Consumers have shut off the traditional world of marketing. They own a DVR to skip television advertising, often ignore magazine advertising, and now have become so adept at online “surfing” that they can take in online information without a care for banners or buttons (making them irrelevant).

Smart marketers understand that traditional marketing is becoming less and less effective by the minute, and that there has to be a better way.

You’ve just heard someone mention “content marketing” and you get the idea you should already know what it is, but you’re too embarrassed to ask anyone. Congratulations, this post is for you.

But what exactly is content marketing?

The Content Marketing Institute, an online resource for information on all things content marketing related, defines content marketing thusly:

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy, and it focuses on owning media, not renting it.

The key word here is “valuable.” It’s what changes this definition from one that could describe almost any form of advertising or marketing. You can tell if a piece of content is the sort that could be part of a content marketing campaign if people seek it out, if people want to consume it, rather than avoiding it.

Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent. The essence of this content strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.

However, the definition of content marketing further depends on your viewpoint and background.  A B2B marketer, looking to generate and nurture leads, for instance, might look differently at it than a brand marketer, looking to cause a shift of brand perception, or a search engine optimization practitioner, trying to increase organic ranking of content in search engines. Moreover, the rules of good content marketing and essential strategies and principles are very much alike in most cases.

In fact, at the basis, content marketing is a customer-centric and integrated approach, part of a broader marketing view.

One of the key similarities in all the different ways of looking at content in marketing is that the customer experience and needs, preferences and questions of people and so-called target audiences are at the center.

At this point, despite this definition and explanation, you’re probably still wondering what exactly content marketing is. We can get more clarity by considering a few examples.

1. Infographics
2. Webpages
3. Podcasts
4. Videos
5. Books

Learn more on: Forbes.com 

Ask content marketers to discuss the benefits of their trade and you will, no doubt, be regaled with facts, statistics, and examples that clearly demonstrate how successful and discipline it can be. But ask him or her to quantify that success with a number, and the answers aren’t always as cut and dried.

Sustainable success rarely comes overnight, regardless of your marketing technique of choice. More likely, any gains will be the result of a slow, steady climb in the influence, visibility, credibility, and desirability of your business — benefits that content marketing is proven in its ability to establish and grow. But try telling that to an executive who urgently needs to justify a content budget with calculations that show a definitive financial impact.

Measurement comes at the end of this framework, but for many, it’s the beginning, middle, end (and everything in between) of your content marketing process… and it’s not easy.

As our content marketing research indicates, 33 percent of B2B marketers and 41 percent of B2C marketers cited the inability to measure as a significant challenge. In the video below, CMI consultants Carla Johnson, Michael Weiss, Ardath Albee, and Jay Baer discuss why this number is likely too low, and share some of their insights into what, specifically, content marketers need to be measuring.

Here are five metrics to effectively measure your content marketing efforts:

1. Brand Lift
Building buzz about your brand should be an ongoing goal of your content marketing efforts. The way consumers perceive your company is really important because there are many competitors gunning for the attention of your customer base. This metric tends to be more abstract, but that doesn’t diminish its importance.

2. Increased Traffic
When your content is created and then distributed to your audience, the hope is that this effort will drive traffic back to your web properties. Measuring an increase of organic traffic from the search engines to your website is a worthwhile method of determining whether the content you’re creating is engaging enough to draw traffic to your website.

3. Social Interactions
A metric that allows you to better understand whether your content is resonating with your online audience is the amount of quality social interactions each piece of content garners. By monitoring the gross amount of tweets, retweets, likes, shares, comments, mentions, and more, your business will be able to understand what content was well received, on what platforms and by what users.

4. On-Site Engagement
Once traffic is driven to your website from the variety of content you’ve distributed, take a look at the on-site engagement that that traffic generated. It is one thing to drive traffic to your website using content marketing, but if that traffic doesn’t do anything once they’ve visited your website then the traffic isn’t qualified, interested in your offerings or engaged enough to continue interacting.

5. Lead Generation and Subscriptions
One of the most valuable metrics to monitor when it comes to your content marketing efforts is if your lead generation efforts increased, as well as your subscriptions to your e-mail list or followers to your social media accounts.

Companies are defined today by their unique story. Anyone can sell a product but why buy that product over another? Creating radio spots and billboard ads are not enough in today’s consumer centric marketplace to connect with customers, it’s content that helps craft a story about your business, drive home your unique value and inform potential customers why they should buy your product or service over others.

Jumpstarting your content marketing efforts can be an uphill battle if you don’t have the right tools in place to get the job done. It’s time to think like a journalist and a marketer to offer your audiences content that is both useful and entertaining, similar to the value a publication brings to its readers.

There are a variety of content marketing tools, services and applications available, each promising to save the day for everything from persona development to editorial planning to content management, amplification and measurement.

Tools are essential for ensuring quality, consistency and enabling scale when it comes to just about any kind of digital marketing. Content Marketing is no different.

I have attempted to put together a map of content marketing tools available to online marketers.  My hope is that this will help guide you through the many content marketing technologies and tools alike to the right one that fits your needs.

1. Percolate

Percolate sources, curates and schedules content for brands to share on the social web. Also uses insights to suggest new content creation. Through Percolate, a brand can publish content for and engage with audiences on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress, and Drupal-based .com.

2. LookBookHQ

LookBookHQ is not unlike Pinterest and Slideshare in that you assemble content (original and curated) including web pages, files, images and video that then become “embeddble” and sharable on social networks. Essentially, LookBookHQ is a way to make your content marketing more visual. Content is displayed in what looks like a Pinterest board. You can annotate images within it and connect them to each other. Some of the content behind the tiles can be gated while other content is open access. Analytics are available to measure engagement and you can integrate with leading marketing automation and CRM solutions.

3. ÜberFlip

Uberflip is responsive-design curator feature for content in just about every format from video to social to PDF that can be published as a hub. Conversion functionality is built into the hub, with customized call to actions. This is a great example of a platform that will help a brand create a “best answer” hub for a topic they want to be known for.

4. Contently

Connects brands with access to a large pool of newspaper and magazine journalists including management tools for content creation, workflow and payment.  Offers a freelancers a place to catch extra work and brands a combination of talent network, content creation tools, workflow tools, publishing, sponsorship and distribution features.

5. Little Bird

Little Bird is a platform that helps companies find, engage and subscribe to real influencers on any given topic.

6. PaperShare

Shifts conversion from the brand site to the content itself using an upload once, share anywhere approach.  Includes a dashboard that offers channel specific analytics that let you know who is reading your content, which channels they came from, what else they have read and any insights they share. Also includes an engagement dashboard for nurturing and direct interaction.