11 Common (and Avoidable!) Content Marketing Mistakes, As Explained by Memes

Question: How do you get better at content marketing?

Answer: You learn from your mistakes.

Follow-up Question: What's even better than learning from your mistakes?

Answer: Learning from other people's mistakes.

If you're looking for bad content marketing, it's a buyer's market. Every brand is a publishing company now. Some are doing amazing work. Most are…not so much.

While bad content may not be of value to its target audience, it definitely is useful for content marketers looking to improve.

I know it's no fun thinking about the (sometimes costly) mistakes content marketers make. And I definitely don't want anyone to feel bad who has made these mistakes in the past. We're not here to shame anyone; we're here to do better.

So to lessen the negative emotional impact of these harsh lessons, I'm enlisting some of my favorite memes to help teach them.

11 Common Content Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them:

#1: The Random Act of Content

The Mistake: Content without strategy is like a baby deer on a frozen lake: lots of motion, but no progress. Yet many marketers are still slip-sliding around.

Don't make me quote the B2B Benchmarks stats again, people. You know it's true. A majority of marketers are creating and releasing content that serves no immediate purpose, has no measurable goal, and is not part of a larger whole.

How to Avoid It: First, it's important to recognize that it is possible to directly measure the effectiveness of content marketing. Then, before you create a single new piece of content, create a content strategy that features concrete goals and the metrics you will measure to evaluate progress.

#2: The Lightweight

The Mistake: The old-school content strategy was to go broad and shallow. Copywriters would churn out 250-500 words on any topic their audience conceivably could be searching for. It didn't matter if the content delivered on the headline's promise-what mattered was driving traffic.

That's a tactic that won't fly anymore. Search engines are evaluating the quality of the copy, and the way readers react to it, to determine rankings.

How to Avoid It: Focus on the few topics that are of greatest interest to your highest-value reader. Don't worry about attracting the attention of thousands of people who will hit your content and bounce-create something valuable for the dozens who will read it and buy. 

#3: The Island

The Mistake: Even the most in-depth piece of content is unlikely to address every aspect of a topic. Yet marketers still publish content without a single link to a related post, or suggestions for further reading. The more time customers spend on site, the more likely they are to take a next step with your company. So it's worth giving them a reason to stay.

How to Avoid It: As you write, look for opportunities to crosslink the reader to other valuable content. For example, that content strategy link up in the first entry leads to another blog post. It's relevant, it's useful, and it entices the reader to stick around.

#4: The Enstuffening

The Mistake: Until recently, SEO was built around keywords. You find the word or phrase your audience might use, then stuff it in as many times as you can make it fit. As with lightweight content, it worked for a while-but no one was really happy with the arrangement. 

How to Avoid It: Search engines are now far more concerned with user behavior than keywords. Bake in your SEO by writing informative content that answers the reader's question. You can start with a keyword, but use it as a jumping-off point to create content that resonates.

#5: The Sloppy Joe

The Mistake: As publishing content gets more and more simple, it's easy to sidestep the gatekeepers of language, spelling and grammar.

That's a good thing overall, but can lead to beautifully-designed assets marred by typos, or blog posts with phrases so convoluted they're impossible to parse. Sloppy copy can damage your brand's credibility and cause readers to bounce.

How to Avoid It: Treat every bit of content you create, regardless of the channel or format, as though it were a multinational ad with millions of dollars behind it. Even if it's a post for your personal blog or your LinkedIn Profile. If you don't have the patience (or a patient friend) to edit, these tools can help.

#6: The Great Wall of Text

The Mistake: We were trained early on to write in big blocks of text. The problem is, big blocks of text are torturous to read on a screen-especially on a small mobile device.

How to Avoid It: Optimize your text for digital consumption (which sounds like a disease, but means “reading stuff on a screen”). Use paragraph breaks every 2-3 sentences, wherever there would be a logical pause. Like here:

Include headers to provide a skimmable set of highlights for your piece as well. Readers will check out the headers before they decide to commit to reading the whole thing. If you don't have these signposts, the reader will frequently opt out. 

#7: The Eye Exam

The Mistake: Repurposing content is a fantastic habit to get into (more on that later). But sometimes what works in one format doesn't quite work in another.

The slides from your presentation looked great on a 10-foot screen, but on SlideShare they're illegible. Or the infographic you made looks awesome-until it's compressed into a tiny window on your blog.

How to Avoid It: Make sure to adapt content rather than just putting it in a new wrapper. You can use those presentation slides to inform a new SlideShare presentation, for example, with less text, more visual interest, and a firm CTA to your blog.

#8:The Post and Pray

The Mistake: So you create an amazing content asset that speaks directly to your audience's needs. You promote it on your social channels and optimize it for search. Then you wait for the likes and shares to come pouring in…and you wait. And wait.

How to Avoid It: It's no secret that social platforms are increasingly pay-to-play. It's simply not enough to rely on organic sharing and search-if you believe in the content, it's worth putting a few dollars behind it. Start with the channel your audience uses the most, make a minimum investment, and optimize from there. 

#9: The Authority Gap

The Mistake: You know that you're a reliable resource for your content. So you naturally expect your audience to find you credible, too. Unfortunately, your target audience may not yet know how trustworthy you are.

How to Avoid It: There are plenty of ways to add credibility to content. Cite statistics from a respected industry source. Curate quotes from trusted individuals in your field (and don't forget to let them know you quoted them). Even better, reach out to influencers to co-create content.

#10: The One and Done

The Mistake: After pouring blood, sweat, tears and coffee into a great piece of content, it's easy to publish it, forget about it, and move on. You may check to see if it's gaining traction, but in general, you're so over it. It's an understandable attitude that leads to a lot of wasted content potential.

How to Avoid It: Repurpose your content by personalizing it for a different audience, changing the format, refreshing the stats, and more. Roll several pieces into an eBook. Turn the eBook into a SlideShare presentation (with legible text). Your content can find a new audience with every iteration.

#11: The Maze of Gates

The Mistake: A potential customer sees a promising headline for what looks like a fun, entertaining read. They click through-only to see a subscription pop-up before they can start reading. Or a contact form for a download. They're not ready to make a commitment, so they bounce.

How to Avoid It: Many smart marketers are experimenting with 100% ungated content. Whether that strategy would work for you depends on your audience. Regardless, it's important to have plenty of top-of-funnel ungated content to pull in casual readers. Entertain them, offer value, then ask for a next step.

Even the Greatest Make Mistakes

If you're currently making any of these mistakes, good news! That means you have some untapped potential to unleash. Use these as a checklist for making your marketing more effective.

If you have successfully avoided all eleven of these, congratulations! Your next move is harder: You get to go out and make all new mistakes that we all can learn from. I'll be failing and learning right along with you.

What was your most educational marketing mistake? Tell me your story in the comments.

Speaking of content marketing, if you would like to know more about working with a talented content marketing agency, be sure to see “Optimize the ROI of Your Content Agency Investment” and “How B2B Executives Need to Strategize in the World of Content“ featuring our CEO, Lee Odden, at Content Marketing World on Thursday next week.

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Combining Email and Facebook for a Dynamite Ecommerce Marketing Campaign

Posted by andrewchoco

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

Most people view email marketing and social advertising as two separate entities, and I'll be honest, I used to think that as well. However, I've discovered that combining multiple different avenues for a coherent marketing campaign yields some pretty impressive results.

We've tried this tactic before at Directive Consulting, combining SEO and PPC; but in this blog post, I'm going to break down a few ways to combine email and social advertising for multi-channel success.

More specifically, you'll learn:

• How to create custom and lookalike audiences on Facebook from an email list
• Best practices for launching email and social campaigns simultaneously
• How we used this tactic to increase overall sessions and revenue
• Some additional strategies to take your ecommerce campaigns to the next level

Using email lists to create Custom Audiences on Facebook

Most (if not all) ecommerce stores require an email address when completing a purchase, and many times you can see what item the person bought. Keeping an organized and segmented email list is the first step to social advertising success. If you're an online clothing store that specializes in creative t-shirts for men and women, create individual lists segmenting categories (e.g., sports, funny, and cute) and gender. If you're using a CRM such as Hubspot, Mailchimp, or Salesforce, you can export these contact lists as .CSV files and then upload those to Facebook under the “Audiences” section using Ads Manager.

When logging onto your Ads Manager or Business Manager account, go to your ad account and select the drop-down hamburger menu in the top left-hand corner.

If "Audiences" doesn't appear in the “Frequently Used” section, hit "All tools" and you'll find it under the “Assets” section.

After clicking on “create custom audience,” you'll need to select the “customer file” section and then “choose a file or copy” and you'll be prompted to upload your .CSV file into Facebook.

Facebook will then match up the emails with actual Facebook users (you can expect anywhere from a 20% - 70% match rate), but with ecommerce those numbers tend to be on the higher side.

Using email lists to create Facebook Audiences

Another great feature of Facebook ads is the ability to create lookalike audiences from previously uploaded email lists. Facebook will match up the corresponding profiles of your email lists with a broader group of people who have similar profiles based on interests, demographics, and behaviors. As long as your email list consists of more than 100 people, Facebook will be able to create a lookalike audience. Obviously, though, the more people you have in the original email list, the more similar the lookalike audience will be (because Facebook will have more data to pull from.)

When you create your lookalike audience, you select a country and choose anywhere from 1% - 10% of a country's population.

But you don't have to stop there. Once you have a lookalike audience (we usually use the 10% option so we capture the most people), you can layer additional targeting on top of the lookalike. For the clothing store example, you could take the audience of 20 million and add additional behavior targeting of men's fashion buyers and online buyers. Now that's a specific audience!

Launching simultaneous campaigns for maximum reach

Now how can you tie together email marketing and social advertising for optimal reach?

Anytime an ecommerce shop launches a promotion or sale, they send out an email blast.

I usually check my email in the morning, see the promotion, and then promptly forget about it five minutes later. It's common knowledge that every opportunity needs multiple touches before they end up converting to a sale, but sending three emails a day promoting a sale is a good way to lose a lot of subscribers.

The solution? Launch a social promotion targeted at your specific email list. Then ramp up the budget to ensure that every person sees your ad at least once during the campaign. A good way to do this is by looking at the estimated reach when creating an ad campaign and making sure your budget is high enough that the estimated reach per day matches up with the amount of people on your email list.

We used this tactic with a client of ours who sells collectable banknotes from countries all around the world.

Their most popular is the Zimbabwean $100 trillion dollar banknote, so they ran a promotion for 10% off. We didn't segment the audiences like I mentioned earlier, because they were only promoting one country's banknote, but we did create two different ad images as well as a carousel ad so we could target everyone in the list with multiple products for the same price.

While you may think this is an obnoxious ad and the red circle and arrow is overkill, this ad actually performed the best out of all of them, generating over 180 clicks in three days with a CTR of 8.7%. Little touches like this really draw in your audience's attention and can lead to much higher engagement.

Carousel ads are great for ecommerce shops because they can show off multiple products without increasing the price of your campaigns. We recently switched over to carousel ads for a client of ours who builds custom fences and had 3,000% more sessions on the site from the carousel ads.

We launched these ads for a three-day period while the sale was running and combed it with an email blast that went out at the beginning of the sale. These are the results we saw when comparing the week of the promotion to the previous week:

We saw our sessions go up, as well as the pages per session and average session duration. We didn't have a single transaction from Facebook the previous week, but had four during the sale, generating enough revenue to easily cover the cost of that campaign.

Another interesting thing we saw was that the email didn't directly lead to any sales. I'm not saying it had no effect on the sales that week, but only launching an email campaign wouldn't have had the same impact as combining these two platforms and working together to create additional touches throughout the sale period.

Additional strategies

1. Use lookalike audiences

For the above example, we only targeted our custom audience of email subscribers (the sale was a special promo just for those customers). But taking it even further, creating a broader audience from the lookalike audience would have been a great audience to target, as well.

What better way to introduce your brand and product to a potential customer than immediately offering a sale? You can also further target these audiences to get extremely specific. For our banknote client, our targeted lookalike audience looks something like this:

2. Create a new segmented list for sale buyers

If you're launching a promotion for a sale using this tactic, segment each new email address you receive into its own list titled “sale buyers.” There's a chance these people have been wanting to buy your product all along and finally waited until a sale came along to do it, but more likely, these people are impulse shoppers who made a purchase because of the exclusivity of the deal you're promoting. This now gives you a list of customers that you know make purchases during sales, and you can test out other promotional deals later on. If you don't offer free shipping regularly, have a two-day period when you do, and target these specific people.

3. Use Twitter as another platform to target your audience

Twitter is another social platform that gives you the ability to upload a .CSV of email addresses, and matches up twitter profiles with those corresponding emails.

In the Twitter Ads platform, go to "Tools" and then "Audience manager."

Head over to “Create new audience” and upload your own .CSV, just like you did for Facebook. (A word of warning: You do need 500 or more matches for Twitter to allow you to use the audience for promotions.)

For ecommerce, most people will use their personal email for Twitter as well as buying a product, so this shouldn't be an issue with a big enough email list.

Now it's your turn

Now you're prepared to launch a robust and successful email and social advertising campaign.

Remember, it's important to ensure your budget aligns with the amount of people you're trying to reach, and to use eye-popping images to catch your audience's attention. Let me know in the comments if these tactics worked for you, or if you have any additional strategies for email and social success!

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5 Strategies to Entice Consumers to Binge-Watch Your Product Videos

Continue watching.

These two words are infamous in the world of video streaming. When consumers are hooked, they want more to watch.

“Content marketers should consider the binging trend a sort of case study. All of the elements that make us binge are lessons,” says Kari Matthews, a content writer for technology companies.

“We can do what these [television] shows do, in our own way, in our own industries, to make the most of our content and build our brands.”

Work with your team to engage customers with binge-worthy product videos. Get them excited about your brand and ecommerce services.

Try these five strategies below to entice your consumers.

1. Cater to Diverse Audiences

Normally, experts suggest creating content to serve a select group of people. But when it comes to product videos, you may want to take a different approach.

You want your content to be shareable. So, it must serve several different audiences. And that includes people who will never purchase your product.

“Remember that not everybody who buys, buys today, not everybody who consumes content shares it, and not everybody who shares content buys,” states Scott Allan, chief marketing officer at AddThis.

“Instead of focusing on capturing leads, create memorable content that customers will draw on when they or their friends are ready to make a purchase.”

So, produce content that people can share with their family and friends. Focus on moments that everyone can relate to, like laughing with friends, hosting a summer barbeque, or attending a college football game.

Below is the noteworthy Dollar Shave Club product video. Not everyone who shared this content bought the shavers, but it did go viral and reached their target audience.

If your company wants avoid vulgar language, think of your product video like a PG-rated film. For instance, most Disney movies are meant for kids to enjoy, but they have enough common themes to engage the parent.

Don't be afraid to serve more people with your videos. The goal is to spread the word.

2. Develop A Backstory

For product videos to gain your audience's attention, the content must discuss more than the product. Yes, content must go beyond talking about your company.

In other words: Tell a story that emotionally attaches people. It's all about showing your audience a new perspective. And giving them a different insight that humanizes your brand.

Studies show that “Americans alone consume over 100,000 digital words every single day, but 92% say they want brands to tell stories amongst all those words.”

The same holds true in the world of video. A written product description isn't good enough. And a video regurgitating similar information is just awful.

According to For Dummies, a “backstory refers to everything that occurred in your story's past. A character's backstory may include family background, job history, psychological condition, and any memories you create for that person from childhood on.”

Instead, bring your videos to life with characters and a plot. Give the actors names and set up an environment where the product is being used, not displayed.

That's what Amazon did when they introduced its Echo. Rather than giving consumers a run down of the product features, the eCommerce giant showcased the product's value in a simulated setting.

Get creative. Show, don't just tell consumers about your products.

3. Create Episodic Content

According to Netflix, the network's 83 million members watch more than 125 million hours of TV shows and movies every day. That's a lot of time in front of a screen.

But what keeps viewers coming back for more?

One reason is access to uninterrupted content. Consumers don't need to worry about commercials. Advertisements don't get in the way of their favorite shows. Therefore, they can focus on viewing what they love the most.

Another reason is the addicting show plots. A great television show contains episodes that leave the audience wanting more. People constantly want to know what's going to happen next.

Will the main character finally locate the killer? Or will the antagonist prevail and destroy his enemies?

Image Source

Episodic content has people on the edge of their seats. And that's how your team should set up product videos.

Shoot multiple videos with cliffhangers. Get consumers intrigued about your brand culture and latest product benefits.

“Episodic content enhances the credibility of your brand as people become more and more familiar with you and what you are about. This builds trust and value with your target audience,” says Kerri Ponder, a writer at Crowd Content.

One product video is fine. But a bunch can get customers hooked on your ecommerce brand.

4. Notify Customers of Updates

Your customers are busy. They have to manage both their work and home schedules.

So, sometimes certain things get forgotten. And that's perfectly fine.

That's where are your team steps in. Remind your customers of your new product videos.

There's an old marketing adage: The Rule of Seven. It says that a “prospect needs to see or hear your marketing message at least seven times before they take action and buy from you.”

Create a special website pop-up telling them about new videos. Keep customers informed by sending notification emails leading up to the launch.

Your business already sends updates about new terms and conditions. Mimic the technique for product videos.

“Getting people excited about content that is perhaps not yet fully done whets their appetite and keeps them talking about you and your brand, days ahead of when your campaign or content actually is released,” writes Shanna Cook, senior social media manager at Nokia.

Like any marketing tactic, don't over do it. Reminders can become nuisances if they are sent every single day. Take a look at your internal data and set times best suited for your target audience.

Ask customers to sign up for your email list for product video announcements. There's power in notifications.

5. Offer an Instant Reward

Everyone enjoys special gifts for their efforts. Reward customers for taking the time to watch or share your video.

Customers want to be delighted. They desire instant rewards that help them today, not tomorrow. So, stay away from mail-in rebates or points that can't be redeemed today.

For example, at the end of a product video, offer a 10% promo code. And think beyond discounts. Give away exclusive access to a webinar or a free eBook.

Christian Karasiewicz, a social media marketing professional, suggests the following:

“Develop a video to showcase your expertise or further educate your viewers, then include a YouTube card that leads your audience to related material. This can be a transcription, checklist, infographic, SlideShare or downloadable PDF…”

YouTube cards are notifications that appear in your video. It's a small rectangular box at the top right corner. It gives your viewers a preview of the message. Check out the video below on how to add cards to YouTube videos.

Analyze which rewards consumers like the most. Then, start offering instant rewards for watching your product videos.

Binge-Worthy Content

On-demand video is attracting consumers to brands. The best ones hold the audience's attention and keep them engaged.

Aim to create product videos for a diverse audience. Give your videos a backstory. And notify customers of new releases.

Produce captivating product videos. Let consumers continue watching.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

The ROI of AdWords Spend for B2B Firms

What is the return on investment for B2B companies when they spend on Google AdWords search advertising? Read the full article at MarketingProfs

10 Must-Read Content Marketing Interviews with Major Brand Marketers

Content Marketing continues to drive marketing strategy for many companies and yet, most companies don't document that strategy. The result? Marketing departments are challenged to create a variety of compelling content on a consistent basis.

Smart, creative and results-focused advice on content marketing that actually works is in high demand and I'm happy to say that over the past few years we've published just under 500 content marketing articles on topics ranging from strategy to measuring ROI. To bring you a balanced view of content marketing, we've made sure to publish our own point of view and thought leadership as well as interviews with brand content marketing practitioners and executives.

There's a lot of insight in those interviews and below is a list of the 10 of the most popular, featuring conversations with brands that include: MarketingProfs, Visa, Facebook, Content Marketing Institute, LinkedIn, 3M, Bank of America, Xerox, and Dun & Bradstreet. Enjoy!

1. Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs

Interview: “Writing is thinking. And for us as marketers, good writing is good marketing”

In business and in life, writing is an essential part of communications – no matter how digital, virtual and science fiction we get in our communications. That's why Ann's most recent book, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content, is so timely. From Twitter to White Papers to books in print, Ann has smart, actionable advice for us all.

Takeaway: “The best content marketing isn't about what you do or what you sell – it's about how what that thing does for others. That's a subtle shift, but an important one, and a hard one for companies to truly embrace.”

Read the full Ann Handley interview here.

You can find Ann on LinkedIn and on Twitter at: @marketingprofs

2. Stephanie Losee, Head of Content at Visa

Interview: “Brands now have the freedom to speak to their audiences directly.”

In this interview Stephanie discusses the most important changes in content marketing, a content report card for brands, predictions, career advice, and insight into more cross-functional content marketing success. Oh, and she also has thoughts on what will be the ruin of Snapchat.

Takeaway: “Think about what kind of content are external audiences expecting when they visit your owned channels, both content and social? What would benefit them? Ask for data about visitors and use it to inform your first few moves. Use existing staffers and resources and get to an always-on strategy that puts customers' needs first as fast as you can.”

Read the full Stephanie Losee interview here.

You can find Stephanie on LinkedIn and on Twitter at: @slosee

3. Jonathon Colman, Product UX + Content Strategy Lead at Facebook

Interview: “Quality isn't a definition; it's a conversation.”

An insatiable learner (Masters in Information Science), wicked smart, focused on results, kind and thoughtful, Jonathan is definitely someone you can learn a lot from. In this interview he shares his journey from REI SEO to Content Strategist at Facebook, offering really useful tips, tools and resources along the way.

Takeaway: “Content experiences aren't a zero-sum game, they're not binary, and they're not a competition between silos within an organization. When you look at the organizations who are growing sustainably year after year, most of the time you'll see quality content and content services are a strong part of their strategy.”

Read the full Jonathon Colman interview here.

You can find Jonathon on LinkedIn and on Twitter at: @jcolman

4. Joe Pulizzi, Founder of Content Marketing Institute

Interview: “Build an audience first and define products and services second.”

In this interview, Joe talks about how he found his passion for content marketing, the value and impact of goal setting, and the 6 step Content Inc model.

Takeaway: “I love content marketing because you can increase the bottom line while, at the same time, help your customers live better lives or get better jobs.  Content marketing is the only kind of marketing that provides ongoing value, whether you purchase the product or not.  Isn't that what all marketers want to do?”

Read the full Joe Pulizzi interview here.

You can find Joe on LinkedIn and on Twitter at: @joepulizzi

5. Jason Miller, Group Manager, Global Content and Social Media Marketing at LinkedIn

Interview: “You need a plan, and you need to find what works, then scale.”

This interview focuses on Jason's current work, about LinkedIn and his insights into making social media and content marketing hits. He also shares examples of great B2B social media and content marketing, tools, resources and even a few predictions.

Takeaway: “As a content marketer you really need to ask yourself: 'Do you want to stand out or do you want to truly connect with your customers and prospects?' The answer is a balance of the two.”

Read the full Jason Miller interview here.

You can find Jason on LinkedIn and on Twitter at: @JasonMillerCA

6. Carlos Abler, Leader – Content Marketing and Strategy :: Global eTransformation at 3M

Interview: “Content culture transformation is an essential pillar of digital transformation.”

This in-depth interview with Carlos covers content marketing in general, content strategy, and how to develop a content marketing culture across a large enterprise.

Takeaway: “Content strategy is a broad concept of organizational practices for effectively managing content lifecycle; content marketing is a specific application of content to add value to an organization's relationship with people. Content strategy enables content marketing and content marketing defines the requirements that content strategy must serve to enable it.”

Read the full Carlos Abler interview here.

You can find Carlos on LinkedIn and on Twitter at: @Carlos_Abler

7. John von Brachel, SVP, Content Marketing Executive at Bank of America

Interview: “Good content marketers need to have both left-brain and right-brain skills.”

For this post, John talked about his editorial background, how he stays current, motivating executive participation with content and a preview of his keynote and breakout session presentations at Content Marketing World.

Takeaway: “Have a compelling and consistent story to tell, one that allows you to build better relationships with your audiences. Sequence these stories to your audiences in ways that keep them connected to you and your brand over longer periods of time.”

Read the full John von Brachel interview here.

You can find John on LinkedIn and on Twitter at: @vonbrachel

8. Jeannine Rossignol, Vice President, Marketing at Xerox

Interview: “Content is an integral component of every aspect of marketing.”

This conversation with Jeannine focused on  content marketing strategy, top challenges facing content marketers, and content marketing lessons to be learned from Charlotte's Web.

Takeaway: “A clear strategy should include who you target, what their buyer's journey looks like, and most importantly, what are the questions they need to answer to move from one stage in the journey to the next. Every piece of content should go back to that strategy.”

Read the full Jeannine Rossignol interview here.

You can find Jeannine on LinkedIn and on Twitter at: @j9rossignol

9. Rishi Dave, CMO at Dun & Bradstreet

Interview: “There may not be a need for more content, but there is a need for higher quality content that delivers new insights.”

Here, Rishi talks about building an inbound approach to marketing with content and the role content plays in an overall demand generation strategy.

Takeaway: “Don't simply jump into tactics around analytics, technology, and content operations. Make sure you have something unique to say and that the organization understands what that messaging is. Until you have that, and a culture that supports it, great execution of inbound will not break through the noise.”

Read the full Rishi Dave interview here.

You can find Rishi on LinkedIn and on Twitter at: @RishiPDave

10. Michael Brenner, CEO at Marketing Insider Group

Interview: “The real question behind content ROI is, 'why should I change what I am doing today?'”

A first class guy and a pleasure to work with as an influencer, our discussion with Michael touches on some of the key questions marketers are trying to tackle, from developing a strategy to growing an audience to the importance of measuring content marketing performance. Michael also shares a business lesson from one of his favorite childhood stories.

Takeaway: “Content Marketing ROI is no harder than ROI for the rest of marketing. Start with a benchmark, calculate the cost of your content, place a value on the results and from there, ROI is pretty easy.”

Read the full Michael Brenner interview here.

You can find Michael on LinkedIn and on Twitter at: @BrennerMichael

There's a lot of smarts in these content marketing interviews and I hope they have inspired you in ways that will motivate content that is better for your customers and more effective for your marketing.

The Content Marketing World conference is coming up fast and on September 8th, I will be presenting solo and participating on a panel that you might be interested in. Here are the details:

Thursday, Sept. 8 – 12:05 – 12:50pm

Optimize the ROI of Your Content Agency Investment

Solo Lunch & Learn Session (Room 1)

Thursday, Sept. 8 – 2:50 – 3:35pm

How B2B Executives Need to Strategize in the World of Content

Panel with Jennifer Harmel, Michael Brenner, Carla Johnson and Kira Modrus (Room 3)

You will also be able to see most of the content marketing smarties interviewed above at Content Marketing World. Ann, Stephanie and John are all giving keynotes and of course, Joe Pulizzi is the man behind it all.

 

My business partner and our agency president, Susan Misukanis (L) and our agency director of marketing, Ashley Zeckman (R) will be attending Content Marketing World as well.

If you can't make the conference or even if you are, don't miss a thing by watching @toprank, @smisukanis and @azeckman for tweets during the conference and Online Marketing Blog for daily liveblogging of presentations. We hope to see you in Cleveland!

Disclosure: We are currently providing services to LinkedIn and MarketingProfs. 

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