Jodi Harris says, “One of the greatest benefits of content marketing is its ability to play matchmaker: to help eligible businesses find and engage with its most desirable consumers – i.e., those who might have an active interest in what they have to offer. And because it is such a powerful driver of awareness, search is one of the main contributing factors to how successful your content will be at attracting those qualified leads. While it’s not always fully transparent how or when Google’s search bots will crawl and index your content – let alone exactly how its search algorithm... [...]

Ann Gynn says, “Wouldn’t it be great if your prospects actually followed your neatly designed sales funnel or smartly outlined path to purchase? But honestly, you know they don’t (even if your content marketing strategy assumes they do). “Buyers are in control. And they’re not going from step one to step two to step three in this process that you define as quite linear,” Anna Talerico, co-founder of ion interactive, said in her recent ContentTECH presentation. “They are jumping around. They’re exploring. They’re comparing. They’re doing their self-education on their own... [...]

Joe Griffin says, “The vast majority of content writers are generalists. They are talented with language; they understand how to structure effective blog posts, lists, guides, etc. However, their biggest challenge is learning how to write from a place of true knowledge and not broad conviction. The nurturing process for content writers has far less to do with helping them become better writers (that’s a given) and more to do with teaching them how to learn a new landscape quickly and effectively. It’s unrealistic to expect a new writer to get his or her bearings perfectly without adequate... [...]

Aman Thakur says, “Newton’s third law of motion says: “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” But that thing #neverhappened. Most of the time, I could not even get a single share. Why? Turns out, the internet doesn’t follow Newton’s law. You need to spend much more time in promoting your work than on creating it. In this post, I’m going to show you step-by-step how to execute six content promotion strategies that work in 2017 and beyond”. 6 How-To Strategies for Content Promotion Content Marketing Institute  [...]

Paul Roetzer says, “In spring 2015 I launched an internal initiative named Project Copyscale to determine whether it was possible to automate content creation with artificial intelligence. Specifically, I wanted to figure out, could we use machines to write blog posts at scale? The idea was inspired by a SXSW session I attended that year featuring the managing editor of the Associated Press and the CEO of Automated Insights, a company that uses a form of artificial intelligence called natural-language generation (NLG) to create content. The presenters shared how the AP went from publishing... [...]

Lisa Murton Beets says, “Too many B2B enterprise marketers are focusing on their brand rather than their audience while creating content. That’s one of the key findings in our new research report, B2B Enterprise Content Marketing 2017: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America sponsored by KnowledgeVision. Let’s take a look at the actual stat: 53% of B2B enterprise marketers who responded to our annual content marketing survey say they agree that their organization is focused on creating content for their audience versus their brand. That’s a lot lower than the 69% of all B2B... [...]

Michael Brenner says, “What is the difference between content and content marketing? The answer is the destination you will use to attract and build an audience. Content marketing is about attracting an audience to an experience (or “destination”) that you own, build, and optimize to achieve your marketing objectives. Content is everywhere. There’s product content, sales content, customer-service content, event content, employee-generated content, marketing and campaign content. Even advertising is content. With content marketing you are attracting an audience to a brand-owned destination... [...]

Deborah Holstein says, “Nearly half of B2C businesses have small content marketing teams supporting the organization. Yet, 73% of businesses will produce more original content in the coming year, which means content teams will spend more time keeping the engine running with little time or headspace for innovation. While boosting the size of your team might seem like an obvious solution, it’s expensive. If you really want to improve your team’s ability to produce quality content, you better protect their opportunity for creativity. Here are six ways to help your team create more amazing... [...]

Jodi Harris says, “For anyone looking to score a quick win with content marketing, I’d like to get one thing straight: Content marketing is not really a turnkey, one-strategy-fits-all technique. For better or worse, successful content marketing works best when it’s a bespoke affair: custom-built to delight your audience and thoughtfully planned to produce tangible business results over the long term. But just because the content process is more artisanal than assembly line doesn’t mean there aren’t a few tried-and-true systems you can use to keep your pipeline flowing at peak performance. One... [...]

Meghan Casey says, ““I got this content strategy thing,” you may think. You know your voice and tone, you know what formats and channels you’re going to create content for, and you know how often you’re going to publish or share content. Great! Except that’s not a content strategy. It’s an editorial plan. Don’t get me wrong. Content marketers need an editorial plan, especially if they’re regularly creating new content. At the same time, you need to figure out lots of other things before you plot your content ideas on a calendar. Enter — you guessed it — content strategy. What... [...]