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The Great Big Content Marketing Experiment: Are You In?

You’ve heard the adage about advertising, right? The “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, I just don’t know which half” quote is often attributed to Henry Ford, Lord Lever and John Wannamaker, among others. They probably all said it at one time or another. I’m reminded of it when a prospective client tries to quantify how effective a content marketing strategy will be for their organisation. Last night I heard about an exciting initiative to prove just how powerful it can be. The Great Content Marketing Experiment is running on 19 May. I can’t wait.

The Project

Content Marketing is comprised of three components: original content, social media and SEO. Each piece enhances and supports the other two, forming a tight cycle of marketing goodness. John Bottom, Head of Content Marketing for Base One, is running the experiment at the IDM B2B Marketing Conference in London next Wednesday. His goal is to prove content marketing actually works.

The Content
He’s running a workshop to create a piece of business content in one day, from scratch. The result will be an e-book titled “Threats & Opportunities: the Future of Social Media as viewed by the UK’s most Senior Marketers.” Once the ebook is complete, a text version and a video version will be posted with the hopes of getting 1,000 social media clicks, tweets, likes, follows, whatever you want to call it.

Creating the Buzz
One thousand hits sounds like a lot to achieve in one day, but I’m confident it will be successful. Using content marketing to promote the project, John already has some of the best people in social media participating in his experiment. I intend to be clicking away on the 19th to assist with John’s goal and be part of a global initiative.

Is it a stunt?
The first criterion for content marketing is to provide valuable content. By assembling 150 senior marketers and getting their opinion on the best and worst of social media, John is going to produce an interesting and insightful document that I, for one, want to read. So, no, this isn’t a stunt. It’s a well-orchestrated example of content marketing. It will also be a fantastic case study for business to consider when they’re trying to decide how much time and money to dedicate to content marketing. I encourage you to have a look at his website and join the party.

Do you think The Great Content Marketing Experiment will be successful?

I’m speaking on the topic of Content Marketing around Australia over the next couple of months. You can find me here: