Introducing a new tool to help marketers review and improve the best options for promoting content

If you’re a regular reader of Smart Insights, it’s likely you’ve seen - or even better, used - our Content Marketing Matrix developed with First10. It has proved to be a popular infographic since it’s not just a nice visual of some interesting ‘facts and figures’ about marketing, rather it can actually be applied to get better results since it helps businesses brainstorm the best types of content to create as part of their content marketing strategy.

What is the Content Distribution Matrix?

This infographic is aimed at helping marketers review the effectiveness of different types of Paid, Owned, and Earned media to promote or distribute their content in generating site visits, leads or sales compared to the level of investment in applying the media measured as paid media costs or the costs of marketing…

A content marketing planning tool to help marketers generate a matrix of ideas for the most engaging content types for their audiences

We created our Content Marketing Matrix to help our members audit their content marketing assets as part of creating a content marketing strategy. It can also be used for content ideation, i.e. to brainstorm future content ideas to generate leads, nurture prospects, encourage sharing, and generate backlinks for SEO. Since we created it eight years ago it's been shared many times and has inspired many 'mashups' in different formats, as this Google search shows; great to see it's been useful! I think our Content Marketing Matrix is a powerful mindtool for marketers since it's a content mapping tool, structured to help you think through two key dimensions of which types of content will best support the path to purchase for your target audience.…

Today, content marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing. Find out how digital and content marketing managers can boost their content strategies in 2022

Businesses are using content marketing as a strategy to reach and convert prospects. But are they getting the best results possible? To achieve these results, you need to focus on improving these 9 most important content marketing skills.

1. Content creation skills

Even though it’s obvious, very few content marketers can create the type of content that will achieve great results for their business. First, content writing is important for your blogs and other important website pages.

To improve content writing skills and eliminate blunders, a marketer has to learn about grammar. Grammarly is a tool that can assist writers to proofread their written content.

Content marketers need to improve their multimedia content creation skills to connect…

Audit your content and SEO with our content strategy tool to get more from your content marketing

One of the biggest appeals of digital marketing is that it's data-driven - we can readily review the effectiveness of our activities and make informed improvements. This is particularly true for using content marketing and SEO to attract and convert visitors to lead or sale. Yet, the tools that are available within analytics to help us visualize and optimize our content haven't really changed since I've been involved in digital marketing. If you dig into the Behaviour reports in Google Analytics you still see long lists of Top Content and Landing pages to try to interpret. Using content groups in Google Analytics can help simplify by grouping related content. Although you can sort the lists, it's not easy to identify which content is performing well and can be enhanced and which is under-performing…

With every company keen to climb Google’s search rankings, it is easy to lose perspective by simply churning out fresh content that seizes on the zeitgeist or otherwise meets current demand

It is difficult to overstate the importance of evergreen content for modern content marketers. Evergreen content is, by nature, time-proof, as relevant if read in a year as it is today. While Google does like to answer searchers’ queries with up-to-date articles, it also rewards high-quality legacy content created many months or even years ago – particularly if you update it regularly. Some blog pages have stubbornly hung on to a number one page ranking for eight or nine years now, bringing a constant stream of traffic to the page, as well as building trust (being the number one spot in search results will help make more people trust you and your business) and, consequently, boosting your conversions. By creating evergreen content, you…

Stand out, get noticed and engage your audience with the inverted triangle principle

To attract an audience’s attention, start with the end in mind. Brands embracing a content marketing strategy should study one of journalism’s key models: the inverted pyramid. This storytelling approach states that the most important elements of a story must come first, before tapering off into more detailed information later. The inverted triangle also helps content creators structure stories so that the most important information reaches the widest audience, whilst the least important information goes at the bottom. We see this all the time in newspaper articles. Consider this example: The headline is clear, succinct and immediately captures our attention. The opening paragraph summarizes the essence of the story. Anyone who abandons the article after three or four paragraphs can still come away with…

How do you run content marketing campaigns for your business in 2021 when the competition is fiercer than ever?

Content marketing has been proven to produce amazing results for businesses. For instance, a good content marketing plan will generate you three times more leads at a 62% lower cost than traditional marketing. Coming into 2021, knowing that we face a difficult economic recession, now it's more important than ever to leverage content marketing to improve your ROI. [si_learning_path_module_shortcode_block id=139221] But there's a little problem: how do you run content marketing campaigns for your business in 2021 when the competition is fiercer than ever? Frankly, the first task you need to perform is to create a content marketing plan. With a good plan in place, you can take the first step to achieve content marketing success next year. Unsurprisingly, CoSchedule found that marketers who proactively plan their projects or campaigns are …

Google Search Console Insights combines Google Search Console and Google Analytics to introduce a new SEO platform for content marketers

If you regularly use Google Analytics and/or Google Search Console tools to evaluate and optimize your marketing (and if you don't - here's some starters for you!), you may have heard about this integrated new insights platform update from Google.

What is Google Search Console Insights?

Still in Beta mode, Google Search Console Insights is a new platform which allows content marketers an integrated overview of how their content is searched for/discovered (GSC) alongside insights about the audience and their behaviour (GA).

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Webinars are great for generating quality leads, building trust with an audience, reaching more people, and converting more leads into customers

In an increasingly competitive market where consumers get hit with content from all sides, webinars allow you to offer them more value than other, more traditional forms of online content (blog posts, infographics, etc.). According to research from the Content Marketing Institute, 43% of B2B marketers use webinars platforms, and 55% use webinars as a key content distribution vehicle. Ascend2, meanwhile, has found that webinars are the second most effective type of gated content resource for lead capture purposes, trumped only by download offers, and Demand Gen Report has found that along with research reports and emails, webinars are the most effective tactics for lead nurture.

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Leads are often hailed as the lifeblood of a business – and while not everyone will agree with that statement, leads are extremely important to the success and growth of your business

There are all kinds of lead generation activities, such as email marketing and social media marketing, but one of the top sources of leads is content marketing – especially, blogging. In this blog post, I’m going to talk about the reasons why blogging is one of the best lead generation tools for businesses – and if you’re convinced, make sure to check out the Quick Win here to learn all about how exactly you can use blogging for lead generation. [si_quick_block id="125491" title="Blogging for B2B lead generation" description="Check out this Quick Win here to learn about all of the different ways that you can use blogging to generate leads, grow your business in the process, and find…