Why content matters (no matter what type of marketer you are)
Columnist Rebecca Lieb outlines the reasons why content marketing is more important to brands and marketers than ever before.
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Rebecca Lieb's latest articles
No content strategy is an island
You can't craft a winning content strategy without a solid foundation. Columnist Rebecca Lieb lays out four foundational elements you need to put into place before creating your content strategy.
The rise of bad content marketing advice
Columnist Rebecca Lieb believes it's time for content marketers to put the kibosh on poor writing and link-bait and instead put content strategy ahead of tactics.
How digital advertising will change with today’s political climate
The proliferation of fake and offensively virulent news will be a growing problem this year. Columnist Rebecca Lieb takes a look at the trend and how it will affect digital advertising and online media.
Global content marketing: It’s gonna be big!
Taking a content marketing program beyond national or regional boundaries is a complex undertaking. Columnist Rebecca Lieb shares what she's learned about challenges and best practices as marketers seek to expand upon their successes.
8 best practices for contextual campaigns
How do you move beyond 'the right message to the right person at the right time?' Columnist Rebecca Lieb explains how to get off to a successful start with contextual marketing.
Why contextual campaigns provide value across the enterprise
Columnist Rebecca Lieb explains how deeper targeting and individualized messaging can benefit marketers, organizations and consumers.
Why context is digital marketing’s next frontier
Once upon a time, personalizing content was the ultimate in marketing sophistication. No more, says columnist Rebecca Lieb, who urges marketers to think deeply about why, how and where customers seek out their brands.
Scaling content marketing to a global level
How do you create a global content marketing strategy? It's a daunting task. But columnist Rebecca Lieb offers some tips to help you meet the needs of each region, country and locality.
Content marketing and the silo issue
Is your content suffering from turf battles over who owns it? Columnist Rebecca Lieb explains how to get your employees, customers and partners to collaborate to make your content shine.
The morality clause in digital marketing
What if a project or client isn't in line with your own personal ethics and values? Columnist Rebecca Lieb tackles that question and offers some guidance on when to say no.
Content marketing and personal branding go hand-in-hand
How do you successfully build your personal brand? Columnist Rebecca Lieb says it all comes down to content marketing and ensuring that the content that represents you adds value.
How To Analyze Your Content Needs
Building out your content offerings is like furnishing an empty house -- with so many options, it's hard to know where to start. Columnist Rebecca Lieb explains how to narrow things down through research.
Content Marketing And Targeting Fallacies
When it comes to audience targeting, don't look for shortcuts. Columnist Rebecca Lieb explains how to tackle it the right way without skipping some essential steps.
Please Don’t! 5 Content Marketing Don’ts For 2016
It's easy to talk about content marketing wins, but what about giant fails? Columnist Rebecca Lieb outlines some of the top mistakes content marketers make so that you can avoid them in the coming year.
Marketing And The Gravitas Issue
Pack away those hoodies and jeans. If you want to move up in marketing circles, you need to project a certain level of legitimacy and gravitas, says columnist Rebecca Lieb.
Content: It’s Not Another Channel
Think content is a channel that should be departmentalized? Think again! Rebecca Lieb explains why team members across your marketing organization need to collaborate and align on content.
Leveraging Content For In-Store Sales
Many retailers still aren't making the most of digital media to bolster their in-store sales. Columnist Rebecca Lieb delves into her recent research on the trend and offers recommendations on how to turn it around.
5 Content Trends To Watch
As content marketing continues to evolve, columnist Rebecca Lieb takes a look at key trends that every marketer should keep an eye on.
The 5 Content Strategy Shortcuts That Aren’t Shortcuts At All
Building a content strategy isn't effective when you cut corners. Columnist Rebecca Lieb delves into some popular shortcuts — and explains why they aren’t really shortcuts at all.
The Difference Between Content And Content Marketing
As the line between content and content marketing blurs, columnist Rebecca Lieb shares thoughts about what lies ahead for content professionals.
Content And SEO: Getting Basic With The Basics
What's the point of churning out killer content if no one can ever find it? Columnist Rebecca Lieb explains why SEO and good content go hand in hand.
Steps Toward Developing A Content Strategy
Columnist Rebecca Lieb details the critical steps organizations should take to map out a clear content strategy to govern their content marketing.
A Meaningful Framework For Content Measurement
Content marketing isn't solely for driving sales. It can recruit employees, provide customer service, facilitate product feedback and more. Columnist Rebecca Lieb tackles how content's impact on these areas can be quantified.
How To Conduct A Content Audit
A content audit is the cornerstone of content strategy, which governs content marketing. The aim is to perform a qualitative analysis of all the content on a website (or in some cases, a network of sites and/or social media presences — any content for which your organization is responsible). Why perform a content audit, which […]
Content Marketing: What To Consider Before You Outsource
If you're like many brands, you want to keep close tabs on your content marketing. Contributor Rebecca Lieb details what you should consider when hiring an outside agency to help.
Culture Of Content: The Success Criteria
Fundamentally, content has become bigger than marketing; it spans across the enterprise, particularly in public-facing divisions such as sales, customer care, recruiting, PR and product groups. All these constituencies have the capability to create and to distribute content, to contribute to the overall content pool, and to become part of the content circulatory system. But how […]
Native Advertising Disclosure & Transparency: Who’s Responsible?
We can all pretty much universally agree that with native advertising comes the obligation of disclosure and transparency. That means clearly and unambiguously indicating that yes, this is an ad, paid for by Acme Corporation. Yet, how to provide disclosure remains a murky area — hardly surprising given how quickly an extraordinarily wide variety of […]
The Role Content Plays In B2B Social Selling
Columnist Rebecca Lieb shares seven concrete tips that B2B organizations with social sales should be implementing.
Orchestrating Content Marketing On A Global Scale
Columnist Rebecca Lieb discusses the necessary ingredients for a successful global content marketing initiative.
Content Marketing: What To Measure Beyond Sales & Leads
Sure, you should be measuring revenue and leads related to your content marketing, but what are the other less-obvious benefits that content provides?
How Much Does Content Cost? It’s Not An Easy Question, And Here’s Why
How much does content marketing cost? Tough question, right? So let’s break the question down a bit to try to simplify it. How much does content creation cost? There are still no easy answers, are there? Yet it’s a question marketers persist in asking, in much the same way people were asking back in the […]
A Major Executive Move In Content Marketing — Q&A With Michael Brenner
Michael Brenner has long been a recognized leader in content marketing in his role as VP marketing at SAP. Very recently, he joined content marketing technology vendor NewsCred to head strategy for that company. NewsCred is a rapidly growing content marketing technology platform that also offers licensed and original content. Clients include Bank of America, Time […]
The New Anything/Anyone Goes Competitive Landscape For Content Marketing Firms
Recently, I was chatting with the CEO of one of the leading digital agencies. Talk turned to competitors, and I asked what firms his firm found itself bidding against most frequently. Usual-suspect names cropped up (Digitas, Sapient Nitro). But so did PwC, a name that would have never cropped up in the same discussion five […]
Say Hello To The Content Marketing Stack
You know about ad stacks, right? Get ready to say hello to the next big thing in content marketing technology: the content marketing stack. Content stacks aren’t here yet, but they’re coming. In the next couple of years, I expect we’ll see offerings from the big enterprise players: Adobe, Oracle and Salesforce.com. (IBM has a […]
Content Marketing Haters Gonna Hate (And Why They’re Wrong)
When something gets big enough to attract a great deal of media coverage and conversation, it’s inevitable that not all the attention will be positive. Take Justin Bieber. Or Miley Cyrus. Both have detractors as vocal and as passionate as their fans. Content marketing is certainly no teen idol, but as interest in the topic […]
Micro Content, Maxi Effect — How Shifts Toward Visual Content Will Impact Marketers
The written word seems to be on the decline, at least in the online space. Articles and white papers have morphed into blog posts and status updates. Hashtags, acronyms and emoticons stand in for sentences. OTP, BRB, LMK, OK? How low can you go? In a year or two, 140 characters — a miserly […]
Content Strategy Gets Tactical: Establishing The Content Workflow
Content strategy — creating repeatable processes to govern content marketing and make it accountable to measurable goals — has many components. Your first steps in putting together a content strategy include determining the goals, developing personas, analyzing content needs, and designating someone to serve in an editorial leadership capacity. From there, you’ll want to establish […]
For The Right Content Marketing Answers, Ask The Right Content Strategy Questions
A big box retailer’s chief content officer of reached out recently with a question. Here’s what he wanted to know: “What is the percentage of content you see utilized comparatively that’s company generated versus user-generated versus contributor generated? I’m trying to see how others are looking at their mix.” What would you have told him? […]
Why Content Strategy Is Foundational To Real-Time Marketing
When the curtain went up on the Emmy Awards, HBO was ready. As usual, the cable network was nominated for a plethora of awards. Naturally, there was no way of knowing who, or what programming, would win which categories. At the same time, there were plenty of knowns: those shows, actors, directors and talent who […]