B2B Memes

JANUARY 29, 2011

Are content farms just convenient whipping boys for bloggers and mainstream media alike? When the likes of Demand Media and Associated Content aren’t being flayed for underpaying writers, they are criticized for producing lousy content. Increasingly the Internet is a gigantic content farm.

Content 100

Content Press Opt-out Blogger 100

B2B Memes

AUGUST 9, 2012

I’ve been thinking about this off and on since last February, when I read a surprisingly (to me, at least) self-deprecating blog post by Mitch Joel. I’ve hit the “publish” button thinking to myself, “this could well be my best Blog post to date,” only to find out a short while later that nobody cared.

Validation 100

Validation Content Blogger Social Media 100

B2B Memes

AUGUST 9, 2012

I’ve been thinking about this off and on since last February, when I read a surprisingly (to me, at least) self-deprecating blog post by Mitch Joel. I’ve hit the “publish” button thinking to myself, “this could well be my best Blog post to date,” only to find out a short while later that nobody cared.

Validation 100

Validation Content Blogger Social Media 100

B2B Memes

NOVEMBER 16, 2011

Thanks no doubt to a helpful boost from Alexis Madrigal , my November 8 post, “ The Future of Content Is Not Destination but Identity ,” found a passel of new readers this week. What does it really mean, he asked , to say the future of content is in its identity? Or that content must be imbued with the brand?

RSS 100

RSS Content Brand Identity Branding 100

B2B Memes

MAY 11, 2010

With publishing luminaries like Paul Conley , Joe Pulizzi , and David Meerman Scott urging journalists to turn to content marketing for rewarding career options, you might think there would be a stampede of ink-stained wretches leaping into the field. I mean this literally: to many journalists, content marketing is just another term for PR.

PR 100

PR Content Fulfillment Public Relations 100

B2B Memes

JANUARY 10, 2011

Content is getting ever cheaper, but to be effective, content has to get ever better. That was the implicit question in a plaintive tweet last week from Bob Scheier: After a look at HubSpot’s Writers Network , he asked: “Why are rates so low ($50/blog post)? Cheap content fits right into that equation.

Content 100

Content Custom Publishing Network Marketing Social Media 100

B2B Memes

OCTOBER 22, 2010

In revised guidelines issued yesterday, the American Society of Magazine Editors, or ASME, addressed types of potential conflict between editorial and advertising content that have grown like weeds in recent years. One way or another, content marketing will get its own code of ethics. Tags: Content Marketing Ethics.

Rules 100

Rules Ethics Content Marketing Guidelines 100

B2B Memes

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Of all the reasons not to update your blog, post a Tweet, or take part in an online conversation, the most powerful may be the fear that you have nothing new or unique to offer. In a world where everyone’s a publisher, content is a commodity. It doesn’t matter if your content is a commodity, as long as you’re not. But so what?

Content 100

Content Thought Leadership Statistics Twitter 100

B2B Memes

MARCH 2, 2011

In an article on Min Online this week, Judy Franks of The Marketing Democracy suggests that traditional media companies are faltering because they don’t value content. Though at first it might seem odd to say that businesses built on content don’t value it, she has a point. Content, of course. In theory, publishers still do.

Word of Mouth 100

Word of Mouth Content Distribution Demographics 100

B2B Memes

APRIL 1, 2010

For B2B companies embracing their new role as publishers, the content marketing community has produced a huge archive of valuable advice. Most of the time, the kind of publishing that content marketers do isn’t very risky. Who owns your content? Your company owns the content. The silence is understandable.

Privacy Policies 100

Privacy Policies Copyright Ethics Content 100

B2B Memes

JULY 16, 2013

Content marketing. Susan Getgood raises an important point today on her Marketing Roadmaps blog when she calls attention to the multitude of conflicting definitions for terms like content marketing and native advertising. New Editorial Rules Nod to Content Marketing. Content Marketing native advertising'

Demand 100

Demand Peer-to-peer Social Networks Advertisements 100

B2B Memes

MARCH 9, 2011

To my mind, neither of these changes has any effect on the social aspects of his blog. But for anyone who reads many blogs each day, as I do, a good RSS reader is essential, and a full-text feed of each post is vastly more efficient than a summary. For one blog, it’s a minor inconvenience; for many, it would be a disaster.

Social Media 100

Social Media RSS Media Wikipedia 100

B2B Memes

MARCH 1, 2012

As I explained in the blog entry announcing the challenge , I had a variety of reasons for undertaking it. Unlike my previous challenge to publish one blog post a day in November, I didn’t quite achieve my goal this time. First, I’ve found that tweeting about articles and other Web content is a good way to keep track of them.

Twitter 100

Twitter Promotion Conversion Course 100

B2B Memes

OCTOBER 19, 2011

Last week journalism professor Matt Waite wrote a blog post worrying about the typical defeatist reaction of journalism students when faced with a coding challenge, whether in HTML, JavaScript, or other language: “I can’t do this,” they tell him. Waite’s blog post, however, wasn’t about veteran editors but about the journalists of the future.

Work Management 100

Work Management Distribution Advertising Mediums Social Networks 100

B2B Memes

SEPTEMBER 22, 2010

Even if the Wall Street Journal reports a scoop behind its paywall, once that information comes out—quoted, linked, blogged, aggregated, remixed, and e-mailed all over—it’s no longer exclusive and rare.”. My working life is now completely consumed by content marketing. I don’t hire anyone that doesn’t blog.”.

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Media Bandwidth 100

B2B Memes

APRIL 20, 2010

Over the weekend, one of my blog posts from several months ago provoked a comment that was simply too good to let pass unnoticed. As Donahue sees it , there is a clear dichotomy between journalism and sponsored content. In sponsored content, the deliverable is the promotion of the sponsor’s point of view. ’”.

Ethics 100

Ethics B2B Deliverability Blast Campaigns 100

B2B Memes

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

Commenting on a Folio: magazine blog last week, an anonymous “Exhausted Editor” bemoaned an increasing digital workload : “I’ve got enough junk to write/post/cover. As he recounts in this article and another , he began his career blogging for AOL and two other sites, producing 10 to 12 posts a day. And yet I wonder. But does it?

Product 100

Product Blogger Press Advertising Mediums 100

B2B Memes

JULY 1, 2010

As explained in detail on Charles Apple’s blog , what I mistook for a real newspaper was in fact a four-page advertising wrap. When I say advertorial , I’m not talking about all sponsored content that appears in a publication. Both publishers and content marketers should disavow it, now and forever. Unseemly expletive.

Advertorials 100

Advertorials Ethics Transparency Trust Marketing 100

B2B Memes

SEPTEMBER 24, 2010

A while back, I spent a few idle hours trying to explore the archives of Jeff Jarvis’s BuzzMachine blog, in search of some legendary Dell Hell and early insights from the master. As Laporte put it, and Carr quoted sympathetically, “I should have been posting [on his blog] all along. But can even blogs reliably preserve the past?

Paper 100

Paper Television marketing CAN-SPAM Buzz 100

B2B Memes

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

So this month, as I hoard my psychic energies for a major writing and editing project (more about that later), I’ve had to make what is, for me, a difficult decision about this blog. No, this is not a farewell to blogging, or even an announcement of a hiatus. Improve Your Blog Posts with Nut Graphs.

Blogger 100

Blogger Rules Promotion Spending 100

B2B Memes

OCTOBER 4, 2010

In a blog post today, Ian Burrell, the media editor for The Independent offered fresh evidence that, at least in the UK, the growth of brand journalism (i.e., journalists moving into content marketing ) is more than theoretical. Tags: Content Marketing brand journalism. In other words, the brand journalism trend is real.

Trends 100

Trends Advertorials Brand Identity Branding 100

B2B Memes

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

Over the weekend, I read a couple of blog posts that highlighted for me the shifting battlefront in the digital-media wars. I’d also recommend reading Joe Konrath’s blog “A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing” (even though it’s aimed at fiction writers) and following Dan Blank and Porter Anderson on Twitter. So what’s stopping you?

Twitter 100

Twitter Course Facebook Cost 100

B2B Memes

NOVEMBER 22, 2011

Like many posts on this blog, the e-book aims to help traditionally trained journalists, marketers, and content creators understand the ideas and values that differentiate new media from old. Both as a preview and as an invitation for your feedback, over the next week I’ll review each of those principles in a blog post.

Media 100

Media Transparency Differentiation Social Media 100

B2B Memes

MAY 15, 2012

As regular readers of this blog will know, one of my frequent topics here is surviving the new-media revolution. I’ll be talking about how the transformation from industrial media to social media is is changing career paths for editor, reporters, and other content creators, and outlining nine keys to a successful new-media career.

Media 100

Media Social Media Personalization Content 100

B2B Memes

NOVEMBER 5, 2011

MUD day 5: When I embarked on this month of daily, rapidly written blog posts, I knew my tolerance for typos and other errors would be sorely tested. A Lesson from Demand Media: Embrace Your Commodity Content. And far from being a mark of indifference or tolerance, wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change.

Paper 100

Paper Demand Optimization Media 100

B2B Memes

JUNE 18, 2012

The act of finding great content and linking to it, he says, is a fine idea. The contrast between these two attempts at curation suggests to me a test that any writer should apply before blogging about another person’s story: Are you are genuinely engaged with it? How can you distinguish between good curation and bad curation?

Curation 100

Curation Aggregators Act-On Guidelines 100

B2B Memes

JUNE 28, 2010

In a comment today on a recent B2B Memes blog post, “ Content Marketing’s PR Problem ,” a reader by the dubious name of Ant Miles raises an interesting point about content marketing and journalism. In content marketing, that bias tends to be more transparent. That distinction isn’t always clear.

Ethics 100

Ethics Transparency PR Advertising Mediums 100

B2B Memes

DECEMBER 3, 2010

Whenever I attend a webinar, I find myself getting frustrated with the format’s limitations, occasionally to the point where I complain about it in this blog. Excellent content and presenters, to be sure, but they were sabotaged by disembodied voices, bullet-stuffed slides, and overly complex tables and charts.

BtoB 100

BtoB Webinar Metrics Trade Show Sample 100

B2B Memes

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

In other words, not only was it OK to use the content without permission, but in fact, the magazine was doing the poor writer a favor, both by giving her more exposure and by improving it with a little crack copy editing. The idea that they owed us anything for the value of the content itself never occurred to them.

Copyright 100

Copyright Ethics Viral Marketing Internet Marketing 100

B2B Memes

MARCH 29, 2011

It’s evidently a topic that resonates with all kinds of content creators, not just journalists. Thanks to Scott Preusser and his brand-new blog, I didn’t have to search far or long to find useful infographic resources. Angela Alcorn's Advice on Infographics. Or to put it another way: Enough with the lectures; show me how to do it!

Tips 100

Tips Effectiveness Copyright Rules 100

B2B Memes

OCTOBER 29, 2010

Back in July, I wrote in this blog about how Reader, a new feature in Apple’s Safari browser, called attention to the proliferation of clutter in most Web page layouts. Though he doesn’t quite say it, Belam strongly implies that the design habits required of mobile content producers will spread to Web producers.

Design 100

Design Peer-to-peer Mobile Advertising Tagging 100

B2B Memes

MARCH 25, 2011

First, a confession: My first reason for writing this post is so I can embed a really cool infographic about Google on my blog. So journalists, content marketers, and writers alike take note: Infographic skills are no longer optional. But the fact that I want to do it reflects the power and beauty of infographics. Click to enlarge.

Dwell 100

Dwell Advertising Mediums SEO High Quality Lead 100

B2B Memes

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

Twenty-nine days ago, I set out to write a post a day for this blog. My less-than-helpful blogging companion. What I feared might turn out to be a month of sub-par blog posts ended up at least as good as my average work, and possibly better. More content means more blog traffic. It’s a blog. I think so.

Blogger 100

Blogger Rules Twitter Work Management 100

B2B Memes

JULY 3, 2012

In a Harvard Business Review blog post discussed last week by Mark Schaefer , authors Jeffrey Rayport and Tuck Rickards asserted that most big companies are too far behind the digital curve. By their standards, only nine of the Fortune 500 corporations are highly digital. That’s no surprise. Your work is uniquely digital in nature.

Marketing Proposals 100

Marketing Proposals Budget Programs Advertising Mediums Social Media 100

B2B Memes

AUGUST 31, 2010

Consider, for instance, how these well-known blogs use figures from popular culture to illuminate B2B subjects: Hubspot and sports: “ Why I Would Hire Bode Miller as My Inbound Marketer.”. On his We Grow Media blog , Dan Blank puts it this way: I find that my best work comes from observing the world outside of the topic I write about.

Blogger 100

Blogger Personalization B2B Comparison 100

B2B Memes

MARCH 11, 2011

One is BNA Tax Management editor and former ASBPE president Steven Roll, with whom I spoke last week (you can hear some of our conversation on his latest blog post ). My goal with the Facebook page is a place to provide more content than 140 characters—enhancing information that was provided in a tweet. They deserve it.

Ethics 100

Ethics Social Media Media B2B 100

B2B Memes

DECEMBER 2, 2010

In a typical day, I read all or part of 25 to 30 blog posts on B2B communications and journalism. As Chip Scanlan defines it in in a superb overview , “The nut graf tells the reader what the writer is up to; it delivers a promise of the story’s content and message. So far so good. But all too often at that point, I’m stumped.

Blogger 100

Blogger Design B2B Leads 100