This Week in Content Marketing: Google, Facebook to Purchase Content in 2017

PNR: This Old Marketing with Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose can be found on both iTunes and Stitcher.

This week, Robert and I recap the biggest content marketing stories from the past year and predict some trends we expect to see in 2017, including new content purchases Facebook and Google may be looking to make; brands betting big on buying media companies; and greater business model diversity from publishers and marketers alike. Our rants and raves feature the late, great George Michael and a new book from Michael Lewis; then we wrap up our final episode of 2016 by highlighting “house organs” in our Example of the Week.

This week’s show

(Recorded live on December 26, 2016; Length: 0:55:34)

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1.    Notable news and upcoming trends

As the holiday week slowed news to a crawl, Robert and I thought we would recap some of the biggest stories and significant trends that impacted content marketing over the past year. We also shared some thoughts on what may be in store for our industry in 2017. Our discussion included:

• Facebook’s total domination of the digital marketing conversation (08:00): Facebook represented the lion’s share of advertising revenue growth over the past year and continued its metamorphosis from social network to full-fledged media company, as recent articles in Forbes and Recode describe in detail. However, Robert believes that the pendulum will soon start to swing in the other direction, and he predicts a backlash as marketers increasingly recognize the dangers of relying on a third-party platform when it comes to building trusted, ongoing relationships with a target audience. My advice here is to expect companies like Facebook and Google to continue to manipulate the system to sustain their growth, but keep your eyes open for the content gaps their efforts will inevitably leave – which knowledgeable subject matter experts may be in a strong position to fill.

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• The rise of the publisher content studios (23:41): Another big story we explored throughout the year is the growing number of media outlets that are building their own content studios as a means of competing with the creative agencies for brands’ content budgets. I view this as an essential diversification of what publishing means in today’s marketplace. Robert sees this as a trend that is poised to really explode in 2017, as it represents an exciting new business model for publishers who have been struggling to overcome deep deficits in online ad revenue.

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• The need to redefine the marketing department and its purpose (27:05): The above story led right into another point Robert and I kept coming back to: the need for marketers to think in broader terms about the value of content throughout the enterprise. Rather than limiting ourselves to viewing content as little more than a demand driver or an advertising alternative, we urge practitioners to expand their horizons and explore its potential to further mid- and lower-funnel goals, like increasing conversions and loyalty.

• More brands will be vertically integrating media (28:05): One of the biggest stories that wasn’t being talked about (except by us) was the major media acquisitions that were made by electronics manufacturer Arrow Electronics, including its purchase of UBM’s (CMI’s parent company) entire portfolio of electronics industry publications. As Robert says, having a media company vertically integrated into the products and services you offer to the marketplace is a smart thing to do. Years from now, content executives are going to look back and view moves like this as the tipping point of content marketing’s progression toward greater acceptance and success.

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Having a media company integrated into the products & services offered is a smart thing to do. @robert_rose
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• Greater software company consolidation is coming – especially in the martech space (32:02): If you happened to view Scott Brinker’s impressively comprehensive infographic depicting the current marketing technology landscape, you would likely recognize that this field has grown so vast and complex that it will be tough to sustain further growth. Robert predicts that many of these businesses will fall out, merge, or get acquired in the upcoming year, as enterprise customers look to simplify their use of these solutions.

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2.    Sponsor (33:30)

• Content Marketing Institute’s 2017 Events. Whether you are just getting started with content marketing or are looking to take your expertise to the next level, CMI’s portfolio of events has you covered. From our free virtual ContentTECH conference to Content Marketing World – the largest annual gathering of content marketing professionals in the industry – we offer a wide range of unparalleled training, education, and networking experiences. Check out all the events we have in store for 2017, including our strategy-focused Intelligent Content Conference, and use the code PNR100 for a special discount on registration.

3.    Rants and raves (36:16)

• Robert’s rave: It’s been an unusually rough year for music fans, as we lost some of the most iconic performers of all time in 2016. Sadly, George Michael became the latest addition to the list, as the erstwhile Wham! front man and celebrated singer/songwriter passed away unexpectedly on Christmas day. As a fan, Robert came across a piece of content that The Late Late Show host James Corden filmed with George Michael in 2011 as part of a U.K. charity event – the concept of which eventually evolved into Corden’s current viral phenomenon: Carpool Karaoke.

• Joe’s rave: I’m in the middle of reading The Undoing Project, by one of my all-time favorite authors, Michael Lewis. The book explores why people perceive and believe things as they do, and why they don’t. In short, it’s gotten me wondering if our narrow view of marketing – i.e., primarily as a means of driving demand – might be limiting its potential to provide more impactful benefits for the broader enterprise. For 2017, I urge content marketers to start pushing away your biases about content’s purpose and expand your view of what can be accomplished by your efforts.

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Push away biases about your content's purpose & expand your view of what can be accomplished. @joepulizzi
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4.    This Old Marketing example of the week (44:35)

• What is, perhaps, Robert’s favorite example of the year comes to us from Google’s archives of publications. Office Appliances was a B2B magazine that was launched by The Office Appliance Company in 1916 to serve office managers, retail dealers, and others who handle purchases of office equipment, furniture, stationery, and supplies. At over 200 pages long, the issue Robert discovered is a comprehensive round-up of that year’s biggest appliance-related stories. It’s a fascinating read – particularly if you are at all interested in history. But beyond its historical relevance, Robert discovered one amazing article on “house organs” – an old term for in-house magazines – which he feels still accurately characterizes the challenges faced by their modern equivalent: content marketing. Tying back to the point I made in my rave above, the article covers the proceedings from that year’s meeting of the Direct Mail Advertising Association and lists 19 ways that becoming “an internal media company” can deliver value to a wide range of businesses. The entire discussion basically predates everything we are always saying at Content Marketing Institute, making Robert wish he could have been in attendance at that DMAA meeting – and making it a fitting way to close out the year of This Old Marketing.

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For a full list of PNR archives, go to the main This Old Marketing page.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Get a Jump on 2017: 11 Can’t-Miss Content Marketing E-Books

2016 is almost up and, well, let’s just say it’s been an eye-opener for many of us. Certainly, it’s shown us that we can all stand to learn more — about ourselves, our audiences, and the world in which we operate as marketers.

If we want to move our businesses forward in the face of any marketing challenges, we need to take every opportunity to become more informed about what’s happening around us and take greater responsibility for driving the changes we want to see.

One of my favorite ways to increase understanding of our industry is through detailed e-books that look at the current landscape, map viable paths toward improvement, or simply inspire us to get a little creative in how we pursue our goals. The following are 11 of the top resources the CMI team produced in the e-book format over the past year — all of which are designed to support your upcoming efforts and better prepare you to achieve content marketing success no matter what the future may have in store.

1. Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends

CMI’s annual research reports are among the most-cited studies across the content marketing industry. For 2017, our team took the conversation in a new direction by more closely examining certain tactics, techniques, and specific actions that the most successful organizations use. For example, our B2B study found that 85% of top performers deliver content consistently compared to 58% of the overall sample and 32% of bottom performers. Not only do the results point content marketers toward best practices for various industry segments (including B2B, B2C, manufacturing, and nonprofit organizations), they also serve as an accurate reflection of our industry’s evolution.

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Our B2B study found that 85% of top performers deliver #content consistently. @cmicontent #research
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2. The 2017 Content Marketing Framework: 5 Building Blocks for Profitable, Scalable Operations

A lot has changed since CMI unveiled its first framework of the principles governing content marketing in 2014. To reflect the shifts we’ve experienced throughout the industry’s evolution — and the insights we’ve gathered along the way — we’ve updated and enhanced our original discussion. Think of this e-book as a syllabus of sorts, covering the five core elements necessary for running successful, scalable, and highly strategic content marketing operations.

3. Get Inspired: 75 (More) Content Marketing Examples

Every business brings a unique set of goals, resources, and values to the content marketing table. But as an industry, we can all learn a little something from these 75 brands that conquered their content marketing challenges with creativity, ingenuity, or simply a strong commitment to providing audience value. Updating one of our most popular e-books of all time, this year’s example collection also illustrates best practices for a wide range of tactics and formats — from mainstays like blogs and print magazines to virtual-reality-enhanced efforts, seamlessly integrated multichannel experiences, and more.

4. Next-Generation SEO Strategies That Will Future-Proof Your Content

Today’s search engine algorithms do a pretty good job of using input like keywords, content quality, and uniqueness to rank content by its relevance. But, according to Rand Fishkin, those formulas are well on their way to learning from actions taken on previous searches and predicting intent, and applying that contextual information to provide a more meaningful search experience. This e-book covers the basics of SEO in the machine-learning age and offers tips to help you prepare your content for the coming of our benevolent search-bot overlords. 

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#SEO formulas are well on their way to learning from actions taken on previous searches says @RandFish.
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5. 2016 Content Marketing Playbook: Shoot, Score, and Win With 24 Epic Content Ideas

If finding the right format for communicating at the right time and place is something you struggle with, our latest Content Marketing Playbook can help you make more informed decisions. Covering 24 of the most popular content types, this e-book offers stats on their use and effectiveness among your industry peers, tips to help with content creation, and essential considerations for achieving success with the tactics you select.

6. 18 Content Strategy Inspirations From Robert Rose

This collection of smart and prescient insights is (IMO) sadly lacking a cover image depicting CMI’s chief content adviser posed as Rodin’s The Thinker. But it does include current concepts, innovative ideas, and critical discussion points that may come in handy as you build and execute on a successful content strategy. Use Robert’s words of wisdom as signposts to keep your efforts on track or simply to spark thoughtful conversations on the role that content strategy should be playing in your organization.  

7. Content Marketing Survival Guide: How to Navigate the Wilds of Social Media

 Tracking your audience through the social media jungle is not for the faint of heart — plenty of perils can befall a foolhardy brand that enters these landscapes unaware and unprepared. This update of our original 2014 e-book has everything you need to thrive in the most popular social environments, explore emerging territories, and avoid getting ensnared in dead-end conversations or plagued by dried up Vines (2012-2016 RIP).

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Tracking your audience through the #socialmedia jungle is not for the faint of heart. @Joderama
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8. 21 LinkedIn Profile Tips to Advance Your Content Marketing Career 

CMI’s Lisa Dougherty compiled an unbelievably comprehensive guide for turning your average LinkedIn profile into a substantive showcase of your content marketing talents and career achievements. The full process can take some time, though, so we put together an e-book of the top highlights, which will get you started while preparing you to make some more impactful changes over time.  

9. Influencer Marketing: The Latest Strategies, Templates, and Tools

Working with top thought leaders, social influencers, and other high-profile content creators in your industry can quickly propel your business into the big leagues in terms of credibility, visibility, and brand loyalty. But with so many strong voices and channels to consider, it’s hard to know which players to pursue and how to position your content for optimal success. This updated guide offers plenty of new tips, processes, and industry-leading advice to help marketers identify and engage the right influencers and drive greater value from their influencer collaborations — without getting overwhelmed by all the options.

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Influencers can propel businesses into the big leagues of credibility, visibility & loyalty. @Joderama
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10. How to Apply Analytics Data to Make Better Content Marketing Decisions

Even if you’re accustomed to tracking your content marketing performance with Google Analytics, chances are you’re still leaving some critical insights on the table. Google Analytics is a powerful measurement tool, but its complexity means it’s not always easy to find the data you need most. This overview of Andy Crestodina’s top-rated Content Marketing World presentation will show you how to compile relevant reports, get answers to your most pressing performance questions, and take actions to improve your potential for success.

11. 2017 Content Marketing Predictions 

If recent events have taught us anything, it’s that predictions are rarely 100% accurate. But even when they fail to hit a direct bulls-eye, they can still help keep you focused on your targets and priorities. In our ninth annual predictions book, you’ll find out which content marketing trends some of our industry’s top experts are keeping in their sights — including shifts in enterprise-wide content creation, paid amplification, and audience development — and how their insights might prepare you to face your challenges head-on in the coming year.

Moving forward

As 2016 draws to a close, the CMI team is already hard at work on new ideas, insights, and advice to help content marketers conquer their challenges — large and small. But we’d love to hear what topics you would like to see us tackle in future e-books. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments or connect with us any time you need a little reassurance that it will all be OK (content-wise, at least).

Want to ensure that you receive all of the latest e-books from the Content Marketing Institute? Subscribe to our free daily newsletter.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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15+ Essential Content Marketing Tools and Templates for Strategy, Planning, and Measurement

Love the fresh start you get after the holidays, but dread coming back to the office knowing just how much pressure you’ll be under to make up for all that lost time? The CMI editorial team feels your pain, so we put together a little seasonal present to help you hit the ground running – without undoing the stress-busting benefits of taking some well-deserved time off.

We’ve collected some of our most popular strategy, planning, and measurement templates to help make your content marketing efforts easier to manage throughout the year. You can also access additional templates for creating, distributing and sharing content that we published earlier this week.

Strategy

While it’s always exciting to create content that gets a lot of views, “likes,” shares, or downloads, these actions don’t always have a direct impact on your business’ bottom line. If you want your content efforts to achieve the results your stakeholders expect, it’s essential that you develop and document a content marketing strategy.

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To achieve the results your stakeholders expect, document a #contentmarketing strategy says @Joderama.
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In fact, in our 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends research, we found that 61% of the most effective B2B marketers are those who have a documented strategy that their teams can reference on an ongoing basis.

Need to build your strategy from scratch or just ensure that your current efforts are properly aligned with your business goals? The following templates will guide you through the key steps in the process:

Core strategy

While there are no one-size-fits-all processes for developing a content marketing strategy, three core components should frame all of your content efforts: your business goals, your target audience, and the needs of that audience. This Mad Libs®-style template created by Meghan Casey is a fun way to fill in the most relevant details.

Get the template: Keep Your Content On-Strategy With This Single Statement [Templates]

Mission statements

A content marketing mission outlines your company’s reason for creating content and the priorities and perspectives to uphold in pursuit of that mission. Use the worksheet to hone the unique content marketing value your business will provide.

This template is part of our e-book: Launch Your Own Content Marketing Program: Why, Who, & How

Audience personas

You also need a template for documenting your personas. Fill in the blanks with the key information you’ve gathered or create a similar form with the information that’s most useful for your business.

This template is part of our e-book: Launch Your Own Content Marketing Program: Why, Who, & How

Planning

Once you know what you want to accomplish, you need to figure out how to get it done. Your plan is one of the five fundamental elements of content marketing and, as such, it should cover everything that happens within your team to enable remarkable content – i.e., all the details that are invisible to your audience but set the stage for content they’ll love.

Like your strategy, content marketing plans should be customized to the needs of your organization. But, on the whole, content planning typically focuses on three key areas: your team workflow, your editorial processes and guidelines, and your systems.

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A #contentmarketing plan should focus on team workflow, editorial guidelines, & systems says @Joderama.
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Editorial guidelines

At a minimum, your editorial planning process should outline the defining characteristics of your brand identity (as it relates to the content you will publish), the preferred voice and style of your content, and the editorial standards governing your content efforts.

Use the publishing guidelines cheat sheet below to determine and document this information.

This template is part of our e-book: Launch Your Own Content Marketing Program: Why, Who, & How

Content workflows

A content workflow outlines the individual tasks involved in producing a piece of content along with the routing process to ensure that each asset moves through all stages of production as smoothly as possible. While you will likely need to adjust your workflow to account for all the various content formats you create, the template shared by Robert Mills can serve as a jumping-off point.

Get the template: How to Define a Workflow That Keeps Content Production On Track

Content request form

Even the most efficient teams can’t always accommodate every request for content, especially in large enterprises. Use a content request form, like this one shared by Gina Balarin, to help your content team prioritize projects, schedule tasks appropriately, and manage the expectations of external teams that rely on them for content creation assistance.

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Use a #content request form to help teams prioritize projects, prioritize & schedule tasks via @GBalarin.
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Get the template: 9 Questions to Help You Prioritize Content Creation [Template]

Customer journey maps

One of the biggest challenges in content planning is to come up with content ideas that will resonate with consumers, but also will contribute to your business’ strategic goals. Customer journey maps like this one originally shared by Marcia Riefer Johnston can help you identify the needs of your audience personas at each given stage in their buyer’s journey – which will make it easier to determine the content topics, story ideas, formats, and channels to leverage in your outreach.

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Customer journey maps help identify needs of audience at each stage of buyer’s journey. @marciarjohnston
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Get the template: Why – and How – to Map Out Your Customers’ Journeys [Template]

Content decision-making

Unless you have a magical content engine that’s capable of bringing every idea you have to life, you will need a way to prioritize the ones that will strike a strong balance between business benefit and audience value. The decision-making matrix shared by Meghan Casey is a simple way for your team to self-determine which ideas are most worth pursuing. Rate your ideas on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 5 considered a perfect match) for each column. If an idea scores a 3 or less, maybe it should be left behind.

Get the template: Keep Your Content On-Strategy With This Single Statement [Templates]

Multichannel content marketing

When you are ready to publish content on more than one platform or to expand your program to target more than one audience persona, you may prefer to use a more scientific approach to selecting topics and delivery channels. This multichannel content marketing planner from Lisa Copeland uses data-driven insights to help ensure that you are delivering the right content to the right people at the right time – which is particularly useful when you need to report to executive management or other company stakeholders.

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Use a #contentmarketing planner to capture data that lead to a solid content marketing plan. @LisaCCope
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Get the template: Data-Driven Content Strategy Meets Content Marketing [Essential Template]

Editorial calendar template

Once you have selected your top-priority topics and stories, you will need a way to manage the process of turning your ideas into full-fledged content assets. An editorial calendar is a great tool for tracking each element as it moves through your workflow and for keeping your team’s efforts organized throughout the life cycle of your content program.

CMI’s editorial team uses a multi-tabbed spreadsheet like the one below to make our editorial process more manageable.

Get the template: Editorial Calendar Tips, Tools, and Templates

Content essentials

Another way to make your planning process more efficient and productive, as well as make the resulting assets more impactful, is to identify your content essentials: pieces of content that can fit multiple formats and be adapted to suit many purposes. Use the template below to organize your content creation efforts around these types of assets and ensure that they will be at the ready whenever you need to use them.

Get the template: How to Find and Use Your Content Essentials: A Template and Step-by-Step Guide

Measurement

Though measurement is typically the final step in your content marketing process, it really factors into every other phase of your approach. This is why we always recommend establishing your measurement practices right at the start of your program, tracking and analyzing your results on a regular basis, and revisiting your reporting techniques periodically to make sure you are focused on the right performance metrics for your goals.

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#Contentmarketing measurement should be in your initial strategy, not reported on at the end says @joderama.
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The following templates will help guide you through some of the most essential measurement processes.

Blog post tracking

As you start to produce more content, it’s handy to have a simple, scalable way to track what you published, the topics covered, and the results achieved. Using mind-mapping tools, you can create a snapshot view of your post titles, categories, and performance metrics. You can also use the tracker to collect additional content ideas as Roger C. Parker has done in the template below.

Get the template: How to Organize Your Blog Content with A 3-Step Post Tracker

Measuring success

It’s not enough to just create and distribute the content you think your audience needs. You must track and evaluate its performance on an ongoing basis. Follow the simple plan outlined by Cathy McPhillips for measuring content marketing effectiveness – including her KPI tracker template.

Get the template: A Simple Plan for Measuring the Marketing Effectiveness of Content

Content curation measurement

Curation is a great way to maximize your content resources and get the most value out of every piece of content. However, it can be challenging to ensure that you are discovering, producing, and sharing the right information to make a positive impact on your target audience. Another helpful template from Roger C. Parker, the scorecard below can be used to gauge the quality and consistency of your curation efforts over time to ensure that you are moving in the right direction.

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Use a #content curation scorecard to gauge quality & consistency of curation efforts via @rogercparker.
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Get the template: 10-Question Content Curation Scorecard Every Content Curator Needs to Measure Success

Editorial reporting

We all recognize how important it is to communicate regularly with our teams about what content is working well; but those intentions can easily fall by the wayside when you become overwhelmed by all the other day-to-day activities you are responsible for. Following a systematic approach to editorial reporting – like the one that Michele Linn has created for the CMI team – can help make ongoing action a lot easier to manage.

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Communicate regularly with your teams about what content is working well, says @Joderama.
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Get the template: A Template to Simplify Your Editorial Reporting

Final word

Whether you are looking to start 2017 with a shiny new strategy or just wishing that your initiatives could be more organized, efficient, or effective, our tool set has something for everyone. But if there are additional templates you would like to see us provide in the future, add your wish list in the comments.

If you are serious about putting content to work in your business, you won’t want to miss the Intelligent Content Conference March 28-30, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Register today and use promo code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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6 Stolen Content Marketing Ideas from the Top Marketers of 2016

I can’t help but be grateful for the CMI community and all of the tips I’ve learned along the way this year. While I always glean so much from our community, I want to pay a special thanks to our Content Marketer of the Year finalists. While all of these individuals offer a lot for us to learn, I’m definitely stealing these six ideas. (You can also get more stolen ideas in this post from 2015 and this one from 2013.)

Test titles on social – and change them after publication

Stolen from: Amanda Todorovich, Cleveland Clinic

While I learned many ideas from Content Marketer of the Year Amanda Todorovich, who runs Cleveland Clinic’s blog, Health Essentials, one suggestion sticks out: When an article is first published, test different headlines on Facebook and Twitter to see what people respond to. Once you have that info, you can adjust the headline in post-production.

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Test your titles on social before deciding on a permanent one suggests @amandatodo. #cmworld
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Ask yourself: What and how can you test your content on social to improve it post-production?

Learn more: How Cleveland Clinic Became One of the Most Visited Health Care Destinations

Create your content pillars

Stolen from: Margaret Magnarelli, Monster

Take a cue from Margaret Magnarelli at Monster, and consider the types of content you want to publish. Monster has three content pillars – with an editor in charge of each:

• How – Straightforward, utility content that is the cornerstone of what they do
• Now – Thought-leadership content that is focused on news- and data-driven stories
• Wow – Fun and entertaining content that is intended for wide social appeal

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#Content pillars should be part of your editorial planning says @mmagnarelli. #cmworld
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Ask yourself: Would you benefit from publishing different types of content – and what would those be?

Learn more: How to Build a Content Marketing Practice in a Year: Lessons from Monster

Treat your internal audience as a distinct audience or persona

Stolen from: Dan Briscoe and Skyler Moss, HCSS

Dan Briscoe and Skyler Moss from HCSS attribute part of their content marketing success to keeping the rest of the company informed about their marketing in a fun way. For instance, Dan gives entertaining presentations during lunch, and shares photos and videos of what his team does.

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Don’t forget 2 important personas: fellow team members & company leadership says @dfbriscoe @CSkylerMoss.
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Ask yourself: What can you share – in a fun way – to get your team and organization excited about what you are doing?

Learn more: How One Brand Created a Movement by Investing in Purpose

Earn the right to email customers

Stolen from: Dusty DiMercurio, Autodesk

Do you have multiple teams excited about content who want to communicate with your subscribers? Take this idea from Dusty DiMercurio and his team at Autodesk: “Earn the right.” In short, your teams should no longer be able to simply request an email list so they can blast a message. As Dusty explains:

It’s a really interesting time because this initiative reflects the organization’s recognition that we need to engage differently with our customers; we need to earn the right to engage with them. Our email inboxes overflow with ‘offers’ on a daily basis; the only way to cut through that and stand out is to earn your audience’s attention.

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Make all marketing teams earn the right to send an email to your subscribers says @dustycd. #cmworld
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Ask yourself: How are you treating your subscribers? Are you protective of what email they receive? If not, how can you change this?

Learn more: How to Create a Culture Where Content Marketing Thrives

Truly be OK with not helping everyone

Stolen from: Thao Le, Hyland’s, Inc.

I really enjoyed learning about Hyland’s niche marketing effort. Led by Thao Le, the company developed web-based Pickleball Channel to engage with technically savvy and active seniors. Of course, pickleball does not have mass appeal, but it’s about having that “one branch on the tree that can’t be split further” (i.e., specializing in a category that can’t be subdivided) that makes the program work so well.

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Get super-focused on a niche audience instead of trying to please everyone; tip from @PickleballChan. #cmworld
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Ask yourself: Are you focused on a niche that you can truly satisfy or are your efforts still broad in the hopes of attracting more people, even if they aren’t the right people?

Learn more: How to Connect with a Hard-to-Reach Audience: A Niche Marketing Strategy

Recognize people in a niche profession

Stolen from: Toby Lee, Thomson Reuters

One of the things that stood out from Toby Lee’s experiences at Thomson Reuters is how they created a job title for the industry and developed an award for one of their key personas. Taxologists, as they are now called, are tax professionals who use leading-edge technology to get results. Not only did this put a name to the profession – which has now become an official skill set on LinkedIn – but it has created other opportunities as well.

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Find a field that is not recognized & celebrate them in your #marketing suggests @CMOTobias. #cmworld
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Thomson Reuters hosts an annual event for tax professionals called Synergy. At the end of the event, they have a Taxologist awards ceremony. Toby explains: “The emotion and reaction from people who win is amazing. We pick them up in limos, give them a suite in the hotel. One winner lady broke down and cried at the award ceremony saying she’d never been treated this nicely.”

The Taxologist of Tomorrow program, a partnership with Junior Achievement (a nonprofit youth organization), offers workshops to high school students interested in learning more about how technology and business acumen will be a key driver in their future success. Workshops in New York and Dallas touched hundreds of students and more are on the way.

Ask yourself: Do you have a key persona – that may be overlooked – that you can celebrate?

Learn more: How to Create a Marketing Team that Cares About Revenue

Those are just a smattering of my favorite ideas from 2016. What about you? What gems can you share – or what have you stolen from others?

Editor’s note: A special thanks to Ardath Albee who scoured the planet looking for the best-of-the-best content marketers. She was instrumental in helping us find our 2016 Content Marketer of the Year finalists.

If you want to learn more about what the top marketers are doing, sign up for your free subscription to Chief Content Officer magazine.

The post 6 Stolen Content Marketing Ideas from the Top Marketers of 2016 appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Create, Distribute, and Share: 15 Essential Content Marketing Templates

Will 2017 finally be the year your business reaches its full content marketing potential?

If you aren’t thinking about how you can gain ground in the upcoming year, you might end up losing some to your competition given that 63% of the B2B marketers in our annual Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends research report said their content marketing programs are more successful than they were the previous year.

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63% B2B marketers say their #contentmarketing programs are more successful than previous year via @cmicontent.
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As we always say, a sound strategy should be at the center of your content efforts. But even the best-laid plans can’t drive your progress if you have trouble executing them. That’s why the CMI editorial team has gathered some of our most popular templates to help you manage the more tactical considerations involved in quality content marketing: content creation, distribution, and social amplification. If your New Year’s resolutions include amping up your creativity and productivity, increasing your brand’s reach and influence, or building a more loyal, engaged audience through social media, the following tools will help you keep your resolve.

Content creation

Though the creative process is unique to every business, plenty of tools can help with the specific tasks that every content marketer must work through – generating new creative ideas, organizing them into resonant content pieces, and ensuring that the best light shines on your business with every effort you produce.

Learn about your audience

Your content can’t reflect your audience’s needs and interests if you don’t know what they are. Some simple research can go a long way toward closing that knowledge gap. One of the most direct ways to gather invaluable insights is to survey your existing customer base. Sending a customized outreach letter – like the one shared by Tom Whatley below – is one way to approach this task.

Generate creative ideas

Team brainstorming (like the process described in this post from Jay Acunzo) is a great technique for getting the creative juices flowing to come up with new content ideas and angles. But you also need to filter the ideas that don’t fit your brand voice or won’t bring you closer to your business goals. For more focused brainstorms, follow Rand Fishkin’s lead by using a whiteboard to outline creative ideas as they emerge and then connect the dots until you have the framework for a compelling yet relevant story.

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Outline creative ideas as they emerge; connect dots until you have framework for relevant story. @RandFishkin
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Connect with consumers

Audiences crave content that they can relate to on a personal level. By building your stories around the kinds of feelings and experiences people commonly identify with – like emotions they’ve felt, ideas that inspired or encouraged them, or life goals they may be pursuing – the content you share will be more resonant and engaging.

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Audiences crave #content that they can relate to on a personal level says @joderama.
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Post Scott Aughtmon’s infographic near your desk to help you keep some of the most crave-worthy characteristics in mind as you craft your chosen topics into compelling stories.

Focus on providing value

What makes content ideas worthy of being produced? As Ahava Liebtag explains, good content needs to provide value to the audience, which means it must be findable, readable, understandable, actionable, and shareable. Use her checklist below as a guide for ensuring that your content efforts hit these key targets for achieving success.

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Good #content needs to provide value to the audience says @ahaval.
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Deliver on audience expectations

With such a diverse range of content formats available to today’s content creators – each with its own strengths and limitations – it’s not always easy to decide which ones to use. Since consistency is key, one way to narrow the field is to focus only on those formats that you have sufficient resources to produce on a predictable schedule over the long term. The checklist below outlines which formats require a strict output schedule and which ones might be a bit more flexible.

Craft compelling, useful headlines

Headline writing is not as simple as it seems. Not only do you need a strong headline to grab your audience’s attention, it should be clear, relevant, and descriptive so readers find exactly what they expect when they click through to your content. This checklist, from our guide on cooking up a killer headline, outlines the rules every content creator should follow, along with some suggestions for spicing up your efforts once you master the basics.

Find your strength in content length

Various formats have different standards for how much detail and dialogue your content marketing should provide. Consider following the best practices outlined in Orbit Media’s chart below to determine the ideal length for each of your conversations.

Putting it all together

For additional inspiration and guidance on how content can be brought to life in creative, valuable, and actionable ways, check out our 2016 Content Marketing Playbook: Shoot, Score, and Win With 24 Epic Content Ideas.

Distribution

Creating stellar content is only the first step in achieving success. If you aren’t distributing your efforts on the most appropriate channels, publishing them at the right velocity, or optimizing their ability to get discovered by the right audience, you are missing valuable marketing and customer engagement opportunities.

Document your channel plan

A channel plan will help your entire team understand how, when, and on what specific platforms you publish content, as well as the rules of engagement they are expected to follow when interacting on those channels. Get started by filling in the cheat sheet below for each channel you plan to leverage in your content marketing initiatives.

Build a subscribed audience

As our 2017 content marketing framework details, building an engaged audience of subscribers is critical if you want your content efforts to provide multiple lines of value for your business. Since a robust email list is a key component of achieving this goal, download the complete checklist shared by Aaron Orendorff to guide you through all the steps for building your own.

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Building an engaged audience of subscribers is critical to provide value for your business via @Joderama.
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Leverage the power of influencers

In terms of visibility, credibility, and impact, few content distribution techniques rival the power of influencer marketing. As you conduct your research on potential influencers to engage, you will want to track your efforts, so you know who you’ve contacted, who has agreed to participate, and what terms they’ve agreed to. CMI’s PR and media manager, Amanda Subler, uses a template like the one below, which you can download and customize to your needs (Go to “File > Download As >” and select the format you would like).

Make it search-friendly

A sound SEO strategy is essential if you want your blog content efforts to rank well on search engines and get found by the right audience. Though search algorithms and techniques are constantly evolving, the checklist below, which outlines Mike Murray’s nine top SEO tips, will give you a solid search foundation that you can build on over time.

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An #SEO strategy is essential if you want your blog content to rank well on search engines says @joderama.
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Social media

Social media is an essential tool for getting your content in front of your target consumers; it also can serve as a powerful engagement platform in its own right, enabling brands to conduct meaningful, two-way conversations that are more timely and relevant than other content formats might allow. Because it serves a dual purpose, working with social media often requires a distinct set of content marketing processes and procedures. The tools and templates below can help you manage some of the unique considerations involved.

Familiarize yourself with the social landscape

Every social network has its own benefits, challenges, and communication styles, so which ones will work best for your business will depend on the audience you want to target, the types and topics of your content, and the goals you are looking to achieve. Our latest Social Media Survival Guide outlines the key characteristics of the top networks and offers guidelines for making the most of every social interaction you initiate.

Listen and learn

Consumers can be protective of the social communities they’ve cultivated. If your brand forces its way into the conversation without first learning the rules and customs, you will never earn their trust or respect. Use this content review template created by James Prideaux to track relevant conversations happening on social networks and document any analysis you extract from your listening activities that can help you become a valuable contributor to the right groups. (Go to “File > Download As >” and select the format you would like).

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Use a #content review template to track relevant conversations on social networks says @Joderama.
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Design for engagement

Audiences rely heavily on visual imagery in their social media conversations – particularly on sites like Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. Not only do you need to know the right tone and voice to use in your content, but you also need to understand the appropriate design specifications. Matt Banner’s cheat sheet below can help you keep track of all the technical details.

Credit: On Blast Blog

Host a Twitter chat

Another great way to create meaningful discussions on social media is to conduct regular Twitter chats on relevant topics. You’ll want to plan your topics, schedules, starter questions, and guest tweeters. The template used by the CMI team (which you can download and customize) is a great way to start that process. (Go to “File > Download As >” and select the format you would like).

Final word

No matter what your content marketing goals are, you need to master content creation, distribution, and social amplification if you expect to succeed. The various templates and guides shared here will get you started in the right direction. But if there are additional templates you would like to see us provide in the future, jot down your suggestions in the comments.

Are you really commiting to content marketing success in 2017? Enroll in Content Marketing University’s winter session by the Dec. 31.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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