9 Must Read Articles for a Winning Content Marketing Strategy in 2014

Did you know that over 70% of marketers plan to increase their content marketing budgets in 2014? (source: Curata)

If “content marketing” is a new concept to you let’s start at the beginning. A basic content marketing definition is the creation and sharing of media by publishing content. There are several content marketing goals, including:

• Driving sales and/or leads
• Engaging customers, buyers and influencers
• Boosting brand awareness
• Establishing or sustaining thought leadership
• Increasing SEO and web traffic
• Decreasing the cost of acquisition for new customers

Over two-thirds of marketers report increases in lead quantity and quality thanks to content marketing!

If it’s time you get serious about creating a winning content marketing plan we’ve gathered nine awesome content marketing blog articles to help you out.

The 3 Biggest Content Marketing Myths on the Web

Let’s start off by debunking a few content marketing ideas or misconceptions with the help of Nicole Beckett from Business 2 Community. We should keep these content marketing best practices in mind while reading through the rest of today’s articles.

1. More is NOT better. Beckett says, “You have to publish a steady stream of high-quality content.” One well thought out piece of content can be infinitely more valuable than ten articles with boring information that could be found on any number of different websites. What makes your content unique and engaging?
2. Starting a blog is NOT good enough. A blog is just one step in your content marketing plan. Beckett shares that a “blog can be a powerful part of your content marketing strategy but your efforts can’t stop there.”

Aligning Content Marketing Teams and Processes

The Huffington Post breaks down the content marketing plan into a process:

1. Identify what content you need to create.
2. Establish metrics to measure your success.
3. Create the content.
4. Distribute the content.
5. Evaluate the success of your content.

When taking this bird’s eye view of content marketing the entire process becomes less intimidating.

The Blueprint to Content Marketing Success

This article posted over on the YouMoz Blog goes a level deeper and creates the perfect roadmap for conquering some big content creation goals.

It first outlines a basic content marketing guide which includes establishing the direction for big content to create in a year, researching if there is other content like yours on the market and then deciding the audience the content will be written for. Finally understanding the purpose of why you are writing is important in the early stages.

The next stage to creating big content is the process of actually writing the content. Steven Macdonald  suggests doing things like starting small, breaking up the content into smaller more manageable chunks and getting feedback along the way.

Finally, decide when it’s time to launch and then market the content like crazy. Promote it on your website, through social media, with email marketing and then remarketing the content as you need.

Conquering Content Marketing in 5 Steps

If you are a more visual person or need some visual graphics to show your boss how your content marketing idea will play out, head over to this Search Engine Watch article by Dan Cristo. His 5 steps include:

1. Planning – researching, ideation and strategy.
2. Development – content creation and asset management.
3. Optimization – search, social and usability optimization.
4. Distribution – content placement and syndication.
5. Measurement – listening, tracking and performance analysis.

Cristo’s content marketing approach helps us understand that content marketing is an ongoing process that doesn’t ever finish.

5 Habits of Successful Content Marketers

This article posted by Social Media Examiner divulges five content marketing best practices common to effective B2B content marketers.

1. Have someone oversee content.
2. Document your content strategy.
3. Use more mediums for distributing content.
4. Use social media more frequently (LinkedIn, Facebook, SlideShare, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, etc)
5. Produce more content and invest more in content creation

Are you willing to do what it takes, as proven by the experts and their best practices?

7 Content Marketing Tips to Recover from Google Penguin

Was your website hit by Google’s big Penguin update in the last couple of years? Then this article at Search Engine Watch by Pratik Dholakiya is for you.

Even if your website is thriving this is one of the best articles to jump start your content marketing strategy. Here are some key content marketing ideas from the article:

1. Create and promote linkable assets. Make sure that your content useful, interactive, emotional, and relatable.
2. Use different ways of publishing your content including PDFs, slideshows, whitepapers, videos, infographics, press releases, case studies, guides and tools.
3. Blog because you want to capture and keep your visitors attention and not to sell.
4. When developing content choose a topic that is more comprehensive or more unique than any other resource on the topic currently out there.

Top 7 Tips for Effective Content Marketing

These content marketing tips are all fairly basic but deserve to be mentioned again:

1. Stop selling.
2. Solve a problem.
3. Blog blog blog
4. Repurpose content
5. Embrace videos
6. Optimize for SEO
7. Promote via Social Media

Content Marketing Tips and Ideas (for the visually inclined)

If you’d rather look than read head over to Constant Contact’s board on Pinterest for Content Marketing Tips and Ideas!

Tips for Building a Strong Content Marketing Plan for 2014

Now that we are almost through here are some final tips for content marketing that have gone unmentioned up until now, thanks to Forbes and Drew Hendricks:

• Use a content marketing calendar tool.
• Use a collaboration content marketing tool between your team to stay organized.
• Be unique.

At 1st on the List we help clients with all levels of content marketing strategies. Want to know about the link between content marketing and SEO? Call us toll free at 1-888-262-6687 today or email our experts at [email protected].

Carissa Krause

Carissa Krause is a Digital Marketing and Project Specialist at 1st on the List. Over the last 12+ years she has worked in our Abbotsford office with clients on a wide range of projects that include areas like local SEO, project reporting, backlink profile review, content development, strategic planning, and more. Whatever the project may be Carissa focuses on achieving greater efficiencies and putting plans into action. When away from her desk you’ll likely find her drinking all the coffee while sitting on the floor driving cars with her two young boys. Learn more about Carissa.

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