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The weekend’s just about here! Punch out and pull up a chair; we’ve got this week’s top content marketing headlines on tap.

3 Rules for Driving Thought Leadership with Content Curation
Paul Gustafson at Content Matters
Curated content allows marketers to stay relevant and build thought leadership with existing material. However, posting engaging curated content requires that marketers know their audiences, utilize available tools, and follow a research schedule.

Why Do Magazines Look So Terrible on the New iPad?
Lauren Indvik at Mashable
With a new HD screen, the latest iPad raises the bar for content resolution. As consumers continue to adopt these HD devices, publishers must plan to increase the resolution of their content. continue reading…

I can’t resist writing about a recent eMedia Vitals article by Rob O’Regan titled, “Not your father’s custom publishing.” O’Regan—formerly the founding editor-in-chief of CMO, a critically acclaimed magazine that catered to senior marketing execs—writes about how something called content marketing is becoming an integral part of business-to-business marketing. Essentially it’s the ability to explain the value propositions of complex products and services—things that just can’t be described with a sound bite or jingle.

According to industry sources cited in O’Regan’s article, content marketing already commands over a quarter of today’s overall B2B spend and will soon become a $47.2 billion industry. No surprise for us—or our clients. In many settings, an in-depth understanding of products and services can only be created with multiple impressions of long-form media, such as magazines. Rich programs that integrate many forms of content and reinforce key messages over time produce consistently better results. That’s good news for everyone—except for traditional publishers with broken business models who are feverishly trying to reinvent themselves as content marketing experts.

So far, these old-school publishers are finding the transition about as easy as teaching a cat to walk on a leash. O’Regan quotes Charles Lee, SVP of IDG’s new content marketing group, as admitting that the “vendor publisher model takes us out of our comfort zone.” Frankly, it seems as if traditional publishers are both scared and at a loss to understand how to customize content in a way that works. Lee is quoted again as describing how IDG always asks its client the following question: “On a scale of 1-to-5, with 1 being vendor agnostic and 5 being vendor oriented, where you want the content to be?”

Such a formulaic approach is tremendously naïve.

The art of custom media lies in shaping content that reinforces client messaging and serves reader interest. Of course client-sponsored content is biased in favor of the client—but it must still serve reader interest to be effective. If custom content emits even a whiff of marketing-speak, it goes unread at best, or at worst, damages the client’s relationship with the target audience.

That’s why I enjoyed reading O’Regan describe why the effectiveness of content marketing begins with content quality—and how the skills of writers and editors with journalism experience are relevant to these efforts. We agree. TDA spends an extraordinary amount of time finding, vetting, and recruiting this talent. But that’s just the beginning. Once they’re here, we teach these professionals how to adapt their skills to the custom publishing environment through best practices and techniques refined over more than 20 years in the business. We know that complexity doesn’t necessarily mean complicated. And that’s a lesson traditional publishers are struggling to learn.

The research results are in. After a decade of speculation, it turns out that the Web is rewiring our brains, constantly refining our neural networks to respond to more input. But this evolutionary change may not be an upgrade. As Nicholas Carr notes in Wired , behavioral psychologists are discovering that while the Web is a superb medium for grabbing attention, it doesn’t always foster a deep understanding of complex subjects.

Carr notes that part of the problem stems from the way online information comes with more information than the primary text. And as Matt Richter of the New York Times recently observed, the overall increase in sudden bursts of information makes it difficult for people to concentrate on specific information.

Most of us attempt to manage all this information by multitasking. Be honest: Who hasn’t checked e-mail and surfed the Web during a conference call? “Computer users at work change windows or check e-mail or other programs nearly 37 times an hour, new research shows,” writes Richter.

But as the Times piece points out, only 3 percent of the population can actually multitask effectively. The rest of the world, as my colleague Paul Carlstrom likes to say, ends up multithrashing.

The ongoing rewiring of the brain presents an enormous problem for anyone attempting to convince C-level decision makers—who battle distractions like anyone else—about the benefits of any complex product or service. The Web is ideal, of course, in helping get you noticed, but when it comes to really selling the big idea behind your offerings, you need prospects to pay attention to the details. If you can’t provide a deep understanding of how big-ticket items will benefit a prospect, your sales cycle will be prolonged at best.

My evolving neural networks now conclude that science has made an elegant case for custom publications, particularly in enterprise high tech where prospects must feel comfortable with new technologies to become customers. Research cited by both Wired and the New York Times articles states that reading about complex subjects in traditional formats typically results in more comprehension than doing so online.

With typography, color, and artwork, publications have evolved over hundreds of years to capture, focus, and hold the attention of readers. An attractive magazine with well-written articles covering interesting topics can pave the way to a deeper understanding of what your company has to offer. Besides, I suspect the people who matter most—the decision makers you need to reach—prefer to read uninterrupted.

Up to this point, print has been the primary medium used to deliver this kind of information to the biggest audiences. It’s cheap and easy to distribute, and everyone knows how to use it.

Now, an emerging class of devices, like Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle, is creating a new medium that helps readers focus. Wired’s new iPad magazine developed with Adobe is an excellent example of how this new approach can minimize the distractions of other electronic media vying for our attention. (In fact, I first read Carr’s Wired magazine article on an iPad.)

Publishing aside, the new neural reality calls for all of us to think more about how we focus our attention, be more aware of the distractions of the modern world, and become more attuned to how our minds are evolving over time.