14 of the Best Content Marketing Tips, Tactics and Techniques of 2013

Tom Pick

12 years ago

Content marketing success starts with developing a strategy and roadmap, but the rubber hits the road with the execution of tactics (and measurement of marketing results to support continual improvement). So it is with Content Marketing Week.

Where do you find ideas and inspiration for content marketing topics? What are the best practices for repurposing to get more mileage out of existing content assets? What pitfalls should content marketers avoid? Where does visual content fit into the mix?

Get those answers and more here in more than a dozen guides to content marketing tactics, the final post of Content Marketing Week.

How I.T. Is Changing: A Story About Beer by Ann Handley

It’s one thing to provide a laundry list of things-to-do to create great content, but quite another to show (and then break down) an exceptional example, as the delightful Ann Handley does here, with a nicely done video involving Cisco networking gear, and beer.

What Can Disney Teach Manufacturers About Marketing? by Industry Market Trends

Interviewing Steve Miller (the marketing consultant, not the 80s rock star), Gary Kane presents and explains the 10x10x10 model for content marketing, starting with: “Write down the 10 most frequently asked questions from your customers.”

17 Essential Content Templates and Checklists by Content Marketing Institute

Michele Linn shares a collection of popular and useful content marketing templates and checklists for tasks like creating buyer personas, developing an editorial calendar, writing killer headlines, choosing keywords, and promoting blog posts.

Matching video content to technology buying committees by 2-Minute Explainer Blog
***** 5 STARS

This post highlights research from LinkedIn regarding the value of video for B2B content marketing, then recommends five approaches for producing video content, such as “dressing up” invitations: “a cool video snippet (can) work nicely in an email invite to a conference or a trade show (‘Here’s a sneak preview of the new thing we’ll be demonstrating’).”

5 Reasons to Consider Flipboard for Your Content Strategy by iMediaConnection

Tom Edwards recommends ways to use Flipboard, an application that “visualizes your social feeds such as Facebook & Twitter as well as providing access to curated topical magazines all while allowing the user flexibility in how they consume their content of choice.” Probably more useful in consumer than B2B marketing, but worth considering regardless.

5 Ideas To Extend Your Existing Content By Repurposing by NewRise Digital

Here are a handful of practical tips for how to repurpose existing content, such as transcribing videos: “If you have videos, screencasts or webinars produced for your content marketing campaign then getting these transcribed into an eBook can offer a valuable way to create a new opt in offer.”

Content Marketing: Five Ways To Keep Feeding The Beast by MediaPost

Santi Subotovsky identifies “five key elements of an effective content marketing strategy, along with a list of applications to help marketers execute on each element,” from content curation and creation through workflow management (where “platforms such as Kapost and Zerys can help”) and analytics.

3 Surefire Ways To Kill Your Content Marketing by Heidi Cohen

The brilliant Heidi Cohen exposes the three “leading causes of content marketing death,” along with fixes for each. For example, among the fixes for content that contains too much marketing hype and buzzwords are to stop selling; take a red pen to every buzzword phrase; and “Take the Hemingway approach. Use simple words. Substitute short words and everyday language for the flowery prose you’ve created.”

Prolific as well as adept, Heidi frequently writes highly bookmark-worthy posts filled with the latest research and trends along with actionable guidance. Other noteworthy content marketing tips and guides from her blog include:

13 Reasons Why Your Content Marketing Might Fail by Content Marketing Institute

Content marketing guru Joe Pulizzi advises readers about how to avoid more than a dozen potential content marketing pitfalls, such as operating in silos (PR, communications, email marketing, social media—which is why a coordinated approach to optimizing web presence is essential), being too focused on one specific channel, and not being “niche enough.”

Content Marketing: An 8-point analysis for your blog by MarketingSherpa

You bring your car in for regular maintenance checkups (hopefully), so why not do the same for your company blog? Daniel Burstein outlines an 8-point blog checkup starting with post frequency (“An element of effective content is consistency”) and proceeding through author bios, which are “a way for your audience to connect both literally by including Twitter and LinkedIn info, and figuratively by understanding how that author’s experience can help the reader better understand a topic.”

8 Content Marketing Ideas You Haven’t Tried by It’s All About Revenue

Amanda F. Batista presents “8 fresh content marketing ideas to recharge your engagement and demand generation strategy,” among them aligning your SEO keywords with calls to action: “translate (keyword) insights into a more results-driven content campaign. Integrate these words into your blog and social media posts, your market proposition plan and anything going out on the web, really.”