Content Marketing Cycle, © Fusionspark Media, Inc.

Analysis & Insight

Use analysis & insight as the basis to plan content, with laser-like precision, to meet the needs of your audiences. @FusionSpark #CMRetreat

Content Strategy

Map content to meet desired outcomes for priority audiences, on multiple platforms, within human & budget constraints #CMRetreat @FusionSpark

Content Creation

Budget content creation to establish you as an authoritative, even fun, resource about your product, service, cause #CMRetreat @FusionSpark

In today’s competitive scenarios, whoever has the best content, wins. #CMRetreat @FusionSpark

Content Curation

Provide added value to your customers & gain search boost by augmenting original content with curated content #CMRetreat @FusionSpark

Distribution

Share content on multiple sites & platforms to reach people anywhere, any time, on the device of their choice #CMRetreat @FusionSpark

Participation

Plan for participation from the outset, ranging from blog comments to game play to content creation to events #CMRetreat @FusionSpark

Evaluation

Did your content efforts meet expectations? Adjust & repeat the cycle to think like a marketer, act like a publisher #CMRetreat @FusionSpark

Here is a round-up of the latest  3Q4 series for your convenience. We look forward to seeing you all at Content Marketing Retreat later this week.

3Q4 Rod Brooks: Striving for Content Excellence and Marketing Fitness

“The power of consumer communication and consumer-generated content is at an all-time high. Those of us who understand and accept that new reality, and who enable the customer to speak on our behalf, will benefit the most.”

3Q4 Pawan Deshpande: Curation best practices; balance hand-crafted with automation

“Without a human in the loop, curation turns into mindless aggregation.  Some of the best curators leverage automation to make their jobs easier and more efficient, but no curator can solely rely on automation.”

3Q4 Jeff Erramouspe: Marketing Automation and closing the Analytics Skills Gap

“Good content will engage the lead during the awareness phase of the buying process and drive them towards becoming a prospect.  Good content will be tailored to different buying personas who are all involved in the decision …In short, content is the fuel that drives the demand generation/lead nurturing engine.”

3Q4 Mark Jacobs: Breaking down the barriers to Video Marketing

“The bottom line is this: contextually relevant information inspires deeper engagement and meaningful action on the part of the viewer.” 

3Q4 Jayme Thomason on Becoming More Effective at Content Planning

“Organizations are feeling pressure to churn out content, but they take little time to thoughtfully figure out who they’re talking to, what they’re going to say that matters to their audience, and where they’re going to say it that will give them the best bang for their buck. We believe that success or failure of your content marketing initiative happens in the planning stage, long before anyone ever see a word you write.”

3Q4 Tim Frick: Analytics, Metrics and Overcoming Measurement Challenges

“An organization can never have too much data. The more data you collect, the more informed your decisions can become. Organizations need to have the right resources in place to make sense of collected data and follow-up with best practices for analysis, reporting, and devising informed recommendations to impact business performance.”

Tim Frick of Mightybytes is a speaker at the Content Marketing Retreat, Jan. 26-27

Welcome to another addition of 3Q4. Here, we have three questions for Tim Frick, principal and owner of Mightybytes, a Chicago-based creative firm, and author of Return on Engagement: Content, Strategy and Design Techniques for Digital Marketing. Tim shares his insight on measuring what matters; highlights of the latest Google Analytics update; and how to avoid some of the most common pitfalls we as marketers typically make in measuring effectiveness of our programs and efforts. Join Tim and other leading experts at the upcoming Content Marketing Retreat, January 26-27.

A recent McKinsey’s Global Survey on Marketing shows the gap between data-driven insight and know how or skills: 71 % say data-driven customer insights will be very or extremely important to their companies’ competitiveness during the next two to four years—but just 4 % say their companies now have the required analytical capabilities to manage their businesses more effectively.

1) Do you have thoughts on this gap or advice for where marketing organizations should start to build up required analytical capabilities?

An organization can never have too much data. The more data you collect, the more informed your decisions can become. Organizations need to have the right resources in place to make sense of collected data and follow-up with best practices for analysis, reporting, and devising informed recommendations to impact business performance.

From a web and social media perspective, it’s not enough to merely install an analytics package and check it every now and again. Reporting should be customized to an organization’s unique needs, be they driven by content, e-commerce, donations, ticket purchases, or other common site functions. There’s no sense investing the time and money to create a video, for instance, if it doesn’t perform appropriately once placed on your website. Software like Google Analytics offers the ability to track how many people clicked play, how many watched your video all the way through, and so on. You can also track file downloads, social engagement, user journeys through specific pages on your site, and many other elements that can help you make better business and marketing decisions.

Mightybytes approaches the task of online measurement by helping our customers first understand what they can measure, then coming up with a plan for what they should measure and implementing that plan over time. This is accomplished through a variety of methods, as each customer’s needs and resources are different. Setting up targets, objectives, and key performance indicators as benchmarks allow us to define specific criteria for success when measuring data. This affects everything from keyword analysis to configuring funnels for tracking specific goals. Once we have tracked that data over a set amount of time we can ascertain how effective our efforts are and make changes accordingly for altering or improving our approach.

2) What emerging tools or approaches to measuring content marketing and social media performance are rising up on the scene that are you most excited about?

There are dozens of analysis tools coming out every day, each ranging widely in cost and range of features. It can be challenging to keep up and find the right tool for your budget and specific needs, as some are free and other cost large amounts of money (but still may not do what you need). Google Analytics has always excelled at measuring web content and site performance. The latest version has new features that bring social engagement and more search data into your reports as well.

Some of these new features include:

• Custom dashboards
• Social engagement reports
• Visitor flow and goal flow visualization
• Webmaster Tools integration
• Multi-Channel Funnels

With this upgrade, you can dive deeper into deciphering what information will really help improve online engagement and drive more business through your website.

3) What are the most common challenges or pitfalls we as marketers typically make in measuring effectiveness of our programs and efforts?

Getting web design/development teams and marketers on the same page about business rules and marketing goals is an ongoing challenge. Design teams are focused on user experience but often overlook content strategy. Developers focus on features and functions but many times don’t consider community engagement or the long-term role of tools they build. Conversely, marketers often focus merely on consumer behavior or trends, and may overlook customers as individuals. They may also have challenges understanding the technical nature of the web as well. This makes effective communication across teams challenging. Teams that can come together under a common purpose with a shared understanding of creative and technical goals—and bring offline marketing efforts into the fold in the process—will ultimately create the best web-based marketing solutions.

These teams owe it to themselves and their customers to build up expertise across the entire spectrum of web-based marketing, not just the portion that directly affects their job description. This is particularly critical in the proper gathering of targeted metrics and other data. If something is not built right or properly optimized the data generated from its use can be compromised, thus undermining your ability to make the aforementioned informed decisions.

Analytics tools are vastly customizable and so few organizations effectively capitalize on what they can do. Many analytics activities get slapped on someone’s already full plate and that poor soul has barely enough time to master the basics. Thus, the reports they generate only scratch the surface, like page views or unique visits when they could be providing much more valuable information.

The new custom dashboards in Google Analytics should help in this respect. If an organization defines each dashboard’s requirements correctly, those who need to measure can analyze and benchmark data based on their unique needs. A mobile marketing manager could have a different dashboard, for example, than a content strategist who may be more concerned more about keyword and content performance rather than device operating systems or screen resolutions (though I’d argue that this data should be important to everyone).

Jayme Thomason, CEO, Divvy HQ

In this 3Q4 addition, we have three questions for Jayme Thomason, CEO of DivvyHQ, a cloud-based editorial calendar application, about the most common bottleneck in the content marketing process, advice for becoming more disciplined and consistent in our approach, and how to balance editorial planning for both long-form and  short-form content.

1) Effective content marketing relies just as much on planning and strategy as it does on successful execution (developing and distributing the content). Where are the most common pitfalls – on the planning/strategy side or on the execution/distribution side – or somewhere in between?

In my experience, the real bottleneck in the content marketing process is the content planning and strategy part. Content marketing isn’t about just sitting down to your computer and blindly pounding out keyword-optimized blog posts. To do it well, you need to spend some time up front. Organizations are feeling pressure to churn out content, but they take little time to thoughtfully figure out who they’re talking to, what they’re going to say that matters to their audience, and where they’re going to say it that will give them the best bang for their buck. We believe that success or failure of your content marketing initiative happens in the planning stage, long before anyone ever see a word you write.

2) You’ve mentioned before that discipline (or consistency) is necessary for content marketing success.  What are some of the ways individuals or departments and organizations can build discipline or consistency into their workflow?

The answer to this is easy to say, not as easy to execute because it comes down to changing the way we see our marketing departments. We MUST get in the mindset of a publisher if we are going to establish a consistent, habitual (read: effective) content marketing initiative. We tell people to start with a frequency they KNOW they can handle, you can always add more. Going the other way will lose you fans. Think about the consequences if the daily newspaper doesn’t show up, or if you don’t receive the monthly magazine you subscribe to. That’s how seriously we (marketers) need to take our deadlines.

Second, develop a new, more “publisher-like” team. Assign a Managing Editor, Associate Editors, Contributing Writers, Bloggers, Tech Writers, etc. Establish the chain of command, the processes each content piece needs to adhere to, and set up weekly meetings to discuss what’s on your writers’ plates and new content ideas. To really take content marketing to the level we need it to be to reach our goals, we must take our blog, email newsletter, print newsletter and video series as seriously as a print magazine takes next month’s issue.

3) There is a lot of talk about original, long form content making a comeback, due in large part to the popularity of the iPad and ebooks.  What advice do you have on how to balance editorial planning for both long form and  short form content  (blogs, articles, social engagement),  as well as multimedia types (video, podcasts, etc.)

Long form content is great and can be a very powerful marketing tool. If we do our strategy and planning right, we’ll have a pretty good idea about the kinds of content our audiences prefer. So if your audience will find ebooks and reports valuable, then the key to getting them done is to plan for them well in advance. We encourage organizations to plan their content at least 6 months in advance, especially if they plan to do some longer form content. This way, you can plan out the entire process and timeline; from outline, to interviews, to drafts, layout, approvals and launch messaging. With the process for long form content nailed down, you can then balance that production process with the production of the shorter, more frequent, content you produce.

Jayme is a speaker at the upcoming Content Marketing Retreat, January 26-27.

Keynote speaker, Rod Brooks, CMO, Pemco Mutual Insurance, and President, Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association.

Welcome to another post in our 3Q4 (three questions for) series of questions for leading experts, practitioners and influencers in Content Marketing. Here we have three questions for Rod Brooks, CMO of PEMCO Mutual Insurance Company and former President of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association. Rod describes what it takes to maintain marketing “health and fitness” and the importance of striving for content excellence within the context of contemporary media.

Rod is the Keynote speaker at the January 26 and 27th Content Marketing Retreat in Langley, WA.

1)  You recently wrote that you’d make “No New Resolutions for 2012” in an effort to stay focused on the ones that matter.  With focus being core to your success, what would you say is the most important area of focus for marketers in the coming year?

Let me be clear that my declaration of “no new resolutions” as I turned the corner into 2012 is largely personal. I’m working on commitments that I made to myself and want to ensure that I complete them and/or build the desired habits that can only be accomplished with consistent and diligent focus over an extended period of time. For me those include: 1) personal health and fitness, 2) writing and sharing, and 3) developing meaningful connections.

As I think more broadly about those commitments, I can see that they are also, at least in part, the answers to your question regarding my suggestions for marketers. Let’s examine that a bit.

• Health and fitness: Marketers must not become comfortable with the shape that they’re in – especially with market conditions being what they are today. When that happens, the chances for bad things to occur increase substantially. Satisfaction, when unexercised, will often lead to complacency. You’ll become less nimble and before long, you’ll find your organization gasping for breath as the market rewards the improved strength of your competitors. Make this the year that you put down the remote, get up off the couch, and move in a less familiar direction. Change something and see what happens. I encourage marketers to make or renew their commitment to professional fitness and to exercise new and overlooked muscles that can strengthen their performance in the market.

For some, the focus will be on mental toughness – a willingness to explore, embrace and apply new concepts and tools. In 2007, I committed to becoming a student of word of mouth marketing. I quickly became aware of how much I didn’t know and how my lack of understanding could hold my company back. As my knowledge and confidence grew, so did our willingness to make new strides into social engagement as a marketing and enterprise-wide commitment. Now, as I look ahead, I recognize the increasingly important role that timely and relevant content plays in our success. Developing the right strategy to drive the desired outcome requires, once again, that we exercise new muscles and build new behaviors.

Bottom line, if you aren’t focused on your professional fitness, you probably aren’t going to be leading the race for long.

• Communicating and connecting: The art and science of effective communication has at its core a reliance on positive thoughts, motivating language, and a willingness to listen for the needs and desires of others. It’s about sharing timely and relevant information between people in ways that are interesting, engaging, entertaining, and informative. As marketers we must focus on doing all those things in ways that will be received, understood, used, and valued. And as content creation is increasingly embraced by consumers the complexity of our challenge is certain to increase.

As the new year begins, I’d encourage my colleagues in the marketing and communication professions to consider the fact that consumers have learned to trust the messages of their friends, families – even people that they have never met – more than they trust the messages that we present to them in our corporate voice. The power of consumer communication and consumer-generated content is at an all-time high. Those of us who understand and accept that new reality, and who enable the customer to speak on our behalf, will benefit the most.

Marketers and the companies we work for need to better examine the value of communities, fans, and followers. The people that link, “like” and list us might well be our greatest marketing asset. How we engage and connect, at each step of the journey from awareness to advocacy, matters more than ever before.

Bottom line? Consumers have the power to describe, define and determine the success of our brands. No longer do they only vote with their dollars. They now hold the power to influence how the masses vote by the way they use their voice.

2) When it comes to building the business case for word of mouth and content marketing, and gaining executive buy-in…. What advice can you share with others for persuading senior management to support these as strategies and initiatives?  

Before attempting to persuade or convince senior management, and perhaps the most important advice that I could suggest, would be to answer the following question for yourself with all the personal sincerity, honesty, and passion you can muster:  “Do you believe that the voice of the customer is the new currency of successful brands? If you do, can you tell me why?” If you don’t or if you can’t, you aren’t ready to enlist the support of your senior management.

Too many times, executives are approached with requests to support a change in direction by staff members who aren’t fully committed and passionate about the change that they’re requesting. That’s never a good way to start. An executive wants to receive more than the analytics of a recommendation. We want to feel the passion for the program from the leader who’s recommending it. In my experience, the recommendations that not only come with a strong business case but are also fueled by passion have the greatest likelihood for success.

Be aware, though, that your passion isn’t enough. Be prepared to demonstrate the connection that word of mouth marketing, social engagement, and content excellence have with the company’s business model, vision, and strategic direction. If you’re suggesting a pilot program, be clear on the measures of success. If you’re suggesting a broad-based initiative, be clear about the collaboration that you’ve done and that will be required in order to realize the expected benefits.

Keep in mind that the ultimate success story will be one that’s bigger than marketing. Success will be realized in your transformation to a socially engaged enterprise, one that listens to customers and is affected by what it hears. One that engages in the conversation, and enables employees, customers, and fans to create and share information on behalf of the company. The better you’re able to elevate the strategic outcome and have a well-thought-out road map for success, the more likely you’ll be to find an executive who’s willing to support your recommendation.

3) A lot of people in the industry are talking about how we’re experiencing a “marketing revolution” – namely because rules of engagement have changed and marketing now touches so many more parts of an organization. What’s your take on the “marketing revolution,” or what do you see as the most exciting trends in marketing today?

A satisfied – no, a delighted and empowered – customer is the greatest marketing asset that we have today. Encouraging and enabling them to use the power of their voice to improve, promote, and defend your company is an essential component of the modern mix.  At PEMCO, we’ve established the “BHAG” (big hairy audacious goal) of never having to advertise for a lead again. That’s our objective.  We know there will be reasons to advertise, but “having to” advertise for leads isn’t our idea of a good time.  Now that feels like a revolution… and it feels very doable.

Embracing the voice of the customer and doing whatever it takes to make every consumer touch point a talking point is exciting to me.  Take a look around your business. How many ways do you communicate with consumers?  Are those experiences remarkable? What are you doing to make them talk-worthy?  How many people are telling your story? Have you made it easy for them? How about your “talkers” – do you know who they are and what triggers the conversations they’re having? There are so many questions that we as marketers have the opportunity to answer and influence. It’s a very exciting time.

I like to think of the way we treat our customers as a material investment in marketing. What happens on the front lines – in call centers, retail stores, and service departments – will impact the messages created and shared by consumers most. Is the promise that your marketing department makes the same as the experience that your service providers are delivering? Is it world-class and remarkable?

Someone once told me that the best and most brilliant marketing ever created wouldn’t offset a company’s mediocre product or disappointing service. Today, the voice of the customer ensures that’s the truth. In fact, advertising can now be equated as the price companies pay for boring products and services. The marketing revolution makes it imperative that employees in every role are living the brand promise and enabling your customers to share stories of how your company surprises and delights them.

Jeff Erramouspe, Pres., Manticore Technology, Inc.

Welcome to another post in our 3Q4 series of questions for leading experts, practitioners and influencers in Content Marketing. Here we have three questions for Jeff Erramouspe, President of Manticore Technology on the emerging analytics skill gap, how content feeds the demand generation and lead nurturing engine, and ideas on how to measure the impact of content on various phases of the sales funnel.

A recent McKinsey’s Global Survey on Marketing shows the gap between data-driven insight and know-how or skills: 71 % say data-driven customer insights will be very or extremely important to their companies’ competitiveness during the next two to four years-but a mere  4 % say their companies now have the required analytical capabilities to manage their businesses more effectively.

1) How can marketing automation solutions help to close the skills gap or provide the necessary data-driven customer insight?

There are two things to consider when analyzing this skills gap.  First, is how do you efficiently collect accurate data?  A marketing automation platform can help by tracking all prospect and customer interactions with your website, marketing collateral, value-added content, e-mail marketing and social media channels.  A good marketing automation platform will allow you to both utilize this information from a specific prospect or customer in the sales process and to aggregate the data so that you can identify trends across groups and over time.  By grouping activity and tracking it by buying persona, for instance, you can tell what content attracts and engages your potential buyers and how they view different content as they move through the buying process.

Second, does your team have the analytical skills to draw logical conclusions and build corresponding marketing programs from the data?  It is important that marketers be able to think systematically about how a lead moves through their buying process.  What is their path to becoming a customer?  A good marketing automation platform will provide a set of tools that allow marketers to visualize this process and plan content development and delivery such that it leads the prospect through its buying process.  Many people call this the “buyer’s journey”.

 2) How do you describe the role of content in demand generation and lead nurturing?

Demand generation and lead nurturing are the activities you execute to help a prospect along their buyer’s journey.  These activities should result in a conversation between the company and their prospect.  Traditionally (that is, before the web became the primary communication vehicle for B2B marketing), these conversations took place between a sales person and the prospect.  The sales person would listen to the needs of the prospect and tailor their solution accordingly, all while trying to influence the prospects needs so that it better fit the solution.  Today, this discussion happens digitally.  Marketing automation platforms make it possible for you to track what the prospect is interested in and respond dynamically with content that will help them through their decision process.  This digital conversation is driven by content.

Good content will engage the lead during the awareness phase of the buying process and drive them towards becoming a prospect.  Good content will be tailored to different buying personas who are all involved in the decision.  Good content will be delivered when the prospect needs it most.  Good content will help move them through their buying process and give them the comfort level they need to make a positive purchase decision.  In short, content is the fuel that drives the demand generation/lead nurturing engine.

3) Measuring the impact of content on various phases of the sales funnel is in high demand (as indicated by the recent study your company conducted with DemandGen).  What is driving this and where should organizations start?

B2B marketers are spending a lot of money on content development, in the range of 26% of their marketing budgets, per the Content Marketing Institute.  As such, they are trying to ascertain whether or not this money is being spent wisely.  This is the primary concern that is driving the need to measure the impact of their content – they are being held accountable for their budgets.  Furthermore, marketers believe that good content marketing works.  They have the anecdotal evidence to support it; now they want the hard data to prove that they are right.

Marketers should start by understanding what content they have today and how that content is being consumed by their prospects.  The first step is to audit their content and classify it by both the person to whom it is targeted and by the phase during which it is consumed.  For instance, a customer case study might be targeted at the decision maker (as opposed to an influencer) and is targeted during the proposal stage where the buyer needs to feel comfortable that there are people like him being successful with your product or service.  Once you’ve audited the content and have classified each individual piece (including your website pages), you’ve got the structure to begin analyzing how it is being consumed.

With the right technology in place, you will be able to answer questions such as how many decision makers that downloaded whitepaper X in the awareness phase moved into the consideration phase and became a qualified prospect.  This will begin to paint a picture of the overall process and how content influences the movement of prospects through that process.   But you can’t do this without first classifying all your content – that is the critical first step.

Jeff is a speaker at the 2nd annual Content Marketing Retreat, January 26-27 where he’ll demonstrate how to nurture prospects through content marketing activities, and how to increase ROI by tailoring the “right content, at right time” in alignment with the sales funnel.  Jeff will talk trends and best practices on Day 1, and will conduct a hands-on deep dive into marketing automation technology on Day 2.

Mark Jacobs, CEO of Me!Box Media Inc. is a speaker at the upcoming Content Marketing Retreat January 26-27th.

Welcome to another post in our 3Q4 series.  Here, we have three questions for Mark Jacobs, CEO of Me!Box Media, Inc. about the power of  video marketing. Mark shares his insight on the most common barriers to effective video marketing, why integrating contextually-relevant content into video is a best practice, and the future of  industry standards.

1) Video is rising as one of the most valuable forms of marketing, yet a general perception is that many organizations are not using it to its fullest potential.  Why?  And, what will help tip the scale in terms of more widespread (and effective) use of video marketing?

Let’s start with why video is so valuable.

The average attention span of a web user is measured in seconds.  Most web site visitors come to a site anticipating that they will be able to apply limited effort and time to making sense of what is being communicating.  In short, they want an intuitive experience.  If the site owner can engage the visitor’s interest intuitively – with a fast, highly visual way to role interest into aspiration to know more – and DO SOMETHING – you have mojo!  Video, done and presented well, naturally (we’ll skip the anthropology lesson here – so trust us when we say most of us are wired to process sight, sound and motion with less effort than text) appeals to the viewer’s desire to passively (code word for intuitively) compress information into a holistic sound-bite, get-me-or-lose-me moment of truth.

Most of us have more experience creating text and graphics.  Text and graphics have been around a lot longer on the web than video.  Bridging from the legacy environment of text and graphics to video is a learning and financial risk process.  Our experience suggests that the tipping point occurs when these three barriers are overcome:

Barrier 1:  Learning to tell the video story – we call it ICAM.

• Interest: the client learns how to fashion their video presentation to be interesting and engaging.
• Curiosity: sight, sound and motion of the video compliments the message  combine in a way that captures viewer curiosity
• Aspiration: the curiosity about what is being communicated builds into an aspiration (emotion and/or felt need)
• Movement: The video is connected to solid opportunities to do something to satisfy the aspiration.

Barrier 2:  Cost/Benefit Justification.

• As decision makers experience video that delivers ICAM, they become experimenters
• Experimenters become believers once there is ROI.  Some experimenters become believers using subjective ROI measures – but the majority of experimenters want objective ROI.  (Objective ROI is still hard in most cases to quantify, so many experimenters pull back – thus slowing the adoption of video)

Barrier 3: Complexity.

• There are a lot of choices surrounding video…these include who to trust with the story creation, production alternatives, costs for production, technology infrastructure, legacy website design and costs of redesign, syndication/SEO/Social strategies and tactics.

2) You often talk about the importance of integrating contextually relevant content into video.  What do you mean and why is this important?

The bottom line is this: contextually relevant information inspires deeper engagement and meaningful action on the part of the viewer.  We can prove this because context points (a) make video effectiveness measurable and (b) exponentially increases sharing of the entire video as well as video segments at the points of contextual relevance.

Here’s why:  Contextually relevant information leverages the Curiosity, Aspiration and Movement phases of the ICAM story telling model.  Socially shared context points seed the amount of interest a video gains.  Contextually relevant information, introduced at appropriate points in an interesting video:

1. Embellishes the sight, sound and motion to make the story more complete

2. Delivers inspiring information during the process of curiosity development

3. Builds deeper affinity to help unleash aspiration

4. Makes movement (i.e. requesting a personal contact, ordering a product or whitepaper, sharing) a simple, natural act.

3) There’s a lot of debate over whether or not the industry needs a video view standard for defining value in Web video.  What’s your opinion and do you think this will happen in 2012?

We need standards…but they must be objective and granular enough to guide communication effectiveness.  Plays are too broad a standard.  We need to know what messages within the video are most valuable to the viewer and be able to connect the stream of messages to actions taken.  I hope that we’ll see this happen 2012.

Mark is a speaker at the upcoming Content Marketing Retreat January 26-27th. Be sure to attend his day-2 breakout session on how the Me!Box console opens  video up to advertising, brand development, e-based transaction, social sharing, video message enhancement, viewership analytics, video search optimization and real-time changes without cannibalizing the content.

This is the first of our 3Q4 series featuring  “three questions for” leading experts, practitioners and influencers in the world of content marketing.  With Content Marketing Retreat just weeks away, we’re kicking off the series with some of our guest speakers for the event.

We asked Curata CEO Pawan Deshpande to share some perspective on the difference between hand-crafted curation and automated curation, some of the most common pitfalls, and what’s in store for the future.    Here’s what he had to say.

1) What’s the difference between curation that is hand-crafted and curation that is automated? What’s your opinion on the relationship or interdependency on each?

Curation— the process of finding, organizing and sharing content on a specific topic, by definition fundamentally requires a curator and is a very human process.  Automation can help assist in finding content by discovering possibly relevant content for the curator.  Automation can also help in organizing content for the curator, by indexing and making content navigable.  Lastly, automation can facilitate more efficient sharing by syndicating content to various online channels.  However, without a human in the loop, curation turns into mindless aggregation.  Some of the best curators leverage automation to make their jobs easier and more efficient, but no curator can solely rely on automation.

2) What’s the biggest mistake or pitfalls someone can make in approaching content curation?

The biggest pitfall someone may make when approaching content curation is to pick a bad topic.  You want a topic that; (1) is not covered by too many other publications, (2) is relevant to your target audience, (3) has enough third party content to be curated.

If you pick a topic that does not meet all three of these pre-requisites, then you are at risk of having your curation efforts go in vain.  If you do a pick a topic that meets all three, then you have a great opportunity to be become to go-to source on a relevant topic for your ideal target audience.   For more insight on this, please see my blog post, Crafting the Perfect Content Curation Strategy .

3) What are the leading trends or changes we’ll see in the way people use content curation in the coming year?

For the foreseeable future, the amount of content online will continue to grow.  The value of curation is also commensurate with the amount of content online. As more content is created online, the amount of both good and bad content will continue to increase, as will the need for a curator and supporting technologies to discern between the two.

In the past few years, we have seen curated content rise to the top of ways for how people receive updates online.  Formerly, people used to access publications, or a feed reader to discover the latest updates on a specific topics.  While people still continue to use those resources, people are increasingly accessing content curated through microsites or social media channels to receive updates about the world around them.  Similarly in the year ahead, we may see people turn more towards curated channels for more relevant search needs, rather than generic search engines.

Learn more from Pawan at the Content Marketing Retreat January 26-27.  Be sure to check out his day- 2 breakout session where he’ll demonstrate how Curata helps marketers maximize their content curation efforts with web-based tools to easily find, organize and share online content – helping them build thought leadership and grow their qualified leads.

Post by Russell Sparkman, CEO of FusionSpark Media, Inc., and Founder/Director of the Langley Center for New Media. Russell is a presenter at the 2nd Annual Content Marketing Retreat.

One of many things on my mind for the coming year is the relationship between content marketing and marketing automation, as well as other platforms and services.

Increasingly, the “what is content marketing?” question is being replaced with the “how do we do it efficiently and effectively to raise awareness, generate leads and convert more sales?” question. One answer is marketing automation.

When properly applied, marketing automation tools promise to help manage the process of deploying and then tracking responses to content throughout the awareness, consideration and decision phases of the purchase cycle.

At the end of the day, however, marketing automation services are tools which, in the absence of content, are simply tools.

How do you fuel your marketing success?

After a presentation on Content Marketing that Chris Baggott of Compendium and I gave in Seattle last year, one audience member, Brian Hansford of Zephyr 47, emailed me with the following message: “Marketing automation services are the rocket, but content is the fuel.”

In subsequent conversations, I learned from Brian that the choke point for marketing automation users is content creation and curation.

The problem is that while companies such as Manticore, Marketo, Eloqua, SalesForce, SilverPop and more offer tools that automate processes such as collecting leads, triggering responses and follow up to leads, sending emails and so on, there’s truly nothing that’s automatic when it comes to tailored marketing messages.

The truth is that, in this day and age of social media, there are no short cuts. Effective marketing communications still requires creativity, skill and craftsmanship to create quality content. Put another way…. automating bad or poorly thought-out processes put you on the fast track for failure.

The good news, though, is that while you can’t automate strategy, you can employ a systematic approach to help streamline your process, increase effectiveness and keep you on track in delivering relevant and compelling information to the people you want to engage with.

In Part 1 of this two part blog post, I’ll first describe The Content Marketing Cycle, and in Part 2 I’ll go into detail about how Content Strategy is used to create an Editorial Calendar that’s in alignment with the primary phases of the buying / decision making cycle.

The Content Marketing Cycle, ©Fusionspark Media, Inc.

The Content Marketing Cycle

Analysis & Insight

A key tenet of Content Marketing is being relevant to the people (the group formally known as the audience – see Participation, below) you’re trying to reach. With the right analysis and insight into what are people’s problems, issues, concerns and interests it’s possible to map content to match needs with laser precision. Analysis and insight comes from everything from customer surveys to listening to how your product, service or cause is discussed in social media channels.

Content Strategy

Content Strategy, as it pertains to marketing, is the deliberate mapping of content creation and curation to prioritized desired outcomes, target audiences and audience needs in order to accurately define and efficiently deploy the right content across multiple platforms, within human and financial constraints, for the purposes of building product (or cause) awareness/consideration and ultimately driving people to purchase (or donation) decisions.

It’s a mouthful! But that’s it in a nutshell!

Content Creation

Creating content that’s of value to the people who buy your product or service or support your case is one of the most important steps you take in establishing yourself as a trusted, definitive resource. And in a competitive scenario, whoever has the best content, wins.

Content Curation

By creating your own original content, you establish yourself as an expert in your product, service or cause. Once you’ve begun to establish this level of authority, then your recommendations of related content produced by others has value. By collecting, or curating, related content and publishing that in your web site, through your social media channels, and so on, you provide added value to your constituents. Curating content also serves the purpose of maintaining a constant flow of updated content, keeping your website fresh, providing both social sharing and SEO benefits to you.

Distribution

By this stage of the cycle, you’re thinking like a marketer and acting like a publisher by creating or curating carefully planned content that’s relevant, compelling, educational or entertaining for the people who are part of your community. Now you need to reach them where they are, when they want it, on the platform of their choice. You have a multitude of options,  from eMail outreach and mobile apps, to sharing throughout the Social Media space.

Participation

Remember that part about “the group formerly known as the audience?” It’s a tough habit to break, but start referring to your circles of customers and constituents as people, and it becomes easier to think of them as participants in your Content Marketing. Plan on how to empower the people who favor you to talk about your brand. This means baking participation in from the outset. Bake in word-of-mouth opportunities.

Evaluation

Back in the Content Strategy stage you will have made decisions about how you’re going to measure success. Remember that sales or donations are not your only measurements of success. Other conversions to measure will be how many new email addresses or other signups did you capture? How many times was your content posted to Facebook, tweeted in Twitter, discussed in LinkedIn? How are pages of your content ranking in Google? For all of the aforementioned, what types of content generated the most results?

Notice how Evaluation brings you back to Analysis and Insight. This is a cycle, in which experience and insight gained through one content marketing initiative is rolled over into the next.

Chance favors the well-prepared

Understanding the Content Marketing Cycle and having a systematic approach is important because it not only helps us be more efficient and effective at each phase, but it helps us be prepared for unforeseen changes – because rest assured, change does and will happen.  When this happens, think about the phases of the cycle, re-evaluate what’s working, what’s not and get back on track.

In part 2, I’ll go into detail about how Content Strategy is used to create an Editorial Calendar that’s in alignment with the primary phases of the buying / decision making cycle.

Compendium CEO Chris Baggott details five principles of content marketing that will lead any content strategy to success.

1. Focus on Participation

The companies who are most successful with their content marketing strategies have wide participation among their employees. You hire smart people who like their jobs and understand your solutions and the problems of your customers. They want to be empowered and they want to help—let them.

Within your environment, free them to blog, tweet, and be active on social networks—good things will happen. We just did an internal analysis of our blog post traffic sorted by author. The person who keeps our laptops and networks running wrote the second-most-trafficked post over the last thirty days. This is a guy who doesn’t talk a lot in the office and, in a “traditional” world, would never get access to a corporate blog.

Progressive organizations like ExactTarget have over 160 employee bloggers. Sears actually has participation in blogging as part of the job requirements. Set your employees free.

2. Focus on the Customer

We all know that people buy from people, and the more transparent an organization is, the more human they become to their audience. Successful content marketing organizations make sure they discuss and celebrate the human aspects of their business. Blog about birthdays, anniversaries, parties, and awards. They should all become part of your content mix, because your customers can relate to these activities.

Along with this transparency comes a responsibility to honestly face shortcomings and openly address problems. Use your social channels to do so. Companies who aren’t transparent simply aren’t trusted. The Iowa legislature is on the verge of approving a bill that makes it illegal for outsiders to film inside animal feeding and processing facilities. How do you think this will affect peoples’ excitement for eating meat from Iowa? Be honest. Don’t hide your faults. We all have them. They make you human.

3. Focus on Transparency

The most important person in any business is the customer. Good content marketing efforts address and tell the stories of the customer. The greatest selling tactic in the history of mankind is The Similar-Situation Story. Tell me a story about how you have helped solve a problem like mine, for someone like me, and I’ll trust that you can solve my problem, too. Want to accomplish this easily? Use email and make some phone calls. Don’t ask for reviews—which, at the end of the day, is content about you—but use-cases, situations, and experiences—which is content about your customer. That is, let your customers tell their stories.

Suppose you sell treadmills. You are going to have a picture of your treadmill and, odds are, you will have a model of some sort posing on it. That is a Similar-Situation Story. Depending on that model, certain customers will imagine themselves and think, “This is the right treadmill for me.”

Now, imagine you capture pictures and stories from hundreds of customers that use your treadmill. They’re going to be people of all shapes, sizes, and dispositions. All this leads to dramatically increasing the types of Similar-Situation Stories that you can tell, directly increasing your opportunities to sell more treadmills.

4. Focus on Sharing

You create content to educate, engage, and enable discovery. Sharing is key, but it doesn’t happen by itself. Successful strategy requires active management of your sharing program. The word “active” shouldn’t intimidate you as something that requires an inordinate amount of work. Tools like email, CoTweet, and a host of others make sharing easy. Sharing is more about using your imagination. Think about using email to point customers to stories they’ve submitted, adding giant share buttons alongside the links.

Marketing 101 tells us that your best prospects are the people who share the behavior and characteristics of your existing customers. By definition, those people are probably the friends of your current customers. Do everything you can to help your current customers share their stories about their experiences with your business on their Facebook walls and Twitter profiles.

Another great tactic is to hold contests among your content creators (i.e., your customers and employees) to see whose content can get shared the most. You will be surprised how much spread you can get with simplistic efforts like these. There was a great book in the 80s called Hope Is Not A Strategy, yet so many content marketers seem to live on the “hope” that their content will be shared. Make it happen.

5. Focus on Search

Let me state unequivocally that the number one benefit of content marketing is the qualified traffic you get from search engines. I recommend that every marketer take the time to review their keywords at least weekly. Guide your writers and your audience to use these words in your content. Was it Matt Cutts who called keywords “the language of your customer?” Understanding your keywords is understanding how your customers are interacting with your industry and how they are thinking about their problems.

I was once looking for rubber floor mats for my garage. After a Herculean effort, I found them on a catalog site labeled “PVC floor covering.” I’m sure some lawyer was like, “We can’t call them rubber,” but my perception of PVC is white plastic pipe for plumbing—not something I’d park my car on. Speak in the language of your customer, not your lawyers and engineers.

Remember—and if you don’t believe me, check your own analytics—most of the consumption of your content is coming from first-time visitors. Our studies show that, on average, eighty percent of all blog traffic comes from people who have never been to your site before. Keeping your messaging and keywords in mind will help you grow your audience by targeting the right people.

[Bonus] Focus on Conversion

Pay attention to calls-to-action (CTAs) and conversions. I can’t tell you how many blogs I see that don’t contain any CTAs. Remember that your goal with content marketing and business blogging is to grow your business. When you’re operating online, this is best accomplished by converting traffic towards a deeper relationship. Don’t forget this.

Chris Baggott has been a leader in marketing for more than 20 years. Chris was recognized as one of Invesp Consulting’s Top 100 Marketers of 2008, an accolade based on nominations and votes from industry peers. Chris was also recognized by BtoB Magazine as a “Who’s Who in B-To-B” and his blog was voted “Best Online Marketing Blog” by MarketingSherpa readers and “Best of the Web” by Forbes. Chris is a presenter at the 2nd Annual Content Marketing Retreat.