Last week when Stephanie and I were presenting about content marketing at MarketingProfs B2B Forum, one of our co-presenters, Amy Black , asked the audience what they had learned thus far. One gentleman raised his hand and volunteered (and I'm paraphrasing), "I know this seems pretty obvious, but it was good to be reminded that all of our content needs a call to action." " During the presentation I shared the story about my very informal and unscientific look at 40 white papers last summer where only 12 of them had a call to action. So, what makes a good call to action? MORE >>

Hop on over the Content Marketing Institute to get your free copy of B2B Content Marketing: 2010 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends and check out the major findings of the study. Over the past couple of months, I've had the pleasure participating as one of the authors for some really interesting and eye-opening research from Junta42 and MarketingProfs on the topic of B2B content marketing. Today, we released the results. Over 1,100 B2B marketers in North America were surveyed, making it the largest study about content marketing in the B2B space to date. If not, start there. MORE >>

The 31-page Eccolo Media 2010 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report is well worth reviewing for more insights around content preferences and consumption patterns. Eccolo Media just released its third annual B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report. Working with Global Marketing Insite, Eccolo surveyed 500 C-level execs, vice presidents, managers, directors, developers/ programmers, and technicians about their use of the following in the research and decision process: White papers Case studies Brochures and data sheets Audio or podcasted content Video collateral (i.e., MORE >>

A few years ago, my husband and I were preparing for our daughter's arrival. Like many parents-to-be, we wanted to have everything ready before we brought our daughter home. Not only were we prepping the nursery, but we also started thinking about everything from childproofing the house to saving for her college education. It was positively overwhelming! It's easy to feel the same way when planning your content marketing strategy. You want to do everything right and have this brilliant, organized strategy, but as you start to lay out a plan, it's not as straightforward as you think it will be. MORE >>

The other week I had a post on the Content Marketing Institute about how to develop an editorial calendar for content marketing. was trading some tweets about this, and Beth Harte (via Serengeti Communications ) asked me: “How can people stick to an editorial calendar when other work pops up?&#. Ah yes, the realism of taking marketing theory and turning it into practice (execution is the tricky part!). As Beth aptly said, “writing isn’t scalable.&#. It’s a fantastic question. Decide if the content is needed. Estimate the time requirement. In short, be realistic. Commit. MORE >>