a small company or department, you have two or more distinct audiences – i.e. techies who want product features and management types who want bottom line benefits – and your budget doesn’t allow you to produce separate content for each audience type? … continue reading “Make Your Content Do Double Duty When Writing to Multiple Audiences”

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3 Critical Questions to Answer Before Building a Corporate Content Marketing Practice

By Nate Riggs | Published: August 24, 2010

Content marketing is hot! Companies everywhere are exploring how they can adopt content marketing strategies into their marketing mix. And that makes sense. What better way to reach the massive amounts of potential customers who spend time online?

For middle managers leading the charge towards content marketing, harsh reality doesn’t take long to set in. Corporate roadblocks are everywhere, and these barriers to adoption will need to be addressed before content marketing can ever become a sustained business solution.

From our experience at Social Business Strategies in working with mid-sized and large companies, we’ve learned that it’s important to consider some of the tough questions before making the final pitch for content marketing adoption. … continue reading “3 Critical Questions to Answer Before Building a Corporate Content Marketing Practice”

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Content Marketing Group Therapy: What Suggestions Do You Have for This eNewsletter?

By Michele Linn | Published: August 23, 2010

Several weeks ago, Joe and I received an email from Graham Kilshaw from Interference Technology. He believes in the power of content marketing and had recently launched an eNewsletter (titled the EMC Business Bulletin) to educate his prospects. The problem was that he wasn’t getting the results he expected.

As content marketers, we’ve all faced this same issue: We want to create content that is effective, but how do we do that? Graham offered to use his eNewsletter as a learning experience for the CMI community.

The premise is simple: He’ll share what he is doing with his newsletter and the results he is having. From there, we’d love to get feedback from the CMI community on how the newsletter can be improved. Graham will make changes and then report the findings in a future blog post. This way, we can all learn from our collective experience. … continue reading “Content Marketing Group Therapy: What Suggestions Do You Have for This eNewsletter?”

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