I came across this quippy quote the other day on Twitter: "Content is the new marketing." I thought it neatly captured the spirit of the times: Provide customers and employees with riveting, useful information around your knowledge and brand, and they will become passionate fans. Companies are scrambling to throw out old communication and marketing plans and launch news, information and social community sites for their customers and employees.

"We're tired of paying other people to get our message out to customers," a senior executive told me yesterday. "This year, we're doing it ourselves."

There's even a new buzzword to describe this new trend: "Brand Journalism."

This April we're bringing some of the most innovative corporate communicators to the NASDAQ MarketSite off Times Square in New York to share their best practices, their plans for new content sites and their analysis of where the industry is heading.

The conference is called, simply: The 2011 Content Summit for Corporate Communicators & PR. I hope you can attend.

Here's an example of why this subject is important.

Last week, I talked to a communicator who is revamping his hospital's website to deliver news and information, video features, and social networks around its brand. Gone is the old “website as shingle” approach—in comes the company-as-publisher model. The hospital is scrounging through online job listings in search of former newspaper reporters and television producers to help.

But the same principle applies to employee communications and media relations. Communicators have learned that publishing a patronizing CEO column entitled "The Only Constant is Change," won't cut it anymore.

Instead, they're communicating through new social networks. They're insisting on content that applies the old principle of what the legendary teacher Don Ranly called Refrigerator Journalism. Make it brief, make it useful and make it shareable.

I hope you can attend our conference. It's being hosted by NASDAQ at its Times Square MarketSite. And we're offering a special bonus for those of you who register early: A special networking event with The New York Times personal technology columnist David Pogue. And get this—at the end of the first day, you can help me ring the closing bell.

 Here are a few of the sessions:

* How to create videos for customers, the media and employees without busting your budget
* How to tap the hidden expertise of your employees and share it throughout the enterprise
* How to build and maintain a Facebook page and Twitter feed that builds brand loyalty
* How use storytelling to engage the media and spark buzz and conversation around your brand

Check out the brochure for speakers and a more in-depth look at sessions. Then, let me know if you have any questions.

You can reach me at ceo@ragan.com or leave a comment below.