I’ve sung the praises of Kristina Halvorson before and it’s time to do it again. Here’s a great presentation in support of her belief that having a content strategy is key to developing an effective content marketing effort.

I’ve long had antipathy for traditional marketing (read: pressure sales) methods and am excited to see the field looking seriously at the use of rich, useful content to build trustworthy relationships that lead to sales. Joe Pulizzi through his Junta42 blog has really led the charge on this; here’s his take on Kristina’s presentation.

His takeaway in a nutshell:

1. Relevance is key.

2. Information must be useful.

3. You need a content strategist to be successful.

4. Think like a publisher, not a marketer.

5. Content is a valuable business asset. Treat it as such.

I’ll add one additional note to the publishing industry, particularly newspapers and magazines. If this all sounds familiar, it’s because this is what you used to do. It’s past time for publishers to return to a more focused content marketing strategy built around your original brand promise. Otherwise you won’t be around for the next phase in the ongoing evolution of journalism.

photo by ehnmark

I try to tweet daily links to content I’ve run across that I think is worth your attention. Thought it might be a good idea to post the most popular of these in case you’re not following me on Twitter. Here are the 10 links I tweeted in May that attracted the greatest attention:

8 Key Elements for Effective Internal Communications (courtesy of Nancy Schwartz, whose Getting Attention blog is one of the top nonprofit marketing reads)

Twitter a Bigger Threat Than Bloggers to Newspapers? (an op-ed by Edward Wasserman, Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University)

Why Communicators Don’t Get LinkedIn (by Geoff Livingston, a PR strategist whose blog should be on your reading list)

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business (a great list by social media expert Chris Brogan)

Twitter: A Marketer’s Duct Tape (both are incredibly simple, flexible, available and cheap, says Harvard Business blogger John Sviokla)

Nonprofit News (the American Journalism Review takes a look at the trend in investigative and enterprise journalism funded by foundations)

Social Media Marketing Example: National Geographic (one in a series by Lisa Braziel of Ignite Social Media)

Push vs. Pull in Media Relations (at Journalistics, a great blog tracking trends in journalism)

15 Steps to Small Business Online Marketing Success (from Joe Pulizzi, one of the leaders of the content marketing revolution)

Developing Social Media Policies (actually fourth in a four-part series on SM policies)

Each of these is well worth a read. Check them out.

Here’s an interesting look at digital content marketing from some people who know what they’re talking about. Thanks to Joe Pulizzi at Junta42 blog for the heads-up.

The New Digital Content Marketing from Bob Collins on Vimeo.