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Ditch the Newspaper Approach to Content Marketing, Try the Blockbuster Philosophy Instead

Here's a critical question many marketers ask themselves: "How do I create thought leadership in a sustainable and profitable way?"

Traditionally, marketers have not had a great answer to that question. That's because the way they produce thought leadership today is all wrong. Pretty much any survey will tell you that B2B marketers think they don't have enough content or that what they have isn't very good.

Research LinkedIn conducted with Edelman also shows that about 50 percent of B2B buyers are disappointed with the quality of thought leadership coming from vendors.

All this tells us that something is fundamentally broken. Why are B2B marketers spending enormous amounts of money churning out low-quality content? What explains the sorry state of thought leadership content marketing? Here's our theory: For the past 10 years or so, marketers have been told to imitate newspapers and "think like publishers." They've taken this advice literally, setting up "brand newsrooms" staffed by armies of "brand journalists" cranking out real-time, lightweight content. Articles, listicles, blog posts, tweets.

The problem with that approach is it's very difficult to be a newspaper in a world where anyone can publish a 500-word article. read more.