This is a guest post by my friend Kareem Mostafa from tribetactics and author of Original Series: How to create binge-worthy, B2B content that drives revenue.

It's not really rocket science what we content marketers wake up and try to do every day: get attention.

We seek to build attention by creating content. Many of us believe that the goal is to create content that is merely better (whatever that means) than others in the same industry in order to stand out - believing that our buyers are perfectly rational human beings. 

Spoiler alert, they're not. They're emotional beings who watch YouTube, Netflix, and listen to Spotify and iTunes as much as you do.

We're not competing for attention from others in our industry. The world is not that clear-cut and perfect. We're competing for attention with virtually everything in our buyer's world. We're competing for attention with Netflix. 

Exactly what is our plan to do that? 

One thought that comes to mind is that Netflix create their own original series on a regular basis. Somewhere along the way, a (very) small group of marketing pioneers began getting the trick - and started creating their own brand original series as well. Wistia, Mailchimp, Ernest Packaging, HubSpot, to name a few. 

And you can do it too. Here's why you need to consider it.

5 Reasons Why You Need Original Series in Your Content Marketing

The Content Marketing Institute released a new study into content marketing services for agencies. The research looked into: 

• How many agencies have embraced content marketing as a service offering?
• How long have they been offering content marketing services?
• What types of services do they offer?
• What are their biggest challenges when working with clients? 

I went through it and I want to share with you the key findings that stood out to me about the growth and development of content marketing services by agencies. 

I've spent over seven years working in an agency or consulting agencies on how to grow their businesses and content marketing has become a top income source and service provided so a lot of the results don't surprise me, however, they certainly speak of the increasing trend where agency disciplines are merging. It's becoming harder and harder to differentiate between the marketing, PR and advertising agency as they all offer or can offer the same content marketing services. 

Now to the research. Let's start with some facts.

Content Marketing has been around for quite some time.

We use it in inbound marketing, we use it in inbound PR, we use it in internal communication, we use it any time we need to interact with an audience. 

Content has become a business asset.

In fact, 88% of B2B content marketers say that creating content makes their audience view their organisation as a credible and trusted resource.  

I learned this from a very cool infographic from my friends over at PointVisible that I want to show you today. 

You can take a look at the full image below but I to run through some of the key statistics from my point of view.

6 Key Facts About the State of Content Marketing