Fast & Easy Friday: A Recap of the Week’s Top Articles & Insights

We hope you enjoy this handy recap of the B2B content marketing articles that caught our attention this week.

  • Marketers Set to Have a (Virtual) Reality Check: It won’t be long before “omnichannel marketing” plans will include virtual reality campaigns as a matter of course. And just like any other emerging channel, we’ll see losers who don’t use the channel’s strengths to their benefit and winners who deliver what no one has yet imagined. Odds of finding yourself on the winning side of the equation go up if you start thinking now about how to make the next big thing work for you. This Content Magazine article ramps up with a quick view around the next corner and then goes all in with expert guidance on leveraging virtual and augmented reality and a glimpse into what’s next. Whether or not you’re ready to start planning, this piece will help you take one virtual step closer to understanding its marketing role.
  • Why Taking the Brand Out of Branded Content Is So Important: We’ve all repeated the mantra “content is king” until it’s practically lost its meaning. Author Billee Howard spends this piece reminding us why it still deserves to wear the crown. “The best content created by brands is content that informs, entertains and delights,” she says. Post that above your desktop as a helpful reminder. The experience is infinitely more important than the brand that creates it. Howard explains here why the use of storytelling has become a core marketing and business competency, and one that will determine whether brands succeed in what she’s calling the ensuing paradigm shift in content marketing. Her guidelines for creating winning content include both compelling reasons and illustrative examples.
  • 7 Ways to Stop Flailing with Your Content Marketing in 2017: “Be better.” That’s how Michelle Linn opens this Content Marketing Institute post. And then she tells you how. And it’s all such solid advice that you may start to suspect that she’s had your team under surveillance. She details seven categories where many of us could stand to improve – offer insights rather than simply answering questions, for example – and explains how and why to be better. If you have the option, read it while you have the luxury to soak it in and think. It will make you better.
  • People-Based Marketing Gets Complicated Quickly in the B2B World: Plenty of marketers repeatedly question where their target audiences spend their time. This article suggests that you’d be wiser to ask a different question: “How do we build the right audience?” A proliferation of channels has made it all but impossible to find a critical mass of any audience gathered in one spot. Instead, Brian Jones suggests you leverage first-party data integration to help bring the audience to you. With data onboarding, you can replicate an offline audience online. With a healthy understanding of the buyer’s journey and careful analysis of attribution data, you can continue to hone your strategy and deliver your marketing messages to the people who are most interested in what you have to say.

We hope you join us in taking a moment to honor the men and women who have sacrificed their lives in military service for our country, and that you enjoy a long weekend of celebration for the country they’ve helped to build. Happy Memorial Day Weekend, everyone!

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