This Week in Content Marketing: Honesty, Moneyball, & Content Strategy

3 minute read

Upland Admin

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There’s a lot to celebrate this week. The sun is shining. Baseball season is here. It was my birthday yesterday (please, no presents…okay you can send me presents). And reputable, brilliant, and entertaining people decided to share their insights on content marketing with the rest of us. Well, I don’t know about you, but content marketing and I both had a fabulous week. Even though I know you’re dying to know about the birthday cupcakes my fabulous coworkers shared with me (birthday cake, salted bourbon caramel, chocolate raspberry), you’re probably even more interested in content marketing. So without further ado, here are my favorite three articles from the week:

Kate Kiefer Lee of MailChimp shared a fantastic article on keeping your company’s voice honest. Which reminds me: I’ve heard a lot of people say that the word “authenticity” gets thrown around too often–and maybe it does. But why shouldn’t authenticity be your goal as a brand, especially when it comes to creating quality content that your buyers are going to enjoy? But I digress. Especially since, for the record, Kate uses the word “authentic” a grand total of zero times–pretty impressive for a post about keeping it real. What she does do is remind us what’s important: “We’re not creating works of literature; we’re creating content, and we’re writing to communicate with our customers.” She also shares a link to MailChimp’s Voice & Tone Guide, so check it out. Great advice and examples here. Via UX Magazine

There are a lot of reasons I love this post by Stephanie Chang, an SEO Consultant at the Distilled NYC office. Reason 1: It’s incredibly useful. It’s long, and every section is packed with amazing information for content marketers. Seriously. Reason 2: It introduces content marketing, why you should care about it, and gives examples of who’s doing it well. Reason 3: She published a robust and detailed internal document (the content strategy framework Distilled gives to clients) and let you and me consume this valuable information free and un-gated. And that is how this article transformed from good content into good content marketing. High fives, Stephanie. Via SEOMoz

I may be biased, but I love Moneyball (well, the movie…I didn’t read the book. I was busy reading Ender’s Game and relating it to marketing automation). Well, this post on Forbes combines the Moneyball concept with content marketing. So, yeah, dream come true. Here’s a little preview: “You need to test which content works and works for different sales stages. Versus different competitors. For different pain points. And then put the right content into play. That’s the Moneyball approach.” Read Steve Olenski’s full interview with Peter Mollins, the VP of Marketing for KnowledgeTree, to learn more. BONUS: There’s a pretty awesome infographic, too.  Via Forbes

And in case you missed anything this week on the Content Marketeer:

Did we miss any of your favorite articles from the week? Give them a shout out in the comments below. Otherwise, enjoy the weekend, content marketers!  

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