OneSpot, a content advertising company that combines content marketing with online advertising, announced it has completed a $5.3 million Series A round of financing. Mohr Davidow Ventures led the investment round with participation from existing and new investors Mack Capital, RSL Ventures, Capital Factory, and Bazaarvoice co-founder Brett Hurt. The investment brings OneSpot's total funding to $6.8 million and will help the company aggressively expand its sales and marketing efforts, as well as broaden and accelerate product development.

From on-boarding through the closing of your deals, content is an integral part of your sales and business strategy. Explore the sales enablement content path with this infographic.

The Federal Trade Commission says it will host a workshop on December 4, 2013 in Washington, DC to examine the practice of blending advertisements with news, entertainment, and other content in digital media, referred to as "native advertising" or "sponsored content." This type of advertising has grown increasingly common as publishers look for ways to get the attention of consumers who simply look past banner ads.

InboundWriter, which specializes in content performance improvement, announced the latest release of its software platform. This new release makes it possible for enterprises and publishers developing rich, text-oriented online content to measurably improve content quality, and consistently predict how content will perform prior to investing significant time and resources into writing, publishing, and promotion.

OneSpot, a content advertising company that marries content marketing with the power, data intelligence, and infrastructure of online advertising, announced it is adding a Content Sequencing Engine as part of the OneSpot platform. The Content Sequencing Engine gives OneSpot customers the ability to use large portfolios of content to enable multi-stage brand storytelling.

Group SJR's "Unfiltered" report took an in-depth look at a variety of digital media platforms and how consumers respond. The SJR Insights team asked 903 individuals of all ages about their current digital behaviors and gleaned results from their responses. Probably the most relevant results in the report are regarding how Millennials respond to news media through social media channels.

Remember the days when the white paper was the go-to (if not only) content marketing tool? Those days are such a distant memory that the term "content marketing" didn't even exist during the white paper's heyday in the 1990s. In its place have emerged a whole array of content channels-blogs, magazines, videos, social networking campaigns, and so on-and a new collective term for them, that delivers dynamic and engaging branded information, the ultimate intention of which is to drive sales.

Consumers today seek information at their fingertips from a wide variety of sources including online search and social media. To tap into this thirst for information and connect with their customers and prospects in a meaningful way, modern marketers are going beyond traditional sales and advertising channels by stepping up their content marketing strategies.

As content providers, it's critical to find a balance between making your presence known on a myriad of channels and spamming already drowning consumers to the point of annoyance (and possible brand detriment). It's also vital that the quality of the content produced doesn't suffer in the race to make it seen.

Back in May, Social Media Today compiled case studies from several reputable sources regarding the correlation between blogging and sales for businesses. Unanimously, studies show that maintaining an active blog can provide an increase in traffic of up to 210% to a website. Clearly, blogging still remains one of the most commonly produced and read forms of content marketing (in fact, many experts find that blogging is the first thing someone thinks of when mentioning content marketing). And, just like any other form of marketing, the blogosphere is evolving.

Your company has a blog that publishes several posts a week? Excellent. You have hundreds of people signed up for RSS subscriptions and frequent comments? Superb. You've got this content marketing thing down? Well, not quite."A lot of times the blog is sort of synonymous with content marketing," says Brendan Cournoyer, content marketing manager for Brainshark. "This rings true with companies that don't have an understanding of it. Even the blog itself is just a tool. The concept behind content marketing is really answering questions and communicating with potential and current customers."

Content marketing is becoming an increasingly important part of the marketing strategy for companies across a wide variety of industries. Establishing yourself as a source of authoritative content is more important than ever on the web, but each industry has its own challenges, concerns, and potential benefits when it comes to content marketing. Jessica Davis of Godot Media has addressed these issues in an ongoing series of posts on econtentmag.com. In this article, we have highlighted some of Davis' best advice for four of the most prominent industries in content marketing, but no matter your industry, many of these tips will help make you a better marketer.

In June, EContent announced it was accepting votes for a new list recognizing the best and brightest in the content marketing industry. We asked for your nominations, and you obliged. With just under a week left in the nominating process, we had received 123 submissions and 53 nominees via Twitter. By the time the nomination process finally closed we had received several more names. Now, your votes have been counted, sorted through, and double-checked.

If you are in the business of digital content-and in this day and age, we all are-you have undoubtedly heard the phrase "content strategy" tossed around lately. You've heard how important strategy is to any content endeavor, but you may still be wondering what that means to you.Content strategy defines how a company is going to use content to meet the needs of a business, guides decisions about content from creation to deletion, and sets benchmarks against which to measure success. Deciding to post a YouTube video is not content strategy, nor are the myriad and growing numbers of features that your CMS offers. A strategy sets a vision for the future. Although it can be revised, it is perennial, not seasonal.

In the information circulating about digital natives, there are many references to the idea that older generations always think the upcoming generation is different from previous ones, but that this generation of digital natives really is different. They have more communication devices at their disposal. They are much more comfortable with them and much more adept at using them. Having grown up in a tech-heavy environment, they are quick to pick up on new technology and expect improvements or new offerings to come rapidly.

While no one may be waiting for the business version of West Side Story with the Sharks played by the marketing department and IT as the Jets, it's definitely no secret that these two groups are often at odds. Artists and engineers are at opposite ends of the spectrum. These business divisions will never see eye-to-eye. But are they really that different? At this year's Gilbane Conference in Boston, Massachusetts one of the prominent ideas raised was the concept of a marketing technologist. This hybrid individual is on the rise in organizations big and small. But is your company ready for someone to bridge the digital divide? And are companies really ready for this shift in business? Basically, do we need a marketing technologist?

Email marketing is on everyone's mind these days. But when it comes to open rates, it isn't so much of a content discussion as it is a context discussion. From corporate marketers to internet gurus, the term "email marketing" appears in articles and podcasts about as often as the term "content marketing."

I recently spent an afternoon going down a podcast rabbit hole. It started with the DoubleX podcast from Slate, which led me to an episode of Dan Savage's Savage Love podcast, which pointed me to--of all things--the OkCupid blog. I was more surprised than anybody when I discovered we could all learn something from OkCupid about analytics and all the very scary things websites know about us.

Content is a conversation. Social media gives us the opportunity to share in that conversation. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other similar channels are so popular because they give us a chance to talk. Did you ever think you'd spend hours reading and commenting about your friend's cousin's trip to Mexico? When you do, doesn't it make you feel connected? Being part of a community is fun, energizing, and comforting. It also creates what we need most in marketing-trust.

Supply and demand is a theory explaining the interaction between the supply of a resource and the demand for that resource, and it applies here. The law describes the interaction between and effect of the availability of a particular product and the desire for that product. Plainly put, when opportunity hits (and it so rarely does), the business owner, marketer or quarterback must be there to meet it with a content piece or an accurate pass to capitalize on it. If not, it is an opportunity lost.