I’ve been cycling back to some news I filed (thank you, Instapaper) a while ago, and I came across the results of a Forrester Research paper, “Emerging technologies B2B CMOs should watch in 2011“.
The recommendations, targeted at chief marketing officers, include:
- using online content curation to bolster thought leadership;
- developing listening platforms to gauge customer sentiment;
- creating brand advocate platforms for spurring word of mouth; and
- offering appointment scheduling applications to engage customers who are ready to buy.
In reading this list, it struck me as consistent with the lessons I’ve drawn from my “context first” analysis. The overlap illustrates the degree to which content abundance and available technologies make convergence across various content businesses more and more likely.
Increasingly, good ideas about content management are coming from outside of traditional publishing. It’s an important time to be listening to the businesses that aren’t quite like ours. They may save us from disruption.
