Gather ’round – we are talking Content Marketing!

We constantly strive to set ourselves apart from other venture capital firms. Each quarter, we organize a forum or workshop for our companies to learn directly from industry-leading experts. We typically focus on covering topics that would have the most impact within expansion stage companies.

Since I have been with OpenView, we have hosted forums organized around a number of functional areas, and (drumroll please) the time has finally come for a forum on marketing! Can you tell that I am excited? Next week, we will be hosting a forum on Content Marketing for our portfolio companies. We have six industry-leading experts coming in to work hand in hand with us.

So, content marketing. What does that even mean?

Essentially, it is all about creating and sharing of useful and meaningful topics or matter to your company’s customers and prospects. It is about having valuable conversations with customers and prospects, not old school, one-way dialogs via traditional marketing tactics. Organizations use content marketing strategies to develop though leadership, generate new leads, among others. For more definitions of content marketing, click here and here.

Here are some quick ideas to incorporating a content marketing strategy within your company:

• Create short videos (30 seconds to 2 minutes) to illustrate your company’s mission or value proposition
• Develop a monthly e-newsletter proposing answers to your target audience’s main pain points
• Include lots of fresh, new, interesting content on your website
• Host webinars or webcasts to deliver content in an interactive format
• Start a blog and have each employee write regularly on key business topics from his/her perspective
• Write an e-book (the new version of a white paper) to reach customers and prospects on another level

Take a look at Get Content, Get Customers by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett for more information on content marketing and strategies for execution.