Courtney Eckerle says, “Writing for your audience, and not your product, is easier said than done in the marketing world. As tempting as it is, Post Planner decided not to laud its product and instead chose to focus on content that would teach customers marketing principles. See how this startup developed a how-to and tutorial-focused content strategy that increased unique website visitors by 1,365% and page views 931%“. Content Marketing: Startup’s focus on how-to content results in a 1,365% increase in unique website visitors MarketingSherpa  [...]

Ben Davis says, “The Festival of Marketing (London’s answer to Cannes Lions) will be upon us in November. I’ve been rounding up some content to whet your appetite, including this collection of content and strategy slideshows relating to some of our speakers. Check out the Festival website for more information, including a full lineup of speakers”. Seven enlightening content and strategy slideshows ‘Econsultancy’ Blog  [...]

Allison Banko says, ““Content marketing is like wrapping your sales pitch in bacon,” said Lauren Patrick, Marketing Content Manager, Urjanet. “It’s not an advertisement. It’s not, ‘Buy me now! Here’s why.’ It’s, ‘Here’s a really interesting problem, and here’s a way to solve it. Here’s our solution.'” Discover how Urjanet’s new marketing team developed a sizzling content marketing strategy for this energy data company“. Content Marketing: How an energy data company’s content strategy increased... [...]

Chris Lake says, “A few months ago I created the Periodic Table of Content Marketing, to provide a handy – and hopefully helpful – cut-out-and-keep guide for content professionals. The table was both practical and tactical, which resulted in more than tens of thousands of shares, and hundreds of thousands of views. I remain humbled by its popularity, and the feedback I’ve had since I published it. Since then I’ve been asked many questions, of which two stand out: Why does ‘content strategy’ only have one element dedicated to it? What kind of skills does a content team need?”. Introducing... [...]

Matthew Peneycad says, “It may seem counterintuitive, but there is actually good reason for why the content your business’ social media audience wants, is not the content your organization should be creating and publishing. Increasingly, consumer-centric businesses and social media marketers are using a variety of social listening tools, data and analytics, and various types of research to determine themes and formats for content that will resonate most strongly with their audience. The trouble with this approach is that if there isn’t a strong correlation between the content your social... [...]

Justin Mares says, “We all do it: spend hours thinking of topics, craft artisanal headlines, and wait for the sudden influx of new customers to flood in after reading our blog masterpieces. Unfortunately, the sudden flood rarely happens. Too often, our ideal customers don’t find the content we release on our blogs. Why? We hit “publish” and hope that people will come find us — but they don’t even know we’ve released something new. Publishing content should be like dating. Imagine you’re trying to find a girlfriend or boyfriend: Do you think you’ll find... [...]

Pete Prestipino says, “Presentation-sharing platform SlideShare is making many of its professional-level features available for free.  Starting August 20th, the popular Linkedin-owned platform began making the change for all Slidershare users to have access to premium features including analytics, profile customization and additional upload options (like video). Slideshare will be releasing one new feature every month starting in September 2014″. Slideshare Goes Free; Content Marketers Rejoice! Website Magazine  [...]

Jim Yu says, “Back in 2013, Google informed us that B2B buyers don’t contact suppliers directly until 57 percent of the purchase process was complete. That purchase process starts with search and continues with content. Fast-forward to 2014: B2Bs are embracing content as a primary form of marketing, and they’re seeing stellar results from the organic search channel. In this post, we’ll take a look at what B2Bs said at the head of the year about their content marketing, and what results B2Bs are seeing in Q3 with new research showing organic content is the B2B marketer’s greatest... [...]

Lee Odden says, “The most elusive of white rabbits in the content marketing world seems to be the question of how to best measure ROI. According to a study by CMI and MarketingProfs, over 50% of marketers are investing more budget in content marketing and the most effective marketers spend more than double than the least effective marketers. While budgets are moving in the right direction, measuring ROI still has some progress to make. According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound Marketing study, less than 50% of marketers can confirm content marketing’s positive ROI“. How to Show... [...]

Kelsey Libert says, “If you’re running experiments and optimizing your presence on social media, it’s easy to get stuck in the weeds. You run a test, figure out what works, and then do more of what works. And if you do that again and again and again, you can get stuck doing the same-old-same-old optimization techniques, ignoring exciting growth opportunities right under your nose. To get out of that rut, it’s helpful to look at larger social media trends and get inspired to try new things in your social media and content strategies”. New Data: A Deep Dive Into Which... [...]