As a Content Marketing Professional, I’m always excited to attend industry conferences and seminars. March 19-23 I attended Search Engine Strategies in New York City. This particular conference covers a wide range of topics in the world of search and online marketing, with everything from analytics tools to PPC and social media tracking to mobile SEO.

If pressed to designate one prevailing theme from this year’s edition of SES NYC, I’d have to say it was “understanding.”

No matter the size of your business or your product line, if you’re in charge of branding and marketing, you are probably spending a good bit of time thinking about how to leverage content in your marketing efforts. It’s helpful to look to one of the world’s leading brands to learn about their perspective on content, especially as it relates to storytelling and brand messaging.

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Is a Content Style Guide Just for Grammar Nerds?
A Content Style Guide is more than just an ivory tower document steering writers away from using hyphens when they should be using dashes and elucidating the mysteries of the comma splice. Rather, it’s a working document that should be organized, clearly written and easy to use for anyone responsible for inputting content—images, videos or text—onto a site, be they grammar nerd or otherwise.

Juxtaposing outsourcing and crowdsourcing in his 2006 article for WIRED magazine, Jeff Howe coined the term for crowdsourcing by discussing how an early photo sharing website, iStockphoto, capitalized on this idea and put the common stock photographer out of business. No longer are stock photos outsourced to photographers when you can purchase the photo for a $1 from the crowd on iStockphoto.

In a recent study done by the Custom Content Council branded content spend reached an all-time high in 2011.

With publication budgets increasing by 68% in 2011 over 2010, the study noted that 26% of the overall spend was on branded content and 39% of respondents favored electronic content over print and other forms. Interestingly enough, the study did note a significant trend away from traditional marketing to branded content.

I traveled to New York this week with several colleagues to attend the Custom Content Council’s Pearl Awards. It’s the custom content industry’s highest honors and we were thrilled to participate for the first time and accept two Pearl Awards for the work we did on behalf of our client, Carlson.

As a creative director who traces her roots to the advertising industry, it was a common practice for my department to first design an advertisement or brochure and worry about the content later. We would show our beautiful layouts to the client for approval and the copy would be “greeked-In”, lorem ipsum dolor, based on the prevailing thought that no one actually reads the copy anyway.

Anyone in the marketing field is familiar with the term brand publishing, but with the move away from traditional advertising, the topic has become increasingly more important.

With the Internet and social media, the mass media techniques once solely used are far less effective. Brands are forced to find different ways of reaching customers, and it seems they have found it in the form of brand publishing.

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Content curators define their job as picking the best content on the Web and sharing it with customers for the same reasons that companies create original content: educating, engaging and attracting more customers according to Pawan Despande, CEO of HiveFire.

Over dinner, my wife, Kelly, and I generally try to avoid work-related topics because they end up being one-sided and, essentially, not very engaging for the spouse who isn't doing the talking (see #1 below!).

Last night, though, was an exception.

Of late, EVG’s Director of New Markets, Ryan Thrasher, has been spending an ever increasing amount of time in Washington, DC. Amidst the budding cherry blossoms and monuments to democracy, he finds his thoughts turning to content marketing …

You probably know that EVG began life, in part, based on the travels of our intrepid CEO, Brice Bay. So it’s not surprising that various members of our team can be found on the move. Eric Ingrand is just back from a quick trip to London for the Changing Media Summit sponsored by the Guardian on March 23 and 24th.

As a Content Strategist for EVG, I love working with hotel clients to help them figure out how they can make the biggest impact with their website and other online content. So, when our Business Developer in Europe, Eric Ingrand, approached me about writing a guest piece that focuses on the best tips for content marketing online for TNOOZ, I jumped on it.

EVG CEO Brice Bay traveled across the pond in mid-January to hook up with our Director of Business Development for Europe, Eric Ingrand, and attend the Content Strategy Applied, London.

The EnVeritas team is back from the AHAA (Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies) Annual Conference in Miami, and in addition to the usual conference grab bag full of flyers, key chains and USB sticks, we are bringing a ton of great information back to Greenville.