Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Content Marketing Primer For Authors


What are the six principles of “epic marketing?”

According to Joe Pulizzi, the author of Epic Content Marketing (McGraw Hill Education), the half-dozen keys to marketing your content are as follows:

1.                  Fill a need in the market place.

2.                  Be consistent in what you deliver.

3.                  Be human and share stories about real people.

4.                  Show a point of view -- don’t be bland.

5.                  Avoid “sales speak.”

6.                  Be best of breed.

There are up to 16 reasons why your current content marketing is failing, including the following says Pulizzi:

1.                  You talk about yourself too much.

2.                  You are afraid to fail and just play it safe.

3.                  You are setting the bar too low.

4.                  You are not sourcing correctly.

5.                  There’s no call to action.

6.                  You are not serving a defined niche enough.

7.                  Distribution of content is inconsistent.

8.              You are too slow, delaying action in the pursuit of perfection.


Below are a dozen content marketing commandments shared by Pulizzi in his book:

·       The content is more important than the offer.

·       A brand us is a relationship, not a tagline.

·         Content without design doesn’t look appetizing (or deliver on marketing goals).

·         Before you create your content masterpiece, first figure out how you are going to market it.

·         Develop and refine your content marketing mission statement.

·         Outsource efficiently, or be effectively outsourced.

·         There are no shortcuts to great content marketing; it takes a lot of elbow grease.

·         Never overlook the power of simplicity.

·         Commit to smarter usage of images in your content.

·         Develop a series of stories for your industry on an aspect that has never been covered before.

·         Whatever you do this year, make sure you are telling a different story than everyone else in your industry, not just the same story told incrementally better.

·         Create a piece of content this year that would be completely unexpected, and see what happens.

Pulizzi, the founder of the Content Marketing Institute, has worked with hundreds of brands, including dozens of Fortune 1000 companies. His book helps anyone seeking to impact others online with attractive content. His new book shows how to tell a different story, break through the culture, and win more customers by marketing less.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer, the nation’s largest book promoter. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2013

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