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Get Ambitious and Embrace New Responsibilities

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Get Ambitious and Embrace New Responsibilities

We spend a lot of time at CMI thinking about the purpose of content in business. It sounds funny. The purpose of content in business?

When we start work with a company on putting a functional plan around their content, a senior leader in the business (usually somebody in finance or operations) often says, “Isn’t that word content too big? Doesn’t that mean everything we do?”

“Yup. It does,” I reply, followed by an awkward moment of silence.

Without realizing it, they’ve unconsciously made the argument of why it is valuable to sort out the function of content in their company.

Now, of course, we need to back off a little from saying it covers “everything.” What we’re going to solve in a consulting engagement, one of our events, a webinar, a blog post, or even CMI University can’t encompass “everything.”

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So, I explain to the inquisitor that what we mean is by developing a strategy for content you can equate content with communication. If your content is intended to communicate and deliver value to our audiences, then it is worth putting a plan around the creation of those things. That’s a content strategy.

It’s worth putting a plan around your #content that’s designed to deliver value to your audience. That’s a #ContentStrategy, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

More than a decade ago, my good friend and CMI founder Joe Pulizzi put a stake in the ground for what would become known as content marketing. I loved that he said it so very plainly: Marketers now have the opportunity to provide “truly relevant and useful content to prospects and customers to help them solve their issues.”

The beauty of that definition is in the stated purpose. Content is purposely designed to be more than classic marketing and advertising, where content’s purpose is to persuade people to become or stay customers. In the case of content marketing, content is created to help. Full stop. In other words, the content is valuable to the audience without any context of the brand or its products.

Joe’s original definition is still reflected on CMI’s definitions page. To this day, it remains in the No. 1 position for Google searchers who ask, “What is content marketing?”

But, of course, like everything in marketing, our beloved practice has evolved.

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Tracking the evolving content ecosystem

Well before content marketing entered our lexicon, the phrase “content strategy” was a key – if not fairly niche – part of business strategy. The term arguably predates digital, but the internet, large websites, structured authoring (i.e., separating the content from its presentation), and dynamically assembling meaningful content gave momentum to the practice of content strategy.

Over eight years ago, I leaned in on my background in enterprise content and attempted to stratify the approaches of both content strategy and content marketing. Content marketing is often the biggest opportunity, the largest gap in capabilities, or the most misunderstood of practices. But it is but one piece in the larger strategic content puzzle.

Content marketing always has (and will always be) a subset of content strategy. That said, both practices have the same goal – effective, efficient business communication.

More recently, new subsets of content marketing have emerged. Whether it’s branded content, brand journalism, native advertising, or even customer experience, we’ve written to separate the signal from the noise on those approaches.

Here we are in 2022, and let’s just say the last two years have been – well – difficult. It’s been hard to get our bearings, hard to set a long-term strategy, and hard to know where to make our biggest investments.

But those disruptions also have been an accelerator. Changes in our digital capabilities, the media by which we consume content, the talent pool and skillsets, and where we do our work have pushed us to innovate. Content leaders, strategists, managers, writers, SEO specialists, technologists, AI practitioners, and data scientists have all found the optimal ways to make content in marketing and communications a scalable, measured, and exciting approach for business.

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2022 is the time to make #content a scalable, measured, and exciting approach for business, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Now we sit on the cusp of the third era of the web.

Can you even imagine what things like crypto, blockchain, DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), and the metaverse technologies will do to our practice?

No. You can’t. Not yet.

From opportunity to responsibility

We’re evolving at CMI, too. We’re humbled at the level of innovation. In the last 12 months, we’ve seen:

So, we still fundamentally believe companies have the opportunity to operate like media companies. But, in 2022, it’s not only an opportunity; it’s a responsibility to act more like media companies.

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In 2022, it’s not only an opportunity; it’s a responsibility of companies to act more like media companies, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

The subtitle of Edelman’s seminal 2022 Trust Barometer is “Societal Leadership is now a Core Function of Business.” As the authors write, “We have studied trust for more than 20 years and believe that it is the ultimate currency in the relationship that all institutions – business, governments, NGOs and media – build with their stakeholders.”

Think about that quote as I refer back to Joe’s 2009 definition of content marketing: “truly relevant and useful content to prospects and customers to help them solve their issues.”

Content marketing is at the heart of any business that wants to build trust.

#ContentMarketing is at the heart of any business that wants to build trust, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Where CMI is headed

If I can humble brag for a minute, at CMI, we have been fighting the good fight for the last decade. We haven’t always gotten it right, but we’ve had a front-row seat to what’s actually going on in the world of business content.

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Over the last two years, my team and I have worked directly with more than 60 of the Fortune 1,000 companies. The research team recently produced our 12th annual content marketing research that surveyed about 1,400 marketers around the globe. Lastly, despite the pandemic and lockdowns, Content Marketing World continued last year with thousands of marketers from more than 50 countries gathering both virtually and in person to talk about the strategic approach of content.

Here’s the point: We see what’s really going on in the community. And our community is you – the practitioner. We see you.

As we move into 2022 and beyond, you’ll see us focus on some of these three major observations:

1. Content marketing and content strategy will merge

Successful businesses take the function of enterprise content seriously. They recognize content is communication, and making it functional is more than just copywriting, thought leadership, storytelling, metadata structures, content management, SEO, or workflow processes. It is all those things.

Successful businesses recognize making #content functional is more than just copywriting, thought leadership, storytelling, metadata structures, SEO, workflow processes, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

We see organizations moving beyond the one or two ad-hoc content marketing practitioners to holistic, specialized teams focused on strategic content. Prepare for the great merger of marketing content, content marketing, and content operations. Content is a business strategy. Copywriting, storytelling, measurement, and structured content operations will become a single, functional strategy.

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To achieve that, content marketers will need to upskill in strategy, technology, and content structures. Content strategists will need to upskill in media operations, creative, journalism, storytelling. And everybody will need to upskill into measurement design.

2. The best content teams will enable the story

Spoiler alert: If you think you can check the content strategy box by installing a content studio of writers, designers, podcasters, and designers who are chartered to build internal capacity for the increasing demand for content, think again.

Robert’s content law is this: The need for more content expands in direct proportion with the number of resources allocated to it.

A successful strategy is integrated. Content creation, management, and measurement must be organizational strengths. All teams need to be empowered to create content for their audiences. The secret superpower of a content team is being the arbiter of good – to create, help, guide, and direct (when necessary) individuals at the edges of the business to be consistent and engaging storytellers.

I promise you CMI will be talking a lot about this in the coming months.

3. Goals and measurability will continue to frustrate

The through-line in the struggle for content to gain traction in the business is how to support goals and measure progress towards them.

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The double-edged sword is that when content grows to be a business strategy, it becomes critically important to measure, and it becomes much more complex to measure.

It is inherently difficult to precisely define value in measuring communication clearly across all parts of the customer’s journey. We have seen some performance frameworks emerge, and certainly, more will become available.

However, the operational model itself may become one of the most important measures of success. In other words, when content strategy becomes the foundational model for communication in the business, the content must work harder. Content must be reusable and scalable across multiple approaches. Thus, businesses will need to measure performance as it relates to the audience’s response and how effectively you’re saying it.

What this means for you

Our goal remains largely the same as it has since Joe wrote his seminal blog post – to advance the practice of content marketing. But if this mission is our North Star, we must enhance our focus with better telescopes.

And your future is the focus of all of this. In the ’20s, a modern content practitioner:

  • Is a leader in the organization’s communication strategy. The team is not an internal, on-demand content vending machine but part of the fabric of every customer experience with the business.
  • Understands the differences and intricacies of all operational approaches of content in the business, from content marketing and content operations to branded content, native advertising, and anything else that inherently drives the creation of media-powered customer experiences as a business strategy.
  • Aligns goals and measurement with the strategy. The content team members of today and tomorrow build audiences through owned media experiences that can be monetized in multiple ways. They drive promotional execution of content for short-term advertising campaigns. They drive engagement and shares on social media and organic search traffic from smart earned media and word-of-mouth strategies. But they also support visibility, transparency, and internal communication of the lifecycle of content – from ideation to creation, management, activation, promotion, and even archival.
  • Supports every part of the customer’s journey. The content teams are not just top-of-the-funnel sales enablement teams. They are not just SEO-focused teams driving brand awareness. They are not just customer-support organizations managing how-to videos or customer events. Content teams are the experts in delivering audience value at every stage of the customer journey.

#Content teams are the experts in delivering audience value at every stage of the customer journey, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

And thus, CMI expands our mission, our editorial coverage, our teaching, and our learning as well. You will see more coverage on topics such as content operations, structured content, technology, as well as educational content on native advertising, branded content, storytelling. And you may even see us diving into the rabbit hole of Web 3.0 and its implications on our practice.

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It’s a unified family of specific, related approaches to the strategic use of media in our business.

CMI is here to support you – the content teams, the leaders, the practitioners, the influencers – all of you who make content work in business.

Want to learn how to balance, manage, and scale great content experiences across all your essential platforms and channels? Join us at ContentTECH Summit this March in San Diego. Browse the schedule or register today. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute




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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

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 convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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