by John Hall
Contently (https://contently.com/)
Contently is a technology company that helps brands create great content at scale with smart technology, content strategy expertise, and a network of 50,000 freelance creatives.
Hootsuite (https://hootsuite.com/)
Hootsuite is a social relationship platform that empowers users to execute social media strategies across their organizations and social platforms and channels.
Influence & Co. (https://www.influenceandco.com/)
Influence & Co. is a content marketing agency that specializes in knowledge extraction and management to create and distribute engaging content that fuels companies’ content marketing efforts and positions their key employees as influencers in their industries.
ion interactive (https://www.ioninteractive.com/)
ion interactive empowers modern marketers to produce engaging, interactive content marketing that generates higher-quality leads with an agile technology platform that launches, customizes, and tests all types of state-of-the-art interactive content marketing experiences without development resources.
NewsCred (http://www.newscred.com/)
NewsCred enables brands to easily manage content creation, distribution, and measurement—across channels, teams, and global markets—all on a single platform.
Quietly (https://www.quiet.ly/)
Quietly helps brands and publishers develop data-driven content that focuses on timeless topics to be promoted (and repromoted) to increase reach, traffic, and revenue by using proprietary tools and analytics, keyword trends, and competitive landscape research to shape evergreen content marketing opportunities.
Scripted (https://www.scripted.com)
Scripted offers freelance writing services from a network of thousands of industry-vetted writers to companies large and small to launch their content marketing efforts.
Skyword (http://www.skyword.com/)
Skyword moves brands—and their content—forward with a powerful combination of enterprise-class technology, authentic voices, and professional services and embraces a sustainable, scalable approach to original storytelling.
SnapApp (http://www.snapapp.com/)
SnapApp is an interactive content marketing platform that empowers marketers to create, deploy, manage, and measure a wide range of interactive content across multiple channels with full customization and design control to ensure content looks great on any device.
Sniply (https://snip.ly/)
Sniply is a social media conversion tool that adds custom calls to action to any page on the web, allowing users to engage followers and create conversion opportunities through every link they share.
Toptal (https://www.toptal.com/)
Toptal is an exclusive network of the top freelance software developers, designers, and finance experts in the world.
Search, Social, and Content Discovery
AddThis (http://www.addthis.com/)
AddThis is the leading provider of behavioral audience data and website marketing tools that help brands build more authentic customer relationships through insight, activation, and personalization products powered by the AddThis Audience Intelligence (Ai) platform.
Buffer (https://buffer.com/)
Buffer is a tool to schedule, optimize, and manage all your social media posts, photos, and videos to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google+.
BuzzSumo (http://buzzsumo.com/)
BuzzSumo is a tool that provides social insights for content marketing and SEO campaigns by analyzing what topics, headlines, and content formats your audience shares, as well as analyzing your competitors’ top content.
Dynamic Signal (https://dynamicsignal.com/)
Dynamic Signal is a social marketing company and leading employee communications platform that helps businesses consistently deliver relevant and personalized communications to their employees to ignite advocacy and engagement.
Kissmetrics (https://www.kissmetrics.com/)
Kissmetrics is an analytics and conversion solution built to help growth marketers measure revenue and customer behavior.
Likeable Local (http://www.likeablelocal.com/)
Likeable Local offers social media marketing software solutions that allow small businesses to create, enhance, and manage their social media presence.
MavSocial (http://mavsocial.com/)
MavSocial is a social publishing and analytics tool designed to help brands and agencies create, manage, and promote visual and media content on social channels.
Moz (https://moz.com/)
Moz develops inbound marketing software, provides robust APIs for link data and social influence, and hosts the web’s most vibrant community of online marketers.
Outbrain (http://www.outbrain.com/)
Outbrain is the world’s largest content discovery platform, bringing personalized, relevant mobile and video content to audiences while helping publishers understand their audiences through data.
PostBeyond (https://postbeyond.com/)
PostBeyond bridges the gaps in workforce communications systems to deliver a modern work experience and engage your employee advocates by enabling employees and partners to post approved brand content to their personal networks in an efficient, consistent, and measurable way.
Revcontent (https://www.revcontent.com/)
Revcontent is the world’s fastest-growing content recommendation and native advertising network, powering 250 billion content recommendations a month.
Searchmetrics (http://www.searchmetrics.com/)
Searchmetrics is a search and content optimization platform that provides customers with competitive advantage, helps identify new business opportunities by highlighting content consumers are engaging with on industry and competitor sites, and offers suggestions for content creation that improves relevance and boosts conversions.
SEMrush (www.semrush.com)
SEMrush is a leading competitive keyword and AdWords research tool that helps users learn about their (and their competitors’) digital marketing campaigns.
Smarp (http://www.smarp.com/)
Smarp is an employee communication, advocacy, and engagement app that brings company news and content to the fingertips of employees, keeping teams up to date, engaging them to communicate, and helping them share their knowledge with their own social networks.
Socedo (http://www.socedo.com/)
Socedo is a demand generation system that empowers B2B marketers to discover, engage, and qualify prospects through social media to increase revenue at scale.
SocialOomph (https://www.socialoomph.com/)
SocialOomph provides a free and paid productivity service for social media that allows users to organize and analyze Twitter accounts in one place while also tracking keywords, mentions, and retweets across multiple accounts.
SocialRank (https://socialrank.com/)
SocialRank makes it easy to understand, organize, identify, segment, and manage users’ most engaged, valuable followers on Instagram and Twitter.
Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com/)
Sprout Social is a social media management, analytics, engagement, and CRM tool that helps businesses grow their social presence and audience.
Taboola (https://www.taboola.com/)
Taboola is the leading content discovery platform that provides publishers the option to display content recommendations in three ways: with content discovery widgets, in-stream native ads, or a hybrid, displaying articles, videos, slideshows, and other content, both from within the site and from other advertisers and publishers.
TweetDeck (https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/)
TweetDeck is a social media dashboard app for Twitter that offers improved user experience and greater flexibility by allowing users to view multiple timelines in one interface, manage multiple accounts, schedule and manage posts, and more.
WordStream (https://www.wordstream.com/)
WordStream provides software and services to help online marketers maximize the
performance of their paid search and social campaigns, driving traffic, leads, and sales for lower costs by automating proven best practices and delivering expert-level results in a fraction of the time for campaigns on Google AdWords, Bing, and Facebook.
PR Resources
AirPR (https://www.airpr.com/)
AirPR is the leading industry educator and technology solution that helps businesses better measure PR’s impact by providing analytics, insights, and measurement solutions for the evolving PR industry.
Cision (http://www.cision.com/us/)
Cision is a leading media communication technology and analytics company that enables marketers and communicators to effectively manage their earned media programs in coordination with paid and owned channels to drive business impact.
PRWeb (http://service.prweb.com/home/)
PRWeb is an online press release distribution network that helps you create buzz, increase online visibility, and drive website traffic.
These are some of the most common and trusted resources used by me, my team, and others I trust. Again, please reach out to me at [email protected] if you need any assistance connecting to the right solution for your business.
NOTES
Chapter 1
1 BI Intelligence, “Ad-Block Software Is Approaching 200 Million Users—Here’s How Publishers Are Reacting,” Business Insider, September 29, 2015, http://www.businessinsider.com/ad-blocking-software-has-200-million-users-2015-8?op=1.
2 PageFair Team, “The 2015 Ad Blocking Report,” PageFair (blog), August 10, 2015, https://pagefair.com/blog/2015/ad-blocking-report/.
3 Bryan Kramer, “There Is No More B2B or B2C: It’s Human to Human,” Bryan Kramer (blog), January 27, 2014, http://www.bryankramer.com/there-is-no-more-b2b-or-b2c-its-human-to-human-h2h/.
4 Lisa Gevelber, “Why Consumer Intent Is More Powerful Than Demographics,” December 2015, https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/why-consumer-intent-more-powerful-than-demographics.html.
5 HubSpot, “The Inbound Methodology,”https://research.hubspot.com/reports/the-state-of-inbound-2015.
6 HubSpot, “State of Inbound 2015,” http://www.stateofinbound.com.
7 Lori Wizdo, “Buyer Behavior Helps B2B Marketers Guide the Buyer’s Journey,” Lori Wizdo’s Blog, Forrester, October 4, 2012, http://blogs.forrester.com/lori_wizdo/12-10-04-buyer_behavior_helps_b2b_marketers_guide_the_buyers_journey.
8 Laurie Beasley, “Why It Takes 7 to 13+ Touches to Deliver a Qualified Sales Lead (Part 1),” OMI, October 10, 2013, https://www.onlinemarketinginstitute.org/blog/2013/10/why-it-takes-7-to-13-touches-to-deliver-a-qualified-sales-lead-part1/.
9 CareerBuilder, How to Rethink the Candidate Experience and Make Better Hires, http://resources.careerbuilder.com/guides/candidate-experience-guide.
Chapter 2
1 Jeff Jones, “The Truth Hurts,” LinkedIn, May 13, 2014, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140513221110-3501295-the-truth-hurts.
2 Jeff Haden, “How to Be Exceptionally Likable: 11 Things the Most Charming People Always Do,” Inc., December 22, 2015, http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/how-to-be-exceptionally-likable-11-things-the-most-charming-people-always-do.html.
3 Tim Urban, “Elon Musk: The World’s Raddest Man,” Wait but Why (blog), May 7, 2015, http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-man.html.
4 John Hall, “4 C-Suite Objections to Content Marketing and How to Overcome Them,” Forbes, December 1, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhall/2013/12/01/4-c-suite-objections-to-content-marketing-and-how-to-overcome-them/#15ad4bd97a02.
Chapter 3
1 Shane Snow, “The Rise of the Superconnector,” April 2, 2013, http://www.fastcompany.com/3007657/rise-superconnector.
2 Just e-mail [email protected], and someone from Influence & Co. will respond with an answer for you—and, many times, even an introduction or discount code to help you get started.
3 MediaKix Team, “How Brands Can Reach New Audiences with Micro-Influencers,” June 29, 2016, http://mediakix.com/2016/06/micro-influencers-definition-marketing/#gs.wFYUzm8.
4 These are just a few of the tools that can help you manage your relationships. Check out the Resource Library at the end of this book or shoot me an e-mail at topof [email protected] for recommendations.
5 Again, if you’re looking for recommendations for this practice, reach out to topof [email protected], and I can connect you to the right resources.
6 You can check out topof mindbook.com/resources for customizable spreadsheet templates my team created to make this process simpler for you and to reference our software recommendations.
Chapter 4
1 Brené Brown, “The Power of Vulnerability,” filmed June 2010, TED video, https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?language=en#t-406950.
2 MarketingCharts, “Honesty Is the Best Corporate Policy,” January 27, 2010, http://www.marketingcharts.com/traditional/honesty-is-the-best-corporate-policy-11762/.
3 Jodi Kantor and Avid Streitfeld, “Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace,” New York Times, August 15, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html.
4 Nick Ciubotariu, “An Amazonian’s Response to ‘Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace,’” LinkedIn, August 16, 2015, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazonians-response-inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-nick-ciubotariu.
5 December 17, 2015, http://qz.com/571151/the-mast-brothers-fooled-the-world-into-buying-crappy-hipster-chocolate-for-10-a-bar/.
6 Tim Cook, “A Message to Our Customers,” Apple, February 16, 2016, http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/.
7 You can download a knowledge bank template to start storing and organizing your team’s knowledge here: offers.influenceandco.com/knowledge-management-landing-page. You can also browse the Resource Library in this book for other software options.
8 Nadav Klein and Ed O’Brien, “The Tipping Point of Moral Change: When Do Good and Bad Acts Make Good and Bad Actors?” Social Cognition 34, no. 2 (July 2016):149–66, http://home.uchicago.edu/~nklein/MoralTippingPoint.pdf.
Chapter 5
1 Ajay Banga, “Financial Inclusion by 2020: Our Generation’s Equivalent of Putting a Man on the Moon,” LinkedIn, November 12, 2013, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20131112154659-283931055-financial-inclusion-by-2020-our-generation-s-equivalent-of-putting-a-man-on-the-moon.
2 Southtree, “10 Unforgettable Statistics About Human Memory,” April 21, 2015, https://southtree.com/memories-matter/statistics-about-human-memory.
3 Alison Preston, “How Does Short-Term Memory Work in Relation to Long-Term Memory?” Scientific American, September 26, 2007, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-short-term-memory-to-long-term/.
4 Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability,” Cognitive Psychology 5, no. 2 (September 1973): 207–32, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0010028573900339.
5 Kelsey Meyer, “Does Thought Leadership Ever End?” Influence & Co., October 6, 2015, https://blog.influenceandco.com/does-thought-leadership-ever-end.
Chapter 6
1 Content Marketing Institute, “B2B Content Marketing 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America,” 2015, http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2016_B2B_Report_Final.pdf.
2 Jonathan Becher, “The Psychology of the To-Do List,” Forbes, March 17, 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2014/03/17/the-psychology-of-the-to-do-list/#42ae71ab3a37.
3 If you don’t want to build a team around you, then hire the resources you need to get the job done. (I actually hire my own company to do this for me because of my time constraints and challenges with writing.) No matter what, work out a collaborative creative process that uses everyone’s strengths to execute.
4 Ulrich Boser, “The Power of the Pygmalion Effect: Teachers Expectations Strongly Predict College Completion,” Cente
r for American Progress, October 6, 2014, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2014/10/06/96806/the-power-of-the-pygmalion-effect/.
5 Christopher Heine, “How IBM Got 1,000 Staffers to Become Brand Advocates on Social Media,” Adweek, July 1, 2015, http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/how-ibm-got-1000-staffers-become-brand-advocates-social-media-165664.
6 The tools listed in the Resource Library of this book, as well as those available at topof mindbook.com/resources can offer assistance to maximize your content distribution.
Chapter 7
1 And it’s worked for us. As a result, you can now search terms such as “content marketing companies” and “thought leadership companies” and find that our company consistently shows up. We’ve grown closer and closer to creating that content utopia.
Chapter 8
1 Simon Sinek, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” filmed September 2009, TED video, https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en.
2 I personally love this exercise, and I encourage you to give it a try, too. Does your company’s communication truly communicate that why? Is that at the core of your content strategy? Do you personally communicate that why when you’re interacting with customers and partners?
When I last went through this exercise, I realized that I often got stuck on the how or the what and didn’t always get to the why, which is the most vital element of any communication strategy.
3 The Economist Group, “Missing the Mark: Global Content Survey of Brand Marketers and Their B2B Audiences,” 2014, http://www.missingthemark.ads.economist.com/presentation.
4 Sumi Krishnan, “5 Powerful Rules for Women Entrepreneurs to Live By,” Entrepreneur, April 6, 2015, https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244402.