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Content marketing in the eyes of 30+ marketers from all over the world.

ikona-data-publikacji

Published

21/08/2018

ikona-data-publikacji

Published

21/08/2018

Contents

Content marketing is a crucial part of marketing strategies nowadays. While many marketers didn’t really put focus on content activities, others were learning how to play this game, so they don’t need to catch up now. Content marketing gives an ocean to possibilities and support your marketing decisions… and so on… and so on…

Ok, long story short:

It matters to SEO: your brand can be visible.

It matters to your business: your brand can be recognized.

It matters to your customers: your brand can be regarded as a trustworthy expert.

We are all tired of defining and theory, though. So we decided to go a step further and ask for practical tips and tricks for content marketing.

We have sent a straightforward message to marketers worldwide.

“Tell us about content marketing. Your golden rule. How to get noticed? How to produce it? How to redistribute good content?”.

We got amazing answers from 30+ marketing gurus from all around the world and we are more than delighted to share them all with you.

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Thiago Carvalho | Former Head of Creative @Daily Mail Group & Founder @Deer Designer | https://deerdesigner.com

  1. Email your list

The people that are most interested in you are the ones that signed up to hear from you (despite all the emails they get daily on their inbox)

  1. Always engage with your community

The more engaged you are, the more they’ll trust you.

  1. Use social media to your advantage

Tell me someone who doesn’t wake up and look at their phones nowadays? Be where they are.

  1. Have a killing visual presence

No matter how good you are. If you don’t ‘look’ professional, people won’t trust you.

  1. Repurpose your content

Wrote a 800-word blog post? Re-shape it with highlights only. And again in form of a video. And another one as a podcast. You can use the same content in varied forms so you can reach different people without increasing the workload. No matter if you run a FMCG business or are into no deposit electricity – you can do it!

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Bohumil Pokstefl | CEO @Kontentino | www.kontentino.com

We create content which is up to date, valuable but not too cliche. Meaning, being written by many others.

What works best for us is using multiple channels. Once we create a blog, we share it on our social media channels. We post it into LinkedIn groups and push the engagement with a catchy question. We also do social media monitoring on similar topics and share our content as a different or similar view on the particular topic.

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David Trott | Lead Digital Marketer @Impact Business Advisors

There’s no getting away from it – the content world is crowded and noisy. If you’re serious about getting noticed, and cutting through the noise, then you need to start with an intimate understanding of your customers and their problems. You need to learn their language – how they talk about their problems – and get good at explaining how you solve them.

If you can articulate your customers’ problems in a way they find relatable, and a way that resonates with them, then they’ll turn to you for the solution. If you can do this, then the rest of the challenge is about distribution – getting your content in front of the right people; this is a fairly straightforward task for Google Ads or Facebook Ads.

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Matteo Volani | Founding Partner of isac/volani | www.isacvolani.com/home/consulting/

It became clear that nowadays it’s crucial to create useful content for your audience. Companies (startups and SaaS in particular) are spreading a lot of relevant informations in order to deliver value other than just the product in terms of resources, templates and knowledge. Every company has indeed a core proposition and by working on it, and by building the company itself, you can gather a huge amount of data, insights and experience that will be then helpful for others.

Once you create something meaningful and unique, as every company has its own, very personal development, you will attract through smart distribution on different social media (depending on where your audience hang out) visitors and readers that will first of all discover your product service through content and second of all will value your product even more thanks to your authority in the subject.

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Pollyanna Ward | Digital Strategist & Digital Brand Manager @Vifit Sport

Good content answers the questions that people are asking, and even better content gets people to read another article by you. Do some gap analysis between your website and your competitors and identify topics you can discuss to get you ahead. Don’t be afraid of clickbaity headers, but use with caution -> once a user has clicked, they want to see something good. If they’re a 45 year old golfer they’re probably not going to be interested in a listicle of ‘7 Times People Failed At Golf So Hard They Should Quit’ followed by 7 GIFs.

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Agnieszka Zawadka | CMO @Livespace | www.livespace.io

Creating fresh and strong content is always a good idea. Produce plenty of valuable content that answers your prospects’ questions. This strategy sets you up as a trusted advisor and moves your prospects closer to their desired outcome. Don’t forget about the nurturing process which should be the focus throughout the sales process – nobody wants to jump directly into a purchasing situation. If you want to win your marketing games, focus on amazing stories that give people motivation to take action with your company. Provide your target group some sort of value – good content that makes customers engaged, informed and enhanced, to share it forward. Remember to create a simple framework for dialogue between your company and target audience – make sure you have the technology and procedures to score and nurture those leads that engage with your content until they are sales ready.

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Norbert Strappler | Founder @DragDropr.com @SyncSpider.com @nnpro.at

For your content to be noticed, shared and easily redistributed it has to be really good and easy to read! To produce a great Content you have to:

  1. Provide value – give a credible, interesting and usable information to your audience and they will come back for more!
  2. Show your passion – make it clear how enthusiastic and passionate you and your team are about your niche and the things you do.
  3. Engage your readers – make them think about the subject, ask more questions and share your thoughts.

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Justin Hartzman | Co-Founder & CEO @needls | http://www.needls.com/ 

Step one: You have to create good content – content that your target demographic actually cares about and needs. Think about their pain points and create original and informative content that they’ll actually read.

Step two: Build a distribution strategy. Use keyword analytics and backlink tracking to boost up your SEO, leverage quotes from thought leaders that share a similar demographic as you to reach their audience, and don’t be afraid to reach out to blogs and online magazines for guest posts.

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Eden Spodek | Founder & CEO @Spodek & Co. | http://spodekandco.com

Do your research to discover and understand what type of content and subject matter appeals to your audience. Create customer personas and develop content that appeals to each persona. Include lots of quality visuals and don’t be afraid to use video.

Tell stories and engage your community. Every company has a story to share. Keep it  relevant – share client/customer stories to help make a point, ask questions, and remember it’s about the audience—not you.

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Ruchi Hupta | CEO @Shane Communications

Participating in niche related Facebook Groups can really give very good ideas for content generation. It tells you what kind of questions people have and what are the trending topics in a particular area. You can even conduct a poll to check the interests and inclinations of the group members and create content around that.

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Rahul Narayan | Owner @Golden Touch Digital | www.goldentouchdigital.com

We use videos to establish “authority” and stand out from the crowd. Shorter videos are more engaging.  

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Noman Rehman | Digital Marketing @Associate Concept Schools | http://nomanrehman.com/  

Content Writing is an essential part of the presenting your brand. Writing good content is one of the most important techniques to attract customers. Content should be engaging and attractive that brings more traffic to your website. Irrespective of which social media channel you post on, audience will only look for creative and unique content that will get more impressions.

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Nina Kozlowska | Content Designer @BrainyBees | http://brainybees.eu 

Content marketing is not a cakewalk: and as long as something beautiful you create and publish matters, the key to success is redistribution. You need to ensure yourself you made all efforts to reach your target audience, without being pushy or spammy. If you produce something great, let the world know about it and spread it further. Otherwise, your piece of content will die alone at the bottom of the Internet, being read by you only. Twice, though.
There are a lot of ways you can use when it comes to distributing. Social media, groups, guest posts, presentations: to make a few. You can make at least three other forms out of one: if you publish an article, consider making a presentation, short video, animation or infographics out of it and post on relevant platforms. Simple as that.

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Isaac Bullen | New Zealand Director @3WhiteHats | https://www.3whitehats.co.nz/

Producing good content starts with research and planning. I’d recommend starting this process using Buzz Sumo or Ahrefs content explorer and going from there.

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Nick Stephens | Freelance Digital Marketing Expert | www.njstephens.com

It’s been said time and time again, but make sure your content is unique. Work on generating new ideas from existing ones. There are some great tools out there to help you. Great content is great but it also helps to have a good network to share it with. Work on building your social media platforms in conjunction with your content strategy. Guest posting can be a great way to gain exposure if you have the time.

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Cordny Nederkoorn | Owner @TestingSaaS | http://TestingSaaS.nl

Content marketing is a crowded space. You need authentic content to stand out. But this is not enough, you may have good content, but without a good headline your content won’t get noticed and won’t get visited, resulting in bad marketing results. Next to the headline you have to research what content type your prospect wants to see: a text, a video or maybe an infographic? Videos are hot these days, but a prospect wants details, which can be explained in a text. If they are interested, they will read it. Content distribution is very important for reaching your prospects. For me, LinkedIn is the distribution channel to reach out to business contacts. Here I can post different content types to inform my network of what I am doing.

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Klaudia Zylka | Marketing Specialist @Sotrender | www.sotrender.com

Think outside the box, create something unconventional. By doing what everyone does you won’t get noticed and you won’t interest people. Be open as you can gain inspiration and ideas everywhere. Don’t forget to monitor what your competition is doing to be a step ahead of them and don’t make their mistakes.

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Brooke Herron | Wine Industry Marketing and Communications Consultant

Make one person responsible for your content marketing. Don’t treat it as an unimportant ‘side job’ that your salesperson or tasting room person can do in their ‘down time’. If you continue to treat it as unimportant you will never get the benefits you could be getting.
Good content is everywhere around you-don’t waste it. People are interested in everything you are doing if you are a winery or a wine business. They want to know what’s happening behind the scenes and see photos of it. They want to see that you are not just a business but that you are people.

Grapes being picked. Leafs being picked. Grapes being crushed. Wines being tasted for flaws. The winery dog rolling in the vine clippings. Barrel tasting. Lab testing. Photos of you at big trade events. It’s all interesting.

Take photos. Take videos. Write social media posts. Write blog posts. Get AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE from every piece of content. A photo isn’t just a facebook post. It’s also an Instagram post. Focus on a good description on FB and adding right hashtags on Instagram. Share every blog post on Twitter and on FB but describe them differently for each channel. Set up a ‘repeat’ to share the same blog post on Twitter a couple of times a month unless it is a time sensitive blog post. Build up your Twitter presence because it is one of easiest ways for small businesses to drive traffic to their website (through direct links to blog posts).

Instagram is you friend. It is the easiest/fastest way to get more visibility with little work. For small wineries this is essential. You get to use content that is easy to get and does not require much extra effort to share. But you need to use tools to make sure you are reaching right audience and using right hashtags and tagging every organization that makes sense to tag. This is why you can’t do it all yourself. You need to HIRE someone who knows what they are doing.

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Bruce Harpham | Content Marketing Specialist | http://bruceharpham.com/

It sounds simple but do something original – bring new data, new interviews and other insights that other people have not seen before. Imagine yourself as a kind of specialized business journalist to get into the spirit.

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Tereza Litsa | Social Media Manager @Lightful | www.terezalitsa.com

The first step to content marketing is to know your target audience to produce the right copy. You want your content to add value to showcase your brand’s expertise. Spend the right time to learn your company’s needs and how content can contribute towards addressing them. It’s also important to remember that content writing may be a key part of your content marketing strategy, but it still relies on the distribution to reach your target audience. A good piece of content will not be successful if you’re not able to promote it that’s why you need to be creative with your methods of distribution by acknowledging how each platform can be part of your strategy.

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Martin Hennig | Senior Marketing Transformation Consultant | http://www.peregrine.se/  

You need content for all phases of the customer journey, sales funnel/sales cycle. Helpful, meaningful content around your core business topics and with CTAs that make sense and don’t feel pushy. Once you created some killer content, put it on your website or blog and use social media to get it in front of people. Boost your best performing organic posts with some targeted ads and don’t forget about the power of employee advocacy.

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Ruchi Gupta | Founder @Shane Communications | shanecomm.com

Participating in niche related Facebook Groups can really give very good ideas for content generation. It tells you what kind of questions people have and what are the trending topics in a particular area. You can even conduct a poll to check the interests and inclinations of the group members and create content around that.

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Ben Culpin | Content Marketing Specialist | WakeUpData.com

Before you start producing any content, take the time to research your buyer personas so you understand who you want to reach out to, talk to them first and understand what their painpoints are and how your product/service is going to solve specific issues. Then seek to produce exciting, engaging content in a wide variety, I’m talking: blogs, infographics, videos, webinars, ebooks, you name it!

Get noticed by paying attention to calendar events relevant to the e-commerce field (Black Friday, Amazon Prime day, Mother’s Day, Back-to-School sales) and plan your content in a series around that field well in advance.

When posting your content on SoMe think about tagging relevant companies, brands or individuals who are mentioned as a case or have contributed to your content. If looking to redistribute find previous blog posts which have been successful in gaining traction and contact relevant bloggers, forums or communities who may find value in your content.

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Vlad Calus | Co-founder @Planable

Content is the key, we all say it, but we’re still creating crappy stuff and re-writing the existent content on Google. Unbelievable, I’d say. That’s why, I think best would be on focusing and creating great content for your customers, first, then it will get traction, and you’ll start getting a new audience. I’d say that most useful I find sharing our articles on Flipboard, LinkedIn & Facebook Groups, creating conversations and asking people, making guest posts partnerships so both of you promote the content.

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Hemant Jani | Co Founder & CMO of Abhisi | www.abhisi.com

Making bold headlines is the first art, followed by eye catchy image and a short interesting snippet.

Make your blog goal/agenda very clear at the beginning itself. This helps the reader to understand the blog better and IF they like the content you win a share. Offer an ethical bribe to the visitors to increase organic shares on your content. Guest Blogging  a great strategy to gain wide exposure for your own blog as well as gain your new subscriber base.

Forum blogging and community engagement help your blog get discovered. Formatting your blog and making blog reader friendly. From Neils Patel, latest updates backlinks do not play a too vital role anymore, but they are still worth and offer visibility to your blog. And the far most important is to create quality content, a well-researched blog is always appreciated.

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Georgios Chasiotis | Marketing Hustler & Co-Founder @Slide In | https://www.slidein.gr/ 

Most companies and individuals focus on quantity.

But, creating more of the same thing doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll get noticed by more people.

Respect your audience, listen to your audience and create content solely for your audience.

This is the only way to get noticed and start earning from your content efforts.

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Rickardo Gherkiere | B2B SaaS Growth Evangelist @Fastforwardonline | www.fastforwardonline.be

Start with writing what people are looking for. Search Quora for questions your target audience is asking, write the best possible answer, adapt your answer to the different channels and repurpose your kick-ass answers. Repeat.

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Oksana Chyketa | Marketer @Albacross | https://albacross.com/

Effective content management requires more than writing high-quality posts. This is because you can have top quality content but, it only reaches a few people. Thus, you need to have the skills to promote the content. From a personal perspective, I believe that the best way to promote content is through social media. The reason why some companies don’t succeed in promoting their content through social media is because they tend to post their content on almost every other social media channel. And although it’s still advisable to be diverse, it is crucial to focus on the platforms where your customers or potential customers could hang out.

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Jakub Zięcina | Marketing Manager @CallPage | www.callpage.io

To launch content marketing which brings measurable results, you should approach it as a process, not only as an act of creating content. Effective content marketing should start with the planning stage, based on business goals (content, keywords, distribution channels) and end with measuring the effects. It is essential to plan distribution channels well. It is worth focusing on thematic blocks connected with remarketing, for example in the lead generation campaign, users who read the article on our company blog should be invited by, e.g. Facebook ads to the thematically relations webinar which results as getting a lead. Other active channels are guest posting or email marketing.

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Enes Karakash | Account Manager @PikselLTD / http://piksel.mk/ 

Every day aim to create something unique, something that will really capture the attention of the reader. The main point with content marketing for our agency is, in a really discrete way, to inform the reader on the subjects that are directly or indirectly connected to the brand/service/product/initiative that we want to promote via this marketing channel.

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Neil Napier | CEO @Kyvio | www.kyvio.com

A successful content marketing strategy starts with an understanding of your target audience. You can produce some incredible content but if you fail to attract the right audience, you lose. They will simply not move through the buyer journey; they won’t convert, and they won’t buy. So before you start drafting your strategy, make sure you really understand who are you targeting and how your can help them with content. Research your market, know your audience, then offer value.

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Woah! Congratulations: you got here, and your mind must be perfectly blown by all of those great pieces of advice coming from people who know content marketing A LOT. Do not hesistate to share this blog post across your network… and follow us for more interesting bits from the world of marketing. In the next “episode” of this series, you will find out some great tips for boosting e-commerce, so stay tuned!

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