Best of content marketing articles, Q3 2015
Hi everyone, We wanted to share with you the Best Of Content Marketing articles we wrote in the past 3 months. And in extra, get the list of the best tools for the publishing phase…
Read MoreContent Curation
How to use competitive research to improve your content marketing
Your content has a lot of competition. That’s a big challenge, but there’s a hidden opportunity there, too. With just a little bit of research you can find out how any piece of content performed….
Read More7 ways for small businesses to generate leads with social media
Small business owners aren’t usually on social media to share cat videos and indulge in celebrity gossip. They’re on social media for business. They do social media to gain exposure, but ultimately the goal is to get more business. Getting more business usually means getting more leads.
Unfortunately, getting leads from social media is not so easy. If you’re doing well at it, pat yourself on the back. Most marketers struggle with getting social media to work well for lead generation.
7 ways for small businesses to generate leads with social media
That’s what Ascend2 discovered when they tallied up the results of a lead generation survey of 300 marketers last month. Only 26% of the marketers they surveyed marked social media as among their more effective lead generation tactics.
Read MoreNo man is an island: content curation for content creators
“There is nothing new under the sun.”
What do you think of that quote? Is it depressing? Dismissive?
True?
True or not, that quote evokes a dilemma every content creator struggles with. We have a lot of content to create, and in one way or another, it’s all been created before.
Before you get on the defensive, let me explain what I mean by that.
Why we tend to create similar content
Our job is to create content that both serves our audience and meets business goals. To do that efficiently, we use proven formats (blog posts, white papers, tweets, etc). We answer common questions. We do this in ways that are familiar to our audience and easy for them to understand.
If we get too creative and too cutting-edge, we become hard to understand. As soon as our audience doesn’t understand us, they’re gone. The rest of the Internet – the easy-to-understand and endlessly diverting Internet – is only a click away.
Read More7 examples of exceptional curated emails [& how to create your own]
Want to try one of the best marketing time savers… just in time for the lazy days of August? We’ve got just the thing. If you’ve been curating content on social media but haven’t taken…
Read MoreDoes ethical content curation exist? A data-driven answer
Ever since we started to work on Scoop.it, we’ve had this question: is it fair to use other people’s content for your own good: in other words, how ethical is content curation? Is it even legal?
A quick look at history clearly shows that artists and scientists never created in a vacuum but have always leveraged pre-existing work to develop their own. And that’s for the greater good. Closer to us, there is a multitude of online media sites which embraced content curation as an alternative or a complement to the content they produce: the Huffington Post is a famous example but Upworthy and BuzzFeed are others and even the respected New York times started doing it.
Of course, such an answer won’t satisfy your legal department or your own need to have a more pragmatic answer. So as we’ve now been arounds for several years and, more importantly, have seen millions of users publish more than 100 million pieces of content, we feel we can not only give you a recap of the facts that make content curation ethical but also back that out with data.
Read More5 easy ways to curate content on your blog
Content curation is a bit of an art form, and takes some time to perfect. But once you’ve figured out a strategy that works, you’ll have a process in place for regularly finding, compiling and editorializing content your audience will love!
Where to source content for curation
In order to curate content, you first need to find it. The net is teeming with information ripe for curation, but the challenge is finding relevant content in a timely manner.
Read MoreContent curation and website traffic: study finds 464% growth in 4 months
This is a very interesting case study by the team at B2B Content Engine on content curation and website traffic: it analyzes the impact content curation has on a B2B web site’s traffic. B2B sites typically have niche audiences which are hard to find from untargeted methods and costly to generate with targeted advertising.
Content curation and website traffic are correlated.
What this study shows is that consistent content curation provided not only impressive results on traffic growth but also lead generation conversion at a 12% rate. In addition to many other great benefits such as brand visibility, awareness, etc…
It also gives an idea of the volume of content that was required to achieve that, which is very reasonable.
Read MoreHow to blog more in 30 minutes a day or less – eBook
The key to content marketing success is to publish good content, but also to publish more content: you need to blog more and to blog consistently if you want to get tangible results. The times where you could publish an occasional epic piece of content such as a quarterly white paper or a yearly survey report and be “good to go” are gone.
Blog more consistently if you want more traffic and leads.
That’s the ultimate goal, isn’t it? You know that you need to have a blog, and a blog that doesn’t suck like many do. But having a blog and publishing a good piece of content every month is not enough. Why? Because for your audience to find your content when they ask Google a question, you need your content to answer the new SEO rules:
Read More5 critical SEO tips to curate content like a king
When you curate content the right way, you should never get in trouble with Google or your readers. In fact, it should do just the opposite: improve your search rankings and delight your readers and followers.
One common misconception about content curation is that it’s simply reposting entire pages of other people’s content on your own site. But let me be clear: this is not curation.
So, what is content curation? While there is some variance among definitions, I like how marketing expert Heidi Cohen defines it: “Content curation assembles, selects, categorizes, comments on, and presents the most relevant, highest quality information to meet your audience’s needs on a specific subject.”
Read More10 content curation pros to convince you to start curating now
There are so many content curation pros that it can seem too good to be true, especially if you struggle to create your own content. The idea that you can to attract and engage an…
Read MorePublish quality content on your blog: quantity matters too!
Companies tend to struggle to create and publish good content on their blog. If you’re a marketer, you’re most likely not a professional writer. Hence it can be difficult to figure out what your audience is interested in, write good content around those topics, all while running your other marketing tasks. And when your segment has many big actors with content marketing teams dedicated to maintaining an efficient blog, it can be challenging to try and compete with them. So it’s important to understand what matters in terms of content quantity and quality.
Publish good content, yes indeed. Here’s how.
If “Content Marketing is all the Marketing that’s left” – according to Seth Godin (best selling author, entrepreneur, marketer and public speaker) -, you want to do things right.
If you want to do things right and publish good content, you should…
Read MoreHow to nurture leads with content curation
Want more leads? You’re not alone. According to IDG Enterprise’s 2015 B2B Content Marketing Spotlight Report, lead generation is the #1 priority for content marketers.
But while everybody says they want more leads, in the very next breathe they’ll add that they want better leads, too. That’s why you’ll see lead nurturing come in as priority #4 on this same graph. Lead nurturing is basically lead generation 2.0. First you get the leads, then you warm them up.
Is content marketing hard? 7 lessons learned +1 (curation)
In this article, Mike Huber rightly says “more is what you need when it comes to content marketing”, and then points out in 6. that “your team needs to be all in”. And since “the best time to start a content marketing program is 5 years ago and the second best time is today”, you’d better start publishing content regularly now.
Our experience adds one lesson to this post: “curation helps you publish more”. And not just more, also better.
Introducing Workflows, Drag and Drop Newsletters and Lead Analytics to Improve Content Marketing ROI
The launch of Sccop.it Content Director in February was a huge success and a number of you already love the product! We wanted to thank you for the continuous feedback to help us improve it, and are happy to announce the release of a new version of Scoop.it Content Director that takes into account the many enhancements you asked for and that will help you generate more ROI with your Content Marketing.
This new release is centered on three main areas:
– Scale your content marketing with contributors,
– Create engaging newsletters in minutes with a new drag-and-drop editor,
– Measure What Matters – improve and prove the ROI of your content with the new analytics.
We will host a webinar on May 20th to show you how you can leverage Scoop.it Content Director to improve your Content Marketing strategy and ROI. You can register here.
Read MoreSmall is Beautiful: 6 Shorter Content Types that Work
When it comes to writing content, a question that often comes is: how much should I create? You can hear all sorts of advice ranging from quantitative analysis on the optimized size of a blog post to bloggers recommendations on the merits of 800-word SEO-optimized posts vs long form epic content.
Read MoreHow to Calculate Your Content Curation ROI
To calculate content curation ROI, all you need to do is to tally up what it took to do the marketing, and then what you got out of it. The first part of that is to figure out how long it took you to do your work.
Read MoreContent Marketing ROI: Do eBooks and White Papers Generate More Leads Than Blogs? A Data-Driven Answer
There are so many content marketing formats that it can be hard to decide which to focus on. White papers, ebooks, slideshares, blogs, infographics, curated content, videos, etc. They all have their merits but don’t…
Read MoreHow to convince your boss you need content marketing software
Most of us who practice content marketing rely on at least some kind of content marketing software. We’re software people by nature, so it’s only natural we’ve got a thing for digital tools. Of course, it is possible to stay on top of your content marketing work with just Excel and Google calendar. But at a certain point you’ll want to graduate to something more robust.
Read MoreLacking inspiration? Here is How to Create Better Blog Posts
With so many advances in smart technology these days, marketing professionals, content creators, and their teams need to keep up with the availability of tools that help reduce their workload and maximize their output.
Read MoreContent marketing: is a blog always the right format?
“According to the experts, a blog will solve all your Internet woes. Blogging will increase your traffic, expand your audience, improve your engagement, position you as an authority, and allow you to shape the message in your space. So should you blog?”
Read MoreUnderstanding SEO: 4 blog posts and 1 infographic every content marketer should read
Content Marketing is the new SEO. To fully understand how SEO evolved and how content impacts it, here are 4 of the best pieces of content I’ve read on this topic (+ one from me):…
Read MoreCan You Afford The 10 Creative Types Needed To Build A Killer Content Marketing Team?
Creating content, especially in a lean marketing team, is an all-hands-on-deck endeavor. Having a dream team in place to create not only the social posts, blog pieces, and video snippets, but the strategy, big picture campaigns and creative long-term vision should be a top priority for marketers in 2015.
Source: www.b2bmarketinginsider.com
Michael Brenner makes an interesting list of all the various creative talents you would need in an ideal Content Marketing team. But while there’s no denying that this would be a dream team, it’s anything but lean.
Read More5 Top Marketing Experts, 15 Ideas and 2 ROI Analysis on Repurposing Content
Repurposing is a key strategy of the lean content marketing methodology. Megan Marrs has 11 interesting best practices and ideas on how to repurpose content efficiently in this great post which made me want to elaborate on this topic.
So here’s the take of several other content marketing experts on the value of repurposing content, a cheat sheet that summarizes key ideas to repurpose content (Megan’s 11 plus 4 others I added) as well as the ROI analysis of two of our own experiment with content repurposing.
Read More7 Actionable blogging tips for content marketers that are proven to get results
Blogging remains the pillar of content marketing, particularly for SMBs. But when you browse many company’s websites, you realize their blog is under optimized.
So why is blogging for content marketing so difficult?
1. It’s hard to maintain the discipline: even when you have an in-house team of content writers, creating content is time consuming and it takes a lot of efforts to maintain the rhythm. Publishing great content on a consistent basis costs a lot.
2. It’s easy to get demotivated by the lack of impact. Initially a blog doesn’t get much traffic so for ROI-driven management team, it’s tempting to dismiss it into the “tried this; didn’t work” category.
Fortunately, getting results out of your content marketing in general and out of your blogging efforts in particular is accessible to anyone. Sure, it requires some particular techniques but the good news is they’re not particularly hard to implement.
Read MoreCreate great content by leveraging your analytics
It’s 5:02 a.m. on Friday as I am writing this. The dog is on the floor licking…something (he likes to lick a lot!) and my wife is asleep beside me in bed.
The last 10 minutes have gone something like this:
• What’s happening on Twitter? Boring.
• How about Facebook? Someone else got engaged. Yay for them.
• Any new emails? Delete. Delete. Inbox Zero!
• Hmm…
Source: blog.bufferapp.com
We’ve all been where Bryan Harris was when he wrote the above introduction to this post. As bloggers or content marketers, we always hear that voice in the back of our heads.
Read MoreWhen are you going to just sit down and write that post? What are you even going to write about? How are you going to actually make an impact with the finished product?
The one decision we all make constantly. Or why we must curate or die in 2015.
The key to success in a myriad of web content that may drown us in 2015 is to curate content. The whys and hows are explained in-depth inside this article.
Source: www.searchenginejournal.com
It’s interesting to see that content curation is evolving from an opportunity to a necessity as Julia McCoy from ExpressWriters recently noted in the Search Engine Journal explaining how we must curate content in 2015.
Why is that happening? Why is this accelerating?
Read More6 Email Marketing Secrets from Marketo
According to research performed earlier in 2014 by Gigaom and reported by eMarketer, email marketing is still the most commonly used method of digital marketing, with a whopping 86% of respondents claiming to use it. If that’s not enough, though, over half (59%) of B2B marketers surveyed by HubSpot say that email marketing is the most effective channel for generating revenue.
With this in mind, I’ve taken an extensive look at Marketo’s Email Lookbook 2014 with the goals of pulling secrets, tips, and email marketing best practices from each section of the report and sharing them in an easily digestible way. (To read the whole report, click here!)
Read More5 Top Trends Emerging From CMI’s 60 Content Marketing Predictions for 2015 eBook
It’s time for our annual eBook of content marketing predictions. Read on to see what big trends, changes, and advances experts see on the horizon for our industry in the upcoming year.
Source: contentmarketinginstitute.com
What are the content marketing trends for next year? The Content Marketing Institute asked thought leaders around the world for their predictions and compiled that in this ebook.
You can read mine above but there I encourage you to read the ebook for others as well.
Jay Baer’s (slide 10) is particularly interesting:
Read MoreHow the right influencer strategy can amplify your content marketing
To rise above the noise, convey a message and mobilize buyers, content marketers are turning to influencers.
Source: www.slideshare.net
Scaling Content Marketing is the key area of focus for many marketers these days. A number of strategies are being offered by experts, social networks or distribution platforms including the most natural one to them: pay for play. As Mark Schaefer wrote earlier this year, Content Marketing could be the victim of its own success if content strategists don’t put in place strategies to overcome the content abundance that results in diminishing returns. Earlier this year, Facebook for instance admitted to de-prioritize the organic reach of content from Facebook pages as users are more and more publishing content to more and more friends. The solution, they say? Buy ads to boost your post. And as LinkedIn and Twitter are also massively dependent on advertising revenue, this trend is here for good.
As mentioned in my reply to Mark, I believe there are ways to overcome content shock and scale Content Marketing through Lean Content. Interest-based content curation is an answer in the broad sense as it’s about leveraging existing content rather than adding to it but the team at Traackr puts it in a more specific context: influencer amplification.
Their point is a clear one: rather than paying for distribution, getting influencers to amplify your reach is a much more efficient approach.
Read More