Content intelligence is a nascent form of revolutionary content marketing technology. It allows you to understand everything there is to know about a piece of content—including its context, so you can use that knowledge to guide decision making for that piece of content. It can even automate and execute some of those decisions.

Content intelligence integrates several existing technologies and applies them to content marketing. These include machine learning, natural language processing, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI). Let’s expand on what a couple of these terms mean:

• Big data involves computationally analyzing extremely large data sets to reveal patterns, trends, and associations; especially those relating to human behavior and interactions. People use big data for everything from predicting stock performance to seasonal buying behavior. And it helps the NSA know whether your post about “blowing up the joint” refers to your bomb-making or DJing skills.
• AI has a more nebulous definition, because what is considered AI is constantly changing. One way of thinking of AI is as intelligence exhibited by any device that perceives its environment and takes actions to maximize its chances of achieving a goal.

Content intelligence may draw on artificial intelligence and big data, but it is neither of those two things. It’s the systems and software that transforms data into actionable insights for content strategy and tactics. Content intelligence means having the full context of an individual piece of content. Not only that, but the whole corpus of content. It allows you to make better decisions about anything pertaining to the content in question.

Check out the infographic below. It offers a quick overview on what content intelligence is, what it can do for you, and where it currently exists in the content marketing space.

Content Intelligence is the Future of Content Marketing

Want to know more about content intelligence, such as which vendors exist, and what you can do to prepare your organization for adopting this technology? Immerse yourself in Curata’s Content Intelligence: The Next Frontier of Content Marketing Technology.

We  dive deeper into each of the skills or traits below, starting at Strategic Thinker and going clockwise.

Strategic Thinker

Fifty six percent of B2B marketers do not have a documented content marketing strategy, and this is a problem. Content marketers must have a strategy in place to produce cohesive and actionable content. The perfect content marketer has a list of several goals and ensures every piece of content drives towards that goal. Some examples of goals include:

• Increase site traffic, brand awareness or lead generation
• Educate prospects on your industry or product benefits
• Improve search engine optimization or customer service
• Build customer trust, rapport, loyalty, or industry credibility

Process-Oriented

Content marketing processes are required to scale your operations. These range from workflow to publishing to promotion to analytics. Within a content marketing process, there must be:

• Defined roles and responsibilities for direct and extended members of your team.
• A path that every piece of content must follow, or at least a staged gate process for decisions to be made about how a piece of content is planned, produced, and promoted.
• An editorial calendar to track content through its various stages.

To learn more about content marketing processes, check out these expert tips to manage your process.

Creative Thinker

Too many people are in a state of content shock as they are bombarded by obscene amounts of eBooks, blog posts, and other vendor content. Therefore, it’s crucial that your uber-content marketer is creative.

Design Skills

According to Ekaterina Walter, author of The Power of Visual Storytelling, the brain processes visuals 600,000 times faster than text. Bottom line? If you can communicate your message through a picture or video, do it.

It is important to think visually. It’s even more important to put these visions into eye-catching graphics, infographics, and images that connect to your main message. Content should always include an element of design. So the ability to create these elements using applications such as PowerPoint, Adobe’s Creative Suite, or the free open source image editor alternative, GiMP, is essential. Examples include:

• An infographic on Copyblogger: “22 Ways To Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue,” demonstrates the power of imagery to communicate a message. Instead of a basic list, Brian Clark created images for each of the 22 ways.
• The ability to repurpose a blog post or eBook into a sharable, compelling SlideShare is essential. This makes long posts or books more digestible for your audience. Learn SlideShare best practices from Todd Wheatland. Also, check out these super SlideShares:

• • SAP’s 99 Facts on the Future of Business
  • Curata’s Content Marketing Advice from 27 Experts
  • SEMRush’s Search Content vs. Social Content
  • Rexi Media’s 5 Reasons We Forget Presentations
  • Eugene Cheng’s SlideShare Experts – 7 Experts Reveal Their Presentation Design Secrets

Video Skills

Video editing is a great skillset to have for content marketers, and is only becoming more important. YouTube currently has five billion video views per day. Uploading videos to a company channel is a great way to reach your audience.

Cisco predicts that by 2021, video will make up 77 percent of all consumer internet traffic. So what does this mean? If you don’t have video editing skills, you might not be able to reach the majority of audiences. Take a look at the Content Marketing Institute’s Succeed with Video Content Marketing: 5 Tips and a Case Study to start your education. Also, check out these great uses of video for inspiration:

• Rand Fishkin of Moz’s Whiteboard Friday
• Sam Adams’ How To: Harvest Ale Pumpkin Keg
• Oreo’s Snack Hacks

Energetic and Influential Promoter

Social Media Know-How

Too many content marketers fall short in marketing their marketing. “Promotion” is the process step to address this shortfall. However, simply composing tweets or posting on Facebook is not enough. The perfect content marketer knows:

• Which channels to publish to according to their business and industry
• The best time to publish for each platform
• Who to reach out to, to make sure content is amplified across several networks and to a wider audience

Influencer Marketing

Speaking of reaching out to people, you have to get your content to the right people. Establish meaningful relationships with key influencers in your industry. These influencers will share your content with their networks and your reach will expand. Here are some great resources to learn more about this important facet of promotions:

• “Secrets to Successful Influencer Marketing” by Matt Heinz, presented at Marketo’s Marketing Nation Summit.
• “Why Online Influencer Outreach is Overrated and How to Fix It” by Jay Baer of Convince & Convert

Analytical Thinker

“Be the Analyst”

• Don’t just communicate facts and figures. Speak your mind, contribute your insights, and voice your opinion
• Ask “so what?” about everything you produce to ensure that what you’re communicating is of value and action-oriented

Measure, Measure, Measure

The best content marketers constantly measure and evaluating the impact of their content. This enables them to: 1) improve their return on investment, and 2) better demonstrate their impact on the organization. Which best describes your company’s content marketing measurement tactics?

• Mostly vanity metrics (e.g., social shares or page views)?
• Engagement metrics?
• Metrics that determine your team’s impact on marketing or sales’ pipeline?

There are numerous resources online about content marketing metrics. But these will get you started:

• The Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics and Metrics
• Rob Yoegel of Gaggle provides actionable tips to keep in mind when measuring content marketing, including:
  • Know when to measure content production and performance
  • Pay attention to where your customer enters the sales funnel
  • Know where your traffic is coming from
• Tony Jaros of SiriusDecisions recommends B2B marketers specifically measure their content based on these three metrics:
  • Content utilization
  • Content production time
  • Impact to sales

Witty and Humorous

Inject humor into your content. Nothing makes a piece of content stand out more than when it’s funny or witty. This greatly increases the likelihood of your audience sharing your content with their peers. For example:

• Marketo’s blog post “You Know You’re a Content Marketer When…” This post uses memes from popular movies and TV shows to exemplify the many habits—and struggles—of being a content marketer.
• “Telekinetic Coffee Shop Surprise” from the movie Carrie. The makers of Carrie prank patrons of a coffee shop by planting actors pretending to have telekinetic powers. The result is a hilarious clip of screams and surprises.

Skillful Writer

Creator of Irresistible and Alluring Titles

Remember when I said readers are in a state of content shock? Well, creating an attention-grabbing title that is both relevant and decent can make or break your post, regardless of its actual content. The best content marketers have the ability to create a title that not only entices, but compels readers to click. Here are some well written titles:

•   Why Content Marketing Fails by Rand Fishkin on SlideShare
•   Dove’s Heartwarming Ad Will Make You Want to Call Dad by Neha Prakash
•   This is How I Stopped My Content Marketing Ego Trip by Pawan Deshpande
•   6 Reasons to Delete Your Facebook Account Right Now by Kim Lachance Shandrow

Ability to Tell a Story

Instead of us writing about this talent, check out these great examples:

• Southwest’s blog, Nuts about SouthWest, regularly tells stories about employees with posts like “More than a company, we’re a family” and “Behind the Faces of Southwest One Report.”
• Patagonia’s blog, The Cleanest Line, lets “employees, customers and friends” of the brand tell their own stories about the great outdoors.
• Coca-Cola’s blog Coca-Cola Journey, tells lesser-known tales of this well-known brand, such as this post on A History of Coca-Cola Advertising.

Attention to detail

Every sentence—and every word—counts. The best content marketers know that to keep their audience interested, every element of their content should be precise. Without this attention to detail, content can come across as disjointed and lacking purpose. Lack of attention to detail undermines your persuasiveness and credibility, which are crucial for creating trust.

Spelling and Grammar

Good spelling and grammer may seem like an obvious trait for a content marketer. However, many of us still make mistake’s. Don’t misspelll words or defy simple grammar rule. You’re reader’s will notice them. (Yes, the mistakes in this section were intentional.) For example, this Huffington Post article titled “The Ten-Second Race to Content Nirvana” has two spelling mistakes in the very first sentence. The first comment at the end of the post points out the error in the article, which ironically is about creating quality content. (Don’t hold back if you find errors in this post.)

HTML skills

Evolving technology is making it easier to create content on the front end. But having a basic knowledge of HTML can help take your content to the next level.

SEO Insight

Content marketers should be primarily focused on creating quality content for an audience. But don’t underestimate the power of also optimizing content for search engines. For tips about SEO when curating content, check out Curata’s list of SEO Do’s and Don’ts. Cyrus Shepard of Moz also had some insightful thoughts on the topic of “How to Survive the Google Tornado” at Marketo’s Marketing Nation Summit.

Street Smarts

Product and Industry Knowledge

It goes without saying that great content marketers know what they’re writing about. Knowing your products can be especially difficult for marketers in the technology industry though. For example, understanding the intricacies of how a semiconductor chip works when you’re marketing to engineers.

• Work with other functional areas of your company such as product management or product marketing to get a better understanding of your product.
• Attend industry events, both in-person and virtual, to get smarter in your industry.
• Set up Google Alerts on your company, your products, and your competitors.
  • This not only helps you generate ideas, but also alerts you when there is news in your industry that you can capitalize upon (i.e., ideation).
• If you’re a Curata CCS customer, tap into the power of the self-learning discovery engine to bring you the latest and greatest content from across the Internet on your topic of choice. It’s also a great source of ideas for content inspiration, as well as a way to follow your industry’s top influencers.

Customer Insight: “Be the Customer”

As important as knowing what you’re writing about is knowing who you’re writing for. Content marketers need to understand their customers in order to create content that answers their most important and burning questions. They need to understand:

• What customers want to learn
• What customers already know
• How customers are finding content
• How customers are consuming content

Where can you get this insight?

• Directly interact with your customers. Go on sales calls with your reps; sit on phone calls conducted by your inside sales team; conduct interviews with your customers as part of a blog post.
• Go where your customers go. Read your customers’ blogs; attend events they frequent.
• Use existing research. Check out any voice of the customer studies your company may already be conducting. This can include Net Promoter Score (NPS) research or product marketing surveys.

Read, Read, Read

Content marketing is all about creation and writing. However, reading about your industry, your market, your customers, and how to be a better marketer might be just as important. For example:

• Check out the best books on content marketing such as “Youtility” by Jay Baer and “Epic Content Marketing” by Joe Pulizzi
• Read what the top content marketing bloggers have to say
• Stay up to date on the advice of analysts and practitioners

Collaborator

Internal Collaborator

• Within your company: Team with other functions across marketing such as product marketing and field marketing. And don’t forget the rest of your organization such as sales and product management. Great collaboration supercharges performance across all parts of the content supply chain:
  • Ideation
  • Content creation: crowdsourcing across your organization
  • Promotion: Interaction with your social media team
  • Analytics: Interaction with your marketing operations and IT team
• Within your content marketing team: It would be ideal to have all the skillsets mentioned in this post embodied in one person. In reality there will be an entire team of people from different disciplines. For example, editors, writers, SEO specialists, designers, etc. The most effective content is the result of the harmonious interaction of all of these disciplines.

External Collaborator

The best marketers understand that partnering with other players in your industry helps increase your credibility and brings in new perspectives. This results in greater value for your audience, and can result in you better leveraging your resources.

• Develop a guest post program
• Contribute to other company’s blogs
• Establish partnerships with other companies and analysts
• Hire freelancers or agencies to better use your resources
• Curate content to complement your existing content. Curata research shows that the ideal mix is: 65 percent created, 25 percent curated and 10 percent syndicated content.

Innovative

Persistent

Don’t let small obstacles stop you from creating quality content. If you hit a roadblock, keep trying or come up with a new solution.

• Can’t get an interview with a key source? Track down a contact on LinkedIn that can make an introduction for you. If you already have their contact information and they’re not responding, keep calling or emailing them.
• Don’t know how to use Photoshop? Learn.

Fearless

• Content marketers cannot be afraid to fail. In the history of content marketing, ideas and technologies have come and gone. The next big trend in content may be something you already thought of, but are afraid to voice your opinion or insight.
• Take risks. Push the bounds to stand out from the crowd. If you make mistakes in the process, learn from them and move on. Whether it’s an edgier title or a new format, it may help generate more traffic and make your content stand out from other companies in your industry.

Resourceful

Let’s face it, we’ll never have enough time, money, or human resources to do everything we’d like to do in content marketing. The best marketers make the most of what they have.

• Don’t have enough time to write? Hire an agency or a freelancer you trust that will best represent your voice and your audience’s needs.
• Having trouble finding the time to write that big eBook? Use PowerPoint slides to get your message across. Or simply write a long-form blog post.
• Repurpose content from that great eBook you wrote six months ago. Turn it into blog posts, infographics, or a SlideShare from the original content.

Do you—or your team—have every trait of the “dream” content marketer? For more on what employers are looking for when they hire a content marketer, check out these content marketing interview questions.

Do You Have Your Ideal Team of Content Marketers?

Still missing a body part? Don’t worry, you’re not alone in this rapidly maturing discipline. Just remember that happiness is in the journey, not the destination. If you want to know more about the arc of a content marketing career, download Curata and LinkedIn’s eBook: The Ultimate Guide to a Content Marketing Career.

Not everyone likes the same content. People respond to different things in different ways. You need to take the time to truly know your audience; what they’re looking for and why they want it on an intimate level. Otherwise even the best infographics in the world won’t get you what you’re after.

Enter Google Analytics.

You need Google Analytics to understand an audience on that deep, organic level. It helps you discover the true insights beneath the surface. In many ways Google Analytics offers the best form of self improvement. It gives you accurate, insightful, and actionable information for reaching your audience the best possible way.

Behavior

To know your visitors and why they respond to certain types of content—and avoid others—requires behavioral insight. Which pages are they visiting? What types of items do they spend the most time on? How do they arrive at your website? Where do they go once they’re there? What causes them to leave, and how long are they staying? These are all questions Google Analytics helps answer.

Action, Action, Action

The goal of all marketers can be summed up in one word: conversions. Simply put, is the content you’re creating compelling enough to prompt your visitors to take action? (Check out how to convert more visitors through lead value optimization.)

Whether that’s sharing content with their friends on social media or making a purchase doesn’t matter. What matters is if they’re motivated enough to take the next step you want them to take. Google Analytics gives you much of the reporting you need to measure activity against your site’s goals.

Funnels

The idea of the sales funnel is familiar to all marketers. But not all know how Google Analytics can help you create these funnels.

Analytics allows you to set up a series of pages as goal posts. These allow you to see which processes a user is engaged in and how far along the process they made it. It’s a valuable tool for optimizing multi-step processes, with e-commerce checkout being just one example.

Finally, you can gain superior visibility over the funnel, and the end user’s experience of traveling across the funnel. (Learn how to Make Sales From Stories With a Content Conversion Funnel.)

Mobile

We live in a mobile world. Increasing numbers of people use smartphones and tablets as their primary means of getting online. Worldwide, mobile Internet traffic has already overtaken desktop traffic as of November 2016.

With Google Analytics, you can see not just how many of your visitors are using mobile devices. You can see what types of mobile devices. And how those mobile device users are responding in their own unique ways.

These are just some of the benefits of Google Analytics:

The Content Marketer’s A-to-Z Guide to Google Analytics

This infographic was created with Visme for Orbit Media Studios. To create your own infographic, download the Beginner’s Guide to Creating Shareable Infographics. To better understand analytics, download The Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics & Metrics eBook.

Without measurement, you have no way to know what’s working, what’s not, and how to revise your strategy to amplify the strengths of what you’re doing and eliminate the weaknesses. Perhaps more importantly, you have no way of justifying continued (or expanding!) investment in content marketing to the C-suite if you cannot show numbers to back up your claims.

Which Marketing Metrics Matter?

To address this, Curata has published The Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics & Metrics. It provides a detailed guide to proving the effectiveness of content using various marketing metrics. It provides an eight part framework to help identify the metrics most relevant to your business, consisting of consumption metrics, sharing metrics, lead metrics, sales metrics, retention (subscription) metrics, engagement metrics, production metrics, and cost metrics. Each of these metrics can be measured across several content channels, such as websites, blogs, or social media.

To give you a high-level roadmap, I compiled 29 of the most essential content marketing metrics into the following infographic. Use this as a guide if you’re looking to expand your level of measurement or if you’re just getting started.

Once you are consistently measuring all the marketing metrics relevant to your organization, it becomes possible to effectively:

• Incentivize your team
• Diagnose and troubleshoot problems before they escalate
• Create alignment between organizational divisions

Want to discover even more content marketing metrics and learn how to compute these? Download the entire eBook on the topic, The Comprehensive Guide to Content Marketing Analytics & Metrics.

It’s hard not to conclude that the sector is in rude health. The future looks bright, especially when you consider the implications of what the nascent field of “content intelligence” has for the sector. Content intelligence involves using Big Data and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology to provide highly automated and predictive content solutions, such as estimating how much revenue a given piece of content will generate. Talk about actionable insights!

Opportunities to Improve Your Content Marketing

That’s not to say that all is gin and roses however—this is human life we’re talking about. Humans are messy, unpredictable creatures with limited resources, and marketers face insatiable content demands from an unfillable Internet. Thanks to a lack of time, lack of budget, inexperience, poor management—you name it(!), we’re all guilty of making mistakes that hold back the effectiveness of our marketing.

Curata’s survey found at least seven common content marketing mistakes that everyone should be aware of—and be paying more than lip service to fixing—to ensure your marketing efforts are as effective as possible. Check them out in the infographic below!

In conclusion, all seven of these mistakes may seem obvious. But that doesn’t mean we’re not guilty of any of them! What did you think of these mistakes—do they jibe or not with your experience? What are the top mistakes you see? Let us know in the comments, along with any solutions if you have them. If you’d like to know more about starting or advancing a career in the content marketing sector, Curata and LinkedIn’s joint Ultimate Guide to a Content Marketing Career eBook offers an in-depth, comprehensive overview, packed with actionable insights. Download it below!

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

Core Attributes of a High Impact Content Marketing Calendar Template

At Curata we publish hundreds of pieces of content every year for an audience of over 80,000 content marketers per month, and that doesn’t include content we publish on external publications. This publishing process includes tapping into multiple data sources and leveraging many writers—both internal and external. From our experience, these are the 12 core attributes you need for an editorial calendar template.

Can’t I Simply Use a Spreadsheet for My Content Marketing Calendar?

You can. 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 offers significant advantages compared to normal spreadsheets, because it is specifically designed for content marketing. These benefits include the following:

• 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 crucial operations and performance insights. These include the ability to measure content’s impact on your pipeline, measuring 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, such as filtered views or 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: If 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 content marketing 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 the Ultimate List of Content Marketing Tools.

Please do add any additional fields you may be using in the comments section below.

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

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

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

So you can:

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

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

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

Why the Content Marketing Pyramid is so Effective

1. Unified Content Objectives

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

2. Message Repetition

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

3. Content Saturation

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

4. Format Diversity

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

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

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

6. On-the-Fly Content Maneuvers

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

7. Balanced Content Mix

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

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

8. Operational Efficiency

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

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

9. The Ultimate Reward of the Pyramid: Pipeline Impact

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earlier this month, we released our third annual industry study, Content Marketing Tactics Planner 2014. We surveyed over 500 marketers on their current content marketing practices and where they’re taking their strategy in 2014. The results revealed a focus on three major marketing strategy components: people, technology and the content mix. With 71 percent of marketers increasing their content marketing spend, we expect to see these organizations driving more high quality leads and building more brand awareness.

People

The Content Marketing Tactics Planner reported that 43 percent of organizations already have a content marketing lead in place. These executives dedicate their time solely to the development and management of content. Top-notch marketing organizations are also starting to grow their content teams. These teams are taking authority on creating and curating high quality, consistent content for their audiences. This type of in-house content production and distribution gets more relevant, valuable content out the door – driving leads and increasing customer engagement.

Technology

Most marketers find it difficult to feed the content beast a steady stream of content with a limited staff and budget. However, many are turning to content marketing specific technology to help them manage their content workflow, find reliable sources and create enough content on a regular basis – 56 percent to be exact! These best-in-class marketers using technology are better able to produce more content (using curation tools) and manage content production more efficiently (using content management tools). Technology allows content marketers to become thought leaders on their topics, engage more buyers and stay afloat in the flood of online content.

Content

Many content marketers are realizing that it’s nearly impossible to create 100 percent original content with limited resources. Curation and syndication are proving to be life savers when it comes to getting content out on time without overworking your writers or stretching your marketing budget with outsourcing. The Content Marketing Tactics Planner revealed that first-class content marketers are only creating 65 percent of content, with 25% being curated from reliable sources and 10 percent being syndicated from topic-related sources. This mix is perfect for supporting a limited staff and budget, publishing consistent content and becoming a go-to source of information for potential customers.

Want to learn more about what’s next for content marketing, where your strategy should be headed and what content tactics to implement? Download our latest eBook Content Marketing Tactics Planner 2014.