This morning, the runners of the Boston Marathon took to the streets of the city once again in pursuit of crossing the finish line on Boylston. I commend their hard work, drive and dedication to reach the finish line, not only due to the physical feat of running 26.2 miles, but because the marathon is no longer just a race for Boston. As a local company, we proudly support the achievements of all the athletes who choose to run for the city.

In the spirit of today’s event, and because we wish we could be cheering on the sidelines ourselves, we’ve put together a step-by-step content marketing marathon guide. Need help getting your content campaigns to cross the finish line? Take a look at the infographic below for tips on how to keep a steady pace, look to your fans for support and reach your content marketing goals.

Did you find this infographic helpful? Check out these other resources for more advice:

• Content Marketing Tactics Planner
• The 4 Steps to Content Marketing Enlightenment
• Content Marketing Tools: The Ultimate List

Or get a free demo of Curata today.

Here’s a rundown of our experts:

• David Cooperstein, VP, Research Director at Forrester Research @MiniCooper
• Ann Handley, CCO at MarketingProfs @MarketingProfs
• Jay Baer, Author of Youtility @JayBaer
• Michael Gerard, CMO at Curata @michaelgerard
• David Skok, General Partner at Matrix Partners @BostonVC
• Ryan Skinner, Senior Analyst at Forrester @rskin11
• Andy Crestodina, Strategic Director at Orbit Media @Crestodina
• Chris Brogan, CEO at Human Business Works @ChrisBrogan
• Marcus Sheridan, Founder at The Sales Lion @TheSalesLion
• Mike Stelzner, Founder/CEO at Social Media Examiner @Mike_Stelzner
• Joe Pulizzi, Founder at Content Marketing Institute @JoePulizzi
• Stan Smith, Founder at Pushing Social @PushingSocial
• Lewis Bertolucci, Head of Social Media at Humana @Lewis502
• Gini Dietrich, CEO at Arment Dietrich/Founder of SpinSucks @GiniDietrich

Have any other expert content marketing insights? Leave a comment below.

If you’re looking for more from these experts, check out the rest of their insights from Mass TLC’s Sales & Marketing Summit, Marketo’s Marketing Nation Summit, Forrester’s Summit for Marketing Leaders and Social Media Marketing World:

• Growth Hacking for Marketing by David Skok and SiriusDecisions 
• Content Marketing Perspective of Marketo’s Marketing Nation Summit
• Customer Engagement Guidelines from Forrester’s Forum for Marketing Leaders
• The Ultimate Social Media Marketing World Wrap-Up

For more on how to improve your content marketing strategy, get a free demo of Curata today.

Enter the Content Marketing Pyramid, a framework which I first blogged about in 2010.

Some have compared this content model to the old model of the food pyramid, and there are a few similarities. Both pyramids stress the importance of creating a strong foundation and building on that foundation with segments that are consumed (or created) at increasingly smaller intervals.

The base of the Content Marketing Pyramid is curated content, which is relatively low effort and lends itself to high frequencies. As we move up the pyramid to short form blog posts to infographics to ebooks and white papers to print books, the content becomes higher effort and lower frequency.

Compared to curated content, print books are expensive and time-intensive to produce, so they’re like the sugars and fats at the top of the food pyramid, which we’re urged to use sparingly. Otherwise, we might get a stomachache (or in the case of content marketing, burn out).

Using this framework, content marketers can quickly identify areas in their marketing program that lack content. If your content looks more like an inverted pyramid with content curation campaigns, you might want to add more of the latter so you’re hitting all the major content “food groups” and getting a more balanced diet

One way to do this is by moving content through the pyramid instead of treating each segment separately. Re-purposing content gives you more mileage out of each idea, saving you time and energy. This is not only for your sanity, but for the benefit of prospects who consume content in different formats. Some are ravenous ebook readers, while others prefer the more interactive environment of a webinar or the shorter format of a blog post.

Here’s a look at how we might move a single piece of content through this process:

Our 34-page ebook called How to Feed the Content Beast (without getting eaten alive) is targeted at content marketers and contains tips on supplementing their existing content with curated content.

Next, we might turn the ebook’s content into a webinar and use it to generate email signups. During the webinar, we could conduct a poll and gather data for an infographic. We could also offer the original ebook as a free download before or after the webinar to reinforce the message.

In addition to a webinar, we might break up the ebook’s content to create shorter blog posts and website blog content for our own site or as guest posts for other relevant sites.

Lastly, we could intersperse the blog content created above with relevant content curated from other sources to offer more diverse perspectives on the topic.

We could also move a piece of content through the pyramid in the other direction, starting with content curation and working up to writing an ebook or print book.

Looking for more ideas on content marketing and curation? Download Curata’s eBook How to Feed the Content Beast.