On November 3, 2009 ANPI sponsored a marketing session at OPASTCO’s Marketing and Technical Symposium in Minneapolis. For a session titled “Social Media: What is it? Why do it? How it will it change your life…or at least your marketing plan”, we knew we had to break out the big guns to live up to the expectations of attendees. ANPI tapped HubSpot’s vice president of inbound marketing, Mike Volpe, to lead this powerful session. He didn’t disappoint as a room filled with marketers and managers spent the next 2 hours drinking from the proverbial fire hose.

Topics included the importance of having a content strategy that feeds into search engine optimization, blogging, social media and landing pages, but the overarching message — and one that Mike would continually repeat is “Stop Thinking Like a Marketer and Think Like a Publisher”. This advice was key in David Meerman Scott’s “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” and is concurred by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah’s “Inbound Marketing“.

The fundamental step of a content strategy is often skipped by marketers eager to show they are on the cutting edge of marketing and communication. So how does a marketer retrain their brain and start thinking like a publisher? Luckily there are plenty of resources for marketers to turn to when figuring out what works best for them. Books like “Inbound Marketing” are a great starting point for all managers and marketers. As the title of chapter one states, “Shopping has changed… has your marketing?”.

ANPI provided a copy of “Inbound Marketing” to all conference attendees. We have a limited supply of extra copies — if you are a customer of ANPI’s, we’d be happy to send a copy your direction (as long as supplies last).

Thanks to ViodiTV for the video clip!