Finally, a book that doesn’t just tell you about Content Marketing but actually shows you how to do it!
Managing Content Marketing is an excellent book that shows you exactly how to justify, plan, execute and measure a corporate content marketing program. And it does it in less than 200 pages.
Authors Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi have filled a huge need in the marketplace in this important area of marketing.
A few highlights:
Content Marketing Has Been Around For a Long Time
Content Marketing is nothing new. Marketers have been using content to establish relationships with customers for years. Check out this video from CMI below going through the history of content marketing.
What has changed is how customers interact with products and services.
This has created an urgent need to make Content Marketing a formal, budgetized process within companies. The authors articulate this well.
A Content Marketing Business Case
The authors turn the age old “What’s the Business Case” question into a cultural question. Companies must have a tolerance for innovation and yes, possible failure. Once this is accomplished, a trial content marketing program can be set up that will prove out the business case.
This is a reasonable point but I would have liked to see a sample model discussion that took into account classic metrics such as:
- Up-front program set-up costs
- # of site visitors increase over time
- Engagement levels
- Conversion rates
- Lifetime value of the customer
At the end of the day, most companies are still going to require a content marketing business case…with numbers. Perhaps this is a book idea in and of itself?
Why Do We Need Content Marketing?
The Who’s on First and Why chapter goes into why companies even need a content marketing program – but not enough in my opinion. I would have liked to have seen more robust and detailed information/statistics about this profound shift in information we are currently experiencing. This would have tee’d up the business case discussion better by putting it all within the context of a greater cultural and economic backdrop. The whole ‘paradigm shift’ thing.
What’s an Engagement Cycle?
The Non-Linear Engagement Cycle is a bit confusing at first but is worth rereading. The authors make a great point that marketers often try to fit all customers buying behavior into the classic linear “sales funnel” of Awareness, Interest, Desire and Purchase. But as we all know, customer buying behavior isn’t that neat and tidy. Introducing a new non-linear process is a nice addition to this ongoing conversation.
Developing Pillars of Content
Developing Your Pillars of Content was an excellent chapter. It reminds us that marketing is almost always about telling stories and always has been. But then the authors go farther and tell us how to create stories using tried and true methods like Christopher Vogler’s The Hero’s Journey and creating your own Story Map.
Simple Techniques to Manage the CM Process
The authors provide some simple yet effective techniques to structure and organize your CM program using nothing more than an Excel spreadsheet. I found the Content Segmentation & Buying Cycle table particularly useful.
Process, Team and Governance
“When Content Management programs fail it’s not because of lack of high quality content but because of a drop in execution”.
No truer words have ever been said!
Read the Welcome to Workflow chapter to get a great idea about how to structure a CM program, how to hire and organize a CM team and how to govern the program with velvet gloves and not an iron hammer.
Great References
The authors reference many interesting books. It’s given me a long list of titles to put on my must-read list.
Here are some of them:
Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm by Henry Chesbrough
Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut by David Shenk
A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H Pink
The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters by Christopher Vogler
Pragmatic Approach to Social Business by Jeremiah Owyang
Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to do the Right Thing by Barry Schwartz
Overall, Managing Content Marketing is a great addition to the ongoing discussion of content marketing for the organization. I recommend this book to any executive responsible for a content marketing program and wishes to take advantage of the years of experience and knowledge the authors have packed into this book.
Content Marketing at Spark
Spark is a full service inbound marketing agency that specializes in helping you create remarkable content that helps you get found. Please notice our Request a Meeting form if you want to talk about Content Marketing with us.
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Posted by CristiSpahr on November 27, 2011 |
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Tags: book review, CMI, content marketing, Content Marketing Institute, Joe Pulizzi, Robert Rose
