Blog Content: The Future of Guest Posts and Date Stamping

PNR: This Old Marketing with Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose can be found on both iTunes and Stitcher.

In our most contentious episode yet, Robert and I debate a declaration of the demise of guest blog content, argue with analysts’ view of the value of Twitter, and take issue with some blogs’ lack of transparent date stamping. Then, we take a deep breath before shifting our focus to an amazing, electricity-free content creation effort and an inspiring example of a video game company that is transforming itself into an educational resource on media for its customers.

This week’s show

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Show overview

1. Content Marketing in the News

• Now Guest Blogging Is Dead, Too?: Google’s Matt Cutts threw a bomb at the search engine marketing community by declaring that links received through guest blogging will no longer make an impact in search rankings. Robert and I talk about the main benefits of guest blogging, and that the key objective behind creating this type of blog content doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with search (contributing article: Matt Cutts).
• Twitter and Facebook Shares Are Not a Part of Google’s Algorithm: Matt Cutts had a busy week! In a separate discussion, Cutts also declared that Google does not currently take social signals from Twitter or Facebook into account in its search rankings. Robert believes that, though this isn’t Google’s current practice, all search engines will be leveraging social signals in the very near future (contributing article: Search Engine Land).
• Why Analysts Are Wrong About Twitter: Robert and I also discuss an article from Eric Wittlake that details how and why analysts are getting Twitter’s valuation all wrong (contributing article: B2B Digital).
• Magazine Labels Ad as News: A recent New York Times article berated Shape magazine for treating clear advertorial like it was news. We discuss the ramifications of this for both marketers and publishers (contributing article: The New York Times).
• How Do Media Companies Create Scarcity?: We share a new take on an old thought about media companies creating truly unique content — and where the opportunities now lie for advertisers (contributing article: Forbes).
• NewsCred Raises More Money: Content marketing platform NewsCred announced a $25 million dollar series C round. We note that 2014 is already off to a fast start, in reference to our earlier content marketing and venture capital predictions for this year (contributing article: TechCrunch).
• Marketer Spending Is Up: Spending on both content marketing and mobile continues to take off, according to multiple research reports (contributing article: eMarketer).

2. Rants & Raves

• Robert’s Rave: Robert shares an amazing story about how Fundacao EDP created a brochure without using any electricity or other energy sources. (The company even filmed a video about it without using electricity):

• Joe’s Rant: While I discuss my general dislike of blog posts that lack a visible publishing date, I also reference some compelling comments made by Jay Baer, Brian Clark, and others in support of “no date” when I took my rant to Facebook. (You can view the full Facebook thread here.)

3. Listener Question

Through Twitter, Daniel Anderson asked us, “What’s our take on how to measure sales on content marketing?” — based on an AdAge article that talked about how marketers are struggling with measurement.

4. This Old Marketing Example of the Week

• Mojang (the video game company behind the smash hit, Minecraft), holds an annual customer event called Minecon, in which half of the educational sessions discuss how players can create content platforms and build an online audience — rather than focusing on the game itself. (For even more details on the media implications in play here, check out my post about Minecraft’s customer event on LinkedIn.)

For a full list of the PNR archives, go to the main This Old Marketing page.

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