Coffee's for closers

(Editor's note: As the world of B2B content marketing grows, ever-increasing numbers of journalists are moving into the field. In addition, a large crop of new grads are coming into the business ... often with little to no understanding of how content marketing works or what role journalism plays in it. This is the first of a four-part series on some of the cultural barriers that workers face in the new world of B2B content marketing. In this piece, I'll be making some suggestions about how folks with a journalism background can get past one of those barriers -- working with the sales staff. I'm hopeful that other folks will offer their suggestions as well. The second and third posts in this series will look at other cultural barriers. In the fourth and final part of the series I'll address how B2B journalists can preserve traditional ideas of journalism ethics in this new piece of the media world.)

Journalists don't like salespeople very much.
As a general rule, journalists don't like anyone. But journalists don't like salespeople even more than they don't like other people.
I'm a journalist. I've been one for decades now. And I assure you this is true. (Note: if you're a salesperson who is reading this, please understand that I don't mean you. I'm crazy about you. I'm talking about other salespeople. You're wonderful. And I love what you're wearing today. That's a very flattering color on you.)
I don't know if salespeople like journalists.
They probably don't. Most people tend not to like journalists.
And yet these two professions have managed to work together at publishing companies since the invention of the printing press.
And the key to their success was this: they didn't really talk to each other.
On the contrary, the publishing industry built an entire cultural infrastructure (separate offices, differing chains of command, ethics codes, etc.) to ensure that journalists and salespeople didn't talk to each other.
And that was fine in traditional publishing, where the value of the product required that sales not influence editorial.

But in content marketing, things are slightly different.
In this new world, content creators are judged (to a degree) on whether or not editorial influences sales.

Write ledes; Generate leads
As the content-marketing industry has grown in the past few years, B2B journalists have moved along a path that looks like this:
a.  working as creators of pure editorial supported by traditional ads, then changing to
b. creators of pure editorial supported by lead-gen ads, and then changing to
c. creators of pure editorial that is, in and of itself, a lead-gen tool.
(Note: becoming a creator of something less than pure editorial is a distinctly different path. That's marketing communications or public relations, and should not be confused with content marketing.)
B2B journalists who move into content marketing find they no longer have a sales team that supports editorial. Instead, journalists find themselves creating editorial that acts as part of the sales funnel.
And salespeople have no idea how jarring this is for us.


Life at the Movies
If you've been in the B2B publishing game for awhile, then consider the following questions:
Have you ever known a salesperson who decided to stop selling ads for his magazine and start writing articles instead?
Have you ever known a journalist who gave up his byline and decided he'd rather call prospects than call sources?
No?
Me neither.
Part of the reason for this is that the skills between the two professions don't transfer well (although I often tell young journalists that they need to develop some sales-type skills, i.e., the ability to handle rejection, a willingness to accept a pay-for-performance compensation structure, etc.)
But the core reason that journalists and salespeople don't exchange jobs is that the the two professions attract extraordinarily different types of people. They are as different as night and day. They don't mix well. They see the world in fundamentally different ways.
Here's what I mean:
Have you seen "Glengarry Glen Ross," the movie with the breathtaking, pitch-perfect dialog written by David Mamet? If so, then you know the famous "Coffee's for closers" monologue performed by Alec Baldwin.
The salespeople I know admire the Baldwin character. Sometimes it's an open admiration. Sometimes it's a grudging admiration. But most often it's a sort of joking, off-hand admiration that manifests with frequent quotes from the monologue itself. (This is similar to the way some of my friends from Wall Street frequently and jokingly repeat the "greed is good" quote by the Gordon Gekko character from the movie "Wall Street.")
But journalists don't like the Baldwin character.
We admire Mamet's writing. Hell, we adore Mamet's writing.
But we see Baldwin's character as repulsive.
And in our heart of hearts, we fear he's representative of the world of business.
And, more importantly, as we move from being journalists to being content marketers, we sort of worry that we're becoming just a little bit like him.

Getting to know you
So as I said earlier, we can assume salespeople don't like journalists. But what do salespeople think of journalists who become content marketers?
Let's return again to "Glengarry Glen Ross." Key to the tension between Baldwin's character and the sales staff are the nature of the leads. The salesmen aren't performing. Baldwin threatens them and their jobs. Shelley Levene, played by Jack Lemmon, complains that "The leads are weak."

To a salesperson, content marketing can seem an ill-defined and unfocused effort that delivers weak leads. And this is largely, I suspect, because salespeople are perplexed by content marketers' goals.
That shouldn't be surprising. Content marketing is growing like crazy in B2B companies that have no experience with editorial operations of any kind. Even the most experienced salespeople are novices at working with content marketers.
And in a sense, the salespeople are right. Content marketing often doesn't deliver leads that are easily closed. Content marketing is more about about creating an environment that can lead to sales. It's as much about though leadership as it is about lead-gen. It's as much about conversing with existing clients as it is about attracting new ones.
But content marketers do this because it's what works today. Business has changed. Buyers have changed. Content marketing is just part of a broad, systemic shift in how B2B industries buy and sell.
And we journalists/content marketers have no idea how jarring this is for salespeople.

Shelley's daughter
If B2B journalists are going to succeed as content marketers, we're going to have to find some common ground with salespeople. We have to get them to understand what we do, how we do it, and why it's valuable.
Traditional marketers have faced similar challenges for years. But for content-markers -- many of whom were traditional journalists or college students just the other day -- this is all new.

The good news is that people much smarter than I are working on these issues. For example, it's worth your time to read Jennifer Watson's recent piece for the Content Marketing Institute on how to communicate our value to the sales staff.
But allow me to make a few suggestions of my own.
First, become a salesperson. Spend some time every month selling your services outside your job. Make a little money on the side. Learn to prospect. Learn to move potential clients through your own sales funnel. Learn to close.
Second, ignore Baldwin. Years ago I watched "Glengarry Glen Ross" with a bunch of journalists. And I wasn't surprised to see that there was universal sympathy in the group for Jack Lemmon's character, Shelley "The Machine" Levene.
If you've seen the film (or the original play), you'll remember that Shelley is in desperate need of money to provide medical care for a sick daughter. Shelley behaves badly as a result. He commits a crime. He falls into sin, if you'll excuse the religious phrasing. He behaves immorally ... drifting toward becoming more like the clearly immoral figures played by Baldwin and Al Pacino.(Pacino's speech on morality is another high point of  Glengarry Glen Ross: "There's an absolute morality? Maybe. And then what? If you think there is, go ahead, be that thing. Bad people go to hell? I don't think so. If you think that, act that way. A hell exists on earth? Yes. I won't live in it. That's me.")
Levene also operates at a distinct disadvantage to the other salesmen -- he's from another time. As the Wikipedia entry on the movie puts it, "Levene's decline is due to the old-fashioned nature of his methods: his presentation as a grinning, successful, confident salesman with a casual swagger immediately telegraphs to modern clients his identity as a smooth-talking shyster looking to disarm them with reassurance; Levene has been unable to replace his obsolete tactics with new ones and suffers financially as a result."
Journalists, who have seen our own share of woes as our traditional employers have collapsed and our long-practiced skills have diminished in value, have a soft spot for Levene. We understand him, maybe even relate to him. He's the sort of person we're drawn toward -- complex, contradictory, troubled. In short, he's a story.
So here's my idea:
If you've made the move from traditional journalism to content marketing, it's time to stop seeing Alec Baldwin every time you see a salesperson. Learn, instead, to see Jack Lemmon.
Learn to see your coworkers as what they are -- regular people with sick children,  financial pressures and moral quandaries.
Just like me and you.
Third, become Baldwin.
If the first two approaches don't work, try a little Baldwin yourself. Never admit that content marketing offers anything less than the perfect, easily closed lead. Wave a stack of index cards in front of the sales team and say, "These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you they're gold, and you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you is just throwing them away. They're for closers."

Journalism by any other word would smell as sweet

March is academia month for me.
Each year at this time I visit with college journalists and their teachers. And each year it is both a rewarding and frustrating experience.
This year was somewhat unusual in that I did less college-focused stuff than usual. I had too much work to do much travel. And some academic events were canceled. But I did get to spend a few days at the annual College Media Advisers convention in New York.

I saw many of the same disheartening things this year that I've written about before -- journalism departments that have not converged; students just weeks from graduating with nothing to show for it but a working knowledge of Quark; teachers and students with no understanding of how the media business operates; etc.
On the other hand, I saw less of some of the stuff that upsets me. This year, for example, I was pleased to find that only one person in a room full of journalism advisers didn't own a cell phone or PDA.

As you'd expect, much of the conversation at this year's convention focused on the troubles of the media industry. No one seems to be landing a job. The kids are frightened.
So I spent a lot of my time talking about where I see opportunities.
And the place where I see the most opportunity for the next few years is in content marketing.

Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, I didn't meet a single teacher, adviser or student who was familiar with content marketing.
And so, repeatedly, I found myself giving a brief overview: Content marketing is about removing the middleman. Companies that once spent their marketing budget on advertising are now spending it on creating content themselves. Content marketers are free of the greatest pressure that the rest of media faces, i.e., content marketers don't need to make a profit from their content. I talked about some of the content-marketing sites that I've written about earlier such as Security Focus as well as Kraft, WeightWatchers and the sites of Waterfront Media.
And, of course, I talked about Joe Pulizzi's Junta42, which is ground zero for the content-marketing movement.
But what I found was that the folks I talked to seemed to have tremendous difficulty with the word "marketing." No matter how much I talked about content marketing as a new form of journalism, they seemed to think it could be nothing more than a new form of marcom.

So it was with great pleasure and gratitude that I stumbled upon a recent post by David Meerman Scott.
In David's "Open letter to journalists," he talks about the opportunities for "open-minded" journalists in the new world of content marketing.
But most importantly, David introduces a new (or at least new to me) term to describe the content-marketing industry.
So you can expect that in March 2010 I'll be telling students and teachers about the opportunities in "brand journalism."

To read my four-part series on college journalism from last year, click here and follow the links.

tags: journalism, b2b, media, trade press, magazines, newsletters, business media, journalism education, content marketing, brand journalism

Investigative reporting and content marketing

I have a thing about calendars. I tend to think in terms of anniversaries and cycles, and I'm often conscious of completely inane and useless pieces of time-based trivia about my past. It's not unusual for me to remark over dinner, for example, that "it was exactly two months ago today that we last ate this!" Or to comment while getting dressed in the morning "the last time I wore this jacket was on that trip to Boston exactly a year ago on Saturday!"
Needless to say, my family is less than enchanted by this habit.
So I can only hope that you, dear reader, will be less than annoyed when I mention that
a) it was exactly a year ago today that John Bethune published an interview with me about what's gone wrong in B2B content marketing.
b) and it was exactly a month ago today that I submitted my annual predictions to the Content Marketing Institute in which I argued that something is about to go right in content marketing.

You should go read all the predictions at CMI. There are tons of insightful remarks this year by tons of insightful people. Read those. Then come back and we'll talk about what I said.

The Sacred and the Profane

So let's review. My prediction looked like this:

Content marketers have mastered much of journalism: analysis, profiles, how-to articles, etc. But no brand has attempted the most sacred form of journalism: the investigative piece. That changes in 2013. Some brand will do solid, hardcore, investigative work -- not of its industry, but of a tangential subject of interest to its customers.
Imagine a baby-food company, for example, investigating the dangers to children of outgassing VOCs. 

I chose that example deliberately, because it's similar to an example I gave in a comment on an article called "Content Marketing is Not Journalism." Check out the article. Read the comments. Consider the nature of the argument.
If you read that piece I think you'll come to the same conclusion I come to -- this is nuts. They're arguing that content marketing can't be journalism because content marketers wouldn't tell a story about "about killing babies with Bisphenol A."
But as I said in my comment, content marketers have told the story about killing babies with Bisphenol A.
The real issue, it seems to me, is that content marketers didn't break the story about killing babies. Content marketers aggregated it. They added value to it. They distributed it.
But content marketers didn't break the story.
(Note: a review of the coverage of Bisphenol A shows people behaving badly across the publishing spectrum. The best, early work on the dangers of BPA showed up in peer-reviewed journals. After that,  advocacy groups began to receive some coverage in the mainstream press. But that same mainstream press consistently published counter-science pushed by manufacturer's public-relations wings. You'd be hard pressed to find any serious investigative work by journalists on the subject for the first few years of the controversy. What you can find, easily, is the sort of he-said, she-said nonsense that dominates journalism when the subject matter is difficult to digest. The sole exception to this was the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal -- which did the tough, investigative work beginning way back in 2007 and never let up.)

Until some content marketer somewhere breaks a story of such significance -- until someone does solid, hardcore investigative work - then content marketing will remain a lesser form of journalism.

( I feel obliged to interrupt myself and make note of the obvious -- if only to prevent people from posting comments that make note of the obvious:
There's nothing wrong with lesser forms of journalism. Not everything that journalists do is magnificent and holy. There is a place for celebrity journalism, just as there is a place for weekly newspapers that focus on high-school sports, trade magazines that teach people how to sell more widgets, local TV broadcasts filled with gruesome crime stories, and newsletters aimed at spreading paranoid theories in order to promote investments in gold.
Furthermore, not every piece of content that a corporation creates is a piece of journalism. Nor should it be. Corporations, even those that produce "great" content marketing, also produce marcomm, press releases, advertisements, instruction manuals, etc.)

The thickness of skin: the depth of coverage

The problem, of course, isn't that solid, hardcore investigative work is hard (although it is.) The problem is that it generates hate.
If you've worked in journalism for awhile, you know all about hate. People hate journalists. They write nasty letters. They sneer at us. They accuse us of lying, of stupidity, of being in the pockets of corporations and political parties and secret cabals.
And if you've worked in journalism for awhile you've learned to sort of like hate.
Hate motivates us. As does love. For isn't that what we mean when we say that journalism's purpose is "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable"?
Marketers, on the other hand, tend not to welcome hate.
As I said in that interview -- did I mention it was exactly a year ago today? -- with John Bethune "my experience has been that the overwhelming majority of these companies don’t have a culture that is open to journalism. These companies don’t have the stomach for news and the confrontations it can promote. They panic when someone complains. They’re afraid of controversy."
But that will change. I believe it's changing now as more and more talented and experienced journalists enter content marketing.
And there's a model we can use to guide us during this change.
Consider this:
Corporations and their marketing and public relations departments are responsible for an extraordinary amount of charitable work. Companies choose a "cause" and they champion it. They sponsor walk-a-thons and volunteer drives. They associate their brand image with some form of "good." In many of these cases they seek to solve a problem -- poverty, disease, lack of education, etc.
This is comforting the afflicted.
Investigative journalism is the flip side of this. Investigative journalism seeks to uncover the roots of a wrong. Why are people in this area poor? Why are children sick? Why can't Johnny read?
What I'm predicting, specifically, is that brands will begin to look at both sides of the coin as part of their content-marketing efforts.
Why can't a baby food maker investigate VOCs?
Why can't one of the companies that associates itself with pink ribbons and the search for a cure for breast cancer also fund and publish investigative work into what causes the disease?
Want an example from B2B? (This is, after all, a blog about B2B journalism.) Have you seen the wonderful work being done to get truck drivers involved in battling human trafficking? That movement comforts the afflicted and seeks to "cure" the problem. Bless them for that.
But why can't a truck manufacturer flip that coin, hire a few reporters and look for the people behind this obscenity?
Of course it will be hard. Of course you might get sued. Of course people will hate you.
But trust me, there is great joy to be found in afflicting the comfortable. There is great joy, too, in feeling the hate.
There are also great branding opportunities for companies that can take it.

This time next year

I was recently named one of 25 journalists to watch in content marketing. That's an honor, and not one I mean to belittle.
But the list that I long to see is something deeper, more meaningful.
I don't expect to be on that list. At present I deserve no such honor.
But the list is coming. I believe this.
Soon there will be list of "content marketers to watch in journalism." And some of those content marketers will be on that list because they have proven themselves to be investigative reporters.

Where can "print" reporters go?

A few days ago I wrote a piece for this blog about the financial crisis in B2B publishing. I said that much of the industry had become "weighed down by the twin albatrosses of junk bonds and rising print costs." And I suggested that the "editors, salespeople and designers of B2B... walk away from print."

A reader of that post wrote a comment asking "where -- specifically -- would you suggest B2B writers/editors look for jobs in the digital world? I'm curious if there are even places for all those thousands of print-based folks to go?" And over at Folio magazine, where my blog is republished, a reader asked "But where do we go, especially in this economy? It's easy to say -- not easy to do."

Those are legitimate questions. And I'll do my best to answer them. But be warned -- plenty of folks in B2B publishing won't like what I have to say.

The unwanted
First, the bad news.
As fast as the world of Web journalism is growing, no "print" journalist should assume that there's a place for him in the new world. The truth is that there are not "places for all those thousands of print-based folks to go." And don't kid yourself -- we are talking about thousands of displaced journalists. The newspaper industry alone has lost 10,000 jobs in recent months. I'd put the number of lost jobs in B2B at about half of that in the past 12 months. And all across the media world, the bad news just keeps coming.
(Here's a quick quiz. What is the largest business media company and the world, and what does it mean for the job market? Answer: It's these guys: a brand new company, created by merger, which is expected to soon lay off thousands of the most talented business journalists on earth, turning an already saturated market into something even tougher.)
But the worse news for print-based journalists is that much of the Web journalism world wants nothing to do with them.
What print journalists don't seem to understand is that:
a) A lot of Web folks are pretty tired of print folks. Nearly everyone who works in Web-only or Web-first journalism came from a print background. And for years they toiled in places where the online world was treated with disdain. Then, as Web journalism took off, the online staff found themselves in an all-new form of hell. Every day was filled with the whining, complaining and resentments of the print staff. I assure you -- the Web journalists who have managed to escape that scene are not eager to start hiring the same moaning characters they left behind. The big secret of Web journalism is that it's fun. And we don't want anyone to spoil that.
b) A lot of Web folks think print folks are kind of lazy and stupid. Every Web journalist on earth has put in the time to learn how to be a Web journalist. No one taught it to them. They taught themselves. They put in the extra hours, took courses, read books, talked to smart people and looked for answers. And they did all that because they knew that Web journalism was important. Print journalists, on the other hand, tend to think that they themselves are important. They're the sorts of people who, even as their publications collapse around them, think the boss should invest in training them in the new skills. Web folks don't want to hire anyone like that. Because Web journalists know that six months from now when something new comes around the print guy is going to be demanding more training.

A place where print is valued
Now, the good news.
Although I think it's a very good idea to walk away from the print side of B2B publishing, there is one possible exception. And for print journalists who either can't or won't become part of Web culture, it offers a haven.
It's a media sector that is growing like crazy and where print journalism skills are still highly valued. New media skills are valued there too. In fact, they are valued more highly, as they should be. But print has a strong role. And there is growth.
So it's time to consider a career in content marketing (my apologies to Rex, who hates that term)
The key to understanding content marketing (or branded media, custom publishing, or any of the other terms used to describe the sector) is that it generally does not require the content to pay for itself. Rather, the content is used to spread a branding message or serve a community. Perhaps the most recognized forms of content marketing are the airline magazines in the seat-back cover or the alumni magazine that many of us get from the colleges we attended. In content marketing, a magazine isn't a business, it supports a business. In content marketing, a newspaper doesn't make a profit, it supports a nonprofit. In content marketing, a newsletter isn't a way to monetize readers, it's a way to communicate with customers.
And in B2B, the sector is growing more important. Earlier this week, Junta42 and BtoB magazine released a report showing that B2B marketers are spending nearly one-third of their total budgets on content marketing.
Take a look at the report here. Make note that the most popular products in the space are Web and electronic. But note too that marketers are producing print newsletters, magazines and other traditional products.
If I were a print-based, B2B journalist, I'd be watching that sector for opportunities.

(Disclosure: I offer content marketing services through my business. And although I work on print products, I specialize in Web and other electronic products. I'm not hiring print staffers at this time.)

For more on the world of content marketing, check out this article in Folio.

tags: journalism, b2b, media, trade press, magazines, newsletters, business media, content marketing

Sometimes content marketing goes wrong. Badly.

There's a scandal this month in the content marketing world. 

That's an unusual occurrence.  In its most common forms, content marketing is a bit innocuous.  But sometimes content marketing goes wrong. Badly. And when content marketing does go wrong, it's almost always because a company has decided its content should be more like journalism, but not actually be journalism. 

The embarrassing situation that Sequoia Capital found itself in this month perfectly illustrates this. As Bloomberg News reports, Sequoia is one of a number of venture-capital bigwigs that has invested heavily in long-form content, high-end documentary films and top-tier content creators in an effort to bolster their brand reputations. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. Brand boosting is one of the things content marketing does. 

The problem for Sequoia is that it ran a fawning piece in September about Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of crypto exchange FTX. And in November, FTX collapsed. 

It didn't take long for people to start mocking Sequoia's article. And it didn't take long for Sequoia to panic. Rather than retracting the story publicly, or adding an editor's note, or commissioning a follow-up story or doing any of the things a journalism outfit might do after something like this, Sequoia at first just yanked the story from its website without explanation. That nothing-to-see here reaction by Sequoia seems to have prompted the Bloomberg article. And the Bloomberg article itself seems to have later prompted Sequoia to publish a sort-of, kind-of Editor's Note confirming the story had been pulled.

If you're a longtime reader of mine, you know I've long held hope that content marketing would grow to be more journalistic. (Here's a piece I wrote about exactly this nearly 10 years ago.) I believe that content marketing can do more than move people through a sales funnel, extend brand reach, etc. But if that is ever to happen, the companies that hire content marketers, writers, filmmakers and the rest will need to develop thicker skin. The problem, as I put it in an interview with Jon Bethune 11 years ago, is that "These companies don’t have the stomach for news and the confrontations it can promote. They panic when someone complains. They’re afraid of controversy." 

And as any journalist can tell you, complaints and controversy are nothing to panic about. They are the air we breathe.

Meet the new boss, different from the old boss

Much of my time these days is spent working on a new B2B site for About.com, now a unit of the New York Times. The site covers the online advertising industry. And I'd urge anyone who works online to take a look. Everyone in the industry -- including those of us on the editorial side -- would do well to understand the money part of the content game.
You can check out the site here.

We launched a few days ago, and things have been going well. We got some press coverage (here and here). And we're getting the sort of search-engine placement at which About excels.

But the thing that excites me most about the new site is that it's a chance to work on a product that is similar to -- although not exactly part of -- a growing trend in online content. And I expect many of you will also soon find yourselves part of this trend.
Allow me to explain.

The About Online Advertising site has two business purposes. First, just like any other commercial site, it exists to make money. We sell ads on the site to generate revenue. But far more interesting is the site's second purpose. About Online Advertising is aimed at entry-level media buyers -- the people who buy ad space for a living. By offering a guide to the industry for newcomers, About hopes to build awareness of its larger brand. In other words, the hope is that media buyers who become readers of About's Online Advertising site will some day become customers of About's hundreds of consumer-focused sites.

Here's why you should care
In the August issue of Folio magazine, Joe Pulizzi, chief content officer for Junta42, wrote a guest column called "Are Corporations the New Kings of Content?"
Joe is talking about the rise of "content marketing" -- in which manufacturers, retailers and others "are jumping with both feet into the province once deemed the sacred right of publishing houses."
Content marketing, as Joe points out, has its roots in custom publishing and branded content. But there is a notable, fundamental difference. When done correctly, "content marketing" involves the creation of exactly the sort of material that is the traditional domain of journalists, not public relations folks.
Or, as Joe puts it, content marketers have "have hired some of the best journalists around, looked for, found and paid for authoritative experts to inform their audiences, set editorial and graphic standards that surpass those of many publications. And, perhaps one of the most critical components, have launched stringent measurement analysis to both determine and improve the content they are sending out.
More importantly, many content marketers seem to have mastered some of the basics of Web publishing -- search-engine optimization, evergreen content and user communities.

Didn't we used to do that?
In another article in that same issue of Folio, Chuck Cordray, general manager of Hearst Magazine's digital media unit, talks about the difficult competitive environment his magazines face online. He mentions two of the kings of content marketing -- a retailer and a manufacturer that have morphed into publishers. "The Kraft foods site is a great site and The Home Depot has the number-one home improvement site,"Cordray said.
And he ain't kidding. Take a look at Kraft's product, and compare it with Good Housekeeping. Then look at any of the buyers guides on HomeDepot.com, and see if you can find anything better written, better designed or just plain better on Better Homes & Gardens.
In the world of consumer publishing, content marketers are proving again and again that they can create Web sites that are just as compelling as anything produced by editors from traditional publishing companies.
And of course the content marketers have a remarkable advantage over the rest of us -- they don't need to make a profit from their sites. A content marketer site isn't a profit center, it's a marketing expense. It exists to serve the larger brand.
In other words, although content marketers are content creators, they are not in the content business.
Want to see some other examples? Check out WeightWatchers.com -- a content- and community-filled site aimed at promoting the WeightWatchers brand. The cooking and exercise material on the site is every bit as well done as what you'd find on the site of any traditional magazine.
Then take a look at Waterfront Media, which has more than a dozen sites in the exercise/health field -- each of them tied to a well-known brand such as the South Beach Diet or fitness guru Denise Austin.

It should be clear that content marketers have mastered the consumer space. And it would surprise me to no end if this part of the Web world doesn't continue to expand. There are jobs here, and opportunity, and I expect many of today's journalism students will find themselves working in this subset of the industry.

To read why I see opportunity in content marketing for B2B publishers, read Part II of this article.

tags: journalism, b2b, media, trade press, magazines, newsletters, business media, content marketing

The excellence craze

(Editor's Note: A custom publisher interviewed me last week for its company blog. As it turns out, at least one executive at the company wasn't crazy about my thoughts on the state of publishing. So the company opted not to publish the interview. I, on the other hand, am crazy about my thoughts on the state of publishing. So I'm posting the interview here.)

Question: Content marketing: Integrating print forms, such as a magazine published by a brand, with digital platforms. What kinds of trends are you seeing?

Paul Conley: I don't see much interesting in terms of integration. It seems to me that electronic content has surpassed print in most respects ... particularly quality. There are exceptions (long-form narrative, for instance, still works best in print.) But very little of the print world is making a successful expansion into digital content. Rather, it seems to me that most brands have digital products that are becoming much better than their print products.

Here's why:

Traditional, print-based custom publishing is primarily a way to serve an existing, captive audience. Whether it's an airline magazine stuck in the slot in front of your plane seat, or the four-color magazine that you get every quarter when you join a trade association, the print product is designed to serve an existing audience. A custom-published magazine is a perk that an association gives to members, it's a reward that a company gives to customers.

That made sense given the traditional tools that custom publishers had: print magazines, mailing lists, distribution systems run by clients, etc.

In addition, traditional, print-based custom publications existed for years as part of a very small media universe. This is particularly true in B2B, where an industry might have had one or two trade publications and one or two custom publications serving the entire marketplace.

But with the rise of the content-marketing or brand-journalism movement, suddenly everyone could be a publisher. Companies that would never have spent the money needed to produce a custom-published print magazine, began leaping into online publishing at an extraordinary rate. I saw a study recently that said 26% of B2B marketing budgets in the U.S. are now tied to content marketing. I doubt that print-based custom publications every got more than 1% of the total B2B marketing spend in this country.

Obviously, brands are not dedicating that level of their marketing budget to reach existing customers. Instead, brands have learned rapidly that they can use content as a lead-generation tool. Instead of putting an article in a magazine and sending it their customers, they distribute it online, in social media, through content-aggregation services and syndication networks. They track who has read it, who passed it on, who signed up for more information, etc.

At first, this worked quite well and rather easily. It wasn't expensive. It was certainly cheaper than traditional advertising or custom publishing. But as the early adopters found success, everyone jumped in.

This has led to what I think of as "the excellence craze." In B2B, where I make my living, it seems like every company in every tiny niche of every industry has become a content creator. There are a thousand voices competing for very small audiences.

There's only one way to compete in that environment -- to be extraordinarily good. The only way I can ensure that my voice is heard is if my content is fantastic. That's completely new for B2B, where both trade publishers and custom publishers have seldom felt the need to be great. In a market with only three of four voices, only a crazy person would spend the money to become great. It was good enough to not be the worst.

I'm seeing money spent on content that is vastly more engaging than what was available just a few years ago. The other day I reviewed a bunch of material that UPS created to win customers in the pharmaceutical-logistics world. There were white papers and videos and loads of other items. And they were all great. Now UPS has an extraordinarily large budget. You would expect them to be able to spend the money to be great. But I see similar levels of greatness at loads of small businesses, consulting companies, etc.

All this is a roundabout way of saying this: brands that have put X amount of effort into producing print products are learning that they have to put 10 times that effort into producing electronic content if they want to compete.

Thus the electronic products (Websites, microsites, videos, podcasts, social-media campaigns, white papers, blogs, etc.) are of much higher quality than the print products that share the same brand name.

Question: That surprises me. I would have expected you to predict that the demand for higher quality electronic content would be coming soon, but you’re saying it’s already here. So how are these companies achieving higher quality in content? Especially the smaller businesses that may not have big budgets?

Paul Conley: There's really only one way to get higher quality content. You have to pay for it. What seems to be happening is that the giant brands (UPS, IBM, etc.) are pouring considerable resources into creating high-end material to use for content marketing. Often that involves hiring a content staff. For example, Intel recently launched a news service and hired a number of well-known journalists to run it. Folks like that are following the Symantec model. Symantec is a big player in tech-security news.

But not every company, even the large ones, are bringing content creators in house. Rather, they seem to be spending money on middle men. Sometimes those are well-established players in the advertising and public relations space like Interbrand. (Interbrand, by the way, runs one of the best content-marketing sites I know. Check out BrandChannel.) Sometimes these middle men are newer players ... boutique agencies that specialize in a vertical or a particular medium. LaunchSquad and SocialTract are among the companies in that space.

The smallest brands seem to be the ones that are most likely to do direct hiring. They're recruiting "social media experts" and such to create content. If you look through the ads in places like MediaBistro you'll find lots of gigs like that ... decent jobs for folks with little to no experience. These gigs don't pay a lot. Maybe they pay around $50,000 a year fully loaded. But most brands in B2B can take that money from their ad or marketing budget and move into content marketing in a big way. Maybe they drop the print ads they've been running in a trade magazine to pay for it. But what they get is constant, all-day interaction with their target audience through digital platforms.

The end result of all this is that there's a battle for folks with content-creation skills in digital media. A newspaper reporter with 25 years experience in print is nearly unemployable today. But someone who can write, record audio and video, and has worked with Twitter and Facebook for even a year can pick and choose among lots of opportunities. They can go to work for big brands, middle men or small firms.

Question: Do you expect this trend to higher quality will continue for the next five years?

Paul Conley: I do. The only alternative is to go with the low-cost models offered by the content farms. Those companies (DemandMedia, Seed, etc.) are likely to move into B2B just like they have made tremendous inroads in B2C. But those companies are volume plays. Their material is cheap ... but not very good. It's perfectly appropriate for search-driven content. But you can't engage an audience with it.

Question: Also, what kinds of devices are audiences viewing this type of content on? Are you seeing more content being created for specific devices, such as mobile or iPad? Are they getting any traction?

Paul Conley: I think it's too early to say. You may remember that I wrote on my blog for a long time that I expected we would soon see "an iPod of reading," a device that would change the way we consumed text, just like the iPod changed how we consumed audio. Well that day is clearly upon us. The iPad and the upcoming competitors will change how we read. They are already doing so. Most importantly, they are changing how we find content. I'm fascinated by Chris Anderson's idea that the Web era has ended. Apps may spell the end of search, serendipity, and the possibility of a nobody becoming a major content creator overnight. The Web gave us all that. But apps may take it away.

But as much as these new devices may change things, we can't say yet just how they will change things. It's sort of like those very early days of the Web browser. Anyone paying attention then knew that something remarkable was about to happen. But most of what did happen turned out to be different from what we expected.

But the smart players today aren't waiting around to see how things will turn out. Smart brands are already creating interesting app-based content. I still read and interact with a ton of content on my laptop at work and home. But when I'm not sitting at a desk, I read news (NYTimes and Bloomberg), shop (FreshDirect), plan meals (Jamie Oliver), exercise (RoundTimer), and play games (SmartGo) through branded apps.

But those apps probably don't represent what the market will look like in just a few years.

That's why one of my pet peeves is when executives talk about "needing a strategy" before they do something with apps or with Twitter. That's the same sort of thing that media folks said for years about the Web. But apps and social media will leave you behind, just like the Web did.You don't need a strategy. You need to get excited about possibility. If you wait until some platform has traction, you'll find that the way it gained traction was by spinning its wheels for awhile on top of your carcass.

Scratching the seven-year itch

What were you doing seven years ago tonight?
Odds are it was more fun than what I was doing -- which was sitting at my desk and launching this blog.

I don't have a very clear memory of  that night -- and that seems strange to me now, given how important this blog became to my career. Rather, I have a hazy recollection of coming home and feeling sort of fed up. It seemed clear to me that the entire world of B2B journalism was entering an extraordinarily exciting and important era of rapid change. But my working life was filled with people who didn't share that belief. I really just wanted someone to talk to about this stuff. But my family, friends and coworkers weren't interested.

So I came home, turned on the computer, and started talking to ... whomever happened to be out there in the newly born blogsphere.

If you don't know what happened next, feel free to take a look at this post from September of this year. In it I tried to spell out how wonderful and important this blog became to me, but how I had lost my taste for it.

But if there's anything that has changed more than my relationship to this blog, it's the world that I wrote about here. B2B media is dramatically different from what it was in 2004. I'd like to think I played a small part in that change. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to do so.

Reviewing the past

Early this morning I received an email from someone who described himself as a "longtime fan" of my work. He wanted to share a link to a piece he'd read on FINS, the career site owned by Dow Jones. The article, titled "We're All Media Companies Now and We're Hiring," is about the extraordinary surge in hiring of traditional journalists to create content for non-publishers.

The writer of that email was kind enough to point out that the article "sounds like what you've been preaching for a long time." And there's no doubt that is true. This new world of content marketing (or, if you prefer, brand journalism) has excited me tremendously.

But I've also developed some concerns about this new world. If you're one of the hundreds of B2B journalists who has made (or is considering) a move into content marketing, I urge you to read my recent conversations with John Bethune. You can find them here and here. You should also read John's interview with Jesse Noyes, one of the better-known and more talented players in the brand-journalism world. (Note that Jesse draws an interesting distinction, calling himself a brand reporter rather than a brand journalist.)

Predicting the future

I didn't intend  to write anything about tonight's anniversary. But that email from a longtime reader left me feeling like I should say something.

Then, in the late afternoon, the Content Marketing Institute and Junta42 published their annual list of predictions for the upcoming year in Social Media and Content Marketing. Joe Pulizzi, the boss at Junta42 and CMI, had asked more than 80 people to share their predictions. But his favorite, according to his blog post today, was mine.

And I realized that I couldn't think of a better birthday gift for me and this blog than this:
Joe, as you probably know, is the father of the content-marketing craze. And I, at least for today, am his favorite child.

So as we enter 2012, as new challenges arise in B2B, and as this blog begins its eighth year, check out my predictions and those of some of the smartest folks in the content-marketing world.

(If you're interested, check out what I said on the six-year anniversary of this blog here.)

Turning readers into publishers

Yesterday I blogged about the rise of "content marketing," in which retailers, manufacturers and others have dived into the world of publishing. This new form of editorial has some distinct advantages over traditional publishing -- primarily that content marketers aren't worried about making money from the content itself. Content isn't their business. Rather, content is an expense aimed at building their business.
Today I want to talk about the opportunity I see in content marketing for B2B publishers.

I'll ask that you bear with me. My thoughts on this issue aren't completely formed. So, as I often do, I'm blogging as a way of thinking.

Much of B2B publishing works on the controlled circulation model. Sure, we sell data. And of course, we charge people to attend our trade shows. But our content is free to our readers. Unlike our brothers and sisters in consumer magazines and newspapers, most of us in B2B don't have to worry about newsstand sales and subscription revenue.
We do, however, have to worry about advertising.
But imagine if we could find a way to make money without advertising or subscriptions.

Driving new business
Suppose you're the publisher of one of the dozens of trucking magazines in the B2B world. Your readers work at trucking companies; Your advertisers are companies that sell stuff to trucking companies -- tires and logistics software and rear-view mirrors.
Now suppose that your boss has told you he wants to see revenue growth this year of X percent. Traditionally, you have several options. You can raise ad rates, ask your existing advertisers to buy more ads, find new advertisers, or launch a new product and find advertisers for that.
But instead of looking at advertisers, what would happen if you looked at one of your readers.

Suppose one of your readers is Joe Schmoe, owner of Refrigerated Liquid Transport Corp., provider of climate-controlled, cross-country transport of dairy products. Joe's company is big. Joe is the king of milk movement. He has a 40% share of the U.S. market. And he has a marketing budget of hundreds of thousand dollars a year. But he doesn't spend any of that with you. He's a reader, not an advertiser. He doesn't need to get his brand in front of other trucking companies.
But he does need to get his message in front of dairy producers.
Joe advertises in dairy magazines. His ads run in B2B publications and Web sites such as "Dairy Cow Monthly" and "Chief Milk Officer."
Could you convince Joe that the way to get his message out was to become a content marketer? Could you help him become one?

It's not customary to do it that way
Most large B2B publishers have a custom publishing unit. In a nutshell, their job is to create content for advertisers. Most of the time this involves producing limited-run, print publications that go to a magazine's existing readers. Sometimes it involves creating a microsite or some other advertiser-driven Web product. But in essence, custom publishing is about creating a product for an advertiser.
But I'm talking about something different here. I'm not talking about turning Joe from a reader into an advertiser. I'm not even talking about turning Joe from a reader into a customer of your custom-publishing unit.
I'm talking about turning Joe from a reader into a real-life publisher.

Here's the pitch:
In exchange for X amount of money, (cash that he now spends on ads in magazines you don't own), you'll help Joe become a content marketer.
Joe becomes the publisher of "Milking the Market," an online news site about dairy futures and milk production. It's not about transport. Joe doesn't have to cover himself or his competitors. Rather, he's offering valuable information to his target audience for free. There are no ads on "Milking the Market," although each page is branded with Joe's Refrigerated Liquid Transport Corp. logo. There are no subscription fees. Rather, it is a purely editorial site that helps milk producers make money.
What you give Joe is expertise in online publishing (I don't think this idea would work well at all in print, where the expenses are much higher.)
In particular, you help Joe with:
a) hiring skilled journalists to produce aggregated content and "evergreen" how-to articles (daily news is too expensive, and he'd need a fulltime staff), and
b) using search-engine optimization to get his product in front of his target audience.

There are dozens of variations to this business model. Maybe you work as a consultant to Joe as he gets his content marketing site off the ground. Or perhaps you do all the work yourself, hiring freelancers as needed, and charging Joe a monthly fee. Maybe he buys back-end services from you (server space, access to a CMS, etc.), maybe not.

But however you do it, what you're doing is very different from what you have done in the past.
Because now you're working for a fee, not for ad dollars.
And your client isn't an advertiser, he's a publisher ... just like you.

(Note: It will be clear to many readers that the closest thing to content marketing in B2B is the world of association publishing. That market has been very lucrative for a number of specialized publishers who produce print magazines for trade associations. The associations serve as publishers and provide the subscriber list, but the work of writing, design, etc. is often done by an outside company with editorial expertise. A similar model has emerged online where companies such as SmartBrief, a former consulting client of mine, and rival U.S. News Custom Briefings, aggregate content for associations. But the core of those businesses remains advertising.)

tags: journalism, b2b, media, trade press, magazines, newsletters, business media, content marketing

Predictions old and new

(Editor's note: As many of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook already know, my mother passed away on Dec. 30. Since then I've been overwhelmed by the kindness I've received from friends and acquaintances in both the real and virtual worlds. Thank you all.

As my Ma took a turn for the worse in mid-December, much of my working life had to be put on hold. So I wound up running late on many things ... including a long-promised follow-up to my predictions about 2009. But as Ma taught me, there's "a time to die ... a time to mourn" and a time to get back to work. So with no further ado, let's look back at 2009 and make some guesses about 2010. )

I hate to say I told you so, but ....

As 2008 turned into 2009, I wrote a a lengthy piece in which I argued that "the B2B industry as we know it is about to collapse."

If you've never read that piece, I'd ask you to do so now. If you have read it, then you know I was predicting a systemwide failure in B2B. The problem, it seemed to me, was clear: Too many people had been borrowing too much money and making too many preposterous assumptions about the industry. Complicating matters was that far too many B2B journalists -- who are the core of the business -- had failed to keep up with the changes in editorial.

Furthermore, I said that I'd grown remarkably disappointed in the majority of Web-only publishers who had emerged in B2B. Simply put, although such companies had mastered things like content aggregation, most of them had failed to move to the next level.

That's what I said

So let's review.

I made three specific predictions about 2009. They were:

1. The B2B publishing industry -- which is now dominated by giant print companies and smaller Web-only companies -- is about to collapse.
2. When the dust settles, B2B journalism will still be here -- but many of the companies that make up the industry will be gone.
3. The dominant business models of both the past and present will fail.

As troubling and unlikely as those predictions might have seemed in December 2008, it's safe to say that I was right.

In 2009 there were bankruptcies, shutdowns and creditors-take-control actions (Doubledown, Cygnus, Questex, Milo, Incisive, Advanstar), there were staff reductions (Cygnus, RBI, UBM, IDG, Edgell, Access Intelligence), there were salary freezes and pay cuts (Cygnus, Penton, RBI), there were closures of print products (Ziff, RBI, Penton, Crain, UBM, CMPMedica, Randall-Reilly, Nielsen and just about every other company you can name.)

And I'm sure I've forgotten a few ugly events too. I just don't have the stomach right now to read through this list of the major magazine-industry events of 2009.

And it's not like the tough times are over. Just last week we saw more shutdowns and a the-end-is-near memo from RBI's chief executive as well as more closures from Penton.

Follow the money

In 2009, everything that could go wrong, did.

And that's because, as I predicted, "the dominant business models of both the past and present" have failed.
Consider this:

I began the post with my predictions for 2009 by referring to a study by Outsell that forecast a 4.5% drop in print advertising in 2009. But halfway through the year, the drop in B2B print ads was already more than six times that level!

Online advertising rates -- already low -- also plummeted.

Traditional publishers, who had hoped that online ads could save them, found their optimism was misplaced. The newer, Web-only publishers found that low-cost operations with narrow margins had little room to maneuver when things got ugly.

Whether it was controlled-circulation print, SEO-driven long-tail sites or content-aggregation plays, we saw last year that B2B's center (free, ad-supported content) did not hold.

Retreat and delusions

So what's next?

I expect more closures, more layoffs, more trouble.

For example, it seems clear that RBI's parent company has no intention of staying in the business -- they'll close anything they can't sell. RBI will be gone by mid-year.

Nielsen seems to be taking a similar approach -- rushing to the exits by killing whatever brands they can't unload.

The simple truth is that for dozens of brands in B2B there's no way out. It makes more sense to walk away and take the write-off. So that's what companies will do.

I'm also expecting B2B will soon see an influx of the content mills that have caused so much trouble in B2C. That's going to cause havoc among content aggregators as well as original-content brands that have invested heavily in long-tail strategies.

The blind leading the blind

I'm also expecting a tremendous increase in the level of delusional thinking among B2B executives.

Watch for the same folks who forecast revenue surges in 2008 and a bounce-back in advertising in 2009 to predict that the end of the recession means ad rates will return to 2007 levels.

Watch too for executives and journalists to argue that the free, but generally poor quality content that is pervasive in B2B is suddenly worth paying for. (Note: if you're one of the folks who thinks he can salvage his brand by putting it behind a paywall, you may want to read Outsell's latest report on the challenges of the paid-content market.)

Change is good

My predictions last year were not meant to imply that B2B journalism itself was in any danger of disappearing. I was expecting change and shakeouts. And that's what we got.

I expect more of the same in 2010.

I also predicted that B2B journalism would soon be dominated by five types of companies (content marketing, data and tech, family-owned and other small firms, price-benchmark companies and entrepreneurs' networks.) A quick look around the industry today suggests that I was right about all of those except for the last.

At the same time, it would be misleading to suggest that the shift from the powerhouses of old is complete.

For example, content marketing had an extraordinary year in 2009. A year ago it was safe to assume that half the people in our industry had never even heard the phrase "content marketing." But that has changed. (Anecdotally, I can name a dozen or so top-notch B2B journalists of the top of my head who moved into content marketing last year. )

But there's clearly plenty more room for content marketing to grow.

There are still hundreds of B2B advertisers who haven't begun producing their own content ... yet. And my prediction that "sophisticated corporations (would begin) to purchase established B2B journalism brands and use them as the basis of their content-marketing efforts" has not come true ... yet.

For a detailed look at what I expect in 2010, you may want to read my predictions in Folio and Junta42.

But in summary, let me say this: the old days are over. We're in the midst of a fundamental shift in how people consume information and how the cost of producing that information can be covered.

There's no going back.

Ever.

Just like in 2009, there will be people who prosper amid the difficulties. And, just like in 2009, there will be people who suffer through no fault of their own.

Your task -- whether you're an editor, a salesperson, a publisher, marketer, c-suite executive, designer, j-student, etc -- is to position yourself where prosperity is possible and suffering is minimized.

In upcoming posts I'll write about the few bright spots I see in B2B as well as outline some of the moves that B2B companies and journalists should make in 2010 so that prosperity, not pain, dominates.

In the meantime, let me say "good luck."

I get the feeling we're all going to need it.

Am I big enough for marketing automation?

My career tends to be riddled with serendipity. I seem to find what I need through good fortune, rather than through any organized effort. Whenever I ask “how did I get here,” the answer is usually “because I got lucky.”
Let me tell you a story about what I mean:
I’m a consultant. That means I run a small business. But it’s about as small as a business can be. It’s a one-person operation with nothing to sell other than what’s in my head. If, heaven forbid, I were to get hit by a bus, my business would die with me. By the same token, if I decided to retire, my business would retire with me.
Lately, this has begun to trouble me. I’ve started thinking about ways to expand … looking for ways to turn my tiny consulting business into something that more closely resembles a real business -- with products, and employees and other such things. In other words, I started thinking about how I could convert Paul Conley Consulting into something that could exist without Paul Conley.
So I thought about it. And worried about it.
Then I got lucky.

Luck of the Draw
One day, staring at my Twitter stream, I saw that Jonathan Jordan, the business coach who tweets under the name @MindfullyChange, was offering a free hour of coaching to the first seven folks to respond to his tweet.
I responded … and I won.
A few days later, I spent an hour on the phone with Jonathan. It was eye-opening. I learned a tremendous amount, but one thing stood out: it became clear that I was uncomfortable with the tasks that are required to grow the business. I like to deliver consulting services. But I’m not crazy about selling consulting services. Thus I wasn’t selling.
Fortunately, this reluctance to actively market and sell my services has not been much of a problem. I’m booked solid nearly year-round. Between referrals, repeat business and the use of the Junta42 matching service, I find enough work to fill my time. But after chatting with Jonathan I realized that the only way to expand my business beyond what I can accomplish working alone would be to expand my marketing/sales role, while delegating more of the hands-on work to others.
(No doubt, entrepreneurs who are much smarter than I said something like “no kidding, that’s obvious” when reading that last paragraph.)
Yet with no real sales skills to speak of, I was perplexed about what to do next.
So I thought about my conversation with Jonathan. And I worried about it.
Then I got lucky, again.

Fortune Smiles
A few days after my chat with the business coach, I received an email from Junta42 saying I had been matched with a potential client. (I won’t go into all the details here, but if you’re a content provider in the B2B content arena, you really should be in Junta42’s vendor/customer matching system. For everyone else, you just need to know that Junta42 vets vendors like me, investigates our experience and then matches us with marketers who need help with content.)
I reached out to the prospect. We traded some emails. I had a few phone conversations with company executives. Then we struck a deal.
As is often the case when I land a new client, I have to rapidly get up to speed on them and their industry. That was true here as well. So I started researching my new client, a company called Whatsnexx, a new competitor in the marketing-automation space.
And several minutes into my research I realized that the answer to how to expand my sales/marketing efforts might be found in the world of marketing automation.
(No doubt, those smarter-than-I entrepreneurs just said “no kidding, that’s obvious” a second time and then hit the BACK button on their browsers. Everyone else may want to read a little further.)

Klaatu Barada Nikto
A few days ago my toddler daughter watched as I tried, and failed, to make a major repair in our home. Her heartfelt advice was “Don’t worry, Daddy. You can buy a robot to do it.”
That’s sort of how I’ve come to think of marketing automation. It’s the robot that does things I cannot do.

If you’re not familiar with marketing automation, I’ll try to explain it. But first, let me offer you a piece of heartfelt advice of my own: Don’t accept anyone’s definition of marketing automation.

In my entire career I’ve never run into an industry that has such a difficult time defining itself. Rather than agree on the parameters (in the way that all grocery chains accept that they are grocery chains or all car makers accept that they are car makers), marketing-automation companies seem to be engaged in an endless pissing match about who is and isn’t a marketing-automation company and what is and isn’t marketing automation.
Reading that stuff will make you nuts. No doubt talking to vendors in the space will do the same. So for now, let’s just use my definition: Marketing automation is a giant robot that can help you market things.
OK, so far?
Good. So let’s look at what’s inside the robot.

Connecting things to connect with your connections
Marketing automation is nothing more, and nothing less, than a system of making connections. Most marketing-automation companies do things that, for example, link your Web site analytics to your email-marketing efforts. Some marketing-automation companies connect CRM systems (like Salesforce) with other databases and communication systems. Some companies do large-scale integration of databases. My client, Whatsnexx, provides its services through a proprietary system that avoids the need for that integration. Almost everyone in the field is engaged in linking things that are not necessarily linked (PPC campaigns, call-center activities, ad placement, social-network marketing, etc.) Everyone in the field is engaged in making it easier for businesses to market and sell.
If you read this blog and are not a member of my immediate family, you probably work in editorial in B2B publishing or B2B content marketing. Odds are you’ve never heard of marketing automation. But odds are that your company is already engaged in it....or is looking at possible vendors.
But as I said at the beginning of this post, I’m not a big company. I’m a one-man operation. So the question for me was “Am I big enough for marketing automation?”
The answer is “yes, sort of.”

What's it cost?
Prices for marketing-automation solutions vary widely. But there are a number of players, including Whatsnexx, with prices that start at around $500 a month.
Some of the less-elaborate solutions such as Loopfuse and Genius offer free versions for small businesses.
The problem, however, is that all of these solutions require that you have some sort of marketing systems in place. If you don’t have anything to connect, then you’re not big enough for marketing automation.
I asked Jacques Spilka, the Senior Customer State Marketing Strategist for Whatsnexx, a version of the “Am I big enough for marketing automation” question. He said “All you really need to do MA is a list of contacts. Everything else is marketing to that list.”
But remarkably, for someone who has been running a business all these years, I don’t really have a list. I don’t have much of anything to connect. I run some Google ads. I have some basic Web analytics. Recently I started using the free version of Zoho to keep track of my customers and leads. But my prospect list is nothing more than a subset of my connections on LinkedIn and a handful of people that send me emails.
So before I can honestly say that I am big enough for marketing automation, I’ll need to get more serious about the whole sales and marketing thing and build a proper prospect list.
I guess it’s time for another session with my business coach.

A tale of two audiences

I visited the campus of Northwestern University a few weeks ago to do some recruiting for a client. Things worked out OK. I met a few interesting students. And at least one of them may get a job out of it.
But the overall experience of my day on campus was a bit disconcerting, as has often been the case when I visit with academics and students.
And, with one notable exception, things were disconcerting in the same way they've been for years now.

The more things change ...
First, let me mention the exception.
For the first time in the five years or so that I've been visiting with students, every single person I met at Northwestern had at least basic multimedia skills and some Web experience. I cannot begin to tell you what a relief that was.
On the other hand, I saw too much of the same-old nonsense I've come to expect on campuses. One student handed me a cover letter with spelling and grammar errors. Most of the students who signed up for an interview had failed to do even cursory research on me or my client. One didn't even know my name. Not one student could correctly answer my all-purpose, do-you-know-anything-about-business questions (1. Approximately where did the Dow close yesterday? And 2. Roughly what would it cost to buy an ounce of gold today? I was willing to accept anything remotely close to 10,000 and $1,000 as answers.)
And, of course, none of the students seemed to have any idea at all about B2B publishing.

When my day ended I left the old, dusty journalism building and walked about 15 yards to a brand-spanking-new building where a colleague was to give a presentation about opportunities in marketing.
And that brief journey was like walking into an entirely new world.
Whereas only two people had attended a presentation earlier in the day with me and a recruiter from the Village Voice, this room was packed with students from Northwestern's new program in integrated marketing communications.
More importantly, the students in the marketing meeting were engaged -- typing notes on laptops, asking good questions. They seemed excited and eager to learn.
I fell in love with those students.
That was the exact opposite of how I felt about my time with the journalism students.
Most of the future journalists seemed, well, disinterested. Only one seemed truly enthusiastic about the profession. They were largely unprepared and disengaged. Most didn't take notes until I suggested they do so. Two of them needed to borrow a pen.

The nice kids
I shouldn't have been surprised.
Because what I saw in those two buildings was, in a nutshell, what's happening across the entire communications industry. Journalists (and journalism teachers and students) are making incremental adjustments to the new world, but marketers and public-relations professionals (as well as teachers and students in those fields) are morphing like crazy.
Most of the marketing people I know love the new world. They're excited. They can't seem to believe their good fortune to be working in a field where the rules are being rewritten.
But many journalism folks I know can generally be described as somewhat less than thrilled. Those differing sentiments among professionals (and academics) must have an effect on students.
There's also no doubt that the economy has had an impact.
Prospective journalists are being told time and again that jobs are disappearing.
Marketing/p.r. students, on the other hand, seem to understand that the skills they are acquiring have value.

If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you know I'm not saying anything new.
It was more than three years ago that I first wrote of my concern that B2B journalists were adopting the techniques of conversational editorial more slowly than were the public relations and marketing executives of the industries we cover.
And it's been more than two years since I started writing about content marketing, which I see as the the most exciting and fastest-growing area in B2B publishing. And content marketing is nothing more (or less) than marketers learning to perform the tasks of journalists.
But what I saw at Northwestern was new, at least to me: that in academia, as in business, the marketing space is attracting an extraordinary new type of communicator; while journalism programs are producing a more skilled, but not-so-very-different-from-the-old-days type of person.

If you're interested in spreading the word about B2B among journalism programs, there are some things you can do.
First, reach out to the j-schools in your area. Offer to do a guest lecture. Make yourself available for interviews.
Second, offer your support to the ASBPE Foundation. Funding for the foundation is in short supply. It could do with your help. Among other academic-related efforts, the group hopes to endow a university chair for an "ASBPE professor of business-to-business journalism."

If you'd like to learn more about what's happening in the world of B2B marketing, public relations and content marketing, the Web is full of great resources.
Three of my new favorites are Mengel Musings, owned by Amy Mengel; the B2BBloggers site, dedicated to "shaping the future of btob marketing;" and Social Media B2B, described as "exploring the impact of social media on B2B."

Vanity, predictions and trumpets

You know those Google vanity alerts that incredibly arrogant, egotistical and self-centered people use to alert them whenever someone mentions them anywhere on the Web?
I have one of those.

It's a good thing too.
Because otherwise amid the hurricanes, nor'easters, power outages and business travel that have marked my life in recent weeks, I would have had no idea that the good people at the Content Marketing Institute said something nice about me. It turns out that it's hard to read email newsletters by candlelight on a computer without power. So by the time the lights went back on, I had an inbox full of stuff I had no time to read. So I deleted a slew of newsletters.

The vanity alerts, however, survived the purge.

The tricky thing about those vanity alerts, however, is that they also tell you when someone has said something not-so nice. And that's what I thought had happened when the alert told me I was mentioned in an article called "Failed Content Marketing Predictions Revealed."
Fortunately for me and my ego, the article discussed not just the predictions from earlier this year that were wrong, but also those that were correct.
As Joe Pulizzi put it: 'For 2012, Paul Conley predicted that, “Public-relations departments and advertising agencies will make a big move into content marketing. Uh, Paul… you got that right.'

You can, and should, read Joe's entire post. It contains insights from people who are brighter than I. And unless they have vanity alerts that prompted them to write Hooray-I-was-right blog posts like this one, you may have no idea how bright they are.

What you can't read ... at least not yet ... are my prediction for content marketing in 2013. I submitted mine a few days ago. And when the Content Marketing Institute publishes its full report on the industry for 2013 next month, I hope my predictions will be included.

Then next year around this time, assuming that I'm right (as any incredibly arrogant, egotistical and self-centered person would) I'll brag about it here again.

In the meantime I'll be working on my latest project; developing a software program that will play the sound of trumpets whenever someone on the Web says I got something right.

It takes six years to become a doctor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery... or to read this blog

Six years ago today I launched this blog.
My initial reaction to reaching this milestone is that I should say something about how quickly the time has slipped away. I feel I should say something like "it doesn't seem possible that six years have passed."
But that feels like a lie.

The truth is that when I look back over the past six years, it seems the time has dragged on forever. I want to scream "Six years! It feels like 600 years!"

Back when all this started, B2B journalism seemed so extraordinarily exciting. Time was flying. There was an urgency about things. Less than a year after starting this blog I had a sense that large numbers of journalists in B2B were making themselves unemployable by refusing to keep up with the pace of change. I wanted to do something to help. I felt invigorated and enthusiastic.
Now hundreds of those people are gone. But hundreds more remain. And as a result of the lingering malingerers, much of traditional B2B publishing turned into a technological and journalistic backwater.


But one man's stumble is another man's opportunity.
Thus the most amazing change from six years ago is how much of the B2B editorial world (both people and dollars) has moved into content marketing -- a term (and arguably an industry) that didn't even exist when I launched this blog.

A few hours ago, Junta 42 released its Content Marketing & Social Media Predictions for 2011 from 100 of the content-marketing industry's "thought leaders." (Disclosure: My predictions are included.)
I was excited to see the predictions. But before I even started reading them I was haunted by the question: Could anyone put together a credible list today of 100 thought leaders in B2B editorial that are NOT in content marketing?


For that in a nutshell is what has changed since this blog launched. At the start it seemed that each day introduced me to another remarkable, fascinating, ambitious person who believed that a new era of B2B journalism was emerging. Many of those folks were quite young. All of them were thought leaders. Getting to know them was the most extraordinary experience of my career. Those people were excited about B2B. And they kept me excited.

Now many of them are gone -- drifting off to law school, MBA programs and the like.

Many others, of course, are still in the business of B2B editorial. Perhaps half of those have moved into content marketing. Some others are still struggling to turn their traditional publications into something more suitable for the present era.

And so today, at the six-year mark, I feel I should say something to the folks who have been here since the very beginning:


Here we are. Six years later. And I'd like to thank you. Every comment, every email and every tweet from you has been great. More importantly, those all-too-rare meetings in the real world have been remarkable. You folks have been wonderful.
I'll be back with more posts in 2011. And you are all welcome to come visit. But I feel obliged to tell you something.
If you had enrolled in dental school on the day I launched this blog, you would now be an expert in pulling out other people's teeth. And certainly that has to be better than reading a blog that feels like having your own teeth pulled.
So think about that before you spend another six years here.