Content Marketing Made Easier – Interview with Michael J. Fern, CEO of Intigi

The practice of content marketing (aka inbound marketing) is about consistently generating compelling, value-add content to your audience. I’ve done a lot of writing about it, and Google considers me a bit of an authority on the subject. Done right, good content marketing can turn your organization or entity into a perceived authority on your subject matter, and an influencer in your reader consumption and spending decisions.

But organizations across the board often face the same reality–content marketing can be demanding. Website or blog updates daily, or even a few times a week on top of all your normal marketing efforts can be resource-intensive.

So, how do you sustain this level of content creation? Certainly, creating original, quality content is essential. This can be done in-house, or even outsourced. But another, often over-looked element to the equation is the art and practice of content curation; the practice of finding and sharing relevant content to your audience.

In the traditional sense, this looks a lot like scouring the Web for cool articles to collect. But that exercise can become laborious. That’s when it’s time to introduce the right tools to help do the job. Intigi (pronounced like integer + Luigi) is one such tool. It’s an online service that helps you find, curate, and share engaging content with prospects and customers.

I spoke with Michael J. Fern, CEO and co-founder of Intigi, who explains, “We help accelerate your content marketing efforts so you can quickly build your company’s thought leadership and increase qualified website traffic.” With Intigi, users can search over 30,000+ content sources. And these sources are in and of themselves, curated by Intigi users.

When speaking at this summer’s Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco, Fern shared a startling statistic: 80% of corporate blogs have 5 or fewer posts. These brands need content curation, perhaps paired with more discipline and patience. But they may also need to recognize the emergence of a new role. At the helm of a tool like Intigi is the content curator.

Curators are the individuals doing the searching and sharing and are friends to the Web. They’ve become so influential and important. Businessgrow.com writer Neicole Crepeau, wrote of the role, “The curator is the new Google.” And an article in Fast Company called content curators “the new superheroes of the Web.”

Intigi makes the content curator and even more powerful role, by increasing productivity, reach, and collaboration. And it’s not just about throwing content out there to magically see what sticks. Intigi provides the metrics to help marketers determine what’s working and what’s not. The tool offers analytics via a Bitly integration, allowing you to better understand things like click-through-rates (CTR) of curated content, the link referrer, and location.

For the organization looking to integrate the solution further, Intigi offers an API. Plugyour site or app into this and directly deliver fresh, curated content to supplement your original works. One of Intigi’s clients produces entertainment focused web and mobile apps and uses our API to provide its users with the latest 3rd- party content on various TV shows.

In the end, content curation is an almost essential practice to maintain your content marketing. Fern clarifies, that curation isn’t a substitute, and that you want to create original content alongside curated content. “The two go hand-in-hand,” he says.