I just finished reading this year’s latest marketing survey results over at the Junta42 site. It’s interesting to see the popularity of different marketing content pieces as part of the overall marketing strategy. You can download the report for yourself here.

Social media marketing (with the exception of blogs) is now in the number one spot. 72% of those polled have now incorporated social media into their marketing activities. What I’d be even more curious to know though, is have they seen and improvements? More hits to the website? More inquiries? Even more sales?

The next five things on the list are what I consider to be the new marketing sweet spot. They are the heart of content marketing. When done well, they cover the full spectrum of the AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) marketing concept. Each piece can serve one or more AIDA goals, but the suite should include pieces that cover the complete AIDA spectrum.

From the 2010 Content Marketing Spending Research by Junta42

Each of these content terms mean different things to different marketers. Personally, I’ve seen each term over-used and under developed. Too many times, companies will label the content with a term below and not fully back it up with meaningful content. These are the way I see each piece

1. E-newsletters – Publish monthly and include product and company news, customer success stories, technical “how-to’s”, and business ideas. Combination of short (100 words or less) and longer (up to 1000 words) articles.
2. Blogs – Keep topics fresh, at least weekly, and relatively short (less than 500 words)
3. White Papers – Don’t fall for the short attention span, 2-pager. Do your topic justice by demonstrating a business problem and how it can be solved. Typically 6-10 pages.
4. Articles – These might be in your own publications or industry publications and are probably best as a deep dive on a topic at between 1000 and 2000 words.
5. Case Studies – These can be as short as two pages, but make sure you provide concrete information about the customer’s initial challenge, how it was solved, and lessons learned.

Effective marketers take the time to do it right. It’s not an area you want to hand off to your already busy product managers or the new marketing coordinator you just hired. Make sure the topics are well researched, the “story” told is coherent and professional, and that you accomplish your goal of what you want them to think and do after they’ve read it.

Content marketing is not an easy task and not every company has the resources in house to get the job done well. This is probably why the Junta42 survey also shows that smaller companies are spending twice the amount (as a percentage) on content marketing as their larger counterparts. Find yourself a content marketing professional you can trust and start building your content library, making sure you get the marketing assets you need to be successful.

They say content is king. But anyone with a good Internet connection can publish content. In fact, the Internet allows anyone to market themselves as an expert. This funny video mocks just how easy it is. Warning: there are a few cuss words tossed in.

So, how do you separate the “wanna-be” experts from the real thing?

Do your homework. Get to know the person or the company. Read their content and understand their motivation.
Here are a few areas that experts tend to excel in:

• Blogs – Does the expert post content regularly—at least weekly? Is it full of buzzwords or does it actually say something that provokes your thinking? Jim Harris’s OCDQ Blog does just that, as does Ted Cuzillo with his Datadoodle blog.
• Websites – Does the expert offer helpful, educational content? Teradata has one of the largest resource libraries available on their site.
• Twitter – Does the expert stay top of mind with meaningful tweets? Kognitio, Initiate, Tableau, and Composite Software have discovered the power of Twitter.

Finally, you can feel pretty certain that you’re listening to an expert if they’ve published a book. Yes, anyone can self publish, but it takes quite a bit of discipline to produce a couple hundred pages of content. Some of my favorite experts who’ve published books are:

Jill Dyche (@jilldyche) “Customer Data Integration” “CRM Handbook” and a few others!
Phil Simon (@philsimon) “Why New Systems Fail” and “The Next Wave of Technologies”
Mike Stelzner (@mike_stelzner) “Writing White Papers”
Casey Hibbard (@casey_hibbard) “Stories that Sell”

Of course, anyone who does all of these things has raised their credibility as an expert—as all of the book authors do.

As a person or company that would like to be perceived as an expert, are you publishing content (big or small) on a regular basis? Is it quality content? Do you provide supporting facts to back up your opinion? Are you committed?

Love to hear who you think are good examples of experts who know how to use the Internet as a publishing medium to share their knowledge.

White papers are still one of the most popular marketing tools for BI and high tech companies, among others. Proof positive is that I just finished my fifth white paper in almost as many weeks.

I find some long held beliefs about white papers very interesting. Like many opinions, some are held long past their expiration dates. For some, they want things a certain way because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

I particularly find strong opinions around whether or not to include a table of contents and executive summary, and how long the white paper should be. Here are some considerations I think should help make an objective decision:

Table of contents – Personally, I’m not a big fan of using a ToC in white papers, unless they are very long (12 or more pages). Your goal is to get your reader reading right away and keep them reading. The ToC is yet one more distraction. Having said that, I think they are very helpful in longer papers. Readers can use them to quickly find sections they want to read again. Skimmers will use them to review the flow to get a quick understanding of where the topic is going. Because of that, it’s important to use headers and subheads that alone, in the ToC, can tell the story.

Exec summary – Again, executive summaries are nice on longer papers. It can satisfy the skimmers who don’t need the full details but want to stay current with the topic. But the main reason you might want to include one is if you are hosting your paper with a syndicator or you have a number of white papers in the resources section of your website. If users find your title appealing, they can validate whether they should take the time reading the whole thing by reading the executive summary first. It’s a way of self-targeting and self-selecting.

Executive summaries should be written in a compelling way to entice your readers to want to learn more. Spend the most time on describing the problem (business or technical) that you will be addressing. Add interesting statistics and maybe throw in a small visual.

Length – There seems to be a trend toward shorter white papers. Whereas, it used to be standard that white papers were 10-12 pages. Now we’re seeing more papers in the 4-6 page range. I understand it. Busy executives have less time to read through a longer paper. But I also feel shorter papers may not do the topic justice and may not give the reader the information they need to help build their business case.

So, for thought leadership papers that describe new trends, strategies, and approaches, short papers are fine. But for solution papers, a longer format is generally required in order to thoroughly describe the problem, market drivers, high level, and detailed solution.

Curious what has worked for you, either as a reader or a marketer. What thoughts (and opinions) do you have?

…back to work, got more white papers to write!

I came across some research done by IDG spread across two different posts that was pretty interesting. They interviewed over 100 information technology buyers about their content preferences from vendors. IDG noted there has been a 60% increase in content assets over the past five years. The rush is on to get in the content game and offer information prospective and current customers will find valuable and that will ultimately drive sales.

Only 39% of those interviewed said they find relevance in links offered to vendor content (though their expectation is only 50%). These same buyers say that if they find relevant content, it increases that vendor’s success rate.

The trouble may come when, in their haste, vendors don’t make the shift from promotional to educational content. Buyers want content that is relevant to their needs, and supports their decision making process. This means the content must have “meat” behind it and not just be considered marketing hype.

IDG asked IT buyers a series of questions about their content preferences from various social conversation channels. Here’s a brief recap of the top preferences by channels:

•             Blog – case studies, ads, tutorials, seminar material
•             Forums – tutorials, free event registration, evaluation versions, white papers
•             Live Chat – free event registration, evaluation versions, white papers
•             Microblog – ads, technical knowledge base, free event registration, white
•             Social networks – free event registration, ads, ROI calculator, white papers
•             Wikis – tutorials, white papers, case studies, knowledge base

To me, these seem more like expectations than preferences, and the study is really quite small. What I did like was their takeaway message.

Winners will be vendors that build a “relevant” content bridge to draw the conversation towards their own hosted platforms and insight.

This will motivate engagement, and build a sense of interest and reliance and credibility with buyers. The wrong content will damage vendor consideration within the ongoing conversation and beyond.