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The Ultimate List of Content Marketing Podcasts

Podcasts have exploded in popularity over the past decade. Today, people turn to them for everything from daily news updates to murder mysteries to sports commentary to personal and professional advice and more. There’s truly a podcast for everyone and every mood.

Marketers are no exception, and through the years I’ve been lucky enough to be a guest on some really awesome content marketing podcasts. The list that follows is a collection of some of my favorites. On this list you’ll find shows that provide valuable insight on modern content marketing strategies, plus innovative and actionable tips you can implement at your company right away.

Happy listening!

Marketing Smarts by MarketingProfs

What it’s about: The MarketingProfs blog is a go-to resource for marketers looking for helpful tips and insights. Their podcast, Marketing Smarts, provides an awesome complement to their blog in the form of interviews with marketing who can give actionable advice to improve your strategies and boost your results.

Why we love it: MarketingProfs releases a new Marketing Smarts episode every week, meaning you can browse their library for just about any marketing topic. Their interviews feature a diverse set of professionals with backgrounds in different industries, types of companies, and marketing specialties.

Episode(s) to check out: I enjoyed spending time on the Marketing Smarts podcast talking about a few of my favorite topics: content marketing, employee advocacy, and future marketing trends.

Listen here: Content Marketing, Employee Advocacy, and the Future of B2B: Michael Brenner on Marketing Smarts

Sound bite: “I want to talk about a reset. Let’s remember what content marketing really is, and let’s reframe it as the future of marketing. Because the alternative is a death spiral into oblivion for a lot of marketers.”

QuietLight Podcast

What it’s about: QuietLight is a broker for SaaS and ecommerce companies. Their podcast provides insight and resources for buying and selling these types of businesses.

Why we love it: QuietLight’s podcast covers a wide range of topics, and every episode focuses on actionable tips that you can apply in the real world. If you’re an entrepreneur by nature or look for ways to be more entrepreneurial, this podcast is a must-listen for you.

Episode(s) to check out: Marketing is one of the focus areas covered in QuietLight podcasts.  I had the chance to be a guest on a recent episode and talk about cutting paid advertising costs to boost revenue.

Sound bite: “Paid media is only going to get more and more competitive, whereas organic traffic is evergreen. And if you can get to the top of the rankings, it’s work that you did in the past that’s [paying off] today versus media money you spent yesterday.”

Bright Ideas

What it’s about: The Bright Ideas Podcast by Trent Dyrsmid can help you scale your business with better systems and processes — including as it relates to marketing.

Why we love it: It was a bummer to hear that the Bright Ideas podcast was coming to an end a few months ago after an awesome 12-year run. The good news is that you can still access the library of episodes, where Trent covers tons of marketing- and business-related topics featuring guests with expertise on each one.

Episode(s) to check out: I’m fortunate that I got to talk with Trent on the Bright Ideas podcast in mid-2021, where we did a consult (of sorts) right on the podcast to talk about how content marketing could impact Trent’s business.

Listen Here: How to 2-3X Organic Traffic Without a Six Figure Budget

Sound bite: “When we see something that generally speaks to the concerns that we have, the things that keep us up at night, that’s when we engage.”

Influencer Blueprint Show by Credit Suite

What it’s about: Credit Suite provides loans and credit for small businesses. Their podcast is one of many resources they offer professionals, and it features industry influencers who share their insights from firsthand experience.

Why we love it: The niche topics! You’ll find everything on the Influencer Blueprint Show from how to target the right clients to scaling your business with social media to raising chickens for fresh produce (you read that right). But don’t worry, there is no shortage of marketing-related topics.

Episode(s) to check out: I got a chance to be on the Influencer Blueprint Show to talk about one of the biggest (and often underleveraged) benefits of content marketing: its compounding effect.

Sound bite: “Advertising tries to interrupt people . . . [but] in a television show, on a radio show, or in a magazine that you’re reading, you’re not reading it or listening to it or watching it for the ads, you’re watching it for the actual content. And so really effective marketing is the content, not the interruption.”

Predictable B2B Success Podcast by Sproutworth

What it’s about: The Predictable B2B Success Podcast helps business owners and marketing and sales execs achieve predictable growth by expanding their influence. Every episode features a founder, executive, or thought leader in the B2B space.

Why we love it: This podcast deep-dives into marketing and sales topics from a leadership perspective. If you’re really looking to affect strategy from what you learn, this podcast is a good choice.

Episode(s) to check out: I recently got to talk about building customer relationships on the Predictable B2B Success podcast — something every business should consider foundational to their marketing strategy.

Sound bite: “Just look at what your customers are trying to solve, provide answers, expertise, thought leadership and help to those customers around their biggest challenges and you earn the right to then present the kinds of solutions you want to sell.”

Listen here: The Importance of Building Customer Relationships: 11 Ways to Build Them

The Marketing Book Podcast by Sales Artillery

What it’s about: On the weekly Marketing Book Podcast (episode released every Friday), host Doug Burdett interviews authors of books on modern marketing and sales trends.

Why we love it: The podcast provides first hand insight from industry thought leaders as they expand on and answer questions about the ideas shared in their books.

Episode(s) to check out: I was lucky to be invited twice to The Marketing Book Podcast to talk about The Content Formula and Mean People Suck with Doug.

Listen Here:

The Marketing Book Podcast: The Content Formula

The Marketing Book Podcast: Mean People Suck

Sound bite: “You don’t have to be the CEO to drive change in your organization or to feel like you’re creating impact in your job. You can be at any level — if you put the customer at the center and you have the courage to push back on bad ideas.”

Marketing Over Coffee

What it’s about: Marketing Over Coffee is hosted by marketing gurus John J. Wall and Christopher S. Penn. It discusses topics related to both new and classic marketing.

Why we love it: Every episode is like a marketing TED talk. The guests have unique expertise and every topic covers cutting-edge ideas or new takes on old ones. If you’re looking to expand your marketing knowledge and perspective, this is a must-listen for you.

Episode(s) to check out: I got to talk to John about the inspiration behind Mean People Suck in 2019.

Listen Here: Michael Brenner on Mean People Suck

Sound Bite: “When you have empathy for your employees, for your colleagues, for your team — and you put the customer at the center of everything you do — you can really generate the results that your organization wants.”

A Shark’s Perspective Marketing Podcast

What it’s about: A Shark’s Perspective focuses on continual curiosity about the consumer and how they perceive brands through marketing, advertising, and the customer experience.

Why we love it: The show helps listeners challenge their assumptions about how marketing tactics, content, and customer interactions really make an impact from the customer’s perspective.

Episode(s) to check out: My conversation with host Kenneth Kinney focused on how to connect with your audience by creating high-value content.

Listen Here: The ROI Of Your Content

Sound Bite: “The world has changed. Most marketing sucks, and we need a new approach.”

The Groundswell Marketing Podcast

What it’s about: The Groundswell Marketing Podcast features guests with unique ideas on sustainable growth marketing and trends shaping audience engagement.

Why we love it: Host Scott Martin is an entrepreneur himself, and most of his guests take an entrepreneurial approach to looking at new opportunities and future industry trends. You’ll hear novel ideas shared in every episode.

Episode(s) to check out: I got to talk with Scott about the importance of making our marketing content human-centric.

Listen Here: Why Human Centric Content Marketing?

Sound Bite: “The days of marketers outsourcing their creativity are over . . . Marketers need to take the mantle for owning the definition of what it means to be creative, the value that it means to be creative, the humanity that has to come behind being creative, and identifying who we are as a brand, what the tone of voice really means, and ‘if we were a person, what would we sound like?’”

Little Bird Marketing Podcast

What it’s about: The Little Bird Marketing Podcast covers a range of topics around marketing, business culture, market research, and digital transformation.

Why we love it: Little Bird’s podcast library features an awesome mix of episodes that offer high-level insights and others that provide practical, actionable tips and tricks to use at work and in life.

Episode(s) to check out: I’ve had the opportunity to be on the Little Bird Marketing Podcast twice, most recently to talk about content marketing and the importance of an individualized customer experience.

Listen Here: Priscilla and Michael Brenner Do a Double Take

Sound Bite: “The need for digital transformation is because customers are demanding it. We don’t care about brands anymore. We are happy to replace one product for another based on experience. And it’s the digital platforms and the culture of the employees at those companies that are defining that.”

The Internal Marketing Podcast

What it’s about: The Internal Marketing Podcast talks about how companies can boost their marketing results by focusing on their most powerful brand advocates and stakeholder audience — their employees.

Why we love it: This podcast is a treasure trove of advice on how companies can improve by first and foremost looking inward.

Episode(s) to check out: I spent time on The Internal Marketing Podcast talking about a topic I believe is so important for every kind of company: employee engagement and the power of internal marketing.

Listen here: Employee Engagement is the New Content Marketing

Sound bite: “In order to generate real business, real growth, and acquire new customers, you need real people telling their stories, sharing their passion and expertise. It’s why I actually believe the future of marketing is all in employee activation.”

Doing CX Right Podcast

What it’s about: Doing CX Right provides actionable tips to help business owners, managers, leaders accelerate brand loyalty and revenue by providing an exceptional customer experience.

Why we love it: Every single episode is packed with tips you can apply right away at your organization.

Episode(s) to check out: My conversation with host Stacy Sherman focused on how to keep your brand top-of-mind for consumers with great content.

Sound bite: “Turning employees into storytellers, getting them to authentically share what they know and some of the fun stuff that they do — the fact that they’re real people — engages other real people who might want to be customers or employees or investors. Content marketing is not just a marketing activity. Creating and sharing content is something that anyone can do inside a company that can really benefit the company.”

The SiteVisibility Internet Marketing Podcast

What it’s about: The show features industry leaders sharing their advice and insights for success at every stage of the marketing process.

Why we love it: The guest list is impressive — you’ll find episodes featuring industry pioneers and thought leaders like Seth Godin, Rand Fishkin, and Tim Ferriss.

Episode(s) to check out: As a guest on the Internet Marketing Podcast, I got to talk about leadership strategies and how they impact digital marketing success.

Listen Here: Leadership Strategies for the Digital Age

Sound bite: “Marketing is kind of like an investment in your retirement. It doesn’t require an additional investment every single month or year, it just requires a consistent, customer-focused approach . . . if you invest a small but consistent amount over time, you’re going to see not just an increasing rate of return, but an accelerating rate of return.”

Leaders in the Trenches

What it’s about: Features company leaders and executives who talk about topics related to growth marketing, culture, and leadership.

Why we love it: This podcast features company leaders, but it’s also for them. The insights shared in each episode aim to help existing leaders find new ways to impact their organizations.

Episode(s) to check out: I spent time talking to host Gene Hammett about how marketing leaders can drive growth by building a strong content strategy.

Sound bite: “The [leadership] analogy I always use is: You can tell me to bake a cake and also tell me how to bake it. You can give me the ingredients and let me figure it out. Or you can tell me you want a cake and let me go buy the ingredients and figure out the recipe. But you can’t have it both ways.”

Magnificent Marketing Podcast

What it’s about: The Magnificent Marketing Podcast interviews industry leaders on marketing best practices and cutting-edge trends in the marketing world.

Why we love it: Host David Reimherr does a great job picking the brains of their guests to really get to the best insights they have to offer.

Episode(s) to check out: I’m lucky to have been on the Magnificent Marketing Podcast a few times. Most recently, I got to talk about a mindset shift I think every organization (especially marketing leaders) needs to make — that marketing in your organization should think like HR.

Sound bite: “Marketing’s job is to activate the expertise and the passion inside their organizations.”

Pam Didner Podcast

What it’s about: Pam interviews guests on topics related to digital marketing, content marketing, and sales enablement.

Why we love it: Every episode is both engaging and instructional — expect to get unique firsthand insights from guests and also takeaways to apply to your own strategy.

Episode(s) to check out: Over the past few years, we’ve seen no shortage of marker volatility and disruption. I got to talk to Pam about how marketers can take a leadership role during such times.

Sound bite: “We have to redefine what marketing is, focus on results and put customers first across the entire organization. And that’s a winning strategy for marketers. It’s a winning strategy for marketing . . . The opposite is marketers are just people that do shit that people ask them to do. And what’s that mean? It means creating brochures for products and making the banners for [events]. I mean, that’s what marketers are going to end up being, and that’s what marketing is going to end up doing in those organizations that don’t make those changes now.”

The Insomnicat Show

What it’s about: The Insomnicat Show isn’t a marketing podcast. It features leaders with many different backgrounds — doctors, authors, speakers, comedians, psychologists, analysts and more.

Why we love it: You never know what to expect topic-wise in the next Insomnicat Show episode, but you can be sure it won’t fail to provide valuable nuggets of insight. For marketers, most of these insights can in some way be applied to a human- and customer-centered strategy — even if the original insight has nothing to do with marketing itself. It’s a great listen to widen your general perspective.

Episode(s) to check out: My conversation on The Imsomnicat Show was about how to gain buy-in for content marketing at your company.

Sound bite: “Being able to present a business case for why marketers should do a certain thing to non-marketing business people is a skill set and a muscle that not a lot of us have really developed.”

Engagement Drivers Podcast

What it’s about: The Engagement Drivers Podcast is for marketing, sales, communications, and recruiting professionals and discusses how to drive authentic brand engagement.

Why we love it: Many of the show’s episodes cover what I believe to be a huge opportunity for companies: engaging employees as brand advocates.

Episode(s) to check out: My time on the show was spent talking about how to activate employees by giving them a storytelling platform.

Sound bite: “Engage with the folks that want to share stories, that have a point of view, that have expertise, that have knowledge that should be shared with the outside world.”

The Employer Branding Podcast

What it’s about: The Employer Branding Podcast is all about how to attract and retain top talent and strategies for providing a top employment experience.

Why we love it: The show is a serious gold mine for company leaders who want to truly impact their company culture.

Episode(s) to check out: On The Employer Branding Podcast I got to talk again about how your employees — all employees — can be marketers for your business.

Listen here: Why Employees Are Your New Marketers

Sound bite: “There’s an inextricable link, a direct tie, between organizations that are encouraging their employees to be authentically telling stories and sharing stories that matter to them and they have a passion around, and the kinds of companies that people want to be a part of. We all want to be part of a company that supports us as a person.”

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The post The Ultimate List of Content Marketing Podcasts appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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Top Resources and Tips to Develop Blog Topics Your Audience Will Love

You’ve got a blog—now what? It’s time to tackle the biggest question of content marketing: what to blog about on your company website. Content planning requires topics and themes, and they should directly relate to the challenges and concerns of your audience and the solutions you provide.

Coming up with these juicy blog topics can be a huge roadblock that prevents your content marketing taking off and delivering the returns you expect. So, it’s time to get real about what to blog about with tips, ideas, and resources.

Quick Takeaways:

  • Blogging without a content strategy and plan leads to wasted time and effort.
  • With the right resources, you can develop an endless supply of interesting blog topics.
  • Find topics consistently and efficiently with resources that measure keywords, social media engagement, and autogenerate ideas.
  • Look both internally and externally for blog ideas.

Blogging without a Content Strategy and Plan is Fruitless

Blogging for blogging’s sake isn’t a successful strategy! The primary aim of your blog should be getting new customers, which means you have to have an effective content strategy. Why is a content strategy critical to choosing what to blog about? Because it sets the tone in how you’ll deliver content to target buyers and deliver the return on investment (ROI), you expect.

Your content strategy is the foundation from which all topics grow. So, if you don’t have one, develop one before you move on to topic creation.

After your content strategy has been set, it’s time for content planning. Content planning is the execution of your strategy. It’s where you begin the journey of learning what to write about, what formats to use, and how to distribute and promote your content successfully.

With a strategy and plan in place, it’s time to look to your available resources to define what to blog about on your website.

Keyword Research Tools

Blogging is crucial to your organic search rankings. It’s no secret that most buyers turn to Google whenever they need to search. This is why your content needs to be optimized for certain search terms.

Keyword research is a vital tool for content marketers as they dig for topics that are relevant to their audiences. There are several ways to use keyword research to decide what to blog about.

What is Google Auto-Suggesting to Searchers?

Whenever you use Google, you’ll immediately see auto-completes, which are based on popular queries used by searchers.

For example, typing in “healthcare data breaches” pulls up a list of queries that are relevant to the term.

This is one way to find suggestions but can be time-consuming. There’s a great tool simply called Keyword Tool that can do the work for you. It uses the phrase you type in and gives suggestions based on Google search volumes. The free version provides limited information, but upgrading to pro offers you a more comprehensive list.

Focus on Questions

Users often ask questions when they search, and the rise of voice search is fueling this. If you want to capture this search traffic, then use QuestionDB. This tool works specifically to compile the questions asked about a topic, giving you a gold mine of blog topic ideas. Be sure to start with a broad phrase.

Using Google Keyword Planner

Beyond Google suggestions, you can also employ Google’s Keyword Planner. Its features can provide a wealth of information on what your audience is likely searching for online. You simply enter a phrase, and it will return to up to 800 related phrases.

What’s good about using the tool is that it also provides you with insights on average monthly searches and the level of competition for that word, which can help you identify possible opportunities.

Google Trends

With Google Trends, you can also find suggestions, but it also offers information on the trending of those phases over time. You may find that certain topics peak during specific times of the year. For example, with regard to the data breach example, you may find there is a spike in related searches during National Cyber Security Awareness month in October, because more content is being created and it’s top of mind for IT professionals.

You can also use Trends to compare two topics and determine which one is trending up. With this knowledge, you can prioritize topics more effectively.

Generate Blog Ideas Based on Social Media Listening

No matter what industry you’re in, there is a buzz surrounding it on social media. You need to tap into this to learn what’s getting traction. You’ll want to determine what topics are trending and getting shared the most. Here are some ways to capitalize on social media listening:

  • Follow hashtags: You can choose to follow multiple hashtags on LinkedIn, giving you a real-time view of what people are posting about. You will be able to see trending hashtags on your dashboard when you log into Twitter.
  • BuzzSumo: BuzzSumo is an absolute must-have social media listening tool. You can enter any phrase into its search, and in seconds, you’ll see the most shared posts on the topic. It does have a free version, but upgrading will obviously provide more insights.
  • Facebook Analyzer: This feature from BuzzSumo assists you in identifying trending topics. You can set the date range for what’s happening now or within the last year. You’ll soon see posts that had the most engagement.
  • Quora: Quora is a Q&A social media platform that allows users to ask questions and receive responses. Dig deep into Quora’s questions to get clued-in to what your audience is seeking. You could also use the platform to test out some new ideas, asking questions of your own and gauging the responses.

Check out the Competition

It’s very likely that your competition has a strong blog and is driving traffic to their website. First, you should do a quick analysis of your top three competitors and their blogs. Determine the topics they are writing about, the quality of the content, and the degree of engagement.

Then you should determine how they are ranking for these terms. Several tools can provide you with this information on competitor rankings. One option is SEMrush. With this tool, you only need to enter their URL to find out how they are ranking. However, this is a paid tool.

A free tool with many of the same features is Small SEO Tools Keyword Rank Checker. Enter a URL of your choice, and the tool will show you the site’s top 10 ranking keywords. Or, you can type in the URL with specific keywords to check how these phrases rank. The results will tell you if the website ranks in the top 100 results for that keyword, and will show you the specific page that is ranking.

Another way to find inspiration from the competition is to look at their FAQs. You can do this manually, but there’s a tool that does it fast. FAQ Fox. Enter a keyword as well as the sites you’d like to search. Select generic for the category to find the top questions and topics related to the keyword.

You can also employ BuzzSumo to understand what’s trending with competitors. Instead of searching for a topic, you can enter a website. From there, you’ll receive a list of the most shared posts from those websites.

Idea Generators and Aggregators

If you’ve exhausted a good number of these tools, then it’s time to turn to an idea generator or aggregator. These are easy to use sites that require you only to provide a phrase or keyword, then the autogenerate a bounty of ideas.

Auto-Generator Tools

HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator

Enter three words, and within seconds, you’ll have five blog ideas based on your phrase.

Hoth Blog Topic Generator

This generator is a bit more detailed and requests more information, including keyword data, desired outcomes, pain points of your audience, industry information, and target demographic. It then provides you with numerous headline ideas.

Impact’s Blog Title Generator

Complete the sentence “blog about…[TOPIC]”. Then this tool provides you with headlines, allowing you to insert relevant phrases for fresh ideas.

Make a Website Blog Post Idea Generator

Use up to three terms, typically nouns, to get a list of possible ideas to add to your content plan.

News Aggregators

Using a news aggregator tool allows you to tap into the big stories in your industry. There are several different options. First, you can use Google Alerts to receive the best results from Google News every day. It’s free and can spur ideas. There are also tools like Feedly, which allow you to find and organize sources as well as filter out things that aren’t important, resulting in more ideas for your content calendar.

Develop Content Topics Based on National Days and Seasonal Events

Every year, there are special days that dedicated to specific topics. Examine these days and events and find one that’s relevant to your audience. In this post, we’ve been using the example of healthcare data breaches. There are many days, weeks, and months throughout the year related to healthcare IT. Identify those, and turn them into topics that you can post along with the special day’s hashtags.

Seasonal events also can inspire timely topics. Those events might be related to industry conferences your company is attending. If so, write blogs about what attendees can expect from your company, or offer them a preview of the event.

Other opportunities exist with national events that will most certainly be trending. Take advantage of these to position your content. For example, the Super Bowl is the most-watched sports event of the year. Your company may have nothing to do with football, but you can probably make some kind of connection to it.

With any of these events, you’ll also benefit from being able to post with a trending hashtag.

Be Your Own Inspiration

You often don’t have to look outside your organization to find blog topics. Topics that you should blog about on your website can come from your own content analytics, if you have already published content. The first part of this exercise is to know what you rank for and how well you rank. You should measure and track this with a keyword master list.

This document should include keywords you rank for and want to rank for as well as their search volume, competition, and keyword mapping. Start with seeing where you rank for all those keywords. Then update it every month to see where you are improving or declining.

Find What You Currently Rank For

To dig into this, you can use Google Search Console. Find the list of phrases for which you currently rank. You can then determine if those topics can be expanded upon with additional content. If you create new blogs around those topics, link back to the page you are already ranking for greater SEO value.

search console queries

See What Users Are Searching for on Your Site

Looking at your site’s search tool can also provide you insight. Go into Google Analytics and look under Behavior > Site Search > Search Terms. You’ll see the most popular website visitor searches. This intelligence can then help you develop topics you know your audience is craving.

Find Ways to Repurpose Posts with High Engagement

Google Analytics will show you the pages with the most views. Within the first 10 to 20 results, you are likely to see blog posts. As well as these page views, look at average time spent on the page to see what topics interested your readers the most. Once you have determined the content that performed the best, decide how you could repurpose the content for new blog posts.

One way would be to freshen up the blog with new data. Alternatively, you may use a new format. Take a well-loved blog topic and turn it into an infographic post, for example.

Write Opposite Posts

If you’re finding that content around best practices or how-to guides, flip them around to deliver the information from a different angle. Let’s say you have a high-performing post on “Best Practices to Avoid Data Breaches.” The opposite of this could be “X Mistakes that Companies Make in Data Security.”

In this way, you aren’t repeating the first post, but are instead repositioning it to attract more viewers, as you know it has meaty content that your audience needs.

Use Internal and External Feedback for Blog Ideas

You have sources all around you that can contribute to your blog ideas. Look for inspiration from both your teammates and customers. Encourage content idea collaboration with departments outside of marketing. These individuals have a wealth of knowledge for you to absorb. Sales team members interact with buyers every day and can give you details about their concerns or what they’re hearing about the competition.

Product owners and subject matter experts can offer you insights on why products are designed a certain way and why that matters to your audience. Also, your customer support team is directly communicating with your customers and can update you on their frustrations, concerns, and successes.

Look to your customers for ideation, also. Get in tune with what they are engaged with, by sending out surveys and asking for their opinions. You could also create user groups so that they can interact in a space that lets them share their needs. Your customers may be interacting with your brand on social media as well, so always be listening for this, so that you can gauge their interests and respond accordingly.

Keep Listening

All these resources to help decide what to blog about on your website have one thing in common—listening. To be an effective content marketer, listening to all the sources around you is vital. To develop the best topics that will generate real results, you need to keep your finger on the pulse of your audience’s needs, the industry landscape, your competitors, and your own content analytics. By doing these things, you’ll have topics that are meaningful and interesting.

However, you may be thinking about how you’re going to do all this with limited bandwidth and talent. That’s why so many companies turn to blog writing services for that boost. If you’re ready to bring more traffic to your site with quality content that’s consistently published, check out our Content Builder Service. Set up a quick consultation, and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books. Get started today and generate more traffic and leads for your business.

The post Top Resources and Tips to Develop Blog Topics Your Audience Will Love appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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10 Tips To Increase Eyeballs And Conversion

Generating conversions for your digital marketing efforts can be TOUGH. Even if you’ve put the basic work in (like content marketing and perfecting your social media game), you can still fall short of where you COULD be.

marketing eyeballs

So why put the effort in? Well, your website is important – essential to your business’ success. Ithemes.com says,

“Your website is a dynamic piece of “real estate” within a diverse online market. Every business, when gauging its digital marketing, is only as effective as how its website performs.”

Talk about hitting the nail on the head! If you aren’t converting, you aren’t thriving. It’s time to ask yourself, what are my conversion goals?

Here’s a quick refresher on conversion rates and their importance from Neil Patel:

Quick Takeaways:

  • Website Success = higher likelihood of business success
  • Converting and getting eyes on your blog/website is CRUCIAL to success
  • Conversion goals include generating leads, creating a good newsletter, and decreasing your bounce rate (% of people who view but don’t engage with your site)

So, what can you do to get that extra edge on converting? We’ve compiled a list of 10 things to keep in mind when assessing your strategy. Take a look at what your company is doing and think about the little things that can take it to the next level.

10 Tips to Increase Eyeballs and Conversion

increase conversion

1. Deliver a clear brand promise

What is the value you offer to customers? Say it crisply and hit a drumbeat.  Many brands do this very well.  Coke – happiness. Red Bull – energy.  Verizon – works everywhere.  Make your brand value crystal clear and unique. Consistently hit that drumbeat across all channels.

Be known for something.  Acid test — if asked what your company stands for, could your customers tell you? What would they say? If the answer you’re expecting isn’t the right one, it’s time to reassess your brand promise.

2. Vary your delivery

Depending on preferences, people are drawn to different types of media. After all, in the era of targeted ads, we are expecting the companies that want our attention to find us, not the other way around.

Take similar content and deliver in 10 ways: expert interviews, how-to podcasts, reviews, videos, weekly news, blogs, tweets, infographics etc.   First-mover advantage on modern platforms, such as Snapchat or Instagram Reels, will give you an edge over the competition.

3. Humanize your brand

brand, conversion

Source: UX Collective

Use language that connects with your customers on a personal level. Relate to their lives, their trials, their successes. Too many brands are behind the times and still use corporate speak in their online presence.

Humanize your voice – and sometimes less is more! Try changing ‘contact us’ to ‘speak with an expert from our design team.’ Instead of ‘chat now’, write your own CTAs such as ‘Come behind the scenes’, ‘Join our community of elite athletes’, ‘Become a VIP’.

Save the corporate buzz-speak for the board room.

On the list to never use: optimize, empower, leverage, and synergy! Don’t use terms that are overused, clichéd, or jargony.

4. Make a connection

Who is signing your email?  For your customers, consider a note from your CEO to connect them back to the brand. For your prospects, consider a note from a human!  Use a voice that is personal and believable. People connect better with humans than a disconnected ‘brand’ persona. Develop a brand personality and use it consistently.  Be approachable.

5. Be relevant

What are people talking about? Check out Reddit, Twitter, or Google Trends to find out what people are interested in around a particular topic. It used to be enough to be on message, but now you have to be IN on the trending conversations.

This has resulted in the development of real-time marketing. Being flexible and in-the-know enough to participate in real-time conversations with your consumers online is crucial.

However, preparing for planned events in your field is important too! At a minimum, have a content calendar that’s relevant and stays on trend. Use it to build and deliver thought leadership, social and digital engagement.

6. Design for mobile

marketing app design

Source: ScienceSoft

This one feels like a duh, but you’d be surprised at how many companies miss the mark! Realize that most people browse on their mobile devices. Use responsive design where possible (i.e. design for the mobile experience).  Hire someone if you have to! It’s worth the investment.

Simply put — your site should load fast, be readable and navigate well.

7. Know your audience

Know what your customer cares about. Use customer segmentation to place your customers into categories. Target them based on their triggers (e.g., I’m a student, likely to buy textbooks). Develop a thesis and test it against your target audience.

8. Provide a single call to action

Tell the reader what you want them to do. Too often you’ve left your prospects guessing on where to go and they end up lost or wandering off your site. Make crystal clear the action you want them to take. We’re talking BIG BUTTON above the fold.

Consider a call out, live chat, or an outbound email to retarget.  Usability testing is a must. If you don’t have the budget, ask your kids, your interns, and trusted friends. Let them test it. You might be surprised.

9. Measure your funnel from end-to-end

marketing funnel

Source: ClatterChatter

Comb through each stage of the sales funnel to see where you might be falling short. While customers finishing registration forms is a good start, actually converting is all that matters. Celebrate when a new client emerges, not before.

This means seamless collaboration between SEO/SEM, social, content marketing, digital and demand generation teams. Incentivize on total win revenue – nothing short of that truly matters for business results.

10. Provide a path to purchase

Consider the mindset of your prospective customer. There’s nothing worse than an over-aggressive live chat or an offer too soon into the experience.

Think of when you shop for clothes at the store and an employee approaches you the second you walk in. Annoying, right?

Always develop your SEO/SEM strategy together with your web design team. Ask yourself – what is the mindset of my customer? Does the experience I’m offering provide what they’re looking for – and does it drive my prospect down a reasonable path to purchase?

Now you know our top 10 insider tips to boost conversions on your site. Remember, there’s ALWAYS room for improvement!

eyeballs conversion

Do you want to use some of the marketing strategies seen here on MIG’s site but need some help or advice? Check out our weekly blog content service or schedule a free consultation. Get started today and generate more traffic and leads for your business!

The post 10 Tips To Increase Eyeballs And Conversion appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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How Televerde Gained Double-Digit Increases in Traffic and Leads with Our Content Marketing Service

How can companies create content that is meaningful? It’s an important question to ask, especially when content marketing is part of your strategy (and we think it should always be part of your strategy).

It’s easy to fall into a trap of churning out content without stopping to assess whether or not it’s really resonating with your target audience. And while consistent and high-volume content is a core part of content marketing, failing to make your content meaningful leads to overspending, low conversion rates, and time spent on developing content that fails to make an impact.

The ability to create content that is simultaneously high-quantity and high-impact lies in doing the work ahead of time and committing to continual assessment and improvement. Let’s explore how our client, Televerde, hit the bullseye on doing both and saw the results to back it up.

Quick Takeaways:

  • High-volume content is important, but ensuring it’s meaningful to your audience is also a key part of effective content marketing.
  • Developing impactful content requires doing the work up front to understand your audience and create a strong content strategy.
  • Commitment to continual improvement is key to content marketing success.
  • Meaningful content that resonates with your target audience means less spend, higher conversions, and an overall bigger impact for your company.

The Problem: Quantity over Quality

Televerde was already a few steps ahead when they reached out to partner with us; they’re a smart company focused on helping clients optimize the sales cycle to generate demand, grow sales pipeline, and increase revenue. They understand how critical it is to connect with current and prospective clients throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

The problem? Despite a $130K per year budget for paid advertising, their social media and blog content wasn’t converting clients at a high enough rate.

“We needed to connect with audiences but our content wasn’t resonating,” shared Chris Daniels, chief revenue officer at Televerde. “It was talking ‘with’ them.”

Televerde’s case is a prime example of why it’s important to remember that  content is not the same as content marketing. The good news for companies like Televerde is that creating the content is a critical first step, and they were already doing it. Now, it was time to evaluate how to make it effective.

The Strategy: Focusing on the Connection

The first important step was to evaluate who Televerde was trying to reach as well as the tone and voice Televerde wanted to use throughout their content. We collaborated with the Televerde team on a comprehensive content assessment that listed intended audiences and a clear positioning statement.

We identified that Televerde wanted to use a tone of voice that was clear, authentic, and inspiring: one that embodies thought leadership and provides new knowledge while remaining relatable and connected.

We explored competitors, other thought leaders in the industry, content themes and pillars, and core audience personas. Once those pieces were in place, we developed an SEO strategy and content calendar to publish consistent, optimized content that would drive organic traffic to the website.

“The onboarding process went really smoothly,” shared Televerde’s Digital Marketing Specialist Jackie Andersen. “The MIG team brought value through their suggestions that we hadn’t previously thought of, but also listened to our feedback and incorporated it into the strategy.”

Jackie also emphasized the importance of consistent connection between our team and Televerde during this critical time.

“The communication from your team was always there.” she recalled.

The Result: Organic Traffic Grows, Conversions Increase, The Spend Gets Smaller

With a new content strategy and calendar in place, the results showed up right away (this doesn’t happen for everyone but we’re thrilled when it does).

Here is an example of the SEMRush “Position Tracking” Report we setup for each client to measure increases in organic search visibility, keyword rankings and organic search traffic. For Televerde, we see a 4x increase in overall keywords ranked and a steep increase in the coveted top 3 rankings:

This is what drives organic traffic increases across the board. According to Televerde’s own website analytics, website users (28%), new users (23%), and total sessions (42%) all increased between September 2020 and May 2021.

During the same September to May time period, there was a 65% increase in completion rate of their website’s “Contact Us” form driven exclusively by organic traffic. Conversion rate after completion rose by 17 percent.

Here is a trended view of the conversions from organic traffic each of the first 6 months we worked with Televerde.

“We shifted our focus from the paid model to connecting with audiences and providing content they wanted, and it shows up in the numbers,” Chris reflected when we talked with him recently about Televerde’s success.

Reflecting: Why Did Televerde Succeed?

There is no magic wand to wave that brings content marketing success. The truth is that it takes time, commitment, consistency, and patience. We did our best to bring the content expertise, but Televerde brought the rest in spades. The results show for themselves.

I was a client of Televerde from my team leading Demand Generation at SAP. They contributed to the success of our content marketing program by helping us qualify the leads we generated.

Now, we get to return the favor by bringing them quality content, and engaged top-of-funnel visitors that convert.

Not only that, but the whole team is such a pleasure to work with. We love their story and now we get to help them grow.

According to Chris, it couldn’t have come at a better time.

“The world was on fire,” he recalls, referring to the tumultuous period at the start of the pandemic, when companies around the world scrambled to adjust to a new (mostly digital) normal. “I knew the single most important thing we could do was focus on digital content.”

The effort is lauded as a win up and down the organization, Chris noted.

“Even our executives are sharing our content now, sharing our blogs — because it’s meaningful.”

Finally, Chris reflected on the critical importance of the partnership maintained by MIG and Televerde throughout the process.

“Results are great,” he shared, “but partnership is also super significant. You can pay people to ‘do content’ but they don’t always take the time to invest in the relationship as needs evolve. The partnership piece with MIG has meant so much.”

Are You Looking for Results Like These?

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to content marketing, but there are best practices that we have tested and proven to work. We combine those with the specific needs of your company and audience to create a personalized strategy and calendar that will drive results.

We provide quality and frequency of content for a more affordable cost than hiring an in-house team to do the same, and with those services we bring the expertise that will maximize your ROI.

More than ever, your customers are looking to connect with you digitally. If you are ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content published consistently, check out our Content Builder Service. Set up a quick consultation and receive a free PDF version of my  book The Content Formula. Get started today–and generate more traffic and leads for your business.

The post How Televerde Gained Double-Digit Increases in Traffic and Leads with Our Content Marketing Service appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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How Capgemini Created The Most Massive Content Marketing ROI I’ve Ever Seen (And The Humble Team Behind It)

If you’ve heard me deliver one of my keynote speaking presentations anytime in the last two years, you’ve heard me tell the story of Lyly Lepinay who used to be the digital marketing manager at global consulting services powerhouse Capgemini. I met Lyly (over the phone) about 5 years ago when she reached out to me get some advice on their content marketing strategy.

About a year later I heard about how Lyly and her team at Capgemini were getting some of the most amazing content marketing ROI I had ever heard of. So when it was time to write my next book Mean People Suck, I reached out to Lyly to see if I could tell her story about how Capgemini did NOT suck.

Instead of getting her permission, Lyly said that she could not take credit for the platform or the strategy. “The real credit should go to Rena Patel,” she said, who was leading Capgemini’s digital advertising and branding at the time. So I reached out to Rena, who after leaving Capgemini went on to work at LinkedIn and is now the CMO of Kantar. This is her story…

Following the Herd

In the beginning, Capgemini had two goals. The first was to increase revenue for their IT services. The second was to improve the overall brand awareness and the reputation of their consultants. Capgemini competes with well-known consulting brands like Deloitte, KPMG, and Accenture. However, the executive team felt like they were falling behind.

The executive team noted their competitors were sponsoring airport ads, golf tournaments, and even professional golfers along with traditional advertising efforts. Patel tried some of these tactics along with other tasks such as tweets, campaigns, press releases, and talking up the company on all the latest marketing channels. These methods were expensive and hard to track. She knew there had to be a better day.

However, the executive team had other plans. They saw their competitors advertising efforts and asked Patel to start the process of looking into sponsoring a professional golfer. Her CMO was excited about the prospect as well as her colleagues, who anticipated the possibility of front-row seats and major golf tournaments and a chance to meet famous golfers.

However, Patel constructively pushed back. (Way to go Rena!)

What’s in It for the Customer?

She examined the content the company created. The hunch that the executive team had about Capgemini being behind their competitors was correct. But their reasoning was a bit misplaced. The real reason was that Capgemini was not producing content that engaged with their audience.

When she relayed this information to the executives, Rena knew she had to frame it in a way that would highlight why sponsoring a professional golfer may not be the right approach. Rena wanted to bring the customer to the center of the organization. So first she asked, “what’s in it for the customer if we sponsor a golfer?”

She did not stop there. Patel spoke to customers and discovered that most of them were not golfers. Many of them didn’t even like golf, nor did many of them watch golf tournaments. Few would recognize most professional golfers except for perhaps Tiger Woods. Rena knew that sponsoring a professional golfer would not drive the results Capgemini needed.

That got her thinking. With a significantly smaller budget, she was confident they could reach and possibly exceed several audacious goals. By creating engaging content, she believed she could raise awareness, build their consultants’ reputation, and even bring nearly a million new visitors to their website.

When she presented this idea to her executives, she bravely told them to hold her accountable if her project failed.

Answering Customers’ Questions

Rena convinced her executives to let her proceed. She created a website focused on meeting their customer and prospects needs by sharing their consultant’s expertise in a brand storytelling format.

The content produced on the site answered the questions Capgemini’s customers were asking. Topics included questions about Big Data, Cloud, Technology, and all subjects about their consulting services. Additionally, Rena discovered that nearly all of their customers were on LinkedIn. And so she focused their efforts on creating and promoting content for LinkedIn.

Guess what? It worked. At the end of one year, Capgemini’s website had nearly a million new visitors to their website. The company’s LinkedIn page had more than 100,000 followers with 3,000 to 4,000 new followers being added per week, and also more than 1.8 million shares!

Rena had done it. She increased awareness, engagement, and most importantly, generated that one million new visitors she had promised. But wait, there’s more to this incredible story. The site not only saw the increase in traffic. It turns out they also stumbled upon some prospects who had reached out to the authors of some of the articles. Some of those prospects asked for proposals. And some of those proposals generated booked projects – to the tune of nearly $1 Million.

Wouldn’t it be nice to stumble upon a million dollars!

But wait, there’re more…

You Promised the Most Amazing Example of Content Marketing ROI!

A couple of years later, I was presenting to the global digital marketing team at one of the world’s largest technology companies. And I was telling Rena/Lyly’s story. Afterwards, a man approaches me and says that he worked on Rena and Lyly’s team. He said that in the 2nd year of the program, they generated more than 8x what they saw in the first year – a nearly 10x Return on Investment.

Imagine you run a program that delivers $10 in revenue for every dollar you spend!

He attributed the success of the program on the fact that the content was customer-focused, the consultants themselves were sharing their expertise, and that this was creating a virtuous cycle of trust that led prospects of their services to reach out to more and more of their consultants directly. But he also gave much of the credit for this to the rest of his team!

Push back. Focus on Customers. Activate Employees. Show ROI

I like to believe that Rena had a few factors to thank for her successful program. First and foremost, she had the awareness to see that the current efforts were not working and she had the courage to speak up.

Second, the executives allowed her to push back and ultimately listened to her recommendations. Her story is an excellent example of what happens when companies trust their gifted employees and ultimately, put the customer at the center of their attention.

Third, despite their massive content marketing ROI, these are 3 of the most humble people I have ever met. Mean people really do suck. These folks do not!

Where’s your ROI? if you are not showing ROI from your content marketing efforts, reach out to us today. We can help. We’ve helped more than 70 brands to document their strategy, define their editorial process, get the content engine running smoothly, and measuring ROI.

This story was excerpted from the book Mean People Suck. Due on sale October 25, 2019.

The post How Capgemini Created The Most Massive Content Marketing ROI I’ve Ever Seen (And The Humble Team Behind It) appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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How Empathetic Content Took Cleveland Clinic from Zero to 60 Million Sessions in 6 Years

We have all been there. A new pain develops in our abdomen, and we start searching the Internet to see what it could be. A good content marketing campaign answers our questions. A great content marketing campaign understands the emotions behind our search while providing answers.

Perhaps there is no better example of a great content marketing program than that of Cleveland Clinic’s Senior Director of Content Amanda Todorovich. Her team took what was initially an internal video, released it to the public. The video went viral and is part of the story behind the launch of the award-winning website Health Essentials, one of the best content marketing examples you will ever find.

Quick Takeaways:

  • It’s essential to base your content marketing strategy on your customers’ needs and your commitment to fulfilling them.
  • Think of topics that interest a wider audience and yet aren’t talked about much, or need clarification.
  • Empathy is the secret of connecting with your content consumers.

Putting Patients First

Amanda had prior positive experiences with Cleveland Clinic as a patient before being hired onto their marketing team. The worldwide clinic had been a patient-focused facility for some time with their commitment to putting patients first, calling their employees “caregivers.”

When Amanda first arrived, the leadership wanted to take their commitment to patients a step further and encourage its 40,000+ employees to utilize the power of empathy.

The Patient Experience Office and in-house media production team created a video called “Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care.”

The premise of the video was simple: “If you could stand in someone else’s shoes, would you treat them differently?”

The video captures experiences many, if not all of us, have experienced:

  • A man who waited too long to be checked
  • A woman whose son 19-year-old son is on life support
  • A patient who has been waiting for a transplant
  • A man whose wife’s surgery has gone well
  • A woman who doesn’t understand the diagnosis a doctor is giving
  • A man who has waited for three hours in the waiting room
  • A mother and son visiting the father who is terminally ill

Each scene demonstrates that if you stand in someone else’s shoes, you will treat them differently. The video harnessed the power of Cleveland Clinic’s brand: We have empathy. We treat each patient as they should be treated.

And this is the same ethos they used to create their content marketing strategy. It’s also why Amanda is one of the heroes of my new book, Mean People Suck. Because she understands the power of empathy to build both growth in the business and meaning and impact in people’s lives.

Just the Beginning

Amanda realized that the reason for the video’s success is that it resonated with patients. She took her experience and began to revolutionize the clinic’s consumer blog, Health Essentials. The website aims to develop hyper-relevant content to address the concerns of more than six million people who visit it each month.

Topics range from diet to heart disease. Some of the more memorable articles include an entire article about what the color of your urine says about your health, whether bacon can be healthy (please say “yes!”), and whether or not suffering from a broken heart is a real syndrome. The website confirms this is an actual condition with a video:

Amanda and her team did not select these topics haphazardly. Each article was selected based on the data they had collected.

In fact, in the “What The Color of Your Urine Says About You?” infographic, they took a hard look to decide whether to use the word “pee” or “urine” on the actual image.

Their data analysis revealed that “urine” worked in the article title, but “pee” resonated more with the average person in the image.

When she began the process in 2012, the website was launching. Six years later, their traffic has gone from zero to 67 million sessions and is now the most visited hospital blog in the nation.

Creating Relevant Content Consistently

Cleveland Clinic’s success did not happen by accident. Amanda and her team built it by producing the right content for the right audience while being useful, helpful, and relevant to people.

Instead of focusing on results at the beginning, they asked why their content is important. The editorial team puts the patient at the center of what they do and uses it to reach more and more lives every day.

It pays off. While the team only publishes three to five articles a day, they have articles with as many as 65,000 social shares. Additionally, the website has dozens of other articles with tens of thousands of shares.

In 2015, Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials traffic was so high that Todorovich decided to monetize the site. Since then, the ads have generated enough revenue to cover the cost of their content operation and become the profit center for the organization.

The Secret to Content Marketing Success

Why has Cleveland Clinic’s content strategy worked? It’s because Amanda’s team successfully builds on producing the right content, putting it in front of the right audience, and being useful, helpful, and relevant to people in a way that’s unique to Cleveland Clinic.

Its editorial team publishes only three to five articles a day, but they have articles with as many as 65,000 social shares. Your entire website might not get 65,000 social shares. That’s well above the average, and Amanda’s team has dozens more articles with tens of thousands of shares.

The key to being successful is knowing your audience and what your audience needs―whether that’s how to treat their diabetes, lose weight, or manage their pain. Another lesson learned? You can’t start with the results desired. Rather, you have to start with why it’s important. Cleveland Clinic’s editorial team puts the patient at the center of what they do and uses its content to reach more and more lives every day. This approach delivers more ROI than any ad ever could!

What Cleveland Clinic’s amazing story teaches us is that empathy is the counterintuitive secret to success. Cleveland Clinic could have hired an agency and spent lots of money on creative ads that talked about how awesome it is.

But at the end of the day, Cleveland Clinic has created (and continues to create) content that is empathetic. After all, empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. That’s what’s behind every story Amanda’s team tells.

What Can You Do?

Every day, we help clients create the kind of success they can only imagine. We follow Amanda’s lead and help our clients create 2-4 customer-focused articles every week. For less than the price of a single event sponsorship, you can start to grow your traffic, leads, and sales just like Amanda did. So if you are interested in our Content Builder Service, setup a call today!

(This story was excerpted from my new book, Mean People Suck, on sale October 25, 2019.)

The post How Empathetic Content Took Cleveland Clinic from Zero to 60 Million Sessions in 6 Years appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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11 Benefits of Outsourcing Your Content Creation

If you want to dip your toes in content marketing but don’t have the time or expertise to create your own content, outsourcing your content creation is an easy and effective way to reap the benefits without all the work.

In fact, content marketing can be greatly profitable: CMI reports that over 70% of brands now hire someone to manage their content creation and distribution to make sure it’s professionally executed.

Not convinced? Let’s take a more in-depth look at why it makes sense to outsource your content marketing.

1. You’ll have more time to work on strategy and other business activities

One of the main reasons for outsourcing content creation is simply that you don’t have time to do it yourself. Researching, writing, and publishing content for regular blog posts can be a full-time job in itself. And that’s before you even consider other necessary tasks in content marketing such as promoting on social media and search engine optimization.

We all have a limited number of hours a day and it’s important for you to concentrate on your core activities to make the most of them. This might mean working on strategy if you’re a marketer, or dealing with other vital tasks if you’re a business owner.

The point is that you can outsource the writing or creating of content while still having as much input as you wish. You’re then free to work on other areas of the business.

While it may seem an easier or cheaper option to produce content yourself, this strategy is rarely the one that makes the most business sense. Stick to the business activities where your strengths are the strongest and leave content production to a professional. You’ll not only end up with higher quality content but you’ll gain back way more than your initial investment.

2. You can publish more content on a more frequent schedule

Even if you were working full-time on content marketing, there’s a limit to how much one person can write in one day, week, or month.

Putting together high-quality content takes time. Sure if you’re going to throw up a 500-word post off the top of your head, you can probably carve enough time out of your daily schedule to do so.

But this type of content is unlikely to have any impact on your audience or bring you any benefit as part of your content marketing strategy.

In fact, Google is even starting to penalize superficial content.

Good content takes time to research, create, and publicize. If you want to put out blog posts that are well-researched and comprehensive, it may not be practical to expect even a full-time writer to manage more than one post a week. Zazzle Media’s State of Content Marketing survey, 60% of businesses find it a challenge to produce content consistently.

If you want to publish content more frequently without dropping the level of quality, you’ll need more writers. This is where outsourcing can really help you to scale up as you can simply outsource as much content as you need, or that your budget will allow.

3. Outsourcing your content creation is cheaper than hiring a full-time writer

When you outsource content creation, you have more time to focus on strategy, ideation, marketing, and experimentation. It also nets you a higher content marketing ROI!

Outsourcing can be a very cost-effective way of producing content. If you employ a full-time writer, this will cost your business tens of thousands of dollars each year.

The average salary for a full-time content writer in the USA is around $65,000. If this writer is an on-site member of staff you also have to factor in IT and other equipment costs, training, and all the overheads that come with an extra employee.

When you outsource, you’re simply paying for the content you order and nothing else. You don’t have to worry about providing medical insurance or replacing your writer’s laptop if it breaks.

Outsourced content is written by self-employed individuals or agencies that factor these costs into their overall rates, making it a much more affordable option for most businesses.

4. Outsourcing is a more flexible option

Having a full-time writer as part of your marketing team has certain advantages. On the other hand, it means you’re stuck with this writer and can’t adapt to your changing content needs over time.

Outsourcing is a much more flexible option as you can hire more writers when you want to produce more content. If you feel like the quality has dipped from a particular writer, or you just want to try a different tone of voice, you can outsource to a different one.

With seasonal variations in your industry, there may be times of the year when it doesn’t make sense to invest in content, and other times when you want to go all out and produce as much as you can. Outsourcing offers you this flexibility so you can scale back when you need to and also scale up your production smoothly and easily as your business grows.

5. You can benefit from fresh ideas and varied viewpoints

You’ve probably got your own stories to tell and want to get your own viewpoint across in your content, and there’s nothing to stop you from doing this.

However, it can be extremely beneficial for your overall content marketing plan to introduce new talent and ideas with writers who can express concepts in a way you may have never considered.

Writers and other content producers are likely to have worked for several different clients and can bring the experience and knowledge they have gained from each to the table. They are also well aware of emerging content marketing trends or may be able to forecast trends in your industry, and come up with new content ideas when you’re stuck for topics.

It’s also easy to lose enthusiasm for your subject when you’re writing about it day in and day out, and this will come through in your writing. Using a pool of other writers means that you never lose this spark and you have a constantly refreshing source of new ideas and inspiration.

6. You can produce and publish content faster and more efficiently

Part of the beauty of outsourcing is how fast and efficient it is compared to trying to do everything yourself.

Good content marketing agencies are really on the ball and will have a team of qualified content producers at their disposal to produce content for you to even the tightest of deadlines.

So say there’s something topical and time-sensitive in your industry that you want to produce some commentary on. Instead of rushing to try and put something together internally while juggling with other important business tasks, you can outsource the job and have it back within a few hours.

Because freelance writers are paid per word or per article, it’s in their interests to work as quickly and efficiently as possible. A full-term salaried writer, on the other hand, has no real incentive to improve their efficiency as they’ll receive the same pay no matter how much content they produce.

7. You can hire industry experts on different topics

While you may be an expert in certain areas, you certainly can’t be an expert in everything.

Unless your content strategy involves writing about a very narrow range of topics, you’ll almost certainly benefit from outsourcing to other individuals with certain expertise.

Most content marketing agencies hire a number of content producers with a wide range of experience and specialties, so you’ll be able to specify an individual with expertise in the subject you need.

For example, let’s say that your business sells toys and you want to write a blog post about the importance of play for child development. You could request a writer with a psychology qualification or specific experience working in child education. This means that you’ll be able to explore the subject in a deeper way and present more accurate information than if you were writing based only on the information you’d found by searching on the internet.

8. You can reach a wider audience

When you outsource your content to professional writers, they can publicize the published piece on their own blog and networks too. This means you’ll reach a whole new audience that might have never discovered your brand otherwise.

If you outsource content via a specialist marketing agency, you might also be able to have them share content on their own social networks or even have a client feature or interview on the company blog.

Even if you’re hiring on a ghostwriting basis and publishing content under your own name, freelance content marketing professionals will be able to help you get your content in front of more eyes. They can research other blogs to guest post on and can generally come up with other new ways to publicize your content.

9. You can experiment with different types of content

When we think of content marketing, blog posts immediately spring to mind. Of course, there is a lot more to it than that and you can outsource all different types of content including social media posts, e-books, emails, and even videos.

Infographics can be a highly effective way at boosting your SEO as others use them and link back to your site. Don’t have the graphic skills to create one? They’re very easy and affordable to outsource to a professional.

Want to publish an e-book but find the idea of putting one together overwhelming? Hiring a writer can help you to pull your ideas together and come up with the finished product on a very short timescale.

When it comes to content creation, over 80% of marketing professionals say that video is the hardest to produce. And yet video offers amazing promise and results. Short videos are one of the most highly shared forms of content on social media and are fantastic for engagement and conversions.

Producing video content marketing can seem like an overwhelming task but it’s something easy to outsource. So if you’ve got a handle on producing your own written content but you’ve not experimented with video yet, it’s well worth exploring the world of outsourcing so you can start to experience its benefits for yourself.

10. You can prove the ROI of outsourcing

Not sure whether you’re getting enough out of your outsourced content to make it worth your investment? This is easy to track and measure. In most cases, you’ll find that outsourcing content production will boost your ROI. Some of the things you can measure include:

  • The number of views and subsequent conversions on a particular piece of content
  • Increase in your social media following, shares, and engagement.
  • Increase in your sales and/or business revenue following the implementation of your content marketing plan.

If you outsource to a content marketing agency, they’re experts in helping you produce content that will help you to meet your business goals. If you’re publishing high-quality optimized and targeted content on a regular basis, then increased leads, conversions, and engagement are sure to follow.

11. You can execute your marketing strategy and meet goals faster

Work with a content marketing agency or strategist and you’re not only ensuring you have a constant supply of content to publish, but you’re also benefiting from marketing expertise and experience that may be way beyond your own skill set.

When it comes to marketing, it’s usually the case that the more you put in, the more you’ll get out. So you can hire a standard content writer who will follow the instructions you provide or you can invest more into partnering with a content marketing expert, who will work with you to make sure your content marketing strategy aligns with your business goals.

There’s a lot more to successful content marketing than just writing. A content marketing agency will help you to define what exactly you want to achieve from content marketing and can offer the tools and experience to make sure you get there.

They’ll also make sure that your content production aligns with the rest of your marketing plan so you’re publishing content at the right time to boost your other campaigns and increasing engagement across the board.

The Benefits of Outsourcing Content Abound

Content marketing offers too many benefits to be ignored, but not everyone has the time or resources to be able to write and produce their own content in-house.

While there are some downsides to outsourcing, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Hiring a writer or the services of a content marketing agency like ours help you to produce higher quality content, save you time and money, and put you in a better position to achieve your business goals.

If you’re interested in getting more traffic and leads for your website, or documenting your content marketing strategy, check out our Content Builder Service. Setup a brief consultation and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books!

The post 11 Benefits of Outsourcing Your Content Creation appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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11 Marketing Experts Reveal Their #1 Social Media Advertising Tip

11 Marketing Experts Reveal Their #1 Social Media Advertising Tip

Let’s talk social media. 

We all use it. It’s a platform that reaches billions of users, making it the perfect place for businesses to reach their audience. 

The world's most used social media platforms

Source

So while social media advertising is undeniably effective, it can also be pretty tricky to get right. There are a lot of different opinions on what works and what doesn’t.

Luckily, we’ve gathered some of the best and brightest minds in marketing to give us their #1 social media advertising tip. 

Let’s hear what they have to say!

Tip #1: Focus on a strong message

When it comes to social media advertising, the most important thing is to have a strong message that resonates. This means creating clear, concise, and easy ads for your target audience to understand.

Too often, businesses make the mistake of cramming too much information into their ads, which can be overwhelming and confusing for users. Instead, keep your message focused and simple so your target audience can easily understand it.

Name: Jamie Shostak

Title: Head of Growth 

Company: Appetiser App Development

Social Media (LinkedIn/Twitter): LinkedIn

Tip #2: Don’t sell the product, sell the outcome 

People are buying your product to solve a need and address a specific pain point. So what is the solution that your product is offering? And are you communicating that solution sufficiently on your social media channels? 

The goal is to educate, engage and inform as this builds customer trust—which is incredibly important. So instead of discussing your products’ features, look at the outcome. What problem does your product solve?

A great example of this is Apple. When talking about the new iPhone, they emphasize that their commercial was shot entirely on the latest iPhone instead of only highlighting the features. Or Nike. Their advertising is about how their shoes will allow you to run faster, jump higher, and reach your fitness goals. You’re not buying shoes; you’re buying a lifestyle. 

So who are you selling to? And what is the problem your product is solving? If you can’t answer these two questions, then you need to go back to the drawing board. 

Name: Yvonne Ivanescu

Title: Founder / Social Media Strategist / Travel Wrier 

Company: Now In Rio Swim / Spreaker / Now in Portugal

Social Media (LinkedIn/TikTok): Linkedin | TikTok

Tip #3: Test and Learn – then Pivot

Most marketers have a test and learn plan in place, but a shocking amount of marketing teams aren’t utilizing those insights to power creative direction for future campaigns. To make an impact with your testing spend, compile those insights over time, and use the layered findings to drive your content and creative planning. 

Name: Amanda Stevenson

Title: Marketing Strategist 

Company: Convince & Convert

Social Media: LinkedIn

Tip #4: Make your brand stand out using explainer videos

There is no doubt that videos have become one of the most powerful marketing tools over the past few years. More and more companies have been allocating big budgets to make videos for their brands. Just when you think those are good news, actually, the competitions are getting fiercer.

Therefore, choosing the best type of video for your marketing purposes is vital to make your brand stand out in the crowd. One of the most recognized video styles is explainer video. A report says that 73% of shoppers are more likely to purchase after watching videos explaining the products.

Explainer videos have both appealing visuals and compelling storylines to attract and engage audiences. In addition, they are well known to be straightforward and impactful in delivering messages. Another winning point of explainer videos is they can break down any complex concepts into digestible pieces of information in the most interesting way possible.

Name: Andre Oentoro

Title: CEO and Founder

Company: Breadnbeyond

Social Media: LinkedIn | Twitter 

Tip #5: Know your audience and align your social ads with your brand

It’s important to tailor your social media to your primary audience. Create personas to better understand your customers and then create social media posts and ads in a way that will appeal to their needs and preferences. Also, remember that your images, videos, and messaging should all align with your company’s brand, regardless of the channel you’re on. 

For example, if you’re a consultant that targets professional service firms, you might want to avoid creating TikTok videos that are funny or silly. While those videos might help you go viral, they might not help you reach your core audience, and they could possibly work against your brand and turn off your target audience. 

Name: Candice Stennett

Title: Vice President of Marketing

Company: SCORE

Social Media: LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook

Tip #6: Advertise where your users are

Sometimes the channel you market in will impact your results more than your actual marketing campaigns. This is because you need to advertise where your users are. For example, if you’re targeting B2B decision-makers, you will likely get far more results advertising on LinkedIn compared to a platform like TikTok. 

You should take some time to list down different platforms your ideal customers use and focus on the platform that is the most relevant to your audience. This not only gives you a higher ROI on your marketing spend, but it also allows you to build a relevant brand on a platform that your audience is active on. 

Name: Ali Ali

Title: Founder

Company: Alisquared

Social Media: Twitter

Tip #7: Use the B2Bob framework for B2B creatives 

This one makes so much sense, yet it’s often overlooked. With the introduction of stories, the attention span decreased, and along with it, the way we consume content altogether. If you add on the complexity of B2B where the challenge lies in showcasing the promise or benefit of the product, it may seem like there’s no point in even doing ads for B2B users. 

However, Facebook introduced the B2Bob framework after the company extensively researched the consumption habits of social content. So, instead of “business to business,” we should rethink the acronym as Brand, 2 seconds, Benefit. Or in other words, you should aim to showcase your Brand within 2 seconds by highlighting your Benefit while speaking to a human such as Bob, if you will. 

If you add storytelling to the mix, striking facts, or surprising benchmarks, your ads have a better chance of standing out from the crowd and stopping people from scrolling. 

Name: Raluca Bejgu

Title: Digital Marketing Manager

Company: Verifone

Social Media: LinkedIn

Tip #8: Go back to basics

Despite all the new trends constantly happening in social media marketing, I believe many of us still do not use basic strategies in full capacity.

When was the last time when you used the AIDA model while creating your social media posts? Of course, the type of content is important, but users’ psychology and best practices on how to get their attention are already in the books.

Name: Evaldas Mockus

Title: VP of Growth

Company: Omnisend

Social Media (LinkedIn/Twitter): LinkedIn

Tip #9: Emphasize more on content creation than media amplification. 

Most social media marketing teams (small or big) spend 80% of their time and budget on media buying rather than creating the content itself to buy the media in the first place. I’ve seen what works for my eCom business is to make more creatives because that’s the prime variable for relating with people, which leads to more sales. 

Allocate at least 60% of the efforts for contextual creatives and the rest for buying and distributing the media. This has worked really well in my experiences.

Name: Bhujal Patel

Title: Founder

Company: My Digital Kube

Social Media: LinkedIn

Tip #10: Tell a Story 

Advertising on social media is all about storytelling. People hang out on Facebook and other networks to share their stories – what they’re nuts about, what they’re tired of, and what they can’t keep in anymore. So instead of a generic product description with a cliche CTA, focus on the emotional side. 

Let’s say you’re going to promote cold email software. Your target audience must have tried lots of tools like yours. What’s the point in wasting time on one more? To get them interested, you could tell a controversial story.

For example, a typical cold email tool usually comes packed with humorous follow-up templates allowing senders to look like funny peeps to deal with. But the truth is – jokes sound manipulative, almost like negging, when told by strangers. And many influencers actually criticise this follow-up strategy. 

The world's most used social media platforms

Source: https://twitter.com/Marie_Haynes/status/1133461675548528640

That’s what you should talk about in your social ad.

Any contradiction or controversy will draw attention for sure. And if you add that your templates are based on a different approach and showed high response rates in your tests, people will want to try them.

Name: Mykola Haichenko

Title: Content Marketing Manager

Company: Visme

Social Media: LinkedIn | Twitter

Tip #11: Invest in Video Content

The most engaging sort of social media material is definitely video. Video content is 12 times more successful than other types of content, according to InVideo. In fact, it has a higher percentage of engagement than both text and image content put together.

Video helps you to be succinct and pique the interest of your audience in the first few seconds. Your ability to condense information into easily digestible snippets of content that are lengthy enough to hold viewers’ interest but short enough to leave them wanting more is key to your social media success.

Name: Eldo Roshi

Title: Co-Founder

Company: Codeless

And that’s a wrap!

There you have it, 11 social media advertising tips from some of the top marketing experts in the industry. 

What do you think? Anything that stands out to you that you want to try first? 

While fancy strategies are great to test and optimise, I believe that the best strategy is simply staying true to your brand: focus on what your product/service is and present it to those you know it will serve. 

And of course – get creative, have fun with it, and see how your brand can start attracting more people and start outperforming your competition!

 

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Why You Should Stop Selling In Your Content Marketing

stop selling in your content marketing

We often get asked by our customers to create content that is more promotional, or that has a direct product tie-in. Which is exactly the kind of content no one wants.

Over the course of my career, I’ve heard more than a few executives huff: “we are in the business of selling stuff ya’ know.”

At this point, I always love to share the fact that over 90% of buyer journeys start with a “basic” search like “what is content marketing.” Guess what? We only rank for that keyword because we wrote other basic posts like what is marketing, what is thought leadership, and what is brand storytelling. These people aren’t ready to buy from us right now. But they will someday.

Ands we’ll know because they’ll read why content marketing is important, how to build your SEO rankings, and how to measure content marketing ROI.

And then we’ll see conversions from our articles on why your business needs a blog writing service, and the truth about content marketing agencies.

As my friend Jay Baer says, there are only 2 letters different from “selling” and “helping.” I’ve tried selling. I’ve obeyed as executives asked me to create content to sell people. I watched that content fail. So stop selling in your content marketing. And start helping. Here’s how.

Stop promoting products in your content marketing for these reasons:

  1. Content marketing must help the buyer. And in doing so, you help the business.
  2. Brands need to think and act like publishers. This means creating content people actually want. Then promote your brand and product “on the edges” of that content.
  3. Promotional content simply doesn’t work. Buyers ignore it as we all have become amazing filters of any content that is trying to sell us something.
  4. Customer-focused content attracts readers who read and share the content providing increased reach, conversion and ROI.

What is content marketing?

I have often said that content marketing is the overlap between what brands know and what buyers ask.

There’s a large amount of content that brands create that no one actually wants. This is the “I am awesome.” “I am smart.” “Buy from us” content. Don’t be that guy or gal.

There is a large amount of content that your buyers are reading and sharing that comes from respected industry publishers. Be more like them.

Today, brands pump out a ton of promotional material. And yet, when we are ready to buy, we seek out the information we need or we love. This consumer-directed search means brands have to work harder to create more effective consumer-focused content.

Content today must compete with pictures of babies and kittens and puppies. If you want your content to be seen, read and shared, it has to be helpful, educational, or entertaining content.

The biggest mistake in content marketing is making the content all about you. We love to quote one of the earliest leaders in content marketing, Ann Handley, who said that in content marketing you need to take your brand (or product) out of the story and “make your customers the hero of your stories.”

Effective content marketing seeks to help the buyer. In doing so, you gain their attention, their respect, and ultimately their trust. This trust is what leads to sales.

But try to add a product pitch or promotional tie-in directly to your content, and the readers start to run for the door.

Don’t Believe Me? Test It!

Back in 2007, I joined SAP to run an online lead generation program. The aim was to get more high-quality leads for sales. The natural instinct of the business was to push product brochures, thinking this would provide a smaller number of more highly-qualified leads.

My instinct was to get new leads through thought leadership content, research reports and white papers focused on the buyers in our space.

So we tested this approach through publisher pay-per-lead programs. We gave publishers the content. They gave us the names and contact information of those who downloaded it. At one point we were testing more than 200 pieces of content across a dozen or so publishers. And the results were clear.

Product-based, promotional content drove almost zero response and no qualified leads. While customer-focused content drove, not just a higher volume, but also higher quality leads.

The responders of non-promotional content converted at a higher rate to new business that we could count as closed deals and cash revenue.

We also found out something else that was interesting: targeted content didn’t deliver more leads in the targeted audience.

What does this mean?

When we wanted leads in the retail industry, and pushed content specifically “for retailers,” even helpful thought leadership content, we received just as many leads in the retail industry as more generic, topic-based content such as “how to deliver amazing customer experiences.”

But these topics also drove high-converting leads in other industries as well.

The lesson? You must understand the topics that are interesting for your buyers. Then publish content that seeks to help them answer their biggest questions, challenges and concerns. You topic will likely be broader than you might initially think. And your content will be much more basic than you might think.

The bottom line: if you want content that works – that truly drives leads and sales – create helpful, non-promotional content.

If you want content that gets ignored, try to promote your business or sell your products.

The promise of content marketing is to attract an audience vs. buying it. 

This is why leading brands like Kraft, GE and Red Bull have said that content marketing delivers a significantly higher ROI than their traditional, promotional marketing efforts.

This is how we rank #1 and get a million visitors and nearly all our new clients from our own content marketing. This is how Televerde saw a double-digit increase in leads in 6 months. This is how B2B SaaS companies can 4-5x their traffic and trials.

Because when you earn your audience through effective content, you earn their trust. And when they are ready to buy and looking for information about the products you sell, they will come to you before they go to the competition.

So How Do We Promote Our Products?

The best way to promote your products is on your website.

We help more than 30 businesses to create content marketing experiences that attract early-stage buyers.

We advise our customers to create consistent, high-quality, helpful content that their audience wants to read and share.

Then we work with you on driving leads, trials, or sales conversions in a couple of ways:

  1. Your website’s main navigation. Do you invite people to explore your helpful content? I know a CMO who hates the word “Resources” on websites. TBH, it doesn’t really matter what you call it. Just let people know where they can get educated on the trends and important topics in your industry. Maybe even profile some of your articles on the homepage for those who aren’t ready to but. When your content marketing is part of your website’s main navigation, you will bring in visitors to your site that never came before. Some of them may read a helpful article and decide to check out the products you sell in the main navigation of your website.
  2. Middle-stage offers. Promote a “middle-stage” offer on the right hand side of your content, or at the bottom of the article like we do here. See that content offer after the 3rd paragraph of this page, the one on the right, and the one on the bottom of the page? They are all powered by a wordpress plug-in called AdRotate. Check it out. Create e-books and whitepapers to capture leads. (Or ask us to do this for you!) This is called “promoting on the edges” and constitutes the main way publishers make money today. If you look at our site, you’ll see we like e-books, webinars, free book PDFs, templates and “Ultimate Guides.” These are longer and deeper resources that middle-stage buyers are interested in. They require a name and email address, but are still customer-focused.
  3. Subscribers. If the goal of content marketing is to attract an audience, then the most important measure of success is the number of readers who subscribe to your content. But the added benefit here is you are building a database of names to nurture and convert deeper into the funnel.

At SAP, we had just one rule for our content marketing efforts: no promotional content or product tie-ins allowed.

We put this in place because 99.9% of our website traffic came from branded searches. This means only late-stage prospects who entered our company or product name into a web browser were visiting our site. Most of them had already completed their buyer journey and were just looking to validate the information they had already gathered themselves.

But the audience of people searching for unbranded terms in our product categories was 1,000 to 3,000 times bigger than this. And we weren’t reaching any of them.

By creating a content marketing resource center that sought to help our buyers and not promote the business, we attracted early-stage prospects. We measured our success based on the number of subscribers who opted-in to our content. And we converted a ton of leads that we would have never seen.

We ranked in the top position for the kind of web searches we knew our prospects were conducting. And in doing so, we delivered new leads and new paying customers for the business. We also elevated our internal experts and began what became a passion for me to help activate employees.

So stop trying to promote your product in your content marketing. It doesn’t work. That’s what your website is for.

Helpful content attracts an audience of prospects you would have never seen.

Ready to start helping and stop selling but gain more leads in the process? Learn more about our weekly blog writing services and get in touch with us to learn how we can help!

The post Why You Should Stop Selling In Your Content Marketing appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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Top 20 Content Marketing Blogs You Should Read Every Day

woman on a beach reading top content marketing blogs

What are the top content marketing blogs you read every day?

This is a question I get asked all the time.

It’s not easy to stay on top of the latest news and updates in content marketing. Smart marketers and business leaders follow the latest content marketing trends, tips, tricks, and hacks by reading the top content marketing blogs every day.

Why? Because companies that blog see 6 times the revenue vs. companies that don’t. Businesses that create consistent weekly content have 2-6 times more leads. Our clients see an average of 138% year-over-year growth in traffic and leads and a 7x Content Marketing ROI.

So that’s why we’re curating the latest in content marketing from the best content marketing blogs.  While there is a long list of blogs and media sites I browse, a bunch of great B2B Marketing blog sites, and many, many more sites I could mention, this is my go-to list of top content marketing blogs I read every day. And you should too!

The list spans across everything from online publishers, to marketing technology tools, to non-profit associations, to startup founder blogs, to other digital marketing agencies, to research organizations, and to independent content marketing consultants.

I’ve also listed some of the top articles for each site, according to one of my favorite  content marketing tools to give you a flavor for what they publish.

And if I missed someone you read every day, please let me know in the comments below?

The Top 20 Content Marketing Blogs You Should Read Every Day

  1. Content Marketing Institute
  2. MarketingProfs
  3. Hubspot
  4. Marketing Insider Group
  5. Orbit Media
  6. MarTech
  7. Moz
  8. Copyblogger
  9. Digiday
  10. eMarketer
  11. MarketingSherpa
  12. DivvyHQ
  13. Ann Handley’s Blog
  14. Optimizely
  15. Content Strategist
  16. Buzzsumo
  17. Televerde
  18. Optin Monster
  19. Semrush
  20. SmartBrief on Marketing

top content marketing blog CMI screenshot

1. Content Marketing Institute (@CMIContent) – everything you need to know about content marketing. If you pick one resource, this is the one. The amazing team at CMI know how to do it right. They don’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk too with awesome conversions, focus on subscriptions and a print magazine to boot. Best article of the past year? 100+ Content Marketing Trends and Predictions for Success in 2022 by Stephanie Stahl.

top content marketing blog MarketingProfs screenshot2. MarketingProfs (@MarketingProfs) – Led by their amazing Chief Content Officer @AnnHandley, this is one of the best resources covering the latest trends and thought leadership in marketing. If you only pick two sites, these are the two to read and share. Best article of the past year? 5 Steps to Prepare for First-Party Data By  Jonathan Moran

Top Content Marketing blog hubspot screen shot3. Hubspot (@Hubspot) – The top resource for inbound marketers. Hubspot has been one of the best content marketing examples to emulate right from the very beginning. Best article of the past year? Which Social Media Channels See the Most ROI? [New Data + Expert Tips] By  Caroline Forsey

best content marketing blog marketing insider group screen shot4. Marketing Insider Group (@MKTGInsiders) We are in fact the #4 most-read content marketing blog according to Rock Content and Feedspot. But I don’t want to be too presumptuous. You be the judge. My top posts of the last year are Google Makes It Official: Content Marketing Is Now the #1 Ranking Factor, How to Make a Content Calendar You’ll Actually Use, Why Social Media Isn’t Enough To Drive Your Business Growth, the Link Between PR and SEO and How Can You Leverage It, and 9 Examples of Ebooks that Convert Like Crazy

top content marketing blog Orbit Media screenshot

5. Orbit Media run by my friend Andy Crestodina is a must-read! I devour every single post these guys publish because they are always jam=packed with insights, stats and action items. Top post in the last year: How to Design A Blog: The 13 Best Practices of the Top 100+ Marketing Blogs. Pure gold!

top content marketing blogs Martech screen shot6. MarTech shares content and experiences that educate, engage and support you in your daily mission as a professional working at the intersection of marketing and technology. Best article in the last year: Getting back to basics: Marketing ROI. Oh I really like that one ?

top content marketing blogs moz screen shot7. Moz (@Moz) is he industry’s top wizards, doctors, and other experts offer their best advice, research, how-tos, and insights—all in the name of helping you level-up your SEO and online marketing skills. Best article in the last year: 22 Smart Google SEO Tips for 2022.

top content marketing blog copyblogger8. Copyblogger (@Copyblogger) “Since January 2006, Copyblogger has been teaching people how to create killer online content. Not bland corporate crap created to fill up a company webpage. Valuable information that attracts attention, drives traffic, and builds your business.” How to Write a Good Blog Post: 7 Practical Steps [2022]By  Sonia Simone

top content marketing blog digiday9. Digiday (@Digiday) Provides news and analysis to stay ahead of the trends transforming media and marketing. Their top post in the past year: Facebook collecting people’s data even when accounts are deactivated

top content marketing blogs emarketer10. eMarketer (@eMarketer) is a great marketer resource for stats. Hers’s their top article of the past year: TikTok to surpass YouTube in US.

top content marketing blogs marketingsherpa11. MarketingSherpa (@MarketingSherpa) provides research reports and blogs on marketing. And their top article of the past year is Marketing 101: What is digital marketing?

top content marketing blogs divvyhq12. DivvyHQ (DivvyHQ) is a leading content marketing platform for planning, creating, sharing, and analyzing your content efforts across the enterprise. In fact, we use them here at MIG to manage all our clients content! Their top post from the past year is How to Increase Your Site Authority with Every Piece of Content You Add by their co-founder Brody Dorland.

ann handleys top content marketing blog13. Ann Handley’s Blog (@AnnHandley) Ann Handley is a lovely writer, a digital marketing pioneer, and Wall Street Journal best-selling author who truly inspires people to create marketing that your customers will love, igniting real results for your business. Her best post in the past 12 months is Public Speaking for Introverts (And Those Who Forget How to Be Around People).

top content marketing blogs optimizely14. Optimizely Creating digital experiences that transform your company takes data-driven decisions, continued experimentation and constant invention. Optimizely Digital Experience Platform helps you unlock your digital potential and their blog supports content and digital experience management. Their top post this past year is The smart CMO’s guide to building a marketing analytics tool stack.

top content marketing blog strategist15. Content Strategist this blog by one of the original content tech platforms has been sharing content marketing advice for some time. Their top article is Brand Voice Study: Should Your Content Be Authoritative or Agreeable?

top content marketing blog buzzsumo16. Buzzsumo Blog is awesome in that they use their own platform to deliver content marketing insights like this top post from the past year: The Top 100 Content Marketers You Need To Follow Right Now. Also thanks to them for giving me the tool to find each site’s top content!

top content marketing blogs televerde17. Televerde is an integrated sales, marketing and customer care solutions organization that delivers pipeline, revenue as a service, and customer experience expertise with a human touch, best-in-class technology, and an operating model that is resilient to shifting market condition. Their top article is How a Strong B2B Brand Purpose Wins Customers (And Hearts)

optin monster top content marketing blog18.Optin Monster writes about my favorite topic after content marketing: conversion! Here is one of their top content marketing posts: How to Write a Great Headline That Drives Clicks -Step by Step

top content marketing blogs semrush19. Semrush is another tool we use here at MIG every day as I am checking on our client’s search rankings and results to make sure we give them the best content. Here is Semrush’s best piece of content in the past year: The Anatomy of Top-Performing Organic Content in 2022

smartbrief top content marketing blog20. SmartBrief on Marketing does a great job at curating the latest news on content marketing related articles from all over the web. Their top piece of content is Top Career Advice from Marketing Leaders

Did I miss one of your favorites? Or is one of your top resources too low on the list? Please let me know in the comments below!

Here at Marketing Insider Group, we specialize in blog writing and content marketing services. We’ve helped our clients take their businesses to new heights through quality content creation and SEO. We’d love to help you produce the engaging content your target audience is craving so you can boost traffic and rankings while winning ideal clients.

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