User-generated content marketing is like having your customers become enthusiastic ambassadors for your brand. It not only enhances brand loyalty but also significantly boosts brand awareness. When you share content created by your customers, it’s akin to receiving a free advertisement for your brand. It’s a powerful strategy that seamlessly complements your traditional content marketing efforts.
What Is User-Generated Content?
User-generated content is essentially from individuals who have engaged with your brand. These folks typically become familiar with your brand by purchasing your main product or service, or they might belong to your target audience.
Regarding user-generated content marketing, the idea is to share this content across your platforms. By doing so, you’re aiming to create a buzz around your brand and garner positive attention.
Why Do You Need User-Generated Content Marketing?
Why do content marketers need to add user-generated content marketing to our overflowing to-do lists? People don’t like or trust traditional advertisements. 7 in 10 people use advertising avoidance strategies such as ad blockers.
It’s true. Humanity has become very suspicious of advertisements that seem to promise heaven on earth. The Fyre Festival is only one of many reasons for this distrust.
In April 2017, Fyre Media co-founder Billy McFarland started selling people tickets to a once-in-a-lifetime experience – a luxury music festival set against the backdrop of a tropical island in the Bahamas.
An average of 5,000 people spent thousands of dollars on these tickets, which should include luxury accommodation for the festival’s duration.
These people arrived on the island excited to mingle and party with celebrities like Ja Rule and Kendall Jenner. They were astounded to find that all the A-list musical acts had dropped out of the festival. To make things worse, their five-star accommodation had transformed into dilapidated tents soaking wet from the rain.
Advertisements for the Fyre Festival had promised “a place where the tropical sun shines all day, and our celebrations ignite the night.”
Our burgers always look juicier on a billboard than on our plates. Our resorts look better in the photos on the website than in person. Red Bull promises to give us wings.
Unsurprisingly, people will trust what one of your customers says about your brand more than an advertisement from your brand. User-generated content marketing is seen as more authentic than traditional marketing. This is why your brand needs it.
User-generated content is a form of social proof for your brand. It helps you strengthen your relationship with current customers and reach a wider audience.
Here’s how sharing user-generated content can boost your brand:
1. It Is Authentic
User-generated content is created by people who don’t work for your brand. This content presents an authentic perspective on your for a potential customer because it is produced by someone just like them who has had first-hand experience with the brand. For this reason, people will trust your user-generated content marketing more than they will trust your traditional advertisements.
2. It Creates a Content Community
When you share content from one client, you encourage others to create similar content. This results in a community of people who love and enjoy advocating for your brand. A content community is a source of valuable publicity for your brand.
3. It Generates Brand Loyalty
Speaking of content communities, user-generated content marketing also inspires brand loyalty. If you encourage people to share what they love about your brand, you will remain at the top of these clients’ minds. This increases the chances that they will return to you the next time they look for a similar product or service.
4. It Drives Sales
Sharing content created by people loyal to your brand boosts brand awareness. Ultimately, more brand awareness generates more sales.
User-generated content is an excellent place to find out what people love about your brand and what they don’t particularly enjoy. The feedback won’t always be positive, and that’s not bad. Instead, negative feedback is an opportunity to tweak what isn’t working for your clients, allowing you to build a product that they truly love.
Taking this feedback seriously will help your clients feel seen and heard. If your customers believe you value what they say, they will stay with you long.
Examples of User-Generated Content Marketing
1) Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” Campaign
In 2011, Coca-Cola launched its “Share a Coke” campaign in Australia by printing people’s names on the sides of their bottles. Coca-Cola encouraged people to buy a friend a bottle with their name on it and share the Coke.
While the original campaign was launched in Australia, it became a multi-national campaign. Images of the Coke bottles were widely shared on social media, and the company tailored the campaign to each new culture. This approach allowed them to create a personalized campaign in each new country.
For example, in Israel, the company greeted people personally by name on giant billboards. Similarly, in China, nicknames were included among the original names.
With this campaign, Coca-Cola built a personal connection with consumers and spread some joy.
2) Aerie’s #Aeriereal Campaign
In 2014, American Eagle’s loungewear and lingerie line – Aerie – launched the #AerieREAL campaign to encourage women to appreciate their natural beauty. Since our adverts are filled with retouched photos of flawless women imposing unrealistic expectations on real women, this campaign is still relevant today.
With #AerieREAL, Aerie hopes to promote body positivity and confidence in women. This is a noble goal, especially in an industry with ridiculous beauty standards.
When Aerie launched this campaign, it also committed to stopping the editing of photos of its models. In addition, it encouraged its customers to post unedited images on social media with the accompanying hashtag “#AerieREAL.” Aerie donates 1 to the National Eating Disorders Association for each photo shared on social media.
In 2020, Aerie launched #AerieREAL Changemakers, a program that recognizes women who are helping their communities and changing the world. #AerieREAL Changemakers awards these fierce and inspiring entrepreneurs, advocates, and humanitarians $20,000 each to support their selfless projects. These women are now brand advocates for Aerie. Moreover, Aerie has gained publicity as a brand that cares about humanity.
3) Starbucks White Cup Contest
2014, Starbucks launched its white cup contest to build a deeper connection with its customers. They wanted to develop a new design for their cups and invited their customers to submit designs using the hashtag #whitecupcontest. These customers, who enjoyed drawing on their cups, were eager to participate.
The #whitecupcontest united Starbucks customers and encouraged them to achieve a common goal. This contest resulted in thousands of cup designs being shared on social media. In addition, Starbucks enjoyed more publicity and brand loyalty.
With the pandemic confining many people to their homes more than usual, brands are reaching out to reassure their clients. By keeping clients’ companies online, brands can create a sense of community during a trying time. Here are two brands that are doing this well:
4) Recreate a Piece of Art at the j.paul Getty Museum
When COVID hit back, the fact that the J.Paul Getty Museum had to close its doors didn’t stop them from engaging with the public. The museum called for people to recreate works of art while quarantined at home.
“We challenge you to recreate a work of art with objects (and people) in your home,” the museum tweeted. Contestants had to:
Choose their favorite work of art
Find objects and people in their homes
Recreate the piece of art
Share their creation on social media
Twitter users joined the fun and encouraged their families and friends to participate. The result was a series of exciting and amusing submissions and increased publicity for the museum.
To celebrate National Travel & Tourism Week 2020, Stevens Point Area invited the public to vote for the perfect way to spend a #StePoWknd. The campaign was designed to engage locals and former guests.
People submitted different must-haves for the perfect weekend. Stevens Point Area then used these submissions to curate the ideal weekend. The final perfect #StePoWknd was divided into drinks, food, and adventures.
With this campaign, Stevens Point excited their community about having a new adventure over the weekend. The public appreciated this excitement, especially given how isolated many people were at home.
If you ask your audience to submit user-generated content, you must be clear about what content you’d like them to offer. For example, the Starbucks white cup contest had a list of rules.
Even so, sometimes, your audience will post unexpected and unscripted content. This is good because the content someone posts spontaneously reflects your brand more authentically. So when this happens, enjoy the moment and share this content with the rest of your network.
2. Ask for Permission
Before you share user-generated content, it’s essential to ask the content creator for permission. By asking for permission, you show this person you respect them. Ultimately, clients who feel appreciated will speak highly about your brand.
3. Offer Something in Return
It’s not enough to ask for permission to use someone’s content. If you share someone’s content, offering them something in return is only fair. This person will appreciate feeling valued as a brand advocate. You can provide your content creators with branded gifts, event invitations, or discount vouchers for your core product or service.
User-generated content marketing can sound very technical and unfathomable at first. However, as you have seen, it’s pretty easy in practice. With the above tips, you can boost engagement with your current clients and increase brand awareness among potential clients.
As you keep your skills sharp and stay competitive with the right content marketing books, sometimes, picking the right book from hundreds of books can be challenging. Which books will give you the right skills to boost your brand? Which books will cater to your industry?
Given the number of books, we’ve curated a list of the top 50 content marketing books for you to read in 2024. We know you’re always busy creating content, so you might not have time to read all 50. To simplify your life, we’ve separated these into 10 books and 40 that you can read to supplement the first 10.
Choosing the best books for your specific role will be challenging even with this list. For this reason, we’ve included a summary of each book, so you know what each has to offer.
Once you’ve brushed up on your skills with these content marketing books, give your content creation process a boost as well by signing up for Kontely. With Kontely, you and your team can create content faster and publish it to several channels simultaneously – all from one place. Join Kontely today and streamline your content workflow to collaborate while producing and publishing content faster for your clients.
10 Content Marketing Books That You Absolutely Must Read
The following 10 content marketing books have been chosen specifically because they are the most highly acclaimed books of the lot. The best content marketers write them and include revolutionary advice to boost your content marketing efforts.
1) Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break Through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less
Author: Joe Pulizzi
In this book, Joe Pulizzi discusses creating content that will stand out in a digital space ruled by information overload and clutter. As one of the world’s leading content marketers, Pulizzi has developed a collection of tricks for capturing the attention of your target audience and inspiring action.
Why You Should Read It:
Why is this book #1 on our list of content marketing books? Today, people are wary of advertisements that promise the sun and the moon. They also don’t like being told what to do.
Because of this, it’s essential to connect with your target audience meaningfully. You need to be able to drive these people to a particular action in a way that inspires them rather than manipulates them into taking it.
If you want to build genuine connections with your customers, Epic Content Marketing is your book. In this book, Pulizzi guides you through what it takes to create content that entertains your audiences. Moreover, he includes case studies of how John Deere, LEGO, Coca-Cola, and other well-known brands have built outstanding content marketing campaigns.
2) They Ask, You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Customer
Author: Marcus Sheridan
In They Ask You Answer, Marcus Sheridan offers an ingenious approach to content marketing. Rather than focusing on selling to people, Sheridan believes we should answer their questions. As someone who transformed himself from a struggling entrepreneur to an inbound marketing guru, he knows about building client trust.
Why You Should Read It:
This book features in our top 10 content marketing books for good reason. Gone are the days when traditional ads, keyword stuffing, and link building were all you needed to reach your target audience. If these are the only tactics you rely on, your strategy will likely fall flat. Since so many people distrust traditional marketing these days, Sheridan’s book focuses on showing you how to create quality content that your target audience wants so that you can build trust with potential clients.
3) Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content
Author: Ann Handley
Ann Handley uses Everybody Writes with wit and insight to teach her readers how to create quality content that people will want to read. According to Handley, your words matter whether you build your brand website, interact with clients on social media, or draft marketing copy.
Why You Should Read It:
Out of all our content marketing books, this is the best one to help you write better. Since we’re all writers, there’s a lot we can learn from Handley. Words have immense power – they can differentiate between retaining customers and sending them running in the opposite direction.
Handley’s book is an enjoyable six-part course on creating content that will leave your readers wanting more. It’s divided into 1) How to Write Better, 2) Writing Rules, 3) Story Rules, 4) Publishing Rules, and 5) Things Marketers Write, and includes a list of content tools to help you produce outstanding content.
4) What to Post: How to Create Engaging Social Media Content that Builds Your Brand and Gets Results
Author: Chelsea Peitz
If you’re used to abandoning marketing guides halfway through, Chelsea Peitz’s book will surprise you with advice you can refer to repeatedly. Peitz covers everything you need to market your real estate business, from building a memorable brand to creating relatable content and boosting your reach.
Why You Should Read It:
What to Post is on our list of content marketing books because it will help you boost your social media presence. This book is for you if you don’t know what to post on social media to increase engagement and make genuine connections with your audience.
Filled with many relatable examples and actionable tips, What to Post will transform you from a social media novice to a social media guru. Peitz even includes some blank pages where she guides you through brainstorming sessions. While it’s written for real estate marketers, the tips in this book can be applied to any industry.
The Practice is the key to discovering the most creative version of yourself. In this book, Seth Godin busts several myths about creativity and productivity and consistently shows how to create quality content.
Why You Should Read It:
Seth Godin’s books will appear a few times on this list of content marketing books, and with good reason. As a content creator himself, Godin can teach us a lot about producing content that turns heads and leaves a lasting impression. If you often battle writer’s block or perfectionism, then this is just what you need to help you push through those moments when you feel uninspired.
6) Become a Content Brand: Build a Team, Own your Audience, and Create Video your Customers will Love
Author: Chris Carter
Chris Carter has spent years helping 180 brands with content creation and building a network of over 150,000 creators, filmmakers, editors, and marketers worldwide. This experience has made him realize the growing demand for video and that no single brand can keep up with it. He wrote this book to help brands produce quality videos that can make a splash.
Why You Should Read It:
Out of all our content marketing books, this is the only one focusing specifically on videos. These days, we’re drowning in new content from brands every day. Instead of struggling with this constant flood of content, Carter shows you how to create quality content that will stand out from your competition. Do you want to learn how to create genuinely memorable videos? Then this is the book for you.
7) Content that Converts: How to Create a Profitable and Predictable B2B Content Marketing Strategy
Author: Laura Hanly
Laura Hanly taps into her experience to show people how to use content marketing to generate a predictable stream of qualified leads. Her methods have yielded positive results and are easily replicable by any brand.
Why You Should Read It:
Do you need help attracting more leads to your brand and converting these leads into paying customers? Then it’s good that Content that Converts is on our list of content marketing books because this is the book for you.
Hanly covers everything from establishing the right target audience to creating quality content to establish you as a thought leader in your industry. Rather than recycling tips from other content marketing gurus, Hanly fills her book with strategies that have worked for her campaigns.
Inspired by years of qualitative research and interviews with leading brands, Rebecca Lieb’s book is written to help you produce engaging social media content. Written by an industry thought leader, the content covered in this book should help anyone build a comprehensive content marketing strategy.
Why You Should Read It:
Lieb’s book is just what you need to create an integrated marketing strategy. This comprehensive book is why it’s in our top 10 content marketing books. By backing her ideas up with examples, graphs, and case studies, Lieb has created a foolproof guide to building a content-centric brand. To create a memorable brand that thrives on quality content, you must get a copy of this book ASAP.
Where You Can Find It:
Buy your copy of Content: The Atomic Particle of Marketing here.
9) The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing
Author: Rich Brooks
In this book, Rich Brooks shares his digital marketing secrets. Brooks has tips for digital marketers of every level, from teaching brands how to rank higher on Google to showing content creators how to generate higher engagement on social media.
Why You Should Read It:
If you own a small to medium-sized business and are keen on it and generating leads, this book will help you meet those challenges head-on. With a combination of humor and insightful advice, Brooks enables you to build a website, attract the right people, and convert these leads into sales.
10) Superfans: The Easy Way to Stand Out, Grow Your Tribe, and Build a Successful Business
Author: Pat Flynn
In a world where people constantly chase likes and followers, Pat Flynn uses this book to remind us that a small, engaged audience is better than a sizeable, apathetic audience. His book is a series of tips and tricks to help you engage with your audience and turn them into superfans.
Why You Should Read It:
This book scored a place in our top 10 content marketing books because it will help you dramatically transform your social media strategy. Your regular audience members will like your social media pages and maybe even buy a product or two here and there.
Even so, the audience members who feel seen and heard will genuinely become your brand ambassadors. These people will tell their friends and family about you and share positive reviews online. They will also send you encouraging messages during a low-peak season and share your social media posts with their online network. We know you want to turn your target audience into superfans (who wouldn’t?), so this one is definitely for you.
As we’ve already said, our 10 most highly recommended content marketing books are above. If you don’t have time to read all 50 books on our list, you should at least read these 10.
More Content Marketing Books for Your Bookshelf:
In addition to the 10 content marketing books you must read, here are more to supplement your reading.
11) Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content
Author: Coleen Jones
In this book, Coleen Jones demonstrates how to create content that converts using 8 principles of influence. According to Jones, using fancy technology and designing pretty content is insufficient to convert your leads into sales.
Why You Should Read It:
As a content creator, it is easy to focus on producing aesthetically pleasing content and using the newest technology to wow your audience.
However, Jones forces us to pause and understand why content is crucial to consumers and how to create content that meets their needs. This book will help you make the content your audience craves, thus creating a genuine connection with them.
12) F*ck Content Marketing: Focus on Content Experience to Drive Demand, Revenue & Relationships
Author: Randy Frisch
Randy Frisch believes the most successful brands worldwide don’t simply do content marketing. Instead, they focus on creating content experiences—imagine the immersive scrolling experience created by Netflix, Spotify, and Instagram.
Why You Should Read It:
Do you want your consumers to feel like you’re speaking directly to them in all your content marketing? Do you want them to forget where reality ends and your marketing begins?
If so, this is the book for you. Frisch designed it to teach content marketers how to use the Content Experience Framework to create personalized content that drives product demand and builds client relationships.
13) Master Content Strategy: How to Maximize your Reach & Boost your Bottom Line Every Time you Hit Publish
Author: Pamela Wilson
Instead of producing endless low-quality content, Pamela Wilson teaches us how to create the best content for each growth stage. As a business owner, marketing consultant, and thought leader, Wilson has practical tips that can be applied in both a B2B and a B2C setting.
Why You Should Read It:
This book, by Pamela Wilson, will guide you through the different stages of creating precious content for your audience. What makes this book stand out from the rest is that it will teach you how the needs of your newly launched blog will change as it ages. Instead of offering cookie-cutter advice, this book will grow with you and your business.
14) Brand Identity Breakthrough: How to Craft Your Company’s Unique Story to Make Your Products Irresistible
Author: Gregory V. Diehl
Gregory V. Diehl believes that every brand has a unique story to tell. Moreover, you carve out a more specialized niche in your industry with every new product. Diehl is passionate about helping content marketers combine these elements to build a standout brand identity.
Why You Should Read It:
The lessons in this book will help you build a brand that your clients can trust and tell your brand story to the world in a memorable way.
Diehl will show you how to be personable enough on your website, social media, and content to create a genuine relationship with your leads. Your brand could benefit from this book since sales follow only once this relationship happens.
15) Faster, Smarter, Louder: Master Attention in a Noisy Digital Market
Authors: Aaron Agius & Gián Clancey
In this book, Aaron Agius and Gián Clancey share secrets that helped them transform their two-person agency into a global leader in digital marketing. It is filled with tips to help you cut through the noise and information overload and build a more visible, long-lasting, and louder brand.
Why You Should Read It:
This book doesn’t simply present a list of successful marketing strategies. Agius and Clancey go beyond that to explain why these strategies were successful.
This approach makes it easy for content marketers to adapt the recommended methods to their brand. With actionable how-tos and step-by-step instructions, this book is an excellent blueprint for anyone committed to excelling with their digital marketing.
Daniel Anderson believes well-crafted stories build trust among your target audience and inspire action. His book contains tips and tricks for telling stories that will excite them about your brand.
Why You Should Read It:
Telling good stories can help you connect emotionally with your audience. If you want emotionally invested customers in your brand, you must pick up a copy of this book. Once you start using your content to tell powerful stories, your content marketing strategy will be more effective.
17) The Context Marketing Revolution: How to Motivate Buyers in the Age of Infinite Media
Author: Mathew Sweezey
In this book, Mathew Sweezey describes our unique digital landscape where – for the first time – our customers have the power to create content themselves. He goes one step further to talk about going beyond traditional marketing strategies to break through the noise and reach these customers.
Why You Should Read It:
Traditional marketing won’t cut it in a world where everyone with a smartphone is a content creator. Your traditional ads are more likely to be a bore or an annoyance to the people you’re trying to reach.
This book will arm you with strategies to break through information overload and reach your target audience. Context is important—helping your customers meet a need in the moment. Once you realize that, you’ll produce the content your audience has always wanted.
Where You Can Find It:
Buy your copy of Context Marketing Revolution here.
18) Effective SEO and Content Marketing: The Ultimate Guide for Maximizing Free Web Traffic
Author: Nicholas Papagiannis
Since people assume content marketing is simply about producing quality content, SEO is an underrated part of content marketing. Papagiannis shows how optimizing your content can increase brand awareness and drive more people to your website.
Why You Should Read It:
This will be a good read if you need help understanding SEO—from the basics to how to implement an effective SEO strategy. Many people assume that SEO only applies to their website or blog.
On the contrary, SEO is just as important on your social media channels, and Nicholas Papagiannis can show you exactly how to optimize these platforms.
Where You Can Find It:
Buy your copy of Effective SEO and Content Marketing here.
19) The One-Page Content Marketing Blueprint: Launch a Content Marketing Strategy in 90 Days and Double your Inbound Traffic, Leads and Sales
Author: Prafull Sharma
This book will offer an eagle-eye view of how content marketing works, including what to expect at each step of the journey. This is a comprehensive guide on how all the elements of content marketing come together to build a strategy that works.
Why You Should Read It:
A Google search on “content marketing” will leave you overwhelmed and drowning in tips, strategies, and advice from different people. These results are often conflicting, and very rarely will one result give you an idea of how all the various parts of content marketing fit together. If you know the feeling, you will appreciate Prafull Sharma’s guide on building a content marketing strategy, piece by piece.
Where You Can Find It:
Buy your copy of The One-Page Content Marketing Blueprinthere.
20) Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins
Author: Mark Schaefer
Today, technology makes it easy for our customers to share recommendations with friends and family. As a result, most marketing happens without brands even getting involved.
The consumer is the new marketer. Schaefer uses this book to show us how to be part of these conversations by appealing to the people initiating them.
Why You Should Read It:
This book will challenge your understanding of being an marketer and show you how to build genuine connections with your consumers.
Today, the most prominent brands succeed because they can create human impressions that help customers believe, belong, and find meaning.
Don’t be left behind. With the right strategy, you can join your consumers’ conversations and arm them with the information and passion they need to be your brand ambassadors. If you’d like to do this for your brand, you must get your hands on this book and join the marketing rebellion.
21) The Content Fuel Framework: How to Generate Unlimited Story Ideas
Author: Melanie Deziel
In this book, professional journalist and award-winning marketer Melanie Deziel shows you how to consistently produce engaging content. Her framework will give your brainstorming sessions the boost they need, helping you generate new ideas effortlessly.
Why You Should Read It:
Even the best content creators suffer from writer’s block or brain fog occasionally. With this book, you can forget about wondering what to post on your social media or waiting for that “big idea” to boost your content.
The Content Fuel Framework is designed to help storytellers in any industry develop fresh, unique ideas anytime and anywhere.
22) Pre-suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade
Author: Robert Cialdini
According to this New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, your message does not influence people and change their minds. Instead, the moment before you deliver your message has the most power to drive action.
Why You Should Read It:
Cialdini believes that optimal persuasion can only happen after sufficient pre-suasion. For this reason, his book focuses on preparing your audience to be receptive to your message before you even deliver it. If you want to understand how to use diversion to prepare your audience to say “yes” to your brand, this book will be your new best friend.
23) Content Inc: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses
Author: Joe Pulizzi
Our list of recommended content marketing books features a second book by Joe Pulizzi. As founder of the Content Marketing Institute, Joe Pulizzi has the credentials to teach us how to be better content marketers.
In this book, Pulizzi recommends reversing the traditional model where brands create a product first and then look for an audience. Instead, he suggests that brands create content, build an audience around that content, and then develop a product for that audience.
Why You Should Read It:
Building a product and trusting that you will find an audience for it is much easier said than done. Brands that do this gamble with their money and investors’ funds. You can never guarantee that there will be an audience for your product once you’ve developed it.
However, if you build an audience first and create content that encourages them to engage with you, you are more likely to make the product they want. Pulizzi shows you how to create content that excites your audience and sparks meaningful conversations.
24) The Content Code: Six Essential Strategies for Igniting Your Content, Your Marketing, and Your Business
Author: Mark W. Schaefer
Mark Schaefer shares six digital secrets in The Content Code to help marketers master content promotion and distribution. He also teaches readers how to optimize their content for the web.
Why You Should Read It:
In a world where too many brands fight over a limited attention span, Mark Schaefer teaches these brands how to create content that encourages engagement.
Beyond simply generating engagement, Schaefer’s formula helps brands create content that will turn their audiences into fans who take over, driving their content to new places. This is a must-read if you want to make content your audience will be excited about.
25) Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth
Authors: Jae Baer & Daniel Lemin
According to marketing experts Baer and Lemin, word-of-mouth advertising is directly or indirectly responsible for 90% of all purchases. Their book is designed to teach brands how to reach people who love to talk and turn them into brand ambassadors – at no extra cost to the brand.
Why You Should Read It:
We all rely on word of mouth from friends and family to make buying decisions. Ironically enough, fewer than 1% of companies have built a strategy for inspiring customers to do word-of-mouth advertising for them.
Talk Triggers provides that strategy in a compelling, relevant, and timely book. This relatable strategy can be implemented immediately by any business.
Where You Can Find It:
26) Storynomics: Story-Driven Marketing in a Post-Advertising World
In this book, Robert McKee partners with Skyword CEO Tom Gerace to create a formula for story-driven marketing. This solution is the perfect alternative to interruptive advertising, which our customers are fed up with.
Why You Should Read It:
People rarely click on pop-up ads anymore, so it’s time we found an alternative that works. Are you tired of annoying your target audience by jumping out at them and interrupting their browsing?
If so, this is the perfect read for you. Pick up a copy of this book and learn how to craft a brand story your target audience will naturally be drawn to.
27) Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
Author: Rory Sutherland
In this book, Ogilvy advertising legend Rory Sutherland decodes human behavior and tells us how to create that magical formula to draw customers to our products. It is a treasure chest of the secrets to human decision-making.
Why You Should Read It:
Most human interactions involve marketing, even if it’s not apparent. Sutherland analyses human interactions – from the everyday to the weird – to explain why humans behave the way they do.
By examining human behavior on such a fundamental level, brands everywhere can learn to create content that appeals to the human mind.
28) Stories that Stick: How storytelling can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform your Business
Author: Kindra Hall
You already know storytelling’s power to help you connect with your audience and convert leads. But do you know the correct stories to tell? In Stories that Stick, Kindra Hall helps us decide which stories are worth telling and to whom.
Why You Should Read It:
Storytelling seems simple in theory, but crafting a story that your audience will genuinely connect with can be challenging. If you struggle to communicate with customers, build trust with investors, and inspire your audiences, then this is the solution you never knew you needed.
29) The Copyeditors Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications
Authors: Amy Einsohn & Marilyn Schwartz
Schwartz and Einsohn have developed this guide for new and seasoned copyeditors looking to sharpen their skills. This workbook includes the latest advice from language authorities and recognizes shifts in 21st-century copyediting.
Why You Should Read It:
If you write for a living, then you need this book. Schwartz and Einsohn have thought of everything you could need, from help writing for a global audience to working with authors who write in English as a second language.
The writers have added a dash of humor and interesting anecdotes for language lovers, including a history of punctuation marks that weren’t cut.
30) The End of Marketing: Humanizing Your Brand in the Age of Social Media and AI
Author: Carlos Gil
This book helps brands navigate the murky waters of social media marketing, where a single influencer can quickly get more views a day than Apple. Carlos Gil explains how brands can stay relevant in a world where traditional marketing is dead.
Why You Should Read It:
Today’s consumers don’t want to be sold to. Instead, they want to be engaged by the brands clamoring for their attention. Building engagement should be a priority for every brand in this digital landscape. By buying this book, you’re putting the formula for generating positive engagement with your audience in your own hands.
31) Words that Change Minds: The 14 Patterns for Mastering the Language of Influence
Author: Shelle Rose Charvet
This book digs into the science of influence to teach readers how to use their words to persuade people without manipulating them. It’s perfect for sales, marketing, recruiting, negotiation, teaching, training, communication at work, and conflict resolution.
Why You Should Read It:
As a content marketer, everyone you talk to has a “communication wall” built around them. This wall is designed to keep out the big lousy marketer notorious for promising the sun and the moon but delivering a rock instead. If you want to get through to even the most stubborn of people, then you need to buy this book.
32) Building a Story Brand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen
Author: Donald Miller
Building a Story Brand is an excellent solution for entrepreneurs who struggle to talk about their brand to audiences. Donald Miller shares lessons on crafting the perfect message for your website, brochures, and social media.
Why You Should Read It:
Building a brand story that excites your audience is crucial to content marketing. Donald Miller’s book teaches you how to do this. By sharing the seven universal story points humans respond to and the real reason customers make purchases, Miller will transform how you talk about your brand.
In this book, Halvorson explains why content is integral to your marketing strategy and how to make it work for your brand. This book offers a refreshing break from content marketing books, which focus on design by putting the focus on quality content.
Why You Should Read It:
A beautiful website is great but means nothing without creative and engaging content. This book will teach you how to combine the aesthetics of your content with valuable information in a beautiful harmony that will appeal to your audience.
Don’t get stuck on beautiful designs while neglecting your content. Offer your target audience the best of both worlds, and they will stick with you.
Where You Can Find It:
Buy your copy of “Content Strategy for the Web” here.
34) Binge Marketing: The Best Scenario for Building Your Brand
Author: Carljin Postma
In this book, Carljin Postma takes us to the people who have turned capturing and retaining an audience’s attention into an art: Hollywood. Since Hollywood has been getting people hooked on engaging content for decades, this is an excellent place for content marketing advice.
Why You Should Read It:
As content marketers, we often make the mistake of looking at each piece of content as a separate piece. In Binge Marketing Postma, we are encouraged to think of each new piece of content as a new episode in a TV show.
Creating this kind of serial content fosters trust and builds genuine long-term relationships with your audience.
35) Killing Marketing: How Innovative Businesses are Turning Marketing Cost into Profit
Authors: Joe Pulizzi & Robert Rose
Pulizzi and Rose take us behind the scenes to innovative marketing departments worldwide, showing us how they are ending marketing as we know it. Their new marketing model is so successful because it focuses on consumer needs.
Why You Should Read It:
If you can create value for your consumers through your owned media and savvy content marketing, you will boost brand loyalty and reach wider audiences. This book will show you how to do that, helping you transform your from a cost center to a profit machine.
36) Integrated Marketing Communications: Putting it Together & Making It Work
Authors: Don E. Schultz, Stanley Tannenbaum & Robert E. Lauterborn
According to this book, your business formula can be replicated—except for your content marketing. Don E. Schultz and his colleagues are committed to helping brands produce outstanding content that meets the needs of their consumers.
Why You Should Read It:
You might have a fantastic product, but your content helps you build a unique brand image and stay top of mind among your target audience. If you want to create content that stands out, this book is just what you need.
Where You Can Find It:
Buy your copy of Integrated Marketing Communicationshere.
37) The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life
Authors: Oliver Luckett & Michael Casey
In this book, Luckett and Casey make a fascinating comparison between social media and the biology of an organism. They explain how we can use our social media content to take part in the evolution of information on these platforms.
Why You Should Read It:
Do you know how to create shareable content that can go viral? It might seem easy to see other brands doing it, but developing viral content takes time and understanding your audience.
This book shows you how to tap into your consumers’ social DNA and create content they will replicate and share with you repeatedly.
38) The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!
Author: Stoney deGeyter
The title of this book speaks for itself—it’s the ultimate guide to boosting your digital marketing. Packed with website strategies, it will help you increase your web traffic and improve your web presence.
Why You Should Read It:
Designing an effective website isn’t simply about slapping pretty colors and leaving it at that. It’s essential to focus on elements that search engines and your target audience will love.
Stoney deGeyter’s checklist covers web marketing strategies for design considerations, site architecture, conversion optimization, website optimization (SEO), website advertising (pay-per-click or PPC), content writing, and social media strategy.
Where You Can Find It:
Buy your copy of The Best Damn Marketing Checklist, Period! Here.
39) Top of Mind: Use Content to Unleash Your Influence and Engage Those Who Matter to You
Author: John Hall
John Hall uses his experience to teach readers how to build content-driven relationships that keep your brand in mind among consumers. With the tips in this book, you can make a lasting influence on your target audience.
Why You Should Read It:
The most loyal customers see you as a trusted friend, and Hall teaches you how to build this relationship with your consumers.
Successful businesses do so well because they are the first brands that come to mind when customers think of a particular product. If you want to rise in the ranks and join these brands, then give Top of Mind a read.
40) Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention
Author: John Ruhlin
If you’ve never considered using gift-giving to boost your brand and connect with potential clients and influencers, then the concepts in this book will surprise you. Ruhlin believes something as simple as a handwritten note could brighten someone’s day and seal a deal.
Why You Should Read It:
You might not have realized this before, but branded gifts can boost your content marketing efforts. The trick is to give your prospect a gift they need precisely when needed.
John Ruhlin teaches his readers how to master the art of gift-giving. You can boost brand awareness and build brand loyalty by learning to give thoughtful gifts.
41) Powering Content: Building a Nonstop Content Marketing Machine
Author: Laura Busche
When your new product is ready to launch, you want to shout about it from the treetops. But how do you create content that will shout loud enough to be heard above the noise and clutter? Well, you can start by reading this book.
Why You Should Read It:
You might have developed the best product in the world, but your marketing efforts will fail if your audience isn’t excited about your brand.
With Busche’s guide, you can learn to create content your audience can relate to, speaking directly to your customers and inspiring them to take action.
42) Brand Now: How to Stand Out in a Crowded, Distracted World
Author: Nick Westergaard
With the rise of technology, sharing the good news about your product will be more accessible than ever. On the contrary, since smartphones have transformed everyone into a content creator, you must find creative ways to break through the clutter. You can start by creating a memorable brand.
Why You Should Read It:
In this book, Westergaard explains how to build a brand that resonates online and offline. Written with wit and insight, brand Now will teach you how to give your brand an unforgettable personality with which your target audience can connect.
43) Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends into Customers
Author: Seth Godin
Seth Godin states, “Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal, and relevant messages to people who want to get them.” His book teaches brands how to create content that people will miss.
Why You Should Read It:
Imagine how good it would feel to be missed by a customer who picks up the phone or emails you are complaining that they didn’t get their newsletter this week.
Any brand would dream of creating content that is missed by its audience. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by. Pick up a copy of Permission Marketing and learn how to create content your clients cherish.
44) The Age of Influence: The Power of Influencers to Elevate Your Brand
Author: Neal Schaffer
In The Age of Influence, Neal Schaffer explains the elements needed to create an effective influencer marketing strategy for your brand. Schaffer, a social media expert, offers many tips and tricks to help you navigate today’s constantly evolving digital landscape.
Why You Should Read It:
Influencer marketing is an essential part of content marketing. Partnering with influencers helps you create content that your audience can relate to.
A good influencer marketing strategy will help you turn your audience into fans, subsequently turning these fans into influencers. If this sounds good, you must buy a copy of this book.
Jeremy Miller believes your brand name forms the foundation of your branding and content marketing efforts. With this book, you can create an unforgettable brand name that travels far and wide.
Why You Should Read It:
Your brand name is everything. It gives your brand a personality and helps your audience remember your core product or service.
Although many content marketing books focus on branding, this book will help you build a truly exceptional brand that people enjoy connecting with.
46) The Definitive Guide to Strategic Content Marketing: Perspectives, Issues, Challenges and Solutions
Authors: Justin Kirby & Lazar Džamić
This book collects advice from content marketing experts worldwide. A treasure chest of theories, tips, and tricks, The Definitive Guide to Strategic Content Marketing is designed to educate content marketers of all levels and abilities.
Why You Should Read It:
Are you curious about the theories that have made content marketing work so well for brands today? This book is just that, with examples from brands worldwide. Understanding how content marketing theories have shaped today’s marketing world will help you adapt these theories to your brand.
Where You Can Find It:
Buy your copy of The Definitive Guide to Strategic Content Marketing here.
47) One Million Followers: How I Built a Massive Social Following in 30 Days
Author: Brendan Kane
In One Million Followers, digital strategist and growth hacker Brendan Kane teaches readers how to go beyond building an engaged social media following to gain dedicated fans.
Why You Should Read It:
Do you want to create content that inspires your followers to do more than mindlessly click the ‘like’ button and scroll to the next thing? Would you like to publish content that stops people in their tracks and drives them to check your website and purchase your products?
If this is you, you should let Kane show you how in this book. Having built online platforms for A-listers, including Taylor Swift and Rihanna, he has what it takes to transform your social media presence.
48) Content Marketing for PR: How to Build Brand Visibility, Influence, and Trust in Today’s Social Age
Author: Trevor Young
Standing out from the competition and producing content that matters has become almost impossible today. Even so, with this guide, you can boost brand visibility and gain your audience’s trust.
Why You Should Read It:
As content marketers, we yearn to produce content that helps us break through the sea of voices crying out for attention. This is the only one of our 50 books that examines content marketing from a PR perspective.
This book combines influential content marketing and public relations theories to help you do just that. The right content marketing strategy is a series of good decisions you make for your brand. The first good decision you can make is to read this book.
Content marketing isn’t simply about producing brilliant content for your brand. You must also make sure this content is easy to find. Ward and French’s book shows us how to optimize our content for the web.
Why You Should Read It:
Your job as a content marketer doesn’t end when you’ve created unique content. To truly outshine your competitors, you must also ensure this content is visible on search engines. In The Ultimate Guide to Link Building, Eric Ward and Garrett French will show you how to make your audience happy while making Google happy.
Where You Can Find It:
Buy your copy of The Ultimate Guide to Link Buildinghere.
50) This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until you Learn to See
Author: Seth Godin
No, you’re not imagining things. Out of our list of 50 content marketing books, this is the third Seth Godin book we’ve recommended because he’s just that good. In another insightful book, Godin explains the importance of your audience in your content marketing efforts.
Why You Should Read It:
Many marketers make the mistake of using consumers to fulfill the brand’s needs instead of vice versa, which is how it should be. Seth Godin tells us, “You can’t be seen until you learn to see,” effectively saying that you must see your audience to produce valuable content.
Understanding your audience’s pain points is vital to this. With Godin’s content marketing tips, you can finally learn what it takes to produce content your audience values.
As you can see, there are many good content marketing books. If you want to brush up on your content marketing skills, the 50 books above are an excellent place to start. Alternatively, a good content marketing course could be just what you need.
Understanding crafting a captivating headline is crucial for creating compelling content that resonates with your audience. Your headline serves as the initial engagement point for readers, drawing them into your writing. It’s pivotal to grasp the essence of composing a headline that grabs attention and piques curiosity, compelling readers to delve deeper into your article.
Whether you’re penning a blog post, an eBook, or a white paper, a well-crafted headline can increase your content’s traffic. Conversely, a lackluster headline may prompt visitors to swiftly navigate away from your page in search of more enticing material.
As evident, the headline stands as a cornerstone of any written piece you produce. The encouraging news is that, with practice, you can master crafting engaging headlines that enhance clicks and draw in more interested readers.
Examples of Winning Headlines
In our quest for the perfect headline, we came across 5 categories of headlines that tend to perform well:
Making a promise
For example: “Do your Business Accounts Faster with this Simple Formula.”
For example: “This is the Best Diet for your Dog, According to Veterinarians.”
Asking a question
For example: “Have you Heard what Carrots can Do for your Skin?”
Disputing common knowledge
For example: “Here’s why Drinking Milk is Bad for You.”
Before we move on, all the above headlines are purely hypothetical. We don’t believe milk is terrible for you, so don’t quote us.
How to Write a Headline That Will Capture Attention
1) Do Your Research
You must first know what you’re writing about to write an engaging headline. Your topic should appeal to readers, so knowing what they want is essential.
Before crafting your headline, consider doing some preliminary research to understand your target audience’s pain points. Understanding their needs better will guide you in writing a headline that resonates with them.
Kick off your research by exploring what prompts people to turn to Google. What specific queries do they type when seeking assistance in your niche? By analyzing prevalent keywords, you can uncover the topics your audience is eager to explore.
Feeling lost? Start typing your chosen keyword into Google’s search bar and observe the suggestions before hitting “search.”
For example, here’s what appears when I use “DIY Decor” as a search term. As you can see, this search term is not as popular as in November. You can also see that Google Trends has suggested some related search terms, which I can compare with my original search term.
“DIY Ghost Decor” is an even less popular search term than “DIY Decor” right now. This is valid since this search term would’ve been popular around Halloween, not in the middle of March. Let’s try one more.
As expected, “Easter Decor” far outperforms “DIY Decor” as a search term at this point in the year. So, writing about Easter decor would be a great idea if you were a company that sells home decor accessories and runs a blog. As before, Google Trends has listed related search queries and their popularity. These queries can help you refine your headline to make it more focused.
For this reason, keeping your headline to 6 words long makes it easy to digest. If you need to write more than 6 words, you shouldn’t exceed 10 words. If you write those 10 words, you must make the first and last 3 words good because they will have the most impact.
Likewise, your headline should be 50-60 characters long. Packing too many characters into your headline will make it chopped in SERPs. Few people will click on your search result if your headline is incomplete.
3) Brainstorm a Selection of Headlines
Crafting the perfect headline isn’t an instant task; it requires patience and time. Rather than hastily settling on the first headline that comes to mind, it’s crucial to give yourself room to explore. Take a moment to brainstorm at least three different headlines, allowing yourself to uncover the one that truly captivates.
Some well-known blogs, such as Upworthy, go even further by generating a whopping 25 headlines. While it might seem excessive, this method increases the chances of discovering a gem. Once you’ve compiled your list, begin the process of elimination, discarding those that don’t quite hit the mark. With this approach, selecting the winning headline becomes straightforward, setting the stage for success.
4) Get to the Point
A good headline gets straight to the point rather than beating about the bush. Many brands make the mistake of crafting vague headlines because they believe the mystery will draw readers in. On the contrary, readers who can’t make heads or tails of what your article is about are unlikely to stick around and find out.
Be direct so that people can see the value in your article immediately. Including keywords in your headline is one way to immediately communicate value to your reader.
5) Size Your Headline to Stand Out
When you want your headline to grab attention, make sure it’s in a larger font than the rest of your text. It sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s easy to overlook details like font size when rushing to meet a deadline.
Luckily, many content editors come with pre-set heading sizes that you can apply. If yours doesn’t have this feature, adjust the size manually to ensure your headline gets the attention it deserves.
6) Use Visually Impactful Alignment
The way you align your headline also determines how prominent it is to the reader’s eye. Centering your headline will have the most impact, while a left-aligned headline seems more formal. Whatever you do, don’t justify your headline, as this leads to imbalanced spacing.
7) Write for SEO
When writing your headline, it would be best to appeal to human readers and search engines. Search engines also “read” your article to categorize it properly. For this reason, you need to optimize your headline to help the search engines understand your content.
As you’re writing for SEO, including the keyword in the title is essential. Moreover, you should include it as close to the beginning as possible. Ensure your headline makes logical sense, as you’re also trying to attract human readers.
Including your keyword in the headline will help search engines understand and include your article in the correct SERPs.
8) Use “You”
Addressing your reader directly is a good strategy if you want your headline to grab their attention. Instead of speaking abstractly, say “you.” For example, in the titles we listed previously, we said “Do your Business Accounts Faster,” when we could just as quickly have said “Do Business Accounts Faster.”
Adding the extra word – “you” – is worth it because it helps you develop a more personal headline that will stand out in SERPs.
9) Highlight the Value
Regardless of the headline style you choose, it’s essential to highlight the value you’re offering the reader. This is an excellent way to convince them that your article is worth reading.
You can do this by discussing a problem that your article solves. For example, you could mention “The Best Way to ABCD.” You can also present your headline as advice or mention interesting research data within your article. Finally, you can promise to teach the reader something useful.
10) Use Statistics
Including statistics in your headline will pique your reader’s curiosity, especially if it’s a surprising statistic. Include the figures as close to the beginning of your headline as possible so that it grabs a reader’s attention right away.
11) Use Numbers
Our brains are attracted to numbers, so adding numbers to the beginning of your headline is a surefire way to stop someone in their tracks. Numbers are especially effective if you are writing a “how-to” article. Remember to use digits instead of words to help your numbers stand out more.
12) Avoid Clickbait
As a content creator, the last thing you want is to earn a reputation for being pretentious or making exaggerated claims. This is precisely what clickbait will do to you, so steer clear.
All a reader needs to do is click on your grandiose headline, only to discover that you’ve misled them with clickbait. This kind of dishonesty will cost you a reader’s trust. This person is unlikely to click on any of your headlines in the future, no matter how interesting they seem.
13) Use Interesting Words
Headlines containing “X Tips for ABCD” are a dime a dozen. Instead of promising your reader some tips, use a less common word. For example, you can offer “X Secrets for ABCD” or “X Reasons to ABCD.”
Less commonly used words will help you stand out from the crowd.
14) Check Your Competitors Out
You shouldn’t settle on a headline before you’ve checked your competitors out and seen what kind of headlines they’re using for your chosen topic. Having an idea of what your competitors are doing will give you a good idea of how to write a headline that stands out.
15) Do A/B Testing
There is no single magical solution to writing headlines that stand out. Ultimately, it would be best to experiment with several strategies until you find one that works for your audience.
You can test your headlines in two ways:
a) Twitter
Once you’ve published your article, you can choose your two most potent headlines. Use them separately to promote your article and see which headline gets more clicks.
b) Email Marketing
Again, once your article is published, please send it to your mailing list using both headlines. Divide the people on your mailing list by half, and send the article to those people using one headline. Send the other half of your mailing list the other headline. Whichever headline gets more engagement should give you an idea of how to craft your headlines in the future. That’s email marketing made easy.
As you can see, learning how to write a headline that will stop people in their tracks is an essential part of content marketing for your brand. Follow the tips above and quickly write outstanding headlines.
Visual content marketing helps you create fresh, unique content and increases engagement with your audience. It is also an excellent way for a content marketer to add personality to their content.
Visual content marketing strategically uses image-focused content to promote your company’s core product or service. For example, you can use infographics, videos, photos, and memes to educate or entertain your audience. In time, this creative use of content helps you build engagement and trust among your audience members, who eventually become paying customers.
Why Is Visual Content Marketing Such a Huge Deal?
Let’s be honest for a second. Would you be excited to read a blog post that contained only paragraphs and paragraphs of information? Or a white paper composed of only pages and pages of text? No, you wouldn’t. So, why would you expect your target audience to hang onto every word of that 3,000-word blog post?
As a digital marketer, these findings present a unique challenge because you need to find ways of communicating to make the most of those 8 seconds. While sharing information about your brand is essential, you need to talk to your audience in a way that will not only capture their attention but also retain it.
In summary, visual content marketing is good news. You need to develop high-quality visual content to capture attention and increase engagement.
How to Use Visual Content to Grow Your Brand
There are many articles about the different types of visual content you can use as a content marketer. We’ve even talked about some of these types of content marketing before. We don’t want to keep singing the same song.
Instead, let’s talk about how you can creatively use your visual content to develop your brand’s personality and connect with potential clients.
1) Repurpose Your Content
If you need inspiration for your visual content, look no further than the text-based content you’ve produced. Blog posts are usually an excellent place to start. Once you’ve written a blog post, converting the information into visual content is easy.
For example, you can take the points you’ve covered in a blog post and put them in a video or infographic. Your editorial calendar is an excellent place to list how to repurpose an original blog post.
Similarly, you can transform long-form content like a white paper or eBook into a series of video tutorials.
The point is that you don’t have to create all your visual content from scratch. Giving your evergreen content a makeover will help you to keep producing fresh, exciting content even when you’re running low on inspiration.
2) Use Non-traditional Types of Content
Infographics and videos are a lot of fun, but they’re also ubiquitous pieces of content. To stand out from your competition, you should also try to use non-traditional forms of visual content.
It might seem scary to do something unconventional. Be that as it may, if you’re a bit adventurous, you can create viral content simply due to its uniqueness.
What non-traditional types of content can you experiment with?
a) Memes / GIFs
Many content creators shy away from using memes or GIFs because they worry their content will look unprofessional. On the contrary, memes and GIFs can help you seem more down-to-earth and relatable when used well. Over time, this fosters trust among your audience.
Think about this for a moment. Your target audience uses memes and GIFs to communicate on social media. Since this content is relatable, using memes and GIFs will help you build a connection with both potential and current clients.
b) Interactive Content
As we’ve already said, we’re bombarded with content from brands clamoring for our attention daily. For this reason, another good way to stand out is to create interactive content. Interactive content creates a unique and memorable experience for your target audience.
Interactive content encourages your audience to actively engage with it instead of passively consuming it. For example, you could build interactive quizzes, landing pages, websites, and videos. This content invites people to click along and be part of the story from beginning to end.
Interactive content generates higher levels of engagement than static content. Therefore, it is one of your brand’s most potent storytelling tools.
A good call to action invites your audience members to engage with you further. While most calls to action are text-based, making them more visual can capture someone’s eye.
For example, you could use an infographic or a button as your call to action. Or you could go one step further and design a video or GIF call to action.
d) Visual Emails
If you want to boost your email marketing, you can use eye-catching visual content. An excellent place to start is by designing a professional header that reflects your brand. Additionally, you could include other elements like photos, videos, and infographics.
Most people sign up for your email marketing to hear from you. However, they will only consistently open these emails if you make it worth their while. Take time to design fun and engaging emails, and you will have an excellent open rate and high engagement with your emails.
e) Quotes / Questions
Quotes that reflect your brand values are a good source of inspiration for visual content. Similarly, questions—whether for or from your audience—can help you create beautiful visuals.
Both quotes and questions can generate conversations addressing the topic you’ve raised. In other words, they are an excellent way to get your audience talking. Next time you want to spark a conversation on Twitter or Facebook, try sharing an image with a quote or a question.
3) Apply Consistent Branding Across Platforms
Whether creating content for your company or a client, building a solid and consistent brand identity is essential.
You can achieve this brand identity using the same voice across different platforms. Whether you write a blog post or publish a social media post, your content should sound like you.
If you’re funny in your blog posts, you should carry the same humor to your social media platforms. If you’re suddenly serious and no-nonsense on your social media, your audience will get confused about who you are and what you stand for. Use a consistent brand voice so that your audience can confidently say they know who your brand is and why you matter to them.
Secondly, you should consistently use branded visual elements to create visual recognition. These elements include text placement, font use, brand colors, and logo.
If you can use your visual content the same way every time, you will build a strong brand identity that your target audience can easily recognize. This is a big deal because if your brand stands out, you will remain at the top of your mind among potential and current clients.
4) Align All Your Visual Elements
When designing visual content, aligning images and text is essential because this helps you look professional. Polished and professional visuals contribute to your social proof and make it look like you know what you’re talking about.
Producing professional visual content will attract an audience that trusts you to solve their problems.
5) Be Authentic
Indeed, you can always recycle and share visual content from other brands. Nevertheless, designing authentic content will help you connect better with your audience.
Showcasing original photos of your products will help your audience trust you more.
Likewise, giving people a sneak peek of your team at work will humanize your brand. This ultimately creates a genuine connection with your audience, who will feel like they know the faces behind your brand name.
6) Use Alt Tags
If you use images in your content, you should include alt tags to optimize them for SEO.
By using alt tags, you’re boosting your content in two ways. Firstly, you’re helping Google to understand what your images contain. Secondly, you’re helping low-vision or blind people understand your images’ context.
Knowing how to do a case study can help convince potential clients to buy your core product or service. When well done, case studies help you build trust with your audience. However, a case study is more than just good storytelling. To do it well, you need to understand which elements make it such an effective type of content marketing.
Before we understand how to do a case study effectively, let’s talk about what it is.
What Is a Case Study?
A case study is a relatable story about a client who solved a problem using your core product or service.
Imagine you’re shopping online for a new pair of shoes. You find a beautiful pair but are unsure if it’s worth the money. What do you do before you decide? You read reviews.
If you have friends who shop online, maybe you’ll ask them if they’ve ever shopped at this particular store. If the answer is yes, you will want to know their experience.
The point is that when buying shoes at a store you’ve never shopped, you will need evidence from other customers that these shoes are a good deal.
Imagine you’re a business looking for a solution to a specific business problem. As before, once you find a solution, you’ll need proof that it’s the best solution on the market.
This is where case studies come in. They’re essential pieces of content, especially in the B2B market. When a potential client is experiencing a problem, they usually spend a lot of time comparing different solutions before deciding. Ultimately, your case study could distinguish between a client signing up with you or joining your competition.
Why Do I Need to Use Case Studies?
At this point, you might ask, “Do I need to invest time and energy into developing case studies when I can just share reviews on my website?” The answer is yes. If you want to convert more leads into clients, case studies should be a priority in your content marketing strategy.
As a content creator, case studies can be a powerful piece of B2B content marketing. Case studies can help you in the following ways:
1. Creating a Relatable Narrative
Since a case study is a narrative, it follows the standard arc of a story. And, as we know, every story has a beginning, protagonist, conflict, climax, and resolution.
Following this narrative arc, a case study triggers emotions and creates a connection with your reader. Everyone loves a good underdog story, and this is essentially what your case study is. It is the story of a protagonist who triumphed over incredible obstacles thanks to your core product or service.
When done well, a case study helps your audience imagine themselves in your client’s shoes. They can imagine your clients’ problems because they face similar issues.
Similarly, like your clients, your readers seek solutions to these problems. A compelling case study drives empathy and helps your audience become emotionally invested in the outcome. Therefore, they will be more open to hearing about your solution.
2. Creating a Sense of Hope
A good case study will go beyond just helping your readers to identify with your client and the problem they are facing. A compelling case study will convince readers that your solution worked for your client and can also work for them.
In other words, a well-done case study should inspire hope and promote your brand. When potential clients read your case study, they will be convinced of the benefits of signing up with you.
3. Helping You to Stand Out
There are many good blogs but not as many good-quality case studies. Although case studies do an excellent job of showcasing a brand’s expertise, not everyone builds them.
For this reason, if you start building case studies for your brand, you will stand out from the competition. A proper case study can make a strong case for your brand and improve your brand image.
How to Do a Case Study in 3 Steps
Developing a good case study isn’t hard. To make the process less daunting, we’ve broken it down into 3 straightforward steps:
1) Select Your Case
You may have many clients to choose from, but not all of them will qualify for a case study. You must seek unique and memorable clients to build a practical case study. These are clients who:
Are facing a unique problem.
Are uniquely using your business solutions.
They have switched from a competitor.
They have experienced dramatic results with your solution.
Choose an unusual case first if you want your case study to stand out. Provided that a client meets one of the above conditions, they are a good candidate for your case study.
2) Do Your Research
Once you’ve chosen the perfect case, you can start gathering evidence. To be effective, your evidence needs proof that what you’re saying happened.
Most people assume that complex numbers are needed to prove their point. Even so, you can go beyond data when doing your research. Quality evidence can be as simple as a before-and-after description.
While the type of evidence you use isn’t carved in stone, there are two essential steps in the research process.
a) Developing an Introductory Questionnaire
An introductory questionnaire explains the purpose of your case study to your client. More importantly, it is a place where you ask a few preliminary questions to help you begin your research.
b) Interviewing Your Case Study
The interview is the most essential part of the case study since this is when your research starts. An interview allows you to not only ask more questions but also get clarification on any vague answers in your questionnaire.
Preparing for the interview in advance is always a good idea, instead of just winging it. Thinking through the necessary information and writing questions will help you get more relevant information.
3) Write Your Story
Once you have all the relevant information, it’s time to sit down and write your story. As we stated before, every good story has 5 different parts:
Beginning: This is where you give background information on the case study.
Protagonist: Your chosen client. Introduce them and explain what they do.
Conflict: The problem they are facing
Climax: How the problem is affecting the client and what makes it unbearable
Resolution: How your solution helped the client to overcome their problem
Your case study must follow this structure closely so readers can follow along easily. However, you can break the standard narrative arc into 6 different parts so that you can add important details to your case study:
Summary: Develop an overview of your case study. 100-200 words is sufficient.
Subject: Introduce your client and explain what they do.
Problem: Explain the situation. Why does it exist? How does it affect your client?
Solution: Describe the solution. Offer supporting evidence for why it was the best solution.
Results: Explain how your solution helped your client to overcome the problem.
Case Study Format
Once you’ve written your case study, you can tell your story in various ways.
Downloadable PDF.
Webpage.
Slideshow.
Video.
How to Do a Case Study: Best Practices
A case study that follows the above structure can be a powerful piece of content marketing. Even so, we want to go beyond simply helping you to do a case study and show you how to write a case study that will stand out.
Here’s how to write a case study that people will remember:
i. Use Evidence to Back up Your Claims
People will get emotionally invested in a good story, but you still need evidence to back what you’re saying up. One way to do this is by using complex numbers from your client. Alternatively, you could create and compare a “before” picture with an “after” picture.
ii. Make It Visual
Visual elements always add value to a good story. Think about it. What do you look for if you’re reading a book but don’t want to focus on masses of text? Pictures! Visuals can help retain a reader’s attention and break down complex information.
Using the “before vs. after” model, you can effectively present this information using an infographic or an image. If you’re presenting figures, you can simplify the data using graphs.
iii. Choose a Fascinating Angle
Since you want people to remember your story, you must make it memorable. You can choose a client who does something differently or has a unique problem.
However, you must relate the problem to most readers even when writing a unique story.
iv. Follow the Standard Narrative Arc
Using the standard narrative arc will help you write an emotionally engaging story. If your story engages, your audience will follow along until the end. Moreover, an engaging case study equals a higher conversion rate.
v. Use Quotes From Your Client
Using quotes from your client will help in three ways. Firstly, it’ll make the story more unique and relatable. Secondly, it will highlight the protagonist of your story. Finally, it will help you back up the claims you are making in your case study.
vi. Repurpose Your Case Study
A good case study doesn’t start and end as a formal one. Once you have developed one, you and your team should feel free to mention it whenever you talk to a prospective client.
Quote your case study to a client who has called to inquire about the effectiveness of your product or service. This will help you convince the client that your solution works since it has worked for a different client.
A good case study can convince a potential client that your business solution is worth investing in. Now that you know how to do a good case study, you can showcase your brand to potential clients.
Content marketing return on investment (ROI) accurately indicates whether your content marketing efforts are helping you meet your goals. For this reason, understanding how to measure content marketing ROI is crucial to your strategy. To evaluate your content marketing strategy, you need to understand what metrics go into the ROI.
What Is Content Marketing Return on Investment (ROI)?
Content marketing ROI is a percentage that shows the revenue you gain from marketing your content compared to what you spend. You’re doing something right if you earn more income than you spend. However, you must identify and fix the problem if you pay more than you earn.
Why Do You Need to Measure Content Marketing ROI?
Content marketing ROI helps you decide and improve your content marketing strategy. Once you learn how to measure your ROI, it can help you in the following ways:
Your content marketing ROI helps you gauge the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy. Measuring your ROI gives you a good idea of what you need to do to increase your leads, retention, SEO, and authority in the future. You can also compare your content marketing ROI from one duration to the content marketing ROI from another. This gives you a good idea of whether one content marketing strategy is more effective than another one.
How to Measure Content Marketing ROI
Content marketing aims to help you connect better with your audience. However, you cannot simply measure the outcome of your content marketing qualitatively. You also need to do quantitative measurements.
You can measure your content marketing return on investment in many ways. However, a standard formula can help you quickly calculate your content marketing ROI.
To arrive at a figure for your return on investment, do the following:
Calculate how much you spent on distributing the same piece of content.
Calculate the total sales that particular piece of content generated.
Once you have the above information, all you need to do is plug the figures into this equation:
((Return – Investment)/ Investment) x 100 = Content marketing ROI
You know you’re doing something right if your spending is less than your earnings. However, if you’re losing money, you must return to the drawing board and fix your strategy.
7 Metrics for Measuring Content Marketing ROI
If you want a quantitative measure of your content marketing return on investment, focus on 7 key metrics. We’ve divided these metrics into categories depending on what aspect of your content marketing outcomes you want to analyze. We’ve also provided instructions on how to do some of these calculations in Google Analytics.
Does Your Content Marketing Have High Earnings Potential?
Measuring the earnings potential of your content can help you determine whether your content is good enough to bring in money from your leads. Is your content appealing enough to convince a lead to become a paying customer? To gauge the earnings potential of your content marketing, here’s what you need to measure:
1) Lead Quality
Are you getting a high enough number of leads to your website? More importantly, are they visiting the critical pages?
It’s essential to go beyond ensuring you have leads—you’re getting high-quality leads. A high-quality lead has a high potential for converting into a paying customer.
A Promising lead will find themselves on your landing page from wherever your content has brought them. Once they land, they will check your prices or consult a customer care representative for more information about your product.
You can set up a goal in Google Analytics to measure the quality of your leads.
How to find this in Google Analytics:
Conversions >>> Goals >>> Funnel visualization
2) Sales Figures
How many of your initial leads turn into actual sales? Comparing your sales with your leads will give you a good idea of how effective your sales funnel is.
How to find this in Google Analytics:
If you’ve enabled the eCommerce feature on Google Analytics, here’s how to find your sales:
Behavior >>> Site content >>> All pages
Many of your leads won’t convert into paying customers immediately. On the contrary, they will probably look around and wander off, only to return to buy your product another day. Sometimes, you remain at the top of your mind even after someone leaves, and they find they can’t resist your offer.
Alternatively, they might see another piece of content from your brand that reminds them of the products they left behind on your website. Either way, paying attention to how these leads eventually convert to sales is essential.
You can find this information efficiently if you’ve set up Google Analytics.
You can also compare this data between different periods. This comparison will help you gauge your most compelling content pieces.
Is Your Content Marketing Generating Engagement?
Producing quality content is not enough. You need to know that your content matters to people. If people interact with your content and navigate from one piece to another, you know they find it useful.
On the other hand, if people leave as soon as they view one piece of content, you can conclude they’re bored. If so, you must revamp your content to address your audience’s needs.
3) Web Traffic
Measuring web traffic is an essential part of evaluating the success of your content marketing strategy. However, some brands celebrate high web traffic without realizing that web traffic can tell you very little about their content marketing.
Since web traffic can become a distracting vanity metric, combining it with other metrics is essential. For example, you could combine web traffic with lead quality and sales. After all, just because someone visits your website doesn’t guarantee they will become customers.
When measuring web traffic, looking at how it grows over time is essential. It’s equally important to focus on referral traffic. This will give you a good idea of which channels most of your leads come from. This information lets you see what part of your content marketing strategy drives the most traffic. You will also know what areas of your plan waste your time.
You can measure your web traffic easily with a Google Analytics profile.
How to find this in Google Analytics:
Behavior >>> Site content >>> Landing pages
This will show you where your web visitors land when visiting your website. Google Analytics lists these pages, ranging from the ones with the highest traffic to the ones with the lowest.
If you want to study your referral traffic, you can also do this in Google Analytics.
You should pair web traffic with onsite engagement to see how people engage with your content once they land on your website. After all, if people immediately bounce away, then you can’t count that as meaningful web traffic.
Google Analytics tracks specific engagement metrics, such as the number of pages viewed per session, average session duration, and bounce rate.
How to find this in Google Analytics:
Audience >>> Overview
You can also study the engagement on each page of your website. This can give you an idea of which pages are more valuable to your web visitors.
How to find this in Google Analytics:
Behavior >>> Site content >>> All pages
5) Social Media Leads
Paying attention to your social media leads will give you a good idea of which channels attract more people. This can help you refine your social media outreach strategy to appeal to more people across all your channels.
How to find this in Google Analytics:
Acquisition >>> Social >>> Network Referrals
Beyond studying your social media leads, you can get an overview of how much revenue is coming from your social media.
How to find this in Google Analytics:
Acquisition >>> Social >>> Overview
In addition, you should monitor engagement metrics directly on your social media channels. For example, track shares, retweets, and likes. More importantly, pay attention to the comments you receive on your posts. Engage with commenters to build positive relationships with your audience.
If you get disappointing engagement metrics, you and your team must figure out what part of your content marketing strategy isn’t working.
Does Your Content Rank High in SERPS?
If your content ranks high in search engine results pages (SERPs), you’ve optimized it well. A high ranking also means that search engines and people find your content valuable. After all, Google ranks the results with high SEO, and those people often click on higher after a while.
6) SEO Ranking
You can do several things to measure your SEO ranking.
Check whether you’re in the top 3 results in Google for your keywords. After all, most people only click on the top 3 results.
7) Online and Offline Authority
Most of the metrics we’ve already covered are directly related to the performance of your website. However, people’s perception of you as a thought leader can also give you an idea of how well your content is doing.
Ultimately, you can’t assign a figure to your authority online and offline. Authority is more about the sentiment surrounding your brand. You have high authority if people rely on you for advice and quality products and services.
To measure online authority, you need to engage in social listening. That way, you can answer the following questions.
Do you get positive media coverage from respected online media outlets?
Are people sharing your products and services with their online networks?
Are you getting positive reviews online?
Is your brand being mentioned in positive contexts?
Similarly, to understand your offline authority, pay attention to how people interact with you offline.
Are thought leaders inviting you to industry events?
Do journalists, bloggers, and influencers contact you for quotes and insights?
Have you received invitations to collaborate with other brands?
Do you get positive media coverage from respected offline media outlets such as newspapers, magazines, and radio?
Over to you:
While all these metrics are essential, you don’t have to use them simultaneously. To get meaningful results, you shouldn’t use them all simultaneously.
Instead, you should set a content marketing goal and pick the metric that will help you assess that goal. For example, for a particular month, you might aim to increase the engagement your content generates.
In this case, evaluating your website engagement and social media leads for that month would make sense. Once you have these figures, you can compare them with the previous month’s results and see what needs to be changed.
Measuring your content marketing ROI is essential to your content marketing strategy. After all, once you’ve implemented any plan, you must measure the results. With these 7 metrics, you will be well on your way to identifying which elements of your strategy are working and which need tweaking.
Knowing the best time to publish a blog post can help you reach more people and boost your engagement whenever you publish a new post.
What is the best time for your new blog post?
Many bloggers prefer to publish their posts at a time when everyone is online. Similarly, some bloggers publish affiliate marketing content when their audience has time to engage with their content and share it with friends. How do you determine what these times are?
The good news is that many brands have already researched this. The bad news is that the results are very conflicting.
For example, consider the recommended time to publish a new blog post to earn social shares.
1. The Best Time to Publish for Social Shares
When they researched the best day to publish posts to enjoy high social shares, TrackMaven found that Sunday works best. In contrast, Backlinko and BuzzSumo found no difference in the number of social shares across the week’s days.
If you’re already confused, prepare to get even more confused. The answer to the best time to publish a blog post for social shares is even more complex.
TrackMaven recommends publishing at 3 p.m., but Shareaholic recommends 9–10 a.m. Furthermore, Shareaholic outlines 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. as the peak time for social shares.
Researchers have also recommended publishing your blog post at other times, depending on your end goal. Consider these times when determining the best time to publish a blog post.
In particular, Shareaholic, BuzzSumo, and Kissmetrics have recommended the best time to publish if you want to attract high traffic, a high volume of comments, and high authority backlinks.
2. The Best Time to Publish for Traffic
According to Kissmetrics and Neil Patel, the best time to publish if you want many page views is Monday at 11 a.m. Similarly, Shareaholic has recommended Monday at 9 a.m.
3. The Best Time to Publish for Comments
According to research by Kissmetrics, the best time to publish your blog post is Saturday at 9 a.m. EST if you want high engagement.
4. The Best Time to Publish for Backlinks
Kissmetrics also recommends publishing your blog post early on Monday or Thursday morning if you want to attract backlinks. According to their study, you can earn these backlinks as early as 7 a.m. EST.
What Is Truly the Best Time to Publish a Blog Post?
As you can see, if you pay attention to all the research, your head will spin before determining the best time to publish a blog post.
Here at Kontely, we like to present confusing data in infographics or graphs to make it easier to understand. However, these recommendations are too contradictory for us to simplify, even with the magic of an infographic.
We aren’t going to put all this contradictory information in one place. However, the least we can do is find some common elements in these research results. From what we can see, it seems that:
Monday morning between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. is an excellent time to publish if you want to attract traffic
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. is the peak time for generating social shares
Off-peak times like weekends are the best time to publish if you wish to high engagement
80% of blog readers read blog posts in the morning
Conversely, 60% of men will read a blog post in the evening compared to 50% of women
In other words, Zarrella believes that if your target audience is men, you will have more page views in the evening.
This might seem like a simple solution to our problem. However, you can’t just slot these times into your blog editorial calendar without trial and error to determine if they work for your brand.
The Best Time to Publish a Blog Post for Your Brand
The optimal time prescribed by one researcher may not work for your brand, industry, or target audience.
So, instead of trying to arrive at one magical answer to this question, we’d like to help you figure out the best time to publish a blog post specifically for your brand. To do this, we’d like to shift your focus.
We won’t consider the answer to this question as a single optimal time. Instead, let’s admit that there are many ways to optimize the timing of your blog posts. How do you optimize this timing?
1. Publish Consistently
Nailing the timing might be a big deal to you. Even so, publishing blog posts consistently is far more critical than publishing them at the right time. If you publish consistently, then you can also:
2. Build Trust
Blogging consistently builds trust with your target audience, who slowly rely on you as a source of valuable information.
Once your readers know that you publish on specific days or several times a week, they will start coming to you to check out your new pieces. This will happen even when you haven’t told them there is a new blog post. Reading your blog will become a natural part of their daily or weekly routine.
Blogging consistently is also good for your SEO ranking on Google. If you’re committed to posting consistently, then Google will recognize you as a source of consistent information. As a result, you will rank higher in the search results when someone searches for a topic you’ve written about.
4. Build Brand Awareness
By improving your SEO ranking on Google, you also improve the chances of people stumbling upon your blog. If more people stumble upon your blog, then more people will know who your brand is.
So, what does it mean to post consistently?
According to a study by HubSpot, brands that publish 16 (or more) times each month get 3.5 times more traffic than those that publish 0 to 4 times monthly. That translates to 4 posts each week.
However, it’s essential to consider your team size before you commit to this blogging schedule. It might be unrealistic for one person to write four blog posts each week if they also have other responsibilities.
If you have several content creators, it’s easy to divide those 16 blog posts among them. However, most brands only have one blogger. In this case, 2-3 blog posts a week might be a more bearable workload for them.
Remember, quality is always better than quantity. Writing two or three excellent blog posts is better than writing four sloppy ones.
If you want to publish 16 blog posts a week but have a small team, then guest posting is a good option.
5. Post Time-sensitive Articles Immediately
Sometimes, you have a time-sensitive article to publish. For example, you could have written a review of the newest iPhone or a blog post related to recent news.
You can’t wait for a prescribed time to arrive before publishing your blog post. If you do that, you risk losing readers to competitors who’ve published their content before you. By the time you publish your blog post, your target audience will have gotten their information elsewhere.
If your blog article contains breaking news, you should publish it immediately. This will help you engage your audience while they’re still interested.
6. Profile Your Target Audience
Do you work in the B2B industry? If so, publish as many weekly blog posts as possible.
A B2B target audience will engage more with your content during the week. This is when they’re looking for solutions to their business problems, so you should capitalize on this time.
You should take time to develop a B2B content marketing strategy to effectively convert this B2B crowd into paying clients.
7. Pay Attention to Changing Seasons
Changing seasons affect the type of content your target audience wants to read. For example, people devour blog posts about vacations and travel during the summer. Similarly, people will look for more educational material if there’s a massive conference in your industry.
In the same way, people will be more open to informative content during the week. On the other hand, they will want more entertaining content when trying to relax at the end of the week.
8. Find Out What Works for You
Above all, you need to find out what timing works best for you to optimize the timing of your blog posts.
Relying on the peak times recommended by Kissmetrics and BuzzSumo is a good idea. On the one hand, adopting these times will help you reach large audiences. On the other hand, you’ll be competing with hundreds of different brands who are publishing at the same time.
In other words, if you publish during peak times, your content might be drowned out by all your competitors. Ultimately, your target audience might never see your blog posts if this happens.
For this reason, it’s essential to figure out what works for your brand. You can do this in one of two ways:
Alternatively, you can measure your website traffic first, then determine what times will work best in the future.
11. Prioritize The Time You Share
The time when you share your blog post on social media is more critical than when you publish. Different social media platforms have different recommended times for posting. However, finding out what works for your social media audience is still essential.
What Is the Best Time to Publish a Blog Post for My Brand?
As you can see, there is no one answer to this question. Many factors, including the content of your blog post, your target audience, and your industry, will influence the best time to publish your blog post.
Instead of trying to find one magical time, it’s better to find out how to optimize the timing of your blog posts. With the tips above, you’ll find many optimal times for publishing posts in the future.
With a content strategy for your website, you can direct all your content creation efforts toward one common goal. If you need a content strategy, you can quickly create content haphazardly, with no idea what it’s supposed to achieve for your site. You will know what content your audience enjoys with a comprehensive approach.
In this article, we shall discuss what a content strategy is, why you need one, the information you need to create one, the elements of a good plan, how to build one, and three examples of content strategies we like.
Let’s get started.
What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?
A content marketing strategy is a plan that helps you connect with people and grow a loyal audience by creating, publishing, and distributing different types of content (including blog articles, social media posts, ebooks, and more). To make a good content marketing strategy for your website, you need to pay attention to what has worked in the past and identify what has yet to work so you know what to tweak in the future.
Why Do You Need a Content Strategy for Your Website?
A good content strategy can benefit you and your website in many ways. Here’s why developing an excellent content strategy is a good idea.
1. Boost your SEO
Developing a content marketing strategy allows you to boost your SEO. Building a strategy includes choosing the keywords and topics you want to target in your content when building your niche website. We recommend choosing high-volume, low-competition keywords, creating high-value content, and, as part of your strategy, publishing the content on your blog and distributing it in various other places.
Using your content strategically can help convert your leads into paying customers. If you can create content that appeals to your audience at different stages of a potential conversion process, you’re more likely to connect with them and close the final sale.
You see a potential customer who stumbled upon your website while wanting to learn more about a product or service before purchasing and has more likely been researching for a while. So, they are either almost at the purchase point or in the process of converting.
By addressing them personally, you’ll find it easier to convince them they need the program you are marketing. If they close, you earn your commission.
Think about your website like a sales tool, but don’t write salesy content. Craft your content strategy to guide you toward making the final sale.
3. Authoritativeness
An effective content marketing strategy can also help your audience treat you as the authority in your niche. When you haphazardly create content, your audience can almost tell you are working without a proper plan. However, a well-planned content strategy for your website can reap big rewards for your audience perceiving you as the go-to voice.
If they give you the mark of authority, they will buy more products from your recommendations and even stay longer on your website, learning more about other products. Remember that we are in the age of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), where authoritativeness is a major Google ranking factor.
You can add authority to your content strategy by making sure that you address these things:
Train your audience to use the products you are marketing. For example, create how-to tutorials and product guides with illustrations, images, and videos.
Take time to find out how they feel about these products and if there are any features they may find challenging to use. Use surveys, comments, or feedback forms to hear from them. The feedback they provide will help you iterate and improve your content further.
What Information Do You Need Before You Develop a Content Strategy?
Before you build a content strategy that works for your website, you need to do some research. While you’re gathering information, you should aim to understand the following aspects of the business you want to build:
a) Get to Know Your Audience
Any content marketing effort aims to connect with your audience. You need to understand the people you’re producing content for; otherwise, you will need to figure out what to give them.
Take time to get to know your audience. Figure out what they like and what they don’t like. Ask them what content they’ve enjoyed seeing from you in the past. With a good survey, you can collect all the information you need to better serve your target audience.
b) Evaluate Your Current Content
Assuming that you created a lot of content before deciding to read about content strategy, you need to go back into the content you made for evaluation. Evaluating your current content is vital to getting on the right track for your future content.
What has worked well in the past, and what hasn’t? Which content generates more engagement and revenue for your website?
This information should help you decide what content to produce more in the future.
c) Study the Competition
Paying attention to the content your competition produces can inspire you as you develop your content strategy.
Study your competition and identify what they’re doing well. Likewise, this exercise can help you spot content gaps in your niche that you can fill by producing meaningful content to address those gaps.
4 Elements of a Good Content Marketing Strategy
To develop a good content strategy for your website, you must ensure it contains the following elements.
1. Brand Positioning
To create a consistent brand image for your target audience, you need to start by understanding your website as a brand. Ideally, you need to evaluate your brand, what it does well, and the environment it exists in.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself to develop a clear branding position:
What do we do?
What is our brand personality?
Who is our target audience?
What kind of buyer persona are we targeting for the products we are promoting?
Which pain point(s) do we solve with our content?
What is the competitive landscape like in this niche?
How are our competitors creating their content?
What do we do well?
What can we improve?
The Kontely team encourages readers to treat their website as a company or a business. Grow yourself into a tiny brand in your small niche. A content strategy lays it out for you and directs you.
You can only convince potential customers to buy products or services of the programs you promote if you have identified why those programs are worth the investment. It would be best to clearly outline what makes your recommended products or services better than others in the same niche.
Tell your audience what your products have that other products do not. If you can make a strong case for the company you’re promoting, you can push some sales to them and get your commissions.
To set yourself apart from your competition in the same niche, you must understand what they’re doing well and what you can do better.
Ultimately, you can always learn a thing or two from other content creators – regardless of how big their audience is. Here are some questions to ask yourself as you develop a value proposition for your website.
Who is our audience?
What do they want?
Are we giving them what they want?
Do we have proof that we’re giving them what they want (high engagement rates, more leads, a higher conversion rate, etc.)?
What are our competitors doing differently?
Are there gaps in the niche that we can fill?
3. Business Case
While content marketing is designed to help you connect better with your audience, it should also help you meet your website’s business goals. A business case can help determine whether your content marketing strategy will serve the business and your audience.
Ideally, a business case should be put together at the beginning of any project you embark on for your brand. It covers your proposal’s who, what, why, when, where, and how. By answering these questions, your website’s business case can help you decide whether the website you are running is a worthwhile investment.
What are your business goals—both short-term and long-term? In addition to defining these goals, you must prove that your content will help you achieve them.
4. Strategic Plan
A strategic plan helps you focus on your highlighted goals and how you will achieve each with the content you create for your niche.
Highlight who you are targeting (audience or persona) with your content and why you’re targeting that particular persona. Identify what it takes to appeal to this person with your content.
For example, if your website is about fitness, you will most likely be addressing people that want to stay fit, lose weight, or are just fitness junkies. That’s your audience. Your website will promote fitness products to that audience. It is best to create a strategic content plan that communicates to your audience, helps them learn why fitness is essential, and invokes them to purchase fitness products or services to reach their fitness goals.
Identifying how each piece of content contributes to your business’s goals can help you stay focused and accountable.
Let’s discuss developing a strategic content plan for your brand.
How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy
1) Analyze Your Audience
Your content strategy is designed to help you build positive long-term relationships with your target audience. For this reason, it’s crucial to understand these people before you do anything else. Aside from understanding their needs, building a buyer persona to guide your content efforts would be best.
How to Build a Buyer Persona
Developing a buyer persona will help you understand your audience’s needs and motivations. Even if you’ve done this before, it’s still helpful to do it again. After all, a changing economic environment, such as the one caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, can change consumer attitudes.
A buyer persona is a hypothetical representation of the kind of person you hope will buy the products you’re promoting. To develop a compelling buyer persona, it’s essential to clarify these critical points about your ideal buyer:
Lifestyle: job, hobbies, and family life.
Demographics: age, income, gender identity, and location.
Communication habits: preferred social media platforms.
Pain points: problems they face in their everyday lives.
Goals: what they hope to achieve.
Your solution: how can the products you promote help them solve their pain points?
While it’s crucial to construct a buyer persona, it’s also essential to understand the process your audience goes through from the moment they stumble upon your review or guide to when they make a purchase. This is known as the buyer journey.
How to Use the Buyer Journey
A potential customer for your products will go through a standard set of steps as outlined in the AIDA model:
Awareness: when a potential client first becomes aware of the problem they must solve and has just heard about the products available in this niche.
Interest: The potential client starts to evaluate whether the solution the product or service offers is a good fit and begins comparing their options.
Desire: the potential client starts to evaluate the value your solution will add to them or their business.
Action: the potential client makes a purchase decision and pays for the products.
Beyond simply understanding the steps above, knowing what kind of content you should give your buyers at each step is essential. By giving them the content they need when they need it, you can guide them further along the path to becoming a paying customer and a referral of yours.
2) Set Your Goals
Once you’ve understood the kind of customer you want to reach, you need to set goals for your content marketing. Are you hoping to increase engagement? Do you want to boost traffic to your website or get more contacts for your email marketing process? Or do you want to boost sales?
Setting 3 or 4 SMART goals can help direct your content strategy and keep you focused on the most important goals. You need to set goals to measure the outcomes of your content marketing.
3) Set Your Kpis
While Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can seem very technical and out of reach, setting SMART goals also helps you to set clear KPIs. Your KPIs will generally have a metric attached to them to help you determine whether you hit your goals. For example, you might’ve decided you want to:
Hit a specific sales and revenue target.
Get more signups for your lead magnet.
Boost website traffic by a particular amount.
Increase engagement with your website content.
Generate more engagement on your social media channels.
Earn specific mentions in the media and by other thought leaders.
Attract a particular number of partnerships with influencers and thought leaders.
Improve the SEO ranking for some of your content to improve overall SEO.
Once you’ve set specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely goals, it’s easy to set and use KPIs. Measure your goals against the outcomes and decide how you did. Find out the challenges if you need help meeting your goals. This might be a good indication of which goals need to be adjusted next time.
4) Perform a Content Audit
Before you develop a content strategy for the future, you need to evaluate the performance of your existing content. Identify what content is performing well and what content needs tweaking.
One good way to do this is to study the channels you use and see how people have interacted with your content in the past. Look at the blog, social media channels, forums, and other places you distribute your content. Which content got more engagement? Which content generated meaningful conversations?
You can generate a survey if you’d prefer to collect solid data to inform your content strategy. This survey needs to contain questions about what content your audience enjoys and what they would like to see more of. You can even ask them for examples of content they want from other brands. Once you’ve created the survey, you must circulate it on your social media pages and offer it to your website’s visitors.
5) Identify Your Best Content Channels
To identify content channels that will work for your brand, you must focus on the platforms where your audience is most active. Which social media channels generate the most engagement? Where does your content perform best? Does your blog content rank well and result in organic traffic?
Once you know what channels will give you more bang for your buck, you can invest in building an active online presence there.
For instance, if your blog content performs well on Pinterest, build a noticeable profile and double down your efforts in marketing your content there. Sometimes, it’s essential to go beyond merely creating and publishing content on social media channels. You need to go one step further and engage with your audience. Reply to comments and initiate meaningful conversations as much as you can.
If the articles you publish on your blog generate more engagement and clicks, invest time creating more content for your blog, improving or updating the outdated content, or even pruning content that is no longer useful to your readers.
6) Choose Topics and Keywords
Now that you know where to publish your content, you need to pick suitable topics and keywords to target. While doing this, you’ll want to focus on high-volume, low-competition keywords. This way, you can rank for popular searches while carving out a niche by writing about keywords your competitors need to focus on.
Looking for these high-volume, low-competition keywords can help you identify content gaps worth pursuing. If you need help selecting keywords to optimize your content, you can use the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer. This tool helps you analyze the ranking difficulty of each keyword in your niche and calculate its traffic potential.
You can pair the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer with their Site Explorer. The Site Explorer allows you to research your competitors’ backlinks and see what keywords they’re ranking for.
With the Keyword Explorer, the Site Explorer should help you identify keywords worth targeting. By targeting keywords that people commonly search for, you can boost your online visibility, capture more attention, and drive more traffic to your site.
If you’re looking for an alternative to Ahrefs, SEMrush offers similar keyword research functionalities.
7) Decide on Content Types and Formats
It’s essential to use content formats that your audience will enjoy. This is precisely why you should conduct a content audit in the beginning. A content audit will help you identify content formats that have performed well in the past and give you an idea of what you should produce more of.
Creating more of what your audience already loves is a surefire way to keep getting their attention with your content in the future.
While producing your content, remember that this content needs to be explicitly designed to appeal to your audience at each stage of the buyer journey. Your website has various content formats, including blog articles, social media text posts, images or photos, videos, and more.
8) Plan for Your Financial and Human Resources
So you’ve decided what channels you’ll use and what content you’ll produce. Next, you must identify how much money and workforce you need to accomplish your goals.
It is essential to set a realistic budget and get enough hands on deck if you can afford it. Some beginner marketers go solo and do everything from content production to marketing on their own. That’s okay, too, but take care not to spread yourself too thin with tasks because it will delay your progression where you don’t focus on anything and don’t do it well.
If you work on your project solo, focus on one thing at a time. Produce the best articles first, then build out social media channels later, etc. Don’t do everything at once.
If you use a team, focus on your content budget and maintain a small team by giving them impossible content targets. If you do this, you will have half-baked content and burnt-out employees.
9) Create a Content Calendar
Once you’ve established your resources, it’s time to plan what content you will create and when. A blog editorial content calendar is an excellent place to do this. If you use it well, you can see what you need to work on at any time.
A content calendar will keep you focused and help you evaluate your content efforts as you go along.
10) Develop Your Content
It’s time to create the content once you’ve finished building your content plan with suitable topics and keywords. Focus on it and get the content out—one article, social media post, or video after another.
11) Publish and Distribute Your Content
When your content is done, you need to publish it online. Before you distribute it, however, it’s essential to check the best time to post on each platform. After all, you want to share your content at a time when it’ll capture the most attention online.
If you share your content on social media, the best times to get the posts out are below.
12) Evaluate the Success of Your Content Strategy
As content marketing is a continuous journey, it’s essential to pause and evaluate your content strategy now and then. Failure to assess your success will only leave you shooting blindly in the dark without knowing what’s working for you.
To evaluate your content strategy, refer back to the KPIs you developed for yourself earlier. Measure your outcomes against your goals to identify what’s working and needs further tweaking.
Evaluate, learn, and improve, and you’ll be well on your way to a marketing career you’ll be proud of.
Examples of Successful Content Strategies You Can Borrow for Your Website
You can develop one content strategy to boost SEO, help with sales enablement, and improve your authority simultaneously. To help with this, we’ve highlighted three brands that excel in using content marketing in each of these areas.
1. SEO and Authority: Neil Patel
Neil Patel has made a name for himself as an SEO guru in the content marketing industry. His content ranks high on search engines. How has he effectively boosted his website’s SEO and authority?
He writes about topics in his niche that people are highly interested in. For example, he writes about SEO (no surprise there), blogging, and digital marketing. Since these are topics that people are generally curious about, Google also records tons of searches related to these topics. Neil Patel boosts his ranking on search engines by sharing answers to people’s questions in these areas.
Neil Patel also presents his written content in short sentences and paragraphs. Short sentences and condensed paragraphs suit your blog, conveying conciseness and precision.
Finally, Neil Patel prioritizes quality over quantity. Despite having written over 4785 blog posts, he believes more content doesn’t necessarily translate to more traffic. He’s evaluated his blog posts to show that more than half of them don’t generate any visits per month.
Rather than churning out one blog post after another, Neil Patel advises bloggers to find keywords that both search engines and people love. Once they’ve identified these keywords, they should focus on writing quality posts around them.
Don’t burn out writing about anything and everything to do with your niche. If you do that, you’ll save a lot of energy and have little traffic boost to show for it.
2. Sales Enablement: Mailchimp
When you visit Mailchimp’s homepage, you’ll find a link to a blog filled with many tips to help with email marketing for your business. How does this content help Mailchimp with sales enablement?
In some of these articles, Mailchimp explains how their all-in-one integrated marketing platform for small businesses can help you do precisely what the article is showing you how to do.
Let’s assume you need help building a new website for your online store. This guide from Mailchimp walks you through every aspect of creating a new website, including how to use their website builder.
It’s a good idea to drop mentions of the solution they’re offering to solve your target audience’s pain points into your blog articles. Likewise, when you use your blog to position yourself as a thought leader in your niche, people are much more likely to buy into your solution.
3. Authoritativeness
Dyson’s Instagram account is an excellent example of an authoritative Instagram page. Their profile is filled with posts highlighting their products’ unique features.
Let’s look at one of their posts about a new vacuum that features a graph that counts the dust it sucks up.
Look at this post about their air purifier, which you can connect to your smartphone.
As you can see, Dyson wants to help you to “get more from your purifier.” If you need help connecting the air purifier, the post directs you to a more detailed guide on the Dyson website.
Their website also boasts a tab called “My Dyson.” This tab offers customers personalized manuals and guides, maintenance advice, and tailored support for their purchased products.
Dyson ensures customers stay long after purchasing by explaining how their products work, highlighting unique features and offering support.
If your website’s readers get such a level of detail for the products you promote, they’ll be more confident in the product you’re selling them.
Conclusion
Developing a content strategy on your endless to-do list may be unnecessary. However, a good plan can keep you focused and accountable for your business. After all, creating content without any strategy is like throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.
Poorly planned content marketing can quickly end in tears when you realize you’ve wasted time and energy on content that needs to be fixed. For this reason, developing a detailed content plan and following all the steps highlighted above is worthwhile.
Exploring content marketing stats can give you insights into trends that could boost your brand. It’s like peeking into the playbook of successful brands to shape your winning content strategy.
Now, it’s crucial to remember that what worked wonders for others might not be a guaranteed success for you. Think of these stats as friendly advice for your brand. You’ll need to tweak and test them to see what clicks for you.
Imagine the scene: your competitors are riding the wave of influential content marketing trends, and you don’t want to be left in their dust. Keeping an eye on what brands in your circle are up to can give you a fighting chance in the race for attention.
But here’s the exciting part – by smartly embracing these content marketing trends, you won’t just keep up; you might even carve out your spotlight in the crowd. It’s about finding the right groove for your brand and making it shine.
Benefits of Understanding Content Marketing Statistics:
Aside from growing your brand and keeping up with the competition, content marketing statistics can help in the following ways:
1. Establishing Your Brand as a Thought Leader
You retain your place in the market by keeping up with content marketing statistics. Beyond that, keeping up with these trends helps you establish a reputation for your brand as a trusted authority. Moreover, once potential customers think of your brand as a trusted authority, they are more likely to become paying customers.
2. Helping You Perfect Your Craft
If you can analyze content marketing statistics successfully, you will become a better marketer. Improving your skills will make you a more marketable asset to brands needing content marketing help.
3. Winning More Customers
Content marketing aims to share valuable information with your target audience to build genuine, long-term connections with them. In other words, if you keep doing your right, you’ll win more customers for your brand.
These content marketing statistics indicate what content creators believe and are doing in 2024.
1) Content marketing costs 62% less than other outbound marketing tactics but generates 3x as many leads.
What you can do: Traditional advertisements are great but intrusive. If you want to build a genuine connection with your target audience, give them valuable information in a format they’ll enjoy. You can do this by investing in different forms of content marketing.
In summary, content marketing will help you reduce your marketing budget and win more clients for your brand.
2) 78% of CMOs say that custom content is the future of successful content marketing.
What you can do: While content marketing is designed to speak to both potential and existing customers, custom content is designed to retain your existing customers. This content can include blog posts, social media posts, email newsletters, white papers, industry reports, videos, webinars, and more.
In summary, Use custom content to share valuable, informative content with existing customers. This will keep them engaged with your brand and boost brand loyalty.
You can use Instagram stories to share valuable information and stay competitive. For example, you could use this platform to share tips and tricks related to your products. Alternatively, you could give your followers a sneak peek into what goes on behind the scenes. Showing your team in action could humanize your brand and generate a connection with your target audience.
In summary: Use Instagram stories to share informational content or show the faces behind your brand.
4) Content is shared on weekdays and most often on Tuesdays.
What you can do: Content is shared chiefly on weekdays because this is when people spend the most time online. If you want your content to perform well online, you must share it when people look. According to Hootsuite, here are the best times to share your content on social media platforms.
In summary: Post your social media content when it matters most.
5) 72% of marketers believe content marketing increases engagement (CMI).
What you can do: To boost engagement with your target audience, you must amp up your content marketing efforts. However, it’s not enough to keep churning content out nonstop. For your content marketing efforts to bear any fruit, you need to keep checking in with your audience to see what kind of content they enjoy from you.
In summary, Ask your audience for feedback on the kind of content they enjoy so that you can produce more of this content.
6) Social media content is the #1 type of content used by B2C and B2B marketers.
What you can do: If you want to go beyond keeping up with your competitors to stay ahead of the pack, social media content is something you should focus on. Even so, when developing a social media outreach strategy, you should determine what content works for each platform.
In summary, determine which platforms your audience spends the most time on and what content works best for them.
7) 60% of marketers produce at least one piece of content daily.
What you can do: To stay competitive, you should keep up with these marketers by producing daily content. There is an endless variety—from blog posts to infographics, eBooks, white papers, social media posts, and more—so this shouldn’t be too difficult.
In summary: Produce at least one piece of content daily to break through the noise and stay on the mind.
8) 77% of brands have a content marketing strategy (SEMrush).
What you can do: To stay competitive, you should also have a content marketing strategy that works for your brand. Track your performance to determine what works and what needs tweaking.
9) 96% of the best content marketers say content marketing has helped them build trust and credibility with their audience (Content Marketing Institute).
What you can do: As a content marketer, you always want to build trust and credibility with your audience. For this reason, you should always aspire to produce valuable content that your audience will appreciate.
In summary: Establish a track record of producing valuable content people appreciate.
10) 90% of these content marketers have succeeded by focusing on the audience’s need for information (Content Marketing Institute).
What you can do: To determine what information your audience needs, you can run a survey or ask them to share feedback. Once you know what they need, you should produce more.
In summary: Ask your audience what they need and produce more.
What you can do: These content marketers changed their strategy in response to evolving needs. To stay relevant during this uncertain time, you should connect with your target audience and learn how their needs have changed. Only then will you be able to satisfy these needs?
In summary: Connect with your target audience, find out how their needs have changed, and produce content that satisfies these needs.
What you cando: You need to not only take time to understand the sales cycle but also develop the right kind of content for each stage of the cycle. By doing this, you’ll connect with each member of their audience where they are and guide them through the buyer journey.
In summary: Guide your leads through the sales cycle with the right content to convert them into paying customers.
What you can do: Be open and honest in your content. Failure to do so will violate your audience’s trust. Don’t give your audience any reason to distrust you unless you want your audience to run to your competition.
What you can do: As other brands seek to boost client loyalty, so should you. After all, the last thing you want is to lose clients who are unsure about your brand to the competition. Find out what your clients value and give it to them.
In summary: Take steps to boost brand loyalty so you don’t lose clients to your competition.
What you can do: Use your web traffic and sales figures to determine how well your content marketing is going. While measuring sales is straightforward, a few tools are designed to help content creators measure web traffic. In addition to web traffic, you can also keep track of other metrics such as page load time, conversion rate, bounce rate, and more.
In summary, track your sales and web traffic to see how well your content marketing is going.
16) Marketers create content for multiple audience segments at once – usually 3 segments.
You can Segment your audience according to stages in the buyer journey or interests. Create content designed to fulfill the needs of each segment and share this content consistently to create a connection with your target audience.
In summary: Segment your audience and design content to fulfill the needs of each segment.
17) 47% of people surveyed in 2024 spent more than $10k on annual content marketing.
What you can do: This is an increase of 9% from 2019. To remain competitive, consider boosting your annual content marketing budget. While your budget doesn’t necessarily have to match the $10k, it should align with your content marketing goals.
In summary: Establish a budget to meet your content marketing goals.
Online Behavior
These content marketing statistics highlight how your target audience spends their time online and what they believe about brands that use content marketing. This information will help you better understand how to reach these people.
What you can do: Since the start of the pandemic, your target audience has been spending more time on their mobile devices. For this reason, it’s crucial to ensure your content is compatible across different devices. Moreover, you need to optimize your content for various social media apps.
According to App Annie, here are the most popular apps from 2020.
TikTok
Facebook
WhatsApp Messenger
Instagram
Facebook Messenger
Ensure your content works across devices and other apps to reach your target audience.
What you can do: Do you want to put your brand in front of your target audience? For this reason, take time to find out which specific platforms your target audience hangs out on. Once you know that, you have a higher chance of connecting with them.
In summary: Adapt your content to the different platforms where your target audience hangs out so that you can initiate a conversation with them.
What you can do: This is undoubtedly good news for your brand. However, the last thing you want to do is take it for granted. Always be open and honest in the brand story you craft with your content. Remember that while people trust businesses as valuable sources of information, it’s easy to lose this trust. All it takes is one mistake or lie; you could lose the confidence you’ve worked so hard to build.
In summary: Be open and honest with your target audience to retain their trust.
What you can do: We know your customers feel they benefit from your content marketing, but do we know why? To answer that question, you can create a survey to determine what content your target audience enjoys. With this information, you can produce more high-performing content.
In summary, Customers are more likely to buy from brands with content. Find out the kind of content your audience enjoys most so that you can produce more of it. This way, you can win more customers.
Blogging
These content marketing statistics refer to what bloggers do and how their target audiences relate to their content. This information will help your blog stand out if you run a blog.
22) Articles with images get shared more.
What you can do: Add one or more images to your blog posts to create content that your readers will enjoy. Once you’ve provided them with informational and engaging content, they’ll happily share it with family and friends.
In summary:Use appealing and engaging images to appeal to your readers and encourage them to share.
What you can do: Given that so many people are reading blogs faithfully, you should invest in quality, informative content for your blog. Learn the best practices for running a successful blog, including when is the best time to post a new blog article.
In summary, if you can set up and maintain a quality blog, you can attract some of these loyal readers.
24) Blog titles with 6-13 words get the most clicks.
What you can do: If you run a blog, keep your titles within this word count. You can also review old articles and adjust the titles accordingly.
In summary: Maintain a word count of 6-13 words for your blog titles.
25) Longer content gets shared more (SEMrush).
What you can do: If you write blog posts, keep your content longer to be more shareable. What is the recommended length for your blog posts?
In summary: Find out the recommended length for your blog posts to be shareable.
26) The recommended blog post length is at least 1269 words.
What you can do: Since this is the recommended length for a blog post, keep your posts to this minimum length.
In summary: Stick to 1269 words at least.
27) Longform content of 3,000+ words gets 3x more traffic, 4x more shares, and 3.5x more backlinks than other blog content.
What you can do: If you want your content to generate a lot of engagement and a high number of backlinks, then you should aim for at least 3,000 words per article. Given that this is much easier said than done, you can choose a few cornerstone articles and make them longer than the average.
In summary, 1 out of every 3 articles should be at least 3,000 words long.
28) Listicles are shared 2x more than other blog article formats.
What you can do: To develop shareable content, include some listicles in your blog. For example, a title such as “50 ways to create engaging content” is much more attractive than “How to create engaging content.”
In summary: Develop some educational listicles as part of your blog content.
29) 51% of companies update old blog articles to boost traffic (SEMrush).
What you can do: Do you want to produce new content without the energy or time to write a new blog post from scratch? You can revisit old blog posts that have performed well in the past, update them, and share them again.
In summary, Updating well-performing blog posts will help you reach a wider audience and renew interest in your blog.
30) 71% of B2B consumers visit an organization’s blog at some point in the buyer’s journey.
What you can do: While you’re not supposed to market your product directly through your blog, inserting a few mentions about your product can be helpful. Keep your blog articles informative and engaging, but dedicate 1-3 paragraphs to discussing your product.
In summary, Run an informative blog, but use 1-3 paragraphs of each article to discuss your product briefly.
31) 86% of companies produce more blog content than other content (SEMrush).
What you can do: To stay competitive, you might want to invest time and energy in growing your blog. Moreover, you should find out what to do to make it competitive.
In summary: Invest in your blog and make it competitive.
SEO
These content marketing statistics highlight what content creators like you are doing to boost their content’s online visibility.
32) 95% of people only pay attention to the first page of search results.
What you can do: Optimize your content to stand out in Google search results pages (SERPs). Pay attention to SEO-boosting factors, such as using high-ranking keywords and linking to sites with high domain authority scores. If you write marketing blog posts, using an editor that gives you both a readability and SEO score as you write is essential.
33) Search is the number one source of blog traffic across industries (SEMrush).
What you can do: Optimize your blog posts for SEO when you write them. Create your content in an editor that rates readability and SEO; you can use a blog editorial calendar. If you can do that, your blog will rank relatively high in relevant search results across different search engines.
In summary, Consider your SEO score as you write your blog content.
34) Half SERP clicks to reach the top 3 results (Ignite Visibility).
What you can do: When optimizing your content for SEO, you should target these top 3 results. Adopting some proven blog SEO strategies can give your blog a much-needed boost.
In summary: Focus on SEO when you’re writing blog articles.
Visual Content Marketing
If you want to use visual content to get an edge over your competitors, then this is what you need to know.
35) Infographics are the #1 type of content to get shared.
What you can do: Summarizing your blog posts is an easy way to generate infographics. Once you’ve developed a summary, you can turn it into an infographic by adding images to your written summary. Repurposing your blog content in this way will ensure you always have information to build another infographic.
In summary: Repurpose your blog content by turning it into infographics, and then share these on social media.
Video Marketing
Are you curious about how to use video to promote your brand? With these content marketing statistics, you’ll be well on your way to producing outstanding videos.
What you can do: To boost your web traffic, you can design engaging and educational videos and post these on your social media. Include calls to action for people to visit your website for more advice, tips and tricks, or insight.
In summary, You can turn your blog posts into short videos. However, remember the recommended length of time for your social media videos.
37) 54% of consumers would like to see more video content.
What you can do: This is easy—you can produce more videos related to your brand and products! However, learning how to create engaging videos that your audience will remember would be best.
In summary, create more memorable videos related to your brand and the products you sell to remain at the top of your target audience’s mind.
What to do: You can help your clients by developing instructional videos that show them how to use your product. To create a compelling video, review the most common questions you receive from your current clients. Create videos that address a client’s needs when contemplating buying your product and then share the rest when they pay.
In summary: Create instructional videos and share them with clients during the buyer journey.
39) 17% of marketers plan to add videos to their marketing strategy.
What to do: Once you’ve started producing videos for your brand, perfect them to stay ahead of your competition. You can improve your video content by asking your audience for feedback.
In summary: Ask your audience for feedback and use this feedback to improve your videos.
What you can do: Since more and more brands are producing videos, you need to pay attention to what your competitors are doing. It’s essential to note what they do well and what they’re struggling with. With this information, you can create videos that stand out from the competition.
In summary: Look at what your competitors are doing and aim to do it better.
41) 96% of people will watch an explainer video to learn more about your product.
You can Create a few explainer videos to explain how your product works. Sharing this content with your leads will help convert them into paying clients more efficiently. Moreover, if clients know they can rely on you to teach them how to use a complex product, they’re less likely to check out your competition.
In summary: Produce explainer videos so potential clients feel more confident about using your product.
What you can do: To stand out from the crowd, you need to figure out how to go beyond creating good videos to create exceptional videos. Ask your audience for feedback on the kind of videos they enjoy and track their engagement with videos you’ve produced in the past.
In summary: Create exceptional videos to stand out from the crowd.
What you can do: Design promotional videos, invest in brand storytelling, and find out how to give your content that extra kick. Once you discover what kind of unique content you can create, you’ll be easier to stand out from your competition.
In summary: Invest in promotional videos and brand storytelling, but find elements to make your content stand out.
Podcasts
Podcasts are a great way to promote your brand while educating your audience. If you’re considering launching a podcast, these content marketing statistics will help.
What you can do: Repurposing some of your blog content as podcast episodes could help you grow your audience. Once you’ve set up your podcast, you should promote it widely on the platforms where your audience spends most of their time.
In summary: Repurpose your content as quality and informative podcast episodes, and promote these episodes where your audience hangs out.
What you can do: If your target audience is in the 25-34 age range, a podcast is an excellent way to reach them. Since podcasts promote your brand while educating your audience, they can be an effective marketing tool. Even so, you might want to survey the content people enjoy in their podcasts. This information will guide you as you develop a content calendar.
In summary: Launch an engaging podcast to connect with people in this age range.
46) In the US, 39% of men and 36% of women listen to podcasts monthly (Edison Research, 2020).
What you can do: If you want to reach these demographics, one way to do it is to launch a podcast. Find out the popular podcasts among these segments and offer them similar content.
In summary, Find out what kind of podcast content is popular among this demographic and offer them something similar.
Email Marketing
A great email marketing campaign can help you stay connected to your target audience throughout the buyer journey. These content marketing statistics can help you create an effective email marketing strategy.
47) Email marketing is the top content marketing strategy for nurturing audiences.
What you can do: Use a good email marketing strategy to connect with your leads and guide them through the sales funnel. If you keep in touch with potential customers throughout the buyer journey, they might eventually become paying customers.
In summary: Use email marketing to keep in touch with potential customers and maintain contact even after they become paying customers.
What you can do: Segment your audience so that you send everyone on your mailing list content that is relevant to them. With a segmented email campaign, you can meet each of these people where they are and connect with them memorably and effectively.
In summary: Segment your audience and send different content to each segment according to their needs.
Webinars
Webinars can help you establish your brand as a thought leader while promoting your products. Here are some helpful content marketing statistics to help with your webinars.
What you can do: Emailing potential attendees might boost your registrations if you run a webinar. To do this effectively, you can list previous webinar attendees and update it regularly. Alternatively, you can collect these email addresses via a landing page on your website.
In summary: Email previous webinar attendees and website visitors to promote your current webinar.
50) 59% of webinar attendees register the week before the webinar, and 17% register on the webinar day.
What you can do: Given that potential webinar attendees will pay more attention the week before your webinar, you can boost your advertising efforts for this week’s webinar. Additionally, it would be best to keep advertising until the actual day of the webinar to get some last-minute registrations.
In summary: Boost advertising for your webinar in the week before your webinar.
Over to You Now:
Content marketing statistics are usually an accurate indication of what your competitors are doing. Therefore, by studying these statistics, you can get a good idea of what works, what doesn’t, and what’ll give you an edge over your competitors.
Whether you’re a solo blogger or part of a team, staying organized and focused is crucial to success as a content creator. A clear plan can make multiple tasks, deadlines, and creative ideas manageable. That’s where a blog editorial calendar comes in handy. It’s not just a tool; it’s your trusty sidekick in the ever-evolving world of content creation. Let’s dive into why a blog editorial calendar is essential and how you can tailor it to suit your needs.
Why Is a Blog Editorial Calendar Important?
Picture this: You wake up on a Monday morning, ready to tackle the week ahead. But as you sit at your desk, you realize you have no idea what to write about for your next blog post. Panic sets in, and before you know it, you’re spiraling down the rabbit hole of writer’s block.
Does this scenario sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone. Many content creators need help with consistency and staying on track with their content schedules. That’s where a blog editorial calendar swoops in to save the day. How?
1. Consistency Breeds Success
Consistency is the backbone of any successful content strategy. Whether you aim to attract new readers, engage with your existing audience, or boost your SEO efforts, publishing regular, high-quality content is vital. A blog editorial calendar keeps you accountable and ensures you’re consistently delivering valuable content to your audience.
2. The SEO Advantage
Ah, SEO – the holy grail of digital marketing. It’s no secret that ranking high on search engine results pages (SERPs) can improve your website traffic. But here’s the catch: Google loves fresh, relevant, dated content. By planning your blog posts, you can strategically incorporate keywords, optimize your content, and increase your chances of ranking higher in search results.
If you’re part of a content team, you know how challenging it can be to keep everyone on the same page. With multiple projects in the works, communication can quickly become chaotic. A blog editorial calendar provides a centralized hub where team members can cooperate, share ideas, and track improvement, fostering a sense of unity and purpose.
So, What Should I Include in My Editorial Calendar?
It’s easy to think of your editorial calendar as a regular calendar. However, if you do this, you will be disappointed with the results.
Certain non-negotiable elements exist for this calendar to work well for you and your team. Here are the sections you absolutely must include in your calendar for it to work:
1) Blog Title
Your blog title should be laid out to help focus your writing. In addition to highlighting the title for each post, it helps to have a brainstorming section where you and your team can add title ideas as they come to you.
For example, let’s assume you own a flower shop and run a blog that teaches people how to care for their plants. The keyword “gardening tools” can branch out into many blog titles.
As shown in the Google Trends search below, other related keywords also famous for this search include “gardening tools for kids” and “gardening tools names.”
So, if you start with “gardening tools” as a keyword, you can generate at least two other blog titles. However, your creativity should continue where Google Trends suggestions continue. You can also write a blog post about “gardening tools for the winter,” for instance. Or “easy-to-use gardening tools.”
If the original keyword “gardening tools” is included in your blog title, your posts about gardening tools will likely be recommended by Google to people searching for “gardening tools.”
As you can see, once you start with a focused and popular keyword, the possibilities for blog titles are endless. This is just one way having an editorial blog calendar should streamline your teamwork.
With this brainstorming process, you can wave goodbye to the days when you used to wrack your brain for something to write about. As long as you have a permanent section of your calendar dedicated to brainstorming blog titles, you won’t run out of things to write about anymore.
2) Keywords
Speaking of keywords, each blog post in progress should have a corresponding keyword assigned to it. This helps the author refine their writing according to expectations.
As with the blog titles, it’s also a good idea to have a running list of keywords to add to as you go. Seeing all the keywords you can use in one place helps you avoid writing one article after another with the same keyword, which can get very tiring—both for you and your audience.
If you can see all your keywords in one place, you can offer your audience some variety by switching from one keyword to another as you write subsequent blog posts. You can also increase your domain authority over time by writing about various topics.
3) Blog Post Status
Your editorial calendar should also have a section for each blog title that indicates the status of that content piece. Is it pending approval, or has it already been approved? Is it under editing? Has it already been published?
Highlighting this information will save time and help everyone on your team to be on the same page. If you can see the status of each piece of content, you no longer have to keep pinging your content creators to find out how far along they are in the process.
4) Deadlines
To optimize teamwork, you must include multiple deadlines for each piece of assigned work in your editorial calendar.
You should have approval, editing, and publishing deadlines. Highlight the stages of your blog post before it’s live on your site.
While assigning these deadlines, you should remember that some tasks—like editing—require 2-3 days’ lead time. It would be unfair to write the first draft of your blog article and then expect your editor to have it done within an hour, especially if they’re multitasking.
Be fair with your deadlines so that everyone on your team can do their best work.
5) Links to Assets
Once you’ve written and submitted the first draft of a blog article, it’s helpful to the rest of the team to share any links to media you used within the article. Dedicating a section of your calendar to this will help save time when the final article is being pulled together or repurposed later.
6) Repurposing Opportunities
Summarizing your blog post in a different format, such as an image or video, can help drive traffic to the original post.
After you’ve published each blog post, it can be helpful for the other content creators on your team to brainstorm creative ways to reuse this content for your social media channels.
So, your blog post has passed through the approval, writing, and editing stages and is ready for publishing.
Where do you plan to publish it?
Once you decide where each content will be published, indicating this on your calendar is essential.
Getting the placement of your content right is crucial to ensuring your target audience sees it after you’ve worked so hard. For this reason, you don’t want any confusion about where to publish your blog post when it’s done and where it will be shared.
Highlighting the platforms in your calendar will help the person in charge of publishing and sharing each piece of content put it in the right place at the right time.
What Types of Blog Editorial Calendars Can I Use?
A few options are available, from DIY content calendars to comprehensive project management solutions. Let’s review the types of calendars you can use with your team.
a) Excel or Google Sheets
Excel or Google Sheets are an excellent option for people who would like to be involved in creating and developing their calendars. Both allow you to get hands-on and create your calendar from scratch or download a pre-designed calendar and adapt it to fit your team’s needs.
A Kanban board is a style of editorial calendar that offers users interactive cards that can be dragged to different sections as required. This is an ideal solution for a team of highly visual people. Trello and Asana are good examples of this.
Sometimes, you should skip designing your calendar and use a comprehensive project management tool to manage your team’s workflow. Editorial calendars help everyone see what stage each content piece is at, the assigned teams, and a priority list of upcoming content.
Once you’ve updated the calendar, it is easy to transition to the writing process using the powerful content editor built in. A project management solution can help you manage all the content for your blogs under one roof.
Putting It All Together
A blog editorial calendar is more than just a tool – it’s a roadmap to success. By incorporating the human element into your content planning process, you can stay organized, inspired, and focused on creating content that resonates with your audience. So grab your calendar, gather your team, and start crafting your next masterpiece. Your readers are waiting.
Remember, it’s not about quantity; it’s about quality. So take your time, unleash your creativity, and let your voice shine in every blog post you create. Happy blogging!
