Under the right circumstances, many professionals are capable of preparing great content for blogs, books, and online sign-up incentives. But only a few can consistently produce quality marketing content on a daily basis.

Those who do usually have a system or process in place to help them meet the daily deadline challenge.

There are three productivity tips I would like to share from the world of writing and publishing (where deadlines are absolute). Use them as the core of your own system for preparing content on an ongoing, stress-free basis.

1. Study the right examples

Resist the urge to reinvent the wheel.

Content marketers often waste time by starting from scratch with a blank screen, rather than looking for models they can use as the basis of their current project. Save time planning your next content marketing project by looking for examples of what’s worked in the past.

Bestselling business and personal development books offer a wealth of ideas you can easily adapt to meeting your content marketing needs — regardless of the types of projects you’re currently working on. Here are a few examples:

• The three-act structure: An excellent starting place is to analyze the three-act structure Carmine Gallo used in his book, “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.” Gallo organized his book around the same three-act structure Steve Jobs used for his famous MacWorld presentations — a structure adapted from many of Shakespeare’s plays.

  There are a lot of ways you can use the three-act structure. For example, you can set the stage in Act 1 by describing a challenge your market frequently faces (for example, the need to come up with fresh content ideas each week). In Act 2, you can show how to take action, such as identifying several core topics that can be addressed from different perspectives. And in Act 3, you would describe the outcome and share tips for optimizing the results — perhaps by delegating content responsibilities, crowdsourcing content, or repurposing existing content.

• “7 big ideas:” Another classic way to organize a complex topic is to base your content marketing project on a few major principles (such as “best practices” or your key observations), and list out your recommendations for each principle.

  One of the best examples of this is Stephen Covey’s perennially popular book, “The 7 Habits of Highly-Effective People.” It’s a great example of how a complex topic (i.e., human behavior) can be simplified by organizing it around a few key ideas. (“You mean, there are only 7 things I need to know?”) Grouping your message on a few key ideas makes it easier to plan and write your content. The numbered key ideas also help readers track their progress through your content. (Bonus:After you’ve identified your key ideas, you’ll also have the foundation for an autoresponder-delivered e-course or a “sticky” series of weekly blog posts.)

  And remember, there’s a bit of magic to titles with numerical specificity. (Look what happens when you remove the “7” from the title — “The Habits of Highly-Effective People” has far less impact.)

• The procedural: Another classic book approach is to help readers solve a problem or achieve a desired goal by breaking a complex project into a series of tasks that readers can address one step at a time. Used as a title technique, this approach adds urgency by emphasizing how quickly readers can achieve their goals. Examples include Jay Conrad Levinson’s “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 days,” which shows how firms can improve their marketing by completing one step in the process each day. Likewise, Lorrie Thomas’s “McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course: Online Marketing” shows how firms can gain improved results from their online marketing in 36 one-hour sessions.

• The almanac: If you want to share a lot of short, detailed ideas and tips, consider an almanac, or one-idea-per-day approach. Few of today’s time-strapped prospects want to read marketing content that reminds them of textbooks and encyclopedias; but, they willrespond to relevant information that is concisely delivered in short, bite-sized chunks.

  An excellent example is “Thou Shall Not Use Comic Sans: A Designer’s Almanac of Dos and Don’ts: 365 Graphic Design Sins and Virtues.”

Each page is devoted to a single idea. Designers can jump in at any point, and still be rewarded with fresh inspiration and perspective.

Other resources, such as  “#Book Title Tweet: 140 Bite-Sized Ideas for Compelling Article, Book, and Event Titles,” provide easy access to examples you can adapt to the requirements of your projects, with brief discussions of each example. 

2. Choose the right tools

Content marketing success involves using the right planning tools — especially those that visually illustrate your ideas and their relationship to your project’s “big picture” before you begin to write.

Knowing the structure of your content marketing project before you begin writing helps you avoid false starts and wasted time. Think of it like this: Although you could drive from New Hampshire to Los Angeles without a map, you’d probably waste a lot of time and resources along the way, arriving tired, broke, and hungry.

In the past, authors and journalists have used planning tools like index cards, sticky notes, story boards, and white boards to visually organize their ideas before they begin to write.

Today, however, mind mapping software, like Mindjet’s MindManager, can help you display the structure of your articles, blog, books, and eBooks in a format you can export to your word processing and presentation programs for writing and formatting. With these programs, you can also schedule, delegate, and track your progress using the same mind map you use to plan your project.

Speaking of Word processors, don’t assume that your current word processor is your only writing option. You may be thrilled, for example, to discover highly focused writing tools like IA Writer, with its uncluttered writing environment. Or, if you want to keep your ideas and online sources in front of you as you write, explore Scrivener, which uses an index card motif. 

Until recently, authors and journalists had to carry notebooks and pens with them to capture ideas wherever they were. Today, mobile apps running on smartphones and iPads permit you to capture your ideas as mind maps wherever you are. (In fact, I began this post on my iPad, before I got out of bed this morning.)

3. Master the right habits

Your habits determine your success. Whether it’s diet, exercise, or content marketing, your habits either work with you or they work against you.

Unfortunately, many of us have gone through life without developing the habits needed for efficient, stress-free writing.

Here are some of the ways you can replace the stress of last-minute deadline-driven writing with habits that can contribute to sustainable content marketing success.

• Execute daily: Many are seduced by the caffeine-like “rush” that can accompany last-minute deadlines. Yet, the thrill of all-nighters and “binge” writing also contributes to wasted effort, embarrassing mistakes, and lost opportunities. The key habit in sustainable writing success involves short, daily, scheduled writing sessions. Schedule 30 to 45 minutes a day, turn off phones and Twitter, and watch your ideas take shape. View these “sessions” you spend with your content to be as unbreakable as your appointments with your most important clients.
• Keep your brain engaged: In addition to your daily writing sessions, cultivate the habit of short beginning-of-day and end-of-day review sessions. All you need is a few minutes of quiet time at the end of each day to review what you’ve written and preview what you want to write tomorrow. In the morning, review your writing goals for the day. These sessions can be as short as five minutes, but that can be enough to keep your brain engaged so you can make the most of your upcoming writing sessions.
• Know when to edit: There’s a time to write, and a time to edit. Avoid the temptation to self-edit while writing. Instead, let your ideas flow; concentrate on finishing the first draft as quickly as possible. Once you finish the first draft, you can put on your editing hat — or pass your content on to others for comment and review.
• Know when to stop: Another reason to schedule short, frequent writing sessions is that your brain quickly tires, so productivity drops during long writing sessions. Explore resources like The Pomodoro Technique, which boosts productivity by reminding you when to take a short break.

Undoubtedly, as you cultivate the habits of writing success, you’ll come up with a system that works for you — one that you can use to efficiently prepare all types of content for years to come. And, in the meantime, please share your favorite content marketing productivity tips with us, as comments, below!

Want more content marketing inspiration? Download our ultimate eBook with 100 content marketing examples.

You can. In fact, you probably already are. But to help you gain the confidence you need to become a content marketing superstar, here are six tips just for you newbies:

1. Strategize — it’s worth it

Many start-ups are running at such a quick pace, that there’s sometimes a “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” mentality. But the one thing you may want to slow down and spend some time on is your content marketing strategy. Why? 

• SEO benefits (how will people be able to find you online if you’re not even there?)
• Reputation (you need to build one somehow)
• Thought leadership (you need to distinguish yourself from the competitors – and fast)
• You need multiple touch points – frequently – to reach your target audience.

Pulling together your content marketing strategy will help you document your objectives and assign actionable activities to them.  The plan can be fairly high-level – capturing your goals; key platforms you’ll be communicating on; what your “wants” vs. “needs” are; and prioritizing activities over time so they don’t all feel so immediately pressing (translate: overwhelming). Plan the work, work the plan, and leave room for adjustments as you gather lessons learned.

Elements of the marketing strategy include:

• Platforms you will communicate through
• Budget
• Roles and responsibilities
• An overview timing (e.g., quarterly or, if that’s overly ambitious, annually)
• Measurement tactics to make sure you keep doing the right things – and avoiding the wrong ones.

2. Create a message strategy

Creating a message strategy is linked to step 1, but so utterly important that I decided to assign it its own number. A message strategy is the bones of your content marketing strategy because it’s where you identify who you are and how you’ll present yourself to your audience. Some things to consider:

• Voice (how do I communicate with my audience?)
• Style guidelines (consistency is key and and this is most important when engaging freelancers or outside communicators into your content marketing strategy)
• Audience considerations (how might you need to tailor your efforts for, say, long-term prospects vs. existing customers)
• Key messages: If you can’t sum up in three or four bullet points what your company does and what your mission, vision, and values are, then your customers won’t get it.

3. Start a blog

There are tons of reasons to start a blog; but to put it simply, it will give you the best return on your time and investment.  For start-ups and small businesses, the blog can act as the hub around which all your content marketing activities are centered.  Blogs allow you to demonstrate your thought leadership in educational – and SEO – beneficial ways, at very little cost to you and your company.  A tip:  If you’re short-staffed on writers, engage others in your company, or even outside industry thought leaders that you can interview or ask to contribute insights on your blog.

4. Pick your platform

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Pinterest - you name it, and someone’s telling you that you should be on it. For start-ups, you need to be very careful about where you invest your precious resources and where you distribute your content because this early on in the game, you’ll want to have close watch over your efforts on each platform, and how they are performing. The more platforms you use, the more platforms you’ll need to measure, people you’ll need to engage with, places you’ll need to update and improve (whew! There goes that sleep…), etc.

My advice here is to pick one or two by going online and seeing how your competitors are performing on those channels. If they have thousands of Twitter followers, but no Facebook fans, chances are they’ve found that the platform isn’t as conducive to their content marketing strategy as others.

Always remember to think outside the box. Your content will go miles further if strategically placed on an industry-related forum or community where your key influencers are. Take the time you’d usually be spending trying to figure out how to “Pin” your product on a board, and think about where people are actually talking about the products or services you offer (yes, I just gave you permission to surf social sites as part of your business strategy). Then, get into those conversations (i.e., LinkedIn groups) before trying too aggressively to create new ones (or at least until you have meaty and substantial content to offer).

Speaking of which…

5. Prioritize

Getting the meaty and substantial content needed to engage your audience isn’t easy. As we covered earlier, the blog is a great place to start. But for every blog, there can potentially be dozens of tweets, a couple Facebook/ Google+ posts, some group discussion topics on LinkedIn, a webinar, a white paper (ca-ching!), a conference session, a book… Yes, things can spiral pretty quickly out of control in your head — and what’s likely to happen is that you’ll just shut down and do none of them.

That’s why you should prioritize. Think through every blog post carefully, and leverage content from it that might be unique and engaging to your fans, or the broader community. Then, after a few months, think about rounding them up into an eNewsletter. See how it goes. Measure and test and measure some more. Baby steps.

Now, if you have the time and budget to invest in something more hefty, try some kind of engaging multimedia element: a webinar is a great way to introduce your company, establish your thought leadership, and improve your reputation; as are videos (both are a great source of leads for you to nurture with your ongoing incredible content, as well).

Regardless of what you choose as your top content marketing priorities, just make sure you do it well. Slow and steady wins the content race, and if you distribute a ton of low-quality content, chances are you’ll lose reader’s trust pretty quickly (not to mention Google’s). 

6. Take pride in your efforts

One of the things I’ve seen most in start-up business owners is anxiety: angst over their “place” in the industry, fear about their ability to add value, and exhaustion over all there is to do. You can do content marketing. In fact, you probably already are. Take your business plan — the roots of your content marketing and where you establish and first communicate your identify. Take all those ideas in your head that bore your business concept, and all the stories about you and your company that you’re dying to share. Then put pen to paper, finger to keyboard, and start writing.

What other advice would you recommend to new businesses, or companies just starting up their content marketing efforts?

As amazing as this proliferation of content is, in the business world, where writing is a very public reflection of a company’s professionalism, it can also be problematic. A company’s content — including its website, blogs, collateral, thought leadership, and social media — can help create and nurture a strong brand if it is clean, crisp, and consistent. Conversely, if your content lacks these characteristics, it can quickly undermine your brand.

That’s why every company needs a content marketing style guide. Good style guides document and standardize everything, from the unique terminology a company uses to describe itself to its spelling and punctuation preferences. In doing so, the style guide becomes a basic road map that everyone can follow to help create consistent, high-quality business communications.

Admittedly, creating a good style guide is no small undertaking. But, if you follow the six steps below, you’ll make the process a lot easier and your end product more valuable:

1. Clearly define your objectives and audience

Your company’s style guide is never going to be a substitute for “The Chicago Manual of Style” or the AP Stylebook, nor should it. Instead, focus on addressing a finite number of common issues or pitfalls that will help improve the overall quality of your content. In the process, remember who your end users are. Style guides aren’t just for the marketing team or freelance writers, they’re for everyone in your organization. Craft your style guide to account for people with a wide range of writing skills.

2. Create a structure that’s well organized and easy to navigate

Once you’ve assessed your objectives and audience, you’ll need to build a logical framework to organize your style guide. Starting with broad categories or buckets like these can help:

• A writer’s checklist: A cheat sheet with the key reminders every writer needs
• Style A to Z: A catch-all list of stylistic do’s and don’ts
• Company-specific issues: A repository of the unique words, phrases, and spellings your company uses to describe itself
• Punctuation: A place to educate writers about when to use colons versus semicolons, hyphens versus dashes, etc.
• Problem words: A section to help ensure that your content creators will know the difference between commonly confused words
• Spelling: A helpful time-saver to promote consistent spellings

In addition to categorizing your content into buckets like these, organize the relevant points in each group alphabetically to make them easier to find. Doing so, as well as creating a detailed table of contents and index, will make your style guide more user-friendly.

3. Pick your pillars

While company style guides often reflect unique nuances (or exceptions to rules) that are specific to that company, they should primarily align with those of widely recognized sources. For example, you might choose the AP Stylebook as your definitive source for grammar, punctuation, and style issues, and “Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary” as the basis for your spelling preferences. Limit the number of sources you leverage to avoid confusion and don’t hesitate to direct your readers to them for more information.

4. Add personal touches

A little creativity and humor can go a long way toward making dry subject matter more fun and engaging. Try incorporating pop culture or, better yet, corporate culture, into your style guide. Illustrate key points with made-up examples about well-known public — or even company — personalities to make them more memorable. Consider also breaking your style guide up with famous quotes about writing, or other personal touches.

5. Promote and enforce

Launch your style guide internally with the same enthusiasm that you’d have in launching a new product with clients. Create a mini-campaign to ensure that copies get into everyone’s hands, as well as to let them know why adhering to a style guide is important. After all, a style guide can only be effective if everyone, including you, is held accountable for the standards it sets.

6. Make it a living document

A good style guide will evolve over time. Be prepared to incorporate feedback, add in new content, and make other tweaks as needed. Each new version will be that much stronger.

Image Credit

Indeed, content marketing heavily involves social media. And, of course, in social media, marketers use content to get their messages across. But although there is plenty of overlap between content marketing and social media marketing, they are actually two distinct entities, with different focal points, goals, and processes. To help clear the confusion, let’s look at the major ways in which they differ:

Center of gravity

In social media marketing, the center of gravity — the focus of the marketing activity — is located within the social networks themselves. When marketers operate social media campaigns, they are operating inside of Facebook, inside of Twitter, inside of Google+, etc. As they produce content, they place it inside of these networks.

In contrast, the center of gravity for content marketing is a brand website — whether it be a branded URL like AmericanExpress.com or a microsite for a brand’s specific product, like Amex’s Open Forum. Social networks are vital to the success of content marketing efforts, but here, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are used primarily as a distributor of links back to the content on the brand’s website — not as containers of the content itself.

Types of content

In social media marketing, content is built to fit the context of the chosen social platform: short messages in the 140 characters range for Twitter; contests, quizzes, and games for Facebook, etc. Here, brands model their behavior after that of the individuals using the social networks.

On the other hand, in content marketing, the context of websites permits much longer forms of content. Brands can publish blog posts, videos, infographics, and eBooks, just to name a few formats. Here, brands model their behavior after that of media publishers.

Objectives

While both social media marketing and content marketing can be used for a multitude of purposes, social media marketing generally tends to focus on two main objectives. First, it is used for brand awareness — generating activity and discussion around the brand. Secondly, it is used for customer retention/ satisfaction — brands can use social channels as an open forum for direct dialogues with customers, often around issues or questions that consumers have.

In contrast, content marketing’s website-based center of gravity enables it to focus more on demand generation. As quality content brings prospects to a brand’s site, brands can develop a relationship with the prospects and nurture them towards a lead conversion or purchase.

Evolution of online marketing

While I don’t know the ratio of brands that practice social media marketing compared to those that practice content marketing, I’d imagine it has to be somewhere around one thousand to one. Social media marketing is top-of-mind for most every marketing department, while content marketing is a (relatively) new term, and a new practice for many.

Yet, I think of the two strategies less as two isolated options and more as interrelated parts of marketing’s ongoing evolution. The internet has unleashed a revolutionary ability for every brand to communicate directly with its customers — without the need for a media industry intermediary.

Social media marketing is the natural first step in this process: Access to users is direct (users spend tons of time on social networks), and content is generally formatted into shorter chunks, which makes the publishing process relatively easy.

But as brands become more familiar with their new role as publisher, the natural progression will be to move toward content marketing. Yes, the bar here is higher: In content marketing, brands must produce longer-form, higher-quality content and build audiences on their own site — they must become true media publishers. But the rewards and results are, arguably, more powerful. Brands can engage more deeply with their customers through content marketing efforts. And by driving consumers to its own website, the brand has a greater opportunity to gain leads and move them down the conversion funnel. 

As we all pioneer this new strategy of content marketing, a shared definition of what we do relative to approaches like social media marketing is invaluable. So now your turn: In the comments, feel free to discuss your thoughts. Is this a definition you would use to distinguish the two disciplines? What’s missing? 

Image Credit:  RockfingrzviaFlickr

In the past few months, we’ve conducted numerous interviews with marketers in order to understand their vision of content marketing. We also studied the expectations of consumers to get their points of view. Based on what we found, we wanted to share some of our ideas for making better content planning a more understandable and achievable goal.

Content marketing’s objectives

To get started, focus on your content strategy’s objectives. We’ve found four main objectives for using a content strategy to create value for your company:

• Make yourself known as an expert in your sector. Relevant and strong content reinforces your company’s positioning. Show that you follow the trends, read interesting articles, and launch innovative campaigns. Content marketing is not just about content creation but also well-executed curation. By sharing useful articles on topics that are relevant to your industry, you show the world that you are up to speed on the latest insight, and by commenting on blogs of other experts, you can further extend the reach of your own expertise. Get your name out there, and others will begin to view you as an expert. As a result, your company’s general renown will increase.
• Maintain a positive relationship with your customers. Sharing your content regularly will keep your clients and consumers in continuous touch with your brand. It’s best not to bother them with offers or discounts, but rather to offer them something that will add value. For example, if you work in the research business, offer your audience research results they can use in their business plans instead of promoting your newest methodology. Once you are known for the value you provide, you can launch more promotion-driven efforts once in awhile without turning your audience off. (We recommend a 95 percent/5 percent split, as discussed in Matthijs van den Broek’s blog post on the content curation sweet spot.) 
• Get new customers. If the content you share with existing customers and fans is strong enough, they will share it with their friends and business contacts. In turn, this helps your company get in touch with new leads. The relevant content you provide can generate interest and encourage them to get to know your company better.
• Increase your reach on social media platforms. Just as in the point above, good content will also help you extend your reach across social media sites. A wider reach makes it easier for you to realize the other three objectives, as well.

How do you get started?

The world is swamped with information, so it is extremely important to make the content you offer relevant to your intended audience. Furthermore, the choice of the topics you focus on can largely determine how successful your content will be. In order to make good decisions, you will need to conduct an internal analysis of your company’s strengths (what is your company good at, and what makes it different than other companies), as well as an external analysis to determine what subjects interest your audience.

To start, think about what topics your company can offer unique content in. This content needs to be in line with the company culture and vision, obviously. It is sensible to think about your top areas of expertise and where you are unique in your market.

For example, Coca-Cola claimed happiness as a theme. Without content marketing behind it, it feels a little strange that a soft drink can provide happiness. In the last few years, Coca-Cola began executing acts — like The Happiness Machine — to make happiness tangible. By creating content about what happiness means, Coca-Cola claimed the theme, and made it relevant to its target market.

Secondly, investigate the market’s needs. Find out what topics your target group is looking for more information on. There are different ways to do this. For example, you can monitor online conversations and see what people are talking about. You can also organize research to measure all current conversations and see what information is missing to determine potential opportunities. Finally, Google offers tools that help you see which search terms score high for your industry. By making these analyses, you can get a clearer view of what the market desires.

Once you have combined the internal (level of uniqueness) and external (what people are looking for) dimensions for your content efforts, you will find that most of your ideas fall into four categories:

• Focus topics: These are topics on which the market is looking for information, but competitors are not offering satisfactory solutions for or sufficient information on. Content in this area will work best to help your company make a difference. Sixty percent of your content should be dedicated to coverage in this category.
• Competitive topics: Once in awhile, it is necessary to create content that the market is asking for, but that is not unique to your company’s experience. Take into account that competitors will also write about these topics, so limit your efforts in these areas to 25 percent of your total content.
• Niche topics: These are topics that may interest fewer people, but that your company has a unique perspective on. Even if some of your content is only relevant to a smaller group of customers, if you have a unique story to tell it’s worthwhile to cover these topics to help foster trust and build more loyal interest from an often-overlooked part of your clientele. For example, for a company in food service, there might be a small part of the audience that is interested in the origins of the foods they sell. Content on the production process or on the geographic location where the food originated would be considered a niche topic in this market. Invest 15 percent of your content efforts toward addressing information in this category.
• Topics to avoid: Don’t waste time and money creating content on topics that your company doesn’t have a unique perspective on or that aren’t likely to generate much interest in your business. Naturally, none of your content should fall into this category.

Planning your content around the three content levels

After determining your topics, the next step is to effectively plan the specific types of content you will create. When doing this, your ideas can be divided into three levels: content updates, content projects, and content campaigns.

• Updates: Updates are short messages sent on a regularly scheduled basis. For updates, it’s best to use a combination of formal content (company data, news, hiring information, etc.) and informal content (company culture information, employee updates, etc.). These are small “pinpricks” of content that will keep employees informed about what’s happening at your company.

Updates are shared mainly via social media, and work well to keep your company at the top of your customers’ minds. For example, an update can consist of a daily blog post, a Facebook update, or several messages on Twitter. Frequent updates are more likely to drive up your audience numbers, so make sure the schedule you set for updating your content is manageable on a long-term basis.

• Project outreach: Projects involve activities that will provide value over a longer period of time and are usually created around a given theme. An example of a project could be Christmas-themed outreach (if that time of year is relevant for your company), the ongoing activities of a new department you’ve launched, data from an important survey you’ve conducted, or details on a major customer event.

Typically, a project outreach cycle will last for a few weeks and will speak to one specific company objective (the type of content you choose to create will be determined by this objective). For example, white papers, webinars, or PowerPoint presentations are projects you can build content on.

Here, information is mainly shared via online channels and can be supported by other media. For example, during the project weeks, a company can publish a series of posts on its own blog, or distribute them through related industry blogs. Then, these posts can be further highlighted by posting brief daily updates (created, as well as curated) on your social media platforms.

• Campaigns: Campaigns are similar to projects but are shorter in duration and more intense. Campaign content creates an awareness of the company or is used to spread information around important company news,, such as a product launch. A good campaign will also trigger conversations about the brand.

Campaigns are often supported by offline media, which can be used to drive a short-term result (usually renown and sales). But above and beyond your choice of media, it is important to make sure that the content you share through offline channels is also conversation worthy. Through your campaign content, you should see a strong growth in short-term reach. Remember, campaigns are the most labor-intensive of the three content levels, and are, therefore, the most expensive — use them meticulously, and at the right moment of your sales cycle!

This approach and the three levels we’ve defined as content streams don’t constitute an exact science — they are only guidelines. But they can be used as the foundation of your own content planning, depending on your objectives. Dividing your content creation efforts into these three content sections will help to ensure a gradual increase in reach and engagement.

If you are interested in learning more about the content marketing insight that we distilled from our studies, you can download the full paper through the SlideShare link below.

SLIDESHARE
http://www.slideshare.net/stevenvanbelleghem/a-six-step-content-marketing-model

Meta descriptions are little snippets of text (about 155 characters) that appear in search engine results and with links shared on social media and bookmarking sites. Although they have very little pure SEO value, meta descriptions are still important for communicating your brand message and for conversions — i.e., getting people to click on your links.

Meta descriptions in action

First, let’s take a look at meta descriptions in action with a recent post on my company’s blog, YouTube Video Optimization Best Practices. This post was originally published without a meta description. When the post cropped up on a Google search engine results page (SERP), this is what you would see:

Notice that for the snippet of text under the link, Google picked up the first 182 characters from the post. This is OK, but in my view not ideal for conveying the primary value of this post or motivating people to click through and actually read it. I added a meta description, and a few days later — after Google had re-indexed the page — the SERP looked like this:

The meta description above has three characteristics I shoot for in almost every situation:

• A quick summary of the content
• A reason to read the content
• Fewer than 155 characters

I’ll get into writing tips for meta descriptions later, but first I want to give you a feel for how meta descriptions look, and where they appear on the most popular social media platforms.

Meta descriptions on Google+

Google+, the latest and greatest social network, picks up meta descriptions on shared links. Again, let’s look at the difference. Here’s what people saw on Google+ before:

And here is the same post immediately after I added the meta description:

I hope you agree that the second version tells a better story, fits the Google+ format by eliminating truncated text, and does a better job of encouraging people to read and re-share the post.

Meta descriptions on Facebook

Facebook displays meta descriptions as well. Here is the post before:

And here is the post after:

Again, a meta description gives your social sharing more persuasive power and an all-around more professional look.

How to add meta descriptions to your web pages

If you’re not sure a published blog post or web page has a meta description, check your browser’s “View Source” option and look for the code contained in the red box (note: the box was added by me — you won’t actually see the box in your code):

If this line of code is not there, it means that search engine and social media text snippets associated with that page will probably default to:

1. the first several characters of text (as we saw above), or
2. text surrounding keywords from the page that matches up to the search phrase entered by the search engine user

Any decent content management system (CMS) allows users to add a meta description. We happen to use the All in One SEO Pack plug-in for WordPress, which looks like this in the post editor:

If your CMS does not allow you to add/customize meta descriptions and titles, I urge you to upgrade.

Tips for writing stronger meta descriptions

Use relevant descriptions. A good meta description provides an overview of the page’s core message and purpose. Descriptions should be fully relevant: There is nothing more detrimental to conversion and reputation than setting up people to click through to a link that contains content other than what they are expecting. You never want to mislead users and leave them feeling used and abused.

Highlight a reason to read. A gentle (or sometimes not so gentle!) call to action influences click-throughs. How will people benefit from reading your content? The meta description is an ideal place to tell them. Here are some examples:

• Learn the essentials about…
• Discover why…
• A complete guide to…
• Order by January 31 and receive…

Leverage your credibility. I once had a client that increased traffic to its remodeling services home page by adding, “BBB approved” to the meta description. For brands that are not household names, phrases such as “since 1975” and “more than 10,000 clients served” may strongly influence searchers to click.

Make it specific. The meta description examples above are powerful because they are specific, concrete and, therefore, meaningful. Empty words and phrases like “innovative” and “world class” are a dime a dozen. They do not inspire confidence and can even be counterproductive in terms of conversion. Make sure you speak to the real benefits that your content provides to readers, in terms of what they want — not what you want them to do.

Keep it short and sweet. Avoid your natural inclination to use all 155 characters. By virtue of its novelty, a short meta description may attract more attention in the sea of lengthy, keyword-stuffed descriptions that are out there.  

Other important considerations

Speaking of keyword-stuffing, there are other important things you should be thinking about when you create and execute your meta description strategy:

Keywords and SEO. While it’s a good idea to include keywords in the meta descriptions you create for pages that are optimized around high-volume terms, recent changes in search engine algorithms are making this a less important consideration. In many cases, Google and other search engines pull text from the page itself based on the search query, rather than displaying the meta description. Given this fact, along with the more consistent and controllable display of meta descriptions on social media sites, focus on persuasiveness over keywords.

Uniqueness and SEO. Every blog post and site page should have a unique meta description or none at all. Duplicate meta descriptions influence Google to ignore them globally on your domain.

Create “default meta descriptions.” As we’ve seen, Google and social media sites sometimes pick up the first lines of content on a web page in lieu or in the absence of a meta description. For that reason, it is helpful to write those first lines of content so that they can double as a strong meta description, if necessary. For example: Take a look at the first two sentences of this post, which were written with this idea in mind.

Rewriting meta descriptions. Here are some final tips:

• There is no harm in rewriting or adding meta descriptions to previously published content. If you come out with an exciting new offer, consider adding it to the meta descriptions of your high traffic pages.
• It’s also helpful to add persuasive elements to meta descriptions on pages with high search rankings but low traffic.
• You can recirculate old blog posts and web pages on social media with new meta descriptions — this will make them fresh to old and new connections alike. 

From a definition of just what content marketing is (and is not) to effective content strategy and useful templates, here are some indispensable CMI posts from 2011 to help you clear the confusion and get your content marketing started on a solid, informed foundation.

The 7 Business Goals of Content Marketing: Inbound Marketing Isn’t Enough

In this popular post, Joe Pulizzi explains what content marketing is and how it’s different from inbound marketing.

5 Things You Need to Know about Content Strategy

Wondering about the difference between content marketing and content strategy? Kathy Hanbury walks you through what you need to know. 

First Things First – Content Strategy Before Social Strategy

It’s easy to get excited and want to jump into social media, but you need a basic content strategy first. Patricia Redsicker explains why.

Creating a Content Marketing Team and Workflow Plan

It’s essential to have the right process and team in place if you want to have a strong content marketing presence. Joe Pulizzi explains the basics.

What it Takes to Effectively Manage Content Marketing

If you’re looking for more insights into managing the process, check out this post from Robert Rose.

A Food Pyramid for Content Marketing

Not sure if you should do a webinar, write an eBook, or start a blog? This post from Tracy Gold provides an easy-to-understand framework for allocating your content marketing resources. 

Creating Valuable Content: An Essential Checklist

This checklist from Ahava Leibtag is a great resource if you want to make your content better.

10 Must-Have Templates for Content Marketers

If you like templates, check out this post with some popular templates from our CMI bloggers.

What other questions do you have about content marketing? Or are there any other posts you want to recommend for content marketers who are just starting out? Let us know in the comments. 

What I loved most about the class was the importance the trainer placed on knowing your audience. We spent a whole session answering questions about the people who would potentially be sitting in our audience: Why are they there, what other activities might they be missing to hear me speak, what do they really want to hear from me, what will turn them off, what things do we have in common, and so on.

This was a pretty familiar concept for me because we did this all the time in our content strategy engagements with clients. The cool kids call it buyer profiling. Whatever you call it, it is an essential step to developing a content marketing program that will actually help you meet your goals. Cards on the table, buyer profiling isn’t easy. But to follow up on my last post about demystifying and simplifying the content marketing process, this post will show you an easy process for learning everything you need to know about your potential target market without spending a ton of time or money.

If you or your company/clients have been in business for a while, you probably already have everything you need to go through this process with ease. But even if you are new to the content marketing game, you shouldn’t have much trouble implementing the process.

Ladies and gentlemen, chuck your spreadsheets!

I’ve participated in my fair share of “market research” projects where clients would spend embarrassing amounts of money doing mass-scale surveys, hiring telemarketing companies to do phone surveys, and buying lists upon lists of data about potential targets. Here’s what I learned: Spreadsheets filled with data give me the hives.

Here’s the problem with spreadsheets full of data: When we execute a content marketing strategy correctly, we must genuinely care about, serve, or enlighten our audiences to build relationships. Then, it’s those relationships that will ultimately drive business. As human beings, we aren’t programmed to be able to care about or engage with a nameless, faceless “buyer #1″ or “Company X.”

The new media environment isn’t about blasting your marketing message to the masses and hoping your target audience is seeing it. It’s about connecting with your audience — in some cases on a one-on-one basis — matching their needs with your relevant solutions and multiplying it all by the massive reach of the Internet. That’s where the sweet spot is. So if content marketing is about making personal connections, why would we choose to do our customer research on a mass scale?

Buyer profiling for the rest of us

I bet you already have some sort of client or customer database or email/ mailing list. I’m going to show you a very simple way to develop your buyer personas with the data you already have. In fact, I helped a small marketing agency customer with this exercise so I could better explain the process. Here’s what we did.

*Disclaimer! Before you get your analytical pants in a twist, I know this process isn’t scientific. But neither is producing good content. That’s why it’s called an art.

Step 1: Find your “top 20 percent.” We started by running a few reports from their Quickbooks account (but any customer database should work) to take a look at which clients had hired them and what work they hired the agency to do, as well as the amount of revenue that each project generated. Then, to make the numbers manageable, we looked at the top 20 percent of clients that contributed the highest percentage of their business revenue. This agency tends to be picky about the client projects they take on, so they had a smaller number to start with. If you have a large number of customers to look at, I suggest starting with your top 20 percent of customers (in terms of revenue or another relevant qualifier), then narrow it down to a smaller percentage that gives you a manageable list size to analyze. Maybe this is your top 10 percent or maybe 2 percent, depending on the number of customers you have.

Step 2: List what information you know about your customers. After we looked at the top 20 percent of their customers, we wrote down specific characteristics about each. Some sample characteristics you could write down about your top 20 percent include:

For BtoB:

• Size of company
• Size of department
• Title
• Job duties
• Whether or not they are the main decision maker

For BtoC:

• Demographics
• Geographic area
• Income level
• Are they a decision maker? If so, what do they base buying decisions on (e.g., lifestyle — environmentalist, baby boomer, etc.)?

If you don’t have much information on your customers, just focus on the things you do know: Maybe you know where they live, whether they’re male of female, or whether they are cat or dog people. Use this information to determine your key characteristics list.

Step 3: Find the commonalities to find your different segments. Then I reviewed the information about each of the top 20 percent clients and looked for any details that jumped out. As I read through the data, I discovered that most of these clients were either business owners with no marketing staff or corporate marketing managers who either ran their departments alone or with the help of one other person. Interesting! I think we just found their customer segmentations. As you look through your data, take note of any patterns that begin to emerge. What customer characteristics keep showing up? Did some specific “types” of people emerge? Are your clients mostly engineers? Mostly women? Are there a lot of middle managers on your list? Write these distinctions down to use as your buyer categories.

Step 4: Get in their heads. Here’s where the exercise from my public speaking class became so valuable. We began to ask questions about these new buyer categories we’ve defined, looking at the working relationship from their perspective and dialing in on their needs/wants/pain points: Why did they really hire this agency? What is the one thing they want to hear when choosing an agency partner? What pressures do they face in their job? What could the agency do to alleviate that pressure? What things do the agency and the different buyer groups have in common? We wrote all these things down, and if they hadn’t met the clients or didn’t know them personally, we used common sense. (Hint: everything you write down in this step could be turned into a content idea that you can put directly into your editorial calendar.)

Step 5: Give them “life!” Find an image that can represent each one of your different buyer types and give each one of these types a name. Then, based on the questions you answered for them above, start to create their stories. For example,  build a career history for them, include relevant details of their personal lives that explain why they are so busy, how many activities they are juggling at home, or any other specific interests they are likely to have. You can even include the content delivery mechanisms that they might prefer and why. And voila! You have your profile!

Bonus Step: If you want to get more scientific or you have little personal experience with anyone on your user list, (for example, if you work for an Internet business or a gigantic corporation, you might not have direct exposure to your customers) here’s a ready-to-go customer survey template that you can use to gather information from your customer/client list.

The rest of the story

The last thing I took away from my public speaking class was to wrap it up.

Once the marketing agency had a clear (and literal) picture of who its target client was and what they wanted from their agency, we developed their content strategy. Since clearly identifying their ideal, target clients, and building their content strategy to serve them, this little agency has seen significant increases in quality website traffic and more inquiries than they can keep up with.

Put the personas you’ve created in a document, print them out, and hang them on your wall (see another great example here from Barbara Gago). Every time you sit down to craft a piece of content, look at them and remind yourself what you’re really trying to do with your content marketing programs — connect with these people in a valuable and meaningful way.

If you have any suggestions to add to my buyer profiling process, or information you’d like to share on how you try to stay connected to your audience, I’d love to read them in the comments section below.

This week, they answer, “What is the one thing you wish someone had told you about content marketing that you had to learn the hard way?”

In cooking parlance, content marketing is stock — a building-block ingredient for nearly all of a company’s “dishes.” As a result, content marketing is a political role. It sits in-between multiple departments and even more functions within each department. Just as the sous chef who mixes up the stock that serves as the foundation for the signature dish goes unnoticed by everyone but the head chef, in many ways the content marketer should aim to make his colleagues the celebrities. - Joe Chernov (@jchernov)

I wish I knew one thing when I got started: How does your content get found? While there is no single answer to this question, here are some tactics I have found to be especially useful: Have your top 30-50 keyword phrases you’re going to use over and over again, and ensure these phrases are embedded within all of your content. Source all of the relevant blog posts to identify conversations you should contribute to and link back to your content. Use tools like Google Alerts or Google Reader that have keyword search capabilities. Cross-promote your content in relevant communities. For example, post your presentations on Slideshare, embed them in landing pages that can be measured, and link to your landing page. You get the boost of traditional link backs to your content, plus you get the exposure on Slideshare. You can do the same thing for webinar content, video content, etc. Update your website constantly with the fresh content so Google keeps ranking your site higher for keywords and lets your content get found. Make a decision on how you want to optimize your content. Long-tail terms are the better way to go for your content unless you have a major budget. Consider PPC campaigns to promote your content. Consider retargeting services with your ads so that the user sees your content over and over again. Ask influencers to share your content. There is no better way to get your content shared than by referral. Consider using old-fashioned email and include the forward to a friend functionality. Syndicate your content. - Darryl Praill (ohpinion8ted)

Before launching a big project, make sure you have the enthusiasm/ support/ effort from your subject matter experts. I work largely for professional service firms, and our content marketing programs absolutely require the expertise, insights, and credibility of subject matter experts. Without their willing participation, the project — no matter how well-researched, well-designed, etc. — is a low-flying dud. - Clare McDermott (@soloportfolio)

It takes a lot of resources to do this properly. In the world of B2B, there is a lot to be gained from a thought leadership approach, of producing really smart content that separates a brand intellectually from the competition, especially when engaging prospects at the very start of the buying process. But there are two big issues that, frankly, marketers are taking a long time to address: In-house experts need to allow time for sharing that expertise. The end benefits justify a significant investment, not just in writing/production/design, but also in the careful planning of the whole strategy — a service that is typically and quite easily outsourced. Too many marketers seem to persist in the belief that content marketing is about a quick article here and there and that will do the trick. While content does not always have to be detailed and lengthy, it should be high-quality, interesting, and well-planned. Ad-hoc content production — squeezed in around the day job — is not a solid basis for success. - John Bottom (@basebot)

Creating great content isn’t enough. The content must be distributed and marketed properly to gain traction.  The content must be organized in a manner that allows the user to find it, just to name a few of the more complicated nuances of content marketing. I believe that it has been an uphill battle to convince people that creating great content is a tremendous marketing opportunity. As a result, the message gets watered down a bit to “create great content and your company will benefit.” There’s more to it than that. - Russ Henneberry (@RussHenneberry)

I wish that I knew from the start that content marketing is not a tactic. When I first heard about content marketing, I admit I viewed it as a new strategy. Now I realize that content marketing is really a mindset that helps shape and enhance all aspects of an overall marketing strategy. - Amanda Maksymiw (@amandamaks)

No matter how much content you produce, it’s never enough! As is the case for many of you, my audience is made up of different verticals, functional areas, geographies, and levels of expertise and adoption. The challenge is to come up with enough fresh, high quality content that’s relevant for each segment. Our solution is to repurpose as much of our content as possibleand encourage user- and employee-generated content. Still, there’s always demand for more. - Paula Crerar (@pcrerar)

Clients are opposed to testing and iteration. I feel that at least 50 percent of my job is educating my clients that the only way to know for sure is to test. They seem more inclined to spend money and time on content that they want to see, not that will appeal to their potential customers. - Ahava Leibtag (@ahaval)

Since I come from the search side of the business and do not have the traditional publisher’s perspective, I would say the importance of keeping an editorial calendar was a lesson I had to learn. Like most companies, even though we had a plan, we still shot from the hip a lot. The key to good content marketing is understanding that it’s a continuous effort to come up with new, engaging content targeted to your audience, and requires research, thought, and a long-term plan to all be documented in an editorial calendar.Our calendar includes many steps, including optimizing the content and even a promotion timeline for each piece of “promotion worthy” content that we create. - Arnie Kuenn (@ArnieK)

You don’t have to create content from scratch to deliver value.Curating and pointing folks to content of interest, inviting others to contribute content, and putting a new spin on existing content are all ways to generate a fresh stream of content that keeps your audience coming back for more. - Stephanie Tilton (@StephanieTilton)

I wish someone had told me how powerful cross-promoting content can be.We drove hundreds of extra downloads of the Content Marketing Workbook from our B2B Marketing Manifesto — just by telling readers that it was available and linking to it. It’s well worth going back to old published content and sprinkling in some cross-promotion. - Doug Kessler (@dougkessler)

The widespread need for content and the importance of creating content for others. It helps more people to discover you and it validates your content, as well as your level of expertise. - Scott Aughtmon (@rampbusinesses)

The one thing I wish someone had told me about content marketing is how hard it is to put the audience first in your marketing content.Great content helps your audience and engages them in a human or emotional way. Most marketing content is self-promotional and boring, and that’s why it largely gets ignored. Engaging with people on social channels does not come naturally for most of us, and so I have learned the hard way that the first step in content marketing is educating marketing folks that the current state of largely outbound, paid, promotional marketing is broken. The next step involves using examples of how content can drive engagement and, ultimately, revenue for our businesses if we produce the kind of content our audience wants and deliver it in the channels where they expect it. But building and gaining alignment of resources around a content strategy must come on top of that educational foundation. - Michael Brenner (@BrennerMichael)

Content marketing is a process, not an end in itself. You are not practicing content marketing if you write and place or publish a few articles.You’re simply doing some tactical promotion that may help short-term but not long-term. Content marketing requires an ongoing commitment, an understanding of your buyers, market segmentation and a commitment to use content to help move customers and prospects through the purchase funnel. It is a lot more work than writing a few articles but, in the end, a lot more satisfying in terms of lead generation and client/prospect satisfaction. - Wendy Marx (@wendymarx)

The best content marketing results come after listening and then continually tweaking the product. There have been very few content marketing successes that work out of the gate.Today, when I go in and talk to CMOs and senior marketers, I always say that the we won’t really be able to find our storytelling groove until after the first few months. Using this approach helps to set expectations correctly. - Joe Pulizzi (@juntajoe)

The one thing I learned the hard way about content marketing is how different it is from more traditional marketing writing styles that tend to be more promotional or persuasive. Content marketing requires a shift in your thinking, from “all about us” to “all about the reader.” If content is written in the wrong way, or isn’t helpful to the reader, it can really damage your reputation and brand. But, if it’s action-oriented, practical, educational, and meaningful, then you’re more likely to build strong relationships with your target audience. This takes a lot of trial and error: Which pieces do people download most? How frequently are people responding to or sharing your content?  Which ones fell flat? Learning this the hard way means a lot of wasted effort on certain pieces that just aren’t meaningful enough. To avoid these tough lessons, I would set up a content marketing strategy from the get-go and a few objectives you want to achieve for each piece. For example: Are there clear questions answered in this piece? Is this valuable to someone looking for certain tools? How many times is our company name used in the piece? A simple strategy would have saved us a lot of time and effort and, I imagine, a lot of other companies as well, as we enter this new world of content marketing. - Anna Ritchie (@apritchie)

I had to re-learn to thoroughly plan things. Content marketing is not doable in the long-run if it doesn’t include thorough planning, be it in a form of social media activities, events, magazines, brochures, blogs, etc. When I entered this business, I was too laid back and thought, “When it comes to it, we’ll do it/come up with an idea how.” I learned you can’t come up with a custom magazine concept without thinking at least four issues ahead. I learned you can’t just jump on a social-media train without a long-term detailed content strategy and schedule integrated with other content channels you may use. I learned you can’t start writing a blog without a calendar and lots of planning. Because sooner than later you’ll find yourself in trouble. I learned the hard way, although this applies to many other aspects of our lives, not just content marketing. - Nenad Senic (@NenadSenic)

The one thing I wished someone had told me when I first started my program was that there is no one-fit solution to a content marketing strategy. Each company has its own unique services, products, campaigns and culture. A content marketing strategy needs to mold to the company, fitting each need of the business. Content marketing is not cookie-cutter. - Jessica Eastman (@JessicaEastman)

I wish someone had told me to do a better job managing customer expectations. Content marketing is a great story and one people are ready to hear. It’s easy to generate enthusiasm for the concept. In the early days, there was a lot of talk about content marketing being free. It’s not. What I’ve found most difficult is that clients don’t understand the slow burn aspect of content marketing.Even though you tell them, they expect results after one or two months. So often I see businesses give up just as they’re starting to gain influence with their audience. I learned the hard way to be very clear about positioning content marketing as a long-term investment. I now get commitment for at least a six month investment before starting a project. - Sarah Mitchell (@globalcopywrite)

Content is required on a regular basis to connect, engage, and sellto today’s more empowered buyer. As a result, you constantly have to work at producing recent relevant content to fuel the various channels and facilitate the audiences need for more information and intelligence. We’ve learned the hard way that once you start it’s a beast that needs to be continually fed. Although it is a never-ending process, it is rewarding and effective. - Tom Pisello (@tpisello)

I wish someone had told me a while ago that content marketing operates on a combination of strategy, planning, and randomness more than most marketers will admit. It’s practically impossible to have sustained success without strategy and planning, but big victories often come at the most unexpected times. For example, a blog post you might think is OK, but not your best, might suddenly become very popular simply because an influencer who doesn’t always follow your blog randomly happened to read this one post and share it. If you’re smart, you’ll have linked to a few old posts in that blog post. Those older blog posts should get a big bump in traffic from the attention the new one is getting. Your regular audience — of Facebook fans, Twitter followers, RSS subscribers, email newsletter readers — will likely also get a bump. That success wouldn’t have happened without the strategic funnel you built to turn one-time readers into a regular audience, your careful persistence and planning, and that one lucky random read. I’ve learned through experience that when you have this combination, patience to wait for deferred gratification in content marketing pays off. - Tracy Gold (@tracycgold)

Every great content marketing operation needs a Managing Editor. To succeed in content marketing, you don’t have to start with big scale and try to create a traditional editorial operation. You can use external freelancers and agencies; you can (and should) get internal team members to write part time. But you need a Managing Editor, and that Editor should have traditional media experience (fear not: it’s a good time to find one). Your Managing Editor does not have to be a full-time employee. But even if they’re a contractor, they need to be regularly available to you and accountable to the success of the operation.To succeed as a publisher, brands need someone who can analyze the audience’s interests and create a content plan, someone who can evaluate, recruit and manage writers, someone that makes sure the trains all run on time. The world of traditional journalism is the best developer of these skills and the best source for this talent. - Toby Murdock (@tobymurdock)

What do you wish you had known when getting started? Let us know in the comments!

In the spirit of Thanksgiving in the U.S., and to give my own thanks for all that I have learned this year, I’ve added some new content marketing commandments and truisms that I’d like to share with you. 

1. The content is more important than the offer.
2. A customer relationship doesn’t end with the payment.
3. Printed marketing doesn’t stop with the full-page advertisement.
4. “Being the content” is more important than “surrounding the content.”
5. Interruption isn’t valued, but engagement is.
6. A blog can be, and should be, a core part of communicating with and marketing to your customers.
7. Internal marketing always takes precedence over external marketing.
8. A brand is a relationship, not a tag line.
9. Focusing on what the customer wants is more important than what you have to sell.
10. The competition can copy everything you have, except your brand. Communications is the differentiator.
11. A news release isn’t meant to be picked up by the press, but rather to help customers find your great content on the web.
12. Communicating directly with customers is the best choice.
13. Marketers can and should be publishers.
14. Today’s traditional publishers are scared of marketers.
15. Without content, community is improbable, if not impossible.
16. The marketing brochure should be stricken from all strategic marketing plans.
17. Content without design doesn’t look appetizing (or deliver on marketing goals).
18. Lead generation is only one small part of the marketing picture.
19. Hiring an editor is not a want, but a must, for all organizations.
20. No matter the medium or the provider, someone is always selling something.
21. The long tail of search engine optimization is driven by consistent content on your corporate blog or website.
22. 90 percent of all corporate websites talk about how great the company or product is and forget about the customer.
23. 90 percent of all corporate websites are terrible.
24. In the next few years, the majority of content consumers engage in will be corporate media (if it is not already).
25. Buyers are in control, the traditional sales process has changed, and relevant content lets organizations into the buying process.
26. Long-form branded content can be created anywhere your customers work, live, or play.
27. The Chief Content Officer is the CMO of the future.
28. Customers want to be inspired. Be the inspiration!
29. There is no one right way to do content marketing. Be willing to experiment.
30. In-person events continue to be one of the best ways to connect with your audience.
31. Never overlook the power of simplicity.
32. Content marketing success in your organization means having the right process.
33. Marketers need to start understanding the difference between content marketing and inbound marketing.
34. The content marketing community is made up of some of the most helpful and inspiring people. Reach out and partner!
35. There are no shortcuts to great content marketing; it takes a lot of elbow grease.
36. When in doubt, always add an image to your content.
37. Don’t rely too much on Google to bring traffic to your site.
38. Content curation is important, but it is not a strategy. To be the trusted expert in your industry, you must create your own content.
39. Don’t wait for perfection.  Great content doesn’t have to be perfect.  It will never be perfect.
40. Outsource effectively or be effectively outsourced.
41. If you don’t have scaling problems with your content, you aren’t moving fast enough.
42. Before you create your content masterpiece, figure out how you are going to market it first.

What is your favorite? Do you have any other content marketing truths? Share them in the comments below.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.