I recently reviewed the "2015 B2B Content Marketing" report by the Content Marketing Institute and was astounded to read that 70% of B2B marketers create more content year over year, yet most inadequately track results. Nearly half of B2B marketers (48%) do not even have a clear, documented plan of attack. How can marketers invest invaluable time, energy and resources in content marketing without first setting and tracking metrics for ROI? It made me wonder if marketers are setting the bar too low for content marketing ROI, and are unaware of the consequences. Creating content without having any goals in …

Oh, the ever-elusive and often-scorned hipster. Though widely mocked, this is a group largely composed of the "creative class," economist Richard Florida's defined community of the skilled, intellectual and hip, once poised to revive America's desolate urban centers. While their actual success in doing so is questionable, one thing is certain: Hipsters have undoubtedly help catapult a number of brands from niche underdogs to international sensations. Let's take a look at how two of the very best have used content marketing to both entice this tricky audience and enthrall the world at large -- examples I've observed while surveying the …

Consumers are hungry for engaging content and marketers are creating more content than ever before. In response to this shift, we are seeing an increase in the number of positions dedicated to content creation within both client and agency marketing teams. And one of the most important positions within these teams is the content strategist. For many marketing teams, this is a new position, and with any new position there is often confusion in regards to job responsibilities, roles, deliverables, etc. Given this confusion, I thought it appropriate to add some clarity to the role, laying out the five key …

The Internet lets people living several time zones apart teach each other as if they're in the same room, spreading information quicker than ever before. This sharing of ideas should be huge for the business word, but in many cases, it's not leveraged properly. The webinar, the most common type of business-to-business remote learning, fails to evoke much excitement. While they make great educational and marketing platforms, webinars have been largely misused, a matter that needs to be resolved.

Truth: Logic rarely spurs action. And yet, more and more, we (marketers) are focused on metrics. We rack our brains trying to figure out how to move prospective customers logically through the sales funnel. We create content based on algorithms and probabilities. And while doing this, we wish and pray that we can have a monstrous breakthrough success, the kind of overnight sensation that Malcolm Gladwell or Jonah Berger might write about some day. Well, it ain't gonna happen if your nose is down in a spreadsheet. Because emotion, not numbers, is the gasoline that fuels marketing awesomeness.