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Great speakers make you feel like their message is pointed directly at you. Having had the pleasure to listen to Dr. Brené Brown’s keynote at HubSpot’s INBOUND15 conference this year had that effect on me. If you don’t know who she is (how did I miss this genius with three New York Times best sellers right now?!?), she gave one of the most viewed TED Talks, changed lives, and is well on her way to changing

mine.

Last year was the first time I attended HubSpot’s annual conference, INBOUND. It was so amazing and overwhelming, it’s a miracle my head didn’t explode daily. I did learn a few things I’d like to share with those who will be attending this year, whether you’re vets or newbies to this mother of all marketing conferences.

Not to sound like Scrooge, but I really hate all of these Christmas and Black Friday in July promotions. Come on, you pay your ad agencies millions of dollars. I’m sure they have art directors, creative directors and copywriters with the skills and desire to come up with something more creative, too.

On the flip side, I very much enjoyed the cookie I ate at our Christmas in July happy hour last week. 

Lessons from BuzzFeed and NewsCred’s webinar, “Creating Content for Millennials: Why It Matters + Strategies for Success”

Beyoncé wasn’t built in a day—neither was BuzzFeed. And both began their ascents around the same time.

It was 2005 when Bey realized there was only one, true Destiny’s Child. And it was 2006 when Huffington Post co-founder Jonah Peretti launched BuzzFeed as “an experimental lab that focused on tracking viral content and making things people wanted to share.” Score.

More marketers are spending time, money and resources on content marketing than ever before. In fact, 42 percent of businesses now publish new content at least weekly. However, the majority of these efforts continue to fail. Why is this? While the reasons are wide-ranging, I see some mistakes happening over and over again: