The Ultimate Guide to All Things Content Marketing

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What is Content Marketing

From our good friends at Junta42/ContentMarketingInstitute:

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

And from the admirable Brian Clark, a.k.a Copyblogger:

Content + Social + Search = Content Marketing

Why Content Marketing

Why Content Marketing is a Great SEO Strategy, Not a Short-Term Tactic – “Content marketing is increasingly leading to higher search rankings and more organic traffic” [Search Engine Watch]
Why Content Marketing Is More Cost Effective Than Digital Advertising [Research] + 7 Ways Content Marketing Is More Effective Than Digital Advertising
1. Content marketing drives three times the sales of digital advertising
2. Content marketing’s cost per lead drops 80% after the first five months
3. Content marketing’s leads generated per $1,000 of marketing spend passes leads paid search generated per $1,000 of marketing spend after nineteen months
4. Provides Trust
5. Supplies in-depth product information
6. Creates context for your brand and products
7. Answers customer questions
8. Presents ratings and reviews
9. Supports Search Optimization
10. Supplies social proof
7 Reasons Content Marketing is Better Than Link Building - ”
1. You Can Measure the Value of Content Easier Than you Can a Link
2. It’s Natural
3. Good Content Writers are Cheaper than Good Link Builders
4. It’s More Scalable
5. It’s More Defensible to Algorithm Updates
6. Authoritative Writers Are The Future – Google+ authorship
7. It’s More Fun
10 Content Marketing Statistics That Will Blow Your Mind - The InboundWriter Blog
Why Content Marketing is the New Branding - “Content is currency” [CopyBlogger]
The Rise of Content Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC] - SocialMouths & BlueGlass
- 90% of marketers are doing some form of Content Marketing, even if they don’t know it (Have you been doing some content marketing without realizing it?)
- 60% of B2B marketers plan on increasing their efforts this year
- 26% of budgets are allocated to content (obviously is much higher in small business)

With weak content, you will find yourself forcing links. With great content marketing and correct usage of media outlets, you will find that links tend to build themselves. – Right Hat SEO

How to Content Marketing

2012 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends - PDF - see image below for study results

B2B Content Marketing Tactics 2012

Content Marketing Stats

Social Media Marketing

Content Chemistry: The Periodic Table of Content [Orbit Media Studios] – pay attention to the legend below the periodic table (outlined in red)

Content Marketing Tactics

The Content Marketer’s Guide to Web Content [BlueGlass] – offers definitions, origins, when to use the content types and usage tips
- Lists and Listicles
- Articles
- Photos
- Cinemagraphs
- Infographics
- Interactive Infographics
- Video
- Video Infographics
- Kinetic Typography
- Graphs
- Quizzes
- Podcasts
100 Inbound Marketing Content Ideas - Free Ebook by Hubspot
- Fill your blog with content that resonates with your readers
- Repurpose existing content
- Position your company as a thought leader
- Make your content about your community
- Share your content through social media
- Analyze the effect of your content
100 Content Marketing Examples - Content Marketing Institute [CMI]
- 100 awesome examples from companies of various sizes, locations and industries
- Cutting-edge content samples from a wide variety of print, video, online and event campaigns
- Checklists, tips and links to additional resources
How to Create Content that Isn’t a Joke (pgs.18-19) [CopyBlogger]
Where to Find Content for Your Blog, White Papers, Webinars and Other B2B Marketing Initiatives - three in-house sources for amazing content
- Your sales team and customer service representatives
- Your social media team
- your product development team
88 Content Creation Ideas for Better Business Blog Posts, Images, or Videos [Search Engine Watch]
22 Ways To Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have A Clue [Infographic]
How to Create More Powerful Content Marketing Stories [CMI] – story telling is powerful and people connect with stories
- Use emotion
- Share your uniquness
- Keep it simple
- Make it shareable

Content Promotion

12 Things To Do After You’ve Written a New Blog Post[CMI]
1. SEO / Keyword integration
2. Syndication
  - Facebook
  - LinkedIn
  - Plaxo
  - Ning
  - other social sites
3. Shorten your post’s URL
4. Status updates
  - Hootsuite
  - Twuffer
  - Later Bro
5. Content teasers on other sites
  - LinkedIn group forums
  - LinkedIn Answers
  - Facebook groups
  - Ning community group forums
  - Niche industry forums
6. Social Bookmarking
  - Digg
  - Delicious
  - Stumbleupon
  - etc
7. Comment on relevant blogs
8. Seek and assist on Twitter
9. Email signature
10. Share content with target customers
11. Add content to your e-newsletter
12. Ask other bloggers to mention your post
Strategies to Market Your Content for Links [Search Engine Watch] – reverse engineer
600+ Places to Share Your Content and Get MORE Traffic… [Buzz Blogger] – good start
7 NEW Things to Do After You’ve Written a New Blog Post [CMI] – decent list
Surprising Results on Social Sharing Techniques [infographic] [B2C]
- Don’t use a question mark
- Keep it short and sweet
- Watch use of exclamation marks
- Include a hashtag (#) for B2B
- Numbers are effective for B2B tweet
How To Promote and Leverage Your Content Marketing
- Create content that is shareable and share-worthy.
- Look at distribution options in creative ways that extend the life of that content as long as possible.
- Choose the venues for the content to live on that allow you to maximize its utility and exposure. i.e. corporate blog, SlideShare, etc.

Content Marketing On Different Platforms

Each platform is it’s own culture, make sure you know how to use each to it’s fullest potential.

Content Marketing On Google+ - Jump on Google+ soon, this Google powered platform is the future of rankings - especially with the advent of AuthorRank/Google Authorship
Content Marketing With Video – Video is great for engagement. With more than 4 billion hours of video viewed each month, more and more brands are capturing an audience with video marketing integration.
Content Marketing On Tumblr – Here are 6 ways that brands can get more exposure on Tumblr
Content Marketing On Instagram – With over 27 million users to date, Instagram is a powerful social media tool. Here are 4 great examples of brands that are killing it on Insta
Content Marketing On Pinterest – Pinterest is the fastest growing social site. Know how to harness it’s power for content promotion

Tips, Tricks & Marty McFly

Influencer Marketing – What it is, and Why YOU Need to be Doing it [SEOMoz]- requires great content in order to function properly
A Template for Killer Website Content - [CMI] – “After years of experimenting, most of us web folks have the best practices of website content nailed down, and we feel like this template covers the bases.”
10 Must Have Templates for Content Marketers [CMI] – 10 templates that every content marketer can use
21 Types of Content We Crave [CMI] – “This is the kind of content we must create if our goal is to influence, inspire, and move to action the unique group of people we have chosen to reach.”
Creating an Editorial Calendar for Content Marketing [Distilled] – how-to
3 Components of a Content Marketing Editorial Calendar that Works [CopyBlogger] – The 3 basic components of an editorial calendar that works
Free WordPress Plugin – Editorial Calendar
The Jedi Master Approach to Content Marketing that Converts [Entreproducer] – Pay attention to the “Monomyth/Hero’s Journey” – Be that hero
Content Marketing: The Hero’s Journey [Sterling Communications] – write content that inspires more action than just simple sharing of the post
How to Build Brand Advocates Through Social Media Marketing [QuickSprout] – 5 actionable steps to creating brand advocacy
Advanced Content Tracking with Google Analytics [Analytics Talk] – This is part 1 of a two part series on advanced content tracking. This post is about why you might want to use this technique and how to implement it

Content Marketing

It’s high time hop in those CMS Deloreans with some Calvin Klein underwear and get back to the future with content marketing.

Feel free to let me know of any other great content marketing guides, tips, etc. you may have. If they’re good, I’ll be happy to add them to this post.

Good luck everyone!

Tyson Stevens: Search Engine Awesomization aspirant. I am constantly learning and sharing all that I learn and know...Well, not all, cause I'm currently in-house Enjoy!