What’s in store for 2013 for Web Professionals – Interview with Rebecca Lieb, author, journalist and speaker
In this eight minute interview Rebecca Lieb, author, journalist, editor, speaker and Altimeter Group’s industry analyst for digital advertising and media we learn about her perspective on the topic of Web Professional Trends for 2013 complete with an overview a Content Marketing definition and the opportunities for Web professionals in the New Year.
According to Rebecca, “Content Marketing has been embraced by businesses large and small. There’s far less of a need to buy media when you can create it yourself. Businesses are aware that if you have a website, a blog, a YouTube channel, a Twitter presence, a Facebook page or a host of other online offerings, then you’re as much (if not more) a publisher as you are an advertiser. But strategizing, creating, assessing, disseminating, evaluating, and monetizing content doesn’t just happen by itself. Someone’s got to actually do it.”
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Specifically we learn:
* How Content Marketing online differs from advertising
* That Content Marketing is not new but evolving and is a rapidly growing trend
* How paid, owned and earned (social media) content are converging
* How small business are benefiting from the Content Marketing trend
* Advice for practicing Web professionals
* Advice for aspiring Web professionals
* Skills required for Content Marketing and Web publishing
* Tremendous job opportunities for developers, content specialist and project managers
* A Fortune 100 case study
More about Content Marketing
According to Wikipedia, content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation and sharing of content in order to attract, acquire and engage clearly defined and understood current and potential consumer bases with the objective of driving profitable customer action. Content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action. Content marketing has benefits in terms of retaining reader attention and improving brand loyalty.
The idea of sharing content as a means of persuading decision-making has driven content marketers to make their once-proprietary informational assets available to selected audiences. Alternatively, many content marketers choose to create new information and share it via any and all media. Content marketing products frequently take the form of custom magazines, print or online newsletters, digital content, websites or microsites, white papers, webcasts/webinars, podcasts, video portals or series, in-person roadshows, roundtables, interactive online, email, events. The purpose of this information is to inform target customers and prospects about key industry issues, sometimes involving the marketer’s products. The motivation behind content marketing is the belief that educating the customer results in the brand’s recognition.
Marketers may use content marketing as a means of achieving a variety of business goals. These may include: thought leadership, lead generation, increasing direct sales, introducing specific brand language and improving customer retention. The term “content engineer” is being used to describe a new breed of marketer who creates, optimizes, and distributes the different types of content required to engage customers on the social web, based on the data of many analysis tools.
Content marketing is the underlying philosophy driving techniques such as custom media, custom publishing, database marketing, brand marketing, branded entertainment and branded content.
According to a recent blog post article by Rebecca, companies that really buy into content marketing are increasingly taking the “everyone” approach. They’re hiring people to be responsible for creating digital content because its worth has been solidly demonstrated, but they’re not the only ones participating.
The fact that “everyone” is involved speaks to a critical aspect of content marketing. Companies must create a culture of content in order to find stories, identify customer concerns, product issues, barriers to sales, extract testimonials and hundreds of other content types.
Content ideas don’t live in the marketing department. They’re more likely to be found on the showroom floor, in the call center, or in sales. Product designers are a source of content. So are suppliers. Companies that take content marketing seriously must invest shoe leather in their initiatives. Like good journalists, they go out and find stories and ideas.
Clearly, when the job is creating lots of content, it helps to have lots of contributors. Yet putting someone at the helm of those initiatives is critical – as critical as putting an editor-in-chief in charge of everything published by a newspaper or magazine. Consistency, style, voice, adherence to mission, editorial judgment and ethics are just part of the role.
More about Rebecca
She is the author of Content Marketing, available on Amazon – How to Use Content to Market Online and in Social Media and consults on content strategy for a variety of brands and professional trade organizations. For additional information visit here website and blog post.