For starters, they have to create a lot of content. Most brands distribute unique content across email, blogs, general webpages, social media, and one-to-one marketing campaigns every day. They also have to manage a team of supporting content producers, usually with tools that aren’t equipped to scale (for example, a spreadsheet editorial calendar). Finally, they must prove content marketing ROI using data from multiple disjointed systems.

And that ROI is a pretty significant investment: B2B content marketers surveyed by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs reported that almost a third (29%) of their marketing budgets were allocated to content marketing.

This amounts to a massive input of time and money—and because today’s consumer expects hyper-personalized content at every stage of the buyer’s journey, it still doesn’t always achieve the ideal outcome. It’s just too much for a human marketer to achieve.

This is where artificial intelligence can make a major difference in the profitability of your content—but are marketers ready?

Are Marketers Ready to Embrace AI?

Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute conducted a study of hundreds of marketers to assess their thoughts on using AI to intelligently automate more than 60 common marketing tasks.

Content marketing topped the list of highest-rated AI marketing use cases. Of the top 10 use cases marketers identified, seven of them related to content marketing, including keyword selection, A/B testing content, content analysis, and optimization.

Three-fourths of respondents were decision makers, identifying as Managers (30%), VPs/Directors (19.5%) or C-Level/SVPs (26.3%).

And the tasks they want to automate are actually all possible with AI tools that currently exist on the market.

What does this mean? Marketing leaders are ready to approach content marketing in a new way. A way that scales, increases efficiency, and makes more money.

AI Can Increase Efficiency, Performance, and Revenue

AI is being rapidly adopted by marketers facing pressure to produce high-performing campaigns faster than ever. It operates with speed and capability that humans simply cannot, so it solves problems that humans can’t. This is why it’s used daily to make marketing more efficient, personalized, and data-driven.

For content marketers, AI does this in three main ways:

1. It creates content faster. And in turn, creates more content than humans, without sacrificing efficiency. One example of this is natural language generation, which accurately writes data-driven content. You can arrange data points in a spreadsheet and run it through an natural language generation tool, which turns the data into a story—automatically.
2. It creates better content. AI learns by your example. This means you can feed it large data sets and it will instantly learn your brand’s standards, for example. Natural language processing can do this very task, then review the content your team has written and offer suggestions for a better-performing end product.
3. It assesses content performance. AI can analyze large sets of data and help you improve your content marketing with what it learns from the data. Even more impressive, it can do this on a hyper-personal scale. For example, it can learn a website visitor’s preferences and intent on an individual basis, then recommend content that can help—answering questions the visitor didn’t even know they had.

All of these benefits result in high-performing, highly personalized content at scale that moves contacts through the buyer’s journey and towards purchase.

It’s Time to Move Forward with Marketing AI

This is a great opportunity for forward-thinking marketers who rely on content to drive their businesses. AI can be your competitive advantage, giving content marketers the ability to brainstorm, create, promote, and optimize like never before.

Content marketers need to start making AI a real part of their marketing strategies. And the inaugural Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference (MAICON) is built to help. It’s an event for practitioners and leaders seeking to drive the next frontier of digital marketing transformation within their organizations.

MAICON is designed to help marketing leaders truly understand AI, educate their teams, garner executive support, pilot priority AI uses cases, and develop a near-term strategy for successfully scaling AI.

Ready to take the next step with AI? Register today.

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.

1. Find the time to go long.

Analyze the data on content marketing influence and authority (as LinkedIn did in a groundbreaking recent study with Buzzfeed) and one finding is overwhelmingly clear: content gets more impactful and effective the longer it is. Blog posts over 1,000 words are far more effective than shorter posts. Over 2,000 words, effectiveness leaps up again.

Why is this? Long form content may be correlated positively with performance because long form content has the potential to cover a wide range of interrelated topics, thus allowing any singular piece to rank for multiple keyphrases on search engines.

Finding the time to create quality, longer-form content should therefore be on every marketer’s agenda for 2018. The best way to do so is to rebalance your content calendar so that you’re pushing out content less frequently but creating content more worthy of people’s attention when you do. You’ve probably noticed that you get the lion’s share of the value from only a small percentage of the content you create. So instead of investing your resources on many pieces that are just “okay,” invest those resources in creating fewer, more powerful content items.You’ll invest the same amount of time and energy, but you’ll get a far greater return on it.

2. Build a proper strategy for your blog.

Your blog is the rug that ties the social media room together. It’s a platform that you fully own, a central hub where you can launch content in any format that you like, and where you can focus your efforts on building a loyal, relevant audience. When your blog does well, your content marketing does well. It gives your content strategy a natural focus and a natural rhythm, it helps to keep you beautifully attuned to your target audience, and it provides you with a regular supply of content that you can choose to amplify on other channels with confidence. Once a piece of content engages the audience for your blog it’s a valuable indication that it could be worth putting paid media behind it.

3. Study the 5% club.

Around this time last year, Beckon’s claim that 5% of branded content generates 90% of all engagement set a content-bashing bandwagon in motion. Marketing commentators quickly jumped on board to declare that the data showed content marketing didn’t work.

Of course, what this statistic really shows is that 5% of content marketing is actually immensely effective – and an awful lot of the rest needs to up its game. If any marketer thought that simply labeling their communications as “content” would automatically increase engagement levels then they have almost certainly learned otherwise by now. But nobody is forcing you to be that kind of content marketer.

There is a formula for content success. It involves earning authority through original, in-depth content, and then leveraging that authority through smart, targeted, paid media distribution on the right channels. Study the characteristics of the 5% and you will be well on your way to joining them.

4. Don’t fall for marketing’s fake news problem.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the goldfish attention span myth? It’s the claim that human beings now have an attention span less than that of a goldfish – and that marketers therefore can’t expect their audiences to concentrate for longer than eight seconds. There’s just one problem with this statistic: it’s complete and utter nonsense. There has never been a study comparing human attention spans to that of goldfish. For that matter, there has never been a study showing what the attention span of a goldfish actually is.

The goldfish attention span myth has been misdirecting content marketing strategies for the last two years – and it’s not alone. It’s far too easy for marketers to fall for snake-oil salesmen-type claims that don’t really stand up to scrutiny but can do a lot of damage when they’re allowed to influence marketing strategies. In 2018, do yourself a favor: when you’re presented with a stat, check where that stat comes from and then decide for yourself whether it’s credible or not.

5. Create video like you mean it.

Video can be a superb tool for driving engagement for B2B marketers – but not if your definition of video content starts and ends with an executive in a suit staring at the camera. Challenge yourself to break new ground in B2B video in 2018. For starters, why not turn that longer-form content you’re planning into the script for a mini-documentary? There are plenty of handy editing tools (such as Videoblocks.com and Powtoon.com) to help.

6. Unlock the amplification potential of your employees.

Employee advocacy is the single most underutilized asset in the whole of content marketing. If you think that’s a big claim, then consider this statistic from our own experience at LinkedIn. We released 123 pieces of content onto our employee-sharing platform, Elevate. Those pieces were shared 4,290 times, which increased the aggregate reach of our content by 15 million. Employee sharing has this power because the combined LinkedIn networks of a company’s employees are typically 10 times the size of its own organic reach. When you create great content as a marketer, you owe it to yourself to give it the greatest opportunity to reach and influence your audience. That simply has to involve sharing by your own employees.

Have questions for Jason? Want more thoughts on what’s next for content marketing in 2018? Join us on November 14th for our next Content Marketing Expert Series Webinar.

But don’t let my scorn fool you, because obviously I’ve watched it. During Taylor Swift’s “73 Questions,” the interviewer asked her, “What does creativity mean to you?” She answered, “Creativity is getting inspiration and having that lightning bolt moment and then having the hard work ethic to sit down at the desk and write it down.”

Ah, the work ethic. The forgotten flip side of inspiration. All writers are struck with a flash of insight at some point. But that lightning bolt fades fast – and when it does, it means sitting down to a blank space and translating ideas into words people actually want to read.

Writing is a practice. And like any practice, it has shortcuts, tips and best practices that can make your writing crisp and your creative process sharp. Let’s look at five tips that can avoid any bad blood between you and your writing:

1. Read your content out loud: I cannot stress this enough. Reading your words out loud lets you listen to their rhythm and flow. You’ll be able to hear, not see, where grammatical notations should fall. And your brain will use an entirely different region to determine if your content makes sense.
2. Use the Rule of 24: Marinating does the same thing to content as it does to meat; it tenderizes it to bring out the full flavor. So write something. Fiddle with it. Then put it away for at least 24 hours and look at it again. Words you may have thought were brilliant may get axed, and you can shake, shake, shake them off. Other constructions you didn’t like as much will appear fixable. You will bring a fresh set of eyes that always results in an improved piece.
3. Use the end as the beginning: We waste way too much time getting to the lede. Stop! People don’t have time, patience or inclination to listen to you go on and on about Taylor Swift. So write your piece. Let it sit for 24 hours. I promise you’ll find that the best stuff you wrote is at the end. So delete your intro, slide in that ending, and you’re golden. Promise.
4. Use proper nouns and concrete phrases: People can’t picture a “rational method” and “abstract amount.” But when you say “white house” or “red door,” an image just popped into your mind. So avoid abstract ideas and concretize them for people. Marinating content like steak – see? It’s a concrete idea that you can hold onto.
5. Layer in voice on the second draft: Ann Handley taught me this, and I’m annoyed I didn’t know this technique till this year: It’s too big a job to convey information while also trying to sound like ourselves, or our brand. So write what you’re trying to say first. Leave it for a while. When you come back to the second draft, then you can layer in all those inside jokes (like song titles) and brand voice differentiators that make the content sing.

Lightning bolt or no, writing words that people want to read is hard. But don’t make it harder. Use these 5 tips to become a fearless writer, and I guarantee you it’ll be easier to sit down and construct a piece of content that enchants your audience. Your reputation depends on it.

Aside from writing,  there are many other things you can do to boost your content marketing career. For more on this check out our Ultimate Guide to a Content Career in the link below.

Don’t worry, this isn’t another blog post about the need for content strategy. Although yes, this is a key factor in a successful content marketing practice. However, it is one of at least four areas the best content marketers dedicate their time to: strategy, production, distribution, and analytics.

Looking for an effective content marketing editorial calendar template? Download Curata’s free editorial calendar template.

We’re going to deep dive into one specific area for this post: editorial calendars as part of content marketing production. A consistent best practice of leading content marketers is using an editorial calendar as part of the production process (pictured below).

Curata research shows over 90% of companies are now using a content marketing editorial calendar. More importantly, the “best of the best” marketers view their editorial calendar as more than a simple spreadsheet. It serves as a living, breathing, planning tool and timeline to:

1. Align team members around a common content strategy, cadence and workflow.
2. Track operational tasks and metrics needed to streamline content creation.
3. Attribute an explicit set of labels or meta tags to individual pieces of content to provide a foundation for subsequent analysis of content performance and ROI.
4. Provide a “parking lot” for great content creation ideas.
5. Facilitate better reuse and repurposing of existing content.
6. Manage the contribution of internal and external contributors, reviewers, and writers; including the ability to crowdsource content across your organization.

Let’s Get Some Things Straight

Let’s clarify several things before detailing the core elements of an editorial calendar template for content marketing.

1. What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the process of developing, executing, and delivering the content and related assets needed to create, nurture, and grow a company’s customer base. Note that content marketing should impact all areas of the buyer creation process—from awareness building to lead generation to sales enablement.

2. Who’s Responsible for Content Marketing?
All the tools, processes, and technologies in the world cannot, alone, make a great content marketing strategy. Someone must be accountable for its development and execution, even if they and their team aren’t responsible for all content creation. 42 percent of companies have an executive responsible for content marketing, with this number increasing to 51% by 2017.

3. Can I Simply Use a Spreadsheet for My Editorial Calendar?
Yes—but Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are time-consuming to use and offer limited functionality compared to dedicated calendar software. The editorial calendar template we provide below offers significant advantages compared to normal spreadsheets, thanks to being designed specifically for content marketing.

• Incorporate data into your content marketing process: Metadata collected as part of calendar management in your content marketing platform is the secret sauce for uncovering valuable operations and performance insights. These include the ability to measure content impact on your pipeline, measure by type of content, content pyramid/program, etc; and enabling content asset tracking/audits.

• Increased process adoption: Easy to use for increased adoption and a better content management process. Calendar software advantages include:
  • drop-down field options for more rapid and accurate data entry.
  • auto-fill data cells for efficient meta-tagging.
  • a clean interface for more productive content marketing management meetings (e.g., filtered views; customized views by time period).
  • simple drag-and-drop and auto reschedule capability to accommodate schedule changes and adding new content on-the-fly.

• Better workflow management: Keep your team on schedule through outbound communications and enable visibility into your teams’ work.

• Real-time synchronization for collaboration: No version control issues.

• Data security: Assuming your solution is software as a service (SaaS), your data remains in the cloud for data protection, so someone can’t delete a master file such as with Google Spreadsheet.

• Enables governance: For example, assuring in-process content is aligned with content strategy, and enabling content audits to identify content creation gaps.

If you are not already using an editorial calendar template as part of a more comprehensive content marketing platform, review your options for this type of software to boost your content marketing impact. Check out the Curata CMP content marketing platform or other companies’ software as presented in Ultimate List of Content Marketing Tools.

Core Attributes of a High Impact Editorial Calendar Template for Content Marketing

At Curata we publish hundreds of pieces of content every year for an audience of over 80,000 content marketers per month. This process includes tapping into multiple data sources and leveraging many writers—both internal and external. We identified 12 core attributes in our editorial calendar template used for every piece of content we produce, including eBooks, PowerPoint presentations, infographics, blog posts, and SlideShares.

1. Title

Be bold, be relevant, and stay on target with your content strategy and SEO goals.

• Resources for title selection:
  • BuzzSumo.com for social media activity around given topics/titles.
  • UberSuggest.org for ideas on keyword groups.
  • Google Adwords Keyword Planner to evaluate search volume.
  • Your content marketing team: At Curata we often select from multiple title options for the final title. (Do ensure your title is true to the actual content of your post or piece of content. No one likes misleading clickbait.)
• Other good blog posts for title selection:
  • Write the Best Titles for Content Marketing: A 10-Point Checklist by Roger C. Parker.
  • How to Write Compelling Titles for Blogs & Content by Heidi Cohen.

2. Publish Date

Have an estimated publish date, then update if required once content goes live.

3. Content Type

This field describes which type of content is being produced. It not only helps with the production process, but enables you to analyze the impact of different types of content on engagement and your pipeline. Here are examples of the “Content Type” fields we use at Curata.

Types of content:

• Blog post: infographic
• Blog post: long-form
• Blog post: short-form
• Blog post: curated
• eBook
• SlideShare
• Webinar (PowerPoint presentation)

A significant part of any content marketing strategy is your blog. Don’t have one or need help boosting its impact on your pipeline? Check out what the blogging 10K club are up to in this survey of 428 marketers: Business Blogging Secrets Revealed.

4. Status

Track the progress of a content item through the content marketing supply chain. The “pitching,” “submitted,” and “accepted” descriptors are useful for when your team is creating syndicated content for another company’s editor to publish on their blog.

Status levels:

• Not started
• Work in progress/process (WIP)
• Pitching
• Submitted
• Accepted
• Scheduled
• Posted/Published

5. Media Type

Your digital content may live in many locations across the Internet. Therefore the best multi-channel content marketing strategies include content publication across three different media types: Owned, Earned, and Paid. Build your owned media as the foundational element of your content marketing strategy, and tap into the power of earned and paid media as on-ramps into your owned media.

Types of media:

• Owned = your corporate blog, corporate website, corporate microsite.
• Earned = press pick-up, guest posts on other companies’ blogs.
• Paid = Taboola, Outbrain, Vocus, Shareaholic, media properties.

6. Media Entity

Put simply, the publishing destination of your content. Examples include:

• [your company] blog
• [your company] web site
• [your company] microsite (including name of microsite)
• [your company] LinkedIn Page
• [profile name] LinkedIn post
• other companies’ blogs
• media entities: Boston.com; Content Marketing Institute; MarketingProfs.com

7. Writer

The person responsible for writing the content, such as an internal writer, freelancer, or agency.

8. Author

The person whose name is formally attributed to the content. The writer may be different to the author when a ghostwriter is used and/or when a writer is basing content on thought leadership or content assets originated by the author, such as a company executive or product marketer.

9. Owner

The person with ultimate accountability for completion and publishing of the content. In some situations, the owner may also be the author and writer of a specific piece of content, e.g., a content marketing editor.

10. Pyramid

Curata uses the Content Marketing Pyramid framework pictured above to address two of content marketers’ greatest challenges:

1. Facilitating the execution of a well planned content strategy.
2. Optimizing the reuse and repurposing of content into multiple formats and through multiple distribution channels. Only 22% of companies have a specific process in place to ensure optimal content reuse and repurposing.

The top part of each Pyramid represents primary research, secondary research and/or thought leadership for a gated content asset such as an eBook. The remaining parts of the Pyramid are derivatives of this core content asset, consisting of reused and repurposed core content for different formats and channels.

Examples of Pyramids executed by Curata’s content marketing team include:

• 2015 Content Marketing Tactics and Technology Study
  • Gated: 2015 Content Marketing Tactics and Technology Planner
  • Long-form blog post: Content Marketing Benchmarks: A 2015 Roadmap
  • Infographic: Content Marketing Strategy: 6 Stats and Tips to Survive and Thrive
• The Ultimate Guide to Content Curation
  • Gated: The Ultimate Guide to Content Curation
  • Long-form blog post: The Definitive Guide to Content Curation

The high level bullets above are what Curata enters into the field “Pyramid” within its editorial calendar in Curata CMP. Attributing an individual piece of content to a specific pyramid enables you to analyze the pipeline impact of all pieces of content within that pyramid. For example, the marketing leads generated per pyramid. (To see these analytics for Curata’s content marketing process in action, feel free to schedule a demo with our content marketing experts.)

11. Persona

Content strategy should identify and develop personas that represent audience segments to give you a better understanding of who you’re talking to when crafting communications. Key parts of each persona include:

• Persona Name: This name is entered into the editorial calendar under the “Persona” field for each piece of content.  Examples of what Curata includes in this field include: Digital Marketing Darla; Editor Elaine; and Marketing Operations Michael.
• Title: Typical title of this individual.
• Background: A description of the individual, such as their role, field, or study, and other personal and/or professional background about the persona.
• Goals: What motivates people for this persona? How is their success measured in an organization? What are their objectives?
• Frustration and Pain Points
• Organizational Structure: Where their role typically sits within an organization, i.e., the reporting structure.
• Narrative: Informal descriptions or stories of the individual’s professional life. These narratives are a great way to help your content marketing team truly understand the persona, enabling them to create more relevant content.
• Sample individuals: It’s always great to include pictures, names, and titles of real people.

Similar to a pyramid, attributing an individual piece of content to a specific persona enables you to analyze the pipeline impact of all pieces of content within that persona. You can even use this attribute to complete an audit of which content you have (or don’t have) for specific personas. Such insights are great for your regular content strategy development and content gap analysis.

12. Buying Stage

Another important part of content strategy is identifying audience buying stages. In fact, 50% of the best content marketing teams create content according to stages in the buying cycle. Work with your demand generation team to identify and understand these stages.

Creating content for a specific buyer stage helps ensure content is relevant to its intended audience and increases the conversion rate of buyers in your pipeline. Attributing an individual piece of content to a specific buying stage also enables you to complete an audit of which content you have (or lack) for specific buying stages. Such insights are extremely useful for your regular content strategy development and content gap analysis.

Buying stage examples include:

• TOFU: Top of Funnel
• MOFU: Middle of Funnel
• BOFU: Bottom of Funnel

OR

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Purchase
• Retention
• Advocacy

Not only do these editorial calendar fields help streamline your content production process, they enable better analysis of your content to determine what is and isn’t working. Finally, please do add any additional fields you may be using in the comments section below.

Looking for a calendar template already loaded with the above attributes? Download Curata’s free editorial calendar template below.

Robert Rose and I just launched our combined sixth book, Killing Marketing: How Innovative Businesses Are Turning Marketing Cost into Profit, at Content Marketing World this September. The book’s key idea makes a case that the majority of businesses approach marketing entirely the wrong way … and that we need to kill the marketing we know and replace it with a new approach: marketing as a profit center.

Below is an excerpt from the introduction of the book that we will also discuss on this upcoming webinar courtesy of Curata. Robert and I truly believe that tomorrow’s businesses are in the process of transforming marketing into something completely new and different, and that building audiences and monetizing those audiences are the future of our practice. Enjoy!

Reprinted with the permission of Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose in association with McGraw-Hill Education.

In the 1970s, Israeli psychologists Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a research paper titled “Belief in the Law of Small Numbers”. The findings were that even professional academics mistook a very small part for the whole when making decisions. For example, even though flipping a coin is always a 50/50 proposition, if a subject was to flip it 100 times, but the first two times turned up heads, the subject would believe that the majority of flips would turn up heads – at least higher than the true probability. This is also known as the “gambler’s fallacy” where in Roulette we see red or black running hot, and we begin to think that red or black is more likely to occur, when statistically, it’s not.

As human beings, the more we see something, the more this becomes our reality, regardless of whether our sample size is too small to draw any real conclusions.

In the mid-1980s, Don Redelmeier was assigned to Sunnybrook Hospital just outside Toronto to serve as a check against certain hospital decisions. Specifically, Redelmeier was brought in to question each doctor’s diagnosis and provide feedback as to the probability the doctor was correct.

Obviously, this was something that the Sunnybrook doctors were not fans of … at first. Where did a generalist from the trauma center (Redelmeier) get the right to question a qualified physician?

But Redelmeier, and others like him, found that doctors “… had exaggerated confidence based on their expert experience.” Simply put, doctors would see problems and solutions around their core expertise, and would often times ignore other signals where they were not as familiar.

The problem was not what doctors didn’t know, it’s what they knew that would get them into trouble.

In November of last year, I took my son Adam to a high school open house. While he was taking a few of the sample classes during the morning sessions, I was doing the same with a group of parents. My first class of the day was called the “Theory of Knowledge”.

The assignment was simple: view a painting of a building and discuss what you “know” about the painting. Our group tried to discern when it was created, whether it was real or fictitious, and, if it was real, was it a famous place?

Once the discussion was completed, the instructor told us that the painter was Adolf Hitler. From that moment on, everything about the conversation was immediately altered. A few people even became emotional upon hearing thisinformation. The truth was, once the majority of the class found out this one piece of information, they could no longer view it as a piece of art.

What the class “knew” could never be undone and would affect their perception of that piece of art, and perhaps others like it, forever.

Does What We Know Hold Us Back in Marketing?

No, this is not a psychology, medical, or art history book, but the previous examples are definitely applicable. For the past 20 years, Robert and I have worked with CEOs, chief marketing officers, VPs of sales and marketing, and marketing practitioners from brands around the world. In each case, some part of their marketing and/or sales process was broken.

We go in, we analyze, we advise and (hopefully) compel these marketers and sales professionals to fix what they can with the resources they have. But what we’ve realized in the past few years has become, to say the least, disturbing.

Combined, this book, Killing Marketing, is our sixth such effort. Normally when creating the work-product such as a book, we start with the answer to a question. For example, in my 2013 book Epic Content Marketing, I talk about how marketers can build loyal and profitable relationships with customers by delivering consistently valuable content in order to drive sales. In 2015, Robert (with Carla Johnson) wrote the book Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing, which outlines an approach on how content-driven experiences can be created, managed, scaled, promoted, and measured in today’s business environment.

This book, however, does not start with an answer … it begins with questions … questions that Robert and I are desperate to find the answers to.

What if what we’ve been taught or experienced in marketing doesn’t show us the full picture?

What if we’ve limited our view of marketing to one area (what we know), and that is not allowing us to see the full potential of what can be accomplished (what we do not know yet)?

What if placing marketing solely in the marketing department is killing the approach of marketing as a strategic business process?

In other words, what if everything we KNOW to be true about marketing is actually what’s holding back our business?

The Day Hollywood Changed

Let’s try to make this more tangible with a popular movie example.

American Graffiti, still today, is one of the most profitable movies of all time. The film grossed over $140 million USD at the box office; it was made on a budget of less than $1 million. After the success of Graffiti, director George Lucas was in demand, and he started pitching his next venture, a science fiction movie called “Star Wars,” to Hollywood studios.

At the time, Hollywood was seeing a number of science fiction flops, and the industry did not see Star Wars as a bankable concept. Ultimately, 20th Century Fox decided to take a chance on the film. Still, the executives at Fox were sure the movie was going to be a flop and decided to let Lucas pass on an additional $500,000 directing fee in exchange for full licensing and merchandising rights. The studio believed they just saved a half-million dollars with no downside.

From 1977 to 2015 (before the Disney release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Star Wars movies pulled in just over $5 billion in ticket sales. During that same period, merchandising sales were $12 billion.

That’s right … 20th Century Fox sold off merchandising rights to George Lucas for pennies and lost out on a vast majority of the franchise revenue. They believed, as most of Hollywood insiders did at the time, that you make money from movies on ticket sales. Period.

George Lucas looked at the business in an entirely different way, and changed the industry forever.

Is it possible that the majority of CEOs and chief marketing officers are looking at marketing based on their own limited references (what they believe to be true about marketing), and not seeing the full potential (what they may not know), like the Hollywood insiders did? Are they killing their marketing from the inside without being aware of it?

The Purpose of Marketing

In one of his 70 books on marketing, famed marketing professor Philip Kotler explained that the “mantra of marketing was CCDVTP.” It was an acronym that suggested that the core function of marketing should be to:

C: CREATE. C: COMMUNICATE AND D: DELIVER. V: THE VALUE. T: TO THE TARGET MARKET. P: AT A PROFIT.

Now, of course, the “profit” that Kotler speaks about is the idea that marketing should ultimately drive more sales of product than it should create costs in order to facilitate those sales. This is what marketers call return on investment (ROI) of marketing.

Most of our marketing in the past 50 years has revolved around advertising, or renting space in channels to garner attention and, hopefully, change consumer behavior. But over the past decade, innovative enterprises have found a “new” way to deliver value to their target markets, by creating relevant and compelling content, gearing it toward specific audience groups, and then, over time, seeing positive behavior changes in the audience which, ultimately, are profitable to the business (this approach is called content marketing). Although the approach is relatively new to most organizations, the goals have remained the same.

In general, enterprises create and distribute non-product-related content to impact the business in three ways:

• Increase revenue (sales goal or winning customers)
• Save costs (savings goal or creating customers at a lower cost)
• Create more loyal customers (retention goal or keeping customers)

But, recently, there’s a new approach that has businesses re-evaluating the entire function of marketing.

A Fourth Model: Marketing as Profit Center

I had an opportunity to hear Robert Sperl, editorial director of Red Bull’s magazine Red Bulletin, explain the origin of Red Bull Media House. In 2005, the beverage giant was a major sponsor of Formula 1 racing. They had a simple goal for one of the races: to deliver a printed guide to exiting fans with the race results immediately following the race.

Prior to each race, the Red Bull editorial team gathered insider stories about the drivers and fun facts about the history of each race, and then assembled and printed the bulk of each magazine before the race began. To complete the magazine and add the race results, they lugged a 1-ton Heidelberg press to each track. As soon as the race was over, they quickly printed the results on the Heidelberg and distributed the magazines to attendees as they were leaving the race — an astounding feat done in almost record time.

Two years later, Red Bull decided to evolve the race publication into a men’s lifestyle magazine. It launched what became Red Bulletin in five countries, with 70% international and 30% localized content. Today, Red Bulletin magazine is published in five languages and is distributed in 10 countries. It prints and distributes over two million copies each month, including 550,000 mailed to paid subscribers.

The Red Bulletin is not measured by the number of Red Bull cans it sells, or how it persuades Red Bull customers to buy and drink more. It is measured just like a media company — Red Bull Media House enters into initiatives that are profitable on their own merit, just like The Washington Post, CNN, or the Financial Times.

Today, Red Bull Media House is one of the world’s most successful media companies. What started as a simple magazine has evolved into TV series, documentaries, world-class events, a music studio, merchandising, and they even license their content to traditional media companies like The New York Times.

While other enterprises were dabbling in media as, at best, a side project, how did Red Bull see this opportunity? Simple … Robert Sperl, and the majority of the other members of the Red Bull media staff, came from the publishing and media industry. Like George Lucas, the Red Bull content team saw the business model in front of them as a natural progression, instead of looking past it as so many marketers did before them.

Today, the Red Bull Model is being replicated in varying degrees across the business spectrum. Business-to-business (B2B) companies, business-to-consumer (B2C) companies, and even not-for-profits are starting to realize that as they focus on creating valuable and engaging content – a new model appears: marketing as a profit center.

Can we actually move marketing from the cost line of the financials to the revenue line? Can marketing actually serve multiple business models?

Our book – Killing Marketing – presents an entirely new business model for marketing, one that both leverages the disruptive forces facing marketing and advertising as it also fundamentally changes the purpose of marketing in the business. Like the Hollywood insiders falling down on Star Wars’ merchandising revenue, we believe marketers are, in most cases, blind to this new opportunity.

A few are starting to see that, to be successful, we need to kill our old marketing beliefs to discover a new model.

Cloud CRM giant Salesforce holds an event in San Francisco every year called Dreamforce. It is one of the most valuable physical events in the world, drawing in over 150,000 people and hundreds of sponsors each year.

Johnson & Johnson operates BabyCenter.com as a completely separate division of the company. BabyCenter reaches more than 45 million parents a month from every corner of the globe through its 11 owned and operated properties in nine different languages. Eight of every 10 U.S. mothers use BabyCenter.

LEGO’s The LEGO Movie was created as a for-profit initiative. On a $60 million budget, worldwide grosses of the movie totaled nearly a half-billion dollars.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg, often barely noticeable to marketers or even dismissed as irregularities or luck. But in the near future, this model will be the rule, not the exception, for every innovative company on the planet.

Driving Value Outside of Products

According to SiriusDecisions, there is a 1-in-25 chance to reach a C-level executive through outbound marketing. There must be a better way.

We’re beginning to see the signs of that better way.

In 2016, both Pepsi and Mondelez announced the launch of media divisions. In both cases, the marketing leaders at these organizations talked openly about a portion of their media being self-sustaining or even profitable.

A few months later, electronics manufacturing powerhouse and Fortune 500 enterprise Arrow Electronics acquired a number of B2B media brands from UBM, one of the largest media and event companies in the world (and parent company of CMI). Not only has Arrow purchased amazingly valuable subscriber lists and editorial talent, but it also purchased standalone marketing that is profitable unto itself.

Red Bull, Johnson & Johnson, and Arrow Electronics still market their products like other organizations, including advertising and traditional public relations. But these enterprises, through their content-driven and audience-building initiatives, drive value outside the day-to-day products they sell, and are monetizing it directly. They are, in every sense of the word, “media” companies.

Of course these initiatives sell more cans, more baby formula, and more electrical components. The delivery of amazingly helpful content keeps customers longer, keeps them buying more, and even helps new customers close faster. The engagement in the content reveals deep insight about customer behavior, and leads to the development of new products and services. All that, and the marketing pays for itself, and even generates a profit for the business.

This is the future of IBM, of General Motors, of Cisco Systems … creating owned media that can not only generate more leads and opportunities, but is so good that the marketing pays for itself.

To learn more from Joe Pullizzi, check out his upcoming webinar.

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.

Content curation is a great way to publish high quality, relevant content on a consistent basis. However, content curation can’t stand alone. Original created content is the linchpin of any content marketing strategy.

In organizations with limited staff and budget, content creation can fall by the wayside, or into the lap of marketers with their plates already full. To enlightened marketers, content marketing is no part-time job, and shouldn’t be treated as such. A successful content strategy that keeps potential buyers and customers engaged requires dedicated writers publishing content consistently.

What if an in-House Content Team Is out of Your Budget?

Outsourcing content creation to freelancers or agencies is a popular option for organizations with limited resources. Curata research found 17 percent of marketers are turning to freelance writers for high quality and relevant content. For companies unable to feed the content beast on their own, a content writing service may be a great option for the marketing team.

Below is a list of content creation services that can help get a content strategy off the ground, drive SEO, and improve engagement. It is divided into two broad categories: in-house writing services, and writer marketplaces. In-house writing services employ writers on staff; marketplaces connect you to a writer appropriate for a specific project. Keep in mind the lines can be blurred between the two types of writing services, and that this list is not comprehensive. It has been updated as of September 2017

Have a writing service you use that isn’t mentioned below? Let us know in the comments section.

In-House Writing Services A-D

Articlez
Content at a price competitive with what others outsourcing to non-native English speaking writers charge.
Services: Articles, blog posts, personal stories, anecdotes, newsletters

Brafton
An agency that provides custom content in various formats from full-time content writers and designers.
Services: Landing pages, case studies, analytical news articles, blogs, eBooks, whitepapers, interviews, custom projects, editing services

Brivin Corp 
Original content creation services that are researched by professionals to ensure quality and boost engagement.
Services: Press releases, blog articles, journalistic texts, and web content

Content Cavalry
One solution for coming up with compelling topics, creating and ensuring top-notch quality.
Services: Articles, social media, blog posts

Content Customs
Owned and operated by Internet designers, developers, marketers, and writers. Offers everything needed to create and maintain an Internet presence.
Services: Content writing services, SEO and marketing, design and development

Content Development Pros
Custom content writing services from content development pros within 72 hours.
Services: Web copy, articles, eBooks, blog posts, press releases

Content Writers
High-quality content for all major industries: travel and lifestyle, legal, food and beverage, medical and healthcare, fashion, music and entertainment, tech and internet, government and non-profit, sports, gaming and fitness, finance, business and real estate, education and daycare.
Services: Blog posts, website pages, press releases, social media posts, product descriptions, email newsletters, whitepapers

Creative CopyWriter
Services for writing projects large or small to entice readers and generate leads.
Services: Web copy, blog posts, articles, corporate brochures, direct mail, email campaigns, newsletters, press releases, presentations, sales brochures and letters, slogans, tweets, video scripts

CrowdFlower
Enterprise crowdsourcing. CrowdFlower offers original, high quality content in multiple languages from skilled wordsmiths.
Services: Sentiment analysis, search relevance tuning, data collection and enhancement, data categorization, content moderation

In-House Writing Services E-M

eBook Writing Service
Create an eBook that penetrates the deepest corners of the market, getting interested readers enthralled enough to return to your work again and again.
Services: eBooks

Editor Group
Delivers writing and editing services, proofreading, strategy and training for sales and marketing, thought leadership, content marketing, investor relations, and community campaigns.
Services: ads, annual reports, articles, blogs, brochures, case studies, magazines, media releases, newsletters, proposals, prospectuses, reports, style guides, tenders, audio and video scripts, white papers

Express Writers
Provides a range of professional writing services.
Services: Web pages, blog writing, resumes, product descriptions, article writing, sales pages, landing pages, topics, content planning, meta tags, content auditing, PR distribution, infographics, press release writing

Graphtek
Writing services for original, engaging website copy reflecting brand messaging and providing customer value.
Services: Web copy, PPC content generation or reviews, blog posts, editing, banner ads, newspapers, magazines

Internet Marketing Ninjas 
An online marketing service that provides search engine optimized web content.
Services: Optimized web content services, digital assets, blog management, press release services

iStrategy Labs
Custom content in various formats.
Services: Animation, illustration, photography, videography, live-streaming, video editing, copy writing, blogging, crowdsourcing

iWebContent
Writes, optimizes and designs content for users and businesses looking to boost their content marketing strategy and stand out in search rankings.
Services: Web content, blog posts, press releases, custom eBooks, blog creation, graphic design, web development

Mad Wire Media 
Writing services that help businesses develop their messaging on websites and increase search rank with content created by skilled writers.
Services: Digital marketing

More Than Words Only
A group of creative writers and expert editors who strive to come up with new ideas for your technical writing services needs.
Services: Web content, blogs, articles, copywriting, social media writing, translation, resumes and cover letters, proofreading, press releases, brochures

In-House Writing Services N-S

No. 2 Pen
Helps brands tell their story and establish an online presence through optimized website content and strategy development.
Services: Web copy, social media posts, newsletters, blogging, PR/blogger outreach, eBooks

Outspoken Media
Provides custom content creation in the form of blog posts, authority articles, link bait, press releases and optimized content.
Services: Blogs, authority articles, link bait, optimized press releases, optimized content

Phenomenal Content LLC
Writing services offering high quality, original content in the form of copywriting, article writing, blogging and editing.
Services: Articles, blogs, editing

SEO Advantage
Articles written by SEO professionals to help organizations rank in search for relevant topics.
Services: Web copy, press releases, blogs, social media, articles

SEO Article Writing Pros
A team of professional content writers and copywriters that can complete custom writing projects based on your specific needs.
Services: Articles, blog posts, press releases, website content, eBooks, eReports, social media posts

Simply Done Tech Solutions
Helps grow inbound marketing strategies and improves SEO via blogs, case studies, eBooks, etc.
Services: Veterinary blog posts, Q&As, Veterinary eBooks, infographics, case studies, how to guides, veterinary videos

SM Content Creation
Will tackle any project, as long as it’s creative.
Services: Website content, copywriting, revisions, blogs, social media

SocialSite Media
SocialSite Media repurposes and optimizes existing content, creates new site content, helps with landing page development, and editorial calendaring.
Services: Blog writing, editing, social media posts, landing pages, content optimization,

Socius Marketing
Provides researched, custom articles for businesses looking to extend their digital reach.
Services: Articles, thought pieces, blogs, whitepapers, corporate histories, executive biographies, email blasts, newsletters, B2B communications

SureWriteSEO
A professional content writing services company specializing in high quality, relevant content optimized for search.
Services: Articles, blog posts, SEO content

In-House Writing Services T-Z

TextRoyal
Features professional US-born writers with experience in over 40 genres, providing SEO-favored, original content.
Services: articles, blog posts, product descriptions, SEO and web content, social media posts, press releases, and more

Textun
Textun offers high quality and cost-efficient writing services.
Services: Report, article, blog post, review, web content

Textworkers
Produces web pages, articles, blogs, and product descriptions for hundreds of companies around the world including Avon, Maybelline, DISH Promotions, oDesk Enterprise Solutions, and more.
Services: Blog writing, article writing, copywriting, product descriptions

The Write Content
Offers help creating content strategy plans, custom-branded content, editing assistance and more from content specialists available for short term and long term projects.
Services: Content strategy, content creation, content editing

Vertical Measures 
A content marketing agency specializing in the development of long form and visual content. This includes free guides, case studies, white papers, infographics, resource pages and video.
Services: Articles, blogs, infographics, videos, guides, social media, SEO content

Write Collective
Topic brainstorming and creation as well as keyword optimization.
Services: Blog posts, articles

Writer Marketplaces A-D

Blog Mutt
A hassle-free writing service that uses experienced writers to produce unique blogs for companies who need consistent content.
Services: Blog posts, articles, eBooks, white papers, social media, web copy

ClearVoice
Offers both a software platform, freelance writer marketplace, and in-house services such as content strategy, management, distribution and measurement.
Services: Articles, blogs, eBooks, infographics, videos, freelancer matching and recruiting

Constant Content
Users can commission freelance writers to create custom articles, and buy pre-written articles.
Services: Articles, blogs posts, copy editing, copywriting, eBooks, press releases, product descriptions, review writing, SEO content, social media updates, technical writing, white papers

Contently 
Allows brands to connect with freelancers in new ways to boost content creation and power the next generation of media companies.
Services: Articles, blog posts, social media, web copy

Content Writers
Connects you with freelance writers who produce professional blog posts, website copy, press releases and social media posts for businesses.
Services: Blog posts, press releases, website page, white papers, social media posts, email newspaper, video script

Copify
Assists businesses from around the world to source fast, high quality content from approved copywriters.
Services: Website pages, article writing, blog posts, press releases, ecommerce content

CopyPress
Software, products, and services that help creatives and advertisers.
Services: Expert content, product copy, eBooks, white papers, press releases, infographics, SEO content

Crowd Content
Quality, unique content to elevate your site to page one on Google and get people talking about your brand on social networks.
Services: Blog posts, product descriptions, website content, eBooks, SEO content, press releases, whitepapers, newsletters

CrowdSource 
Manages a crowd of qualified writers, editors, and moderators to perform large-scale content creation quickly and efficiently.
Services: Articles, buying guides, product descriptions, blogs, recipes

Writer Marketplaces E-S

Ebyline
Helps brands and publishers find and hire high quality content creators. Simplifies the freelancer management process.
Services: Photos, videos, infographics, text

fiverr
A worldwide online marketplace offering content creation services beginning at five dollars per job performed.
Services: Business copywriting, creative writing, translation, transcription, resumes, cover letters, proofreading, editing, press releases, articles, blog posts, research, summaries, legal writing

Godot 
Provides reliable, quality content writing services to give your content marketing strategy a boost, no matter your audience.
Services: Articles, blogs, copywriting, eBooks, social media, SEO, whitepapers

inklyo
Find professional journalists, copywriters, and bloggers that create quality content which attracts attention and provides value for readers.
Services: Articles, blogs, copywriting, newsletter, press releases, resume, SEO

iWriter
A service created solely to facilitate the process of hiring someone to write articles for you.
Services: Articles, web copy, blog posts

Mediashower
Content written by professional journalists and edited by SEO experts to ensure it ranks higher and receives more attention.
Services: Articles, blog posts, SEO content

RightlyWritten
Allows you to place an order with a network of highly qualified copywriters. Does not require a contract.
Services: Articles, blogs, web copy, press releases, newsletters, social media, creative writing, technical writing, product descriptions, eBooks, whitepapers, resumes, cover letters, taglines, slogans, script writing, academic writing

Skyword
Helps businesses engage audiences with unique content designed to perform in social media and search.
Services: Content strategy, original content creation, content performance management, content amplification

Scripted 
A digital forum connecting organizations with highly qualified freelancers who can write blogs, articles, and bulk social media posts.
Services: Standard blog post, long blog post, white papers, Tweets, Facebook posts, website pages, product descriptions, local content, articles

Writer Marketplaces T-Z

Textbroker 
An online forum for custom-made, original written content with over 100,000 U.S.-based freelance writers who can write on various topics.
Services: Articles, blog posts

TextMaster
TextMaster offers professional translation, proofreading, and web content writing services from native speakers across the globe.
Services: SEO content, articles, branded content, eCommerce, proofreading, editing, translation

TextWriters
An online marketplace connecting more than 50,000 professional freelance writers with clients needing different types of content. Also features a catalogue of thousands of pre-written articles.
Services: Hire freelance writers, buy articles online, use ready-made content

Upwork
A large online marketplace where businesses can hire from over two million freelance writers, designers, web developers, mobile programmers, and more from around the world.
Services: Blogs, articles, web content, technical, creative, copywriting, editing, eBooks, translation, biographies, creative

WriterAccess
Connects businesses with one of thousands of freelance writers in minutes, with a quick turnaround.
Services: Blog posts, Twitter and Facebook posts, white papers, web copy

Writology
A platform combining a freelance marketplace and a professional writing service.
Services: Copywriting, web content, academic writing, rewriting, business writing, technical writing, media writing, SEO/content writing

Zerys
A marketplace for thousands of freelancers to connect with businesses, and also doubles as a project management tool for content.
Services: Content strategy planner, content production platform, professional writer marketplace

If you’re looking for writers, you’re advancing in your content marketing career. To find out how to take the next step, download Curata and LinkedIn’s eBook: The Ultimate Guide to a Content Marketing Career.