Content Catchup: How Top Brands Build Their Newsrooms, Red Bull’s Secret Team, and More Must-Reads

Here’s what you missed while wondering when your VC-engorged tech company is going to build a cave room that you can hibernate in until April…

How to Get a Bigger Content Budget in 2015

Every ambitious content marketer wants a bigger budget, but doing so is tricky. Celine Roque and Natalie Burg spoke with some of the most successful content marketers in the business to get their six secrets to success. Read it.

Build vs. Buy: Why Top Brands Are Leaning on Freelancers to Build Hybrid Newsrooms

Build or buy? That’s the question haunting marketers tasked with building brand newsrooms or content studios. Alyssa Hertig went to some of the biggest brand publishers around to figure out what works best:

As we speak, marketing directors around the country are being tasked with an exciting but unenviable challenge: “Do content marketing.” But how? It’s difficult to know where to begin. Do you spend months building the perfect in-house team? Hire a bunch of freelancers? Or embrace some combination of the two?

Each brand will necessarily reach different answers to fit its specific needs. There’s no definitive best way to build a brand newsroom, but top brand publishers seem to have settled on a similar formula of in-house teams and freelance talent that lets them create content that matters—and at scale. Read it.

10 Questions You Should Ask Your Next Content Marketing Partner

Today more than ever, marketers are being tasked with getting a content operation up and running—and fast. Often, that means bringing in outside help, but with no standard protocol for vetting potential partners, it’s all too easy to make the wrong choice. Luckily, Ray Cheng is here with a list of 10 crucial questions you need to ask. Read it.

Meet the Men Behind Red Bull’s Explosive Content

Red Bull and GoPro are the envy of the content marketing world. Their secret sauce? A couple of daredevils with a small content shop, writes Natalie Burg.

The Red Bull Signature Series Dreamline BMX contest recently wrapped up its third year of giving riders the chance to, as the 2013 event coverage put it, “attack the most innovative BMX dirt setup that we have every seen. A course that many people are saying could alter the sport.” And that’s not just Red Bull’s opinion.TransWorld RideBMX calls Dreamline “the premier dirt contest of the year”—which is exactly what Luke Seile and Paul Williams, co-founders of the branded content firm Become Co., had in mind when they created it. Read it.

Is This What Your Content Marketing Brainstorm Looks Like?

And finally, I leave you with our first-ever TCS comic, which we’ll be doing at least weekly, but probably more often.

And to read my rant against culture-hijacking by brands that accompany it, head here.

Otherwise, keep on cranking and fighting that hibernation. We’ll see you Monday.