I think our team has done a pretty good job on this blog of advocating internet marketing tactics according to their practical use over the years. Our goal: To help marketers put things in perspective and make informed choices. One particular area of focus has been on content marketing.
Rather than just pontificate about the latest trend, our approach is to experiment, optimize and share what we learn. For example, we’ve implemented content marketing projects for organizations that range from several Fortune 50 companies to Content Marketing World, the Mac Daddy of content marketing events. That experience has inspired many popular and useful posts during the first half of 2013.
I realize not everyone reads our blog every day to catch these goodies, so through a combination of discovery, consumption and engagement data, I’ve filtered out our top content marketing posts for the first half of this year – the year Content Marketing exploded as a hot marketing topic. I’ve further filtered based on which posts I think provide the most strategic or tactical value as well. Enjoy!
1. 11 Blog & Social Content Marketing Tools I Use (Almost) Every Day – Miranda Miller
Content creation is one of the most common obstacles cited by many marketers and in this post, Miranda Miller shares a collection of the tools she uses on a regular basis to plan, write, promote and measure content.
2. 11 Examples of Killer B2B Content Marketing Campaigns Including ROI – Lee Odden
With over 90% of B2B marketers using content marketing tactics, the pressure for performance is greater than ever. This collection of B2B content marketing case studies with ROI and performance metrics offers marketers ideas about how effective content marketing can be, including Xerox citing over $1 billion in new business from their campaign. Thanks to the B2B Content2Conversion conference for recognizing these companies in their Killer Content Marketing Awards.
3. 3 Essential Content Curation Best Practices to Boost Content Marketing Performance – Lee Odden
In the realm of content marketing, curation has provided companies with numerous benefits ranging from efficiency to leveraging news curation for building thought leadership. Curation is also the cornerstone of being useful on the social web by finding, filtering and adding insight shared with social networks. This post drills down into: Sources of News, Types of Content to Curate and Where to Publish.
4. 6 Essential Questions & Answers About Content Marketing for 2013 – Lee Odden
As prep for an online radio interview I answered some of the key questions many marketers have on content marketing ranging from, “What content marketing is and isn’t” to “What do you see on the horizon for content marketing in 2013?”. Have questions about content marketing in your mix? Get answers here.
5. How 4 Consumer Brands Are Using Visual Content To Tell Stories & Engage Customers – Ashley Zeckman
One of the things we decided to focus on this year was to provide more practical examples for tactics gaining traction. This post from Ashley Zeckman provides 4 examples of consumer brands like Kraft and Sherwin Williams using visual content that resonated with many of our readers.
6. What is The Future of Content for Marketers? – Lee Odden
As companies mature in their use of content marketing strategy, the question of “What’s Next” is a logical next step. As part of my research for this presentation given to a crowd of 3oo MIMA attendees, I discovered that there was notable debate about what content is, let alone the future of content. This post provides a view into the future through the lens of information discovery, consumption and action including original quotes from Joe Pulizzi, Michael Brenner and Lisa Grimm.
7. What Should Lead Your Online Marketing Strategy: SEO or Content Marketing? – Lee Odden
An interesting debate has been emerging amongst the SEO and content marketing communities – both of which are based mostly on incomplete knowledge of each other. As SEOs have driven the charge for more content, many content marketers have countered with the need for better quality content. Deciding whether keywords or stories should lead online marketing strategy is a discussion worth having as search changes and content marketing adoption increases.
8. The Truth About Content Marketing & SEO – Lee Odden
What good is great content if no one can find it? How useful is findable content when it doesn’t engage and persuade? These and many other questions are answered as part of an effort to break through some of the misunderstanding about the relationship of SEO and content marketing. The only thing worse than no SEO at all, is ALL SEO and “more content” isn’t better unless it’s meaningful and findable. This makes sense of it all with a practical approach based on real world SEO and content marketing integration experience.
9. B2B Conversion Optimization: How Buyer Personas Inspire Content That Converts – Nicolette Beard
Understanding how different customers navigate information through the buying cycle can be a complex, time consuming process. Unless you can identify common characteristics amongst groups of customers. Developing content that is relevant for customer segments that have been refined as “personas” can improve both efficiency and marketing effectiveness. Nicolette outlines exactly how to do that in this excellent post.
10. SEO for Ecommerce Websites – Managing the Duplicate Content Beast – Evan Prokop
Online content has many applications and takes many forms, including duplicate content. While repurposing content can be an efficiency for many content marketing efforts, the duplication of information can become problematic for visibility on Google. In this post Evan outlines steps companies that might be publishing duplicate content can take to have their cake and eat it too in terms of continued or even improved search visibility of content assets.
11. 3 Ways to Use Multi-Channel Analytics Reporting for Content Better Marketing – Alexis Hall
What good is amazing content if you’re not measuring it? Good content marketers know that integrated, consistent messaging is critical across multiple digital platforms. It allows us to connect with our customers how – and when – they expect to connect with us. This post by digital marketing smartie Alexis Hall offers 3 ways to use multi-channel analytics to measure the performance of your content marketing investments.
Which of these content marketing posts was your favorite? What content marketing related topics would you like to see more of? Software? Book reviews? Interviews? Conference liveblogging? Tips & How To’s? Cartoons? Video? Or maybe something else?
