By Alexandra Reid
As companies increasingly opt to bypass the traditional press in favour of content marketing, journalists are being increasingly sought after to tell company stories, communicate with their audiences, and deliver information that is valuable to their marketplaces.
Journalists are known to employ a number of practices to share news and other information with their audiences so that it is persuasive, easily understood and remembered. They tell balanced, well-researched, newsworthy and engaging stories to win the hearts and minds of the masses. Companies are beginning to realize that this style of communication works extraordinarily well for inbound marketing. The content marketing bar is rising as more journalists are hired to these positions and those marketers without journalism backgrounds are now obligated to learn and apply journalism best practices to improve their content marketing activities.
Here are a handful of best practices that I learned during my journalism years that I use to carry out content marketing activities for our agency and its clients:
Read More
By Alexandra Reid
As usual, we covered a lot of ground last month on our blog. We talked about social media, customer service, content marketing, trademarks for small businesses, neuromarketing, the trials of RIM, government funding for startups and what they have to get right to go global. In case you missed any of our posts, here’s a handy roundup:
July 9: Trademarks for small businesses in little towns
July 23: What technology firms must get right to internationalize quickly
July 25: Have the feds finally found the right way to back winners?
July 30: The pitch from a neuromarketing perspective
And on a related note…
In addition to our series, our associates and guest bloggers were also busy writing on a great range of topics. Here are our other posts from July, as ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:
July 26: Hard-cabled for success
July 31: A nice little story about the value of storytelling in content marketing
July 16: The best time to start a business
July 17: 5 qualities of a great ghostwriter
July 24: Throttled by those five ubiquitous rings
July 10: 7 reasons why people hate your B2B business blog
July 11: Your audience will judge you by your cover
July 3: The top 10 truths of social media
July 18: Where is Ottawa’s International Startup Festival?
July 12: Managing perceptions and product at RIM like Apple did
July 19: Why I like customer advisory boards
July 5: The price of everything, the value of nothing and customer service
Image: Cynthia Frenette
By Alexandra Reid
I’ve been a volunteer at Big Brothers Big Sisters Ottawa for almost a year now, running the youth mentoring organization’s online accounts and helping with its blog. As a non-profit, its budget for marketing activities is tight and so it relies greatly on word-of-mouth referrals and small events to attract volunteers, donors, and partners and spread its messages.
Read More
By Bob Bailly
In the July 13 post on Francis Moran and Associates blog’s Great Articles Roundup, this excerpt was referenced and it caught my eye: The startup pitch in the corporate context.
You can tell a lot about a company by its approach to the business pitch. This post argues that the corporate business pitch could take some pointers from the standard VC pitch, which should always identify a clear problem, provide a compelling solution and be differentiated, aspirational, inspirational, and visually communicative.
The excerpt references a longer blog piece written by Joe Lee that contains great practical advice on the corporate pitch. I’m pleased to say his ideas are also supported from a neuro-scientific point of view.
Read More
By Alexandra Reid
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Marketo, NextGen Journal, ReadWriteWeb, B2B Bliss, Ventureburn, and Montreal Tech Watch.
Building a B2B marketing brand advocate army
Great information on how to create a program to reward B2B brand champions, modelled after Marketo’s own champion program.
Read More
By Alexandra Reid 
