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We’re back after a three-month hiatus during which some business priorities took precedence.

Content marketing is the latest marketing buzzword, and it has a lot of marketers scared. The most recent annual survey by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs reported that while 88% of North American B2B marketers say they use content marketing, only 30% believe they are effective at it.

The result is, as Forrester Research reported, 65 percent of business decision makers consider the content they get from vendors to be useless.

Part of the problem is that marketers have not been trained in the skills that they are now expected to master to create compelling content. After all, marketing has always been about delivering a message, not enticing a customer to find you.

But marketers do have an ally they can turn to to help them become good content marketers: big data. Now if those two words strike fear into your heart, then you should read Outside-In Marketing: Using Big Data to Guide your Content Marketing, the new book by James Mathewson and this week’s guest, Mike Moran. This book won’t baffle you with jargon; it spells out metrics you can use to constantly test the effectiveness of your content and make it better. And it’s written in terms anyone can understand.

Mike Moran has a rare combination of skills. A retired IBM Distinguished Engineer with 11 patents related to search and retrieval technology, he now teaches marketers how to use content to attract and retain customers. Mike launched his own content marketing consultancy in 2006, shortly after co-authoring the best-selling Search Engine Marketing, Inc. (now in its third edition). He’s also the author of Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules. In addition to teaching and consulting worldwide, he’s also a senior strategist at digital media marketing consultancy Converseon. He previously spoke to us on FIR B2B #28.

Follow Mike Moran on Twitter.

About Paul Gillin

Paul Gillin, host of FIR B2B, is a veteran technology journalist and a thought leader in new media. Since 2005, he has advised marketers and business executives on strategies to optimize their use of social media and online channels to reach buyers cost-effectively. Full bio