The most inevitable trend in marketing?

As you know, advertising has pretty much worn out its effectiveness. In my experience it has been this way for years now, evidenced through increasing marketing cost and decreasing ROI. The key challenge therefore is figuring out what's going to replace interruptive advertising. This is where social media has gained so much attention - but in truth social media is powered by content, as Chris Brogan puts it, "€œContent is a means to deliver interest. It"€™s a gathering place for you and the people you hope to entertain / attract / educate / equip... [it"€™s] wood for the fireplace around which great stories are told"€.

So, I want to focus this post on the fuel that powers those social media conversations - because I believe it"€™s central to success in marketing, whether you"€™re already hot on social media or not. Consider…

We love this book, Get Content. Get Customers by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett because content is at the heart of today's marketing and it does a fantastic job of explaining the why and the how of online content marketing. The authors advice is summarised in the top 10 content marketing lessons which we review at the end of this post. If you need to push content up the agenda in your organisation, and many need this, then we definitely recommend this book, but with one caveat we give at the end of this review. I think it succeeds because it blends both practical, structured advice on creating a content strategy, plus many small, but specific case studies from many sectors to inspire you to develop a content strategy.

The B.E.S.T. formula

As an example of the structured practical guidance, we liked this formula for creating a content marketing roadmap. B.E.S.T stands…