Joe Pulizzi is an entrepreneur, speaker, author, and podcaster. He’s the founder of multiple startups, including the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), the leading content marketing educational resource for enterprise brands, recognized as the fastest growing business media company by Inc. magazine in 2014 and 2015. CMI is responsible for producing Content Marketing World, the largest content marketing event in the world (held every September in Cleveland, Ohio), as well as the leading content marketing magazine, Chief Content Officer. He began using the term “content marketing” back in 2001, now the fastest growing internet marketing industry. CMI also offers advisory services for innovative organizations such as HP, AT&T, Petco, LinkedIn, SAP, the Gates Foundation and many others. Content Marketing Institute was sold in June, 2016 to UBM, a multi-billion dollar events and media company out of London.
Joe is the winner of the 2014 John Caldwell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Content Council. Joe’s third book, Epic Content Marketing was named one of “Five Must Read Business Books of the Year” by Fortune Magazine. His newest book, Killing Marketing is coming out September 2017. His fourth book, Content Inc., has been a top direct marketing best-seller since September of 2015. Joe has also co-authored two other books, Get Content Get Customers and Managing Content Marketing. Joe has spoken at more than 400 locations in 16 countries advancing the practice of content marketing. He’s delivered keynote speeches for events and organizations including SXSW, NAMM, Fortune Magazine’s Leadership Summit, Nestle, General Motors, Oracle, DuPont, SAP, HP and Dell.
Joe not only writes one of the most influential content marketing blogs in the world, he writes a column for Entrepreneur.com and is a LinkedIn Influencer. You can also hear Joe on his podcasts, “This Old Marketing” and “Content Inc.” . If you ever meet him in person, he’ll be wearing orange. You can find Joe on Twitter @JoePulizzi.
Joe spoke to ScaleUp editorial team about his journey and content marketing.
Challenges content marketers face
The biggest challenge is to produce consistent content. Another challenge is to target a niche audience and not multiple personas at the same time. Being authentic and sounding like human beings in their content is another pain point. Marketers have a tough time integrating their content marketing with the rest of their marketing.
Some enterprises don’t even have an idea of how much content they are creating and where it’s coming from. They have a difficult time not inserting sales messaging in the content.
“90% of enterprise content is about the products or services”
Finally, the content most companies create is not irreplaceable. It doesn’t feel a true customer need. Enterprises need to focus on becoming the best of breed with their content instead of just telling stories like all their competitors do.
Read the full interview in ScaleUp Magazine Issue 7
