5 Ways Joe Pulizzi Blew Our Mind at #CMWorld2013

It’s only been a week since Content Marketing World 2013, the world’s largest gathering of content marketing professionals. Over 2,000 attendees gathered in Cleveland, the unofficial “content capital of the world” September 9-12 to listen to the expertise of prominent professionals such as LinkedIn’s Jonathan Lister and Jonathan Mildenhall of Coca Cola.

While it’s hard to pin point a single event that was most valuable, there’s no question that Content Marketing Institute (CMI) founder Joe Pulizzi stole the show in his opening keynote address. Dressed in his trademark orange suit (you read that right), Pulizzi’s talk focused on sharing some of the coolest insights from CMI’s annual report which is developed in conjunction with MarketingProfs, scheduled for release in the near future.

Over the next week, we’ll be sharing a number of our favorite insights from the conference.  If you weren’t fortunate enough to snag a seat at the show, we’ve shared a few of the facts from Content Marketing World 2013 that really blew our mind – as well as ways you should run with Pulizzi’s insights.

Social Media Rules

It was a bit shocking to learn that blogs aren’t quite as common as you might think. Study findings shared at Content Marketing World 2013 indicated that the following types of content are most common.

• Social media
• E-newsletters
• Blogs
• In-person events
• Video

It seems that companies are quickly catching on to the importance of content promotion through social media channels. If your business isn’t spending 2 hours promoting your work for every hour creating a blog, white paper, or video, it may pay to ramp up your social sharing.

Content Is Worth Every Penny

The average company allocates 30% of their marketing budget to creating custom content. 60% of businesses plan to increase their spend on content, while decreasing funds going towards other areas of marketing, such as direct mail, telemarketing and other types of traditional advertising. If your business blog suffers so your company can fund pay-per-click advertising or radio spots, it may be time to follow nearly 2/3 of your peers and spend more on white papers, eBooks, and social media.

Content Velocity Is Still Challenging

Some things never change, and one of them is the struggle surrounding content velocity. Pulizzi shared at Content Marketing World 2013 that just like last year, the biggest challenge content marketers face is creating enough custom materials, with 30% reporting a lack of time as the greatest challenge. It’s a tough issue without easy solutions, and the answer certainly isn’t cutting quality. We anticipate that businesses will dedicate increased budgets towards quality content outsourcing solutions to meet the expectations of their customers.

Write It Down

Perhaps the most embarrassing and uncomfortable stat to come out of the opening keynote at Content Marketing World 2013 was the fact that 50% of companies don’t have a documented content marketing strategy. As Winnie Ng Shuchman points out, this statistic caused many of the audience members to “squirm in their seats.” If you’re among the half of professionals who’ve yet to set goals, key performance indicators, or define your company’s online voice, that’s okay. It’s never too late to start working towards established goals.

10% of Attendees Answer to “Content”

Okay, so this particular piece of evidence was mined from the Content Marketing World 2013 registrations, but it’s certainly worth highlighting. According to Pulizzi, a full 10% of the individuals registered for the recent event had the world “content” somewhere in their job title – content creator, content manager, and content marketing specialist. You get the picture. While it might not seem impressive at first glance, consider the fact that a decade the profession was in its infancy stages. The concept of creating custom content for business has nowhere to go but up.

Did you attend Content Marketing World 2013? Which of these findings did you find most interesting – or actionable?