• White papers are among the top 10 tactics used by B2B content marketers in a CMI study.
• 78% of buyers used white papers in the past 12 months to research B2B purchasing decisions.

Sounds simple, right? Write a white paper to improve the results of your content marketing efforts. If you want to get started now, you can click here to skip down below for a free white paper template. Too simple a directive? Keep reading.

There are a lot more questions to be answered prior to creating a white paper. Here are just a few of them:

White Paper or Whitepaper?

If you guessed “white paper,” you’re correct.  At least according to these sources:

• AP Style Guide
• Wikipedia
• Investopedia

According to Google’s data, people get it right roughly 83% of the time.

White Paper: Average monthly searches = 49,500

Whitepaper: Average monthly searches = 9,900

What is a White Paper versus an eBook?

Oh, the roads you will travel in trying to figure this one out. Here’s a quick summary of differences according to Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman from their book, Content Rules:

eBooks	White Papers
Broken into smaller chunks – designed for skimming and scanning	Long and linear – a deep read
Concept centric – based on ideas and trends of interest	Data centric – often based on formal research
Visually heavy – main text supplemented with call-outs, bullet lists	Text-heavy
Casual and collegial – a conversation among equals	Formal – impressive expert speaks to you

Having worked at IDC for 10 years prior to joining Curata, I prefer to look at eBooks as an evolution of the white paper; at least from a content marketing perspective. Some of Curata’s most downloaded eBooks are in some ways like a white paper according to the above descriptions: data-centric, based on quantifiable research, and deeply researched on a single topic, for example: the 2016 Content Marketing Staffing & Tactics Study. That said, according to the above distinctions, white papers do play a key role in educating and engaging buyers at a deeper level than your typical eBook. (If you do want to write an eBook, read Curata’s Ultimate eBook Template with free download.)

How do I get the Biggest Bang for My White Paper Buck?

Four quick tips to get the most return out of your white paper investment:

1. Create your white paper as part of a broader content strategy. A white paper should be fulfilling the objectives of your content strategy—for example:
   • building thought leadership in an area that aligns with your product direction.
   • addressing the pain points of a particular persona.
   • meeting the needs of your audience at a point in the buying cycle.
   • achieving “ownership” of a popular search term in Google.
2. Optimize the reuse and repurpose of white paper content. Creating a relevant and high quality white paper is a non-trivial endeavor. It would be a waste to simply create this asset, gate it behind a landing page, do some promotion and then move on to the next big project. A strategic way to ensure you get the most out of a white paper is to use the Content Marketing Pyramid framework. This puts a white paper at the top of pyramid, with the content from the white paper atomized into more bite-sized assets such as eBooks, webinars, infographics, blog posts, bylines, tweets, and so on. Using an editorial calendar such as the one in this free editorial template will enhance your execution.
3. Market your marketing. Once you’ve put all this time and effort into creating a white paper, you need to ensure that just as much effort—if not more—is invested into its promotion. Atomizing content as described above will help as most—if not all, of the pyramid components drive traffic to the white paper. Collaborate with your internal and external teams to tap into all available promotional channels, such as social media, newsletters, email programs, search engine marketing, cross-promotion with other content assets, and so on. Teams to align with include: social media, digital marketing, field marketing, marketing communications, and agency partners.
4. Measure pipeline impact. You can’t know what your ROI is until you measure it. There are many content marketing platforms on the market today, and the best of them, such as Curata CMP, offer sound analytics functionality, with the ability to measure things like social shares, leads generated, leads touched, pipeline generated, pipeline touched, and revenue influenced.

How do I Structure a White Paper?

At the end of this post is a a complete white paper template download, which is also chock-full of tips for completing each section. Keep reading to take a deep dive into each of these areas.

Title

Your title can make the difference between a good white paper and a great white paper. Spend time crafting a title that will grab your readers’ attention and entice them to read and share your white paper.

Tips:

• Review the following questions in preparation for title brainstorming: Who is your target audience? What are their greatest pain points, needs, and/or interests that are being addressed by this white paper? What are you providing in this white paper that your audience cannot get elsewhere? What are the key Google search terms you’re looking to target/own as a result of this white paper and its related Content Marketing Pyramid?
• Grab attention with a bold title, but don’t be too risqué. Ensure your title represents what is truly in the white paper. And remember, focusing on your audiences’ needs versus your own will keep you on a track to success.
• Unless you work in a highly technical industry, avoid buzzwords and stick to clear and easy to understand language.
• Abide by standards in your industry, but don’t sacrifice the opportunity to differentiate your white paper with the title.
• Consider search engine optimization as part of title creation.
  • Tap into tools such as Google Keyword Planner and Buzzsumo to see which words and phrases are being searched for.
  • Optimal title length for search engines: “Google typically displays the first 50-60 characters of a title tag, or as many characters as will fit into a 512-pixel display. If you keep your titles under 55 characters, you can expect at least 95% of your titles to display properly.” [Moz]
• Keep your title short, simple and to the point. As they say, less is more. Do take the time to create a shorter, more powerful title. Having trouble shortening your title? Break it down into sections with a colon, or insert a subtitle that can be more descriptive.
• Analyze which white paper titles already exist in your industry i.e., from your competitors. Determine which types of titles have been most successful (i.e., Google search ranking, social shares), and which aspects have helped set those white papers apart from the others. You may decide to emulate some of the attributes of the best titles, but don’t be afraid to take a chance and be unique.

Abstract or Executive Summary

The abstract provides another opportunity to grab your readers’ attention, and convince them your white paper is worth their time to read. Similar to the title, time should be spent developing a clear, concise and hard-hitting abstract.

Tips:

• Write the abstract after you have completed your white paper.
• Use a direct structure format for the creation of your abstract. That is, include the most attention-getting findings, insights, and recommendations from your white paper.
• Keep it short, simple and to the point. A commonly recommended length is 150 to 250 words.
• Put the entire abstract on the title page. Then you can use the title page as a separate sheet for your sales team to send to prospects.  Add a call-to-action linking to the full white paper and save it as a PDF.
• Ensure that the abstract answers the following questions:
  1. What is included in this white paper? (i.e., What audience pain or need is trying to be solved?)
  2. Why should I read this white paper? Give your audience a reason to take time out of their busy schedule to read your white paper.
  3. What are the white paper’s conclusions and recommendations?
• Have someone review your abstract. Preferably someone that knows your audience and has strong attention to detail.

Outline

Develop an outline prior to beginning the writing process; it will eventually take form as its shorter, more succinct cousin, the table of contents. The outline will provide a map and related trails to keep you on the correct path to meet your originally laid out objectives. It will ensure your messaging and content are on-target, and that information flows in an easy-to-follow manner for your readers. The following tips and subsequent section examples provide a good starting point.

Tips:

• DON’T SKIP THE OUTLINE. Yup, the first tip is that you shouldn’t skip the process of creating an outline. Yes, it will take time and delay the start of the writing process. However, it will save you an enormous amount of time in the long run, and more importantly, ensure you have a better final product.
• Target your audience’s needs. It’s critical to create a white paper focused on readers’ needs, interests and/or pain points. Take a non-egocentric approach to your content creation, minimizing the attention spent on your company and its products. There are plenty of other formats to provide company or product-specific information to your audience, such as data sheets for example. For additional tips on how to align with audience needs, refer to “The Four Steps to Content Marketing Enlightenment.”
• Collaborate with your team for outline creation. As the foundational design of your white paper, modifying your course at this stage is much easier than trying to change direction once the paper is written. Be sure to include team members as part of the development and review of the outline to ensure your white paper plan is on target.
• Plan on many revisions. Creation of an outline is an iterative process. Don’t hesitate to modify its design during the process.
• Maintain flexibility. Although the outline is intended to be the map or blueprint for writing your white paper, maintain the flexibility to adjust your outline as necessary once writing begins.
• Map out sections and subsections. It is important to break up your text into several sections, including section headers and subheads within each section. This increases readability and allows your reader to skim through the document and absorb the sections most relevant to their business.

The below sections provide an example of how to structure a white paper.

Introduction

If you’ve done a good job creating the title and abstract, your readers will be ready to dive into your story. The introduction is essentially the next level down from the abstract. More specifically, it’s an opportunity to introduce readers to the problem, need or pain point that is the basis of your white paper, as well as the related solution. Just as in the abstract, you need to pique your audience’s interest in the introduction and entice them to read further.

Tips:

• Set up the problem, need or pain point right up front.
• Grab your readers’ attention in the first sentence or two. Strive to make a great first impression—try using a controversial and/or bold statement.
• Use data to support your point(s).
• Provide additional detail to that included in the abstract, but avoid going into too much detail. Save the specifics for later sections.
• Introduce a framework that may be used throughout the white paper, or could even provide background into the topic.
• Indicate the objective(s) of the white paper, as well as what specifically will be included in subsequent sections. Providing a map or structure in the introduction will help your audience follow your thought process and understand how the white paper is organized to achieve its objectives.

Background/Problem Statement

The introduction provides an overview of the white paper. This section allows you to expand upon this overview, and thoroughly define the problem statement.

Sample questions to be answered in this section:

• What is currently happening in the market today? (i.e., What’s the current situation?)
• What are companies and/or individuals struggling with most, and why?
• What are the specific problems, needs and/or pain points?
• What are the potential benefits of addressing these problems, needs and/or pain points? Answering this question will help readers understand why your solution is of value; and more importantly, entice them to continue reading.
• What data points help to support answers to the above questions?
• What frameworks and/or models can be used to enhance readers’ understanding of this information?

Solution

You’ve provided a succinct description of the most impactful solutions in the abstract, and an overview of these solutions in the introduction. This section allows you to go into the specifics of the solutions.

Tips:

• Introduce the solution(s), including a clear definition and even a framework or model.
• Provide a detailed description of each part of the solution. Use subcategories as required to help readers draw distinct boundaries between different parts of the solution. Subcategories also make it easier for your audience to follow your thought process and absorb the content.
• Be very clear regarding the benefits of each of the solutions, including how it specifically impacts your audience.
• Target your solutions to different segments of your audience to improve your content’s relevancy.
• Provide specific, real-world examples to support your solution(s). These examples provide another opportunity to connect with different segments of your audience. For example, provide cases targeted for three different buyer personas.
• Create a figure and/or table as a stand-alone sheet to help readers visualize your solution(s). This sheet can also serve as a stand-alone asset for your readers and/or your sales enablement efforts. One example from our recent business blogging study can be seen below.

Conclusion

By this point you’ve told your readers what you’re going to tell them in the abstract and introduction; you’ve told them in the problem statement and solution; and then you need to tell them what you told them. The conclusion provides the opportunity to:

• Summarize the white paper objectives.
• Review the problem statement(s).
• Highlight the solutions and their value for your audience. Be clear regarding how these solutions address the problem statement(s).
• Finish with a strong statement. For example: a vision of future solutions, how your audience can develop new solutions on their own, and/or where they can go for additional information and/or resources.

Additional Resources

Provide a list of available resources for your audience. This may include resources you have sourced throughout the white paper.

More Tips for Creating White Papers

• Formatting & Coloring: Create a consistent color scheme based on the color of your logo. Use the most dominant color for your section headers. Use a softer version or a shade of gray as the subhead color. Use these same colors throughout all visual elements of your white paper such as charts, graphs or figures.
• Grammar & Editing: Ensure your white paper has been run through several editors for quality control. Once someone downloads your white paper, it is in his or her possession and you are unable to make further edits. Correct spelling and grammar will elevate your message and back up the credibility of your company.
• Promoting Other Assets: Use the white paper to link to your other content marketing assets, such as other white papers, eBooks or blog posts. Make sure these assets are highly relevant to the topic at hand and focused on answers the audience may need, rather than pushing your company’s products too aggressively.
• Curating Expert Content: Substantiate your message by including content from subject experts by getting quotes directly from them or curating their content. Be sure to follow ethical best practices for curating content, such as linking back to the original source, only taking a small portion of curated content, and adding your own annotation. For a guide to ethical curation, download our complete eBook on the topic: Content Marketing Done Right.

Ready to get started? Download this free template to create your own white paper today.

In this post I analyze the results of Curata’s recent survey of 1,000+ marketers to hone in on what these foxes are doing from a strategy, staffing and tactics perspective to kick ass with content. I share many of the staffing, process and technology benchmarks gleaned from the research, as well as what some of these foxes have to say about their own strategies. For a more in-depth presentation of the benchmark data and related guidance, download the entire eBook here: Content Marketing Staffing & Tactics Barometer.

Overview: Top 5 Content Marketing Strategy Areas to Focus On

We’re entering a new phase of content marketing. The marketers leading this pack are no longer focused on pure content volume or trying to hit the lottery with that one piece of content. These marketers—the foxes, are building the foundational elements of a practice that taps into the power of content to move an entire organization, versus simply a handful of people in a small corner of the marketing team.

More specifically, the foxes are focused on:

• Strengthening the content marketing team (e.g., 42% of companies have an executive responsible for content marketing).
• Creating a content marketing strategy (check out The Content Marketing Pyramid to see how we do this at Curata).
• Building out content marketing processes (i.e., production, distribution, analytics).
• Investing in content marketing technology (75% of foxes are increasing marketing technology investment).

SCOTT ABEL
Founder, CEO, and chief strategist at The Content Wrangler, Inc.  @ContentWrangler
“The single best practice that will set content marketers apart from the crowd is to focus on adopting intelligent content production efficiencies. The big challenge today is producing relevant content efficiently. It’s about scale, automation, and creating content the way factories create products: In a united, consistent, optimized way that provides the most bang for your content production buck.”

Survey Demographics

1,030 marketers participated in this survey. They were made up of:

• Participant Titles:
  • CMOs and VPs of marketing made up 8.7% of respondents
  • Marketing directors, managers and specialists were 45.9%
  • Marketing consultants and agencies were 16.7%
  • Marketing technology directors, managers and specialists were 9.1% of respondents
• Revenue:
  • 54.4% of companies were <$10M by revenue
  • 26.4% were $10M to >$100M
  • 12.6% were $100M to <$1B
  • 6.5% were $1B+

Content Marketing Works!

The new content marketing movement has had a significant impact on business, with 74% of companies increasing lead quality & quantity from their content. Marketing leadership is recognizing content’s positive impact, with 75% of companies increasing content marketing investment, and 43% increasing staff levels. However, the real work is just beginning.

Content marketing hype is coming to an end, indicating the beginning of its maturity across more organizations that will:

• Expand the strategic impact of content marketing efforts
• Fill skill-set gaps across teams
• Better leverage existing resources
• Get more rigorous on measuring content impact deep into the pipeline.

Content marketing is positively impacting the entire marketing & sales pipeline. Content continues to build awareness for organizations, and the best marketers are tapping into the power of content to more deeply engage leads, better influence sales opportunities and influence revenue growth.

CHRIS GAEBLER
Chief Marketing Officer, Arbor Works  @Chris_Gaebler
“Good content makes a point. Great content tells a story. Stories have tension and consider the humans involved. Start with the person, think about their struggles, and write.”

However, although content marketing has been growing significantly over the past three to five years, companies are only just starting to ramp up their efforts to take full advantage of the opportunities presented. As one example of the early stage content marketing is in, the average content marketing team consists of only three staff members.

Content Marketing is Still in the Infancy of Its Maturity

The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs’ 2016 content marketing study identified 32% of companies as being sophisticated or mature. This is similar to the 29% of companies considering themselves leaders in Curata’s study (i.e., the foxes).

Although roughly a third of companies are leading the pack, all companies have significant opportunity remaining by improving their content marketing practices. This covers many areas across people, process and technology.

Investment Continues to Grow

75% of companies are increasing content marketing investment, with 43% increasing staff levels. The 42% of companies with an executive responsible for content marketing will increase to 51% by 2017. Skill-sets being beefed up include writing (i.e., journalists), design professionals, and others.

This growth in staff is exciting and sorely needed as we enter a new phase of content marketing maturity. No longer are content marketing teams solely focused on trying to create one ‘home-run’ piece of content that garners thousands of shares and page views. This become too much of a lottery play. Now we’re focused on:

• Building a content marketing strategy that yields high quality content on a consistent basis
• Paying more attention to customers’ needs along the entire buying cycle
• Increasing relevancy by developing content focused on specific verticals, company sizes, and even specific accounts (e.g., supporting account-based marketing)
• Tapping into the reach of sales teams through sales enablement
• Learning what does and doesn’t work to get better and demonstrate impact

ROBIN GOOD
Writer, speaker, change-agent, & publisher of MasterNewMedia.org @RobinGood
“What do I believe is the single best practice that will set apart the top content marketers from the rest of the field this year? The ability to move away from the classical article metaphor to create content that is not only useful, rich in resources, and well documented, but which also provides real information benefits to the reader, either in the form of a learning experience, of a starting point for new discoveries, or as a problem-solving resource. Doing this is not easy, nor is it going to save anyone time—quite the opposite. But those who invest time and resources to create such content will stand out for contributing something of such real value or inspiration to many that it will last to promote their brand for a very long time.”

What’s Your Content Marketing Spirit Animal?

When thinking about your own organization and its current efforts to thrive in the content marketing environment, do you think of your business as:

The Fox
Cunning, strategic, quick-thinking, adaptable, clever, and passionate, with the ability to use your resources for survival and growth.

The Wildebeest
Follows the pack, afraid of being left behind.

The Elephant
Strong, stable, and patient. Slow to shift to changing situations.

The T-Rex
Formerly powerful but rapidly on the way to extinction.

There are many different animals in the jungle, and some are better suited for survival than others.

MONICA NORTON
Senior Director of Content Marketing at Zendesk @monicalnorton
“The content marketers that stand out from the crowd are risk-takers. They experiment. They never get too comfortable. If they don’t fail once in a while, they’re playing it too safe.”

So at a high level, what are the foxes up to?

Content Marketing Strategy in 2016

The majority of marketers (75%), plan to “increase” or “significantly increase” their content marketing budget in 2016. Accountability for this investment will increase in the next six to eighteen months as more rigor is applied to content’s pipeline impact.

The ability to respond in real-time—and not only newsjacking—is becoming more and more important. However, good planning provides the foundation from which you can respond most effectively, which is why having a great editorial calendar remains crucial. You can find the best in the Ultimate List of Content Marketing Editorial Calendar Templates.

DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT
Marketing strategist & bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR, and Newsjacking @dmscott
“Gone are the days when you could plan out your entire content marketing programs well in advance and release them on your timetable. It’s a real-time world now, and if you’re not engaged, then you’re on your way to marketplace irrelevance.”

Top 6 Content Marketing Challenges

1. Limited budget (including staff)
2. Creating enough content on a regular basis
3. Finding the best sources to create amazing content
4. Measuring the impact of content
5. Organizational culture
6. Promoting content

Companies continue to struggle with tapping into expertise across their organization to create compelling content, as well as recycling existing content into different formats across different channels.

Leading companies—the foxes—struggle with budget just like everyone else. However, they are more focused on finding sources for better content rather than creating enough content, and they don’t struggle as much with organizational culture supporting content marketing endeavors.

Other insight regarding these challenges includes:

• Limited budget and content, as well as source discovery, will become easier problems to resolve with organizational structure and process changes, along with content marketing technology.
• Measuring the impact of content is increasing in priority. The ability to measure the impact of content allows marketers to create more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
• Promoting content was ranked as the lowest marketing challenge. Promoting content helps marketers get the most out of what they create before creating more. Don’t forget to market your marketing, and don’t just leave it up to your social media team!

Guidance for addressing these challenges in this post and the related eBook are structured into a People, Process and Technology framework.

The Fox’s Content Marketing Strategy & Tactics: People

Leading marketers are focused on:

• Hiring a content marketing lead who will drive strategy and orchestrate the content marketing strategy across many marketing disciplines.
• Build out the team, focusing on the greatest skill-set gaps as detailed below.
• Improve staff alignment across the organization.

42% of Companies Have an Executive Responsible for Content Marketing Strategy

Do you currently have an executive in your organization directly responsible for an overall content marketing strategy? (e.g., Chief Content Officer, VP or Director of Content)

Expectations for growth of this senior role were high in 2015, with 49% of companies expecting to have a lead for this role by the end of 2015. Growth has been slower than expected however. That said, this role exists at 42% of companies today with this expected to increase into 2017.

Of the foxes, 53% have this role in place today, versus 32% for the elephants and T-rex. Small companies with less than $10M in revenue, and large companies with $1 billion+ in revenue should see a 30% increase in staffing for the lead role in 2017.

Two thirds (68%) of these senior content marketing executives have global authority—a good sign given how important collaboration across an organization is for content creation and input, content reuse, and content distribution.

“Chief Content Officer” Not a Common Title for Content Marketing Executives

What is the exact title of the executive in your organization directly responsible for overall content marketing strategy?

The most common title for content marketing executives is Content (Marketing) Director or Manager—not Chief Content Officer. Most folks titled Chief Content Officer are in agencies or publishing organizations. 68% of companies have up to three people on their content marketing team, and 42.5% of companies are increasing content marketing staff levels this year.

29% of $1 billion+ companies are struggling to align content marketing strategy across their teams, while small companies are leading the pack in content marketing alignment.

What’s the Greatest Skill-Set Missing From Today’s Content Marketing Team?

JAY BAER
Marketing consultant, speaker, author of New York Times bestseller Youtility @jaybaer
“The best content marketers will think video first in every element of content marketing. Because if you have video, you have audio. And if you have audio, you have text (via transcription + editing). Video is now the seed corn for all great content marketing.”

Alignment Also Key Success Factor for Content Marketing Impact

Please indicate how aligned your content marketing strategy and tactics are across internal teams (e.g., campaign management; social media; marketing operations; product marketing; regional/field marketing).

The Fox’s Content Marketing Strategy & Tactics: Process

Leading marketers are focused on:

• Creating a content marketing strategy (step-by-step provided in this webinar)
• Completing a content audit.
• Focusing content creation on segments and accounts. (e.g., account-based marketing)
• Reusing content. (e.g., using the Content Marketing Pyramid as a framework)
• Creating and curating content.
• Measuring content’s impact.

A common theme among foxes is stretching the dollar.

They’re asking themselves:

1. What content do I already have?
2. How can I reuse and repurpose content?
3. How can I collaborate and curate?

Do You Know Which Content Exists Across Your Company, and Where It Is?

How often does your organization complete an audit of your company’s content?

37% of content marketers never complete a content audit!

Reasons to Perform an Audit:

• Know what content you have and don’t have
• Focus content creation and curation efforts on gaps in content inventory
• Prevent investing in duplicate content
• Identify and then replace or remove outdated content
• Determine which content can be reused and repurposed
• Improve quality of existing content

Content Marketing Leaders Create Content for Individuals (Account-Based Marketing)

BETH KANTER
Author, trainer & nonprofit innovator in networks, learning, and social media @kanter
“The top content marketers understand their audience and why they want to consume content, and create and curate high quality content that helps them reach their goals.”

29% of Leading Marketers Systematically Reuse and Repurpose Content

The Content Marketing Pyramid

Use the Content Marketing Pyramid to execute a content campaign, assuring optimal content consumption, reuse and reach. For the full framework for developing and executing your content marketing strategy, download The Content Marketing Pyramid eBook.

JASON MILLER
Bestselling author, global content marketing leader at Linkedin @JasonMillerCA
“The one single best practice that will set apart the top content marketers from the rest of the field in 2016 is… doing more with less by extracting every last bit of value from your existing content while striking a balance between data, creativity and your own personality for content creation moving forward.”

The Best Marketers Create AND Curate Content

Almost two-thirds of foxes (leaders) are curating content, with a similar percentage outsourcing content creation. Companies not taking advantage of these strategies are missing a HUGE opportunity to better leverage resources and more deeply engage with users. The recommended content mix is: 65% created, 25% curated and 10% syndicated content. Target one-third of your created content to be outsourced.

What percentage of companies are curating content or outsourcing created content?

Additional reasons to outsource or curate content? To better leverage resources, improve the ideation process, better engage buyers through higher value content, and engage with your ecosystem.

What Exactly is Content Curation?

Content curation is when an individual (or team) consistently finds, organizes, annotates and shares the most relevant and highest quality digital content on a specific topic for their target market.

Have you ever published a “best of” post, commented on and shared a link on Twitter, or posted a link to Facebook with your commentary? Then you’ve curated!

To be clear, content curation done right is not pirating. Follow these 6 tips to curate content ethically:

1. If you are reposting an excerpt from an original article, make sure your excerpt only represents a small portion of the original article.
2. Always identify the original source and drive visitors to the original publication. 3. Retitle all content you curate.
3. Don’t use no-follows on your links to an original publisher’s content.
4. Inject some creativity and your own voice into your curation efforts. E.g. provide context for the material you use, add your own insight and/or guidance for your audience.
5. Make your commentary longer than the excerpt you’re reposting.

To really curate like a rockstar, download The Ultimate Guide to Content Curation eBook.

Analytics

“Half the money I spend on advertising content marketing is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” – (with apologies to) John Wanamaker

The foxes are laser-focused on measuring the impact of content; to justify its impact on the organization as well as to drive continuous improvement. These leaders also get that content impacts the top, middle and bottom of the funnel if done right.

Content marketing leaders excel at performance measurement

JIM LENSKOLD
Marketing expert, international speaker, president of Lenskold Group and author of Marketing ROI: The Path to Campaign, Customer and Corporate Profitability @JimLenskold
“Marketers with ROI-based measures will gain advantages as they maximize their financial performance. Content measures must go beyond engagement and leads to show contribution to both incremental sales and increased customer value.”

Seeing the Impact of Content

Estimate the impact of your company’s content marketing investment on the following areas during the past 12 months.

Content marketing has had the greatest impact on the top of the funnel (TOFU) so far. However, the foxes are seeing significant impact on MOFU & BOFU as well. They are looking at metrics across the funnel, from leads generated and influenced at the marketing-owned stages, to sales opportunities generated and influenced.

Time to Raise the Performance Measurement Bar

Data-driven content marketing is possible, and can yield significant results. For example, Curata used its own content marketing platform, integrated with Marketo and SF.com, to demonstrate that long form blog posts generate 9 times more leads than short form blog posts. (full blog post here) Investing in marketing technology makes this process possible.

The Fox’s Content Marketing Strategy & Tactics: Technology

There’s no doubt that the number of technology solutions continues to grow, as evident by the below Content Marketing Tools Universe figure below. 75% of foxes are increasing marketing technology investment in 2016 to take advantage of these new solutions. However, a key step in getting the greatest benefit out of this investment is integrating new software into your existing tech stack. 40% of companies have either “moderately” or “fully” integrated their marketing and sales force automation systems, compared with one third in 2015. 59% of foxes are dedicating effort to MAP and SFA integration.

Summary:

Content marketing is impacting ALL stages of the pipeline. The foxes get this, and as a result content marketing is entering a new phase of maturity. Don’t miss the boat!

• Build your content team: both internal and external. Take a Center of Excellence approach.
• Identify opportunities to stretch your content marketing budget (e.g., repurpose and reuse content, tap into content curation).
• Raise the performance measurement bar to go beyond measuring page views and social media. Dive deep into marketing pipeline impact and sales pipeline impact (examples here).
• Tap into the power of content marketing technology: Establish a closed-loop content supply chain, and integrate with marketing and sales automation (e.g., the content marketing platform is complementing marketing salesforce automation). And above all, don’t forget to have fun with it!

What you need is an effective, documented content marketing strategy. Enter the Content Marketing Pyramid, which:

• Improves your focus with an organized strategy that establishes clear goals and priorities
• Stretches your budget by making each piece of content work harder
• Increases your production capacity by making more efficient use of valuable resources

So you can:

• Create a predictable stream of successful content
• Engage your buyers
• Drive pipeline activity for marketing and sales

You were not given a content marketing budget in order to create content. You were given one to increase brand awareness and build your sales and marketing pipelines. Using the Content Marketing Pyramid helps you do just that. (For a deep dive, download Curata’s Content Marketing Pyramid eBook.)

The Content Marketing Pyramid enables the development of content and related assets intended to reinforce common messages/themes through multiple content formats, distribution methods, and promotion channels across owned, earned, and paid media. The Pyramid assures optimal content consumption, reuse, reach and impact. It provides a common strategic process to align different parts of an organization around “content,” ensuring consistency across functional, geographic, and business unit boundaries.

Why the Content Marketing Pyramid is so Effective

1. Unified Content Objectives

One of the most important purposes of the Content Marketing Pyramid is to align all content around corporate objectives and marketing themes. The framework helps you document and share this strategy across all departments in your organization so everyone is working toward the same goals and using the same playbook for content production.

2. Message Repetition

Marketing themes are most effective when they expose the buyer to a consistent message via multiple points of contact across a sustained period of time. The Content Marketing Pyramid facilitates intentional and strategic repetition of your key marketing messages across multiple channels and in a wide variety of content formats.

3. Content Saturation

The most effective content marketing programs extend far beyond owned properties by distributing and promoting content via earned and paid media channels. You also expand your content’s reach to include new audiences across multiple channels such as social media, sponsored content, and contributed postings. Best of all, you don’t have to reinvent your core message for each respective audience—you can adapt and strategically repurpose your existing content to get it in front of more people.

4. Format Diversity

While some audiences may enjoy an interactive webinar, others may prefer reading a print book or listening to a podcast series. The Content Marketing Pyramid framework makes it easy for you to create a plan that delivers a consistent marketing message across a variety of content formats and channels. This allows you to cater to all segments of your audience, expanding your reach and mind share.

5. Flexible Content Creation: Top to Bottom or Bottom to Top

You might begin your pyramid with the development of a cornerstone research study that you break down and repurpose into supporting assets and engagement touch points. Alternatively, you might be inspired by some particularly insightful comments on a blog post or a conversation in a social community and build up from the bottom to the top of a pyramid. One of Curata’s most successful pyramids began as a long-form blog post not intended to ever be a pyramid: The Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics & Metrics.

6. On-the-Fly Content Maneuvers

The Content Marketing Pyramid allows you to take advantage of unexpected content opportunities like news-jacking, event-related content, and jumping into spontaneous industry conversations. Because each Pyramid gives you a comprehensive overview of all the content planned in support of a particular marketing theme, you can easily coordinate the insertion of unplanned content in a cohesive and integrated way.

7. Balanced Content Mix

The Content Marketing Pyramid makes it easy for you to adhere to best practices for balancing different types of content. Using this framework, you can efficiently plan the right ratio of:

• Created vs. Curated Content: 65% created x 25% curated x 10% syndicated (e.g., analyst white papers)
• High Effort vs. Low Effort
• Owned vs. Earned vs. Paid media

8. Operational Efficiency

The Content Marketing Pyramid helps you streamline and empower your internal operations by:

• Aligning all content marketing activities with clear corporate objectives
• Providing both a long-term road map and a short-term operational plan for content development and distribution
• Unifying all your efforts and teams around a central strategy and process
• Reducing lags and inefficiencies in your content marketing workflow
• Requiring the identification of clear and measurable goals and objectives
• Giving you a way to assign value to and measure the performance of each piece of content within a campaign

9. The Ultimate Reward of the Pyramid: Pipeline Impact

The Content Marketing Pyramid makes it easier for you to achieve these goals by helping you provide consistent, focused, and highly relevant content. It isn’t about providing more content; it’s about providing the right content–content directly aligned with your corporate objectives, that supports the needs of all functional roles within your organization, and gives your customers and prospects exactly what they want.

When you build out your content programs according to the Pyramid framework, you create an upside down funnel that draws people in and drives up from Level 5 to Level 1, at which point they are prompted to provide contact information in exchange for access to key pieces of Core Content. Each piece of content in a Pyramid Level drives the reader to another piece of content higher in the Pyramid. For instance:

• A Level 5 social media post, comment on a third-party blog, or response to a forum question might include a link to Level 4 blog post.
• That Level 4 blog post invites the reader to view a Level 3 infographic or sign up for a Level 2 webinar.
• The content in that infographic or webinar is in turn attributed to a Level 1 eBook or whitepaper, which requires contact information to download.

There are multiple points in this scenario where you might choose to gate content behind a registration form, but wherever you choose to do so, all content is ultimately driving your audience to a point where they have provided enough information to become an official lead in your pipeline.

Will content marketing ever be easy? No. But nothing worth doing ever is. Content Marketing is a long-term play that can deliver a substantial return on your investment if you build a smart strategy and efficiently execute against that strategy.

The Content Marketing Pyramid is the only framework that provides definitive and in-depth support across all aspects of your content marketing practice: the planning, process, and–ultimately–the performance. If you’re interested in finding out more, download Curata’s Content Marketing Pyramid eBook.

Most marketers are making significant investments in content marketing to drive awareness, with the better practitioners using it to grow leads and revenue.  If statistics about how many marketers are making the shift to content marketing are enough for you (and your boss) to move full steam ahead with your content marketing initiatives, then I’ve included some of this data below.  If you need a better understanding of content marketing, its proven impact to marketers and real examples of it in action, then read on.

• 88% of B2B marketers in North America use content marketing. [Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs]
• 76% of marketers are increasing investment in content marketing. [Curata]
• What percent of marketers will increase their use of the following content marketing related activities: Original visual assets(73%); Original videos (72%); Original written content (69%); Original audio (26%). [Social Media Examiner]
• 82% of marketers curate content. [IMN, Inc.]
• Click here for even more data.

What is Content Marketing?

According to the experts, content marketing is:

• “developing, executing and delivering the content and related assets that are needed to create, nurture and grow a company’s customer base” [Curata]
• “process and practice of creating, curating and cultivating text, video, images, graphics, e-books, white papers and other content assets” [Gartner]
• “marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience” [Content Marketing Institute]
• “marketing strategy where brands create interest, relevance &  relationships with customers by producing, curating and sharing content” [Forrester]

Is Content Marketing Really NEW??

Yes, marketers have been producing content for hundreds of years; however, this content marketing stuff really is new.  It includes:

• New Content Formats;
• New Channels; and most importantly,
• A New Way of Communicating! (e.g., non-egocentric; by persona; by account)

New Content Formats

Yes, the traditional forms of content do continue to be highly valuable (white papers, case studies), however, there are new forms of content in addition to new ways to “package” content. (e.g., social media, eNewsletters, blog posts, videos, ebooks and infographics) [click here for a detailed white paper template]

New Content Channels

Here are just some examples . . . . And yes, I really do find it exciting how many opportunities we now have to distribute our content across the Internet:

A New Way of Communicating

The “old” way of using content was a one way communication by marketers to their prospects, solely focused on how great their company and products are, and why people should buy their products. This type of content certainly still has its place towards the bottom of the funnel; however, today’s content marketing involves also creating content that is educational, entertaining and relevant to an audience at the middle and top of the funnel, and even before our prospects enter the funnel/buying process.  The best marketers get this new way of creating and curating content, and have stopped egocentric marketing. Today’s content marketing is intended to build trust and a lasting relationship with prospects, so that they will look to your company when they are ready to enter the buying process. In many cases your content may not even have anything to do with your company’s product. (e.g., Here at Curata we published an entire blog post and template on Content Interview Questions and Answers to help our customers hire great employees and/or prepare for their own job interview)

The Real Benefits of Content Marketing

Content marketing offers real benefits. . . to you, your career, your company and your customers.

Buyers are Hungry for Better Content = Opportunity for Marketers

Buyers are hungry for better content, to help their career, to help them with their jobs and to help with their purchasing decisions; and they are on-line looking for this content before even reaching out to your sales people:

• 67% of B2B buyers rely more on content to research and make B2B purchasing decisions than they did a year ago. [DemandGen Report]
• Type of content used in the past 12 months to research B2B purchasing decisions: White Papers (83%); Case Studies (67%); Webinars (75%); eBooks (68%); Videos (63%); Blog Posts (56%); Infographics (52%). [DemandGen Report]
• “57% of the purchase decision is complete before a customer even calls a supplier.” (Corporate Executive Board)
• “67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally.” (SiriusDecisions)

But don’t get too excited just yet at the thought of publishing all that wonderful content for your audience. As much as buyers value content, they are also overwhelmed by irrelevant and low quality content. Avoid the steps that will inevitably lead to a content marketing death wish. (e.g., creating boring content, only focusing on your product(s), not tapping into the power of content curation)

Content Marketing Impacts The Entire Marketing and Sales Pipeline

Content marketing is a lot more than simply a blog post or some infographics. From a marketing strategy perspective, content marketing provides value to awareness building, lead generation, sales enablement and revenue.

Curata asked 600 marketers about the impact of content marketing investment on each part of the pipeline. Two-thirds or more of marketers indicated a positive impact on each area.

Impact of Content on Curata’s Lead Generation Process

Curata depends upon content marketing for a significant part of its lead generation goals, with over 80% of sales opportunities being marketing generated. We have even completed an analysis of what types of content generate the greatest number of leads using a data-driven content marketing approach. For example, data analysis using our own content marketing platform (including integration with Marketo and Salesforce.com) indicate that, on average, long-form content generates 8x more page views, 3x more social shares and 9x more leads than short-form content. [Refer to this post on Data-Driven Content Marketing for additional details and content-related metrics]

Content Marketing Offers the Missing Link for Marketing Automation

Salesforce automation (SFA) fuels revenue by tracking and supplying sales opportunities and leads. Marketing automation platforms drive SFA by supplying marketing qualified leads. But what drives the marketing activities and leads of marketing automation platforms? The answer is CONTENT!

Content is the fundamental currency for marketing automation. Like a car without any gas, marketing automation will not get very far without content.

Content is needed for everything from a website (which is tracked by marketing automation), to email campaigns, to even pay-per-click landing page offers.

If it were not for content, many of the key parts of marketing automation would cease to function. With no content, drip campaigns would come to a halt — there would be no content to drip to leads. With no content, lead scoring would stop since there would be no content for a lead to browse on a site. With no content, many demand generation campaigns would come to a halt because there would be no enticing offers for many lead capture landing pages.

Given that content is crucial to the customer acquisition process, what tools and technologies can support this? There are a myriad of content marketing tools out there. But there’s still a need for a Content Marketing Platform (CMP) that sits on top of the Marketing Automation Platform and Sales Force Automation system. This CMP needs to supply content downstream to generate and nurture leads, that are then converted to opportunities and revenue by sales. [Refer to The Emergence of the Content Marketing Platform to learn more about this market evolution, the leading CMP vendors and how much you should expect to spend for this new class of software]

More Data Demonstrating the Benefits of Content Marketing

• 36% of companies with a documented content strategy indicate that their content marketing is “very effective” or “extremely effective.” [Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs]
• 77% of all companies rate their social media marketing successful to some extent at achieving the most important objectives set for it. [LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community]
• The power of the blog as a part of a content marketing strategy:
  • 55% of business bloggers are getting 5% or more of their corporate web site’s traffic from their blog. [Curata]
  • The greatest impact that today’s business bloggers have on their organization are: thought leadership, SEO and brand visibility and buzz. [Curata]
• How effective have B2B marketers’ content marketing efforts been at delivering business value? Very Effectively (14%); Somewhat Effectively (51%); Neutral (27%); Somewhat Ineffectively (6%); Not effectively at all (1%) [Forrester]

Real Life Examples of Content Marketing In Action To Help Build Your Business Case

There are many great examples of content marketing in action. I’ve included just a few of them below, including a cross section of small and large companies.

Alcatel-Lucent

Alcatel-Lucent has built a microsite for its IT audience that is building thought leadership for the Alcatel-Lucent brand and driving referral traffic to its other web properties.

Company Description: Alcatel-Lucent is a leading innovator in the field of communications technology, products and services. With over 150 years of experience, they provide solutions for enterprises, service providers and governments worldwide.

Content Marketing Opportunity: Create a thought-leadership resource for a global technology audience with the most relevant, diverse content on emerging technology and executive-level business strategy. The site is also intended to drive web traffic to its other web properties.

Web Site: IT Strategist

What is it? Alcatel-Lucent created a destination site designed specifically for IT professionals that want to learn and stay up to date on enterprise-focused IP infrastructure and communication solutions along with top IT issues

What does this site contain? A mix of content created by their own expert staff, coupled with curated content from across the web; thereby bringing in the best that industry experts have to offer. There is a hyper-focus on creating and curating content for their target audience, IT professionals. This content supports Alcatel-Lucent’s direction, and provides them the opportunity to bring in 3rd party perspective which supports their brand image.

Benefits: 

• Alcatel-Lucent is getting more information out to readers and validating credibility with industry insights by publishing 5-30 relevant articles per day on the IT Strategist and only spending 45 minutes to an hour on daily curation using content curation sofware.
• The higher volume of publishing has resulted in increased web traffic.
• The IT Strategist is becoming a go-to source for emerging technology information and executive level strategy planning.

Verne-Global

Verne-Global has built the #1 media site on Google search for news about green data centers by using content marketing. As a result, it is the leading referral site of qualified prospective customers to Verne Global’s corporate site, with approximately 15% of traffic sourced from it.

Company Description: Verne Global is a wholesale supplier of ‘green’ data center space that provides a 100% renewable power solution at cost-efficient pricing. Based in Keflavik, Iceland and Washington, D.C., Verne Global helps corporations solve their abundant energy consumption problems by providing an alternative, environmentally green way to store data.

Content Marketing Opportunity: Educate the market about the inherent benefits of the green data centers by using content marketing, and then strategically divert prospective customers to the Verne Global solution. (i.e., referral traffic)

Web Site: Green Data Center News (www.greendatacenternews.org)

What is it? A robust news and opinion site to establish Verne Global as the leader in green data centers.

What does this site contain? Original, created content (blog posts) and high quality, relevant curated content

Benefits: 

• It has quickly become the hub for up-to-the-minute IT energy efficiency information from around the world, with 000’s of hits each week.
• The greendatacenternews.org site is the #1 organic Google search result for “green data centers”. This is a key factor in this site being the source of 15% of total traffic referred to the Verne Global corporate site.
• The greendatacenternews.org site is a 2 time Stevie web site awards winner.

Lenovo

Lenovo has pre-loaded its Companion app on all Windows 8 PCs and tablets globally. Lenovo offers robust global and local content to 7 key markets through this app, thereby, providing the best experience for its customers with their Lenovo PCs or tablets.

Company Description: Lenovo is a $39 billion global Fortune 500 company and a leader in providing innovative consumer, commercial, and enterprise technology.

Content Marketing Opportunity: Increase daily visitation, encourage repeat users and build customer loyalty for Lenovo by providing current, high quality, localized content (created and curated) for a global audience in the Lenovo Companion app which is pre-loaded on all Windows 8 Lenovo PCs and tablets globally.

Application: [source]

What does this application contain? Millions of Lenovo users have one app, one place on their PCs or tablets where they can check what is new with their system and Lenovo, access support when needed, and read up on tech developments and opinions from a stable of Lenovo experts, partners, publishers and bloggers.

Benefits: 

• Average daily visitation to the Lenovo app has increased 113 percent and repeat visitation has increased 143 percent as a result of their increased use of content marketing – created and curated content.
• The Lenovo Companion is the highest performing of all the Lenovo-developed Innovation Apps.

Next Steps

With the above information in hand, you’re now in a position to build a more solid business case for your boss to invest in content marketing.  Key steps to help build a plan to share with your boss include:

• Develop a preliminary content strategy (check out this post for how to create a content strategy)
• Cite any data you can from past experiences within your company about the power of content marketing, and use the data in this post (Arnie Kuenn recommends using a pilot program to help get data to build your case)
• Explain how content marketing can help achieve your marketing goals.
• Be prepared to overcome objections.

Still looking for more help? Join one of our weekly content marketing webinars, or reach out to our Curata content marketing specialists to see Curata’s own content engine in action.

In fact, business blogging is a strategy employed by 80% of marketers, as reported in the Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs 2015 B2B Benchmark Study. Although many companies have a business blog, they are largely underutilized.

A well-run blog can become the cornerstone of a content marketing strategy and can have a myriad of benefits: brand awareness, referral traffic and lead generation to name a few.

The good news is that many marketers are already seizing the opportunity in business blogging. According to our recent study of 425+ marketers, Business Blogging Secrets Revealed, 56% of leading marketers are hiring resources dedicated to a business blog.

But how can you ensure that this investment will lead to the aforementioned benefits? Click through the following SlideShare to see how the blogs with 10,000+ page views a month are getting the most impact from their content.

For an even closer look at the results of our study, download a free copy of our eBook on the topic.

We recently conducted a study of 600+ marketers to find out what tactics and technology they are using to get the greatest impact from their content. Through our analysis, we identified a leading group of marketers and deemed them the content marketing foxes. These foxes employ several strategies to optimize their content operations, such as tapping into technology and creating center of excellence teams.

Use this infographic to see what actions the foxes are taking and learn six tips on how you can thrive in the content marketing jungle.

Want to dive deeper into the results of the study? Download our complete eBook on the topic: 2015 Content Marketing Tactics & Technology Planner.

As evidence of marketers’ realization of the opportunity of content marketing, 76% of companies will increase investment in this area in the coming year. But top marketers know that success will take more than simply an increase in budget.

To identify the best practices of these leaders and understand what tactics they are deploying, we conducted a survey of 600+ marketers entitled the 2015 Content Marketing Tactics and Technology Study.

Welcome to the Jungle

Through our analysis, we identified four distinct groups of marketers based upon their strategies and tactics as well as the value that they receive from content marketing:

The Fox – Cunning, strategic, quick-thinking, adaptable, clever and passionate; with an ability to use its resources for survival and growth.

The Wildebeest – Follows the pack, always afraid of being left behind.

The Elephant – Strong, stable, patient; yet slow to shift to changing situations.

T-Rex – Simply put, extinct or rapidly on the way to extinction.

What’s the Fox Doing?

We found that best-in-class marketers (the foxes) are employing the following strategies to optimize their content operations:

• Building a content marketing center of excellence team
• Developing a predictable content supply chain with more efficient internal processes
• Developing the analytics required for a more data-driven content marketing practice to understand which types of content are and aren’t working.
• Tapping into the power of new content marketing technologies

The Study

Here are a few statistics about the respondents of the study:

• Titles: CMOs and VPs of Marketing, marketing directors, managers and specialists; marketing consultants and agencies; and business owners.
• B2B vs. B2C: 56% marketers who took the survey were B2B companies, 13% were B2C and 24% listed themselves as both. (7% non-profit)
• Verticals: 33% technology businesses, 19% marketing agencies, 17% professional services and 13% healthcare.
• Company size by revenue: 2% <$10M; 27.3% $10M to >$100M; 9.0% $100M to <$1B; 11.5% $1B+.

How to Become a Fox

This post will focus primarily on the foxes and their best practices in relation to all companies in our study. We identified what these leading marketers are doing in the areas of strategy, people, process and technology.

Strategy

Invest in Content Marketing, But Allocate Resources Wisely
Overall, 76% marketers are increasing investment in content marketing, which is an increase from 71% in the survey we conducted last year.

But, where is the smart money going? How are leading marketers prioritizing their budgets?

According to our survey, foxes are focused on creating high quality content and measuring the impact of content across all levels of the funnel.

People

Create a Team that Oversees All Content Marketing Efforts
49% of marketers have an executive in charge of content marketing. By the end of 2016, this number will increase to 60%.

Increased staffing indicates that senior marketing leaders realize the opportunity for content marketing to impact the organization; and they are laying the foundation for a more strategic content marketing competency. Initial expectations were that these new roles would take the title of “Chief Content Officer”; however, at least from a title perspective, this has not panned out.

The more common (and smarter) path taken by marketing leaders is to establish a leader of a center of excellence team (CoE), versus creating a new, ivory tower executive position. This role will focus on content operations and alignment of teams around common processes.

The Center of Excellence Team Takes Shape
Content marketing’s center of excellence team should be responsible for aligning different departments that touch content, such as the social media team, the blogging team, product marketing , digital marketing and marketing operations team.

Overall, the foxes are better aligned across internal teams, with 56% of leaders identifying as “very aligned” or “extremely aligned.”

Process

After strategy, the key steps remaining in the content marketing supply chain include: production, distribution and analytics.

1. Production

Stretch Your Dollar
One common theme among foxes? The ability to stretch their dollar, through methods such as reusing and repurposing content.

In fact, 85% of foxes reuse content in some capacity.

Shifting from the sporadic recycling of content to a more systematic reuse of content requires a strategic process supported by the content marketing team. Curata has developed and tested the following Content Marketing Pyramid^TM as a framework to ensure optimal reuse and repurpose of content. This framework will not only help stretch your content marketing dollars, but it will also increase the readability and promotion of your content as well as its ultimate ROI.

For more information on content repurposing, check out our complete guide to the content marketing pyramid.

2. Distribution

Market Your Marketing
To determine how marketers use content promotion, I took a look at our recent business blogging study, which reported that leading bloggers (10,000+ page views a month) consider content promotion a high priority. They also ensure that many teams (i.e. social media team, blog writers) have a hand in promoting a given piece of content.

For more specific tips on content promotion, see the following resources:

• 11 Effective Ways to Use Social Media to Promote Your Content
• Content Promotion Tools: The Ultimate List

Invest in Owned Media
When promoting and distributing content, it is important to keep in mind the importance of owned media (i.e. blogs and microsites). Instead of seeking out audiences on other sites, leading marketers are focused on building up their owned properties and developing audiences that will keep coming back for more quality content. These marketers use earned and paid media as onramps to their owned properties.

A few ways to do this include:

• Creating guest posts for high-traffic sites that will link back to your owned properties
• Experimenting with paid distribution of an eBook or other types of content

3. Analytics

Measure Content’s Impact Throughout the Funnel
One major difference between foxes and the herd is their sophistication of measurement. Foxes are focused on measuring content’s impact across all parts of the marketing and sales pipeline.

To catch up to the fox, work closely with the marketing operations team to see how your content is influencing marketing leads and sales opportunities.

For more detailed instructions on measuring content impact, check out our Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics & Metrics.

Technology

As the foxes look to better align their teams and measure the impact of content, they are tapping into the power of various marketing applications. In 2015, 68% of leading marketers will increase their investment in marketing technology.

Leaders will focus their technology investment on analytics to determine the ROI/impact of content and digital asset management and storage for better content organization in addition to other areas as seen below.

To streamline content organization, 77% of foxes are using editorial calendars to track and create a predictable content supply chain.

Now that you know what the most cunning, resourceful marketers are doing, you can use the above data and insights as a roadmap for a successful 2015.

To access the full results of the study, be sure to download the eBook: 2015 Content Marketing Tactics and Technology Planner.

We recently surveyed 400+ business bloggers and identified one group of respondents — those who run blogs with 10,000 or more page views a month — and deemed them the “10K Blogging Club.”

This group not only has high traffic, but they also reap many more benefits such as high referral rates from their blog to their corporate website and higher impact of their blog activities on marketing and sales’ pipeline.

If you’d like to make into the 10K Club, you’ll have to put in a little work. That’s why we customized a workout plan that will get your blog into shape in no time.

To learn more about the practices of leading business bloggers, download the full eBook on the topic: Business Blogging Secrets Revealed.

Here at Curata, we decided to have a little fun and come up with 24 different ways to finish the sentence:

You know you’re a content marketer if. . . 

While there are several traits that make a content marketer successful, there are also tell-tale signs that indicate your are passionate about your job.

Do you relate to these? Add your own anecdotes in the comment section below!

1. You spend half your day trying to come up with titles that are both catchy AND search engine optimized.

2. You create an infographic for your Facebook friends about what it’s like to be a parent.

3. You create an infographic of infographics.

4. You see orange clothes in a store and think of Joe Pulizzi.

5. You see a sign for Red Bull at a bar and instead of thinking of Red Bull Vodka, you think of the awesome content they have on The Red Bulletin.

6. You think about content curation when you’re visiting the art museum with your significant other.

7. You actually know what “native advertising” is.

8. Instead of listening to Serial, you’re more excited to listen to marketing podcasts, such as Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose’s This Old Marketing and Social Media Marketing with Michael Stelzner.

9. Your favorite coffee table book is Everybody Writes by Ann Handley.

10. Someone sends you a holiday card using the word content (as in happy), and you accidentally pronounce it as content (as in content marketing).
11. You want to optimize your kid’s English paper for SEO.

12. Your friends assume that all you do is blog and they try to tell you blogging isn’t a real job.

13. You plan your vacations around marketing conferences, such as Content Marketing World, Marketo’s Marketing Nation Summit and MarketingProfs B2B Forum.

14. You think that you’ll go crazy if you hear the term “Content is King” one more time.

15. Your wife asks you to put up a utility shed in the backyard and your first thought is that maybe Jay Baer can help out.

16. You have a collection of tchotchkes from various content marketing conferences.

17. You have trouble writing an email without including links, bolding and bullet points.

18.  You can easily spot cheesy stock photos when browsing the Internet.

19. You see tofu in the grocery store and start thinking about the sales and marketing funnel. (i.e., TOp of FUnnel)

20. Whenever you see a swimming pool, you can’t help but think of Marcus Sheridan.

21. You have a strong stance on various grammar rules, such as the oxford comma.

22. Sometimes, you feel like you’re herding sheep trying to manage all of your blog’s guest posters and freelance writers.

23. Formatting and editing an 80+ page eBook is no big deal.

 And finally. . .

24. You genuinely love your job.

Looking for ways to justify your love of content marketing? Download our eBook, The Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics & Metrics, to prove the ROI of your content marketing efforts.

From providing a new perspective on your usual blog content, to accessing a whole new audience, these are just some of the reasons why you should consider accepting guest posts. In fact, the results from our business blogging study indicate that the best content marketers source 24% of their blog posts from external contributors, and 56% of externally sourced blog posts are from non-paid, guest bloggers.

Benefits of Guest Posts for Your Blog

There are many benefits to developing a guest posting program for your blog, such as:

• New Content:“Limited budget” is the #1 challenge for content marketers in 2015 (Register for our free Feb. 10th webinar to learn about other 2015 plans by leading content marketers). You get great content (hopefully) without having to spend more resources on content creation; however, be prepared to sharpen your pencil for editing your contributors’ content.

• Value for your audience: Your audience will appreciate seeing a new perspective in addition to the topics that you usually write about. As great as your content may be, your audience wants different perspectives on the same topics.

• Audience retention: What’s one of the benefits of providing greater value for your audience?. . . They’ll want to stick around and read more. This may even include viewing other content on your site, or checking out more about your company and its products/services.

• More frequent posting = More traffic: Guest posts can be a key contributor to creating and sustaining a more consistent and more frequent publishing schedule. Increased publishing frequency is an important driver of more traffic. (91% of the best blogs publish new content weekly or more often)

• Great guest posters = More traffic: You’ll certainly get more traffic and better engagement if your guest posters produce great content. Guest posters may also drive additional traffic to your site if they promote their post to their own blog audience and social media followers. This will no doubt expose you to a new audience.

• Influencer marketing: Engaging with guest posters is a great way to be part of your ecosystem, and to get to know its “movers and shakers”. A next step will hopefully lead to more interaction with your guest posters, such as joint webinars, or even opportunities for new business with your posters and/or their contacts.

• Improved writing and other content marketing skills: You may learn a thing or two from your guest posters.

What Makes a Successful Guest Blogging Program?

1. Put Someone in Charge of the Guest Blogging Program

This person should manage all aspects of the program, including the items below and communication with guest bloggers. Most importantly, ensure you have a strong editor(s) on your team.

2. Develop a Guest Blogging Strategy

• Content Strategy: Identify the key topics you want your guest bloggers to cover and ensure that the topics align with your overall content marketing strategy. It’s ok to stray a bit from you key topic(s), but ensure that it will still be of value to your audience.

• Target High Value Bloggers: Look for content contributors that will bring the most value to you and your audience. At the same time, ensure that there will be value for your contributors in being part of your program. (e.g., they will get exposure to your audience and have the opportunity to build their own page rank by providing links on your blog). As great as it may be to get a superstar influencer to post on your site, don’t overlook the value of including other types of contributors.

3. Publish a Guest Blogging Policy with Guidelines

If you’re going to allow guest posts on your site, you need to be specific about what you will and won’t accept, and what your guest posting process entails, such as:

• Preferred word-count or length of post. (e.g., provide a range)
• Backlinking do’s and don’ts.
• The type and tone of content that you’re looking for. (e.g., you may not want your contributor to spend much “real estate” writing about your own products, and instead focusing on pain points of the audience)
• The editing process. (e.g., you should reserve the right to edit your contributor’s content, yet give them the courtesy of a final look prior to publication)
• A rule that you will only accept original content, and that the post will not be republished on other sites.
• A note about how proper attribution will be given to all pictures, data and other content that does not originate from the contributing author.
• Copyright rules – For example, indicate that the author has the copyright to his or her words, but that your company can use them in other pieces of content, with proper attribution.

Setting these expectations up front will be a key success factor in establishing valuable, long-term relationships with your blog contributors.

Read the guest blogging guidelines of some of the biggest names right here:

• Copyblogger values style, personality and quality.
• MarketingProfs requires unique copy backed by valuable research data.
• Content Marketing Institute focuses on advancing content marketing through logical, useful articles that are specific to content marketers.
• Social Media Examiner accepts original how-to articles from established authorities with track records for writing detailed posts.

4. Make Contributors’ Posts Better

You or your editor’s job is to publish blog posts that will provide as much value as possible to your audience; and no one knows your audience better than you. Therefore, for the benefit of you, your audience and your blog post contributor, invest in the time to edit their post. Make it a better post.

This may include content revisions; spelling and grammar improvements; making the content more readable through bolding, bullets and other formatting; and adding visuals to the post. Your guidelines should include a statement that you will be editing their work to ensure that there are no surprises when they see their final, edited content piece.

5. Be Proactive about Managing Timelines and Delivery Expectations

You should already have an editorial calendar in place for your blog and other content marketing activities. (Don’t have one?. . . Check out this Ultimate List of Editorial Calendar Templates for help in creating one) Ensure that you’ve built in a slot in your editorial calendar for your contributors’ posts. Then, more importantly, agree to a set of milestones and dates with your guest posters. For example:

• Draft due date: ####
• Review by editor: 2 to 3 weeks after receiving the draft
• Publish date: ### (or leave open-ended and keep your contributor up to date on when it will be published . . . and don’t forget to team with them for promotion)

You don’t necessarily need hard and fast rules for when you edit or publish a guest post, but be sure to keep the contributor in the loop if the process is taking longer than expected.

6. Measure Performance of Your Contributors

Ok, I know that content marketing performance measurement is in a very nascent stage right now. Regardless, apply whatever metrics you’re currently using for your own posts to your contributors. Use this insight to identify your best posters . . . and don’t lose the ones that give you and your audience the most value!

For those of you that are move advanced in the content marketing measurement area, push the limits to determine the impact of your individual writers on generating and influencing leads in marketing’s pipeline and opportunities in sales’ pipeline. (Here is a complete guide to content marketing metrics)

To learn more about guest blogging and other best practices of leading business bloggers, grab your copy of Business Blogging Secrets Revealed. In here you’ll find survey results of 428 marketers, as well as insights into how the best business bloggers receive 10K+ page views per month.