57+ Words Every Content Marketer Should Know [Glossary]
As a kid, you probably learned the phrase, knowledge is power. As a marketer, you prove its validity every day through your content that educates, informs, and inspires your audience. But knowledge isn’t a static construct. Perceptions and attitudes change,…
Want More Referral Traffic? Don’t Overlook These Sites
Just as LeBron James has dominated NBA courts and conversation, Google has dominated search and content conversations since the turn of this century. But LeBron isn’t the only player in the NBA. And Google isn’t the only player who refers…
How To Direct An Employee Creator Network
One of the more exciting trends in marketing is the rise in interest in engaging employees as influencers and content creators. Recent research from agency giant Ogilvy finds that 89% of C-suite B2B marketers recognize that tapping employees as influencers…
How To Prepare for the Data Apocalypse
Everybody knows the apocalypse of ad tech data approaches. Yet, most aren’t rushing to do anything about it. That’s the latest finding in the Internet Advertising Bureau’s 2024 State of Data Report: How the Digital Ad Industry is Adapting to…
How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals
A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI. The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling. The goals and roles of content marketing…
Enhance Your Content’s Power With a Performance-Centric AI Plan
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a topic of huge debate among content creators. It’s been hailed for its efficiency yet critiqued for diluting the human touch in content — not to mention serious concerns around security, privacy, attribution, plagiarism, and more. …
How To Produce a Podcast
“I have too much time and too much money, so let’s make a podcast,” said no marketing person ever. Podcasting has become huge, but it’s a daunting format for many marketers. Much like writing a book, it’s difficult, time-consuming, and…
7 Answers to TikTok Ban Questions
The alarmist headlines grow louder these days — TikTok Ban: It’s Here! Americans Sound Off on TikTok Ban in Viral Rants! Say Farewell to TikTok! Content creators and influencers who earn their living from TikTok are having a toxic freakout…
How To Find and Include More Underrepresented Voices in Your Content
When women make up so much of your target audience, why does your content marketing focus on quotes from Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or Richard Branson? Effective content marketing connects your audience’s wants and needs with the education…
Content Editing: How To Handle Major Rewrites
Have you ever had to edit bad content? You know the kind. It doesn’t contain enough dots for you to connect. You can’t save it by asking the author a question or two. It’s that bad. But what if you…
Manage Your Content Budgets With ‘Bottle’ Episodes
When marketing budgets get tighter, an easy trap to fall into is failing to create long-term content plans. I’ve seen it: The budget gods come down early in the year and proclaim that X amount will just have to do….
The Problem With AI Headlines
Today is the Ides of March. It is not a day to celebrate; it is a day to beware, as the soothsayer told Julius Ceasar. It didn’t work out well for him, but will the 2024 caveat — beware of…
Helpful Advice To Find a New Job in Marketing and Content
Are you in job hunt mode? Maybe you recently lost a job or expect cuts to your team. Perhaps you’re seeking new opportunities that fit where you want to go professionally or personally. Does anyone enjoy job hunting regardless of…
Enterprise Content Marketing Research | Content Marketing Institute
For enterprise content marketers, 2024 is all about efficiency and results. That’s what 333 enterprise marketers (in companies with 1,000-plus employees) told us during CMI’s latest annual content marketing survey. We asked an open-ended question about top content-related priorities…
Does AI Do ‘More’ Or ‘Less With More’ in Your Content Strategy?
Let’s dispel a myth going around right now. You are NOT behind if you haven’t fully integrated generative AI into your marketing or content strategy. For all the bluster going on, exceedingly few companies have integrated any of it,…
Is Your Thought Leadership Stuck in ‘Mutually Assured Irrelevance’?
How is your thought leadership program going? Is it more thought than leadership? Or are the thoughts more like what everybody else is saying? New research from Edelman and LinkedIn says most thought leadership apparently doesn’t encourage or inspire much…
6 SEO Content Mistakes, Myths, and Misunderstandings
It’s hard out here for content marketers to attract the right traffic organically. With search engine optimization practices evolving and content competition coming from everywhere, it’s all too easy to get confused. While watching several SEO presentations at Content Marketing…
50+ Blogs, Newsletters, Podcasts, and Video Channels
You’re busy enough doing the work. You don’t have the time to search for content that can help your content and marketing. So, we asked the CMI community in our newsletter and on social media for their favorites. We also…
Evergreen vs. Classic Content: Why Marketers Should Know the Difference
Last week, I had a lively discussion with a colleague about “evergreen” content. I argued evergreen does not automatically mean the content will stand the test of time. Nor is content that stands the test of time necessarily evergreen. The…
Lessons From Air Canada’s Chatbot Fail
Air Canada tried to throw its chatbot under the AI bus. It didn’t work. A Canadian court recently ruled Air Canada must compensate a customer who bought a full-price ticket after receiving inaccurate information from the airline’s chatbot. Air Canada…
4-Part Guide To Crafting a Winning Content Plan
You receive or finalize your organization’s latest content marketing strategy. That means you’re ready to jump right into creating great content, right? Not so fast, friend. Sorry to tell you, but that strategy is a virtually useless piece of (digital)…
How To Achieve Business Podcasting Success
Business podcasting differs from entertainment podcasting in almost every dimension. (The hint is in the adjective.) So don’t look to podcasts from Trevor Noah, Glennon Doyle, Joe Rogan, or even The New York Times for hints on how to succeed….
Learn the ABCs of DXPs [Sponsored]
Digital experience platforms (DXPs) are a relatively new arrival in the alphabet soup of martech offerings. But the genesis of these solutions comes on the back of technology that’s been around since the outset of the digital era: the content…
Attention vs.Trust: Which Should Content Marketers Prioritize?
If you had to pick the impact your content on a potential customer, would you choose: Deeper trust but quickly fading attention and recall or Fixed attention and great recall but minimal, if any, trust? Now, I know you want…
Marketing Team Reorgs: Why So Many and How To Survive
How long has it been since your marketing team got restructured? Wearing our magic mind-reading hat, we’d guess it was within the last two years. Impressed by the guess? Don’t be. Research from Marketing Week’s 2024 Career and Salary Survey…
Look Inside Your Brand’s Community for People To Help Lead It
Intuit knows people ask a lot of questions about taxes. For over 10 years, its TurboTax brand provided an online question-and-answer support forum to address them. But a few years ago, Intuit saw the potential to evolve the robust FAQ…
Technology Content Marketing Research 2024
In a 20-minute demo, the sales engineer deftly clicked through the interface, configured a new image set, assigned the metadata, and set the rights-management properties. He logged in as different users to demonstrate a sophisticated workflow. Then, he published an…
How to Shift Your Storytelling To Co-Create
My wife and I have a running bit of funny banter. Well, we think it’s funny. On occasion, as we do our end-of-evening ritual — close up the house, brush teeth, get a glass of water, etc. — I demand…
9 Actions You Can Take To Get Better Content Results Without Spending More
In my career, I’ve seen it all. I’ve been through economic downturns. I’ve been through booms. I’ve worked with startups. I’ve worked at large publicly traded companies. And I’ve always had to come up with scrappy content and marketing solutions…
Don’t Wait To See How Cookies Crumble; Cook Up a New Data Strategy Now
Imagine a world where you make candy and cakes. Almost all your competitors make similar candy and cakes, but you do well because your cakes are awesome. In this world, you and your fellow confectioners in the marketplace rely on…
5+ Ways AI Can Benefit Your Content and Marketing
Have you welcomed AI onto your content marketing team? AI-powered tools and techniques can add invaluable assistance to your content and marketing work. But you first must understand the possibilities before you can benefit from them. Industry experts (human ones)…
‘Playing Around’ With Generative AI Won’t Lead To Innovation
AI doesn’t solve anything but is an opportunity to solve many things. A weird tension builds as marketing teams across all manners of business experiment with generative AI tools. It boils down to this: Generative AI solves problems you don’t…
Stuck in B2Boring? Take These Lessons From the Super Ads Bowl
Who will win the Super Bowl? The Kansas City Chiefs? The San Francisco 49ers? Will one of the 40-plus brands (yes, at least 40) advertising during the show win? What about half-time performer Usher? Or Taylor Swift? OK, that last…
Why and How To Add Mentoring to Your Content Career Plan
Mentorships took the No. 1 spot in LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report. The subject beat diversity, equity, and inclusion (No. 2), upskilling and reskilling (No. 3), leading through change (No. 6), digital fluency transformation (No. 7), and hybrid/flex work (No….
Crickets? Rethink Your Livestream Strategy
You hit the live button, and the viewer count doesn’t budge. You assume it’s a tech problem and open another screen to see if it shows up. It’s working. The counter shows one viewer but returns to zero when you…
How To Help Your Internal Teams Fall in Love With Innovative Ideas
Ironically, a difficult thing for creative marketing and content teams to do is the one thing they want (and must) do frequently: Inject new, creative approaches into their work. I always see this challenge in my consulting, especially with companies…
Are CMI Roles Going 6 Feet Under?
Are you skilled for the hottest jobs in the market? LinkedIn recently released the 25 fastest-growing roles in the United States. Like many other fields, marketing and sales are changing. But are these the same old jobs wrapped in a…
The Advanced LinkedIn Ads Guide
B2B marketers love LinkedIn for a reason. Your desired audiences are right there. So, LinkedIn Ads seem like a great opportunity for paid campaigns. But with great opportunity comes a great cost — accessing that LinkedIn audience comes with a…
Build a Robust Content Infrastructure With the Right CMS [Sponsored]
Here’s a burning question many marketers look to answer when figuring out how to optimize their content operations: What does an effective content infrastructure look like? Ongoing advances in modern technology have made it easier to build a content roadmap…
6 Easy Things You Can Do To Improve the Content Experience
What if you created content so great your audience doesn’t even realize it’s an experience? That scenario can happen when you opt for one or more of these ideas to take your content goals beyond simple consumption and clunky…
Don’t Hide — Mine Your Brand’s Flaws for Storytelling Gold
Your brand is flawed. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your company does. The character of your brand is flawed. Brands behave badly in major and minor ways. Even the most well-intentioned brand efforts go awry. Elon Musk…
What Marketers Should Do as Google Crumbles Third-Party Cookies
Google followed through on its resolution to give up cookies. Well, maybe “give up” is too strong to describe Google’s deprecation of its third-party cookies. It stopped tracking 1% of Chrome browser users to display content based on the attributes…
Hackensack Meridian Health’s Award-Winning Content Strategy
Seven years ago, Hackensack Meridian Health operated on content autopilot. It’s a story familiar to many marketers. Some with the brand published a print magazine. Others sent newsletters with syndicated content that used medical sources unaffiliated with the largest health…
Owned Media Demands This New Content Role for Long-Term Success
How many owned media properties does your company have? Yes, I’m asking you to count the newsletters, websites, campaign microsites, blogs, communities, and resource centers your business actively maintains. Many of you probably have that number readily available. For others,…
Solo Stove Burns Marketing Team Over Snoop Campaign
Last week, Solo Brands, the parent company of direct-to-consumer-brands Solo Stove and others, appointed Christopher T. Metz as its president, chief executive officer, and director of the board. But that isn’t the interesting story. The story is why Solo Brands…
6 Strategies To Convert the Content Clueless
This article is co-authored by Digital River Media CEO Annie Murmann and COO Jeneanne Ballos. You diligently developed your customer personas, carefully selected relevant keywords, and added funny memes to your content strategy. Presenting it to the CEO, you observe a look of confusion. At…
How To Bring Personality to Your Content and Personas
. Developing content requires you to think about the audience. You likely create customer personas around the demographic data. But have you considered the personality of your audience? Knowing your audience’s personality traits can help you better understand their behavior…
Build This New Framework for Agile Content Ops in Talent-Starved Times
When it comes to managing content and marketing operations resources, 2024 will be complicated. For one thing, marketing budgets will receive plenty of scrutiny (as they always do). In 2023, Gartner research found that 71% of CMOs believe they…
Do Better AI Prompts Translate to Better Outcomes?
Around the turn of the 21st century, Web 1.0 came online. (Well, not the 1.0 part since no one knew it would have versions.) Everything centered on the “net.” You logged onto the net using the Netscape browser. You made…
How To Tame Content Tasks With These 5 ‘Cheat Codes’ [AI Not Required]
“Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.” That cliché is cold comfort when you’re buried in assignments, distracted by the constant ping of new requests hitting your inbox, and dreading when your brand’s latest change initiative trickles into your…
Cultivate Content Leadership | Content Marketing Institute
Regardless of your specific intention or word for 2024, you (like me) probably think about it in terms of fixing or improving something you think is wrong about yourself or your ability to accomplish it. I can’t tell you how…
Attention Metrics Hot for 2024
New year, new format: CMI’s weekly news series has evolved into What’s New – a hot take on a current marketing topic. Every week, CMI chief strategy advisor Robert Rose will explain a hot topic or pattern – including why…
How Content Helped ServiceNow Grow From Startup to Global Brand
ServiceNow’s origin story reads like many other successful tech startups. They didn’t initially need thought leadership. They needed great products and sales. ServiceNow had that — a cloud-based workflow platform used to automate various IT processes. But ServiceNow lacked a…
6 Ways to Elevate the Text-to-Audio Experience
Converting your text-based, long-form content into audio versions sounds like an easy – and smart – thing to do. After a few months of working with an AI-based audio-conversion tool on the Content Marketing Institute blog, I still think it’s…
Forget Resolutions; What’s Your Word for 2024?
Happy New Year. Yup, it’s that time again. You open your favorite journaling book and write your intentions or resolutions. You dust off the gym membership card and try to remember exactly where the gym is. You start relearning…
How This FORTUNE Brand Studio Exec Built a Content Business
From a young age, a kernel of creativity germinated inside Megan Gilbert’s brain. She loved to consume books, magazines, and TV – and welcomed even the commercial messages in and around them. “I was obsessed with ad messaging as well…
’Twas the Night Before Break (2023 Edition)
Editor’s note: No ChatGPT was prompted to create this poem. Robert deserves all credit (or blame) for the twists on the original by Clement Clarke Moore. ’Twas the night before break, when all through our firms,No marketer stirring, not even interns….
The Rise in Retail Media Networks
As LL Cool J might say, “Don’t call it a comeback. It’s been here for years.” Paid advertising is alive and growing faster in different forms than any other marketing method. Magna, a media research firm, and GroupM, a media…
10 Content Marketing Articles Readers (Like You) Loved This Year
Content comes at you fast, to paraphrase that old ad campaign from Nationwide. So, you likely missed (or forgot) some helpful and thought-provoking articles from this year. Sure, we surface pieces through the in-case-you-missed-it entries in the CMI newsletters. But…
The Audience Relationship Mandate | Content Marketing Institute
By Robert Rose. Synthetic voice and sound recording created by Everlit based on the voice of Robert Rose (with his permission). I’ve been thinking about something that will impact marketing in 2024: Relationships. And I mean specifically the relationships between…
7 Generative AI Prompts To Help Your Content Marketing Workflows
By Connie Smart and Alli Berry Synthetic voice and sound recording created by Everlit. This article was co-written by Alli Berry. Like it or not, generative AI tools generated (pun intended) a nauseating amount of attention this year, but not…
New Study Reveals Clear Writing Tips for B2B Marketers
Just like Taylor Swift knowing which tracks will make Swifties swoon, the value in clear content seems obvious to B2B marketers. But it’s less obvious to your stakeholders (and clients), especially when marketing to a sophisticated audience. You get accustomed…
How To Ditch the Rocks in Your Content Stocking
Before you dig into my last column of the year, I want to express my appreciation and gratitude for you. I won’t be sorry to see 2023 move to the rear-view mirror, but I have a special place in my…
Human Marketing vs. AI + Humans: Who Won?
Imagine you receive this creative brief: You are a creative content marketer. Develop a marketing campaign that you will pitch to clients for the launch of LuminaEdge – a fictional VR platform that provides immersive, multi-sensory experiences. Your objective is…
Marketing in 2024: AI, Brand, and the End of Social Media?
As that song from Rent says, “525,600 minutes. How do you measure, measure a year?” It’s been a heck of a year in marketing. We’re not going to miss a lot about 2023. It started as disruptive and tough. Many…