Trevor Young | PR Warrior blog | Where PR meets social media meets content marketing

Who's Who in the Content Marketing Zoo

Toby Murdock, publisher of The Content Marketeer and the CEO of content marketing software platform Kapost, recently compiled this useful list of the top 50 brands in content marketing (in partnership with ClickZ).

If you're interested in the (fast) emerging speciality that is 'content marketing' and want to check out practical examples of (major) brands that are doing it well, then you might want to trawl through the list below. 

Absorb a good chunk of what these brands are doing and you'll quickly gain a better-than-average understanding as to why the discipline of content marketing is a critical one for brands to understand and, if relevant, consider using as part of their marketing arsenal.

A tip - if you are someone who thinks publishing your own content online is all about you and your company's products and services, then take special note of what these brands are doing!

Thanks Toby for sharing this useful resource!

 The Content Marketeer 50: Brands to Watch in 2012

Rank	Brand	Content Marketing Index
1	American Express	400
2	Intuit	384
3	General Mills	377
4	Mr. Porter	373
5	IBM	365
6	Kate Spade	363
7	Williams-Sonoma	350
8	Cisco	347
9	Verizon	347
10	Liberty Mutual	346
11	P&G (HomemadeSimple)	345
12	Birchbox	344
13	Unilever (Degree Men)	342
14	Patagonia	340
15	L’Oreal	337
16	GE	336
17	P&G (ManoftheHouse)	335
18	Bergdorf Goodman	332
19	Tory Burch	331
20	Eloqua	324
21	Whole Foods	321
22	The Boston Consulting Group	318
23	Adobe	317
24	Marketo	317
25	Anthropologie	315
26	Zillow	315
27	Zappos	314
28	Fiskars	311
29	Southwest Airlines	308
30	Sun Life Financial	306
31	AT&T	303
32	Playstation	301
33	SEOMoz	299
34	Kelly Outsourcing and Consulting	296
35	Barneys New York	294
36	Deloitte	292
37	Radian 6	292
38	Starbucks	292
39	Dell	290
40	P&G (BeingGirl)	289
41	Amazon	287
42	Target	287
43	Evernote	278
44	Macy’s	267
45	The Gap	266
46	AtTask	262
47	Pepsico	259
48	Ebay	250
49	Wegmans	250
50	SAP	247

Content Marketing and Small Business

FOOTNOTE: The brands listed above by and large are pretty big companies. If you're an entrepreneur who runs a small but growing business, don't be disheartened! From my experience, some of the better exponents of content marketing come from the smaller end of the business spectrum.

In fact, it's often easier for a start-up or a small established company run by an active entrepreneur with a tiny but passionate team to create compelling content and distribute via social channels. Smaller companies tend to know their audiences well, and content marketing works most effectively when a brand is in-sync with its customers.

My Video Interview with Brian Solis at PR Directions 2011

At the recent Public Relations Institute of Australia’s PR Directions national conference in Sydney I had the opportunity to catch up with best-selling author and renowned new media thinker Brian Solis following his opening keynote address.

I wrote about the presentation here: Brian Solis on Branded Journalism and the 'Connected Consumer'.

The video was shot by Burning House Productions on behalf of the PRIA. 

Brian Solis on Brand Journalism and the ‘Connected Consumer’

Best-selling author and renowned new media thinker Brian Solis delivered a neatly-packaged glimpse into the future of public relations during his opening keynote address at the Public Relations Institute of Australia’s PR Directions national conference in Sydney this week.

Could Solis have jam packed any more information into his one-hour presentation? I think not. That said, social media and its effect on PR and marketing is a massive multi-headed beast of a subject, and so props to Solis for being able to paint such a broad (but vivid) picture within his allotted one and a bit hours.

It was perfect timing because he has only just released his new book: The End of Business As Usual (Rewire the way you work to succeed in the consumer revolution) and the theme of his presentation was more or less along these lines.

These quotes, from an interview with Solis that appeared yesterday in ZDNet, will give you a pretty good feel for Solis’s current pitch:

The End of Business as Usual is aimed squarely at change agents and business leaders. It isn’t about social media as much as it is about building a business that connects with a new generation of connected customers.

Think about the ties that bind in social media for a moment. Everything and everyone is connected by shared experiences. What you’re doing, what you’re witnessing, what moves you, what you’re learning, what you love, what you hate, you are compelled to share your experiences.

When it comes to businesses, shared experiences assemble to form a brand that’s co-created by the consumers who experience it. Connected customers see this pool of experiences within their social streams or in the results of a social search. Experiences are influential and they are absent from a traditional Google search.

The ‘Connected Consumer’

Solis talks a lot about the ‘connected consumer’.

He says you don’t need to connect with everybody, you just have to connect with ‘hubs’ (of connected consumers).

He also advises looking beyond the major social networking platforms, saying that just because you set up a Facebook or Twitter account doesn’t mean you’re hitting the connected consumer.

It’s how we earn relevance with the connected consumer that’s important.

“My job is to speak through you (the connected consumer)…that changes my entire strategy”.

Brand Journalism

Solis is a staunch advocate for the concept of ‘brand journalism’, saying: “We have to become the resource, we have to become the influencer”.

He introduces the idea of creating a new role within the organisation – the CEO, or Chief Editorial Officer.

People will follow you if you provide information that helps them, Solis says.

He gives the example of Cisco’s ‘The Network’ technology news site for which the company hired journalists and bloggers to write content that’s of interest to customers.

The website’s audience is in some cases bigger than the publications that cover the tech industry.

Flipboard has reportedly hired a senior editor from Forbes magazine to manage its brand journalism efforts.

Indium Corporation, which manufactures among other things solders and semiconductor assembly materials (yep, very sexy stuff!) created content around questions people were asking for/searching for online.  

The company’s portfolio of blogs (yep, they have way more than one, indeed its portfolio of blogs is written by a team of 15 writers) -  increased inbound leads by 600%! More on Indium here.

 “Content is not king,” Solis contends. “Context is king”.

(NOTE: author David Meerman Scott is also a strong advocate for the concept of brand journalism – check out his take on it here).

Paid, Owned & Earned Media … and more

In PR circles, the concept of paid, owned and earned media is now well accepted.

However, Solis throws two more into the equation – ‘promoted’ and ‘shared’ media (i.e. shared media = Dell’s IdeaStorm and the My Starbucks Idea platforms; promoted media = promoted tweets and sponsored Facebook stories).

Solis gives the example of Budweiser which created a Wordpress site that became a hub for Bud content that was interesting and newsworthy, and targeted to people who loved commercials, Superbowl and beer.

“It’s about making something so interesting it’s shareable,” he says.

“This is a time when we can become part of the story.”

Solis urges brands to adapt to a new KISS model: Keep It Significant and Shareable.

Resonance is the new ROI

Solis is big on listening to connected consumers – he says you’ve got to listen so you know what they want … “it’s about intelligence, not (just) monitoring for followers and likes”.

Intelligence, he maintains, translates into insight which in turn can translate into ideas.

“Being in public relations is more incredible than ever before,” he says.

 

PIC: Brian Solis and the PR Warrior rub shoulders at PR Directions.