Content Marketing has grown up fast and @Martin (Marty) Smith gives some great advice in this post. One of these is what he calls COPE for Create Once Publish Everywhere which I think is a great #leancontent rule:

1. Because everytime you can remix your own content, you should: this is not being boring, this is acknowledging that the world is vast and that people are busy so they might not be reading your tweet just because you shared something.

2. Content curation or creation only works if it's coupled with strong distribution.

3. SEO and social shares are tightly correlated.

Content Marketing is about becoming a media. But in my opinion, there are two ways to fail when companies or organizations try to become one:

- first, a common mistake is to try to be a media "20th century style", ie produce every single piece of content they publish;

- two, think it's all about news.

As Jeff Bullas reminds us in this post, to inform is just one of the key goals you can set for your content strategy. Entertaining and inspiring your target audience as Red Bull magnificently does or educating it as a lot of B2B players also do very well are also great ways to derive brand value, leads or any other benefits you can expect from your content strategy.

With that in mind, it's much easier to understand why being objective is not a necessity content marketers have (unlike news reporters) and also why curating content is as important as creating it.

In a recent debate, some have predicted the end of content marketing as we know it because of the exponential growth of content. 

I disagree and I explained why in this post on the Scoop.it blog.

Where some see a problem, you can always count on others to see an opportunity.

Which side will you be on?

A good way to think of your content strategy multiple steps and how to structure your content for the various phase of your customer acquisition and retention cycle.

The costs of a thorough content strategy are usually underestimated as this article points out.

But like in any business process there are multiple ways to react to this: outsourcing is of course one and this is what this article is about. From my experience, while outsourcing content ensures the job gets done, it doesn't necessarily reduce the costs drastically as you still have to proofread and control the content freelance writers have produced to ensure they match your brand voice. I was for example discussing the other day with an insurance broker who uses freelance blog writers to come out with weekly posts and who was complaining he had to edit a lot of their initial drafts if he wanted quality. He was also saying freelancers didn't have the ability to react fast as an internal team or employee would. 

Introducing a mix of content curation with content creation however significantly reduces the cost while keeping you in control. You're probably already reading a lot about your business, your market and what's interesting for your target audience to read: in short you're already doing 80% of the curation work. Why not leverage it by publishing and sharing this content?

If you read one thing about content marketing this week, make it this. An excellent roundup of BS things "experts" say about content, complete with hilarious videos and snarky rebuttals.

(Get ready for a really meta sentence.)

This piece on content marketing is excellent content marketing for Joel of Business Casual Copywriting. I will certainly be subscribing to his site.

Preview:

"Going Viral" is not a strategy.

Content Strategists and Content Marketers are different.

Guest blog.

Know your limits/abilities.