In just a few days we’ll be celebrating our 8th year of blogging here at Online Marketing Blog. Most of the SEO Blog class of 2003 is still going strong: (SEOBook, Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Journal, etc) Although, we haven’t been solely focused on SEO ourselves for several years. Marketing channels may change, but our focus on providing useful information, tips and insights on how to better connect brands with customers transcends any specific tactic or channel.
This blog is a testament to how a small business can have multiples of impact when there’s a good understanding of both business goals and what people are interested in. I’ll admit that in 2003 I had no idea what our Content Marketing and Blogging Strategy was. Fast forward to today and we’re getting millions of visits yearly and recognition from top industry publications and media all over the web.
Since content marketing is a focus for our agency, it’s what we write about and apparently people like it. Online Marketing Blog is the only blog to have been rated #1 three times by Junta42, which is the brains behind the Content Marketing Institute. Forgive the self congratulations, but I’m pretty proud of what we’ve accomplished with very few resources in the past 8 years.
Now on to the good stuff: Here are the top content marketing posts from TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog for 2011. These were picked by traffic, social shares, comments, pickups on other blogs and news sites as well as few personal favorites.
Why Your Business Needs a Content Marketing Strategy – The most popular content marketing post in 2011 set the stage for why content marketing strategy is so important, especially in an age of brands and consumers as both publishers and participants. Google sites handle about 88 billion searches each month. YouTube is the second most popular search engine second only to Google. Facebook is now over 600 (strike that) 800 million users. Twitter has nearly 200 million accounts. LinkedIn is at 101 million users and FourSquare grew 3,400% in 2010. How do you stand out? This post sets the stage.
Core Content SEO Tools: Keyword Glossary & Editorial Plan – Our readers love tactics and tools posts and this one was quite popular offering two basic but well used formats for managing keyword glossaries and a blog content plans. Keyword glossaries help manage optimization of web pages and digital assets so that you know what pages are meant to attract what type of traffic (customers). The content plan is essential for aligning key messages and unique selling propositions for your products and services with customer needs across the buying cycle. Even simpler than that, it helps to keep content on track and on schedule.
How Small Business Can Get BIG Online with Content Marketing – We practice what we preach with content marketing and as a small company doing big business with several Fortune 50 companies and many Fortune 1000’s this post outlines several instrumental content marketing tactics for small businesses to get bigger.
10 Tips on Adding Content Marketing to Your Mix – Do you like tactical, practical tips that can be implemented right now? This post gives the goods with 10 tips ranging from mapping keywords to content in the buying cycle to recruiting content contributors in your organization.
Content Marketing: Definition & 30 Tactics – That’s right, 30 different content marketing tactics listed and explained for your ideation and content development planning. This post is intended to serve as an index for a series of in-depth articles on each of the 30 tactics. I’ll get on that, right after I finish OptimizeBook.com 🙂
Content Marketing Tips from 5 People Who Know – This was a great crowdsourced post on content marketing with contributions from Ann Handley, David Meerman Scott, Brian Solis, Jay Baer, Joe Pulizzi. Seriously, this is like the Beatles of Content Marketing and we brought them to YOU.
Effective Use of Keywords in Content Marketing – Yes, that’s right. More useful, tactical tips. Online Marketing Blog is like a gift that just keeps on giving. There’s a bit of confusion in the content world about SEO (I think) and this post gives creative content folks some practical ideas on how to use keywords in their copywriting in a way that’s meaningful to customers and search engines.
5 Ways to Fail at Content Marketing & Tips to Succeed – No one likes to fail but they sure do like to read about it. For the optimists, we added some success tips too. Are you guilty of any of these content marketing sins? Do you have reason to be smug, knowing you’re already using best practices? You’ll just have clicky on the linky to find out.
How SEO Can Work With Content Strategy – I’m really glad this post made it into the popular and useful list because the value and growth of content strategy is HUGE and where there’s content, there’s an opportunity to optimize and socialize. You know the deal: Great content isn’t great until it’s discovered, consumed and shared.
5 Key Roles for Content Marketing Success in 2012 – The content marketing master deservedly makes a second appearance on this list, this time with a recent guest post. Joe Pulizzi of Junta42, Content Marketing Institute, the Content Marketing World conference and co-author of two books on content marketing, shared his smarts on what the key organizational roles will be for content marketing in the coming year as organizations ramp up their investments and levels of expertise.
Our marketing agency, like the content on our blog, is focused on best practices for creating, optimizing and socializing content as well as helping companies take a more holistic approach towards connecting customers with relevant content throughout the customer lifecycle. We welcome your continued comments here and on Facebook and Twitter.
What’s in store for 2012? Well, you have certainly noticed the contributions of TopRank Marketing Manager Ashley Zeckman over the past 2 months. Ashley will continue to help me with daily blogging and a whole host of other things I can’t tell you about because it’s super secret sauce marketing stuff. But it cannot go without saying that she’s had a BIG impact in just a few months and those contributions are very much appreciated.
We’re due for a re-design, possibly an implementation of Genesis, some cool new tools and apps plus some social features that will help our community find more of what they’re looking for and to connect with each other.
What would you like to see more of from TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog in 2012? Content, features, contributors, more video, comics, conference coverage, the floor is yours. Thanks for reading!
