What Makes Content Shareable & Why It Matters for SEO

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10 Shocking Facts About Content Marketing Today

Every day, more than 27 million pieces of content are shared on the Web. If there was ever a question as to whether content is still king, this statistic speaks volumes. However, the content marketing industry is just beginning to bloom as more people turn to it to exhibit their company brand and message.

Content marketing has revolutionized what it means to showcase your business to the world. With social channels such as LinkedIn and Twitter, it's quick and easy to get the word out about your goods and services. Now, content marketing has evolved into an art – every marketing team is attempting to create the next unique, wildly successful campaign to propel their company to the top.

As marketers find new ways to reach their target audiences and technology continues to evolve, the future of content marketing continues to get brighter. Here are 10 shocking facts about this revolutionary marketing strategy that shapes the way we make purchases, evaluate services, and use the Internet each day.

1. Companies with an active blog generate 67 percent more leads per month

This statistic highlights one key factor that anyone who uses the Web can't ignore – people love blogs. They love them even more when they happen to find them on their favorite company's websites.

Why? Because blogging provides consumers with a down-to-earth view of what a business is all about. Furthermore, company blogs can quickly become a go-to resource for other people in the industry, assuming posts are always educational and relevant. Marketers can utilize the company blog to entice readers with calls-to-action and content offerings for lead capture. Why not cast a larger net when there are plenty of fish in the sea?

2. On average, content marketers are using 12 different tactics

Multitasking is an understatement for marketers, as this statistic from the Content Marketing Institute implies. Every year, more channels of communication open up for marketing teams – think of all of the apps and social networking sites that have exploded onto the scene in 2014 alone.

That being said, content marketers are taking advantage of many of them – most have an average of a dozen in their arsenal. Virtual conferences, videos, and research reports are among some of the most popular ones, and they may be worth incorporating into your own strategy.

3. About 86 percent of B2C companies use content marketing

It's no longer just the B2B companies that are taking a stab at content marketing, according to this statistic. With the number of consumers turning to social networking to make buying decisions, B2C companies are viewing content marketing as the key to expanding their client base. The value of content marketing continues to expand across multiple industries.

4. B2B marketing teams spend 33 percent of their budget on content marketing

This statistic indicates one key point: content marketing is valuable – so valuable that it's worth 33 percent of the marketing budget.

Resources such as content management systems and email marketing software come with a price. That being said, you can make up for the cost with the ROI of the product. Automating certain marketing tasks can save your team valuable time that they could put toward other tasks such as lead nurturing.

The value of content marketing continues to prove itself in the number of leads that are brought in, which have the potential to translate into deals.

5. Social media sites and blogs reach eight out of 10 Internet users in the U.S.

This is a large number, even when you aren't taking into account the number of people who may be using these sites to make purchases. Whether your buyer persona is most frequently on LinkedIn or Facebook, content marketers need to have a presence on social media and develop a blog strategy for outreach purposes.

6. Email is the most popular form of communication

Despite the prominence of social networks and their relevance in content marketing, email is still the winner. For this reason, marketers need to continue to place value in their email marketing campaigns, as well as the content that they are distributing to their target audience. These days, email automation and tracking software make it easy for marketing teams to tackle this portion of their job.

7. Approximately 47 percent of B2B marketers regularly use LinkedIn

Even if your target audience primarily uses Facebook or Twitter, it's a good idea to utilize LinkedIn as a marketer. Business professionals turn to this website to make connections with other people in their industry and build their network.

If you still aren't convinced, consider this statistic – top salespeople spend approximately six hours per week on LinkedIn. The social networking site has evolved into a powerful sales and marketing tool that continues to grow in popularity.

8. Nearly 87 percent of B2B companies use social media to distribute content

While it's completely acceptable to offer content on areas of your company website, there's a greater chance of reaching the masses through social media. That being said, publishing your content on websites such as Facebook and Twitter isn't always enough.

Your content marketing team needs to build a following on these social networking websites by providing valuable, insightful updates. This may take some work – and an employee who is dedicated to social networking efforts. However, the ROI will come in the form of more prospects and leads, who may eventually become customers and contributors to your overall bottom line.

9. Companies that blog 15 times per month get five times more traffic than those that don't

This number indicates one simple fact – build a blog, and people will come. Active blogs can create a breadcrumb trail for more leads and set the sales team up for success; pointing to an expert and in-house-written blog post that answers a lead's question thoroughly and intelligently is a very helpful sales tactic. It's up to the marketing team to ensure that the blog is always full of insightful, fresh content, and although this may take some work, the potential benefits are hard to ignore.

10. Only 44 percent of companies outsource their content marketing efforts

While it may be easy to outsource tasks such as blogging and social networking, companies are showing a preference toward keeping content marketing in-house. There are pros and cons to doing so, but the biggest benefit is that in-house teams generally have greater access to primary data, company voice, and other brand nuances that outsourced writers don't. However, in-house teams are commonly more expensive than outsourced solutions.

Conclusion

Content marketing isn't just a fad; it has firmly established itself as a core facet of the marketing industry. Its seemingly sudden increase in popularity is due to its significant benefits to other disciplines of online marketing, such as SEO and social media marketing. Clearly, marketers have embraced content marketing and the statistics prove its value.

Image credit: Stock Monkeys

How to Implement an Engaging Content Marketing Plan for the Finance Industry

Finance-related information is often dismissed as boring and dry and a pain to read. But it need not be that way. After all, everybody needsgood and reliable information when it comes to money. So it should not be difficult for financial institutes to grab people's attention with the right kind of content.

For an engaging content marketing plan, focus on creating content that helps your customers and provides them with the resources they need to make informed decisions.

Yes, we live in a consumer-driven world now, and not only do you need to understand exactly what content your target audience wants, you need to be obsessed with them to succeed. This post will help you do exactly this.

A Bird's Eye View

Before you dive into a new strategy, it's good to get the basics right. Make a plan and create an overview of your goals and what your content marketing will look like. Here's something to get you started.

Social Channels: Facebook and Twitter are the "must do" channels. But if you have the time and the resources for it, jump into LinkedIn communities or run a Google

6 Reasons for Your Lack of Content Marketing Success

Content marketing is the phrase of the moment. Everyone in the marketing industry now seems to "do content". Several brands and agencies boast its success, and a growing number of "experts" claim that content marketing is an effective and relatively easy way to drive awareness, sales, and advocacy.

Is it too good to be true?

Excellent results in content marketing can certainly occur. And there are several agencies or brands where it has actually happened.

But content marketing is not as easy as one would think. It often requires a lot of education, the art of convincing and having to break a lot of old marketing habits.

If you have invested a lot of energy (and money!) in content marketing and despite all that the results are not meeting your expectations, perhaps the reasons that led to this failure are apparent. If not, here are six possible explanations to your woes in content marketing.

1. Lack of Planning

Like the saying goes "Fail to Plan is Plan to Fail". Creating a strategy that is clear and with foresight is essential for your success. From editorial calendars, training and managing of editors and authors, content approvals, performance measurement... there is a lot to manage!

Success in content marketing begins with having a well-detailed content strategy that clearly defines objectives, terms, and roles and responsibilities. Your plan needs to be bullet proof! The slightest flaw in planning will compromise your success from the starting point.

2. Lack of Listening

Ego-centric content is another content marketing fail. Create content for customers, not your boss.

Taking time to understand what your customers really want to see or read, you'll be able to focus your efforts on creating content indisputably useful for them. Listening and anticipating the needs of your customers is the key to a more effective content marketing strategy.

3. Lack of Agility

You know that the success of your marketing strategy content depends on the fact that you should be able to post relevant content on a regular basis, but management insists on approving every piece of content, jeopardizing the momentum and limiting its impact.

The lack of agility generated by a very complex chain of command (legal, PR, engineering), can really kill any good content marketing strategy. Leaning as much as possible the levels of decisions (and a more convincing buy-in from C-level) can greatly increase the success factors.

4. Lack of Focus on Loyalty

Rebecca Coggan, from Matter Inside, illustrates really well one of the reasons why content marketing tends to fail: Brands tend to put too much emphasis on sex (sales) and not enough on love (loyalty) when creating content.

Although many of us admit that quite a few relationships were born out of sexual intercourse, the secret of a healthy and lasting marriage lays in nothing else but love. It is kind of obvious to say that when focusing on loyalty you decide to invest in your most profitable customers – the returning ones.

Be loyal to your consumers. Prioritize gradual constant action over one time high risk, big budget campaigns that often become ephemeral. The famous viral video campaign launched by WestJet for the past Christmas holidays is a good example of a big campaign that quickly fell into oblivion.

It's better to spread your energy (and money) into a lot of smaller but precise actions. By doing this you have a greater chance of maintaining a closer relationship with all of your consumers and engaging them in content that will rekindle the flame of love.

5. Lack of Modesty

Your consumers aren't stupid. Millennials are THEtech-savvy generation. Bombarded by the most advertising ever in history, they know what to look for with a sharpened ability to detect whether a brand's approach in content marketing is genuine.

Therefore, the only way to succeed is telling a real story that supports the promotion of your brand and your products. This will also help you stand out of the crowd from boring and commercial competitors who use typical "product-talk" that draw in little to no interest from consumers. By creating a narrative you will both entertain your audience and be more accessible and valuable to your customers.

6. Lack of Testing

Andy Nulman, from Just For Laughs, once said that successful content the fruit of rebellion and religion. Don't be afraid to test something different and pray that it works!

This is a good lesson of humility for brands that are alas often too afraid to shock consumers (or their legal department). Experimenting and taking chances with your content might be revealing for your marketing department and who knows, provide unexpected results. The key is to constantly test and to fail quickly.

Summary

Success in content marketing depends on many factors, but these are the most obvious pitfalls. Avoiding them can be a hard task, but being aware of your weaknesses is always a good step toward bettering your content marketing performance.

Francis Bedard of iProspect contributed to this post.

Image credit: Imgur

The Original Search Marketing Event is Back!

7 Ways Content Marketing is Like a Relay Race

Earlier this month, I laced up my sneakers and hit the road with 11 teammates to run the Ragnar Relay from Madison, Wisconsin, to Chicago, Illinois, covering 196 miles in just more than 34 hours.

As I've written previously, I think you can find a lesson in just about any scenario, and the Ragnar was no exception. Here are seven takeaways that relate to content marketing that crossed my mind before crossing the finish line.

1. Start With a Training Plan

One does not simply walk into Mordor; similarly, one does not typically up and run any type of race without some training. The same preparation is required to execute effective content marketing.

Successful content is born out of a well-planned strategy. Map out your future content through an editorial calendar and note the key milestones for your projects. Having a goal in sight will keep you and your team focused on the task at hand. But remember, if you’re not seeing results you want with your content, take a step back and review your plans and processes. You may find that a piece puzzle is just not working.

2. Coordination is Key

Twelve people in two vans running three legs each across 36 exchange points requires a lot of coordination. We held several meetings before race day to sync up on logistics and calculated our pacing time and handoffs to make the experience as smooth as possible.

In the same vein, content marketing has many moving parts that need to be synchronized in order to properly execute. To ensure your execution is not hindered by workflow barriers, assign roles for each project.

Identify one person to act as the primary lead and have him or her develop a work-back plan with critical checkpoints to connect and inform the other stakeholders: the contributors, reviewers, and approvers. Spreadsheets are an easy way to organize workflows, but as your content marketing program grows, you may need to consider investing in a tool to improve organization and help you manage the steps of your program.

3. Rally Around the Team and Community

A relay race calls for trust and teamwork – runners must have faith that their team will be waiting at the next stop, ready to receive the baton. The running community is very strong, so we felt supported beyond our own team. The race organized social communities to connect teams and foster that trust and camaraderie.

Within content marketing, have confidence that your team members can deliver their pieces on time and meet quality standards. Set clear expectations up front and develop standards for new contributors. If enlisting new bloggers, for example, provide guidelines on tone/voice and style so they have a framework to reference.

When you feel like you’ve developed tunnel vision or can’t see the end in sight, turn to your community for inspiration. Scan social media to see what topics influencers are talking about. Talk to your sales, support, or products teams to get a fresh perspective and new feedback.

4. You Can’t Prepare for Everything

We took to this challenge armed with race guides, packing checklists, and maps. We prepared as much as we could, but we couldn’t control everything. In the days leading up to the event, a runner got injured; we had to think on our feet (quite literally) and make it work, having a few runners take extra legs.

Sometimes things don’t turn out as planned. Last-minute roadblocks may come up that impact your deliverables – this could be anything from internal hold-ups on approval to external factors such as influential breaking news.

Sometimes the hiccups may be minor and you have a solid plan and process in place so the impact is minimal. Other times, you may need to revisit your message or deadlines to adjust for these unexpected changes.

5. Every Role in the Process is Valuable

There were so many people involved in this event besides just the runners. Our drivers made sure we got to all our checkpoints. Volunteers corralled runners and provided water.

Stations were set up to take care of injuries. Local organizations provided food and in some cases, sleep arrangements and hot showers. The runners may have been the focus, but the event could not have happened without all those involved.

Just because someone doesn’t have "content marketing" in their title, doesn’t mean they won’t provide valuable perspective. Tap into other team members who are subject matter experts and are eager to contribute.

Not everyone’s a writer so find an output the person feels comfortable with - maybe that’s an interview or a webinar. Don’t forget to acknowledge your contributors - from the person who provided research or a set of reviewing eyes to the designers involved. Show your appreciation and it will pay off with future projects.

6. Enjoy the Ride

At the end of the day, Ragnar was about the experience – the journey, rather than the destination. Content marketing is the same.

Don’t get too focused on the final content type. It shouldn’t matter too much if the delivery mechanism is a blog post, infographic, report, or video; what matters is the story being told. Have confidence in the story, and it will deliver.

7. Finish Strong

Each runner had three legs to run so it was key for everyone to pace themselves and make sure they had enough fuel left in the tank to finish. On the content side, it’s common to fall into the trap of putting a lot of time and effort into content creation, but don’t forget to save some energy to take a piece across the finish line.

Promotion and distribution are big parts of the equation. And of course, the race isn’t really over when you cross the finish line. Be sure to continually evaluate your content to understand how it’s performing, if it’s hitting your metric benchmarks, and if it needs updating.

The Original Search Marketing Event is Back!

7 Outstanding Content Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Small businesses have historically been slow to adopt the content marketing strategies that corporate marketers use. But as SEO has evolved significantly in recent years, it has become clear that small businesses need to include how-tos, e-books, comparison guides, and other content marketing techniques to remain competitive in the rankings.

Whether the content is created in-house or outsourced to an agency, there will be a time when creative ideas for interesting new content become scarce. Here are seven tips for creating outstanding content.

1. Create a Content Marketing Calendar

Having a calendar that documents a content strategy is a great way to ensure timely content creation, but this strategy is too often overlooked. Sixty-one percent of marketers say that their biggest difficulty with content creation is that it takes too much time, but only 44 percent are reported to have a documented content marketing strategy.

Putting together a calendar of content scheduled for the month is a great first step that provides a set amount of time to strategize, brainstorm, create, and publish.

2. Find Out What Works

BuzzSumo: The Heavyweight of Content Discovery?

Before we get started, I have a confession – I was initially a little reluctant to write this review, because BuzzSumo has become nothing short of my secret weapon when it comes to keeping on top of what's going on in our industry. It's so good, it's revolutionized how I create, share, and read content relating to SEO, PPC, and Internet marketing.

Something else I want to point out before we go any further is that this isn't a paid review, and I have no relationship to BuzzSumo other than the fact that I'm an enthusiastic user. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's dive into why BuzzSumo is such an awesome tool and why you should make it a part of your Internet marketing arsenal.

Real Insights

I'm always on the lookout for new tools that will help me do my job more effectively, and BuzzSumo more than fits the bill. But what is BuzzSumo, and what does it do?

Simply put, BuzzSumo is a Web-based software program that trawls the Web for content based on search queries, and provides you with lots of interesting data based on your results. I use BuzzSumo for three primary tasks:

Discovering hot new industry topics and interesting news.Identifying key influencers in my industry for networking purposes.Researching other websites.

Let's look at each task in a bit more detail.

Content Discovery

Content curation can be kind of a pain. Even highly customizable services like Feedly can be difficult to use, especially if you don't have all day to sit around reading articles and news stories.

With so many sites republishing the same old stuff, I need to know which articles are worth reading, and fast. BuzzSumo makes this easy.

First, simply enter a topic in the search field. For this example, I chose "PPC" because that's the nature of my business. You can also filter your results using the list of content types listed on the left.