Though more than 90% of B2B marketers now use content marketing in some way, many still struggle to do it productively. As reported here previously, just over a third of marketers “say their organizations are ‘very committed’ to content marketing,” and only about half rate their content marketing efforts as even “moderately successful” (much less highly successful).

Like singing, downhill skiing, playing chess, or a thousand other activities, content marketing isn’t difficult to do; it’s just challenging to do well.

As with most complex tasks, using a structured process can really help. The website visibility and engagement model for marketing technology (martech) provides a comprehensive framework. But here’s a greatly simplified version of the process:

The expanding universe of marketing technology tools can help with each stage of the process. Here are three different types of tools that can help in the content strategy and planning stage.

Content Ideation Tools

While it’s true a circle has no beginning point, a wheel does have to start turning somewhere, and ideation is where content marketing gets rolling. It begins of course with developing a content marketing strategy, using a model like the reporter’s questions or the ACKTT framework.

From that point [Read more…]