It’s an exciting time for content marketing. The term is gaining traction in social media circles, with more and more marketers adding the phrase to their vernacular, listing it as a LinkedIn speciality and including it in their 160-character Twitter bios. All this buzz led us to take a second look at how content marketing is being defined by the marketing community.
What better place to start than Content Marketing World 2011, where social media guru Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner sat down with content guru C.C. Chapman to talk content marketing?
For C.C. Chapman, content is everywhere and it’s in all of us. A Tweet, a blog post, a doodle – if it tells a story, it is content. There are endless possibilities for marketers in this realm.
Entrepreneur Magazine’s Mikal E. Belicove definitively explains that content must be created and published to support business objectives, such as brand awareness or lead generation. Belicove advocates for the direct line between content and your company’s end goal.
These are two essential components at work in the finest content marketing. As Chapman says, storytelling fuels compelling content. Narrative will drive the success of your content. At the same time, marketers who only create content for content’s sake are missing an important opportunity. Content is most effective when it’s leveraged to support a specific objective. Maybe it’s a conversation starter, a relationship builder, or indeed a lead generator for your sales team.
How do you define content marketing? How does content support your company or brand? How do you measure its effectiveness? Let us know in the comments below, on Facebook, or on Twitter.
