- How much investment + industry money is in content marketing technology? – This is a great breakdown of the amount of money going into the sector, especially for platforms and other tech plays. Er, it’s from the company #1 on the list but still worth a read. (And no, we don’t feature, partly because we’ve never taken outside investment.)
- The real competition for agencies: BuzzFeed and Vice – This is a podcast – stick with me – which we haven’t tended to curate. Only Jason Stein from Laundry Service, together with Digiday’s EIC Brian Morrissey, speaks real sense. Like there are only two ways left (with any legs, at least) to make money from content: subscriptions and content marketing. Discuss.
- Stop using stock images (link no longer available) – OK, pet subject. (Bonus link: Alternatives to bad stock images) We liked the simple advice on not sucking with the images all of us have to source all the time.
- The mobile ad-blocking apocalypse hasn’t arrived (at least not yet) – From the last 10 weeks or so, let alone the last quarter, we could have chosen any number of pieces about ad blocking, one of the themes of this year. But things have really reached fever pitch and this is one of the best articles we’ve seen. Why care? The greater ad blocking’s success, the greater the need for content marketing to step up to the plate and work for everyone.
- The cost of mobile ads on 50 news websites – Without going too far down the ad-blocking rabbit hole, this was a great piece of analysis by the NY Times about one of the less-often-cited reasons for why people are turning off ads – the amount of mobile data they eat.
- How did the GE-branded podcast The Message hit No. 1 on iTunes? In part, by sounding nothing like an ad – OK, another podcast-related post (wait for ages and two come along at once) and another link from NiemanLab, who are clearly a class act. Clearly the whole podcasting resurgence thing is real – even for brands.
- Why your PR won’t survive without content marketing (and vice versa) – We’ll be running our annual research soon about the link between PR and content marketing, so this is a good way to plug it. No… rather this is a good piece from Contently that nails the relationship. (Bonus related post from PR Daily.)
- Copyranter: Ban brainstorming – If you don’t already follow Copyranter Mark Duffy on his blog or over on Digiday, you should. Here’s an example of his old-school common sense.
- 7 brands with print magazines that are actually awesome – From the guys at Contently again (this might be from before this calendar quarter but we saw it not that long ago) and it’s a great look at high-end brand content. These mags compete with the best in the world.
- Business-to-business readers are consumers too (link no longer available) – Remember, when you wince at Van Damme in that Volvo Trucks video, that THIS IS B2B, FOLKS.
- The real secret to content marketing: Know your values – This quarter we also wrote about our values as an agency, so this piece really hit home.
And on that note, we leave you until next time. These have been some of the links that have made the biggest impression on us over the past three months. And why 11? Because it’s one louder.
*photo credit: Goes to Eleven via photopin (license)
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