I’m at BlogWorld Expo in New York this week learning all about the relationship between content and marketing, and how you can turn your content, and your customer’s content into a tool to grow your business.

Disclaimer right off the top: this isn’t your usual “you need a blog” blog post. You do need a blog, but the truth is that beyond needing a blog, what you really need is a content strategy. In the spirit of openness around sharing with our Resellers, I’ll tell you this – we’re still learning about content and marketing ourselves, just as you are and I’m super excited about some of the insights I picked up today at BlogWorld.

I’m not going to go in depth on anything right here, but I do want to cover off a few of the big things that I picked up in sessions today that I think will be of use to you in your business. If you want to check out some of my notes from the sessions I attended today, I’ve opened up that part of my Evernote collection to you. Check That Out Here. And if you have any questions, hit me in the comments, through my personal Twitter account or through @OpenSRS (I’m ^JK).

I’ll give you three neat things that made me go “Oh, wow!” today when I heard them:

  1. Having a content strategy is key. It’s not enough to have content. You need to create the right content. That means thinking about and identifying what your core subject is, then finding some related topics, your passions, and even looking at content that’s already out there that you can use. There’s more in my notes for “Building your Content Bubble” with David Murray. Great session – follow @davemurr on Twitter and check out his blog for lots more.
  2. Pick a niche and dominate it. Identify your customers, figure out what they want and then target keywords and categories to provide content that they will find through searches. They have problems, you have the solutions – use your content to help them find you and it will lead to customer acquisition. There’s lots more in the notes from “Dominate Your Niche with Social SEO for Blogs” with Lee Odden. Lee blogs as well, and can be found on Twitter @leeodden. Worth checking out.
  3. Social Media can drive customer acquisition big time. No, seriously – it can. And you can measure it and prove it. Case studies showed how you can induce your customers to create the right content for you, then leverage that content to drive more potential customers to your site. The secret to getting people to share content is to let them share their content. I just about fell off my chair at this point..of course! Lots more in the notes for “Using Social Media Marketing to Drive Acquisition” with Chris Baggott including those real-world case studies. Check out Chris’ posts at Compendium.com and follow him on Twitter @chrisbaggott for more.

More to come!

I’ll be taking notes again tomorrow and sharing more thoughts throughout the day both through Evernote, here on the blog and on my Twitter account, @jameskoole. No worries – I don’t live tweet sessions! You won’t be annoyed, I promise.