2014 was another successful year for chrisparente.com. I’d like to say thank you to all of my visitors, and I wish you all the best in 2015.
2014 was a year of transition for me. Early in the year I launched my own content marketing firm, StoryTech Consulting LLC. I’m very happy to say the business is going well, and naturally that took some time and attention away from this site. Despite not being able to publish as regularly as in past years, Google Analytics reports chrisparente.com received over 117,000 pageviews in 2014. The average visit produced 2.55 pageviews, an excellent indication of reader engagement.
The most popular 2014 story in the Work category was my review of a big announcement in the content marketing world, the partnership of NewsCred and Outbrain. In the Wine category, my story looking at the state of the wine industry in the U.S. pulled the most readers. And in Wheels, the DIY inspection of my 1999 M3 was the most popular story of 2014.
Many older stories continue to drive significant traffic. My article on BMW quality concerns continues to have the most Google juice of any of my stories, followed closely by my articles trying to help owners of BMW SULEV vehicles. My article on the demographics of wine consumption in the U.S. continues to rank highly, asking the question whether enough younger people are drinking wine to replace aging Boomers. Some of my earlier articles looking at online privacy are proving evergreen, led by a piece published after the Snowden/NSA revelations broke.
When I launched StoryTech Consulting, some friends suggested I suspend or discontinue chrisparente.com. Their thinking was it wasn’t purely focused on business, and that’s what prospects would want to see. Instead I built a new site for the firm and kept this publication going as well, albeit with a reduced publishing cadence.
I believe my online publishing experience is an added benefit to my clients. I bring a “thinking like a publisher” mindset to my engagements not because it’s a marketing theory I believe in, but because it’s a role I’ve personally filled for eight years. I’ve also gained firsthand knowledge of how to earn an online identity as a thought leader in a very specific niche — in my case BMW DIY repair and wine. And I’ve dealt with the migration of readership to mobile — nearly 40 percent of traffic to this site is now from smartphones or tablets.
These hands-on skills are incredibly helpful as I work with clients to launch, promote and grow their owned media properties. The publisher mindset and other principles of content marketing are increasingly being adopted by B2G and B2B companies. In a nutshell these are:
- the consistent publication of high quality content that demonstrates thought leadership;
- targeted promotion that respects and educates the enlightened buyer;
- the nurturing of prospects via integration into the sales funnel process of the organization.
The new year looks bright for companies that follow these principles, and I hope your 2015 will be as well. Thanks again for being a visitor to chrisparente.com, and see you next year.