Content Matters

Marketing is a continually evolving practice, and content marketing is a major element of that practice. Brian Piper, a marketing consultant and the co-author of the upcoming second edition of EPIC Content Marketing, joins us on the Content Matters podcast to talk about content marketing, the upcoming Google Analytics 4, getting better at SEO, and the impact of Web3 on brand marketing. If you want to understand how to evolve your markeing training or where to focus your marketing efforts, this episode is a must-listen. A few highlights: How Brian got started in content marketing thanks to a book called EPIC Content Marketing. How to prepare yourself for GA4 Why brands are getting involved in the creator economy. Why brands should be thinking about Web3 Content marketing in higher education. Where You Can Find Brian: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianwpiper/ Website: https://www.brianwpiper.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/brianwpiper The book: Pre-Order Epic Content Marketing, 2nd Edition Purchase $PIPER coin

Alex Lee is the Partner Success Manager at Diginomica and an experienced communications consultant. They refer to themself as a “Comms consultant who loves data analysis.” Alex joined us on the Content Matters Podcast to share their insights and expertise on building and implementing a social media strategy. The conversation focused on organic social media marketing but also included their view on social media advertising. Some of the topics discussed: What brands should and should not be doing on social networks today. The role employees play in building the brand voice on social media The newest social media tactics, including Twitter threads, LinkedIn Posts, the 3-2-1 method of engagement. How brands should deal with negative feedback on their posts. The difference between social media marketing for a media brand vs a product/services brand. Analytics and the importance of measuring performance. Her take on social media advertising and how to make it work.  About Alex Alex started her comms career managing communications and leading strategic planning and policy development, using data and analytics for c-suite dashboards and change programs after a project with JISC Data Labs. As diginomica's Partner Success Manager, Alex works closely with diginomica's industry content and thought-leadership partners planning and creating targeted and thoughtful social media campaigns in line with diginomica's partner and community goals as well as reporting on partner content performance using analytics tools including Google Analytics, Parse.ly, and social media management platforms. Meet Alex: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-elisabeth-lee/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlexLeeComms Diginomica: https://www.diginomica.com

Andrew Sevillia is a customer advocacy and marketing professional with over 15 years of experience working for companies like Sage Intact, NetSuite, and Juniper Networks. Andrew joined us on the podcast to help us better understand what customer advocacy is and why it's so important for companies to create advocacy programs. He also shared insights on how to build a customer advocacy program and Some of the topics included: Understanding customer advocacy and customer marketing. What a customer advocacy program looks like and some of the key elements of a program. Who needs to be involved in the program and some of the challenges of running a program. How a customer advocacy program collaborates with and helps other departments in the company. If you want to build a truly customer-centric company, this is a great way to get started. About Andrew Sevillia: Andrew Sevillia is extremely passionate about nurturing customers into advocates! Over the course of his 15 years in Customer Advocacy, Andrew has interviewed thousands of customers resulting in over 700 customer stories, 300 customer video testimonials, countless blog posts, and press releases. At NetSuite, Andrew supported annual revenue growth and delivered marketing leads. In partnership with his marketing colleagues, Andrew grew top-of-funnel lead generation through the creation and execution of demand generation marketing from inception to completion. Most recently, Andrew spent four years at Sage Intacct where he led the Customer Marketing and Advocacy programs. Not only did Andrew increase Sage Intacct's reference-able customer pool from 200 to 2,000, but he also created a library of customer testimonials across all verticals. Where You Can Find Andrew: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asevillia/  Additional Resources: Customer Advocacy groups: Base (formerly Crowdvocate) SlapFive: Customer Marketing Influitive Customer Marketing Alliance https://www.linkedin.com/in/asevillia/

We often think of marketing operations and content strategy are distinct elements of a marketing strategy performed by different teams. But there is a relationship between the two and you can't be good in one without a solid understanding of the other.  Moni Oloyede, Director of Marketing Infrastructure at Fidelis Cybersecurity and a digital marketing expert and speaker, joined us on the Content Matters podcast to talk about the interrelationship between these two areas of marketing and shared some guidance on how you can bring them together to create successful customer experiences. Here's what you'll learn: With all the tools and technology available to marketing today, how do move past the complexity to create a martech stack that works? Why marketing operations and content strategists need to work together and how. How she got into marketing operations and where she sees its future. The problem with marketing attribution today. The role of women in marketing operations today. About Moni Oloyede: Moni Oloyede is the Director, Marketing Infrastructure at Fidelis Cybersecurity, and an expert in Digital Marketing Strategies, Marketing Automation, and Inbound Marketing. Oloyede specialized in inbound marketing strategies and has an extensive background in content marketing and content development for B2B companies. Oloyede is certified in Marketo, Eloqua, and ExactTarget, and deployed several multichannel integrated digital programs for lead generation, product launch, lead nurturing and up-sell/cross-sell. A frequent speaker at conferences and events, Oloyede recently shared her insights on marketing attribution at the MarketingProfs B2B Spring Forum. Where You Can Find Moni: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moni-oloyede/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MoniOloyede Personal Website: https://momartech.com/ Additional Resources: Finite Fest: https://hopin.com/events/finitefest2022 Mind the Gap: Bridging the Gap Between Sales and Marketing Through Empathy: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/354a0a71-e5e8-4a0f-92ec-3b92f655e5db ROI Tracking: How to Properly Measure Marketing Success: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV4U5YNCg5M (See lots more on Moni's LinkedIn Profile)

Jennifer Allen has taken on the role of Chief Evangelist in her company, Challenger. It's new role, one that she worked hard to achieve. She joined us on the podcast to talk about the role, what it involves and how it helps a company build a strong presence. She also shared her experiences working in Sales and talked about how the role needs to evolve to better support customers, including acting more like a marketer than a traditional salesperson. Here's what you'll learn: What the role of the Chief Evangelist is and how she came to take it on. Why salespeople need to think and act like marketers and how to change the traditional mindset to selling. The best way for salespeople to approach social selling. How a podcast and webinar have helped Challenger create awareness of their approach and how it has helped Jen personally. How she has adapted to her new role and her vision for how it will evolve. Her advice for others, especially women, who want to become a Chief Evangelist in their company. About Jen: Jen Allen is the Chief Evangelist for Challenger, a global leader in training, technology, and consulting to win today's complex sale. She has over 15 years of experience working in Sales in roles such as Account Executive, Director of Business Development, and Senior Director. Allen understands how the sales role is evolving and spends much of her time helping sales leaders assess gaps in their go-to-market approach through her role as Chief Evangelist at Challenger. She is the co-host of the Winning the Challenger Sales podcast and co-host of the Winning the Challenger Sales webinar series. Where You Can Find Jen: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferallen1121/ Additional Resources: Winning the Challenger Sale – Webinar Series https://www.challengerinc.com/resource/wtcs-season-3-replays/ Winning the Challenge Sale – Podcast: https://www.challengerinc.com/podcast/

There is so much to understand about content strategy, and Hilary Marsh, Chief Strategist of The Content Company joined us on the Content Matters podcast to talk about some areas that are not as widely discussed.  The focus for our talk was more on content strategy for intranets and for companies where content is their primary offering (like associations and non-profits) but you could apply much of what Hilary shared to all content strategy work.  Key topics included how content strategy has evolved, what organizations are doing well and not so well and much more, including: How to think about content as an investment. How content strategy for an intranet is different from content strategy for a website (or isn't). Why content strategy is an HR issue and needs to be a part of everyone's work. How to operationalize content strategy. How content management technology supports content strategy. The audience engagement journey (you have to listen to learn what this is).  About Hilary Hilary Marsh is president and chief strategist of Content Company, a content and digital strategy consultancy. She helps content-rich nonprofit organizations and associations get better results from their content by improving their practices.  Hilary has over 20 years experience in content strategy, community management, digital transformation, digital governance, and more. She is a regular speaker at conferences like Confab and the Content Strategy Forum. She is also a guest professor at FH Joanneum University of Applied Science in Austria and the Content Strategy Professor at the University of Strasbourg in France (the only university-level course in content strategy). Hilary works primarily with non-profits, associations, and companies who want to improve their intranets. Where You Can Find Hilary: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hilarymarsh/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/hilarymarsh The Content Company: https://contentcompany.biz/ The Content Strategy Community: https://content-strategy.com/ Join Hilary at: Confab in May: Content measurement that matters: Not everything that can be counted counts STC Summit in May: https://summit.stc.org/ Hilary's newsletter: https://www.contentcompany.biz/newsletter The course Hilary mentioned that she will be teaching (isn't live yet, but keep an eye out for it here): https://firehead.net/training/ Lots of content strategy tools: https://contentcompany.biz/tools, including: The Content Strategy Roadmap: Content Assessment Scorecard

We talk a lot about customer experience, but the employee experience is equally important to get right. When employees don't feel valued and aren't engaged in a way that makes them happy and content in their work, the customer experience suffers. But a lot has changed in terms of employee experiences and we're talking with Chantelle Nash to understand how they've changed and why it's important to consider employee experiences as one element of a company-wide perspective on digital experience. Chantelle is the Learning Systems and Innovation Leader at Baker Hughes, but she's also done some fascinating work for GE that we're going to talk a little about today. Chantelle has over 10 years of experience in global learning and development and HR Technology. She's working in everything from design and development of programs, communications, digital marketing, data and analytics, social learning, and community management. Here are some of the things we talked about: How do companies address the learning and development of their employees today and why does it need to evolve? Explain what a consumer-type approach to L&D means with examples. Why organizations need to align all aspects of the business, including marketing, sales, support, and L&D, and how they can do it. How to attribute the performance of learning and development programs back to the overall revenue and business goals of the company? The podcast she created, hosted, and produced for GE Crotonville - Brilliance: Leadership Learning. Her advice for others who would like to grow their experiences and skills in this area. About Chantelle Chantelle Nash is a Learning Systems & Innovation Leader at Baker Hughes. She has over 10 years of experience in global L&D and HR Technology, including design and development, communications, digital marketing, data & analytics, social learning, and community management. Her passion is helping connect people and ideas to ignite action, and helping organizations tap into the value of employee experience through modern, multidisciplinary approaches to product design, management, and culture and engagement across the digital ecosystem. Chantelle is currently responsible for optimizing digital learning solutions, driving engagement, and creating a roadmap and strategies to develop the overall employee experience ecosystem. After starting her career in HR, Chantelle joined a global corporate university where she established key development processes and standards for online learning. She subsequently held various online technical training roles, joining GE's Oil & Gas business in 2012. In 2014, she joined the Digital Learning & Technology team at GE Crotonville as product manager of the company's in-house digital leadership learning experience platform, where she led several digital engagement initiatives to promote a culture of continual learning and informal knowledge-sharing across a target group of approximately 160,000 employees. Her work on the internal social learning blog, “Smartbits”, earned the 2017 Brandon Hall Gold Excellence Award for “Best Use of Social Collaborative Learning”, and she pioneered creation of the Brilliance: Leadership Learningpodcast, one of the first on-demand leadership resources from GE Crotonville available externally, which she also hosted and produced. Chantelle holds an M.S. in Human Resource Development (HRD) and a B.A. in Corporate Communication from the University of Houston. Her hobbies include spending time with her Family and pets, creating, traveling, eating, sometimes cooking, sometimes working out, writing, learning (really!), and an occasional videogame. Where You Can Find Chantelle: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chantellenash/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/CtelleNash Additional Resources: Podcast: Brilliance: Leadership Learning TedTalk: https://www.ted.com/talks/emilie_wapnick_why_some_of_us_don_t_have_one_true_calling

We are fortunate to kick off our fourth season with Val Swisher, Founder and CEO of Content Rules, a consulting firm that delivers content strategy, development, transformation, and optimization services. Val joined us to talk about something every company wants to do – provide personalized experiences at scale. She's authored a book on the topic - The Personalization Paradox: Why Companies Fail (and How to Succeed) at Delivering Personalized Experiences at Scale with Regina Lynn Preciado, a senior content strategist with Content Rules. We talked about the need for content standardization to enable personalization at scale and what organizations need to do from a content strategy and technology perspective. Here's what you'll learn: How Val defines personalization What is the Personalization Paradox? What is content standardization and how you achieve it? What needs to be standardized? What are the biggest challenges to providing personalized content (at scale)? How should a company think about personalizing content in a global context? About Val Swisher: Val is the founder and CEO of Content Rules, a global content strategy, Optimization, and Transformation consultancy. She runs the content strategy, global content strategy, and content optimization service lines for the company. Val has more than two decades of experience and is a well-known expert on global readiness, intelligent content, and technology solutions. She speaks frequently at industry conferences and is a sought-after guest on webinars and podcasts. In her view, content should be easy to read, cost-effective to translate, and efficient to manage. Where You Can Find Val: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valswisher/https://www.linkedin.com/in/valswisher/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/valswisher and https://twitter.com/contentrulesinc Content Rules: https://contentrules.com/ Additional Resources: Book: The Personalization Paradox: https://contentrules.com/tpp/ The Personalization Paradox Webinar Series: https://contentrules.com/watch-your-words-the-personalization-paradox-1/ (Part 1)

Sara Feldman is the Director of Member Engagement at the Consortium for Service Innovation, a non-profit alliance of service and support organizations that focus on innovation around customer engagement, productivity, and success. Through her work as a Consortium member and now working for the Consortium, Sara understands the importance of customer support experiences in the overall customer experience. She joined us on the podcast to talk about the work the Consortium does, but also shared her views on content strategy, how to create successful customer support programs, and more. Key topics included: What is the Consortium for Service Innovation and how does it companies? Sara's role as Director of Member Engagement Understanding Intelligence swarming and Predictive Customer Engagement The best support success is the one that never happened Success content is for more than your customers. Rethinking how we generate content in the organization. Where You Can Find Sara: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarafeldman/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaraContentWise Additional Resources: Service Innovation Org: https://www.serviceinnovation.org/ Intelligent Swarming Defined: https://library.serviceinnovation.org/Intelligent_Swarming

Andy Crestodina is the co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Orbit Media, a web design and development agency located in Chicago. Andy is a wealth of marketing knowledge and is one of the experts to talk to about SEO and content strategy. He regularly shares in-depth insights on his blog and presents regularly at conferences. He joined us on the podcast to talk about these topics, along with demand generation, account-based marketing, and more. Key topics included: What is Orbit Media's content strategy and why do they share so much great information. Working on SEO today – what's working. Balancing storytelling, creativity, and tactical structured content strategy. Why lead generation isn't dead. How to do ABM on a budget successfully. Where You Can Find Andy: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andycrestodina/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/crestodina Orbit Media: https://www.orbitmedia.com/ Additional Resources: ABM: https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/account-based-content-marketing/ Book Content Chemistry: https://www.orbitmedia.com/about/content-chemistry/ Blog: Results Driven Blog - Website Blog Advice | Orbit Media

Episode Summary: Mark Lewis is a content engineer and the co-founder of the intelligent content consultancy, Caliper Content Services. Mark joined us on the Content Matters Podcast to talk about a topic near to his heart, and a source of frequent frustration – metadata. You think it's simple to create metadata on your content, but there's a lot to think about to build your metadata model and we cover it all in this episode. Key topics included: What is content engineering What is metadata and why it's so important Why you can't design metadata as an afterthought His advice for content strategists This is the first time we've gone deep into a discussion on intelligent content and Mark takes what could be a complex topic and explains it in easy-to-understand terms. Additional Resources: Presentation: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/alignment-understanding-objects-mark-lewis/ Book: Object Technology: A Manager's Guide About Mark Lewis: Mark is a content strategist, content engineer, speaker, author and STC Fellow. He is recognized throughout the industry for his ability to prove the business case for moving static content to XML and intelligent content. Through design metrics, his approach can prove alignment across content strategy and corporate strategy. His experience spans a variety of industries including life sciences, finance, aviation, education, and oil & gas. Mark started the DITA Metrics community to promote the sharing of metrics, ROI and case studies. In his book DITA Metrics 101, Mark's cost models offer a framework to determine the savings possible with enterprise-wide intelligent content implementation. He is a contributing author of DITA 101 and a technical reviewer of Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy, both by the Rockley Group. Mark is also a contributing author of The Language of Technical Communication and The Language of Content Strategy. Where You Can Find Mark: LinkedIn: Mark Lewis | LinkedIn Twitter: https://twitter.com/LewisDITAMetricMark Lewis (@LewisDITAMetric) / Twitter Caliper Content Services: https://calipercontentservices.com/

Katrina Wong is the VP Marketing for Segment, a business unit of Twilio. She joined us on the Content Matters Podcast to talk about the evolving customer data landscape, including what the end of third-party cookies means for customer experience and why it's not such a bad thing that marketers are easing their reliance on third-party data. We also talked about customer data platforms (CDPs) - of course, and how they help bring together all a company's first-party data to enable truly personalized – and hyper-personalized customer experiences. And we talked about what the API economy and the idea of building blocks has meant for creating custom solutions that differentiate brands. And those are just the highlights. Inside this Episode: The difference between first, second, third-, and zero-party data What the end of third-party cookies means for marketers The benefits of a customer data platform (CDP) and how it brings together first-party data The API economy and building blocks for custom solution development Marketing at Segment The evolution of the CDP About Katrina Wong: Katrina Wong is the VP Segment Marketing, a business unit of Twilio. She's been with the company for about a year and a half. Wong has spent the last fifteen years working with a range of startups, enterprises, and high-growth companies working in marketing, go-to-market, and revenue growth roles. You will recognize many of these companies – like Hired, SAP, Salesforce. Where You Can Find Katrina: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrinawong11/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/KatchMeSocial Segment: https://www.segment.com Panel: Building Your Ideal Customer Profile: How to Target your Product, Sales and Marketing More Effective Building Your Ideal Customer Profile: How to Target your Product, Sales and Marketing More Effective

Latané Conant is the CMO of 6sense. She joined us on the Content Matters podcast to discuss account-based marketing and engagement, with a focus on the insights she shares in her book: No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls. Along with over seven years in executive marketing positions, Conant is also a seasoned sales leader, so she understands well the challenge of getting sales and marketing to work well together and how things need to evolve in companies to make that happen. Some of the things we talked about: Her shift from sales to marketing and her belief that employee and customer experience are at the heart of everything. How we make it difficult for people to buy from us and how to fix it by getting rid of the three pillars - forms, spam, and cold calls. How to determine relevance to know which accounts and contacts within those accounts to engage. Why predictive revenue growth is key for CMO's to understand and implement. The difference between working an account and working a lead. The process to get everyone on the same page. How marketing and sales teams are evolving. Where you can find Latané: Twitter: https://twitter.com/LataneConant LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/latane-conant/ Other Resources: 6sense website: The 6sense Account Engagement Platform Her book: No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls.

Episode Summary: Sarah Mitchell’s company, Typeset, produces an annual State of Writing survey. This is the second year of the survey and Sarah talked about some of the key insights from the survey. She also shared her experiences as a writer and content marketer. Inside This Episode: Businesses are planning to increase content development, but not content budgets. Writers are not completely satisfied with the performance of their content, yet they are optimistic about the writing process. How writers understand the customer and what to write. The lack of governance in writing projects. The type of content that performs. The ROI of content. About Sarah Mitchell Sarah is the founder of Typeset, a content marketing, and editorial services company, and the founder of Global Copywriting, a content marketing consultancy. Sarah specializes in developing and implementing content marketing strategies. She writes frequently on these topics and is a regular speaker at conferences talking about writing effectiveness and content marketing. She’s also the Australian Consulting Editor for the Content Marketing Institute and a judge at the Content Marketing Awards held in the US (and a past winner, too). Where you can find Sarah: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahcmitchell Typeset website: typesetcontent.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/SarahMitchellOz Other Resources: State of Writing 2021: https://typesetcontent.com/blog/state-of-writing-research/ State of Writing 2020: https://typesetcontent.com/blog/state-of-writing-research-2020/

To understand content strategy in its full perspective, you only need to talk with Kristina Halvorson, co-founder and CEO of Brain Traffic, a content strategy consulting firm. Halvorson joined us on the Content Matters podcast to talk about the elements of content strategy and how they all work together to build better customer experiences. She shared her insights on content marketing, copywriting, UX writing, content marketing, content design, and much more. Inside This Episode: The complete definition of content strategy The difference between marketing writing and writing for the web and products How content impacts the entire customer journey How leadership needs to approach content design and measurement About Kristina Halvorson Kristina Halvorson is widely recognized as one of the most important voices in content strategy. Her seminal book Content Strategy for the Web is credited with sparking the explosive growth of content strategy and its recognition as a critical field of practice. She appears regularly a featured speaker at conferences all over the world and is known for her lively, insightful presentations. Kristina is the executive producer of Confab and Button, two events focused on helping content strategists, designers, and writers create and care for exceptional content all along the customer journey. Where you can find Kristina: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinahalvorson/ Brain Traffic website: https://www.braintraffic.com/ Confab Conference: http://confabevents.com/ Button Conference: http://buttonconf.com/ Other Resources: Content Strategy for the Web, 2nd Edition

If you want to understand how to create, manage, and publish your content from an organization-wide perspective, Rahel Bailie is the person to talk to. Bailie is a long-time content advocate who works with organizations that truly understand how important their content is. She joined us on the podcast to talk about her experience on content strategy, content operations, content experiences, and much more. Inside This Episode: Getting a holistic view of content across the organization The importance of UX of content and the need to understand the customer experience to properly manage content The role of technical content in the customer experience The importance of back-end content and how to operationalize it About Rahel Bailie Rahel Bailie is the CEO and Principal Consultant at Content, Seriously, UK consultancy. She has many years of experience working with organizations on their content operations, strategies, and systems. Bailie understands the complexities of managing the editorial and technical aspects of content and works to ensure that content is built and managed to enable its use in compelling experiences in both existing and emerging channels. Where you can find Rahel: Content, Seriously Rahel on Twitter Rahel on LinkedIn Other Resources: Updating the Content Quad Information Operations in a Digital Environment

Robert Rose shares his insights and experience about how content marketing has evolved in terms of new trends, team composition and experiences, and its role in the organization. He talks about building experiences and architecting desire and why it’s not enough to be the FAQ of your industry. Inside This Episode: The most important trend in content marketing in 2021 What does the modern content marketing team look like? How to build experiences and architect desire The difference between B2B and B2C content marketing Where companies should focus their content marketing efforts in 2021 About Robert Rose For more than 25 years, Robert has helped enterprise marketing leaders tell their brand’s story more effectively through digital media. As the Founder of The Content Advisory, Robert has worked with more than 500 companies, including 15 of the Fortune 100. In this capacity, he has advised these business leaders on how to optimize marketing operations to build experiences that customers fall in love with. His focus is on helping build and implement operational excellence for the people, process and technologies of strategic enterprise content. He’s provided strategic advice and counsel for global brands such as Salesforce, Capital One, NASA, Dell, McCormick Spices, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His firm, The Content Advisory, is the exclusive education and consulting group for The Content Marketing Institute. Where you can find Robert: TCA: The Content Advisory The Content Marketing Institute Robert on Twitter Robert on LinkedIn Robert’s books: Killing Marketing with Joe Pulizzi Managing Content Marketing with Joe Pulizzi Experiences: the 7th Era of Marketing with Carla Johnson

Michael Meinhardt is the founder and CEO of Cloudwords, a globalization automation software company. He joined us on the podcast to talk about the challenges with translation management today and how automation software can help companies manage globalization processes better, improving workflow and productivity, but also accelerating the time-to-market of global campaigns. Meinhardt mentioned the globalization automation maturity curve, which helps you understand how mature your globalization processes are and how you can improve them.

Jack Molisani is the Executive Director of the LavaCon Conference on Content Strategy. LavaCon has been taking place since 1998, bringing together content professionals from across the globe to share insights and best practices and develop lasting professional relationships. This is the first year LavaCon will be virtual (like so many other conferences) and Molisani has created a conference that still feels as personal as being there live. His goal is to help people "find their tribe." We talked about the conference and the effects of going virtual, as well as the trends he's seeing across the content strategy and technical communications industry.

David Greenberg is the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Act-On Software. He joins us on the podcast to talk about marketing strategies, including refocusing on experience nurturing over lead nurturing, the role of automation, and where marketing automation fits with account-based marketing. We also talked about the rebrand of Act-On and its shift to growth marketing automation. Lots of great insights to make you think about your own marketing strategies.

Melanie Deziel is the founder and Chief Content Officer of StoryFuel, which teaches marketers, publishers, creators and companies of all sizes how to tell better brand stories. She's also the author of The Content Fuel Framework: How to Generate Unlimited Story Ideas. We talked about her background as a journalist and how she found her way into the world of content strategy and content marketing, about building content teams, telling the right stories in the right way, as well as the need for content for everything from thought leadership through to product marketing, sales enablement, and ABM. Throughout our conversation her strategies and insights were consistent – it's all about the customer. And her new book is a guide for figuring out the best stories to tell in the best formats once you have that understanding of who your customer or audience is.

In this episode of the Content Matters podcast, we're tackling the topic of ethics and digital content. How can we as tech providers advocate for better ethics and standards over profits? The Facebook boycott, Stop Hate for Profit that's happening this month, is a clear sign that things need to change and that businesses, whether they're B2B, B2C, or whatever, and if they're technology businesses or otherwise, have an opportunity to help drive that change. Our guest to discuss the role of tech providers in fostering a more respectful discourse is Jim Edmunds, CEO and founder of Ingeniux, the sponsor of the Content Matters podcast.

Kris Laird is the Director of Sales Development at Ingeniux. He's helping the company build a modern sales process that leverages new strategies and technologies that build relationships with prospects and customers. Prior to Ingeniux, he worked for Outreach, a sales engagement solution, and another 18 as a music educator. We talked to Kris about a new way to engage prospects that involve content, intent, a strong relationship with marketing, and more. If you are a marketer who wants to understand how Sales work, listen to this podcast. And if you are in Sales and want to understand how to grow and improve your skills and sales processes, listen to Kris. Enjoy!

CEO and co-founder of Uberflip, Yoav Schwartz joined us on the Content Matters Podcast to talk about the technology behind content-driven experiences. We discussed the shift in buying power to the CMO, the difference between content experience platforms and content management platforms, the opportunities and challenges that too much data (or not enough) bring to marketing and much more.

Tom Treanor is the Global Head of Marketing at Arm Treasure Data, a customer data platform (CDP) provider. Treanor joined us on the Content Matters podcast to talk about CDPs including how they work, how they help improve customer experience, their relationship with CRMs, and much more. He also shared his views on marketing today and in the future and provides great advice for getting started with a CDP implementation.

Randy Frisch is the co-founder and CMO of Uberflip, a content experience platform. He joined us on the podcast to talk about marketing during the COVID-19 pandemic - how it has and hasn't changed, and how we need to rethink how we use content to engage, inform and influence customers. We also talked about what the "new normal" for marketing will look like as we slowly emerge out of pandemic and try to get back to business as usual.

Ian Truscott is the Founder and Strategy Director of Appropingo, a consultancy that helps organizations design and implement better marketing strategies. Truscott has been a CMO/VP Marketing for a number of technology companies and was a content management analyst for the Gilbane Group. With all this experience, Truscott understands a lot about marketing strategies and marketing tech, including content management. In this podcast, we talked about the content management industry and the goal of creating omnichannel experiences, how organizations can create ART - awareness, revenue, and trust, and much more.

Scott Abel is the CEO and Chief Wrangler of the Content Wrangler. Abel is an expert on content strategy, working with organizations to develop strategies to create, maintain, and deliver their content across channels. He is a popular speaker on content strategy, and he’s the co-author of Intelligent Content Management: A Primer and The Language of Content Strategy, and the creator of the Content Strategy Series of books from XML Press. He's also the producer of the Information Development World Conference. Scott and talked about many things related to content strategy, including the challenges companies facing, the key elements and roles involved in developing and managing your content strategy and content operations, and the role of a unified content hub.

A conversation with David Hillis, VP Business Development at Ingeniux (the sponsor of the Content Matters Podcast), is a conversation about how content management is evolving and pushing organizations to rethink what content means to them. "Content is actually the most valuable business asset that most organizations have. Content shapes the way that we interact with the world, with our customers, with the market. It's how we project not only who we are, but where we're going as a company." Listen in to hear David's insights on agile content management and what that really means today.

If you don't think your organization's content is a critical asset then you need to think again. We spoke with Alan Porter, Director of Content Intelligence Strategy at [A], a frequent conference speaker, guest writer, and trainer on content marketing, content strategy, customer experience and the author of “The Content Pool: Leveraging Your Company's Largest Hidden Asset,” about the importance of content to the organization and the challenges faced when your content is siloed and not respected for the differentiator that it really is. Porter also shared his insights on the CMS industry, the role of technical communicators and the value of not using lists.

Scott Hunter is the Director Program Management for .NET at Microsoft. Responsible for the entire .NET platform, Hunter shared some of the new features and capabitilities of the .NET platform including .NET Core 3, machine learning, big data and mobile apps. We also talked open source, Microsoft vs Java and how much things have changed at Microsoft.

Mathew Sweezey is the Principal of Marketing Insights at Salesforce, a Forbes Contributor, author and creator of The Electronic Propaganda Society. His forward-thinking view of marketing and how things are changing centers on the idea of human to human marketing, engaging through conversations and how context marketing builds better customer experiences. We talked to Sweezey about human to human marketing, the role of AI, the importance of data and how marketing is changing now and will continue to evolve. Plus, Sweezey provides three things marketers should start doing today.

Ann Handley is a digital marketing and content expert, partner and Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, and WSJ best-selling author of Everybody Writes. She joined us for a conversation on the importance of storytelling in B2B marketing, of knowing your audience and finding the right voice to speak to and with them.

As the Senior Digital Marketing Manager of Townsend Security, Ken Mafli is in the trenches working hard on the company's inbound lead generation strategy. And that means he knows a lot about SEO and content strategy. In this episode Ken shares his insights and experience on how SEO has changed and become a part of a larger content strategy that requires you to truly understand your customers and their needs. He talks about creating content topic clusters and pillar pages that speak to the questions prospects have and the user experiences customers crave. Check out the company's primary pillar page as you listen to the things Ken and his teammates learned.

Claudio Guglieri is a designer and the Group Creative Director at Huge, a full-service digital agency headquartered in Brooklyn, NY. He's also a keynote speaker at the Ingeniux User Conference. Guglieri believes we can leverage the most important human abilities we use when interacting with digital content to improved to improve the application and website experience. In this podcast, Guglieri shares his insights on interactive design, how it's changed and how we need to think about it going forward. (Note: you can also watch his Tedtalk, Making Technology More Natural.

Chris Willis is the CMO of Acrolinx, an API powered content governance platform. Willis shares his insights on the challenges organizations face today creating impactful, quality content for customer experience. We talked about what he means by "strategy-aligned content" and the importance of active content governance. If you're struggling to create a brand voice that is cohesive, on message and delivers a great experience, then you'll want to hear what Willis has to say.

Cathy McKnight is the VP Strategy at the Content Advisory and Partner at Digital Clarity Group, which means Cathy knows a lot about web content management, content marketing and content strategy. We pick Cathy's brain about everything from building the right ecosystem for content, what technology is required to build the right foundation to support content successfully, to the critical role content operations plays in building great content-driven experiences.

Account-based marketing is on the to-do list of every B2B organization. We talk with Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing about this opportunities and challenges of ABM and how it relates to intelligent content management.

Deane Barker is the Chief Strategy Officer at Blend Interactive and the author of Web Content Management: Systems, Features and Best Practices. Deane talks with us about headless CMS, the concept of a distributed architecture for content management and the role content plays in digital experience.