Business information provider ZoomInfo has launched an online publication, ZoomInsights, with content specifically suited to the needs of marketing, sales, and recruiting professionals.

Native advertising company Sharethrough announced the launch of Sharethrough Sponsored Stories, a native advertising solution that allows brands to promote articles, posts, reviews, and more across the open web. With Sharethrough Sponsored Stories, marketers can expand their promotion of non-video content beyond Facebook and Twitter to include native placements across Sharethrough's network of digital publishers.

Percussion has teamed up with DivvyHQ - the spreadsheet-free editorial calendar application - to bring you content planning solution. Percussion CM1 enables content marketers to create and publish more content more rapidly across their web properties than ever before. With DivvyHQ integrated into Percussion CM1's dashboard, you will be able to use Divvy's calendaring interface and collaboration tools to better manage the planning and production of all types of content across their organization.

The B2B marketing landscape is shifting, and the use of content marketing is at all-time high; however, a lack of measurement for those programs confirms a need for learning and growth in the industry, according to the second annual B2B Marketing Survey from Curata, Inc. The results, derived from more than 450 marketing professionals found that while 87% of those surveyed are using content marketing to further their overall objectives, 43% of respondents do not measure the outcome of their programs.

Social media agency Affinitive has been acquired by global marketing company Project: WorldWide. Affinitive had run over 200 online marketing campaigns, were a Preferred Marketing Developer for Facebook and were a founding member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

It wasn't long ago that the position of "chief content officer" was merely a glimmer in the eye of a few particularly tech- and trend-savvy marketing executives. Some time around the turn of the century, as digital media was beginning to cement its foothold in the worlds of marketing and commerce, and as the social media revolution was in its most nascent stages, the idea that a company should employ a director -- or a team, or even a whole department -- to create custom branded content to compellingly and coherently represent their organization in all of its prospective media channels was born.

More art than science, content marketing involves a softer, gentler sales approach that aims to inform and entertain prospects with the unstated goal of turning them into customers. Clever videos, e-books, whitepapers and sponsored e-forums are becoming increasingly popular as businesses see that they drive engagement and ultimately sales.

The Content Marketing Institute reports -- in its 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends -- marketers are now choosing LinkedIn the most for content marketing purposes. In 2011, 71% of B2B marketers posted content to the site formerly associated with nothing more than a virtual resume, but 2012 showed an increase to 83%, with Twitter and Facebook trailing by a nose at 80%.

"Content marketing" has grown from a murkily defined buzzword--or rather, a series of evolving buzzwords including "branded content" and "custom publishing"--into a ubiquitous, and in some high-profile cases demonstrably effective marketing strategy. Whether they knew it or not, millions of American consumers were touched last year by savvy content marketing campaigns from a broad spectrum of brands ranging from Oreo cookies to the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns. With the rise of content marketing has come a proliferation of solutions for companies lacking the resources or the internal know-how to execute their own content marketing strategies from scratch.

In a world of free content -- from app to university classes from the likes of Princeton and MIT -- the consumer is making out like a bandit, while content producers wring their hands over the prospect of finding a way to make money. Companies are being forced to find new ways to market their services to encourage people to pay. How? Increasingly, it's through customized experiences.

If you are in the business of digital content-and in this day and age, we all are-you have undoubtedly heard the phrase "content strategy" tossed around lately. You've heard how important strategy is to any content endeavor, but you may still be wondering what that means to you.Content strategy defines how a company is going to use content to meet the needs of a business, guides decisions about content from creation to deletion, and sets benchmarks against which to measure success. Deciding to post a YouTube video is not content strategy, nor are the myriad and growing numbers of features that your CMS offers. A strategy sets a vision for the future. Although it can be revised, it is perennial, not seasonal.

In the information circulating about digital natives, there are many references to the idea that older generations always think the upcoming generation is different from previous ones, but that this generation of digital natives really is different. They have more communication devices at their disposal. They are much more comfortable with them and much more adept at using them. Having grown up in a tech-heavy environment, they are quick to pick up on new technology and expect improvements or new offerings to come rapidly.

Millennials are a driving force for mobile services and will increasingly be so as they move into the world and take on more responsibility for their own lives. According to Nielsen's 2009 "How Teens Use Media" report, 77 percent of teens in the U.S. already have a mobile phone. Wireless communication, a constantly evolving space, presents a big opportunity for companies. Mobile marketing and its promise has been hyped for a number of years, but only recently has it shown signs of delivering on that promise. There have been a number of hurdles holding back mobile as an effective channel: privacy concerns, the expense of data plans, ease of use, speed, and consumers' not wanting spam on their mobile devices, to name but a few.

A global study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), titled "Maturing with the Millenials," claimed that more than half of the executives polled had not yet developed a way to target, attract, or retain Millennials as customers. This is a significant insight, since this generation is and will continue to be a formidable purchasing body. They are just beginning to graduate from college, enter the work force, and establish lives of their own. With those life steps comes the need to make purchases, including the most basic ones such as a car, furniture, and food. Digital natives didn't just appear on the horizon, and it is surprising to see that companies are, to a great extent, still up in the air about how to go after this audience.

I first met Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and organizer of Content Marketing World, at the Niche Magazine Conference in February 2011. He was a featured speaker at the event, and he spoke on a number of topics, mainly social media and content marketing. I enjoyed every session I attended, but his keynote on content marketing was what stuck with me. As the founder of the Content Marketing Institute, you'd expect him to be passionate about content marketing. It was more than that, though. Pulizzi, who's been around the publishing business for a long time, talked about content marketing in a way that "just made sense" for both marketers and publishers.

She was at least six inches taller than me but I was in love. Or what passes for love as a 14 year old boy in middle school. Lori was tall, blonde, and a super-smart basketball player with the sweetest southern accent you have ever heard. The eighth grade dance was almost here and I had to work up the nerve to ask her to go with me. My hands were sweaty, my heart rattled like a subwoofer in my chest, and my already cracking voice was hitting Mariah Carey high notes with ease. Was this love? If so, it was the scariest thing I had ever experienced in my life.

Right now, the content marketing industry, well over 100 years old, is going through as much change as we have ever seen. The biggest reason for this, outside of the fragmentation of media, is that the barriers to entry have been obliterated. There were three major barriers that used to exist as a gate to corporate publishing. Though they are no longer a concern today, I did discuss them in detail in Get Content Get Customers (published in 2008).

Old school marketing drives me nuts. Whenever I encounter it, I delete it, tune it out, turn it down, or fast-forward past it. And, I'm not alone.According to the folks over at GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications, 80% of business decision makers prefer to read informative articles about subjects of interest to them. What they don't like are advertisements and thinly veiled marketing disguised as something interesting.

At almost every event I've attended over the past few months, content marketing sessions are standing-room only. Marketing professionals are hungry for any way that they can continue their content marketing journey and attract and retain customers with compelling content. To help, I've dissected my last few presentations and put together seven critical strategies that I believe all marketers need to consider as they head into next year.

In 2006 I wrote a blog post on thinkjose.com about a small appliance company in Utah doing something dangerous and in turn creating a viral success selling $400 blenders that could turn a rake into sawdust. Several months later I wrote a feature article for Streaming Media entitled "Giant Web 2.0 Lies" highlighting BlendTec and their runaway video success. BlendTec continues to use the Will It Blend? videos to test their devices' power by blending phones, gaming consoles, cars, and even food over the last six years. With over 120 YouTube videos the company has racked up almost half a million subscribers and over 212 million views on their YouTube.com/Blendtec channel.