Content Marketing is rapidly growing, but is often done poorly. People think they have to publish content regardless of the needs of their target audience, at a pace no one can possibly consume. This leads to what Mark Schaefer calls “content shock,” in which you overwhelm an increasingly unwilling audience with content. It’s a huge waste of money that does more harm than good.
I hosted a webinar with James Mathewson about how we define content marketing. In our book “Outside-In Marketing: Using Big Data to Guide Your Content Marketing,” we offered a more pragmatic approach. Outside-in marketing is based on understanding the audience and publishing only what they need. The planning, publishing, and iteration of content requires big data analytics. Marketers need to integrate search query, social listening, persona, web analytics, and even CRM data into one model of customer behavior that informs content.
Don’t worry. The big data analytics practices at the heart of outside-in marketing are not heard by themselves. Integrating them isn’t rocket surgery. As long as you keep asking yourself who the audience is and what their behavior tells you about your content effectiveness, you can leave the API plumbing to the techies. This 30-minute recorded webinar helps participants understand customer behavior in terms of common journeys they take and content they consume along the way. It gets you started towards effective outside-in marketing.
Biznology author James Mathewson wrote two books: Outside-In Marketing and Audience, Relevance, and Search. He has 20 years of experience building effective digital content. He was editor-in-chief of ComputerUser.com and ibm.com, where his work led to significant increases in audience and engagement. He is currently a Distinguished Technical Marketer for IBM, building big data analytics systems to help marketers plan, publish and improve content for their target audiences.
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