3 Alternative Content Marketing Strategies

3 Alternative Content Marketing Strategies:by Joe Pulizzi
With Content Marketing World coming up in just a few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of content marketing.  The industry has been moving faster than I ever could have anticipated. Along with the big issues of content management, content sourcing, content distribution, content integration, etc., I think there are some alternative content marketing strategies that we need to start paying attention to.  Here are three that have been keeping me up at night.

Brandscaping

I’m halfway through Andrew Davis’ new book Brandscaping and I’m already starting to think differently about how content partnerships can work. Essentially, a brandscape is a collection of brands that work together to produce great content. I’m starting to believe that this is critical to the evolution of content marketing, as more brands inherently struggle with managing the content marketing process.  More to come on Andrew’s book in a future post, but I believe we should all start to think of how unconventional content partnerships fit into our overall content marketing strategy.

The Talent Scout

Andrew goes into detail about the importance of identifying talent for your content initiatives.
I’ve traditionally thought of the Chief Content Officer role as the chief storyteller within the brand.  It’s a function that is sorely needed within most organizations. But who identifies the talent?  Is that the CCO’s role?  If it isn’t, it certainly should be.  This goes beyond sourcing and into strategic talent scouting on behalf of the brand story.
So if we aren’t actively looking for content talent, in all its forms (audio, video, textual), it seems we are missing an opportunity. Yes?

Buying Talent

I started working at Penton Media, a large B2B media company, back in 2000.  In 2003, I remember taking a proposal to the CEO stating that we should form a partnership with eBay Business, in the hopes that they would ultimately buy us.  Penton was struggling financially in those days, while eBay was soaring.
Although the idea received literally no attention, the model was sound.  Penton reached over a million business customers.  Ebay Business was trying to become the gateway to business purchasing.  Why should eBay buy ads in Penton publications when they could own the content and ultimately purchase Penton?
10 years ago, this idea may have seemed silly…a brand buying a media company.  Today (that is, right now) your brand should be salivating at the opportunities in front of you.  Bloggers and startup media companies are there for the taking.  They are creating amazing content and looking for someone with deeper pockets to help them with their vision.  Why can’t that be you?  Heck, if Google can buy Zagat, then anything is possible, right?
The original post is titled 3 Alternative Content Marketing Strategies , and it came from The Content Marketing Revolution .