For a brief window in time—something close to a year—this was the most effective method of organic reach engineering attainable on LinkedIn. It worked like a dream. It made me appear significantly more gifted than I am, and drove the vast majority of traffic to our websites. Until of course, one day it didn’t.

These are the types of golden hacks we marketers are often in search of. A little break in the space-time continuum that gifts us an advantage over the competition. The challenge with these moments is just that; they are temporary, maybe lasting a few days to a few months. But the window eventually closes, typically because others have made the same realization as you and eventually overrun it. This forces someone to tweak an algorithm and end the opportunity.

As a marketer, you’ve surely lived through this. You likely follow the latest trends on social channel strategies. You’ve maybe become skilled at ongoing testing at a scale unthought of just a few years ago. Maybe you’ve even formalized it in new ‘growth hacking’ roles within the business. This needs to be a constant process to optimize the likelihood of tripping across such an opportunity—and to recognize when the windows of opportunity are starting to close.

Like anything when we’re focused on the short-term however, sometimes we’re so close to the frame we can’t see the big picture. And in the world of organic reach, the big picture has started to come back into focus again in unexpected ways.

That Whole Content Shock Thing

Remember the days when you could write a blog post, shout about it on social channels, and people would click on it? It actually really worked. (Click here for 11 Effective Ways to Use Social Media to Promote Your Content.) It worked so well in fact, everyone who was doing it kept increasing the volume of content they were producing. Until, well, two things happened:

Content Volumes Went Nuts

You can take Mark Schaefer’s word for it, or you can look at some indicative measures like the total number of digital news articles published in a year, as tracked by Google:

Even with the rise of fake news, it seems like there’s definitely a trend at play here.

Organic Reach Took its Ball and Went Home

And that much content, well… you know the rest.

The Rise of Paid Social

The silver lining—for the primary social channels at least—of this supply-demand conundrum? Compound quarterly paid media growth rates that look something like this:

So that, it would seem, was pretty much game over. Incorporate paid media into your content distribution strategy, or no one sees your stuff.

The Return of Organic Social Reach

For the past eight years, my agency has worked with over a hundred large enterprise organizations on global content marketing strategy development and execution.

In the early days, our clients were exclusively within the marketing department of client organizations. As content marketing has become more mainstream however, there have been numerous phases of shifts in the market. A significant one was when B2C marketers started to aggressively shift money into digital. More recently, the corporate communications function largely missed the boat during Content Marketing 1.0. But they’ve started to reclaim internal ownership of stakeholder engagement through content marketing.

Perhaps the largest development I’ve witnessed in recent years has been the application of content marketing techniques to the HR function. Firstly in isolation, and more recently, in conjunction with marketing.

At the risk of promoting and thus accelerating the end of a great hack—the results are giving dramatic new life to the organic reach of many an organization’s social feeds.

First though, let’s step back and look at what I believe has created the conditions for this very unique point in time.

Who Do You Trust?

If you ever tire of jumping on Mary Meeker’s internet stats, do yourself a favor and sit down for a few hours with Edelman’s annual report into the coming apart of the planet. The Trust Barometer covers an enormous (and sometimes chilling) range of issues relating to changing societal perceptions.

For the purposes of this article however, there is one incredibly salient finding which has been consistently important since the late 2000’s. Namely: we don’t trust official spokespeople anymore. In this age of online narcissism, we are most willing to trust people just like ourselves.

Edelman Trust Barometer, 2017

Deep down, we know this to be true. Just think about the last time you booked a hotel. You’d trust the review of someone you don’t know and will never meet over what the hotel tells you about themselves.

This trend occurring at the same time as organic reach drops has, unsurprisingly, fueled the creation of another industry, as marketers seek out the next free competitive edge…

Search Trends: “Influencer Marketing”

That’s right, we trust people like us. Well maybe they’re not exactly like us. But we agree with what they say, and they communicate with the appearance of authenticity. Which is why influencer marketing is so powerful. (Learn how to create an Influencer Marketing Program for Content Promotion.) In the image below is the same post, same influencer. But one is posted from the influencer’s own account; the other from her client’s. Lumee Case (a phone case with LED lighting that makes you look on fleek for selfies) posts, and gets 1,700+ likes. Kim posts, and gets 800,000+ likes.

As the influencer space has evolved and matured, we’ve moved through various phases. Perhaps the most interesting recent evolution is the rise of the ‘micro influencer.’ If you’re an early adopter and influential amongst your social connections in fashion or music, you’re in luck. Many major brands are looking to place two hundred $1,000 bets with a large number of people with street cred, rather than $200,000 with a single ‘Kardashian’ level influencer. As my 14 year-old son can attest.

Even in the relatively new world of influencer marketing then, we’re seeing an accelerating move away from big names towards ‘a person like yourself.’

Employee Advocacy = The New Influencers

We’ve worked with more and more enterprise HR departments on building out their employer brand and bringing it to life through social. And we have seen two additional changes start to happen.

Firstly, marketing is actually keen to be in the room with HR. Not so long ago, the concept of ‘employer branding’ was a tug-of-war disaster zone within many organizations. Marketing felt ownership of anything with ‘brand’ in the name. HR typically didn’t have the budget or relative organizational authority to make an impact. In the past two years, there has been a major shift on both sides. Now many marketing leaders are actively supporting and often driving employer branding efforts.

Perhaps the most fundamental aspect of bringing an employer brand to life is the identification and use of internal spokespeople to carry that message to the outside world. That’s right, employee advocacy. People considering working with a company have a very active authenticity radar, and want to hear from people who are—surprise—like them.

When an organization’s objectives and the employee’s aspirations are aligned, the results can be nothing short of outstanding.

For example, notice the image below from a recent LinkedIn post. In it we see PwC achieving extraordinary organic reach through what appears to be a spontaneous employee post. It is in fact the end result of an intentional strategic approach to topic selection, content co-creation, and advocacy platform.

More unexpectedly, in the past few months we’re seeing something more significant starting to happen.

Sure, we’re getting more and more clients where both marketing and HR are in the room together, taking a common approach to content marketing.

What I think’s most interesting though, is that increasingly our marketing clients are coming to believe that perhaps the best way to market to all audiences is through employee advocacy. And not just when you’re trying to convince people to come work for you.

Back to the Future

Now companies have the same teams looking across a broader set of audience needs. And more and more are discovering that employee advocacy is the most ‘authentic’ way to reach those audiences. For awareness, perception, lead-gen, nurturing, conversion objectives—all of it.

At one-level it’s back-to-the-future. Employee advocacy tools had a first burst of relevance around five years ago—but it’s much more than that. Progressive companies are trying to leverage internal employees as their marketing channel right through to the core business strategy. They’re asking: what do we want to achieve, with whom—and which of our internal team members will drive it?

All that stuff about trusting people just like ourselves really is playing out in the marketplace.

Want to dive into the details of how companies are rediscovering employee advocacy to drive external marketing results through organic reach? Please join me for Curata’s Expert Series Webinar on Employee Advocacy and The Return of Organic Reach, Tuesday May 9 at 3pm EDT.

Effective promotion requires the same degree of resources and thoughtfulness as creating quality content does. There are an abundance of content promotion tools available to help. Peruse the best of them in Curata’s Ultimate List of Content Promotion Tools. There’s a range of platforms from social media networks, to social media management tools, paid content promotion tools, distribution tools, and advocacy tools.

Good Tools Aren’t Enough

Such tools are an extremely useful part of any content marketing strategy. But while necessary, they are not sufficient for effective promotion. They lack one crucial element: the human element. A 2015 Nielsen Trust in Advertising report asked consumers which forms of advertising they trusted the most. The overwhelming winner for more than 8-in-10 global respondents was recommendations from people they know and trust. Online banner ads and search engine result page ads were trusted by less than half the respondents.

DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT
Bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR and Newsjacking, Marketer in Residence at Hubspot, keynote speaker. @dmscott
What’s my best advice for marketers creating an influencer marketing program for content promotion? Educate and inform instead of interrupt and sell.

What Not to Do

There are a lot of easy pitfalls to avoid when you’re developing an influencer program for content promotion. Most involve not thinking about an influencer as an actual person, but just as a means to an end.

For instance, don’t ever send a form letter email or mass mailing. (Think about how well they work on you.) Personalize your email beyond just their name and company. Show what you know about them, such as mentioning a hobby you’ve seen them talk about on Twitter.

Never just ask for something upfront from a cold open. Saying “Please share this with your followers” the first time you introduce yourself just establishes you as a clueless jerk.

Research shows 75 percent of brands find it difficult to identify the right influencers in their niche to partner with. Don’t invest time and money on influencer marketing before you’ve vetted your list to find people who are actually relevant. They need to drive real changes in attitude, perception, and adoption patterns. 

A Brief History of Influencer Marketing

Data confirms what should be obvious: we listen to messages coming from specific people we know and trust more than those coming from impersonal organizations.

The first researcher to discover this, Paul Felix Lazarfeld (later with Elihu Katz), published a book analyzing which factors affected voters’ decision making process during Franklin Roosevelt’s quest for a historic third term in the 1940 presidential campaign. The People’s Choice (1944) introduced the idea of influencer marketing to the public sphere.

Katz and Lazarfeld’s later book Personal Influence (1955) is considered the handbook of the theory of two-step communication. It argues most people form their opinions under the influence of opinion leaders rather than large brands or political figures. Ideas then, flow from media to opinion leaders, and from them to a wider population.

Influencer marketing has existed for a half century. But it’s only since social media became ubiquitous that influencers could substantially scale their reach. 

Why Use Influencers?

We already trust people ahead of organizations. And today’s world of information overload means we place even more stock in people with authenticity and credibility. We don’t trust an authentic jackass! Well executed influencer marketing is important not only for content promotion, but also for relationship development and effective SEO link building.

ANN HANDLEY
Ann Handley, head of content at MarketingProfs, world’s first Chief Content Officer, author of the WSJ bestseller Everybody Writes @MarketingProfs
Don’t launch an influencer program because you want influencers to promote your content. That’s the wrong mindset—because it’s both short-sighted and one-sided.Instead, there are far better reasons to launch an influencer program:

1. Launch an influencer program to cultivate relationships with people who align with your bigger story, values, and purpose.

2. You want to give them access and insight.

3. It would be great to work with them long-term.

A by-product might be that they’ll promote your content—because they want to and are motivated by your success (and vice-versa). But that’s a by-product of a successful relationship. Not the reason to launch a program.

SEO Benefits

Part of effective SEO requires marketers to generate back links to our sites in order to rank higher in search engine results pages. Google prioritizes links from larger, higher quality sites such as say—the New York Times, over links from some student’s content farm blog in Russia. Back links are ranked as a vote of confidence about the quality and reliability of a website.

As you develop a relationship and trust with an influencer, both parties link to each other’s content. For example, linking to each other’s social media posts on accounts such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, and sharing guest posts on each other’s blogs that link back to each other’s websites. You both help to extend each other’s audience and reach.

Branding Benefits

The SEO benefits of link building from an influencer relationship are arguably secondary to how they position your brand on the web. Links imply relationships between entities. Associating your brand with other known entities is an indispensable signal—for both humans and search engines—in determining which brands are credible and trustworthy. It’s a long term strategy that requires resources and patience. The benefits however, like compound interest, accrue over time.

Influencer marketing also provides short-term results though. It can drive immediate traffic and sales. Publishing content on an influencer’s site gives you access to an already large and established audience. Influencer marketing should be thought of as an accelerator to your content marketing strategy. It amplifies (rather than replaces) your other content promotion options.

Building an Influencer Network

There are a plethora of social media ranking and monitoring tools available such as BuzzSumo, Klout, sproutsocial, TrackMaven, Traackr, and Lumanu (for micro-influencers). They will help you search for relevant influencers by subject, degree of influence, location, and other parameters.

GINI DIETRICH
CEO of Arment Dietrich, keynote speaker, author of Spin Sucks @ginidietrich
The very best thing marketers can do when creating an influencer relations program for content promotion is very carefully, hand-select the people with whom you want to work. There is nothing worse than being on the receiving end of a pitch, when it’s not a fit for you at all. Plus, it leaves a bit of a sour taste in the people you may want to work with in the future. Most likely, you’re going to work with only a handful of people so do your homework. Cultivate the relationships. And then make the ask. This almost guarantees 100 percent success.

Once you narrow your list down to the most likely candidates, it pays to personally evaluate the substance of a potential influencer’s work. You can learn a lot from their comments, reviews, and posts on social channels. Kristen Matthews of GroupHigh advises evaluating influencers against content fit, reach, and engagement. This helps you filter out the least relevant fits for your brand, and forces you to read their content and determine if outreach truly makes sense.

Influencers are People Too

When you’ve done your homework and you’re ready to reach out, remember that an influencer doesn’t owe you anything. Especially not a response to some random stranger rude enough to ask for something without offering anything in return. Show that you share interests, goals, and priorities. Compliment them on an article, video, or SlideShare they created that you liked. If you’d like someone to contribute content to your blog for example, tell them about your readership and how you’ll be promoting it. That way they can assess whether your audience is large enough and targeted enough to their area of expertise to be worth their time engaging.

ARDATH ALBEE
Author of Digital Relevance, CEO of Marketing Interactions, keynote speaker @ardath421
Creating an influencer program takes a commitment to provide value to the influencer. The most important thing is to see the situation from their side. What’s in it for them? Why should they care? And will what you’re asking for complement what they are passionate about? Once you’ve matched those things up with the influencers on your list, do something for them. Comment on their blogs, share their social posts, ask intelligent questions that show you know what they care about. Do this before you ask for anything in return. Influencer marketing is about building mutually-beneficial relationships. And it’s something that marketers need to get better at if they hope to put influencer marketing to work successfully. Essentially, you get what you give.

Keep it short and sweet, and at the end of your email outreach, clearly state a proposed next step. It’s important to then stay in contact. Retweet them, like their status updates, email to let them know about upcoming projects you have that they may be interested in collaborating on. All relationships require maintenance, and influencer relationships are no different.

Define Objectives

There are typically multiple objectives in any content marketing plan, whether it’s to increase brand awareness, website or blog visitors, social sharing, or leads generated. There are also multiple stakeholders to consider. Your brand may want to grow expertise on a given topic, influencers may want exposure, and prospects almost certainly want expert information. Write these down so you can measure how well you achieve them.

Keywords and Headlines

Clarify which subjects to focus on by defining the headlines you want to write in terms of the search terms and customer questions you want to address. Use keyword research to determine what your prospects are interested in and how to address their concerns.

TopRank Ceo Lee Odden suggests that, “Topics represent the themes and areas of focus for planning editorial and for sourcing influencers. Topic alignment between brand, influencer and community is essential for mutual value to be created.”

The type of content you choose will usually be dictated by your content marketing plan, but remember, some content formats are more conducive to influencer co-creation than others. These include webinars, eBooks, whitepapers, long form blog posts, and SlideShares.

MICHAEL BRENNER
CEO of Marketing Insider Group, keynote speaker, co-author of bestselling book The Content Formula @BrennerMichael
Marketers need to start from the perspective of the influencers and answer what’s in it for them, before asking for favors and content. Book them to speak at your events, pay them to write a series of articles, invite them to participate in other events for free such as webinars and Twitter chats. Most influencers want to build a relationship with the brands they support and are happy to offer their time and insights once there is some mutual trust.

The Planning Process

Make the process of working with you as easy as possible. For example, rather than always asking them to write something for you from scratch, offer to write the first draft of a blog yourself. Or rewrite an older (high performing) post of theirs, allowing them to edit it as they see fit. If the quality of work is equal, busy people will always choose to collaborate with those who make life more convenient.

You will send and receive many emails before you and your influencer have managed to hammer out a subject and format that aligns with both parties’ needs. Once you have completed content you’re both happy with, make it easy for them to promote it. Provide assets such as pre-written tweets, embed codes, shortened URLs (with tracking code for the particular campaign). Make it easier to share your content—and it will be shared more.

Measure Results

Sharing is only one metric to measure the success of your influencer marketing promotion plan however. Curata focuses on metrics such as leads and revenue generated, and the quality of backlinks, time on site, scrolling time, and bounce rate which are all crucial to SEO rankings. Other metrics such as social shares and page impressions tend to be vanity metrics. They look good, but don’t always count for much (towards your business goals at least).

Follow Up

When you’ve published your piece and distributed it through all your, and your influencer’s promotion channels, email them and thank them. Follow up and let them know if their content did well, or if there’s any comments for them to respond to.

CARLA JOHNSON
Keynote speaker, author of Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing, Chief Experience Officer at Type A Communications @CarlaJohnson
The best advice I have for marketers creating an influencer marketing program for content promotion is relevance:To influencers – Spend time researching their content and what matters to them. Are many of their followers part of your market? Make sure their audience is actually one interested in what you deliver. Also, how can you ensure your outreach is beneficial to influencers themselves? They get many asks, make sure that the relationship you want to build is one they believe is relevant and worth their time.
To your audience – Do your homework to find the most appropriate influencers. Just because someone is influential doesn’t mean they’re the right influencer for your brand. Think about what channels your buyers use and match those with your influencer outreach. No sense investing in YouTube influencers if your buyers hang out on LinkedIn.
To your brand – Invest wisely and do your homework. Which influencers can help you meet the business objectives of your brand? Every company’s goals are different and there’s aren’t any one-size-fits-all standards for influencer programs. What worked beautifully for another brand may not be something that brings success for you.

Influencer Marketing: Integral to Content Promotion

Content is not king. Not unless people can find it, and not unless it’s presented well enough to hold people’s attention ahead of the avalanche of other competing content out there.

One of the best ways to introduce new people to your content is to get someone with a built-in audience to tell them about it. Influencers have an authenticity and credibility that other entities can’t match. We take messages from them more seriously than from other sources. Google does too, which means building a relationship with an influencer also helps improve your domain and search engine results page rankings.

Finding the right influencers isn’t hard with the social media ranking and monitoring tools available. Engage with them respectfully and genuinely. Measure the results. Do it right, and you won’t just have developed an effective way to amplify your content promotion, you may just find you’ve developed a new friend. For a thorough examination of how to measure the results of your influencer marketing content promotion, download The Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics & Metrics eBook.

Covering a wide span of industries—both B2B and B2C, there are websites, individual blog posts, posters, magazines, photo essays, a tool to find anyone’s corporate email address, a book, holiday guides, a tool to measure the strength of your brand, and an eBook. Read on to find out what these experts consider to be excellent content marketing ideas.

DOUG KESSLER
Creative Director, Co-Founder, Velocity Partners @dougkessler
One of my favorite B2B content marketing examples is CMO.com by Adobe. It’s a great example of serving your audience first and worrying about turning it into revenue later. By doing that, they’ve created a valuable media property that would take millions to buy. Tim Moran, the editor-in-chief, has done an amazing job with the site (I interviewed him in a post called How Branded Content Is Done)—it just keeps getting better.

DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT
Marketing & Sales Strategist, Keynote Speaker, bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR and Newsjacking @dmscott
I love how Quark Expeditions uses content: they understand how important it is in today’s environment to educate and inform, instead of interrupting and selling. Here’s a video of mine that talks more about it.

ANN HANDLEY
Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs, Author of Everybody Writes and Content Rules @MarketingProfs
One of my favorite content marketing examples of all time is from the Humane Society Silicon Valley, and its “marketing” of a little jerk of a dog named Eddie the Terrible. So much of their content marketing is great. But this one is truly spectacular (and low-budget): http://www.annhandley.com/2014/12/16/eddie-the-terrible-ridiculously-good-writing/

JOE PULIZZI
Founder & CEO, Content Marketing Institute, Author of Content Inc., Speaker & Entrepreneur @JoePulizzi
John Deere’s The Furrow magazine. Created in 1895 to help farmers be more productive, The Furrow is the largest media property in the agricultural industry, with 1.5 million subscribers in 40 countries and 14 different languages.

RAND FISHKIN
Founder and former CEO of Moz, Author, and Co-Founder of Inbound.org @randfish

10X Content refers to content that is ten times better than the best result that can currently be found in the search results for a given keyword phrase or topic.Some combination of the following criteria is necessary to qualify as 10X: provide a uniquely positive user experience; deliver content that is some substantive combination of high-quality, trustworthy, useful, interesting, and remarkable; be considerably different in scope and detail from other works on similar topics; load quickly and be usable on any device or browser; create an emotional response of awe, surprise, joy, anticipation, and/or admiration; achieve an impressive quantity of amplification; solve a problem or answer a question by providing comprehensive, accurate, exceptional information or resources.

Here’s my favorite most recent content marketing examples that qualify as 10X:

http://blog.froont.com/9-basic-principles-of-responsive-web-design/ 
https://maptia.com/davidheath/stories/burma-an-enchanted-spirit
https://www.voilanorbert.com/

MICHAEL BRENNER
CEO, Marketing Insider Group, Author of The Content Formula  @BrennerMichael
Here is one of my favorite recent content marketing examples. In full disclosure I’m on the board but wasn’t paid for the consulting I did:

https://marketinginsidergroup.com/content-marketing/non-profit-content-marketing-plan/

Why I love it:
This is a non-profit with very little marketing budget and almost no resources. But by tapping into the power of the impact they are having on the world, and the emotional stories of their target audience, they achieved massive content marketing success, including a 10X increase in new “customers” with no investment of budget and a tiny portion of their staff’s time.

How they did it:

At Healthy Kids, they super-charged their blogging efforts with employee perspectives, “profiles” of successful community coordinators, they partnered with organizations who were sharing healthy smoothie recipes for kids from popular sites such as Mom Junction, and they curated content from the CDC on how to maintain kid’s health through running.

HEIDI COHEN
Chief Content Officer, Actionable Marketing Guide @heidicohen

Hands down, my favorite piece of quality content is The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn. Kudos to LinkedIn’s Jason Miller (with help from Lee Odden and his Top Rank team).Miller believes as a marketer you should create big rock content around the conversation you want to own. He built The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide brand (within a brand) beyond its original LinkedIn focus. Other guide iterations concentrate on other marketing conversations including thought leadership and content marketing.

Miller spins McDonald’s “value meal” into the “quality content full meal.” The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide delivers on its promise. It’s easy-to-read, consistently branded, and taps into high profile influencers. He carves each piece of big rock content into serving after serving of high value, contextually relevant information. (Hat tip: Rebecca Lieb for the Thanksgiving content analogy.)

Why The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide To LinkedIn is quality content:

• Continues to be relevant. First created in 2014, this big rock content was updated in 2015 and 2016. Why create new content when you can update and improve existing content? (Ask your team this question. This is why I believe content marketing planning starts with an audit!)
• Is the cornerstone for additional portions of content. The guide provides multiple servings of useful content (100+ pieces according to Miller). Further, Miller expanded the Sophisticated Marketer’s Guides to related marketing topics. Talk about long term planning! (Key point: This isn’t set your content strategy and leave it alone.)

Qualifies prospects. The guide not only owns the LinkedIn conversation, but also gets potential prospects into the sales pipeline. The main piece of big rock content is gated. Even better, the same landing page and URL remain constant. Prospects are further pushed down the funnel with the download.

BARRY FELDMAN
Owner, Feldman Creative, Content Marketing Consultant, Speaker, Author @FeldmanCreative
The Road to Recognition is a soon-to-be released book by myself and Seth Price. It’s an exciting example of so many things you can accomplish with content marketing.

You see, it began as an infographic that went viral and evolved into guest posts, SlideShares, interviews, and speaking opportunities. Its popularity suggested we’re onto something big. Its topic—personal branding—begged for more, something epic. And that something is the book.

The book is mega-collaborative affair too, featuring many guests. As the story of the book unfolds you’re going to see every conceivable kind of social media and content come from it. So this is the story of market research, repurposing, collaboration, influencer marketing, social media marketing, and much more all rolled into one.

Want a preview? A new infographic charts the course for accelerating your personal brand.

ARNIE KUENN
CEO at Vertical Measures, International Speaker, Author of Content Marketing Works: 8 Steps to Transform Your Business @ArnieK
I really like the direction Home Depot is going with their content (disclosure: The Home Depot is an SEO client of ours). The Home Depot was fortunate enough to get a large budget to build out their content over the last few years, and I am happy to see they have not wasted it away. They continue to improve all of their product pages, but I especially like their various resource sections on the site. For example, the holiday season is upon us and they have produced some very helpful content like their Holiday Guides. Within their holiday guides they have many specific guides, like how to choose the best artificial Christmas tree for your home. I like solid, practical content, and this fits the bill.

SHERRY LAMOREAUX
Senior Editor, Act-On Software @SherryLamoreaux
One of my favorite content marketing examples is the famous oyster ad that reputedly was David Ogilvy’s first after launching his own little agency. You know the one… the 1950 Guinness Guide to Oysters. Reading it, I am informed and amused, and I am pleased that Guinness thinks enough of me (and my kind) to write such an ad so well. Well, Guinness, perhaps I’ll try one of your stouts the next time I’m in an oyster bar. I want to like you back. And in retrospect, I see how many “rules” Ogilvy broke. He had to be going on intuition. What a brilliant guy.

I love Brian Clark’s commentary on the oyster ad too (published on Say Daily on February 27, 2014). I especially like his authenticity discussion, because it touches on continuity: Online conversion optimization studies repeatedly show that people expect continuity in the information trails they travel. And for some reason, continuity fascinates me.

ROBIN GOOD
Keynote Speaker, Startup Adviser, Publisher – MasterNewMedia  @RobinGood
One great example of content marketing is OnBrandGrader.com. Why? This 100% free tool scores the effectiveness of any website across Consistency, Message, Usability, and Accessibility, while providing a valuable report with specific advice and tips. It is a content marketing tool devised by Bynder, a company specializing in branding and corporate identity.

The art of curating a company’s best advice and wisdom into an automated tool which provides immediate insight and advice to potential customers is, in my opinion, the best way to get lots of visibility, while increasing authority and credibility in any market niche.

Content marketing doesn’t have to be an article at all costs. Content can be repurposed in a million different ways. Thus, directories, catalogs, and instant feedback tools are some of the most effective ways to provide high value and immediate usefulness while being original and providing something altogether unique.

Whether you’re a seasoned content marketing professional or only new to the field, we hope this collection of content marketing ideas helps you improve your content! If you’re interested in furthering your content marketing career, download Curata and LinkedIn’s new joint eBook: The Ultimate Guide to a Content Marketing Career. Packed full of original research, data, and analysis, it outlines the state of the content marketing sector today, the qualifications and capabilities required by the sector, and best practices for great content marketing.

It’s a world class speaking lineup with many, if not most of the biggest names in content marketing. But what do you do if, at some apres-conference soiree, you find yourself face to face with one of these charming and erudite speakers, bereft of conversation starters?

At Content Marketing World, as in life, offering to buy someone a drink is always a good start. Then it comes down to finding something in common to talk about. To that end, Curata spoke with some of the headline speakers to find out a few interesting details about them. Discover the banjo player, the romantic novelist, the tequila collector and the breakdancer. Read on to find out who’s who!

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Chad Pollitt

Co-founder & VP of Audience at Relevance, Marketing Adjunct Professor, Author, International Speaker and former US Army Commander

Lesser known fact:

“I once played in the International Foosball Championships in Las Vegas and actually placed second in one of the events back in 2002. That’s the only thing I think I learned in college. Check out the one minute mark in this video for the infamous “AERIAL Trick Shot.””

Well known facts: Chad is a decorated veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and former Army Commander. He is VP of Audience and Co-founder of Relevance, a digital magazine, agency, and events company dedicated to content strategy, promotion, and marketing.

A member of a Forbes Top 100 list, Chad authored The Native Advertising Manifesto, The Content Promotion Manifesto, and 51 Things Your Mother Taught You About Inbound Marketing. He is a regular contributor to industry media outlets, including the Huffington Post, Guardian and Social Media Today.

@ChadPollitt | LinkedIn

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Doug Kessler

Creative Director, Co-Founder, Velocity Partners Ltd (UK)

Lesser known fact:

“Most people don’t know that I play the banjo. Most people are lucky that way.

Those who do know wish they didn’t.”

Well known facts: Awarded Launch of the Year 2015 by the Content Marketing Institute in October 2015 for Sprint Business launch, Doug is a displaced Yank who started his career at Ogilvy & Mather, New York. Soap and fabric softener bored him rigid so he jumped ship to specialize in B2B. Doug is a content marketing junkie. He’s a copywriter at heart but with a secret jones for analytics. And Lagavulin.

@dougkessler | LinkedIn

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Arnie Kuenn

CEO at Vertical Measures, international speaker, & author of Content Marketing Works: 8 Steps to Transform Your Business

Lesser known fact:

“I am actually really into boating. And I have never even owned one. I have been on the water in almost every type of boat imaginable. I have trained and earned a powerboat certification and read countless books on the subject. My goal is to buy a trawler someday and either cruise it from the west coast to the east coast or possibly buy it on the east coast and cruise the great loop. Right now I am trying to find a yachting manufacturer or large broker who wants to hire a content marketing agency!”

Well known facts: Arnie Kuenn is the author of the award winning content marketing book Accelerate! Arnie is also an instructor for the Online Marketing Institute and the Content Marketing Institute. Arnie served on the 2008 Arizona Super Bowl Marketing Committee. He is a founder and past president of the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association (AZIMA). In 2014, he was voted the Interactive Person of the Year at the AZIMA TIM Awards.

@ArnieK | LinkedIn

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Carla Johnson

Marketing and Customer Experience Strategist | Author | Speaker | Storyteller

Lesser known fact:

“I’m a classical pianist and started studying when I was eight. My mom made me take lessons and I didn’t like it in the beginning because I was an outside girl growing up. But then I realized that if I practiced, I got out of chores around the house and my older sister had to do my share. That motivated my practicing and then I fell in love with playing the piano. I studied for 13 years and still play today.”

Well known facts: Carla is recognized as one of the top influencers in content marketing. Her book, Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing, teaches marketers how to develop, manage and lead the creation of valuable experiences in their organizations. Carla serves as Vice Chair on the Executive Board of the Business Marketing Association (a division of the ANA). She was previously the Vice President of Thought Leadership. Carla is an instructor for Rutgers University mini-MBA program, the Content Marketing Institute, the ANA, and the Online Marketing Institute. A frequent speaker at events such as Content Marketing World, Carla also contributes to industry wide news outlets, forums and conferences.

@CarlaJohnson | LinkedIn

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Ardath Albee

SEO & B2B Marketing Strategist of her firm Marketing Interactions | B2B Marketing Strategist | Speaker | Author of 2 Books

Lesser known fact:

“People may not know that I’m a long-time member of Romance Writers of America and love writing women’s fiction. I’ve written five novels so far—none actually published… yet. When I say I’m a storyteller, I really mean it—whether in fiction or in business. Actually, even more interesting is that a lot of the strategy and skills needed to write compelling long-form fiction cross over into the development of B2B personas and content marketing strategy.”

Well known facts: Ardath grew up in Southern California. She is the author of eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, (McGraw Hill), and Digital Relevance: Developing Marketing Content and Strategies that Drive Results (Palgrave Macmillan). Her mom says her hunger to write started with her fourth grade teacher. “I’ll take her word for it, as I don’t remember when, exactly, I knew I had to write.”

Ardath runs her own firm, Marketing Interactions, Inc. She helps B2B companies generate more sales-ready leads with e-marketing and content strategies. She has a B.A. in English Literature from San Francisco State University. Ardath was a finalist in the Golden Heart writing contest for unpublished romance writers through RWA in 2005.

@ardath421 | LinkedIn

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Rand Fishkin

Wizard of Moz

Lesser known fact:

“In January 2007, I filmed a 30-second ad for a major retailer (in which I proposed to my then girlfriend, now wife, Geraldine) that was set to air during the Super Bowl. Thankfully, the retailer pulled out a week before the game, or I’d have gone down as a pop culture footnote. Phew! I proposed during a homemade TV ad on her favorite show a few days later, and she said yes while watching in our living room!”

Well known facts:

Education: Attended University of Washington, Seattle 1997-2001 | Dropped out to start Moz
Interests: Travel, Science, NFL Football, Food, Beer, Scotch, the Internet, Adventure Time

Over six years as founder and CEO, Rand grew Moz from seven employees to 134, revenues from $800,000 to $29.3 million, and traffic from 1 million to 30 million annual visitors. He raised two rounds of funding ($1.1 million in 2007 and $18.1 million in 2012) and led three acquisitions. In 2013, rebranded the company from SEOmoz to Moz, shifting focus from exclusively SEO tools to broader web marketing software.

Rand stepped down as CEO in February of 2014, promoting longtime Chief Operations Officer Sarah Bird to the position. He moved into an individual contributor role and retains the title “Wizard of Moz,” as well as the stuffier, less-fun title “Chairman of the Board of Directors.”

Rand has co-contributed to two books: Art of SEO, and Inbound Marketing & SEO.

@randfish | LinkedIn

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Gini Dietrich

Founder and CEO, Arment Dietrich, and Spin Sucks Pro

Lesser known fact:

“In 2014, I was about two months away from having my own cookbook and cooking show on television! Then a couple of things happened: 1) It was the year Spin Sucks came out so I had my hands full; and 2) As it turns out, cookbooks are rarely your own recipes and I couldn’t bring myself to write about how much spin sucks every day and then release a cookbook that wasn’t full of recipes passed down through generations.”

Well known facts: Gini’s blog Spin Sucks is on the AdAge top 150 list. It’s a top 10 online destination for PR and marketing tips, tools, and techniques. An award-winning communicator, her clients have included Abbott, Sprint, Ocean Spray, Bayer, BASF, The Catfish Institute, Central Garden & Pet, and Denny’s. Gini speaks in venues ranging from trade organizations and international social media and communication forums to Vistage International and PRSA.

@ginidietrich | LinkedIn

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Jay Baer

Marketing and customer experience consultant, NY Times best-selling author, keynote speaker and emcee, investor

Lesser known fact:

“I am a tequila collector and a certified BBQ judge. My very favorite tequila is Casa Dragones, which tastes like angel tears. It’s super expensive though, so definitely a special occasion sipper. On a more regular basis I like Corzo reposado, Avion silver, and a shout-out to Roca Patron Anejo and my friend Adrian Parker, who has the best job in the world (head of digital for Patron).”

“I had to go to BBQ judging school in Illinois to become certified, so I can tell you a lot of strange and boring details about competitive BBQ. But if you really want to compare and contrast, pork ribs are the way to go. You can tell a lot about a cook by how they do their ribs. Personally, I prefer Kansas City style BBQ, with Texas style brisket and beef ribs a very close second, and Santa Maria style third.”

Well known facts: Jay Baer is the author of Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers. He has advised more than 700 companies since 1994, including Caterpillar, Nike, Allstate, The United Nations and 32 of the FORTUNE 500.

Jay is the founder of Convince & Convert, a strategy consulting firm that helps prominent companies gain and keep more customers through the smart intersection of technology, social media, and customer service. His Convince & Convert Media division owns the world’s #1 content marketing blog, the world’s top marketing podcast, and many other education resources for business owners and executives.

@jaybaer | LinkedIn

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Joe Pulizzi

Founder, Content Marketing Institute

Lesser known fact: “Most people don’t know that I grew up watching my father cook at the restaurant my parents owned, and then worked with my grandfather and uncle at their funeral home before college. It’s probably one of the main reasons why I ended up being an entrepreneur… watching my family run companies.”

Well known facts: Joe Pulizzi is an entrepreneur, speaker, author, podcaster, father, and lover of all things orange. He’s the founder of multiple startups, including the Content Marketing Institute (CMI)—and the Content Marketing World conference. CMI also offers advisory services for organizations such as HP, AT&T, Petco, LinkedIn, SAP, the Gates Foundation and many others.

Joe is the winner of the 2014 John Caldwell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Content Council. Joe’s third book, Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less was named one of “Five Must Read Business Books of the Year” by Fortune Magazine. His fourth book, Content Inc., was released September 2015. Joe has also co-authored two other books, Get Content Get Customers and Managing Content Marketing.

Joe also writes a column for Entrepreneur.com and is a LinkedIn Influencer. You can hear Joe on his podcasts, “This Old Marketing” and “Content Inc.” If you happen to bump into him at Content Marketing World, he’ll be wearing orange.

@JoePulizzi | LinkedIn

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Ian Cleary

Founder and CEO of RazorSocial

Lesser known fact:

“I always wanted to do break dancing so about two years ago I started taking lessons. I was, by far, the oldest in the class with most of the class under the age of 15. But that wasn’t going to stop me. At a conference last year in Chicago the organizers asked me to do something fun during my speaking event so I did some break dancing! It’s a good way of ensuring that everyone remembers you at a conference!”

“I didn’t always work in marketing. A couple of years after leaving school I went to Australia and got a job as a laborer in an underwater tunnel they were building out beneath the sea in Sydney. I had no experience whatsoever in construction but I was told by my Irish friend to say yes to everything at the interview… it worked! I guess I was doing some marketing of my ability…”

Well known facts: After being a shareholder of several tech companies that floated on Nasdaq or got acquired, Ian Cleary thought, “Why not build a global company?” So he hustled, flew all over the world, bought beers and dinners, offered free advice and developed key relationships. This led to him becoming one of the Top 50 Content Marketers in the world, a regular speaker at conferences such as Content Marketing World, and a globally recognized influencer. Ian also contributes to VentureBeat, Entrepreneur.com, Content Marketing Institute, Social Media Examiner, and the Huffington Post.

@IanCleary | LinkedIn

Content Marketing World Keynote Speaker Mark Hamill

Actor, Voice Actor, Writer

Lesser known fact:

Luke Skywalker is gay. Or at least, in an interview with Britain’s The Sun, Hamill leaves Skywalker’s sexual orientation open to interpretation: “… fans are writing and ask all these questions, ‘I’m bullied in school… I’m afraid to come out’. They say to me, ‘Could Luke be gay?’ I’d say it is meant to be interpreted by the viewer… If you think Luke is gay, of course he is. You should not be ashamed of it. Judge Luke by his character, not by who he loves.” Then again, the only character Luke openly displayed any affection for in the original trilogy of films was his sister Leia. (He did have a rural upbringing.)

Well known facts: Hamill is world famous for his depiction of the character Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of The Jedi, and The Force Awakens. He made his acting debut on The Bill Cosby Show in 1970. He starred in action comedy Corvette Summer and war movie The Big Red One in 1978 and 1980 respectively. Hamill then tried to avoid being typecast as a heartthrob and worked primarily on Broadway, as a voice actor, and other lower profile movies. Hamill is also the co-creator of the comic book miniseries The Black Pearl. He has written several stories for Simpsons Comics. Unknown: what Hamill will talk about in his Content Marketing World keynote address.

@HamillHimself