Content Marketing News: Fresh Tools and Acquisitions

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

This week, Robert and I report live from Content Marketing World in Sydney, Australia — our first live podcast ever! In this episode, we talk about a new report on sustainable digital business models from Pew Research, LinkedIn’s new content marketing tools, the acquisition of Klout by Lithium, and Copyblogger’s controversial decision to remove comments from its blog. Joining us are two special guests — another first for This Old Marketing — who provide valuable perspectives on this week’s news. 

This week’s show

(Recorded live on March 31, 2014; Length: 54:42)

This week’s episode is sponsored by King Content.

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Show overview

1. Content Marketing in the News

1. Pew’s State of the Media — In Search of a Sustainable Digital Business Model (2:23): A new report says digital publishing is struggling, and that advertising revenue isn’t enough to build a sustainable business. Robert and I expect to see a blurring of the lines among traditional media companies, digital production companies, and agencies that provide strategic services to brands. Traditional publishers will need to sell a variety of products and services to survive (contributing article: emedia vitals).
2. Lithium Acquires Klout (8:13): Robert and I saw this coming several months ago, but as far as our live audience is concerned, it’s a non-issue (contributing article: TechCrunch).
3. 

   Wheatland

   Our First-Ever Guest Speaker Joins the Conversation (9:35): Robert and I introduce Todd Wheatland, who recently joined King Content as Head of Strategy after a successful stint as CMO at KellyOCG. An expert on LinkedIn (among other things), Todd provides some keen insights into our next news item…

4. LinkedIn Adds Content Marketing Tools (12:58): The social media giant recently debuted new content scoring and curation tools for large brands. But who stands to benefit most — brands, or LinkedIn itself? And will these tools provide any value for the average content marketer? Robert, Todd, and I each offer our verdicts (contributing articles: TechCrunch and AdvertisingAge).
5. Copyblogger Removes Comments from Its Blog (21:40): This controversial move by the thought-leading Copyblogger has Robert, Todd, and I divided on what it might portend for the future of guest blogging. Though there are questions about how this completely removes all long-term context for posts, I believe this model is poised to become the standard for blogs, due to the massive amounts of conversation already taking place on social media channels (contributing article: Copyblogger).

2. Guest Speaker

1. 

   Washer

   Tim Washer, Senior Marketing Manager of Social Media for Cisco Systems (33:50): In his current role at Cisco and his previous job at IBM, Tim has succeeded in bringing humanity, emotion, and humor to technology products, thanks in part to his background as a comedy writer, storyteller, and stand-up comic. Robert, Tim and I talk about finding your voice, being honest and vulnerable, and fighting against corporate forces that tend to water down any content they touch.

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

Join Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose at CMI’s Content Marketing Master Class, where you’ll find the tools you need to create exceptional content, engage your audience, and grow your business. April 30, 2014 in Toronto, ON, Canada. 

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