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Last month at BlogWorld LA, I had the privilege to see Jay Baer and Joe Pulizzi’s session about content marketing. Their session focused on the different types of content marketing that companies participate in. It was titled: “How Much Do You Open Your Kimono?”

Is content marketing worthwhile? How do you tie it to revenue?

They taught that there are six types of content marketing. The six types of “opening the kimono” are:

1. Closed Kimono – There is no online thought leadership. Your content is not for public distribution. This type has the goal of significant repeat and “word of mouth” business. Pro: There is zero time investment. Con: You have limited exposure and a reduced ability to build online influence.

2. What Happens In Vegas – Online thought leadership is distributed and built via micro-platforms. Your company is participating in platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. and leaving blog comments to build your reputation as a thought leader. Pro: Original content is not required. You’re sharing other’s content in an effort to become a community resource. Con: You have no ability to drive the lead source and limited search engine potential. A great quote included in this segment was:

“To be considered a leader in any field, one must build and gain trust within their communities.” – Lisa M. Loeffler, Genuine Media Co.

3. Quid Pro Quo – This type comprises of selling thought leadership via methods such as e-books, how-to articles, and e-newsletters. The essential flow is that you give away free content and include a form asking people to subscribe to receive more free reports, etc. This builds your subscriber base and you then you market to those people with your paid content. Keep in mind that your free content needs to be “best in class” or people won’t pay you for your paid content. Pro: Recurring revenue. Con: Passive income.

4. Give Me Your Number – This is essentially lead-gated thought leadership. In this type, you put your content behind a gate (such as a lead form) and people have to give you some personal information to access the content (such as an e-mail address, etc.). Here you can focus not just on lead generating but lead nurturing. You would promote your content through all of your media channels but not give it to away until someone completes a lead form. Pro: If your content is good, you can generate a river of leads. Con: You have no control over the lead quality.

5. Peekaboo – In this type of content marketing, you give away what you know but not the process. Your content itself becomes your resume of thought leadership. Pro: You will get heavy SEO and PR awareness within your audience Con: This type takes tons of effort. It can also devalue each piece of content. You also risk publishing too much which could lead to you being ignored.

6. The Full Monty – Just like it sounds. You give it all away – what you know and how to do it. You create content for content’s sake. You even create content that is outside your industry. You can still have a lead form but it should not act as a gate to the content. Pro: There is no barrier to the customer. You can go big or small. Con: This type requires serious effort. It also allows others to “steal” your content and diverts attention from your core attributes.

Which one is right for you really depends on your target audience. Through testing, you can determine which one converts the most for you with your audience.

They provided a worksheet with a testing plan that you can use to evaluate each type and see which is the best fit for your company. You can access that worksheet at http://bit.ly/openkimono

It was fun using this “type-guide” to identify which type of content marketing various members of the online automotive community are using.

You can follow both Jay Baer and Joe Pulizzi on Twitter for more valuable information and content.

DJ Waldow of Waldow Social delivered a timely and fascinating presentation at the 2011 BlogWorld LA conference held November 3-5, 2011 in Los Angeles, CA titled “A Social Media Experiment: How to find a job” sharing his thought and experiences while offering timely advice and tips on how job-seekers of today can leverage the power of social media to aid them in finding a job.

DJ Waldow was formerly the Director of Community for Blue Sky Factory and is now the owner of his own business, Waldow Social. In his session, he told his personal story of how he was laid off unexpectedly when his employer was acquired by another company. Because the company’s acquisition was not public, he was not allowed to say anything other than he no longer worked there. So he got creative.

He shared with the audience how he created “Project Awesome“, which included an interactive PDF resume in Slideshare (to date viewed 9,181 times), the aforementioned blog post (which received 5,000+ visits and over 200 comments), and enlisted his friends to give video recommendations(viewed over 1,500 times) for him to use in his job hunt. All of this creative marketing of himself using social media led to “300 e-mails, 44 phone conversations/interviews, 7 in-person interviews, 13 Skype chats, 2 Google+ Hangouts & one Facebook chat – all with people interested in hiring (him) for a full-time position” and all of this occurred within the first 2 weeks of him losing his position.

Of course, being in the business of social media, he had some very high profile friends (which helped), but his approach was not one of soliciting recommendations from everyone he knew, but rather identifying key people in his life that he knew well enough to ask for a personal favor from. He called this “Social Capital”. Your social capital is gained by trust from people that you have earned, friendships that you have built, and relationships that you have grown. Identify key people in your life, both personal and professional, to assist in marketing yourself. Be creative and use social media networks to share that you are in the market and enlist your network in sharing YOU with THEIR network.

He advised that, if you plan to use social media, the first step is to know what’s out there in the world about you, right now. Do a search on the internet and see what others would find should they be looking for information about you. If you find negative items, either delete them or correct the ones that you can.

He challenged job-seekers to ask themselves these four questions:

What are you known for?
What do you want to be known for?
What are you good at?
What do you love?

In the connected world in which we live, traditional job hunting skills and habits will no longer separate you from the rest of the “pile”. You must be different and creative to stand out, but above all be helpful, be kind and always be positive.

Originally published on Yahoo!