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How 5 Pros Made Their Careers in Content Marketing

The pros in content marketing circles have moved in different ways to get where they are today. Here’s how some of them made it to the top.

Many of today’s top content marketing pros highlighted in a recent Content Marketing Influencers chart didn’t study “Content Marketing 101” in university years ago. There was a different path to the top, which included online publishing, blogging, online advertising and more.
So how did some of today’s top influencers rise to the top of their game? Here’s a shortlist of power movers and shakers in content marketing today, and how they came to be in power:

Jeff Bullas

Jeff Bullas is one of today’s leading digital marketing influencers. After gaining a BA in economics and commerce in the late 1970s in his native Australia, Jeff went on to to a few early sales and marketing roles before discovering the internet in the mid-1990s. He jumped in with both feet as an early blogger and later an early social media enthusiast. Hear Jeff describe his own rags to riches story here.

Jay Baer

Jay Baer is one of the industry’s top speakers, authors and businessmen. His consultancy Convince and Convert is a powerhouse for global clients, he’s written 5 books (with a 6th coming in 2017), and is an active presence on Facebook and Snapchat. Jay’s background includes a political science degree from Arizona State University, early jobs working in marketing and advertising, and his early ‘00s agency Mighty Interactive, which won many awards between 2000 and 2005.

Joe Pulizzi

Joe Pulizzi is a leading light in content marketing circles. He’s founder of Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and author of Content Inc. In the mid-1990s, Joe graduated with a BA in communications degree from Bowling Green State University and a Masters in Communications from Penn State University. He then moved to New York and worked in publishing jobs, eventually rising to VP with B2B publisher Penton Media before moving back to Cleveland, Ohio to launch CMI in 2007. Since then, it’s been skyward for Joe, as he leads a new generation of content marketers with advice, smarts and tenacity.

Lee Odden

A mainstay of the digital marketing arena over the past 15 years, Lee Odden is co-founder of his Top Rank Blog and Top Rank Online Marketing agency from Minneapolis, MN. Lee’s background includes a VP-Online Marketing role at a large grocery company in the 1990s, and then moving on to start blogging in 2001 and a digital marketing consultancy at the same time. He runs one of the most widely read digital marketing blogs – Top Rank Marketing – in the world.

Neil Patel

Neil Patel is an entrepreneur through and through. Based in California, Neil rode the internet wave in the early aught to be co-founder and VP Marketing for ACS. In 2008, Neil co-founded analytics platform KISSMetrics and served as VP Marketing there until 2014. Besides building his own brand and content marketing presence at conferences and events, Neil also heads up another analytics software firm Crazy Egg.

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