As a newer member of the TopRank Agency blog team, I spent a good part of my first couple weeks here digging through the past year’s blog posts and getting up to speed with TopRank content and best practices. As I did, I found that I was jotting down quotes and notes that stood out to me — some from industry leaders, and others from up-and-comers I haven’t yet met. In sharing this list with you, I hope that you’ll find the same insight and utility that have discovered.
Here are a just a few (OK, 30) of my favorite quotes from some of the best brains in the business. You may have your own quotes that you remember well from conferences, books or blog posts in 2014. If so, feel free to share!
As you will see, I have categorized my favorite quotes into four topic areas: Strategy, Tactics, Predictions, and ROI. In doing so, I noticed that some people’s quotes fell into multiple categories, also that some individual quotes could have fit more than one category. (I don’t know that this changes the relevance of the quotes themselves, just an interesting side note.)
Content Marketing Strategy
Michael Brenner
@BrennerMichael
“Content is the atomic particle of all marketing across paid, owned, and earned channels. A Culture of Content starts with an obsession of customer.”
Content Marketing Best Practices Report: Creating a Culture of Content
Brian Clark
@brianclark
“The best “native” advertising helps build an audience into a a long-term business asset, and that’s a goal worth spending on in conjunction with owned content creation.”
21 Digital Marketing Trends and Predictions for 2015
Andrew Davis
@TPLDrew
“Some of the best content has no CTA. There’s an implied action that sparks a new journey!”
A Writer’s Guide: Calls to Action – Tips Inspired by Tweets from Content Marketing World
Gurdeep Dhillon
@gurdeepd
“Modern marketing is about taking risks and not being afraid to fail. No matter how much we research and study our audience, we’re not always going to hit the mark when we create content. The key is to recognize the failures, learn from them, and move on. And the way to do this is simple … measure everything!”
How to Build a Content Marketing Strategy eBook
Kevin Green – Dell (client)
@KevinMGreen
“Many people forget how new search and SEO really is to the average user. Most digital marketers are still thinking in terms of keywords, but consumers are getting more conversational. Search is getting smarter and more effective at understanding the nuances of a user’s requests and serving them not only the results they are looking for, but in an experience that helps them better discover and learn.
Digital is now the first touch point for the consumer and a channel where the consumer has greater control over what they see and when they see it. In a world where the intended target has limitless choices, it’s up to Digital Marketers to understand the customer journey, customer expectations and desired outcomes from a myriad of scenarios.”
Digital Marketing – What Does It Really Mean? Insights from 9 Brand Digital Marketers
Ann Handley
@annhandley
“Does your content lead readers on a journey, or does it merely stuff them as leads into a pipeline?”
Infographic: How to Grow Your Audience – 10 Tips from Facebook, MarketingProfs, ExactTarget, Copyblogger
John Jantsch
@ducttape
“I believe organizations will go deeper into overall strategy with digital marketing – Chief Digital Officers will help organizations lessen their focus on demand creation and heighten it on organizing an end to end customer journey through digital storytelling tactics.”
21 Digital Marketing Trends & Predictions for 2015
Deanna Lazzaroni (client)
@DigitalDL
“Social has a powerful way of connecting great minds. Don’t be afraid to tell the world why you’re one of them. Build your brand.”
15 Women Who Rock Social Media at Top Tech Companies – Career Advice & Insights
Rebecca Lieb
@lieblink
“Content strategy is the infrastructure of content marketing. Without answers to ‘why’ & ‘how’ the result is chaos.”
Content Marketing Strategy Infographic – 12 Tips from SAP, Boeing, CAT, Progressive, John Deere, charity: water
Jason Miller (client)
@JasonMillerCA
“Standing out is overrated. As a content marketer you really need to ask yourself: “Do you want to stand out or do you want to truly connect with your customers and prospects?” The answer is a balance of the two.”
Rock & Roll Social Media & Content Marketing Interview with Jason Miller of LinkedIn
“We don’t need more content — we need more relevant content,”
Welcome to the Funnel, We Have Leads & Names – Jason Miller of LinkedIn at MnSummit
Joe Pulizzi
@JoePulizzi
“If we only talk about ourselves, we’ll never reach customers”
5 Content Marketing Best Practices Most Businesses Aren’t Doing, but Should! #SMMW14
Mark Schaefer
@markwschaefer
“Are you human? Isn’t that the essence of how this online world started, why we love social media, and what people expect if you are going to build trust and loyalty? And yet, this is getting increasingly lost in a world preoccupied with traffic, search rankings and automated marketing software.”
5 Must Read Perspectives on Social Media Marketing Strategy
Scott Stratten
@unmarketing
“I’m the first person to preach about customer experience, but if your product is terrible, I don’t care if you’re the greatest customer/community believer in the world, it won’t help. We always talk about the importance of social media, of being where the customer conversation is, but we need to tend to our own home first.”
“What it comes down to is transparency in marketing, that’s where the consumer comes in. Marketing is no longer about what brand message the company wants to put out, it’s what the customer thinks. Good or bad. You don’t define your brand. If you want to know what your brand statement is, ask a customer.”
What’s Next in B2B Marketing? #MPB2B Interview with Scott Stratten @UnMarketing
Nazli Yuzak – Dell (client)
@NazliYuzak
“Be prepared to fight the good fight! Social media is still about building human to human relationships. There may be a lot of content to share from your organization but you have to defend the customers’ perspective and make sure that they are being presented with the most relevant content to where they are in their journey.”
15 Women Who Rock Social Media at Top Tech Companies – Career Advice & Insights
Content Marketing Tactics
Ardath Albee
@ardath421
“Let’s say you develop 5 resources to help prospects reach an objective. A prospect reads the 2 resources about and solving a specific problem and a case study about a company similar to theirs, but ignores the 3 that take a different perspective. Now you know exactly what type of information will be relevant to entering into a dialogue with the prospect.”
How to Show Real ROI For Your Content Marketing eBook
Brian Clark
@brianclark
“To please your audience, research their problems & desires, observe their content interactions & iterate.”
Infographic: How to Grow Your Audience – 10 Tips from Facebook, MarketingProfs, ExactTarget, Copyblogger
Jason Miller (client)
@JasonMillerCA
“Take your content and treat it like leftover turkey. Slice and dice it and use it in as many ways possible.”
18 More Amazing Search & Digital Marketing Takeaways from #MNSummit
Ann Handley
@annhandley
“Writing doesn’t have to be long to be meaningful. I’d argue that the words we use everywhere – on our websites, on our landing pages, on our LinkedIn profiles and so on – are just as important as the words we use in places we typically think of as ‘writing.’ ”
Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content – Interview with Ann Handley
Michael Stelzner
@Mike_Stelzner
“Those that pitch are becoming ignored. A little bit of selling here and there is great, but those marketers who do nothing but sell, sell, sell, are gonna get ignored, dismissed and overlooked by consumers and prospects. Get cracking folks, it’s time to actually care. That means dedicating more resources to things that are harder to track, like answering customer questions and providing more value online.”
21 Digital Marketing Trends & Predictions for 2015
Amy Higgins – concur (client)
@amywhiggins
“When crafting a blog post, think about the title – if just the title is shared in a tweet, will someone what to read it?”
Content Plus Social is A Sweet Song to Sing – Interview with Amy Higgins of Concur
Content Marketing Predictions
Brian Solis
@briansolis
“I’d love to say that by 2015 we will truly see digital strategies that are integrated across social, mobile, advertising, marketing, comms, et al. But, we won’t. What we will see though is a more conscious effort to bring disparate groups to the table to learn how to collaborate across screens, channels, and moments of truth to deliver ONE experience to customers wherever they are in the lifecycle.”
21 Digital Marketing Trends & Predictions for 2015
Jay Baer
@jaybaer
“With content marketing reaching near-ubiquity, the success pendulum will swing toward boosting consumption of content. That will put a new focus on math, testing and optimization as content production and content distribution become equally important.”
21 Digital Marketing Trends & Predictions for 2015
Pam Didner
@PamDidner
“The major change for 2015 is NOT about digital marketing. The major change will come from Marketers by Going Back to Basics: reevaluate the target audience, determine what works and what doesn’t. Re-prioritize and be smart about resource allocation and investment.”
21 Digital Marketing Trends & Predictions for 2015
David Meerman Scott
@dmscott
“Marketing (one to many) and sales (one to one) are beginning to use the same techniques of content creation and real-time engagement. The best organizations will not run marketing and sales as separate “departments” but will merge the two functions into one customer facing organization focused on revenue generation.”
21 Digital Marketing Trends & Predictions for 2015
Content Marketing ROI
Joe Pulizzi
@JoePulizzi
“Skip analytics reports for your CMO. Instead, focus measurement reporting on performance: sales, cost savings, and customer retention.”
Infographic: Achieve Real Content Marketing ROI – 10 Tips from CMI, Dell, Kraft Foods, Curata, NewsCred
Michael Brenner
@BrennerMichael
“Content Marketing ROI is no harder than ROI for the rest of marketing. But many folks ask the question more as a defense mechanism for change. You will hear marketers ask this question despite not knowing what the ROI is on the rest of their marketing spend. So start with that benchmark. What is the ROI of marketing? Content marketing ROI is easier because content marketing results are easier than something like advertising.”
Lessons on Marketing Strategy and Content Marketing ROI – Michael Brenner Interview
Mark Schaefer
@markwschaefer
“The way I measure content marketing success would vary by every customer. I would start with this question — ‘What is the behavior or attitude we are trying to change?’ Usually we can backward engineer from that response to find a set of measurements or leading indicators to determine our progress.”
A Practical Approach to Content Marketing Success – Interview with Mark Schaefer
As I mentioned, if you have any memorable quotes from 2014, feel free to share. There are surely more than 30 I could have pulled from the past year’s archives. I’m looking forward to 2015 at TopRank, where I’m sure I’ll fill a notebook or two with quotes from even more great minds we come across at TopRankBlog.
Top image: Shutterstock
