Did you miss this week’s best content marketing articles? No problem! Here they are:

#1 Content Marketing. Content Strategy. What’s the Difference? by Rebecca Lieb

As with many marketing-related terms, it’s tough to nail down precise, etched-in-stone definitions for either term. But it’s nonetheless clear that content marketing and content strategy are not interchangeable concepts, nor do they refer to the same thing. There is, as we’ll soon see, a huge degree of interdependence.

#2 Content Marketing: What The Inc 500 Know That The Fortune 500 Do Not? by Heidi Cohen

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth research, entitled 2012 Inc 500 Social Media Settles In reveals that Inc 500 companies continue to blog at greater rates than their Fortune 500 peers. In 2012, 44% of the Inc 500 had a corporate blog, an increase of 7% from 2011. By contrast,  28% of the Fortune 500 had a blog in 2012. While this is an increase of 5% from 2011, the Fortune 500’s blogging rate still lags that of the Inc 500.

#3 6 Experts Share Tips for Managing the Content Marketing Process [Video] by Michele Linn

We curate a lot of content, and we also try to take very much of an educational approach; so we’re always trying to get content out there that’s going to be very informational in nature; very instructional, so that our portfolio companies are constantly learning and looking to us as a thought leader and an expert. —Kevin Cain

#4 8 Ways Your Content Strategy Should Change With the New Facebook News Feed by Anum Hussain

Facebook’s new look is flooded with enhanced images of every variety — an entire feed can be viewed solely comprised of these vivid images! Just one month after the introduction of Facebook timeline for brands, visual content — photos and videos — saw a 65% increase in engagement. This metric is bound to increase even further with the upcoming Rich Photos emphasis

#5 7 Ways to Generate High-quality Leads with Content Marketing by Megan Leap

Content is a critical component of great B2B marketing today. Content can help position your organization as thought leaders, nurture prospects over time, and best of all, it can generate high-quality leads, too.

#6 Top Ten Content People You Must Know When Defining A Content Strategy by J-P De Clerck

Note that a content strategy is not the same as a content marketing strategy and that I went a little bit back in history for this list. As we should know by now, content marketing is not new and content has been a crucial part of marketing forever.

#7 5 Content Marketing Mistakes that Even the Pros Make by Neil Patel

Do you feel overwhelmed with content marketing?  As simple as it sounds, it’s easy to forget that there’s just as much marketing involved as there is content creation. Typically, this task falls squarely on the shoulders of the marketing department.

#8 Want More Leads? How to Create Awesome Digital Content for Your Squeeze Page by Joanna Wiebe

Because your visitor is signing up to receive your digital content, it behooves you as a marketer to put at least as much effort into your free digital content as you put into the squeeze page that promotes it, the ad that leads to it and the emails + landing pages that follow it. Here’s a simple 5-step process to create awesome digital content for lead gen on a squeeze page…

#9 The Creative Content Marketing Bar is Higher. Can You Reach It? by Lee Odden

Not long ago, it was progressive just to create blog posts and a few social shares every day. Now so many brands have adopted a publisher model for content marketing that the web is flush with content marketing tactics.

#10 Content Marketing for Small Business by David Gould

Marketers’ top concern is producing enough content to be effective with content marketing. But how much is too much? The answer, as always, is “it depends,” but we needn’t leave it at that. While finding that sweet spot of output vs. return will take some trial and error, what is clear is that a higher output generally provides higher returns, at least in terms of broad metrics like traffic and search engine indexing.

I hope you enjoy them. I sure did!

Here is a list of the top 10 social media marketing articles for you to read this weekend:

#1 The Ultimate Status Check For Social Media Monitoring by Jason Falls

Two weeks ago on Friday, I decided to test my Louisville compatriots to see if anyone in the restaurant business paid attention or developed what I consider to be basic, starting behavior for businesses in social media monitoring.

#2 Real-Time Social Media Marketing Strategies by Mitch Joel

There are few people who have the depth of experience and knowledge when it comes to e-commerce, social media, content and digital marketing than Sam Decker. I’ve known Sam for close to a decade. He worked at Apple before handling e-commerce for Dell, from there he went on to lead marketing at Bazaarvoice and he’s currently a founder at Mass Relevance.

#3 Why You Need Social Media, Even if Your Customers Don’t by Corey Eridon

Well, here’s the thing: your customers probably are on social media. Can any B2B company make the case that its target audience isn’t on LinkedIn? Are there B2C companies without potential customers on Facebook? I guess it’s possible , but it certainly won’t stay that way for long.

#4 7 Surprising Ways to Grow Your Business on the Twitter Vine by James T Noble

The app has taken off quickly. It has an intuitive interface and is already being used by major news outlets and some big name brands. None of you will be surprised that no small part of Vine’s initial success is due to its integration with Twitter – the second biggest social network worldwide.

#5 20 Social Media Marketing Blogs You Should Read in 2013 by Pam Dyer

Here are some that I read on a regular basis — I think you should, too! The authors all have unique voices and offer timely information about tools, strategies, and trends that you can use to jumpstart your marketing efforts.

#6 Four Smart Strategies to Help You Engage With More of The Right People on LinkedIn by Margaret Adams

Of course, the first thing you need to do is to decide who you want to engage with: prospective clients, your next employer, strategic business partners, professionals in your industry etc. Once you who you want to attract you will need a plan to make sure you don’t waste your time and your efforts when you’re using LinkedIn.

#7 The Future of Social Media Marketing According to HubSpot’s CMO by Brittany Leaning

You might recall Seth Godin’s famous book, Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends and Friends Into Customers. This concept of permission marketing is essentially that marketers must obtain permission before advancing to the next step of the purchasing process, as opposed to forcing bottom-of-the-funnel messages onto people who barely know your name.

#8 10 Ways to Integrate Vine into your Social Media Marketing Strategy by Marcela De Vivo

There are some really great reasons why you should think about using Twitter’s new video sharing app to promote your business or brand. Vine is already extremely popular, which means it should become a part of your social media plan. Using Vine is also incredibly easy. Create a quick 6 second video, integrate it into your Twitter feed and make your tweets even more interesting.

#9 The Ultimate Guide to Measuring Your Pinterest Marketing Success by Anum Hussain

Pinterest launched free analytics for all users with a verified account. Finally, marketers have the ability to truly measure the success of their Pinterest marketing efforts!

#10 How to Make Your Facebook Contests Stand Out by Rachel Sprung

Facebook contests are a popular way for you to get your audience engaged and excited about your brand. More and more companies have adopted the use of Facebook contests to better track participation and engagement.

I hope you enjoy this week’s list. Stay tuned for next week’s articles!

Yesterday’s announcement that Google will shut down Google Reader brought this great article by Linked Media Group to my attention. They recommend the following activities for a successful content marketing strategy:

• Use the right content platform: We strongly agree with their recommendation of WordPress. It’s a great tool for publishing your content and it integrates seamlessly with Intigi.
• Update your content frequently: Search engines reward sites that frequently publish keyword dense content. The higher search ranking will help you rise above the noise in search engine results and drive more traffic to your site. Please note that improving your search engine ranking takes time (weeks to months), however once you have spun up that flywheel it will continue to work for you and bring new leads to your website. Intigi’s daily content recommendations are a great fit for this activity: they allow you to complement your original content with curated content related to your niche.
• Optimize your content for the web: Optimize your content for grazing and scanning: keep your paragraphs short and highlight important concepts.
• Integrate keywords with content: To get the best search engine results, it pays off to be smart about the keywords you include in your content. When working with Intigi, you get this for free because the recommended articles will already contain the keywords that are important to you. Two more useful tools for this activity are the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast.
• Cross promote your content: Once you have published an article to your blog, make sure to promote it on social media. Intigi makes this super easy by creating promotional posts to Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
• Utilize social media to drive content search rankings: Your authority on social media impacts your search engine rankings. Intigi helps you build your audience on social media by frequently sharing relevant content to your network.
• How to develop a content strategy: The first activity they recommend is to use (the now discontinued) Google Reader to build a focused stream of relevant content from thought leaders, news sites and blogs. We took this approach a step further with Intigi by allowing you to filter down this torrent of information to only contain articles with keywords that match your content strategy. You can use this noise free stream of content to share to social media and to get inspiration for your original posts.

Read the original article: Powerful Strategies for Content Marketing

Google just announced the closure of Reader. It’s hard to believe!

For replacements, we’re fans of the following applications:

- Fever

- Feedly

- NewsBlur

- FeedDemon

- Reeder

If you’re looking for more control over your news consumption, then you should try Intigi. With Intigi, you can import an OPML file from Google Reader and then filter your incoming feeds by your preferred keywords and social signals (e.g., shares via Twitter). You can then easily share content to social media, a WordPress site, or even an RSS feed (e.g., to connect with IFTTT).

We’re a paid application, primarily targeting marketers, but we also have a number of startups and small businesses using our application to discover and share content.

Here is a list of the best social media marketing articles of this week!

#1 Outsourcing Social Media – Should You Do It? The Pros & Cons by Amanda Day

In our recent social media survey, we found that 43% of small businesses spend 6 hours per week or more on social media. That’s precious time for a small marketing team (or army of one)! Given the investment of time required, and the need for someone with expertise, many companies opt to outsource their social media marketing to a consulting agency or individual. In this post, we examine the pros and cons to hiring a consultant vs. keeping your social media marketing in-house, and provide tips for making the right choice for your business.

#2 8 Businesses That Nail Social Media Brand Consistency by Desmond Wong

With all of the social media platforms available to us, however, it also becomes more and more difficult to present a cohesive message across all the channels. One thing that we’ve noticed — and struggled with ourselves — is that the experience from one social network to another can feel really disjointed. And I’m sure that’s not the brand experience most marketers hope and dream for their fans and followers.

#3  When Small Businesses Shouldn’t Do Social Media by Stephanie Schwab

As someone who is deeply entrenched in, and very much in love with, social media, it’s very hard to say “Don’t do social media.” But honestly – more and more, I find myself telling some of these entrepreneurs and business owners that social media may not be the most important thing for them to do (at the moment they’re asking me).  So how can a small business know when to not do social media, or which types of social media to use if they’re a very small or very new business?  For most, it comes down to a matter of time, money and priorities.

#4 10 Women That Rock Our Social Media World! by Frederic Gonzalo

These ladies share a common trait: they are passionate, experts in their respective field and share generously their knowledge through blogs, tweets, webinars and/or other social media outlets. I learn a great deal hearing or reading them, so if you don’t know them or don’t follow them, get your notepad ready! Here they are:

#5 16 Ways Businesses Are Using Twitter Vine by Kristi Hines

Vine is a new mobile app that allows you to capture life from your mobile device in short, six-second looping videos.  You can share these short videos with your Twitter followers and Facebook friends.  Think of it as Instagram, except with videos instead of pictures. In today’s post, I’ll show you some creative uses of Vine for business.

#6 Addressing the Addiction and Cost of Social Media by Sam Fiorella

Have you ever found yourself asking, “Where did the last hour go?” when connecting with friends or colleagues in social networks? Social media is like a drug; just a little taste and we can’t help but want more. Social networks are the drug dealers; they facilitate our addiction to this gateway drug with one-click access to our social graph and a multitude of other sites and apps.

#7 If you don’t monitor social media, you might as well not use it by Catriona Pollard

Like all the major manufacturers, Ford has a “book a test drive” feature on its website and on the face of it, it’s a very clever marketing tactic. Ford is fulfilling the potential buyer’s needs without them having to even pick up the phone or walk into a dealership to get service.

#8 Facebook Is Now The Best Ad Targeting Platform Around by Ben Harper

Facebook advertising’s precise interests and social profile targeting features have always had a slight edge on Google in terms of knowing about the users targeted, but now this can officially be combined with desire to purchase and real world data I’d expect to see the balance of power in the online advertising world begin to gradually shift.

#9 5 reasons you should be in social media, even if the boss says “no” by Mark Schaefer

Boss driving you crazy? Having a hard time selling the idea that you need to be on the social web? I know first-hand that there are still many naysayers out there who don’t understand why they need to have a social media presence. Here are five reasons that should convince even the last hold-out to get on board …

#10 Survey Says: Nearly 4 in 10 Women Have Decreased or Stopped Using Social Media by Cynthia Boris

A new survey from Weber Shandwick says it could be so. They questioned 2,000 North American women and found this startling fact: Nearly four in 10 North American women (38 percent) have decreased or stopped their usage of one or more social networks during the past six months.

I hope you like this week’s top social media marketing articles. Stay tuned for next week’s articles!

Here are the most popular content marketing articles of this week in case you missed them!

#1 Content Marketing Nirvana by Andrew Delamarter

Content marketing efforts are typically held to ROI metrics – this is “weaponized content” that is supposed to generate traffic, sales, or engagement – so let’s begin with the ends in mind and map out the best possible content marketing framework. It may not be reachable, you may not be able execute every element, but at least you know what to shoot for. So let’s get started on defining our own personal content marketing perfect state.

#2 How to Develop a Content Marketing Strategy with Joe Pulizzi by Trent Dyrsmid

Content marketing is all the rage these days, but have you given thought to developing a strategy for your content?  Do you know how to create content that your audience will find valuable enough to share?  Do you know how to measure what is working with your content marketing?

#3 Seven Content Marketing Tips From Top Chefs [Infodoodle] by Veronica Maria Jarski

After watching a marathon of Food Network programs, I realized that much of the advice from top chefs regarding fab cooking is the same type of advice for content creators.

Inspired by the chefs who want to serve fresh, attractive food, I drew an infodoodle for marketers wanting to serve refreshing, flavorful content to their customers.

#4 How to Approach the Creation of Viral Marketing Content by Hartley Brody

I have a secret for you. Viral videos don’t always spread like you might think. When people imagine creating a viral video, they expect that everyone who watches it will pass it on to at least one other friend, who will then pass it on to at least one more friend, etc.

#5 Hunting Hippos: Winning Approval from the C-Level for Content Marketing by Jonathan Crossfield

Unless a new activity is directly related to a particular business challenge, it is viewed as a diversion. If the current climate is to reduce costs, outline how you’ll support your social media strategy. If customer acquisition numbers are causing boardroom stress, introduce plans for an email program to prospective clients.

#6 Dramatically Raise the Value of Any Piece of Content with These 27 Tactics by Ken Lyons

If you really want to dominate your niche and distance yourself from your competitors, you have to take the wheel of the “awesome content” bus, be a leader and set precedent for your industry. And by implementing the following 27 tactics (which range from keyword targeting to link analysis to content usability tips), you will dramatically improve the value of your content for readers, users, customers and engines as well and absolutely own your vertical.

#7 The Nine Ingredients That Make Great Content by Zach Bulygo

If you write original content, search engines will help your site get more exposure. For instance, Google has made it plain that they do not like and will penalize sites with duplicate content. Put another way, Google wants to reward high quality sites that contain original content.

#8 Technical Hacks for Content Marketing by Justin Briggs

Creating the kind of content we all strive for requires copywriters,  photographers, creative directors, graphic designers, videographers, statisticians, marketer researchers, back-end programmers or front-end programers. Creating great content these days requires at least 2 or 3 of these skills to create the content in isolation. Otherwise, content needs to leverage external resources or other team members.

#9 What to Tweet About – 37 Ideas for Better Content Marketing by Mike Brown

What to blog about is a frequent content marketing topic on the Brainzooming blog. People are always looking for new blogging ideas. Responding to a tweet on what to blog about, @InnervateTF requested a comparable piece on “what to tweet about.” Since responding to audience questions is a great source of ideas for blogging topics, we’re covering their Twitter content marketing question – which amazingly, we haven’t done previously.

#10 4 Powerful Local SEO and Content Marketing Strategies No One is Talking About by Marcus Sheridan

Ever since Panda and Penguin, local SEO has become more and more of a challenge for businesses. Not only do they need to target what is in some cases many location-based keywords, but they need to do it without sounding like they’re schlepping Google with an abundance of out-of-place local search phrases. Truth be told, the information that I’ve seen around the web on this subject of how to combine SEO with Content Marketing (Search Content Marketing) on the local level is seriously lacking.

I hope you like this week’s top 10 list. Stay tuned for next week’s articles!

SEOMoz has published a fresh addition of “The Content Curation Guide” originally posted last year by Gianluca Fiorelli. It’s based on his “Mozinar” (slides posted below) and includes audience Q&A. → Read more

“Essentially, you find where your audience is and go there. Common sense, but not so easy to do it if you listen to the buzz instead of your customer.”

Source: 19 Things Successful People Do On Social Media via www.forbes.com

This article presents some great points, but I want to spend a minute on point #3, about finding where your audience is.

First, before you can find where your audience is, you need to know who your audience is.

Identifying a focused target audience (e.g., your customer) is the first step in positioning your social media sharing. The next step in positioning your social media sharing is identifying your audience’s problem, desire, or as Clayton Christen likes to say, their “jobs to be done.”

Then you need to provide your audience with a solution. That is, solve a problem, share some useful insight, answer a question, or simply relieve them of boredom (e.g., entertain them through conversation).

When you identify a target customer and a problem, and provide a solution, you’re delivering value. It’s this value that helps you connect with your audience and build your brand.

Successful people position their social media sharing, and so should you!

This great guide contains a comprehensive list of activities that help you acquire customers: From planning, set up, and execution all the way to analytics and optimization. Building your audience on social media, and driving traffic to your website through content marketing are on the list as well. Intigi is the ultimate tool for any content marketer who is committed to posting targeted content on a regular basis to social media and their blog.

Read more →

Have you missed the most popular content marketing articles of this week? No problem! We’ve got you covered.

#1 Goodbye SEO, Hello SCM: The Rise of Search Content Marketing by Marcus Sheridan

Recently, while speaking at a conference in Dallas, a WordPress developer who was in the audience gave me one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received. After my 1-hour talk, the gentleman came up to me and made a very simple statement:

 

“That was the best presentation on SEO I’ve ever seen.”

 

I don’t mention this compliment from the gentleman to brag, but rather to make a point—during my entire time speaking to this group of people, I never mentioned the phrase “SEO”  or “search engine optimization” one single time. Rather, I simply discussed the power of thinking like a consumer, being willing to address every single question they have on our website, and then using those questions to create a long tail keyword campaign that generates traffic, leads, and sales.

#2 Is corporate America ready for content marketing? by Justin Goldsborough

My question. And I got the answer I was expecting. Very. Very important. Content marketing is not creating an ad. It’s creating content that doesn’t sell overtly,  but does provide relevant information to consumers. And according to Brent, that content takes time to concept and produce effectively. He told a story of a Pinterest infographic his agency created and shared online that led to speaking engagements and a new business opportunity. An infographic his team spent several hours of several days building.

#3 The Story of Content Marketing by Kay Ross

Once upon a time, business owners and marketers thought the only way to attract customers was by broadcasting pushy, one-way, disruptive, hard-sell marketing messages.

#4 Content Marketing Personas: An Introduction by J-P De Clerck

Personas, whether buyer personas or not, represent how different segments will interact with you. As said, in each step and across each touchpoint they take decisions and by giving them a name, face and personal story as representatives of your typical buyer segments, etc. you take that narrative when looking at every decision. It’s clear that content is essential in taking decisions and persuading people to make them. From a content marketing personas perspective we add this additional mapping layer of auditing content needs.

#5 4 Ways to Fall in Love with Content Marketing (NOW) by Craig McBreen

Part of branding done right is a solid content strategy. Say you’re a firm that specializes in disaster preparedness and recovery (why not pick the most obscure industry ever, right?).

 

Write a whitepaper on 10 steps to prepare your company for the worst. This pdf could be offered if someone signs up for your list. Then write 10 posts, one for each step. And while you’re at it, do your best to make it less than boring – that’s where the love comes in. Just make it sing a little and you’ll be miles ahead of the competition.

#6 Qualifying Leads Via Content Marketing: 4 Top Qualifiers by John McTigue

I know what you’re thinking. What happened to BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing)? According to Ken Rogue of InsideSales.com, “BANT went out of style about three years ago when a research study done by DemandGen found that only 20 percent of companies have an annual budget that they make purchase decisions from.” So authority is crucial as a first step now, and money will work itself out of need and timing. But how do we get the answers to these questions from content alone?

#7 What comes after content marketing? Here are four ideas by Mark Schaefer

Here’s a dirty secret of content marketing. Today it is possible to win the inbound lead battle simply by being first and overwhelming, a trend I characterized last year as the content arms race. You don’t have to be great. You don’t even have to be good. And to some extent it is even possible to fake your way to the top.  But that can’t last.  The market will adjust. Something has to emerge that will trump strategies based on sponsored posts, social proof, and commodity content.

#8 Why Our Content SUCKS by Jonathon Colman

But what is content anyway? It’s not a feature. And it’s more than the sum of its parts: words, design, production, UX/IxD, advertising. When we regard content as a feature or as simply being a set of components that can be “bolted-on” to a design, then our content is bound to fail.

 

That’s because content is the experience — it’s the whole thing. And you can often tell good content from bad by focusing on the experience it creates. It’s pretty easy to figure out when a brand is just targeting some niche set of keywords with their content… instead of, you know, targeting the needs of their users.

#9 Effective Content Strategy Guided by The SAVE Framework by Nenad Senić

The SAVE framework fits like a glove to your publishing strategy. To attract your prospects/customers, to retain them, to make your content valuable and sharable, you should follow the SAVE framework. Many of you already do it, though not calling it as such.

 

Many others are still looking for the model that would work best for you, for the model that would help you draw a successful, effective and long-term content strategy. I believe that the SAVE framework can help you tremendously.

#10 Personalized Content Marketing: Segmenting Leads to Win Customers by Brianne Carlon

Over the past few years, marketers have realized that relevancy is one of the most important elements to their success. That is why we spend numerous hours and copious amounts of energy depicting buyer personas. So now that these personas are determined, why would we send them all to the same place to receive the same content? Ideally, you wouldn’t, and soon you won’t have to.

 

We already know leads who are nurtured with relevant information produce a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. Why not start the process off with a bang—or better yet, Personalized Content from the visitors’ very first interactions with your site? You know what this means: Personalized Content helps you get the right content to the right person at the right time from the beginning.

I hope you enjoy these fantastic articles on content marketing…please stay tuned for next week’s top ten articles!