FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

September 6th was a coming out party for content marketing. Over 600 marketing professionals came together in Cleveland from 18 different countries for Content Marketing World (the largest content marketing event) to learn how to create and grow their own publishing and storytelling platforms.

Yes, you heard that right. Marketers are actively trying to figure out how to do your job…publish valuable, relevant and compelling content to build subscriber bases and ultimately sell more products and services.

Content marketing is not new. You used to (or still do) call it custom media or custom con More...

Don't get me wrong, content marketing strategy is critical to the success of a content marketing project. Not having a content strategy is like playing baseball without the bases (envision people running everywhere...not a pretty sight).

That said, I've seen a multitude of content strategies die for the following reasons:

■ Lack of support from the executive team. They fail to understand why they can't talk about themselves all the time.  They don't "get" the idea of content marketing. The brand ends up producing mediocre content without real organization and continues to think that content marketing doesn't work.
â–  Lack of setting success criteria. This happens more often th More...

Okay...there, I said it.

You'll find no greater supporter of online content marketing than me, but marketers and agencies are talking up print for 2011. Yes, in the era of iPads and Apps, there is still a role for print.

Jeff Jarvis recently wrote about how media companies need to ignore print.

"The physical costs of production and distribution are killing. The marketing cost of subscriber acquisition and churn are hellish."

He's right.  And if you are a media company that relies on most of your revenue for print, More...

One of the most frequent questions I receive while traveling is about blogging. The questions revolve around how to get started, what to talk about, and what software to use.

My questions back to them usually startle the person, because so many start thinking about what they want to say, other than what their target audience needs to hear.  Here are a few...

1.  Who are your primary and secondary targets for your blog?

2.  What do you want to tell them?

3.  Do you understand what the key informational needs of the audience are?

4.  Are you reading other blogs on that topic, and ones targeting your customers and prospects?

5.  If you are reading, are you leaving comme More...