Inbound Marketing’s Next Stage of Evolution: Content Curation

We had the opportunity to chat with three top content marketers—Mike Volpe, CMO at HubSpot; Ann Handley, chief content officer at MarketingProfs; and Dan Moyle, multimedia marketing & communications specialist, AmeriFirst—at Inbound 2013, it’s clear that content marketing is maturing as an industry. And with that maturation comes some challenges. Watch the video below for answers to some of our burning questions.

“Marketers are realizing they can’t just create a one and done content campaign,” Handley says. “It becomes a lifelong effort creating the kind of content that’s going to engage your customers, that’s going to delight them.”

While advertisers can take a set it and forget it approach, content marketing requires ongoing work. “The biggest challenge is finding the time and doing the work,” Volpe says.

Savvy organizations are meeting these challenges in a few different ways. Volpe mentions the importance of choosing a few effective content marketing tools to streamline your time instead of taking the duct tape approach, while Handley stresses the growth of staff roles like chief content officer, director of publications, or editorial director. “They’re hiring people to drive that bus, to create engaging content, and to build audiences,” she says. “They’re finally putting the systems in place that are allowing them to create engaging content.”

Moyle takes a purposeful and disciplined approach to content strategy where he sits down with keywords and cranks out 30 blog titles to work on in the coming weeks. “There’s no such thing as writer’s block,” he says. “You just have to do it.”

Not surprising, the three marketers see content curation as an increasingly vital part of content marketing. “It’s hard to create enough of your own original content to be able to tweet 15-20 times a day,” Volpe says. “Having curated content that you can publish helps because it’s things that they’re going be interested in. I think curation can be a really important part of your overall inbound marketing strategy.”

But as Moyle points out, curation is not about aggregating other people’s content. Curation is about adding value for your own readers by identifying the best and most relevant content for your audience, selecting main points from the content you’re curating, and wrapping own insight and guidance around that. “The smarter we get, the better our tools are, the more we can do that in a regular and ethical and respectful way,” he says.

Handley uses curation not only to share content but also to get a pulse on emerging conversations and trends. “I use it to listen … to see what else other people are publishing,” she says. “What are the hot buttons for marketers? It’s a way to prospect socially through your content to create more content that’s engaging.”

Do you agree? Do you have similar challenges? We want to hear from you – leave us a comment and let us know.