Voices
15 Poems About Content Marketing
A year and a half ago, Contently signed the Super Bowl 50 Host Committee as a client. The committee wanted to created a content hub for visitors coming to San Francisco for the big game. As part of the deal, Contently would receive two tickets to the Super Bowl, along with a whole bunch of swag and party invites. Which created a problem: We’re a company of well over a hundred people—who would get the tickets?
It was an issue that vexed our executive team for many months. How would we choose? Would it be based on performance? Bribery? A battle royale officiated by Tina Turner a la Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome? We escalated long emails threads, stopped each other in the halls, and booked contentious meetings that always felt on the verge of devolving into physical combat. What I’m trying to say is—people really wanted those tickets.
Finally, like King Solomon, I hit upon a truly equitable scheme. A random drawing … but in order to limit participation to those who truly wanted to go, we made one condition: To be considered, entrants would have to submit a poem on content marketing.
We also limited the drawing to non-executive employees, though execs were free to submit poems. As you’ll see below, at least one exec used this forum to express his displeasure.
We received many a poem, from limerick to haiku to free verse—the best of which we’ve reprinted (in no particular order) for your enjoyment below:
1. Contently software
Smart, premium and friendly
Buy us please, thank you.
-Chris Meade, sales strategist
2. A manager who lived out in Queens
Had clients who feared empty screens.
Ever so gently
She whispered, “Contently,”
And POOF: information filled their machines
-Fran Slattery, enterprise account manager
3. The greatest blog post,
Blocked by suits who cannot write;
Compliance is hell.
-Jordan Teicher, senior editor
4. Content is the key
Success will follow content
Shouts DJ Khaled
-Jake Hall, sales strategist
5. There once was a young CMO
Who knew content was more than for show
So he got out of the weeds,
Published e-books, got leads
And watched his company grow
-Brian Maehl, talent development manager
6. What’s the ROI
Of measuring ROI?
He asked, drowning fast.
-Joe Lazauskas, editor-in-chief
7. Re-up content spend
Ad-words is bad words, fo sho
Tell real great stories
-Kevin Curtin, senior developer
8. There once was a man from Contently,
Who didn’t take plagiarism gently.
With his trusty red pen,
He caught some cheating men,
Now they’re all locked in the penn.
-Raghav Sachdev, senior QA engineer
9. Content ROI!
I awake in a cold sweat.
Trust me, it works.
-Richard Sharp, head of product and customer marketing
10. Here is my submission
I’m on an American mission
To get citizenship and thus equal rights
So I can be in lotteries and bar fights
Related to the great NFL
Give me the tickets or go to hell
-Gavin Power, VP of finance
11. A brand suffering content affliction
Said their story lacked strong depiction
So they came to us
And jumped on the bus
Cause our team sold with such strong conviction
-Dustin Abanto, inside sales manager
12. Start top of funnel
Content marketing journey
Conversion event!
-Brett Banes, sales executive
13. There once was a girl from Contently
Into that good night she didn’t go gently
She sold hella software
And acted like a boss there
And soon drove away in a Bentley
-Sam Slaughter, VP of content
14. Roses are red
Violets are Blue
Please buy some content
How about a million or two?
-Dylan Zucosky, sales executive
15. Content marketing is like football
People do things on a field
The field is the Internet
The points are the readers
Everyone has fun
But only one team wins
That team is Contently
-Alli Manning, senior manager, creative network
If you’re inspired to write your own content marketing poems, tweet me @samslaughter215 or email me at sam@contently.com. We don’t have any more Super Bowl tickets to give away, but if we get enough submissions, we could always publish them in a chapbook.
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