So how can you get your content marketing job descriptions to stand out from the rest? Resist the urge to speed past the creation of the job listing by leaving it to HR or just copying and pasting a result you googled (yes, that includes this post). You’re hiring writers after all, and the job description will help form the early impressions of your company and your team. If you want to capture the attention of the top content talent in your area, roll-up your sleeves, put your marketing hat on and craft a job description that creatively (and accurately!) captures the unique opportunity you’re offering.

Keep reading to check out:

• Our review of the top three google search results for “Content Marketing Job Descriptions”
• The basic architecture of a content marketing job description
• Ideas for crafting THE BEST content marketing job descriptions
• Our favorite content marketing job description online right now

Top Three Articles on Content Marketing Job Descriptions

HubSpot

This is a thorough post covering top twelve job descriptions you should hire for to have an all-start content marketing team. This post includes descriptions from inbound marketing manager to blogger to SEO manager. This post is a great resource for basic job descriptions as well as reasons why you might want to create a position and what to looks for in an application.  Though not all positions are “content marketing positions” per se, it’s helpful to look at the other job descriptions to determine if a content marketing manager is really what you’re looking for. As the creators of the term “inbound marketing” their inbound marketing manager job description is on point. Here it is :

Inbound Marketing Manager Job Description

If your marketing department is just starting to make the shift to an inbound approach, it’s possible you’ll still need to prove the success of your inbound marketing program.

If this is the case, you’ll likely be looking to hire an all-in-one inbound marketer — someone who can build and grow your inbound marketing strategy from the ground up. Look for someone who is very self-motivated and versatile … and gets stuff done. (And if you’re still trying to convince your boss to to make the shift to inbound in the first place, download these 100 stats, charts, and graphs to help you get inbound marketing buy-in.)

Job Description:

We are looking for an amazing, data-driven inbound marketer to own the majority of the marketing funnel for our company. You will be in charge of attracting site traffic, converting that traffic into new leads for the business, and nurturing those leads to close into customers, the latter of which sales leadership will help you accomplish.

Responsibilities:

• Build and manage a rich content/editorial calendarthat attracts a qualified audience to our owned properties (including blog posts, whitepapers, ebooks, reports, webinars, infographics, etc.).
• Grow new leads, including marketing-qualified leads, by converting site traffic through calls-to-action, landing pages, and lead generation content (including offers).
• Optimize our marketing automation and lead nurturing processes through email, content, and social channels.
• Establish closed-loop analytics with sales to understand how our inbound marketing activity turns into customers, and continually refine our process to convert customers.

Requirements:

• BA/BS degree or equivalent work experience
• Some past experience in marketing preferred
• Excellent communicator and creative thinker, with an ability to use data to inform all decisions
• Proficiency in marketing automationand blogging software in order to generate traffic, convert visitors into leads, and then nurture them (using dynamic workflows) into converted customers
• Bonus skills: HTML/CSS, Adobe Creative Suite.

Marketing Insider Group

Marketing Insider Group does a great job of distilling all the qualifications a content marketing manager could have down into three skills. Jere they are:

1. Creating content people actually want

2. Sharing content on the channels they use

3. Measuring the results of content marketing activities

 For their complete content marketing manager job description, check out the full blog post.

Workable

Simple and to the point, this post is a full, content marketing manager job description. Use this post as a jumping-off point to create your own content marketing job description. Workable has a large library of marketing job descriptions, check out other job descriptions on their website to build out your entire marketing team.

Architecture of a Content Marketing Job Description

The basic architecture of a content marketing job description should include:

1. Job title
2. Description of key responsibilities
3. Amount of Experience Expected
4. Technology/Tools they’re expected to use
5. Key teammates they’ll manage or work closely with
6. Salary Range
7. Information about the company, what problems it solves and who it serves

Even the basics require some finesse. Check out Undercover Recruiter’s science backed tips including the ideal length for your job title (spoiler: 50-60 characters).

Ideas for the Best Content Marketing Descriptions

A quick google search for “Content Marketing Job Descriptions” (as of September 2017) will return these top three results (excluding job boards/job search engines). After reviewing each, I find myself feeling like the Goldilocks of content marketing job descriptions, each providing some help but leaving a bit more to be desired.

Too Bland: Workable’s Content Marketing Manager Template – Aptly named a template, it really is just the bare minimum of key responsibilities, tools and technology.

Getting Better: Marketing Insider Groups content marketing manager job description has a bit more depth and industry specific terminology, but still lacks personality.

Nearly Just Right: HubSpot’s 12 Marketing Job Descriptions aren’t limited to just content marketing roles, so you’ll find a little bit of everything here. What I liked best about these are the use of industry statistics to demonstrate the importance and scope of influence of the role – marketers love to be flattered and we’re all looking for a way to make a noticeable impact. Word choice was also very empowering and can be used to demonstrate the importance and perspective the organization puts on marketing. Some examples: “own the majority of our inbound funnel”, “offers and downloadable content are the backbone of inbound marketing”.

Think of the content marketing job descriptions above as a paint by number set. You’ve got the outlines to guide you along, but you choose the way to color them in. Here are some ways you can build upon the templates to craft the perfect content marketing job description:

• Include a relevant industry stat to show the importance of the role and potential impact for the company
• Include examples of some of your top performing content to-date in as many relevant formats as possible
• A qualitative and quantitative description of how success will be measured in this role
  • Share an example of performance reporting or content stats that you’d expect this person to be held to

Quick tip: Some other things to consider when writing a job description is to understand  what motivates employees  (perks? Ability to take ownership of projects? Flexible schedule?) and understand what a creative employee will appreciate in a  job description.

 Content Marketing Job Description Examples 

Still stuck? Here are job descriptions for content marketing roles that caught our eye. When writing your own description, consider what skills are critical to the role you’re hiring for. Most content marketers understand employers are looking for a hybrid combination of skills. According to the Creative Group’s 2017 Salary Guide:

Hybrid professionals are in demand. Creatives with skills outside their specialty are highly marketable. In addition, digital proficiency is becoming a prerequisite for many traditional roles. For example, graphic designers now need to be familiar with web layouts or social media, and copywriters must have knowledge of search engine optimization. Expect this pattern to persist as cross-departmental collaboration becomes the norm.

Some skills to consider in your job description include: data analysis, SEO, design, social media, video, project management and more.

Content Marketing Manager (Drift) 

For the full description, check out the link above. We love the clarity this description provides for what this role will be doing at the company.

What you will be doing on the marketing team at Drift:

• You will lead our Content team, which includes managing internal and external writers, but you will still be a writer first: this job is far from middle management. You’ll be expected to create and produce 90% of the time, so if you love managing people and creating, then you’ve come to the right place.

• You’ll be writing all different types of content — from interviews to original research to case studies and product launches.

• In addition to creating regular content for the Drift blog (2-3x/week), you’ll become a regular contributor to blogs outside of Drift (guest posts, contributed columns, etc.)

• You’ll work across the marketing team to provide content and copy as needed for the Drift website, speaking decks, email copy, Drift Studios, and more.

• You will also be responsible for running our podcast, Seeking Wisdom. This includes managing the team that creates and edits new episodes, the editorial calendar of upcoming guests, promotion for new episodes and more.

Content Strategist (New York Times) 

For the full job, check out their listing on LinkedIn. We loved the introduction’s description of the company and how the role fits in.

T Brand Studio is a fast-growing team of energetic writers/editors, content strategists, videographers, designers and developers creating branded content for The New York Times’s advertisers. Our clients cover the gamut of the New York Times’s advertisers. Increasingly, our clients are looking to T Brand Studio to help them unearth stories to tell on their own channels.

The T Brand Studio Services team is looking for a content strategist to conduct editorial consulting projects. Content strategists work in concert with our 60+ strong creative and production team, leading editorial strategy for multiple branded content projects. The tasks include: conducting pre-sale research, concepting and ideation for branded editorial strategies; presenting to clients and leading senior/executive client meetings; brainstorming, on-site reporting, writing and editing white papers and comprehensive reports. This role is heavily editorial, almost entirely client facing and has a significant travel component. 

Blogger (Adidas)

For the complete description, check  out the link above. In this case we love their key relationships section. If a job has special requirements, building it out into it’s own section might be a good idea. It will help the applicants understand it’s importance.

Key Relationships

• US and Global Business Units and Digital Communications leads.

• US eCommerce Marketing team and the broader US eCommerce team in Portland which includes Site Merchandising, Analytics, Operations, and Brand Communications.

• Newsroom, SEO, Category Owners and Brand Activation.

In addition to having an awesome job description, remember, the company the description is for plays a huge role in talent’s interest. If you’re still not having luck recruiting the right content marketers, have a look at your company culture.

For more on taking your content marketing career to the next level, check out this guide we created with LinkedIn.

Despite the fact that 86 percent of brands have adopted content marketing practices, 82 percent of marketers say they’re not receiving training – WrittenT

To start learning right away, check out our content marketing expert series below.

No matter what level of experience you have – whether you’ve been in the industry for a while or are looking to break in—creating a plan for growing your career expertise is beneficial.

Pam Didner, Content Marketing Consultant, Author, Speaker | @PamDidner

Having a plan is a good starting point. At the end of the day content marketing is about getting your hands dirty. Start producing different types of content pieces and syndicate/promote ​them. Then, use analytics to optimize them. It’s a journey, my friends! 

Fortunately, there are many online content marketing courses that provide content marketing knowledge for people of all levels. Whether you’re an experienced marketer looking to learn more about the latest trends or you’re a small business owner seeking ideas for how to use content marketing to advance your business, there’s a learning opportunity out there for you.

This article addresses some of the top online content marketing courses available today. It gives you details on courses that can fill in your knowledge gaps so you – and your content marketing – can be more successful.

How to Determine What Course Is Right for You

Before starting any online content marketing course, you should think about what your knowledge gaps are and what you would like to get out of the course. There are a variety of online content marketing courses designed for specific purposes, so you’re sure to find one that fits your specific goal.

General Understanding

A broad overview on best practices is the best choice for people who want to grow their overall understanding of content marketing. There are different types of overview programs available, depending on what you want to achieve with your knowledge:

• Starting or Growing A Career in Content Marketing: If you’re looking to start or grow a career as a content marketer, look for a class that can give you full, in-depth understanding of all aspects of content marketing.

Many colleges and universities offer certificate programs in content marketing or have content marketing as part of an overall marketing certificate program. For example, Northwestern University allows you to specialize in content marketing and Cornell offers content marketing as part of an overall marketing certificate program. (more programs are listed later in this article.) 

• Professional Development: If you’re looking to take a class to build on the work you are currently doing in marketing or other parts of your organization, you can choose from a variety of online or in person seminars. These types of online content marketing courses will help you gain further insight into what content marketing is, how it is done, and what makes it successful. At these classes, you may also hear about a topic or idea that you’d like to learn more about in the deeper-dive class described above.
• Introduction or Knowledge Enhancement: There a plenty of content marketing webinars offered by companies and professional association. While some of these webinars may have a sales pitch included with them, they will provide a good overview specific ideas or topics. A webinar can be a good start to developing your understanding of content marketing.

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Knowledge on a Specific Topic

In addition to these broad overviews, you can also learn about a specific sub-topic of content marketing. These online content marketing courses focus on a specific area of content marketing, including:

• SEO: Effective content writing for search engine optimization (SEO).
• Paid Traffic: Learn how to make the most of your online advertising.
• Social: Get the information you need to better leverage social media.
• PR: Learn how fit public relations into your content marketing.
• Metrics: Advice on how to analyze your results.

Andrew Davis, Bestselling Author & Keynote Speaker | @DrewDavisHere

Changing the way you measure the impact of your content marketing is one of the easiest ways to improve. Instead of measuring views, visits, leads, or downloads measure revenue per subscriber.

More details about specific classes are available later in the article.

Think carefully about how much time you can realistically put into a content marketing course.  Also, consider how much time and resources you will have to implement what you learn after the course.

Sally Hubbard, Senior Editor, Tech Antitrust Enforcement, Host of Women Killing It! podcast | @Sally_Hubbard

I feel myself and so many people I know spend our days running, running, and rushing on the hamster wheel, but where you are going is not where you are meant to be going. It’s all a waste of time. We all tell ourselves we don’t have time, but what is more of a waste of time than killing yourself to get somewhere you don’t want to go?

If you have limited time and budget, taking an in-depth course so you can implement an entire content strategy might not be the best approach. Instead, take a seminar on starting a blog or creating a podcast. Implement these ideas into your business and grow from there.

Tap Into Your Content Marketing Software

If you use software to support your content marketing – or are looking into software – don’t overlook the software company’s educational offerings.

Many larger marketing software companies offer online content marketing courses for free. These courses will simultaneously teach you how to use their software and how to strategize your content marketing activity. Here are some examples:

• HubSpot Academy: Offers a variety of courses and certifications for all levels and types of marketers.
• Marketo: Get certified on Marketo’s own software or learn more about marketing operations, analytics, or demand generation.

Read more about the different content marketing software options.

How Much Are You Willing to Pay?

Costs for online content marketing courses range from free to thousands of dollars. Before determining how much to spend, consider what the ROI will be for the course.

If you already have a robust set of content marketing expertise, you probably don’t need an expensive course promising to teach you content marketing from the ground up. Alternatively, you don’t need an expensive analytics course if you have not yet started to create content.

Now that you’ve decided what type of content marketing course might be right for you, we’ve got a comprehensive list of resources you can choose from.

Top Online Content Marketing Courses 

Universities

UC Davis: This is an in-depth, five-week course for people already in the marketing profession. This course is a collaboration between UC Davis and Copyblogger. Though it is offered through a college, the course is not for academic credit.

Northwestern University: This course goes beyond just writing and moves into other information that’s extremely important but often glazed over in content marketing. The first month of learning for this course is free. After that it costs $49 dollars a month.

Harvard University:  This new five-day program delivers the proven framework and foundational tools marketers need to design, implement, and manage a successful digital marketing strategy that achieves their business objectives. Students engage in hands-on exercises that help them build buyer and influencer personas, capture and measure critical data, communicate more effectively, and drive deeper customer loyalty and market share.

Paid Courses

Marketing Motive: This is a self-paced advanced content marketing course that covers the basic strategies and tactics for all types of B2B and B2C content marketing, including blogging, email, social, and more. The focus on this course is on content creation rather than more complex topics like SEO, analytics, and paid promotion. Users can buy 180 days of access for a cost of 299 dollars.

Lynda: Lynda.com offers a variety of online content marketing courses, from basic topics like “What is Content Marketing” to output-specific courses that cover topics like creating a podcast or writing a blog post.

Lynda is a great option for those looking to continue learning about other topics such as graphic design or coding. Lynda.com requires a membership which costs 20 to 30 dollars a month.

Content Marketing University: This is one of the most popular sources for information on content marketing. The organization offers over 30 hours of curriculum covering all aspects of content marketing. The course is led by marketing leaders including Robert Rose. Over 25 percent of Fortune 100 companies have attended this course. The course costs 995 dollars a person with discounts available for alum and non-profits.

LinkedIn e-Learning: The popular social media site has a learning platform where students can learn how to develop, implement, and measure a winning marketing strategy using today’s tools and platforms. LinkedIn’s marketing course is designed to help students to master traditional marketing skills and provide information on the latest digital tools and techniques. The course covers everything from branding and public relations to SEO, PPC, web analytics, and social media marketing. The first week is of the course is free.

Free Online Courses

There are many free online courses that can improve your content marketing skills. These are made available for a variety of time investments. Here are some of my favorites:

Content Strategy Courses:: Content strategy courses offers both a free and paid version of their course as well as the option to take the entire course or only the modules you think would be useful to your business from buyer personas to content promotion. The free course covers 8 mini lessons broken up into 5 days with short lessons that range from 2-20 minutes each. The paid course has a star lineup of instructors and some impressive success stories. The paid course starts at 997 dollars.

GA Academy: Analytics Academy helps you learn about Google’s measurement tools so that you can grow your business through intelligent data collection and analysis. Therea are several courses offered as a part of this academy including eCommerce analytics, GA for beginners and Google tag manager.

Data Analytics and Exel Pivot Tables: This Excel Business Intelligence training course is for all business users who are required to develop management reports, analyze data or ask ad-hoc questions of their data.These are critical skills for content marketers. In a recent report entitled ‘Big data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity,’ McKinsey Consulting reports that data skills will become the basis for competition, innovation, growth and productivity. The report also highlights the need for approximately 1.5 million managers in United States with data skills.

Marketing in a Digital World: This course examines how digital tools, such as the Internet, smartphones, and 3D printing, are revolutionizing the world of marketing by shifting the balance of power from firms to consumers.

Marketing in a Digital World is one of the most popular courses on Coursera, with over 150,000 learners. This class is rated by Class Central as one of the Top 50 MOOCs of All Time

Quicksprout University: Even if you are new to SEO, this online resource will help you with traffic-generation by providing conversion tutorials from the trusted co-founder of KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg.

Pay Per Click University: This training program is produced by WordStream, and students can pick from a variety of courses, including Pay-Per-Click 101, Pay-Per-Click 102 and advanced Pay-Per-Click.

Google Digital Marketing Course: This is an adwords certification course. Students may use the Digital Marketing course as a self-study training pack that can be completed at their own pace or professors may choose to incorporate the modules into their lesson plans. If opting into the optional AdWords Certification category, Google recommends that students review pay particular attention to the AdWords Fundamentals module.

SEO Training on Udemy: Optimizing a web site for search engines requires looking at many unique elements. These course gives practitioners of SEO insight into these elements, helping them to understand the broad field of website optimization

Content Marketing for B2B Enterprises: This course takes students through a four-step content marketing process. The course is structured in 19 video lessons, each lesson will take around 5 minutes. The entire course clocks in around 35 minutes. So, if you have an hour, you can knock this out over lunch!

The marketing courses listed above make up only a small sample of all the courses available to you to help expand your content marketing. You can find other lists of resources in these round ups online.

Content marketing courses are a great way to learn how to improve your marketing programs.

For free content marketing education, check out our own online content marketing expert series in the link below.

Creating a podcast, however, isn’t easy. For a step-by-step on creating your own podcast, look here. The first step for creating a podcast as a content marketer, is listening to the best content marketing podcasts there are. Here’s a list of top content marketing podcasts you should listen to to improve both your content marketing skills and podcast knowledge. Two birds, one stone.

1.) Content Inc. by Joe Pulizzi

What It Is: A podcast by Content Marketing Institute founder, Joe Pulizzi. This podcast originally served as part of a “podcast-to-book” strategy in which Pulizzi was using each content marketing podcast episode as a future chapter of his book, Content Inc. This podcast is no longer actively produced, but there are 200 episodes still available on the Content Marketing Institute website. The podcast covers all things content from mixing media, to analysis of Starbucks’s content campaigns.
Listen to This For:

• A shorter podcast (each one runs no more than ten minutes in length)
• One quick tidbit of actionable information. The titles give you an idea of what you’ll learn. Feel free to scroll back through past podcasts for topics you’re interested in.

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 31 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @JoePulizzi

2.) Unthinkable by Jay Acunzo

What It Is: A podcast written by an alum of HubSpot and Google; a content marketer who’s sick of people producing bad content.
Listen to This For:

• Creative inspiration
• Awesome stories and well-written intros

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 105 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @jayacunzo

3. The Marketing Companion by Mark Schaefer

What It Is: Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster keep it fun and fresh in this podcast. Podcasts are organized by topic so you can pick and choose.
Listen to This For:

• Laughs while you learn
• Episode titles like: Love, Politics and Content Marketing or I wasn’t a desperate entrepreneur and that’s why I failed

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 42 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @markschaefer

4.) Exponent.FM

What It Is: A tech and society podcast for the intellectual marketer. This description of their most recent podcast sums it up. “Ben and James discuss the different levels of aggregation, Facebook and Russian ads, and why it’s worth defending the future.”
Listen to This For:

• Broader views on the way tech not only impacts your marketing and business, but also society
• Ideation and bringing the bigger picture home to your specific marketing activities

Number of Stars on iTunes 4.5 Stars, 145 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @exponentfm

5.) Serial

What It Is: A podcast told from the creators of This American Life. Narrates one nonfiction story over multiple episodes.
Listen to This For:

• Great storytelling
• Leisurely listening (not marketing related)

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 9460 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @serial

6.) The Pivot by Todd Wheatland

What It Is: A podcast told by marketing expert Todd Wheatland. This fireside chat format in which Todd dives into the backstories of other marketing influencers.

Listen to This For:

• Insight into successful marketers beyond their “expert hacks”.

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 10 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @ToddWheatland

7.) Duct Tape Marketing Podcast

What It Is: Interviews with authors, experts and thought leaders sharing business marketing tips, tactics and resources hosted by one of America’s leading small-business marketing experts – John Jantsch.

Listen to this For:

• Insights beyond specific tactics or campaigns
• Real questions around your career, not just your job. The importance of having a side hustle, sales as an entrepreneur, and sonic branding

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 103 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @ducttape

8.) Copyblogger

What It Is: Recently rebranded to Rainmaker FM, this podcast brings you the best tips, tactics, stories and strategies for accelerating your business. Each day delivers eye-opening advice on some vital aspect of the ever-evolving digital-marketing landscape.

Watch this For:

• Timely advice with your business in mind

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 218 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @copyblogger

9.) The Urbanist

What It Is: With an influential audience of city mayors, urban planners and architects, this is Monocle’s guide to making better cities, be it new technology, state-of-the-art subways or compact apartments.

Listen to This For:

• A great example on creating “how-to” content that isn’t boring. The urbanist combines interesting storytelling, current events, and compelling point-of-view to give its listeners top-quality how-to content on urban planning

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 228 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @Monocle24

10.) Mad Marketing

What It Is: A podcast by the “sales lion,” Marcus Sheridan covering topics from the importance of good people in marketing, finding your talents, and vulnerability, all the way to the more tactical topics like Facebook growth and artificial intelligence.

Listen to This For:

• Realm off-the-cuff advice directly from Marcus Sheridan
• To ask your own questions and hopefully have them answered on-air
• If you’re sick of the fireside-chat style podcast that’s become so popular across industries

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 69 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @TheSalesLion

11.) Online Marketing Made Easy

What It Is: Expert interviews, mini-execution plans, and intimate behind-the-scenes secrets from the host, Amy Porterfield’s biggest launches. 
Listen to This for:

• Advice on how an individual can start their own online business and grow subscribers
• Getting into the tactical nitty gritty of everything from starting an online course to growing webinar followers

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 654 Rating
Tweet the Author: @AmyPorterfiel

12.) Longform

What It Is : This podcast consists of a weekly conversation with a nonfiction writer. 
Listen to this For:

• Inspiration to perfect your non-fiction writing
• Outside-the-box thinking
• New ideas to improve your creative process

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 526 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @longformpodcast

13.) Growth Byte

What It Is: This podcast finds the best startup growth content online and summarizes it for you in 2-3 minute audio “bytes.”
Listen to This For:

• When you don’t have time to listen to a full-length podcast
• A quick understanding of what content is working for high-growth startups
• Tactics to help your own growth

Number of Stars on iTunes: N/A
Tweet the Author: @growthhackertv

14.) Marketing Over Coffee

What It Is: Marketing Over Coffee covers both classic and new marketing. Your hosts, John J. Wall and Christopher S. Penn, record the show in a local coffee shop every week and publish the show on Thursday mornings.

Listen to This For:

• Marketing and tech intersections
• Social media, SEO, email marketing and other tactics

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 137 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @johnjwall and @cspenn 

15.) Content Matters

What It Is : A talk show about all things content marketing featuring Andy Crestodina and Barry Feldman. Each 22-minute episode explores a significant tactic that makes content marketing effective.
Listen to this For:

• All things content from building your team to content creation to measurement
• Interesting and knowledgeable hosts

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 9 Ratings
Tweet the Author @crestodina  and @FeldmanCreative

16.) Digiday

What It Is: Each podcast has a guest speaker giving their opinion on a specific topic (usually a polarizing one in  the marketing space).
Listen to this For:

• Thought provoking content that you may or may not agree with
• Blunt honesty from the host

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 22 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @Digiday

17.) The Art of Paid Traffic

What It Is:  Facebook ads expert Rick Mulready reveals the best paid traffic tips, tactics, and strategies for generating leads and sales for your business. Automation and affordability are the name of the game.
Listen to this For:

• A niche topic podcast that will actually educate you on paid traffic
• If you’re tired of listening to people telling you the way to get more traffic/better content is to “do better”

Number of Stars on iTunesL 5 Stars, 291 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @rickmulready ‏

18.) The #AskGaryVee Show

What It Is: Hosted by entrepreneur, CEO, investor, vlogger, and public speaker Gary Vaynerchuk. You’ll find a mix #AskGaryVee show episodes, keynote speeches on marketing and business, segments from DAILYVEE video series, interviews and fireside chats given, as well as new and current thoughts recorded originally for this podcast.
Listen to this For:

• A great example of repurposing content effectively
• A mix of information on marketing, entrepreneurship, becoming and influencer, general tips on becoming successful

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 2412 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @garyvee

19.) Content Warfare

What It Is: Every week on the Content Warfare Podcast, Ryan Hanley interviews the Internet’s most prolific content creators to extract their secrets for winning the battle for attention online. Popular guests include: Chris Brogan, Marcus Sheridan, Mark Schaefer and Gini Dietrich. Popular topics include: content marketing, writing, podcasting, social media and audience building.
Listen to this For:

• Advice on creating content that converts
• Compelling fireside-chat style episodes with the industry experts you attend conferences to see

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 89 Ratings
Tweet the Author @RyanHanley_Com

20.) Sporkful

What It Is: As you probably guessed, not a marketing podcast. This is a podcast about food. BUT a really great podcast that you could learn a  thing or two from.
Listen to this For:

• A podcast covering a topic that most people would say requires a visual element
• To better understand how you might use a podcast even if it’s not a conventional medium for your space

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 771 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @TheSporkful

21.) The Growth Show

What It Is: HubSpot’s business podcast answers questions around how to grow a company, a movement, or an idea. Each week they sit down with someone who has achieved remarkable growth (or has tried to) and unpack just how they did it.
Listen to this For:

• Real businesses and real issues
• Talking through why something that should have worked didn’t

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 175 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @hubspot

 22.) You Must Remember This

What It Is : You Must Remember This is a storytelling podcast exploring the secret or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century. It’s the brainchild and passion project of Karina Longworth, who writes, narrates, records and edits each episode. It is a heavily-researched work of creative nonfiction: navigating through conflicting reports, mythology, and institutionalized spin.
Listen to this For:

• A reminder that a deep passion for a subject can produce a very interesting result
• To experience first-hand how one person can carry a podcast from ideation to post-production

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 2379 Ratings
Tweet the Author @rememberthispod or @karinalongworth

23.) The Sophisticated Marketer

What It Is: LinkedIn podcast hosted by resident content marketing guru Jason Miller.
Listen to this For:

• Top marketing interviews from around the world
• Jason Millers “rock and roll” flare

Number of Stars on iTunes: 4.5 Stars, 34 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @JasonMillerCA

24.) General Electric’s Theater Podcasts

What It Is: The Message and LifeAfter: GE has two hit podcast series under it’s belt. Both are nonfiction, science stories meant to awaken the listener’s nerdy side in 40s and 50s style radio storytelling.
Listen to this For:

• A creative take on what podcasting could be
• More inspiration on turning you “boring” subject matter into something people actually care about

Number of Stars on iTunes: N/A
Tweet the Author: N/A unless you wanna tweet at GE?

25.) Conversion Cast

What It Is: The ConversionCast unveils the inner workings and marketing secrets of one of software startup, Leadpages. You’ll discover how this Inc 500 company with over 40,000 (and growing) paying customers rocketed into existence. Moreover, you’ll learn exactly how they find, convert, and keep their customers. 
Listen to this For:

• Metrics: Like actual metrics

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 188 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @ConversionCast

26.) StartUp

What It Is: A series by Gimlet Media on “what it’s actually like to start a business”
Listen to this For:

• Lessons on starting a business
• How to navigate common roadblocks and achieve milestones

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 5319 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @podcaststartup

27.) The Fizzle Show

What It Is :Weekly insights for small business owners who want to earn a living doing something they care about. A highly reviewed and very entertaining show focusing on modern business essentials: self employment, marketing, productivity, selling things online, motivation, audience growth and work-life balance.
Listen to this For:

• More information on how to use your creative talents to make money
• Growing a business online
• Increasing freelancing work

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 522 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @Fizzle

 28.) Seeking Wisdom

What It Is: A podcast from tech-startup, Drift about personal and professional growth hosted by David Cancel and Dave Gerhardt.
Listen to this For:

• A super-smart marketer and super-smart entrepreneur in the same podcast
• Everything you care about in terms of your career growth

Number of Stars on iTunes: 5 Stars, 299 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @dcancel or @davegerhardt

29.) Moneyball for Marketing

What It Is: Crimson Marketing’s CEO Glenn Gow interviews the best and the brightest marketing minds. He and his guests talk about the incredible changes happening in marketing organizations around Big Data and marketing technology. Moneyball for Marketing features marketing technology insights from the top marketers in the world.
Listen to this For:

• Great guests focused on teaching the audience

Number of Stars on Itunes: 5 Stars, 114 Rankings
Tweet the author: @glenngow1 ‏

30.) Marketing Speak

What it Is: Tips, tricks, and new insights that the top players in the digital marketing world are using to grow their brands and businesses.

Listen to this for

• Top marketing experts talking about what they know the most about
• Tactical advice on a variety of topics from influencer marketing to link building

Number of Stars on Itunes: 5 Stars, 18 Ratings
Tweet the author: @mktg_speak

 31.) Learn to Code with Me

What it Is: A coding podcast for beginners. We’re always talking about how, as content marketers, we should expand our skill sets. Code is one place to start.

Listen to this For:

• Beginner information on coding
• Some interesting stuff on the coding industry that doesn’t necessarily pertain to you

Number of Stars on Itunes: 5 stars, 115 ratings
Tweet the author @learncodewithme

32.) Social Media Marketing Podcast

What it Is: Social Media Examiner’s Michael Stelzner helps your business navigate the social jungle with success stories and expert interviews from leading social media marketing pros. Discover how successful businesses employ social media, learn new strategies and tactics, and gain actionable tips to improve your social media marketing. 

Listen to this For:

• Marketing insight from a social perspective
• If you think social is useless (they’ll prove you wrong)

Number of Stars on Itunes: 5 Stars, 560 Ratings
Tweet the Author @Mike_Stelzner

 33.) The SaaS Content Marketing Show

What it Is: Learn how to turn your SaaS company into a real user magnet with targeted content strategies. Every two weeks this content marketing podcast brings SaaS founders, CEOs, and marketers training, insights, and tools to launch and manage a successful content marketing strategy. 

Listen to this For:

• Information specific to SaaS content marketers. This niche information makes it all the more actionable

Number of Stars on Itunes: N/A
Tweet the Author: @pawelgra7

34.) Edge of the Web

What it Is: Winner of Best Podcast from Content Marketing Institute this past year, Edge of the Web is a weekly SEO podcast discussing all things within SEO, social media, content jarketing and digital marketing. Hosts Erin Sparks, Douglas Karr, and Tom Brodbeck discuss the latest news and trends in the SEO industry as well as interviews with some of the top names in digital marketing.

Listen to this For:

• Advice and discussion directly related to the most current events in marketing
• A deep-dive into current best practices for SEO

Number of Stars on Itunes:5 Stars, 10 Ratings
Tweet the Author: @EdgeWebRadio 

Did we forget your podcast? Feel free to tweet us suggestions to add to the list @curata

Podcasting can be an important part of your editorial strategy. For more in-depth editorial calendar planning, download our editorial calendar template.

According to a B2B marketing trends report, customer testimonials and case studies are considered the most effective content marketing tactics by nine out of ten B2B marketers. According to Social Fresh, customer testimonials have the highest effectiveness rating for content marketing at 89 percent. Seventy-three percent of people have used marketing case studies in the past 12 months to make B2B purchasing decisions. This infographic (courtesy of Venngage) outlines thirteen quick steps you can take to create a case study that works.

For more information on creating a stand-out content marketing case study, check out this ultimate marketing case study template. Use this guide to understand how to use case studies for your organization. It offers instructions on how to secure a first-rate case study, and a template for getting started on a case study today.

Marketing case studies can be hugely effective. They provide proof of concept to potential buyers, and drive your audience further down the funnel. They can also serve as a powerful sales enablement tool. For more on how to drive your audience further down the funnel and measure your content’s efficacy, read Curata’s eBook: Content Marketing Metrics: Account Based Marketing Edition.

Job Market Overview

Content marketing jobs have grown over 350 percent since 2011. The highest concentration of content marketing jobs are in Massachusetts, New York, and California. While some say the forecast for content marketing roles is bleak, others predict content marketing roles will grow and responsibilities will shift to include changing technologies and story-consuming preferences.

Examples of content marketing skills expected as a requirement in the next fives years include augmented and virtual reality, chatbot marketing, and live video. As responsibilities and skill sets grow for content marketers, so do their salaries.

Content Marketing Salary Survey

Creative salaries are increasing. When determining your content marketing salary, consider years of experience, location, and industry. Top resources for calculating average salary include:

• Robert Half Creative Group Salary Guide: A personal calculator supplements this guide. Enter your experience, industry, and location to receive a custom salary range. According to Robert Half, the national average content marketing salary for managers in 2017 is $70,000 to $103,000.
• Glassdoor: Glassdoor gives national and location-specific content marketing salary information. Glassdoor also provides data on company-specific compensation.  According to Glassdoor, the national average salary for content marketing managers is $68,348.
• PayScale: PayScale breaks content marketing salary into subcategories including commission and bonus and can produce a custom salary report based on your experience and skills. According to PayScale, the national average salary for content marketing managers is $64,776.

Quick tip: Want a nice pay bump? Change your title to content strategist. They made between 81k and 104k in 2017.

How to Get a Raise

Asking for a raise requires courage and preparation. Though the average content marketing salary is increasing and the interest in content marketing is growing, many teams are choosing to hire contractors instead of full-time employees or try their hand at supplementing with technology rather than full-time hires. Here are a few things top-content marketers think you should do to help impress your boss and get a raise.

Work Outside of Work

If you’re new to the content marketing space and trying to break in, the best thing you can do to get hired with a competitive starting salary is do content marketing as part of a passion project. Interested in tap-dancing animals? Create a website and grow an audience. We also suggest practicing answers to these questions.

In a similar vein, create notoriety for yourself prior to interviewing. Here’s why:

Develop More Skills

Another challenge in advancing your content marketing career is developing the variety of skills required to succeed. Expanding on these will help in getting a raise.

Arnie Kuenn, CEO of Vertical Measures | @ArnieK

“There are many different roles in content marketing, all requiring different skill sets. But there is one thing I recommend anyone involved in content marketing do to make themselves more valuable to their organization; that is to truly understand your brand’s customer journey so that you can build a strategy that puts the right (optimized) content in front of your customer at the right time. If you become an expert at that, you will be unique within your organization.”

Skills required for content marketers outside writing include html, Google Analytics, programming, marketing strategy, content strategy, thought leadership and brand development.

ROI

Many experts agree one of the best things you can do for a salary bump is prove you’re returning the investment the company is making on you.

Lee Odden, CEO at Top Rank Marketing | @leeodden

“The smartest thing a content marketer can do to increase their salary is to make a clear connection between content marketing strategy, tactics implemented and increased ROI. Marketers are an investment and there’s no better reason to increase that investment than a proven increase in return.”

Quick tips for making the ROI argument to your manager:

• Use numbers: you’re asking for a numerical increase in your content marketing salary. It only makes sense to use numerical reasons to support that increase.
• Track against larger marketing and company goals. Your company is looking to increase revenue, prove your content is helping with this.

Barry Feldman, Author of 'The Road to Recognition' | @FeldmanCreative

“Prove you’ve earned it by help the person that’s responsible for deciding what your salary is find the money. Do everything you can to demonstrate how your work drives the traffic, leads and sales that affects the top line and/or decreases the marketing costs that affect the bottom line.”

Pam Didner, B2B Marketing Consultant | @PamDidner

“Make an effort to demonstrate the value you add to the company and other marketing teams. Then, be strategic and articulate the benefits of content marketing to upper management. It’s Do, Show and Tell!”

www.pamdidner.com

Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder of Orbit Media | @crestodina

“Your boss wants to measure ROI, so the skill that has the biggest impact on your perceived value (and therefore your ability to command higher pay) is Analytics. Be the person who can show which actions drive results and which investments are a waste of money. You’ll hold the key to marketing insights …and to a bigger paycheck.”

www.orbitmedia.com

Gini Dietrich, CEO of Arment Dietrich and author of Spin Sucks | @ginidietrich

“Show results! While we certainly can prove attribution, if you can show how your content marketing efforts tie to business results, you can ask for that raise. Start with attribution. Move to lead nurturing. And then to the jackpot at the end of the rainbow—a boost in revenue. While content marketing works in tandem with other sales and marketing efforts, if you set up your reporting to show how your efforts brought the lead in, nurtured them, and helped them make a decision to buy, attribution goes to you. Use it the next time you ask for a bump in your salary.”

If you aren’t sure if you’re generating ROI for your organization, you’re not alone. Before asking for a raise, take some time to develop an ROI measurement process your manager supports. Also start getting feedback from the sales team or customer success. If other teams can anecdotally support your claims that your content is helping them close and retain revenue, all the better.

Bernie Borges, Podcaster, CMO of Vengreso | @bernieborges

“A content marketer who directly and indisputably helps the sales team create more qualified sales conversations has the best chance of earning more compensation.”

Stay Current

Ann Handley, Head of Content at MarketingProfs | @MarketingProfs

“Stay curious and keep your skills current. ABS (Always be sharpening!) your content knowledge and skills.”

Todd Wheatland, Author and Speaker, Global Strategy at King Content | @ToddWheatland

“Most people avoid recognising what it is that motivates them, and asking for what they want. It doesn’t matter if you’re an outstanding performer; if you don’t make it clear to your employer what’s important to you, then you are going to lose out comparatively to those that do. Once you’ve found the courage to do that – and let’s face it, most people never will – it’s important to have a sense of both the external market value of your capability, and the reality within your current organization. In my experience, avoid at all costs making it about ‘I could be earning more money somewhere else.’ Stay focused on your current role, the work you’re delivering and the impact you’re having. Make it easy for someone to say Yes – show clearly that you understand what’s important to the overall organization, and how you’re quantifiably driving towards that metric.”

Carla Johnson, Keynote Speaker, Author, Storyteller | @CarlaJohnson

“The best thing a content marketer can do to bump up their salary is to get curious. There are lots of skills a person can learn, but that’s a reactionary approach. That’s seeing where they may get behind the curve and then catching up.  Curious people find opportunities everywhere. They dig into the world around them, understand why ideas and experiences work or inspire the, connect that back to their work and generate great ideas one after the other. Ideas that work within the constraints of the working world. This is how people contribute ideas that excite others and help brands stand out from the crowd. Bosses are strapped for time and have a ton on their plate. But deep down, they always want to deliver the best, most creative work possible. When you consistently make your boss’s job easier and look great at the same time, you become the golden child. And that will always bump up your salary.”

No matter your location, years’ experience or the content marketing salary you’re trying to reach, there are a few things you can do to help get you there.

Improve your marketability by showing off your marketing chops both on and off the court, in and out of the office. Create and grow an audience in your free time.

Make yourself a “multi-sport” athlete. Expand your expertise beyond just writing and into SEO, coding, design, email, paid marketing and more.

Exceed your numbers. If you’re lucky enough to be part of a content marketing team that already has an understanding of how to measure content marketing, then do your best to assure you’re exceeding expectations when it comes to achieving ROI. If your team doesn’t measure ROI for content marketing efforts, create and install a process.

To find out more on how to take the next step in your marketing career, download Curata and LinkedIn’s eBook: The Ultimate Guide to a Content Marketing Career.

Using a methodology like a funnel as the foundation for your content strategy can clarify your direction and simplify your team’s goals. Content marketing methodologies include the buyer journey, content marketing funnel, content marketing framework, and content marketing pyramid.

While there are other common methodologies in the content marketing space, the content marketing funnel is one of the most popular. This post provides more information on what the content marketing funnel is, how to create content that maps back to its stages, and how to optimize your content for it to help you achieve your goals.

What Is the Content Marketing Funnel?

According to Single Grain, the content marketing funnel is a system that takes as many leads as possible through a step-by-step content flow. It then converts them into actual customers who pay for your products or services. The four stages of the content marketing funnel are:

• Awareness
• Evaluation
• Purchase
• Delight

While most people don’t move through these phases in a linear path, having a content marketing funnel model can help your content marketing strategy. A content marketing strategy helps answer the following questions:

• What type of content should I create?
• How do I measure success for this piece of content?
• Should I repurpose this content?
• Are their holes in my content strategy?

This post walks you through all stages of the content marketing funnel and teaches you how to map your content to drive traffic, leads, and ultimately—revenue.

Awareness Stage Content

The first stage of the content marketing funnel is awareness. In this phase you want to attract and educate your audience on your topic.

To determine if the content created for this phase is succeeding, answer the following questions:

• Is it generating a high number of shares and views?
• Are the people sharing and viewing the content part of your target audience?
• Are they interested in the content and converting on it?

Marketing resources across the web suggest that creating for this stage of the content marketing funnel is best in the following formats: ads, social media posts, infographics, and videos.

While these content types work well for awareness stage content, not all audiences are the same. Look at your metrics to analyze which content performs the best at this stage. Metrics you can use to determine if your content for the awareness stage is performing are total shares, views, time on page, scroll depth, and bounce rate.

A Bird in Hand…

Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media studios explains the importance of creating value at this stage:

The most valuable audience, at least for B2B marketers, is your current prospects. So your most valuable content is something you make specifically for these people and send to them directly. 

Create a piece of content that answers top questions for your current prospects and you’ll get value from it even if no one else ever reads it. Plus, you can share it with the next prospect who asks that question.

You may have thought that visual content might be best for this category. Curata CMP analytics told us a slightly different story. Our long-form blog content performed the best for shares, views, and time on page.

From there, we determined which posts to heavily promote and optimize, which new keywords needed targeting, and how to develop content for this stage of the funnel moving forward.

You can use the following platforms to determine if your content marketing works at the awareness stage:

• Outbrain
• Curata
• Scroll Depth
• SEMRush
• Google Analytics

Evaluation Stage Content

The evaluation stage is when potential buyers determine the legitimacy of your company, develop trust, and decide if they need your product. Andrew Raso of Online Marketing Gurus describes the evaluation stage as when:

People are doing heavy research on whether or not your product or service is a good fit for them

A famous example of evaluation stage content is Nestle’s Toll House chocolate chip recipes. Nestle Toll House released recipes to the public, including their own chocolate chips as a primary ingredient. This validated Nestle Toll House as the go-to-source for all things chocolate chip-related, and also pointed consumers to their product.

Determine the success of your evaluation-stage content by answering the following questions:

• Are my contacts converting on this content?
• Is this content generating leads?
• Is this content influencing leads?

Generally, this means creating white papers, case studies, webinars, or blog posts. Curata’s content team looks at leads generated and leads influenced to determine which content performs the best.

Need More Leads

However, there’s a common mistake to be wary of when looking at metrics like these, as Anna Hrach of Convince and Convert explains:

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make when measuring content is automatically assuming that correlation implies causation. We see two trend lines headed in the same direction, so we automatically assume they have a direct relationship. That unfortunately tends to lead to misguided conclusions and forced connections that aren’t always there to begin with.

Not surprisingly, white papers, templates, and guides are great for racking up leads influenced and leads generated.

To learn more about lead generation, Curata tested content type, topic, and distribution method to get a clearer idea of what was working and how to promote our content.

Other platforms you can use to determine if your content marketing work at the evaluation stage:

• Marketo
• Salesforce Pardot
• Act-On
• Bizible
• BrightFunnel

Purchase Stage Content

The next stage of the content marketing funnel involves convincing your audience that a purchase is the smartest step. The goal is to create content that results in closing business. Questions you should be answering about your content in this stage include:

• Is this content influencing revenue?
• What sort of pipeline is this content generating?
• Is this content influencing pipeline?

Typically, the best formats for this stage are reviews, questionnaires, self-assessments, product sheets, and calculators.

At Curata we use our Curata CMP software analytics to determine the efficacy of content at this stage of the content marketing funnel. (Only 30 percent of leading marketers feel they are effective at measuring content marketing’s impact on the bottom of the funnel.) We’ve also taken steps such as building out our G2 Crowd page and updating our product sheets as a result.

Another example of popular purchase-stage content is Progressive’s side-by-side insurance comparison tool. Users are able to look at quotes and compare Progressive against competitors.

If you’re looking to drive results in the purchase stage of the funnel, use these tools:

• Curata CMP
• Kapost
• Contently
• Bizible

Delight Stage Content

The last, frequently overlooked stage in the content marketing funnel is delight. This is especially important for B2B companies with a subscription-based model. This stage of the funnel has several goals.

Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi explains why this stage is important:

Marketers don’t realize that the most important part of this process is not the content.  The asset we are trying to build is the audience… so everything should revolve around building a loyal audience that will ultimately behave in a way that will help your business.

Curata recommends talking to your customer success team to help determine exactly what your KPIs are for this stage of content. Consider goals for your delight stage content such as increased product usage, renewal rates, online interactions, referrals, case studies, and user generated content.

There are a variety of content types that work well for this stage. These include product guides and educational materials, member-exclusive content, forums and chat rooms, special offers, and giveaways.

The Curata marketing team often partners with our customer success team when creating this type of content and tags it accordingly in Curata CMP. One example of a successful content piece is our CCS use-case guide.

Other examples of content that delights can include anything from a personalized email to offering “priceless surprises” to your customers, like MasterCard did.

Tools to help ensure your content will succeed at the delight stage of the funnel include:

• Salesforce
• Curata CMP

Go Beyond the Marketing Funnel

Actionable Marketing Guide Chief Content Officer Heidi Cohen advises not just creating content for the funnel. Maximize its usage by making it available at all relevant touch points.

When creating content for the purchase process, think beyond the funnel. To get the maximize value for your content investment make your content available at every touchpoint where it’s relevant. This includes post purchase, something many marketers forget.

Aligning your content strategy and editorial calendar with the content marketing funnel helps ensure your content is used to its maximum potential. You will gain a clearer idea of your strategy, increase your content’s efficacy, improve ROI, and align your content with the overall team’s marketing strategy.

For more on improving your content marketing strategy, read Curata’s Content Marketing Pyramid eBook, a framework for developing and executing your content marketing strategy.

Why bother? Redesigning your blog should not only give it a sexy new look, it can improve everything from SEO to blog traffic to click-through rate. According to surveys by Akamai and Gomez.com, nearly half of web users expect a site to load in two seconds or less, and they tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded within three seconds. Fifty two percent of users said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company. Seventy percent of consumers today learn about a company through their blog, rather than ads.

Business blogging is de rigueur now, and audiences decide a lot about a brand from its blog. So we saw a need for improvement. Two months after our redesigned blog launched, we’ve significantly increased blog traffic and time on page, faster load times and a decrease in bounce rate. (We’ll go into more detail on results later.) First though, we’ll walk through how we decided a blog redesign was the right call for Curata.

Should You Do a Blog Redesign?

From blog traffic improvements to a better aesthetic, there are many reasons why you should or shouldn’t do a blog redesign. Here are the pros and cons we weighed before determining a blog overhaul was smart for Curata.

Reasons to Do a Redesign

• Curata’s blog aesthetic was outdated: our images were small, formatting was poor, and we weren’t using white space well
• Our bounce rates were high: the existing layout made it almost impossible for users to find other great content on our website
• Pages loaded slowly: This made for a poor user experience. This negatively affected Curata’s SEO ranking and blog traffic goals
• It didn’t reflect our product or our brand well: We believe our software is sexy. But the look of our blog wasn’t confidence inspiring branding for potential customers or partners. This made it easier for people to ignore our great content

Reasons NOT to Do a Blog Redesign

• Redesigns can be pricey
• They take time away from other content initiatives
• Redesigns are a headache. They can cause you to lose information, mess up analytics, or even crash your website
• You could end up with something worse than what you currently have—just in different ways

Other Factors

For reasons unknown, we hadn’t ever reached out to our blog subscriber list. While Curata’s blog had a subscription option, the list of subscribers had somehow never been emailed. We’d also never promoted the option to subscribe, or encouraged interested parties to do so. A relaunch was a great way to re-engage with this audience.

Looking at the pros and cons, we decided that with careful budgeting, time management, and an understanding of potential setbacks, the benefits far outweighed the drawbacks. So the Director of Content, Mitchell Hall, and VP of Marketing, Amber Stevens, developed a plan for redesigning our blog.

8 Steps for a Blog Redesign

Here are the steps we took.

1) Identify Criteria and Loop in Key Stakeholders

Our content director and marketing head set about establishing the necessary criteria for what we needed from the new blog. Here are some of the questions they asked when deciding on an agency:

• What kind of clients has a prospective agency had in the past?
• Do you know anyone who’s used the agency?
• Is your existing team capable of taking on the work involved in the relaunch?
• Do you need an agency to provide everything in-house, or is outsourcing ok?
• How reachable/available do you want your agency to be?
• How much budget do you have for a redesign?
• What’s the timeline?

Based on these questions, here’s the criteria Curata’s marketing team came up with for the agency that would design our blog:

• A history of B2B SaaS clientele
• Personal reference from us, or someone we knew
• In-house technical and design
• Not outsourced to contractors
• Ideally located in same time zone
• Within our budgetary constraints

From there, we pitched our reasons for the redesign, agency criteria, and goals to other stakeholders in the company. We wanted to make sure we weren’t leaving anything out. It’s important to keep other parties in the loop during this process. For us, the key parties outside of the marketing department were Curata’s CEO, Pawan Deshpande, and the head of engineering, Jeff Suarez.

2) Define Your Blog

A blog redesign is destined for failure absent a clear vision of what you want to achieve. So it’s important to figure out what the new blog should look like, its tone, and the functionality you want. There are a variety of exercises you can do to determine your blog’s voice. Here’s some we did:

• Create a mission statement for the blog. What’s the point of the blog?
• List out as many adjectives as you can think of that describe the personality of the blog.
• Narrow the list down to five adjectives.

Here’s what we came up with:

We wanted to strike a balance between corporate and playful by showcasing something unique/eccentric within the design/consumption experience.

Adjectives we felt describe the personality of Curata blog:

• Bold
• Honest
• Authentic
• Sharp, with a sense of humor (but not snarky or cheeky)
• Authoritative

How Can Your New Blog Reflect This Definition?

Once you’ve defined your blog’s personality, brainstorm with other stakeholders on how the redesign can better express it. Look at other blogs your audience likes to read, or that have an aesthetic you’d like to emulate. This will provide a clearer understanding of what the blog redesign means.

Curata’s key aims for our blog redesign were: A bolder design that made better use of white space. Using more and larger images. And most importantly, better displaying our content so that people could more easily find interesting things to read; stay on the site longer, and come back more often.

3) Find a Design Agency

After making these decisions and developing a criteria for the agency we needed, we reached out to personal contacts at agencies, and narrowed our options down to two compelling bids at the same price. Ultimately we went with the agency that, in this case, had a little more flexibility with the final number: Fresh Tilled Soil. FTS were highly recommended, had a great creative portfolio, a knowledgeable team, the in-house skills to do custom development if needed, and they were flexible in meeting our needs with cost and timeline.

4) Work With the Agency On Design and Layout

Schedule a meeting to go over what you want out of your relaunch from your agency. They should come back with several options for the new design. Here are some of the first design aesthetic options Curata was given:

We then scheduled a meeting with all internal stakeholders to go over the options and figure out what we liked and didn’t like.

Over several weeks of further iterations, we decided on a final color scheme, CTA, banner, home page layout layout, category page layout, and article page layout.

5) Optimize for Mobile Experience

More users now access the web from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets than from desktops or notebooks. We knew our website didn’t offer a great experience for blog traffic coming from mobile. So we had to think about:

• Collapsing the topic categories into one menu at the top of the screen
• Figuring out how far down the screen a user had to scroll for our offer pop-up to show
• Determining how related and latest articles would display
• Whether to incorporate a “Read Next Article” prompt on mobile

—Amongst many other factors. Mobile is an essential part of your design brief so the aesthetic and readability of your users’ mobile experience is as good as the desktop experience.

6) Make Decisions About the Details

We continuously collaborated with Fresh Tilled Soil on a weekly basis to determine additional items we wanted addressed. There were constantly new action items we felt would be beneficial to our readers, as well as our content efforts. Here are some of our smaller goals, and the features we implemented to achieve them:

• Let Readers Know How Much They’ve Read Our most popular articles are all over 2,000 words long. So we wanted to help our readers better gauge how much more content they had to read. Accordingly, we added a progress bar that fills with blue as you scroll down Curata blog posts. See it above? You’re more than half-way through.
• Show Off Our Sexy Software We strongly believe in our product. Curata sells a powerful content marketing platform that captures sweet metrics that provide us insights that inform our content strategy. We wanted to give our readers a taste of what this software can do, so we decided to display a selection of these metrics on the homepage and at the bottom of every blog post (see above). These content performance analytics show a tease of how useful Curata’s software can be.
• Drive Conversions We also wanted to improve our blog click-through rate and decrease the bounce rate. To help this, we updated the way our CTA’s display, along with their locations.

7) Make Your Launch a Success Post Publication

We wanted to draw attention to our relaunch, so we created a free giveaway campaign to increase blog subscriptions, drive more blog traffic, and re-engage existing subscribers. Then we used email, social, and a small budget for paid advertising to increase our blog subscribers by 35 percent. We also set up email notifications with a new design for when fresh blogs are posted.

8) Analyze the Results

A month after the relaunch, we looked at our blog’s performance to see how it was comparing against previous months. Here’s how we did:

• Performance tests show we halved our page loading time.
• All our analytics metrics have shown noticeable improvement. Compared to a month ago:
  • Blog traffic is up 9.71 percent
  • Users are up 6.28 percent
  • Page views are up 17.19 percent
  • Pages per Session are up 6.83 percent
  • Bounce Rate is down 1.84 percent and returning visitors are up 3.95 percent

If these results continue to compound over the coming months, our redesign can be considered a success. However, there are some things we’d do differently.

Roadblocks and Lessons

Post-launch, we worked with our vendor on additional issues we didn’t foresee and learned a few lessons. Some of these included:

• It would have helped to have a staging server to enable previews before moving to our live site.
• The vendor focus towards the end of the process seemed to trail off, with a reduction in their otherwise excellent communication.
• Practically speaking, it’s impossible to tease out the impacts of all the various changes
• Related: at this stage it’s hard to directly tie major site goals to micro causes. For example, was a blog traffic spike because of extra promotion or design improvements?
• The initial mockups we received were ‘style tiles’ of design elements, rather than of article pages. This made it hard for some of our team to visualize how the layout would actually look.
• While massively improved, we didn’t meet all our site performance goals. As this is an important factor in page ranking, we’ll have to devote more resources to improving performance on an ongoing basis.

Increase Blog Traffic With a Blog Redesign

Undertaking a blog redesign is a big step, and one to to be systematic about. We’re glad we went through this process, and very happy with the great job Fresh Tilled Soil did for us. We hope you’ve found this case study useful, and if you have any tips for undergoing a blog redesign, let us know in the comments. For more information on content marketing strategy, check out Curata’s eBook: The Content Marketing Pyramid: A Framework to Develop & Execute Your Content Marketing Strategy.

According to a B2B marketing trends report, customer testimonials and case studies are considered the most effective content marketing tactics by nine out of ten B2B marketers. According to Social Fresh, customer testimonials have the highest effectiveness rating for content marketing at 89 percent. Seventy-three percent of people have used marketing case studies in the past 12 months to make B2B purchasing decisions.

Use this guide to understand how to use case studies for your organization. It offers instructions on how to secure a first-rate case study, and a template for getting started on a case study today.

The Basics

What is a case study and why are they so important?

According to Top Rank Marketing Blog:

A “case study” in the context of marketing is an analysis of a project, campaign or company that identifies a situation, recommended solutions, implementation actions, and identification of those factors that contributed to failure or success.

As the aforementioned stats illustrate, marketing case studies are important because they help you sell your company’s product. They validate the statements your company makes about your product, and allow potential buyers to see your product in action. This blog post will help you secure and create a case study that sets your company apart from its competitors.

Here’s what you need to do to secure a case study.

Steps for Getting a Marketing Case Study

The first (and often hardest) part of creating a marketing case study is getting a customer to agree to one. No doubt many customers are pleased with your product. But it’s no small thing for them to take time out of their busy schedule to talk about how awesome the product or service they’re paying for is.

Many larger companies also have formalized rules around providing testimonials. This can extend the process of getting a case study, as they have to go through legal, senior management, and more, just to get approval.

Increase your case study prospects. Create a formalized process that ensures you get the case studies you need on a regular basis.

Meet with customer success, sales, and marketing to get them on board with creating regular case studies. From this meeting, create a formal document that outlines how to submit marketing  case study opportunities, the frequency that customer success are expected to do so, and the process/time commitment involved after a client has agreed to participate.  
Include a case study request email template to save customer success time. Consider these sample templates:

• Case Study Request Templates (SitePoint)
• Case Study Request Templates (Boast)

Including It in the Contract

Some companies choose to include a customer testimonial or case study commitment in part of their purchase agreement. This is a great way to guarantee you’ll have case studies in the pipeline. It’s also a conflict of interest, and some would argue flirts the line of ethical behavior. By including case studies in a contract, you’re essentially paying for testimonials.

You want to publish only truly impressive, stand-out marketing case studies. Customers who are doing so well with your product that you’d want to make a case study from their experience are likely to be happy to help. Customers who need a contract to be forced into a case study aren’t often the ones you want as a face for your brand.

Gather Information for Your Marketing Case Study

After a customer agrees to do a case study, take the following steps to ensure the process goes smoothly.

Send an Email

It should introduce you if you haven’t already. Confirm the date and time for your first phone call or in-person meeting. Address the time commitment of the case study, and include the questions you plan on asking.

With customer testimonials the person you’re interviewing needs to have well-spoken and thought out responses about your product. Here are some sample questions you could ask:

• How did you find out about our company?
• What made you start looking for our solution?
• Which other products did you look at before deciding on ours?
• Why did you choose our solution above others?
• How has using our solution been so far? Tell us about your experiences and what you’ve done with it?
• How has our product benefitted you and your team?
• What results have you seen with our solution so far?
• What do you hope to do with our product moving forward?
  

Interview

Next, conduct the interview. Whether it’s in person or over the phone, make sure to record the interview for transcription later. Make sure to inform them that you’re recording them. Aside from being common courtesy, it’s also illegal in some states to record someone without their consent. As you’re interviewing, make note of any especially interesting points, as well as numerical results.

Take Pictures and Record Video

If you’re conducting an interview onsite, take pictures and video. If not, ask your customer to send some over. The more visual your marketing case study is, the better. According to Animoto, four times as many consumers would prefer to watch a video about a product than to read about it.

Transcribe

Transcribe and fact check the interview. Try using a service website like Fiverr for quick transcription that won’t break the bank.

Gather Data

Find out information about the company and their results with your product outside of the interview. Ask if you can see their results or look into their reporting for numerical information to back up the information in the interview. If they don’t have this information, look internally for more general stats on your product’s impact on the people that use it.

Find a Story, Start Writing

Once you have all the data you need, start pulling together your copy, video, and images into a shareable document. Use the marketing  case study template below to create a first-class case study.

Marketing Case Study Template

Title

Too many companies title their case studies things like “[insert company name here] Case Study.” This is both boring and uninformative. Use the case study title to help potential readers decide if it’s something that applies to them. Include a description of the company and some of their results. E.g. “Case Study: How CS2 Compliance Is Succeeding With Curata Content Curation Software”

Subtitle

The subtitle should round out the reader’s expectations of what’s in the study. Include more numerical improvements, or an overview of what happened. E.g. “Creating and Growing an Excited Community in a Highly-Regulated, Niche Market”

Their Company Overview

We recommend pulling the company overview directly from the company’s website. It should be two or three sentences and highlight parts of the company most important to your audience. If you’re looking to highlight the company size, mention it here.

Your Company Overview

It’s okay to use a boilerplate description here. However, if there is something else that might be beneficial to include in this particular use-case—add it. If you have more than one product description in your boilerplate description, focus on the product the marketing case study focuses on.

Introduction

The introduction should present the company you’re talking about and their problem. Here’s an example:

CS2 Compliance, a regulatory consulting firm for financial services clients, wanted to build a community for its clients and save time answering regulation-specific questions in individual emails. They wanted a solution that made content creation easier, found topical subjects in their industry, and enabled them to quickly publish to their website and newsletter.

Solution

The next section should introduce your product and why your customer went with you. Example:

They chose Curata Content Curation Software (CCS). Curata CCS uses machine learning, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence to help marketers discover and publish industry-specific content across marketing channels.

Action

This should describe how your product or service was implemented and how it made the overall process smoother, easier, cheaper, etc. Example:

CS2 uses Curata CCS to curate articles that answer a variety of FAQs, building a robust content program including discussion boards, webinars, and frequent newsletters. This has led to strategic and streamlined website content and newsletter publication for CS2.

Results

Finally, show the results. They support the statement that this company was successful with your product. If you have further information about how customers perform with your product, include it here. Include how your client is planning on using your product in the future to grow and expand their goals. Example:

Newsletters now have an open rate of 42.52 percent, and a click-through rate of 23.11 percent, both significantly above industry averages. With Curata, CS2 exceeded community registration goals by over 60 percent. CS2 is now using Curata to expand their reach and create custom experiences for each sub-audience within their online community.

Pull Quotes

Once the meat of your marketing case study is written, choose some pull quotes to highlight. Example:

CS2 co-founder and president Mary Harris King had this to say about Curata: “Curata keeps our current clients up-to-date with interesting articles while integrating with our public facing website so potential clients can see our newsfeeds, and sign up for the daily news digest, etc. It’s a great way to reach both audiences.”

Statistics

Case studies are a compelling way to convince prospects to buy your product. They’re even more compelling when your claims are supported by data and hard information. Use company information and stats, outside numbers, and numbers from your customer to round out your marketing case study. Writing on how curation improves content marketing ROI? Include a stat from a trusted source. Example:

Over 50 percent of marketers that curate content indicate that it has increased their brand visibility, thought leadership, SEO, web traffic, and buyer engagement.

Conclusion

Many case studies include a conclusion at the end wrapping up all the details. Instead, try a big, colorful CTA. While a conclusion is nice, making sure the reader doesn’t have to consume more than they need is even better. If your marketing case study is very long, include the most important points at the beginning in bullets.

Distribute and Promote Your Marketing Case Study

Case studies are effective on your website and as a sales enablement tool. They should also be sent to your sales team. Include a description of what it’s about and the situations it should be most effective for.

Other ways to maximize the impact of a case study include:

• Place it on your home page
• Send an email sharing it with the case study’s target audience, or as part of your newsletter
• Write a supplemental blog post to drive traffic to the case study. Focus on the problem solved in the case study and write an informational post on that topic
• Add the case study to relevant landing pages
• Add it to you or your coworkers’ signatures
• Insert it into a slideshow or longer presentation on product use cases
• Share the case study on social media

Examples of Awesome Marketing Case Studies

For more information, check out some standout case studies by other companies.

Bitly

Bitly’s case study is notable for a couple of reasons. First, their decision to use a slide deck over a single page document. It’s easy to digest and different enough that it piques the reader’s interest. The layout is sleek and skimmable with easy takeaways. Bitly includes images and a colorful layout that’s more interesting than a traditional, text-heavy marketing case study.

Kantar Media Division Cymphony

Kantar media created a case study video of their work for Samsung. For a service-based product, this form of marketing case study proved extremely effective. Kantar describe their process, their findings, and their results in a quick, story-heavy video.

Zendesk

Zendesk include customer testimonials in a visually appealing multimedia library on their website. This allows visitors to search by use case, industry, and company size to find the most relevant story to them.

For an example of one of Curata’s case studies, check out “How CS2 Compliance is Succeeding With Curata Content Curation Software” [pdf].

Marketing case studies can be hugely effective. They provide proof of concept to potential buyers, and drive your audience further down the funnel. They can also serve as a powerful sales enablement tool. For more on how to drive your audience further down the funnel and measure your content’s efficacy, read Curata’s eBook: Content Marketing Metrics: Account Based Marketing Edition.

Too many times content marketers get asked by another employee if they have some random type of content on some random topic.

And too many times content marketers respond, ‘I’m pretty sure we do, but I’m not quite sure where it is. Let me take two hours out of my day to try to find it for you.’ Except not the last part.

Not that is, until they decide to revamp their content marketing taxonomy.

What Is a Content Marketing Taxonomy?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines taxonomy as “a scheme of classification.” In content marketing, that means:

Content marketing taxonomy is a scheme of classification made up of titling, folder organizing, tagging, and any other way of organizing content that aides in your content marketing’s findability, content marketing strategy, and content marketing distribution.

Why Is a Content Marketing Taxonomy Important?

Having an effective content marketing taxonomy isn’t just about the ‘findability’ of your content. It helps put your content strategy and goals into perspective, allowing you to ascertain content priorities based on what’s in an item’s name. It also simplifies content audits—which should be performed at least once a year.  

Of B2C and B2B marketers, 56 percent and 64 percent respectively admit they don’t have a documented content marketing strategy. A content marketing taxonomy aids content strategizing by organizing content in an easy-to-understand way for marketers to analyze data and gaps.

A clear and concise content marketing taxonomy improves the readability of your editorial calendar. It allows all parties to know what kind of content you’re creating at a glance.

Natalya Minkovsky, editor for the Content Marketing Institute’s Chief Content Officer magazine, says that:

Taxonomy is about so much more than categorizing content. When crafting a content strategy, we consider the people, processes, and technologies that support the content throughout its lifecycle. The same goes for creating taxonomy. As content strategists, we have to think about taxonomy from the perspective of what terms and structure will help the content perform best and support the organization’s business goals. We also have to consider the longevity and flexibility of the taxonomy.

Futureproof and Organize Your Content

A well constructed content marketing taxonomy also helps future content strategy execution. It simplifies new audience-facing strategies by allowing you to slice and dice data in multiple ways. If you already tag content based on personas and want to personalize your audience experience, a content taxonomy helps determine which content to serve to whom.

Likewise if you’re looking to create a “recommended content” module. It’s much easier to automate data associations when you tag your content by topic or campaign. A content marketing taxonomy also helps organize your system of reusing, revamping, and re-promoting older content on different platforms or to new audiences.

A content marketing taxonomy helps determine how your website content should be organized. For example, with a well-organized taxonomy you can see which content types have the best bounce rates, click-through-rates, or time on page metrics. These insights help determine the order and flow of content on your website.

Content Marketing Taxonomy Planning (With Template)

When planning a content marketing taxonomy, first consider the constraints of your content marketing platform and other software for housing or planning content. Some software requires you to fill in preset fields for each piece of content, so you have to include missing tags in the name. Other software allows custom fields, so most tagging can happen separately, providing more opportunities for slicing data by multiple fields at once.

This is what content tagging looks like for a piece of content in Curata’s content marketing platform (CMP):

[SE]_ContentMarketingPlatformAnalytics_OneSheet

Fields (in CMP):
Distribution Method: Sales Enablement
Stage: BOFU
Author: Sasha Laferte
Persona: N/A
Topic: Analytics
Campaign/Content Marketing Pyramid: N/A

Consider including the following elements in a content marketing taxonomy.

For Written Content

• Distribution Method: This field allows you to separate the analytics for content items depending on how they’re shared. For instance, Curata’s sales team gets a separate content link for one sheets, eBooks etc., even if a gated version or blog version also exists. It helps us understand how content performs when shared by the sales team, and which content closes.
• Content Type: We include content type in the title because a name alone doesn’t always tell you all you need to know. Our content types include long form blog posts, eBooks, infographics, case studies, one sheets, and more.
• Content Title: Use the exact title of an eBook, blog post, or other piece of content in the title in your system for searchability. Inaccurate titles make life harder.
• Stage: This helps determine which metrics to examine to see if content is performing the way it was intended.
• Campaign: Allows searchers to look at a campaign’s metrics holistically and find all content created for a particular campaign theme.
• Author: Included to find options by an author or to compare author performance.
• Persona: Including personas allows you to find gaps in content creation, and enables future personalization and recommended content efforts.
• Topic: Topics also help you to look for gaps in content creation and allow for future personalization and recommended content efforts.

When separating by “content type” or “distribution method,” define what these mean. This way everyone dealing with the new taxonomy understands what each section means. It also ensures there aren’t duplicate fields. For instance, if someone posts all sales enablement content under [SE] but others call it sales enablement, you won’t be able to consistently find the content you’re looking for. Tracking and analytics based on this distribution method will also be incomplete or inaccurate.

For Images

• Size: Important for knowing how the resolution will look on different pages.
• Type: If you’re looking for infographics, charts, etc., this makes these pieces of content easier to find.
• Description: Allows searchers to look for content images based on keywords.

Tags, Categories, or Titles

Once you’ve determined which information needs to be included in your taxonomy, decide which information should be part of the title (and where). Include what should be included as a tag, what should be included as category, and whether or not any of this information should be externally visible to help your audience find the content they need. Here’s how we determined which piece of information fits where, and why:

• Title
  A title should cover the factors most likely to be searched for within a CMP. Clearly outline the structure of titles and explain the options within each section of the title.
• Tags
  A tag helps group your blog posts by topics. A content item can have multiple tags attached to it. Tags are keywords or phrases for the content item. As Blogging Basics 101 puts it, “If categories are your blog’s table of contents, tags are your blog’s index.” Curata uses tags and fields as two methods of labeling and grouping content. You can also use fields for campaign, author, length, and stage. Be aware if your tags are visible to the audience—as in WordPress—before determining what to include.
• Categories
  A category is:

… a topic you address on your blog. Your category list is like the table of contents for your blog. Categories are broad and can encompass smaller, more defined topics (i.e., tags). A category title should be descriptive and can be several words long.
–Blogging Basics 101

The difference between an externally visible blog category and a tag is that a category is designed for a broad grouping; a tag describes specific detail.

Externally Visible Tags and Categories

If your CMP forces content tags or categories to be externally visible, things can get tricky. You probably don’t want your audience to see your “BOFU” or “Content Marketing Carey” tag.

One solution is to store content on a community drive outside your CMP, and organize by folder and title. Create a graphic that displays the folder hierarchy that’s accessible company-wide. Determine whether the way you organize content is hierarchal, more like a funnel, wheel, or something different, and base your folder or organizational structure on this schema. It will make content more findable and assist you in streamlining the organizational process.

At Curata we keep content in both locations to fit the individual preferences of various departments. The spreadsheet below in our Google drive is also used to find content. The taxonomy is the same, but the organization is slightly different. This allows our sales team to find our content without sorting through pieces they don’t need or learning a new taxonomy. We ultimately decided to retain this inherited format to keep things simple for sales. It also allows for easy sorting based on content type, and includes a link to the content (with tracking parameters).

Having an external tagging and categorizing system as well as an internal taxonomy enriches your website’s metadata and boosts your SEO.

Implementation

Implementing a new content marketing taxonomy requires change management. There are several ways to go about this—here’s what we recommend.

Prior to developing a content taxonomy, assemble as diverse a team as possible to collect opinions and feedback. Content taxonomy can impact everyone from marketers to designers to engineers and salespeople. Getting their buy-in and feedback beforehand can save future headaches. Once you determine an official taxonomy, here are some simple steps to roll the program out company-wide.

1. Send an email notifying the entire company of the upcoming change
2. Make taxonomy changes to all existing content
3. Upload a document with the new taxonomy to a shared drive
4. Send an email with advice on the new system’s benefits and uses
5. Update the taxonomy regularly, and remind your company to use it

A content marketing taxonomy assists with content organization, findability, content strategy, and consumption. And it sets you up for more successful content marketing plans in the future. As James Goldman of CMSwire says:

[A] taxonomy is the backbone of executing journey-based marketing. It is the instruction manual for the tools, people, and processes used to manipulate, distribute, and target the huge volumes of content you need to produce in order to embrace content marketing.

For more information on creating a content marketing strategy that works, check out Curata’s eBook on creating a content marketing strategy below.

This is harder than it might seem. Marketing influencer Mark Schaefer coined the idea of “content shock” in 2014. He argued that content production will:

… increase exponentially as more and more brands pile in on the action, the rate of increase in content consumption will only increase slightly and then inevitably plateau. This is because we only have so much time with which to consume content. Therefor content marketing will become a victim of its own success, and brands will find that the same techniques become less and less effective each year.— SmartInsights

The point of “content shock” is upon us. Over four million blog posts are published on the Internet every day, while 50 percent of content created gets eight shares or less according to BuzzSumo. This says two things. First, that most content is created without being read or interacted with. Second, that many content creators fail to properly distribute their content. For content to succeed requires strategic content distribution.

Source: BuzzSumo

The real value of content marketing is in the distribution channels.
— Jayson DeMers, founder of AudienceBloom

If you build it, they will come no longer holds true, if it ever did. Marketers now need to build it, share it, talk about it, optimize keywords, email it, and share it again. Then maybe you’ll start getting people to come to your website.

Some people may argue that if you create really amazing content, your job is done. People will find it and love it and share it and come back for more. This is sort of true. If you own a bakery, you need to put your freshly baked triple fudge cake out front in the glass window in order for people to know they want to buy it. If not, they’d probably pick something else in the glass window, even if it’s not as good. That cake won’t create value for your bakery no matter how delicious it is. The same goes for content: it needs to be out front in the glass window.

REBECCA LIEB
Analyst, Author, Speaker. @lieblink
If you build it they will come.
Maybe. Maybe not. That’s why a plan to promote and distribute content is as critical as having great ideas for content creation. The most brilliant content in the world is the proverbial tree falling in the woods if it’s not seen or found.There’s not a single best way to approach promotion and distribution. Instead, there’s a series of questions to answer: who is the intended audience? Where do they go online? Who are their influencers? Is paid promotion a good option? If so, on what channels or media? There are many, many dependencies to promotion and distribution that can only be addressed with a solid content strategy.

This article explains different content distribution methods, how to develop a content distribution strategy, tips for optimizing, and offers tools to make planning and scheduling easier.

Things to Consider

Before developing a content distribution strategy, consider the following:

• Content distribution should just be one section in your overarching content strategy. And there is no one size fits all option to content distribution. Your strategy should be unique to your company.
• Consider the goal of your content. Are you hoping your audience will buy your product, interact with more content, or sign up for your newsletter? This will dictate the way you’re sharing, where you’re sharing, and the frequency.
• Who’s your audience? Determine your target audience and figure out where they are and at what time to optimize your online promotion strategy.
• The digital and content marketing landscape is constantly evolving. Best practices for sharing on Facebook are nothing like what they were five years ago. Be aware of promotional tactics that are no longer effective.

Distribution Options

After defining your content audience and goals, examine content distribution methods to determine which ones are ideal for your organization. Here are the most common content distribution methods in marketing today, and how they can be used in a distribution strategy.

Paid Promotion

Paid is a four letter word to a lot of content marketers. If my content is good enough, why do I have to pay people to read it? The simple answer is, you’re not paying people to read it. You’re paying people to see your content, the same way magazines pay for prime placement on newsstands.

Paid content can help:

• Pre-existing content work harder
• Get a solid base of eyes on your content
• Jump-start sharing of your content

DOUG KESSLER
Creative Director & Co-founder of Velocity, @dougkessler
Everybody talks about earned, owned, and paid media. But it’s important to add employed media. All the people who work for you add up to a really powerful distribution channel—but only if they know the content exists.

When paying for eyeballs, metrics other than pageviews become more salient. While you can count on those numbers, you’re paying for them. “Paid” is an umbrella term that can include anything from paid social to banner ads to pay per click (PPC).

Email Marketing

Email should be the foundation of any content strategy. While not as glamorous as social, email remains the most effective marketing channel there is. Email allows you to send content to people who already have a relationship with your brand. You have more information about them, and more control over how your content is packaged when they first see it.

For this reason, email should be a primary method of content distribution. Segment lists to prevent your audience from fatiguing with emails, and to ensure you only deliver content each audience member finds interesting. 

• Email is best for: Acquiring customers. Email is 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined. — McKinsey
• Email is worst for: Growing your email lists. Because, well, you already have their emails.

Social Distribution

Over 80 percent of the US population has a social network profile. And 94 percent of B2B marketers distribute content on LinkedIn. Social is necessary for content marketing to succeed, and marketers know it.

Social distribution works best when shared both organically and via paid options. There are plenty of tools like BuzzSumo or Hootsuite that can determine the best time to share content, where to share, and what kind of messaging is most effective.

• Social is best for: Increasing engagement, buzz, and brand awareness.
• Social is worst for: Bottom of the funnel content meant to sell.

Tips: Social distribution can be overwhelming. Not only are there several big players to advertise on, but the pay to play options are extensive. Don’t advertise on social sites your audience isn’t on.

Make sure the content you’re sharing matches the preferences of the audience on the platform. Advertising on Instagram or Pinterest requires sharing visual content rather than text-heavy content.

PAM DIDNER
GCM Strategist, Speaker, Author. @PamDidner
Understand how your customers use each social media channel. Customized your copywriting and image as necessary. COPE: “create once, publish everywhere” doesn’t work well in the increasingly personalized communications.

PPC (Pay Per Click)

There are two types of pay per click: search engine PPC and content PPC. Search PPC involves paying to rank for keywords on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) like Google. Content PPC operates similarly. You pay for your content to show up in the recommended or related articles section of content discovery networks.

• PPC is best for: Serving content to a new audience and helping your company be found.
• PPC is worst for: Sustained, high-value traffic, unless you want to continue paying for it.

Tips: Strong copy and calls to action are vital. Your content will be served up against similar competitor content.

SEO

Is SEO a distribution method? Not really. But ensuring people can organically find your content is. This is about as close as we can get to the idea of someone asking for your cake without finding it from the front glass case. Good SEO means anyone who asks for a chocolate cake is offered a slice of yours. While SEO is a ‘free’ way to get eyes on your content, it’s difficult to do effectively. To start, focus on key phrase research, go in depth in your articles, and create high-quality content. Integrate SEO into your content strategy.

Republish Elsewhere

In addition to the company blog, publish your content on sites such as Buzzfeed, Medium, Slideshare, Reddit, and other third-party websites. (Make sure to link back to your website on these other platforms.) This helps your content gain more visibility, and to drive more traffic to your website.

Influencer Marketing

Search Trends “Influencer Marketing”

While influencer marketing needs its own strategy, your influencer connections can aid in distributing your content. Tactics such as including influencer quotes in your content incentivize influencers to distribute your content to their followers, increasing your content’s reach.

Native Advertising

Another way to distribute your content is via paid posts on other media sites. This is a good option for outlets you haven’t been able to get published in.

Customer Advocacy

Many brands ask customers for case studies and testimonials. If you’re creating a tiered customer advocacy program, try social sharing and interaction as one of the tiers with low incentives. Or ask customer success to encourage your clientele to share your content.

Edelman Trust Barometer, 2017

Tips for Optimizing Distribution

• Repurpose content so it’s in different forms for different distribution channels.
• Keep testing; there’s no “best practices” for content distribution.
• Company employees are an asset. Your email lists and social accounts aren’t the only ways to share content with your audience. Ask employees to participate in your content distribution strategy to grow your audience and social engagement for free.
• Create a community engagement strategy that aligns with your distribution strategy. By consistently interacting with your audience to form deeper connections with them, you increase the likelihood they’ll interact with and share your content.

Tools

As with anything in the marketing sphere, there are many tools and platforms to optimize a content distribution strategy. Here are some of the essentials:

• WiseStamp: Automatically share your latest piece of content in your email signature.
• ClicktoTweet: Help your audience evangelize your content. Share tweetable quotes at the click of a button.
• Medium: All brands should have a Medium account. It allows you to republish existing posts to reach a new audience.
• GaggleAmp: Create messages for your company’s employees that are sent out automatically on social channels.
• Hootsuite: One of many social scheduling tools that helps you optimize the time and frequency that you publish.
• Quora: According to Quora’s website, “Quora is a question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users.” Quora enables you to establish your company as an expert in your field, and lets you link back to your content from a high domain authority site.
• Slideshare: This presentation sharing platform gives you another opportunity to distribute eBooks, webinars, and event presentations. With 80 percent of traffic coming from search, over 159 million monthly page views, and less than one in five B2B marketers using it, it’s without a doubt a platform you should be on.
• PR Newswire: Having a platform that reaches journalists and other news outlets is important for sharing company updates and company news.

Create a Content Distribution Action Plan

Now you know the options for content distribution and the best ways to use them, create a content distribution strategy for your company by:

1. Implementing a set of rules for content distribution. For example, if content’s goal is to generate x pageviews, share x times on social media and send x emails over x weeks.
2. Create a distribution calendar in conjunction with, or on top of your editorial calendar.
3. Establish KPIs and allocate time to analyze performance once a month or every other week. Adjust and optimize according to these metrics.

ARDATH ALBEE
CEO & B2B Marketing Strategist, @ardath421
My number one tip for content promotion and distribution is that it’s most successful when it’s part of the content planning process, rather than an afterthought when you hit publish.As part of all the content briefs I help my clients create, I coach them to include the requirements for promotion and identify distribution channels up front. This way you (or your writer) can create the snippets for social media along with any additional graphics.You can also map out distribution scenarios so that momentum is built along with reach and exposure. Planning for content promotion and distribution also helps to ensure that your messaging is consistent across channels, producing better experiences for your audience.

Once you have a content distribution strategy, it’s time to put it all into action. For more on creating a comprehensive content strategy, download Curata’s eBook: The Content Marketing Pyramid: A Framework to Develop & Execute Your Content Marketing Strategy.