Over the past 5 years we’ve published over 380 articles about content marketing here on Online Marketing Blog. It’s a big topic after all – with plenty of opportunity to help marketers better understand the planning, creation, management, promotion, measurement and performance optimization of content.
After digging in to our web and social media analytics, I’ve identified 10 of the most popular posts on content marketing that I’m sure you’ll find useful. From our Content Marketing Maturity Model to tips, tools and measurement – the 10 posts summarized below will help you finish off 2014 in style and put your planning for 2015 in the right direction.
Content Marketing Maturity Model from TopRank – (Lee Odden) Every business goes through an evolution of sorts as they mature in their content marketing skills. While not every business needs to make it to Monetization for every content marketing program, no one should be satisfied with Stasis. This post breaks down the journey from creating more content, to creating meaningful content to creating content experiences that will inspire your customers to buy and advocate for your brand. What else could a budding content marketer ask for?
5 Steps to Content Marketing Awesome: You Can Do This! – (Lee Odden) Content marketing can seem overwhelming when getting started, but not with this handy guide. Start with identifying audience segments, then map the customer journey as you embark on your own journey to content marketing awesome. Map the essential buyer questions and brand answers to your content plan and then get ready to optimize your content performance. Is that awesome? We say yes!
What is the One Most Important Skill for a Content Marketer? – (Lee Odden) Information overload is giving us all a headache, so let’s boil it down to that one most important thing to soothe our minds towards content marketing success. What is it? To find out, you’ll need to finish reading this sentence and click the link above. Go!
Visual Content Marketing Strategy eBook – (Lee Odden) As part of a foursome of content marketing eBooks produced for the 2014 Content Marketing World conference, this collection of visual content marketing strategy tips from content marketing gurus like Pam Didner, Mark Schaefer, Maggie Burke, Carla Johnson and Jason Miller from LinkedIn really resonated with our readers. I think you’ll like it too – information plus entertainment. It’s infotainment Alice in Wonderland style.
Modular Content – Creative Repurposing for Content Marketing – (Lee Odden) So much content and so little time. Plus that content has to be great or no one will read, share or be inspired by it. Enter the notion of “modular content” to help savvy content marketers create and repurpose high quality content that attracts, engages and inspires customers to take action. You’ll learn how to plan for content efficiency that’s both social media and search engine friendly.
5 Ways To Create Great Content Without Writing A Lot – (Ben Brausen) Writing is not a skill all marketers are experts at and yet the demand for content from customers continues to rise. The solution? This liveblog of Marcie Hill’s presentation at NMX revealed her approach to using photos, infographics, video, audio and animations to engage customers – without writing a lot. In this case, a picture really is worth a thousand words!
What is the Difference Between Content Marketing and Content for Links? The Wrong Answer Could Cost You – (Lee Odden) Don’t let the chubby Spanish Spiderman fool you – he knows exactly what the difference is between acting in a way that gets tips and acting like a fool. That’s a great analogy when comparing the difference between content marketing for customers and content marketing just to attract links. It’s a must read for SEOs and marketers alike.
Mobile Content Marketing – What You Need to Know: Pros, Cons, Examples, Best Practices – (Nicolette Beard) As part of our series on content marketing tactics, this post about mobile content marketing really resonated with readers. And why not? Content discovery, consumption and even commerce via mobile devices is skyrocketing. Are you ready for mobile content marketing? I didn’t think so. Read on.
5 Content Marketing Best Practices Most Businesses Aren’t Doing, but Should! – (Evan Prokop) The godfather of modern content marketing, Joe Pulizzi, shares his smarts at Social Media Marketing World on some of the most important content marketing best practices that just aren’t being practiced. Which are you missing?
Attract, Engage, Convert: How to Better Measure and Optimize Content Marketing Performance – (Lee Odden) No successful marketer creates content just for the sake of creating more content. Content Marketing by definition means creating content for a specific audience to inspire a business outcome. The model for content marketing accountability presented in this post (Attract, Engage, Convert) will give you a clear line of sight to the performance metrics that will help you understand content marketing ROI.
With hundreds of content marketing posts to choose from, this was no easy task, to narrow it down to 10. Depending on where you’ve matured your content marketing skills to, this collection of posts is either a great primer or a great confirmation of the best practices being used by some of the top marketing brands on the web.
BONUS:
We’ve been busy this year at TopRank Online Marketing with a wide variety of content marketing programs for numerous mid-market and enterprise clients. Unfortunately, we can’t talk about many of those due to NDAs.
But there are a few projects that I can share with you that are both great examples of our content marketing work and super useful collections of marketing advice. Below are a few examples of content marketing projects that we produced this year for Social Media Examiner, LinkedIn, Content Marketing Institute, and MarketingProfs – a fine collection of marketing authorities that know great content.
These eBooks include practical tips and advice from over 120 marketing experts and industry thought leaders. In fact, there are also over 50 major brands represented as contributors ranging from Adobe to Xerox and John Deere in between. Collectively, these 7 eBooks have been viewed over 290,000 times on SlideShare alone in the past 6 months. I hope you enjoy them too.
What were some of your favorite content marketing posts from Online Marketing Blog this year?
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