Companies that use marketing automation have 53% higher conversion rates than companies that do not, according to the Aberdeen Group.

Though some marketers insist content marketing automation takes away the relationship between the brand and customer, automation can actually enhance that relationship.

Content marketing automation can be as simple as scheduled social media posts and as complicated as list segmentation and lead scoring. Depending on a brand's marketing and sales strategy, content marketing automation can dramatically improve conversion rates.

However, marketers really need to take automation seriously if they want to prove the success of a campaign....

Are you getting the value you should from your content marketing? Learn 5 best practices your business needs to follow to get the results you deserve.

... ‘If we only talk about ourselves, we’ll never reach customers’ says the always entertaining Joe Pulizzi in his packed-room presentation at Social Media Marketing World 2014.

The answer to this pathological content hoarding problem is content marketing, or at least it was supposed to be. Unfortunately, many businesses are not following important content marketing best practices and are seeing disappointing results because of it. According to research from Content Marketing Institute, 90% of businesses today are engaging in content marketing, but only 45% report it to be effective.

Here are 5 essential content marketing best practices businesses need to follow if they want to get the ROI that’s missing from their content marketing:...