Category: Digital Marketing

Marketers have been sold a dream: Collect more data, and you’ll get better insights to make smarter decisions. We all chased big data, embraced digital […]

Content Marketing Institute Team The Content Marketing Institute team byline indicates this article reflects the collective work of the CMI team. CMI is a global marketing […]

Want a good book to advance your content skills, inspire creativity, or grow your business acumen? Look no further. One of these 40 books recommended […]

How many times have you rolled your eyes or screamed (silently) about an unnecessary or misguided request crossing your content marketing desk? You know what […]

It’s been a rough few months for marketers. For all the announcements on LinkedIn celebrating the landing of a new job, I see as many […]

If your brand treats video like an extra in the background of your marketing strategy, it’s time to make it the star. Discover why, learn […]

If you work in content marketing, you’ve experienced the “battle of the brains.” Your creative brain gets excited to develop your next innovative, engaging, and […]

These days, brands championing a social cause or initiative must treat it as a serious commitment. Of course, it was never a good idea to […]

I see one mistake derailing marketing strategy again and again: Setting up marketing teams as internal agencies that serve cross-functional “customers” in other departments. That’s […]

Content Marketing Institute Team The Content Marketing Institute team byline indicates this article reflects the collective work of the CMI team. CMI is a global marketing […]

Marketing goals often use soft, fuzzy language like “brand awareness,” “credibility,” and “education.” They’re nice things for the business, but they aren’t easy to measure, […]

Sound familiar? You stop writing after the intro to ponder what details to include. You need facts to support the solutions recommended in the content, […]

I meet regularly with a group of seasoned professionals to explore big ideas, emerging trends, and how we might anticipate what’s coming next in the […]

Don’t launch a new agency or any brand before listening to advice from someone who’s done it and even written a book about building brands […]

Fashion shows function well as a marketing tool. Models walk down runways showcasing what the brand is selling. It’s a common-sense tactic. Yet, this marketing […]

When someone lives with a health condition such as asthma, psoriasis, or bacterial infections, they’re not the only ones who are affected. Their family members […]

We’re living in an era obsessed with overachievement. Tech billionaires tout themselves as the sole architects of progress, preaching the virtues of moving fast and […]

Content Marketing Institute Team The Content Marketing Institute team byline indicates this article reflects the collective work of the CMI team. CMI is a global marketing […]

Is it time to expand the definition of content marketing? In 2020, I posed that question. My argument was simple: Content marketing isn’t just about […]

Did you hear the canary chirping in the marketing coal mine? It got a little louder in the past month after Ahrefs released a report […]

Remember 2019? We were all riding the Old Town Road with Lil Nas X while watching the slow-burn soap opera that was Brexit unfold across […]

SEO isn’t dead. It just needs a fresher approach. In this video presentation, experts from TopRank Marketing reveal why traditional SEO still has a role […]

“With great power comes great responsibility.” That’s what Uncle Ben told Peter Parker (aka Spiderman) in 1962. Let’s twist the phrase for our industry: “Great […]

What was your favorite ad from the Super Bowl LIX? I couldn’t pick just one. As is true every year, I love how creative they […]

Content Marketing Institute Team The Content Marketing Institute team byline indicates this article reflects the collective work of the CMI team. CMI is a global marketing […]

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs are being cancelled by public institutions and private companies. But the end of formal DEI initiatives shouldn’t signal that […]

Just when it seemed like the generative AI landscape was beginning to settle, DeepSeek stepped in and said, “Hold my beer.” Wall Street seems convinced […]

Take the lead on innovation and creation with your brand’s content and marketing. Learn how to get the buy-in and budget for innovative ideas with […]

Trendy content marketing formats and platforms can come and go. Today’s TikTok campaign is tomorrow’s “Remember when …?” But one format has stood the test […]

Many brands line up with statements of “thoughts and prayers” after natural and human-made devastation, such as the recent California wildfires and hurricane flooding in […]

One of the best motivational speeches I’ve heard came not from a business event or even a TED conference. It came from the Academy Awards […]

Content Marketing Institute Team The Content Marketing Institute team byline indicates this article reflects the collective work of the CMI team. CMI is a global marketing […]

You have too many marketing tasks and responsibilities to do them the hard way. Your work is too critical to business success to let best […]

Confession time. Just before sitting down to write this article, I was working on a social calendar project for a new client. I turned to […]

Visibility. Once upon a time, that word was the most common answer I heard when I asked marketing leaders what was wrong with their content […]

Open a marketer’s treasure chest and you’ll see an abundance of data. How do you select the valuable gold among all the worthless pyrite? And […]

As the founder and CEO of The Joy Brigade, Shabnam Mogharabi counsels people to rebel with joy. She’s embraced the strategy herself, doing the research, […]

I recently interviewed Marcus Collins, author of For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want To Be, […]

To get everybody on the same page with your brand’s content marketing, you need an actual page. Your team — and everybody else involved in […]

People prefer the easiest route. When they search for information, that now means they turn to generative AI tools, like Gemini and ChatGPT, or even […]

Have you seen that video of Mark Zuckerberg talking about the difference between Meta’s and Apple’s development approaches? For some reason, LinkedIn keeps serving me […]

Meta just learned the hard way that no one likes fake friends. Users quickly sniffed out the company’s AI-generated profiles with their awkward bios, wonky […]

Brands generate original research to grow their recognition as thought leaders in their industries. But the buzz won’t materialize if the marketing team doesn’t promote […]

Content marketers have long had an identity crisis. In recent years, the crisis has grown with the ubiquity of content creators in the creator economy. […]

Happy New Year! Here we are again. It’s the beginning of a new year — that magical time when your journaling app sends you a […]

Happy New Year! Here we are again. It’s the beginning of a new year — that magical time when your journaling app sends you a […]

I hope you are getting ready for a wonderful season of giving, and taking a pause from all things marketing and business. For the last […]

When your content fires on all cylinders, the signs are obvious. Your audience searches for your content by name, eagerly engages with it, and spends […]

Hashtag stuffing isn’t as tasty a dish as it once was. This month, Instagram ended its following hashtags feature. Users can no longer follow hashtags […]

Earlier this year, everybody was all aflutter about the U.S. ban on TikTok. But when the ban moved into the courts, everybody moved on to […]

Exciting destinations. Luxurious accommodations. Friction-free coordination. Memory-making experiences. For consumers, these are the things travel dreams are made of. For content marketers, empowering aspiring travelers […]

“The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” That fantastic quote, usually attributed to author William Gibson, perfectly captures the state […]

This past couple of weeks, it wasn’t politics or U.S. Thanksgiving gatherings that dominated social media arguments. Instead, it was a car manufacturer. That’s right. […]

You’re underpaid for the marketing work you perform. That’s the sentiment of marketers surveyed for CMI’s 2025 Career Outlook: Content and Marketing Professionals (registration required). […]

It hasn’t been an easy year, and I won’t be sad to say goodbye to 2024. I’m looking at 2025 as a complete reset and […]

You can access a wealth of marketing-related data — from web analytics and customer journey behavior to competitor analysis and product usage. However, if the […]

It’s Thanksgiving Day in the United States, when you try to leave work behind, put aside petty squabbles, and be present with the people you […]

At a conference last week, the CEO of a professional services firm asked me about some advice they’d received from a marketing consultant. The consultant […]

On Nov. 6, the day after the U.S. elections, more than 115,000 users deactivated their accounts on X. That’s the most in a single day […]

New research suggests that manufacturing marketers — like a lot of other B2B marketers — only feel “average” about their content marketing. Sixty-seven percent of […]

Predicting the death of anything is the easiest way to land in hot water. The second easiest is clinging to once-disruptive concepts after they, in […]

What happens when search-related data shows your organization’s content isn’t delivering? You dig deeper into data. That’s what Brian Piper does as director of content […]

Predictions for 2025 started fast and furious before the calendar flipped to November. But, as you’ve learned, marketing predictors are really bad at them. In […]

Caspian Studios likes to shake things up. Take its Murder in HR podcast. Many agencies listen to client needs and then develop a program to […]

You’ll never know what content works — and why — unless you regularly track and evaluate its metrics against your business goals. However, just as […]

How do you approach content optimization? It’s easy to get stuck working on one piece at a time — trying to make one thing rank […]

For the last 25 years, people have used internet search in a straightforward way. Input a keyword or phrase, and the search engine returns pages […]

You likely associate influencer marketing with well-known B2C tactics. Engaging social media personalities to co-create content and promote products to their massive follower base is […]

What’s your data strategy? Your first thought might be about first-party data collection, performance metrics, or metadata for targeted content. But that’s not what I’m […]

What are your brand’s “left ventricles” waiting for discovery? Seth Stephens-Davidowitz posed a variation of that question in his keynote presentation at the Marketing Analytics […]

It looks like Semrush took notes on CMI’s advice that the best way to launch a content marketing platform is to acquire one. The search […]

A spark can ignite a creative fire. A spark can illuminate a moment. Last week, I witnessed glimmers of light building into full-on radiance on […]

Did Salesforce really need another content project? The company’s mega-successful Trailblazer program, launched way back in 2007 as IdeaExchange, had evolved into a global community […]

In introducing our latest content marketing research, CMI’s Stephanie Stahl wrote: “While many [companies] find themselves simply treading water, a group of top performers has […]

This week, thousands of content marketers from all over the world invaded San Diego to celebrate the beloved practice, do lots of learning, and have […]

Universally acknowledged truth: Good content serves as one of the most effective ways to attract and retain your target audience’s attention. Research-confirmed truth: Half of […]

The pandemic didn’t just change the B2B buying game; it flipped the whole table. That’s how Susan Gonzalez, director of marketing at the wholesale e-commerce […]

As Content Marketing World 2024 kicks off today, I’m sharing my opening remarks on our beloved practice’s current state and future direction. Marketers are living […]

Does your marketing measurement and data have standards? What does that even mean? Well, it means you have a standard method for naming, storing, and […]

“Let me tell you a story …” Those six simple words command attention. They create an expectation that an engagement-worthy experience is about to unfold. […]

When Mo Sherifdeen joined Travel Oregon 19 years ago, he was the first person hired to work on the website. His role as web manager […]

Pretend it’s late 2024. Oh, wait, it is. How time flies. As you plan your marketing strategy for 2025, think about the team you’ll be […]

Fragmentation. It’s the best word to describe today’s landscape of entertainment and information consumption. Two years ago, user-generated content accounted for 39% of time spent […]

Building the ideal tech stack for content marketing remains a pie-in-the-sky dream for most marketers. So, we asked the experts presenting at Content Marketing World […]

Tell me something, marketers. Are you satisfied with the state of B2B content marketing? According to 980 of you, the answer is likely “no,” given […]

Like most people, I hate spending money on some things but love spending on others. For example, I’ve been known to overpay for hotels, restaurants, […]

My neighbor was a math professor at a college in San Francisco. He once told me: “The longest distance between two points travels through a […]

“By 2025, data stories will be the most widespread way of consuming analytics.” That prediction from Gartner a few years ago was geared toward CFOs, […]

For any successful journey, you need to know where you are, where you want to be, and what paths you can take to get there. […]

“Isn’t it obvious?” How many times have you asked this question? How many times have you heard it asked? In a work setting, this phrase […]

This story may sound familiar. A small team writes and publishes content for a corporate blog. The company doesn’t know what, if any, impact the […]

In the 20th century, marketers relied on coupons, customers’ anecdotal feedback, and mainstream media subscriber numbers to understand their reach and impact. It was an […]

Do you remember CliffsNotes? The iconic yellow-and-black books summarized all manner of literary works. They digested the plot and detailed the themes and symbolism. CliffsNotes […]

An update to terms of service isn’t usually a headline-making event, even at the biggest brands. Yet, this past year tells a different story. In […]

Reasons abound when you don’t want to do something: “I haven’t the time.” “The team is just me.” “Our audience needs new content.” But are […]

Is a career path in marketing even a thing anymore? As we approach Content Marketing World 2024, I’m struck by how much has changed in […]

Almost three years ago, Micky Onvural made a surprising move. She left her role as CEO of a B2C fashion brand, Bonobos, to become CMO […]

Consumers really like short-form content. Billions watch TikTok videos, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels every month. But it isn’t just consumers who like short content. […]

Let’s talk about SEO. More than a month after a source gave thousands of pages of internal Google documentation to SparkToro co-founder Rand Fishkin, the […]

Marketers should stop using attribution models and return to a 1985-like measurement model if they want their brands to succeed in 2024 and beyond. “Attribution […]

Ask a question; get an answer. Ask the next question; get the next answer. Repeat until done. That’s the basic formula of any interview. But […]

I had two interesting discussions with marketing leaders recently. Both revolved around the same question: “Where do we start?” One told me she’d road-mapped an […]

How are things for marketing agencies? Not as great as last year, according to Ad Age’s Agency Report 2024 (subscription required). In 2023, total revenue […]

Social media offers a volatile space for marketing. The rules of engagement vary across platforms, as do the audiences and opportunities for brands. The platforms’ […]

Stuart Butler is a trained rocket scientist turned content marketing rock star. Though the career as a rocket scientist didn’t stick, he applied what he […]

A long time ago (so long ago that Nickelback still had hits), my marketing leader would ask me what value my brand-building programs added to […]

We didn’t get to the south of France this week, but we’ve been talking about Cannes Lions. At the International Festival of Creativity, the most […]

Brands’ words and actions — including yours — matter. As politics, health care, and other cultural topics become more polarized, being authentic about your values […]

A mentor of mine used to drill the following into my head: “You are not your target market.” He meant that it doesn’t matter if […]

When is your content, our content? In the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) has a pizza delivered to his history […]

Two brains are better than one. Embracing the machine brain of technology as a partner with the human brains of content marketers lets you do […]

Time for a quiz. Do people trust: Non-governmental organizations (NGO)? Government? Media? If you answered no, no, and no, you would be right. According to […]

I’ve heard about more organizations kick-starting their content marketing strategy lately. That’s a welcome change from the past year when teams hunkered down to figure […]

Does Pride Month seem quieter this year? No big controversies stand out like last year, but no creative campaigns — so far — stand out […]

A perplexing irony exists in content marketing. Though most content is static, interactive content usually delivers better results. Interactive content saw 52.6% more engagement than […]

Audience building is one of the hottest topics in marketing today. That’s why you hear so many software vendors claim their product will help you […]

Depending on your age, you’ve heard of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Younger people may recall the Edward Snowden revelation or Wikileaks and Julian Assange. […]

Headlines are the workhorses of content. When they work well, they pull readers into your articles, e-books, podcasts, etc. When they don’t work, they keep […]

A cacophony of brand voices hums in discord across your content spectrum. Getting them to sing together presents a challenge for even the most experienced […]

You’d think that a new company with the resources of OpenAI would have a straightforward path to building trust. They had no legacy brand problems […]

When is your audience NOT your end customer? If you’re a B2B marketer, you know the answer. Your job requires engaging and winning over distributors, […]

More content marketers should act like museum curators. Museum curators pick an exhibit theme, carefully select the artifacts, and organize them into a story that […]

You’ve heard the expression, “Work smarter, not harder.” Content marketing teams would do well to adopt that philosophy. Hard work alone can’t solve the struggle […]

Did you follow the Apple iPad Pro content debacle? Here’s a quick recap. A recent online ad for the new iPad Pro showed a large […]

OpenAI and Google made waves in the world of artificial intelligence this week. In a studio set seemingly from the 1970s Merv Griffin Show, OpenAI […]

Wouldn’t it be great if the content your brand invests so much time and resources in could earn attention from the media? More people would […]

  Quality content can get your web pages ranking higher in Google search results. But contextual links can help, too. Google says the inclusion of […]

What the heck should you do with social media in marketing these days? Content and marketing teams have been so wrapped around the AI axle […]

An old saying goes that marketers only worry about two things — the logo and the Pantone color. Well, the entry of digital technology 25 […]

Content marketing teams rarely talk about efficiency. You frequently discuss quality, conversions, and brand alignment. Your primary concerns center around the awesomeness of what you […]

Your lack of social media guidelines could discourage employees from becoming brand advocates and even applicants from joining your company. I speak from personal experience. […]

We should rename generative AI. I suggest calling it “expressional AI.” The dictionary defines “generative” as “having the ability to produce, originate, or reproduce something.” […]

In the immortal words of Britney Spears, “Oops, they did it again.” No, we’re not talking about the US government approving a TikTok divestiture.  It’s […]

If only you could write faster … The deadline pressure would lessen. The work volume wouldn’t overwhelm. The headache assignment would go away more quickly. […]

Every editor knows what it feels like to sit exasperated in front of the computer, screaming internally, “It would have been easier if I’d done […]

There’s something in the air. In the past week, I’ve been asked more questions about how to measure content marketing than I have in two […]

Tell us you don’t know anything about marketing without telling us you don’t know anything about marketing. Last week, multibillionaire and marketing genius Elon Musk […]

With so many nuances to content, from distribution to format to the buyer’s journey, you must take a drill-down approach to your analytics. Assess performance […]

Content creation acts as the heart of effective content marketing. And, as a skilled creative practitioner, you pour your heart into your work every day. […]

Change fatigue. It’s a thing. My good friend and amazing consultant Jenny Magic wrote a whole book on the topic. Undeniably, fewer businesses have worked […]

To use AI or not to use AI, that is the question. Let’s hope things work out better for you than they did for Shakespeare’s […]

I have a tough time putting aside my editor’s brain. Editors and good writers know what I’m talking about. It’s the hazard of the job. […]

Are you motivating your audience to take action? How do you know which creative assets compel your audience to act? Understanding how your audience interacts […]

Do you play golf? I don’t, but I’m intrigued by one thing: The goal of golf is to play the least amount of golf. Think […]

Google + HubSpot. Is it a thing? This week, a flurry of news came down about Google’s consideration of purchasing HubSpot. The prospect dismayed some. […]

Creating content gets a lot of attention. But it can’t get an audience without a well-executed content publishing process. Content production requires systems and easily […]

A massive change is coming to search. As Google experiments with AI in its standard search results and its Search Generative Experience (SGE), marketers must […]

Feeling stuck with generative AI? Here’s a way to get unstuck. I’d like to ask you to think about two questions. First, did you see […]

What’s really going on with generative AI and marketing? We wanted to know, so we went straight to the source and asked. No surprise, generative […]

As a kid, you probably learned the phrase, knowledge is power. As a marketer, you prove its validity every day through your content that educates, […]

Just as LeBron James has dominated NBA courts and conversation, Google has dominated search and content conversations since the turn of this century. But LeBron […]

One of the more exciting trends in marketing is the rise in interest in engaging employees as influencers and content creators. Recent research from agency […]

Everybody knows the apocalypse of ad tech data approaches. Yet, most aren’t rushing to do anything about it. That’s the latest finding in the Internet […]

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI. The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the […]

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a topic of huge debate among content creators. It’s been hailed for its efficiency yet critiqued for diluting the human touch […]

“I have too much time and too much money, so let’s make a podcast,” said no marketing person ever. Podcasting has become huge, but it’s […]

The alarmist headlines grow louder these days — TikTok Ban: It’s Here! Americans Sound Off on TikTok Ban in Viral Rants! Say Farewell to TikTok! […]

When women make up so much of your target audience, why does your content marketing focus on quotes from Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, […]

Have you ever had to edit bad content? You know the kind. It doesn’t contain enough dots for you to connect. You can’t save it […]

When marketing budgets get tighter, an easy trap to fall into is failing to create long-term content plans. I’ve seen it: The budget gods come […]

Today is the Ides of March. It is not a day to celebrate; it is a day to beware, as the soothsayer told Julius Ceasar. […]

Are you in job hunt mode? Maybe you recently lost a job or expect cuts to your team. Perhaps you’re seeking new opportunities that fit […]

  For enterprise content marketers, 2024 is all about efficiency and results. That’s what 333 enterprise marketers (in companies with 1,000-plus employees) told us during […]

  Let’s dispel a myth going around right now. You are NOT behind if you haven’t fully integrated generative AI into your marketing or content […]

How is your thought leadership program going? Is it more thought than leadership?  Or are the thoughts more like what everybody else is saying? New […]

It’s hard out here for content marketers to attract the right traffic organically. With search engine optimization practices evolving and content competition coming from everywhere, […]

You’re busy enough doing the work. You don’t have the time to search for content that can help your content and marketing. So, we asked […]

Last week, I had a lively discussion with a colleague about “evergreen” content. I argued evergreen does not automatically mean the content will stand the […]

Air Canada tried to throw its chatbot under the AI bus. It didn’t work. A Canadian court recently ruled Air Canada must compensate a customer […]

You receive or finalize your organization’s latest content marketing strategy. That means you’re ready to jump right into creating great content, right? Not so fast, […]

Business podcasting differs from entertainment podcasting in almost every dimension. (The hint is in the adjective.) So don’t look to podcasts from Trevor Noah, Glennon […]

Digital experience platforms (DXPs) are a relatively new arrival in the alphabet soup of martech offerings. But the genesis of these solutions comes on the […]

If you had to pick the impact your content on a potential customer, would you choose: Deeper trust but quickly fading attention and recall or […]

How long has it been since your marketing team got restructured?  Wearing our magic mind-reading hat, we’d guess it was within the last two years.  […]

Intuit knows people ask a lot of questions about taxes. For over 10 years, its TurboTax brand provided an online question-and-answer support forum to address […]

In a 20-minute demo, the sales engineer deftly clicked through the interface, configured a new image set, assigned the metadata, and set the rights-management properties. […]

My wife and I have a running bit of funny banter. Well, we think it’s funny. On occasion, as we do our end-of-evening ritual — […]

In my career, I’ve seen it all. I’ve been through economic downturns. I’ve been through booms. I’ve worked with startups. I’ve worked at large publicly […]

Imagine a world where you make candy and cakes. Almost all your competitors make similar candy and cakes, but you do well because your cakes […]

Have you welcomed AI onto your content marketing team? AI-powered tools and techniques can add invaluable assistance to your content and marketing work. But you […]

AI doesn’t solve anything but is an opportunity to solve many things. A weird tension builds as marketing teams across all manners of business experiment […]

Who will win the Super Bowl? The Kansas City Chiefs? The San Francisco 49ers? Will one of the 40-plus brands (yes, at least 40) advertising […]

Mentorships took the No. 1 spot in LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report. The subject beat diversity, equity, and inclusion (No. 2), upskilling and reskilling (No. […]

You hit the live button, and the viewer count doesn’t budge. You assume it’s a tech problem and open another screen to see if it […]

Ironically, a difficult thing for creative marketing and content teams to do is the one thing they want (and must) do frequently: Inject new, creative […]

Are you skilled for the hottest jobs in the market? LinkedIn recently released the 25 fastest-growing roles in the United States. Like many other fields, […]

B2B marketers love LinkedIn for a reason. Your desired audiences are right there. So, LinkedIn Ads seem like a great opportunity for paid campaigns. But […]

Here’s a burning question many marketers look to answer when figuring out how to optimize their content operations: What does an effective content infrastructure look […]

  What if you created content so great your audience doesn’t even realize it’s an experience? That scenario can happen when you opt for one […]

Your brand is flawed. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your company does. The character of your brand is flawed. Brands behave badly […]

Google followed through on its resolution to give up cookies. Well, maybe “give up” is too strong to describe Google’s deprecation of its third-party cookies. […]

Seven years ago, Hackensack Meridian Health operated on content autopilot. It’s a story familiar to many marketers. Some with the brand published a print magazine. […]

How many owned media properties does your company have? Yes, I’m asking you to count the newsletters, websites, campaign microsites, blogs, communities, and resource centers […]

Last week, Solo Brands, the parent company of direct-to-consumer-brands Solo Stove and others, appointed Christopher T. Metz as its president, chief executive officer, and director […]

This article is co-authored by Digital River Media CEO Annie Murmann and COO Jeneanne Ballos. You diligently developed your customer personas, carefully selected relevant keywords, and added funny memes to […]

. Developing content requires you to think about the audience. You likely create customer personas around the demographic data. But have you considered the personality […]

  When it comes to managing content and marketing operations resources, 2024 will be complicated. For one thing, marketing budgets will receive plenty of scrutiny […]

Around the turn of the 21st century, Web 1.0 came online. (Well, not the 1.0 part since no one knew it would have versions.) Everything […]