In an interview that marketo did last year to Rebecca Lieb was explaining about the new marketing and her new book Content Marketing. But for all the people who is not familiar with her name I would like to give a brief introduction about her.
Rebecca Lieb
Rebecca Lieb is the Altimeter Group’s digital advertising and media analyst. She is also an author, columnist, journalist, and frequent speaker. Earlier, Rebecca was vice president at Econsultancy, where she launched the company’s U.S. operations and grew them to profitability in a year’s time. She was VP and editor-in-chief of The ClickZ Network for over seven years. She spent part of that time running the redoubtable SearchEngineWatch.com, too. She also do a ton of public speaking on topics related to interactive marketing, advertising and digital media, as well as consulting on digital content strategy and search engine optimization.
The Truth About Search Engine Optimization was published by Pearson Publishing’s Financial Times imprint in 2009 – and it instantly became a best seller on Amazon. An updated edition will publish soon. My most recent book, Content Marketing, published in late 2011.
Interview with Marketo
Marketo : What are your best tips for businesses that are struggling to find content?
Rebbeca Lieb : For one thing, businesses have to start thinking like publishers in order to not only define content, but also to effectively use content. It’s very daunting to wake up every day and find a blank page to fill, blank air time or blank podcast time, which is why “real” publications have editorial calendars.
There’s a degree of predictability in content that’s not only very helpful to the business or the publisher who’s publishing that content, but also to the audience. The regularity of these types of features keeps people coming back. So in order to constantly create new sources of content you need a plan, you need an editorial calendar.
Marketo : During your session at ad:tech you mentioned that content is like leftover turkey?
Rebbeca Lieb : I love using the turkey analogy. People really get that. You start out with the turkey at Thanksgiving and that’s the main event, and then everybody knows that after Thanksgiving you’re eating turkey sandwiches, you have turkey on your salad, and maybe a little turkey hash.
Journalists very quickly learn how to treat their stories and their sources like that turkey. That’s not meant to sound derogatory, but you need to understand what your content assets are and how and when to use them.
Marketo : How important do you think that is to the overall content marketing strategy?
Rebbeca Lieb : A content audit is very important because it not only assesses what you have, if you do it correctly it assesses how well it’s working and how it’s working on a number of levels. So you not only look at what content you have, but also is it professionally produced, is it spelled correctly, is it consistent in style?What content is attracting people? You look at your web analytics, and say “oh they like this”, “they don’t like that”, or “they can’t find something else”. It evaluates how fresh and topical your content is.
Marketo: Influencer outreach is essential for a successful content strategy. What are your recommendations for people who are just starting their influencer outreach? How do you reach an influencer that may be considered inaccessible?
Rebbeca Lieb: Not a lot of people are inaccessible on the web, but what they are is inundated. You know there’s a lot of noise, we all get a lot of email, we all get a lot of messages and a classic mistake that’s made when people try to reach influencers by getting in touch by saying “Hi, I really admire you. Now can you do this thing for me?”
What you really have to do first is establish a relationship with that influencer. Perhaps give them something of value or something that’s helpful. Take a risk, stick your neck out there and create some dialogue and you might be pleasantly surprised.
Marketo: Who are the top content marketing influencers to follow? Who would you recommend adding to your RSS readers? Aside from yourself of course!
Rebecca Lieb : Robert Rose who just coauthored an excellent book on content marketing with Joe Pulizzi. Joe founded The Content Marketing Institute and their feed is invaluable and probably the leading publication. For content strategy, there’s Kristina Halvorson who wrote the book on the topic. I’m a great admirer of Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman who published early books on content marketing before mine even.
Also, Lee Odden is a terrific blogger on this and Sally Falkow is very good in the public relations range. If you search Twitter, there are some very good Twitter lists of the leading content marketing influencers. I would suggest following those people and determining who’s right for you and who’s really speaking to your content marketing needs.
Source : Marketo and Rebbeca Lieb
