Nov 5, 20165 min read

This Week in Content Marketing: Social Media Platforms Take More Victims

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

This week, Robert and I discuss Twitter’s decision to kill Vine and offer our thoughts on why brands and content creators should have seen this coming. We explore the growing trend of agencies launching print magazines, and praise IDG’s content creation model as one all brands should emulate. Rants and raves include an argument against starting a podcast and five ways to scare your boss into embracing content marketing; then we wrap up with an example of the week from Google.

This week’s show

(Recorded live on October 31, 2016; Length: 1:02:06)

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Noosh: Each year we cull through thousands of Content Marketing projects to gather useful insights about costs, collaboration, vendor management, and more. We’ve analyzed more than 175,000 projects from companies around the world to summarize things like the average cost of a project, number of team members, time to complete, etc. Download your copy of this essential benchmark now to see how your company compares to averages around the world! Get the Content Marketing Benchmark Report!

1. Content marketing in the news

Twitter shuts down Vine 4 years after purchasing it (10:38): As reported in Adweek (and elsewhere), the app that pioneered 6-second looping videos is being yanked for failing to take root with marketers or thrive in the shadow of walled-garden competitors like Snapchat and Instagram. While I feel truly bad for the content creators who built their audiences on this platform, Robert and I both consider this yet another in a long line of reasons why marketers should not leave themselves vulnerable to the whims of third-party media platforms.Marketers should not leave themselves vulnerable to the whims of 3rd party media platforms says @joepulizzi. Click To Tweet

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Vine shutdown is a big loss for black culture (15:06): In a related story, Vox laments the impact that Vine’s demise may have on the African-American creative community in particular, contending that the technological and cultural inaccessibility of the app-only video site made it a uniquely welcoming place for marginalized audiences seeking a greater degree of creative freedom and personal expression online. While both Robert and I found this to be a particularly disheartening side effect, we also see potential for a business or brand that embraces this community to purchase Vine technology and make it their own.
Why you may soon be seeing more agencies launch their own print magazines (18:10): Following the latest magazine launch by think tank JWT Intelligence, our second Adweek article of the week predicts the rise in print publishing ventures as a way for agencies to connect with clients, as well as with their own internal teams. While Robert wonders if we’ll ever see an agency launch a print magazine that’s focused on something other than “life at an agency,” I remain hopeful that this is the direction they will ultimately be moving toward.
How IDG approaches editorial strategy (26:17): In a recent profile published on Fipp, John Gallant, chief content officer at leading tech publisher IDG, describes how his team fulfills the company’s mission of identifying high-value individual audiences within the larger tech community. Robert and I both feel this is an extremely timely, relevant and well-detailed case study, as well as a fascinating example of how publishers can use content to deliver multiple lines of value.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Tell Stories Your Readers Crave: Ideas From a Content Powerhouse

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3. Rants and raves (43:25)

Joe’s rave: The good folks at Spark Media Solutions have produced a new YouTube video on five “terrifying” consumer behavior changes that may be impacting your marketing results. Scare tactics aside, it’s a wonderful resource full of compelling stats you can use to justify your marketing spend to your organization’s stakeholders. I encourage everyone out there to subscribe to Spark’s YouTube channel, Spark Minute, as well.

Robert’s gentle rant: A blog post on Thought Catalog hit Robert’s inbox this week, urging people NOT to start their own podcasts — particularly if they are only doing it to cash in on the current trend. While Robert doesn’t take issue with the author’s talking points, per se, he offers a counterpoint that he feels corrects the universally discouraging tone of the original conversation.

Robert’s rave: Robert also gives a big shout-out to Paul Roetzer, founder of Cleveland agency PR 20/20, on the launch of his new venture, the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute. The thought leadership initiative aims to tell the story of the AI movement from a marketing perspective. Robert is extremely encouraged by this fascinating experiment and encourages anyone who is interested in the field of AI to check it out.

4. This Old Marketing example of the week (54:06)

Think With Google: I was shocked to discover that we haven’t yet featured Think With Google — the company’s regular publication targeting marketers and advertisers — as a TOM example, even though it originally debuted as Google’s Zero Moments of Truth research back in 2011. Among its findings, that groundbreaking study pointed out that 88% of consumers conduct their own research before making a purchase and consult an average of 10.4 online sources — insights which, at the time, were eye-opening revelations in the marketing industry. Since then Google has expanded the initiative into a fully-fledged resource with a mission of providing compelling data, big ideas, helpful tools, and creative inspiration that marketers can use to inform their strategies and campaigns. One thing I found to be super-interesting is that they heavily focus their online calls to action on their email newsletter — each page has at least two CTAs. But that’s not the only thing they must be doing right. Over the last five years, Think With Google has become one of the most frequently cited sources of credible industry research and trend analysis, which is a testament to just how committed this effort is to helping marketers be better marketers.