Fast & Easy Friday: A Recap of the Week’s Top Articles & Insights

Happy Friday, B2B marketers! If you’re like us, you’re gearing up for your trip to sunny Scottsdale for the B2B Marketing Exchange. We’re really excited to see our friends, peers and clients at the show, and to uncover some new content marketing, demand generation and sales enablement best practices. In addition to packing our bags and prepping our session wish lists, we’re also collecting some reading material for our flights. Here’s a quick list of some of the articles we plan to dive into during our trips: 

  • Goodbye, marketing automation: Make no mistake, marketing automation platforms aren’t going away. The technology is very much thriving and helping B2B organizations of all sizes better engage buyers and convert them into sales opportunities. However, the technology is evolving to focus more on the actual wants and needs of today’s buyers. We’re no longer company focused; we’re buyer focused. That’s why this article says we need to start calling marketing automation platforms customer engagement platforms. Interesting, right? 
  • Step up your influencer marketing game: Yes, there’s been a lot of buzz around influencer marketing. It’s a topic I personally love to write about. But TopRank Marketing partnered with Traackr to survey enterprise marketers in North America and Europe and found that B2B marketers are actually really behind the curve in their influencer marketing initiatives. This article from Lee Odden provides an interesting overview of the research and where companies are falling short. But I recommend checking out the full report, as there’s some great analysis from Brian Solis of Altimeter, too. 
  • Navigating the Dark Ages of content marketing: There are so many exciting things happening in the content marketing world, so is it fair to say we’re in the Dark Ages? Hear me out. According to this article, there’s a lot going on, but content is still “everybody’s job and nobody’s job” at the same time. Meaning, everyone is scrambling to create and promote content, but there aren’t people solely focused on content strategy and big-picture thinking. Does this resonate with you? This article dives deeper into this concept, and highlights feedback from five experts who shared what they think marketers need to do to get out of the Dark Ages. 
  • Bad writing habits we’re all guilty of: I’m not going to lie, I felt a little sheepish reading this article. Mainly because I’m guilty of so many of these bad writing habits. I guess the point, though, is that while we’re all content marketing superstars in our own right, we all need to freshen up our writing skills once in a while. Sometimes, that means taking our time while writing or even allocating a bit more time to the editing process. I know I’m going to make a point of doing that in the future.

Have a great weekend, everyone. Hopefully, we’ll see you at B2BMX! 

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