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.