Very quickly, high-quality, engaging content became an absolute necessity for most businesses. This awoke a sleeping giant: content marketing.

The Content Marketing Institute’s 2022 Annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends Report gives an interesting insight into the new post-pandemic landscape. Here are the major takeaways.

Don’t bother trying to return to ‘normality’

When businesses were suddenly forced to work a lot harder to reach their customers, many decided to fundamentally change the way they communicate. “The pandemic made us create a strategy,” said one respondent quoted in the report. “Getting attention got way harder, and we had to adapt.”

This meant changing the tone, as well as the context, of their content to fit with the evolving needs and values of customers, focusing more on helpfulness and kindness.

While some businesses have started abandoning this approach, that might be a mistake. Of the businesses that consider their content marketing to be successful, 87 percent are prioritizing the needs of their customers by being helpful over promotional.

Key takeaways

• The tone of your content is more important than ever
• Prioritize your audience’s needs over your sales message
• Focus on helpfulness and kindness

Embrace the technological shift

All industries had to change the way they used technology — and content marketing was no different. Marketers had to get used to new content creation, collaboration, and workflow tools, like a content marketing platform. While this may have required some adaptation, it allowed for increased inter-departmental collaboration and enabled businesses to create more effective content as a whole.

The report showed 83 percent of businesses that considered their marketing efforts to be successful use collaboration and workflow tools to improve how they work with distributed teams. In contrast, only 50 percent of those who considered their content marketing to be “unsuccessful” used the same tools. Collaboration has always been key, but now there is no excuse to ignore the technology capable of maximizing the way teams work together.

B2B businesses aren’t just using technology to collaborate, though. Around 58 percent of respondents said online events produced the best results over the last 12 months — with research reports and articles less than 3,000 words coming in a close second.

Key takeaways

• Look for new ways to reach your audience
• Don’t ignore more traditional formats
• Use tools and technology to improve efficiency and collaboration

LinkedIn reins supreme for B2B marketers

While social media is evolving quickly, it remains one of the most important ways to engage your audience and distribute content.

As always, social media played a large part in distributing content. While B2B marketers use a range of different platforms, however, they don’t always produce the same results. 77 percent of respondents said LinkedIn performed best in the last 12 months with Facebook lagging behind in second place at 37 percent.

This shows that more effort put into social media doesn’t always mean better results. Take time to identify your highest-performing channels then consider whether you’d be better off putting more effort and budget into them, rather than spreading your resources across multiple platforms.

Key takeaways

• Focus your attention on the platforms that get the best results—with some extra attention paid to LinkedIn
• Consider the different ways in which you can distribute interactive content types (such as webinars and virtual events)
• Look for ways to establish your brand and management as thought leaders (such as through presentations and talks at events)

Content marketing budgets are on the rise, buoyed by virtual events

Many businesses had to pivot quickly during the pandemic to reach their audience. In general, an increase in virtual events, customer-first content marketing, and a gentler tone-of-voice paid off. As one respondent said: “Work-from-home forced us to do more webinars instead of live events, which ended up increasing our actual audience 10x. And not a junk audience either, but a relevant audience that we weren’t reaching before.”

The change in attitude towards content marketing has been reflected in budgets, with 66 percent of respondents expecting their future marketing budget to increase from 2021 figures. Investment in in-person events are expected to return, but many marketers are planning to invest in hybrid events as well.

Key takeaways

• Virtual events aren’t going anywhere
• Examine how you can film and record in-person events to create a companion virtual experience
• Content marketing will remain a vital part of the marketing mix

The end of the pandemic is now in sight, and content marketing emerges on the other side as an industry changed for the better.

“We see the merging of content marketing and other marketing activity,” Robert Rose, CMI’s Chief Strategy Advisor, said. “It’s becoming a more blurred function in the business—and there will be more content-marketing-focused teams now assisting the
wider marketing department, and vice versa. So, we’re seeing more of
the integration of people, processes, and technology that are helping
businesses to approach their content in a more holistic way.”

The post 4 Key Takeaways From CMI’s 2022 B2B Content Marketing Research appeared first on Contently.

A lot of brands are wearing the stench of that landfill these days because marketing has a huge empathy problem, especially in B2B content. Sure, companies may talk about business problems in broad corporate language—about “creating value in the ever-changing paradigm of digital transformation” or “unlocking the world of the future through an AI-enhanced revolution.” But relatively little B2B content talks to buyers like they’re human beings.

The reason for this, it turns out, is super simple: Most marketers don’t ever talk to their prospects and clients.

The empathy marketing problem

According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2019 B2B Research report, just 42 percent of B2B marketers talk to clients as part of their research.

By comparison, 50 percent of B2B marketers use social listening, which makes me want to abandon my job, hotwire a SpaceX shuttle, and give that whole astronaut dream another shot. You know what’s better than getting a list of keywords your audience uses on Twitter? Actually having an in-depth conversation about their problems and challenges. It’s also a hell of a lot cheaper.

Yes, data is important and should play an important role in your decision-making. But there’s no substitute for the nuance and insight of conversation. You’ll hear their hopes, dreams, and frustrations—even the language they use to describe their work lives, which will help you connect with them in turn. Using the same vocabulary as your consumers helps consumers feel closer to a brand.

Once you have these conversations, you’ll interpret your customer data in a new light. You’ll gain a deeper understanding of why your audience reads, shares, searches, and ignores the content they do. You’ll have eureka moments that reveal why that landing page just didn’t work. Because data without the context of customer empathy is like buying someone a present based solely on the data from their Facebook profile. (Speaking of which—martech sales reps, for the love of god, please stop sending me Limp Bizkit t-shirts.)

How to develop customer empathy, in 10 steps

This summer, as part of a Contently innovation workshop, I decided to devote two days a week for conducting empathy interviews with clients and prospects.

I’d just taken over as head of marketing, after a two-year stint as our head of content strategy. To be honest, I worried that the exercise would be redundant—I’d worked with dozens of clients as a content strategist and interviewed dozens more for our blog over the years. What else did I have to learn?

As it turns out, a lot. It’s one thing to spend time with clients. It’s another thing to do it without an agenda.

I got a fresh perspective on their struggles setting KPIs (many CMOs give little direction), tracking content performance (compliance keeps even basic analytics locked away), and inspiring their team to take risks (marketers are incentivized to play it safe). Even though I’d heard these things before, entering these conversations with an empathetic mindset helped me understand our audience so much better.

Here are some tips, which I am taking right from the Move the Needle field guide we used.

1. Start with a problem you suspect is affecting your customer. Use that to guide your interview questions. For example: Marketers don’t know what content to create, struggle to measure success, and are afraid of doing something wrong.

2. Talk to one person at a time. Group interviews lead to groupthink. You get more useful answers from people one on one. Feel free to bring someone from your team to take notes so you can focus on absorbing what you hear and asking follow-ups.

3. Decide if you’re looking for behavior or feedback. Behavior means understanding how they work. Feedback means getting intel on a product or offering. Don’t mix the two. Keep the person focused on ways they’ve tried to solve their problems in the past.

4. Embrace negative feedback. If you don’t go into these conversations damn near eager to hear constructive criticism, you’re going to end up leading the witness or trying to sell them something. The point of this exercise isn’t to confirm what you already think. It’s to learn something new that will help you drive future results.

5. Make them feel open to give you negative feedback. At the start of the call, encourage brutal honesty. Assure them the feedback is 100 percent confidential.

6. Ask open-ended questions. Yes-and-no questions are your enemy. Instead of, “Do you do content marketing?” go with “What types of content do you publish? What motivates you to create that content? Do you ever get frustrated with the process of creating content?”

7. Listen without interrupting or influencing. Ask your questions in a neutral way, and don’t fill the silence. Let the customer keep going. Say “I see” or “interesting” to keep the conversation going, but keep it as objective as possible.

8. Go deep. If you hit an interesting thread, don’t be afraid to keep asking why someone does something.

9. Ask for intros to more people who could help. Chances are this person knows additional people worth talking to at the company or in your field.

10. Write up notes immediately, and don’t stop until you’ve interviewed 20 people. You want to keep it fresh and have a good sample size.

Once you commit to this empathy marketing exercise, hold yourself accountable. You’re going to really, really want to go do your regular day-to-day job. But don’t stop pushing until you’ve gotten to 20 interviews.

I challenge every marketer reading this to spend a month conducting customer interviews. The first 20 people to email me proof of your interviews at lazer@contently.com will get a free copy of The Storytelling Edge—and in all likelihood, a promotion.

The post Empathy Marketing: How to Understand Your Customers, in 10 Steps appeared first on Contently.

-Alejandro, Mexico

Content marketing is a funny discipline. It’s been a major movement for the past six years, but some companies are still just starting to take it seriously. And once they do, marketing leaders panic. They turn to the closest living creature and scream, “We need to do content! Now! Someone start typing!”

That approach doesn’t work out great, because the worst kind of content only exists to check a box. Just creating content isn’t a goal. That won’t do anything for your business. Plus, you’ll waste a lot of money if your content fails to impact some larger pursuit like brand awareness, lead generation, or sales enablement.

Alejandro, without a larger strategy, you’re doomed to fail.

So how do we change your boss’s mind? Here are three great stats that could help you make your case:

1. According to a 2017 Contently survey, 98 percent of marketers believe that “having and following a content marketing strategy is important for content marketing success.”

2. Per CMI’s 2018 B2B Content Marketing Trends survey, 62 percent of content marketers who rated themselves as very successful or extremely successful have a documented content strategy. Conversely, if you don’t have a strategy, there’s a good chance you won’t be successful.

This holds true for B2C companies as well, as we see in CMI’s 2017 B2C report. (The 2018 B2C report hasn’t been released yet.)

3. According to SiriusDecisions, 65 percent of all content that brands produce goes unused. There are a few big reasons for why: content is hard to find, unknown to users, irrelevant, and low quality. All of these stem from a lack of content strategy.

Your boss is going to waste a lot of money if you don’t get the opportunity to put together a comprehensive content strategy. If you want to start mapping out where you need to go, check out our whitepaper Content Methodology: A New Model for Content Marketing, which provides an end-to-end guide for building a content marketing program.

How can you best measure content marketing ROI for content that’s distributed via social channels? What are the best ways to go beyond likes and social shares?

Ryan, Chicago

It’s all about setting up the right conversion pathways so you can follow what folks do after they find your content. Do they sign up for a newsletter? Check out your product page? Ask to talk to a salesperson? Your business goals will ultimately dictate what you decide to track. Regardless of what conversions you’re after, this KissMetrics guide to Google Analytics social reports is an excellent place to start.

What are the differences between a writer’s role and a content marketer’s role? Does a freelancer have to know all the technical marketing jargon, or can they just write?

Kate, Las Vegas

Contently has a network of over 160,000 freelance creatives across the globe that we vet and train to work with brands, so this is a question we’ve thought about quite a bit. If you aspire to write for a brand, you don’t need to be a content marketing expert. (Unless, of course, the topic is content marketing.) Just be a good writer who specializes in a certain topic or industry.

That being said, you do need a basic understanding of marketing terms. Writers should be versed in the foundational elements of a company’s content program. (Which is why we create a content strategy for every Contently client and make it accessible in our platform for every freelancer.) Specifically, you’ll want to know:

Business goal(s): What is your client trying to accomplish with this piece of content? What metrics will determine success?

Audience: Who is the target audience for this piece of content? (You’re going to write differently for a 55-year-old CMO than a 20-year-old student.)

Content pillars: What core topics and concepts does your client focus on?

Target SEO keywords: What target SEO keywords is your client trying to rank for with this piece of content?

Writers have to keep these factors in mind when they’re crafting content, and they need a certain level of marketing fluency to reach that point. Alternatively, if you’re a marketer working with freelancers, you need to make sure they understand this information before you start commissioning work.

Over the past five years, tons of writers have gotten hooked on content marketing after upping their marketing fluency, including me. Who knows? Once you start to geek out on content marketing, it could open up a whole new career.

Joe Lazauskas is Contently’s director of content strategy and editor-in-chief. Ask him your most pressing content strategy questions here, or email him at lazer@contently.com.

His book, The Storytelling Edge: How to Transform Your Business, Stop Screaming into the Void, and Make People Love You, which he co-authored with Contently co-founder Shane Snow, will be published on January 29 by Wiley. Pre-order it here.

The post Ask a Content Strategist: My Boss Wants Me to Write Blog Posts Without a Strategy. What Do I Do? appeared first on Contently.

Every year since 2010, the Content Marketing Institute has put out one of those studies on the state of content marketing. CMI’s analysis of B2B content marketing is a prime example of how to get earned media. Positive statistics demand coverage and dominate headlines. But I wanted to dig deeper to draw out more unorthodox insights from the report—and not all of them are good.

Here are 4 takeaways that examine the state of B2B content marketing and point out some areas where marketers need to improve.

Centralized content teams are the norm

Traditionally, content teams have been siloed from the rest of the marketing department. The idea of a centralized content operation, however, is something analysts like SiriusDecisions have been advocating for years. And according to CMI’s study, that centralization is currently taking place across the B2B space.

Overall, 92 percent of respondents have some form of a centralized team running content marketing. That data point is a big deal, suggesting that brands are making alignment and organizational efficiency priorities. (It’s worth noting, though, that the individual answers may be a bit flawed since a “centralized content marketing group that works with multiple brands/product lines throughout the organization” overlaps a lot with “small (or one-person) marketing/content marketing team [that] serves the entire organization.”)

This graph struck me as an interesting starting point for further research. I’d be curious to know what kind of content these teams create: Are they mostly producing content for a blog? Or are they also heavily involved in sales enablement, event content, customer success content, and so on? Perhaps that’s something for next year’s study.

More content needs to map to the buyer’s journey

We talk a lot about the importance of mapping content to the buyer’s journey, and we’re not alone. Particularly in B2B marketing, ensuring that you have content for the right audience at the right time is key to achieving content marketing success.

Yet, per CMI’s study, only 41 percent of B2B marketers claim to create content based on the buyer’s journey. That’s particularly surprising given that 72 percent of respondents are concerned with how content impacts customer experience. Since customer experience is largely based on a buyer’s journey through the sales funnel, mapping content to each step should be an important part of ensuring a great experience.

B2B marketers aren’t using tech to manage email

If your inbox looks anything like mine, it shouldn’t be surprising that email is the most used content distribution tactic in B2B. Ninety-three percent of B2B marketers use email to distribute content. (Social media is right behind at 92 percent.) And 74 percent of respondents named email as the most effective distribution format, 29 percent above the next closest method (blogs).

Despite this, only 70 percent of B2B marketers are using email tools to manage their distribution. That gap of 23 percentage points is concerning because B2B marketers shouldn’t be wasting time and resources by manually creating email lists and sending out messages without any insight into their performance.

An ROI reckoning is coming

Measuring ROI is one code that plenty of marketers still have trouble cracking. Sixty-five percent of B2B marketers either don’t measure it at all or are “unsure” if they measure the ROI of their content marketing. Incredibly, the most given reason for why is that there isn’t a “formal justification required.” Thirty-eight percent of respondents also admitted that measuring ROI is too difficult.

There’s no getting around that measuring the hard impact of your content requires intensive organizational capabilities and lots of hard work. But the marketers who aren’t even trying to figure out how to track ROI won’t stick around much longer.

At some point in every competent business, executives will question the marketing budget, and content marketers will have to justify their work. If those 38 percent of B2B marketers aren’t prepared, they risk losing everything they’ve built. And if that happens, don’t be surprised if this normally rosy study suddenly gets much bleaker.

The post The 4 Most Important Takeaways From CMI’s B2B Content Marketing Study appeared first on Contently.

In turn, content marketing hiring is on the rise. Content management is one of the most sought-after marketing skills, and content strategists have one of the highest-rising salaries in America. Content marketing job listings grew 350 percent on Indeed between 2011 and 2015.

Whenever managers ask me for advice about filling these roles, I usually have to explain that, no, I can’t help them poach from Contently’s network of 100,000 freelance creatives. But once that’s out of the way, we usually end up having a deep conversation about what they should look for in the hiring process. Here are the five rules I preach every time.

Rule 1: Don’t obsess over domain expertise

Recently, I was having lunch with a friend hoping to hire a content marketing manager, which is the catch-all job title for a writer and editor who has decent video instincts.

“I need someone who really knows ad tech,” she said.

“No you don’t,” I said.

I encounter this exchange in just about every hiring conversation. While it’s crucial to hire freelance writers who know your industry inside and out, you don’t have to hold your full-time hires to the same standard. That may sound counterintuitive, but one of the benefits of full-time hires is you get to coach them up. That learning curve gives you the luxury of prioritizing other factors: storytelling ability, passion, and strong instincts for creating content that’ll perform well on different distribution channels. You can absolutely teach someone everything they need to know about ad tech or martech or content marketing. It’s much harder to teach someone how to write.

I have an amazing team. They’re the biggest content marketing geeks on earth. When they started at Contently, none of them knew much about content marketing. But they could write, edit, and craft a good story. That’s what matters.

Rule 2: Put their skills to the test

Rule 1 comes with an obvious risk: What happens if your hire never develops an interest for your industry? After all, demand-side platforms aren’t for everyone.

To mitigate this risk, I highly recommend putting potential hires to the test. Give them (paid) freelance assignments that mirror the work you want them to do, and see how much they master a subject on their own. For instance, when we were interviewing Erin Nelson for our marketing editor role, I assigned her a 2,000 word explainer on best practices for mid-funnel content marketing in B2B tech. She had a solid base of knowledge coming from the B2B events world, did a ton of research on her own, and knocked it out of the park.

There are too many great storytellers looking for work to settle for mediocrity.

I’m also a big fan of using paid internships as a feeder program, kind of like a minor league team. There’s no better way to evaluate someone than by working with them for three months. Even when editorial interns don’t earn a spot on your content team, the ability to tell your company’s story makes them a great fit for accounts, sales, product marketing, and other departments that may have an opening.

Rule 3: Hire people who challenge the status quo

Our CMO Kelly Wenzel has a favorite saying: Don’t assume we’re going to keep doing something just because we did it before. She reminds me of this every week, and it helps keep me on track. But challenging the status quo isn’t just for CMOs. One of the biggest benefits of a new hire is they’ll look at your operation with fresh eyes—from the type of content you create to how you deliver it to your audience and measure the results.

I always press interviewees to tell me their impression of our content and what they’d do to improve it. If they come up blank, it means that they either didn’t do their research or don’t have strong analytical skills. Either way, it’s a big red flag.

Rule 4: Know the role

When you’re an early-stage startup, you need a bunch of Swiss army knives who can run around, do a dozen different things, and not screw up too badly. But when you mature and pass the 100-employee threshold, as we have over the past 18 months, you need machetes, daggers, and scalpels. As your company grows, people who are exceptional at one or two roles often become more valuable than people who are decent at whatever you throw at them.

When you’re a small content marketing operation, you may need someone who can run social, manage the newsletter, build landing pages, run AdWords, and still produce content for the blog. In this case, you may be willing to stomach someone who’s not as strong of a writer or videographer, because they keep the trains running.

As we grow, we often find ourselves loyal to these versatile employees, even as we hire other specialists to take over some of their responsibilities. But if what you really need is a great writer or videographer to produce breakthrough content, hire the best damn writer or videographer you can find. Don’t worry if they know anything about Marketo.

Rule 5: Bonus points for multimedia skills

The amount of time we spend each day watching digital video has tripled this decade. Increasingly, multimedia content is just table stakes. You need to hire accordingly.

That means when you’re evaluating someone’s writing skills, don’t just consider their ability to crank out a blog post. Can they write video scripts? Are they an engaging on-camera personality? Do they have a knack for making badass social videos? These skills matter.

Bonus points for other multimedia skills as well: data visualization, photoshop, infographic design. The ability to spice up blog posts through visual assets is a huge help when you’re trying to win over reader attention.

Most of all, don’t settle. It’s a great time to make a content marketing hire. The job market for creatives remains pretty terrible, and the stigma around branded content is fading. There are too many great storytellers looking for work to settle for mediocrity.

The post 5 Golden Rules for Your Next Content Marketing Hire appeared first on Contently.

When I walk in, Dan Mazei, the senior director of Reebok’s Global Newsroom, is standing on a chair, scribbling story ideas on a whiteboard. A dozen staffers surround him, gathered on couches and colorful footrests. Everyone is young and fit, and I feel like I’ve walked on the set of an office comedy. The banter that follows confirms my suspicions.

“Refinery29 headline yesterday: ‘The Magical Advice We Got From a Real Fitness Witch.'”

“A witch?”

“Yes, a fitness witch. She works at Enchantments, an occult shop in Manhattan. She was also a trainer at Equinox.”

“Puts the whole fitness goth trend into a whole new light.”

“There’s a fitness goth trend?”

“Oh my god yeah, people work out in all black. There’s a studio on Bowery. Can you search for it? It has a bondage spinning bike on the ceiling.”

“So, she can be our goth fitness expert?”

The exercise goes on like this for an hour. By the end, Mazei stands on his tiptoes, using every inch of available whiteboard space. The team settles on a plan to shoot a video two days later with an influential 15-year-old power lifter. They’ll give him old-school toys like a Skip-It and see how he reacts to bygone devices once meant for millennials.

The team also decides on a half dozen blog posts—ranging from indoor fitness routines to help you survive the heat wave, to a scary interview with a former Spice Girl.

As they break into their respective pods, the team seems energized. I’m left staring at the whiteboard, wondering if we’re about to see the brand newsroom reach new heights.

The talent race

Five years ago, the term “brand newsroom” sounded like an oxymoron. But as disruptive advertising grows more taboo, large corporations are taking a cue from media outlets on ways to connect with target audiences. Seventy-eight percent of CMOs now say that custom content is the future of marketing. In turn, many have started to build in-house marketing teams.

But to build a brand newsroom that can crank out top-performing content, brands have had to compete with traditional storytelling machines to draw in the best creative talent. The problem is many creatives still have their sites set on journalism careers. There is a huge difference between working in editorial at Vice versus Deutsche Bank.

However, as brands develop newsrooms that mimic the open environment of publishers like BuzzFeed and Vice, that migration is picking up.

Take, for instance, Nestle’s brand newsroom, which The Columbia Journalism Review’s Michael Meyer captured in his deep dive into corporate studios, “Should Journalism Worry About Content Marketing?” The piece describes a 20-person newsroom similar to Reebok—punctuated by stand-up pitch meetings, an aggressive editorial calendar of up to 10 stories per day, and an optimistic environment free of stress.

You get a sense of creative freedom in Reebok’s plush, brightly-lit newsroom, where binge-think sessions give it an unmistakable startup vibe. There’s a freedom to pitch any idea, no matter how ludicrous, and a genuine emphasis on great storytelling over marketing messaging.

The sessions were started by Mazei, who came from Edelman in late 2015 to head Reebok’s content efforts in the hope of inspiring greater flexibility. “[You have] to be able to pivot on a dime. To embrace creativity,” he said. “It’s a helpful dynamic for the way that we operate as a newsroom because we’re not supposed to be heads down at a desk.”

Reebok’s revamped content strategy is a way for the brand to reinvent itself in a media-centric world and differentiate from its competitors. Instead of competing head-to-head with Nike or Under Armour for big-name athlete endorsements, it has focused its energy on nurturing niche communities. For instance, Reebok sponsors the CrossFit Games, and a large portion of its content focuses on an audience interested in that.

Five years ago, the term “brand newsroom” sounded like an oxymoron.

“Our brand ethos is that we have stepped completely to a different direction than those brands,” Mazei said. “Sure, Steph Curry is out there, or you got Lebron doing his thing after winning the championship. That’s not our game. We’re [trying to reach] the person who’s in the gym five times a week, working out hard, doing the tough stuff.”

To connect with this niche audience, the apparel brand is modeling after digital publishers.

“I think the native storytellers are great. BuzzFeed changed the whole world with the way it produces content,” he said. “Building stories for social consumption specifically, and building stories for platforms is really fascinating stuff.”

The virtual newsroom

It’s a big commitment to build a newsroom that’ll attract top creative talent. Between office renovations and full-time hires, the costs add up. For every Nestle and Reebok that builds a mini-BuzzFeed inside its headquarters, there’s a brand building a newsroom that, for the most part, doesn’t exist in a physical space.

That’s something we’ve witnessed first-hand at Contently, a content marketing technology company that connects thousands of creatives to brands looking to scale their content marketing operations. Hundreds of brands use our platform to build teams of editors, writers, designers, and videographers, and manage their content marketing operations.

For folks like David Gardner, SoFi’s former director of content marketing, this arrangement is just logical. “Because we didn’t have writers in house, we tapped Contently’s freelancer network,” Gardner said. “We also needed a managing editor to scale content and manage writers.”

Or take Genpact, a business transformation firm, which used Contently to quickly spin up a global newsroom with dozens of writers without having to endure the laborious process of building an internal team.

The virtual brand newsroom built through a software platform makes a lot of sense. Freelancers get paid well while working from the comfort of their homes. Brands quickly build and maintain a newsroom without having to recruit full-time employees, which lets them creatively use budgets that otherwise wouldn’t be earmarked for personnel. The virtual model would have been difficult to pull off years ago, but advances in content marketing technology make it an increasingly attractive option.

What type of newsroom are you?

For brands that want to be heard, an investment in content is almost inevitable. According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2017 benchmark reports, 89 percent of B2B marketers and 86 percent of B2C marketers now use content marketing. And over 40 percent of marketers in both groups say their content marketing budgets will increase this year.

In the process, we’ll likely see a few different models emerge. Some—like Reebok, JPMorgan Chase, and Casper—will build internal newsrooms that resemble the headquarters of digital publishers. Others, like Genpact and SoFi, will leverage content marketing technology and tap into networks of creative talent. Then there will be companies following Marriott, which has physical brand newsrooms all over the world but also runs a travel magazine staffed by freelancers and uses content marketing technology to connect global teams.

For years, “brand newsroom” has been one of the most lampooned marketing buzzwords. But in 2017, the pressure to source and maintain top talent is resulting in some exciting and unexpected new content marketing models. Brands will have to decide what’s right for them based on their culture, budgets, and resources. But one thing’s for certain: There are more attractive options than ever before.

The post Virtual vs. Physical: The Two Brand Newsroom Models Taking Over Content Marketing appeared first on Contently.

As a new infographic from NCC Home Learning points out, event marketing gives businesses an opportunity to showcase their products, humanize their brands, and create memorable experiences with their audiences. They can also work well for gathering important customer information, such as contact details and demographic data.

Say you want to establish your company’s expertise in B2B software. Set up a conference or summit to discuss the latest trends and share your insights. Or maybe your customers love music; you can host a party or festival with exclusive product announcements and giveaways.

These events should tie into your digital marketing strategy as well. You might partner with online influencers, use Facebook ads to target local consumers, or showcase user-generated content on your social pages and website.

Marketing may be digitally dominant, but in-person events aren’t going anywhere. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 68 percent of B2B marketers use event marketing, and 36 percent say it will be the most critical tactic for their content marketing success in 2017.

To learn more about what event marketing can do for your business, check out the infographic below.

The post Infographic: How Event Marketing Can Boost Your Content Strategy appeared first on Contently.

Every year, the shockingly low number of marketers who have a documented content strategy has been the most troubling stat in the robust report. I always expect to see a dramatic rise, but it usually lingers around 33 percent. It finally jumped a bit this year—to 37 percent for B2B marketers and 40 percent for B2C marketers.

But that’s still pitifully low.

Two-thirds of content marketers are straight-up sabotaging their efforts by failing to create a documented content strategy. They simply don’t bother to outline their target audience, voice, style, and goals. If I could fix one problem in the content marketing industry, it might be this. And that’s because it’s so crucial to everything we do, especially if you want to evangelize your content efforts within your own company.

Why we’re obsessed with documented content strategies

I lead our content strategy team at Contently. One big change we made over the past year is ensuring that every new client has a documented content strategy in place. Some clients have a robust, documented strategy already, but for those that do not, we create a detailed content plan for free. That’s because we truly believe that a documented content strategy is critical to success. Not having one is a recipe for disaster.

It’s just logical. For starters, if you don’t have a documented content strategy, there’s a good chance you don’t have a clear sense of your goals. And without goals to hit, it is impossible to know whether you’re successful or not. Right now, this is an epidemic within the content marketing industry. According to CMI’s report, 60 percent of B2C marketers and 59 percent of B2B marketers are not clear on what an effective content marketing program looks like.

This is ridiculous, and it needs to improve.

Overcoming your fear of a documented content strategy

I have a simple theory for why marketers struggle to document their content strategy: It’s scary and daunting. Some people may not know what a content strategy is supposed to look like.

We bake content strategy directly into our platform, but anyone can create a reasonably successful strategy by focusing on 10 key components:

Content Mission: The purpose of your content.

Goals: The clear objectives you’d like content to achieve for your organization.

KPIs: How you’ll measure those goals and the benchmarks you’d like to reach.

Tone and Style: A clear, detailed description of what your content should sound like, with examples.

Target Audience: Who you’re trying to reach.

Content Topics: The subjects you’ll cover.

Content Formats: The different types of content you’d like to create. Text, video, infographics, shortform video, etc.

Tagging Structure: A system for tagging content so you can track what’s working and optimize over time.

Content Allocation: How much content you’ll create each month, and how you’ll divvy up your budget between each topic and format. (ex. below)

The process is relatively straightforward, but it forces you to think critically about your content marketing program, pursue some data-driven research [note]We use a set of internal and external tools[/note], and ask tough questions.

As a company, we’ve come to believe in content plans so much that we baked them right into our software so any contributor working on a project can see it. A lack of planning is the biggest reason that content marketing programs fail. We’re excited to be part of the solution.

Content marketing is still a young industry, but it’s heading in the right direction. CMI’s report revealed that 62 percent of B2B marketers and 63 percent of B2C marketers thought their content marketing programs were more successful this year than last. Imagine how much higher that number could be next year if everyone just sits the hell down and plans ahead.

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Of course, CMI loves playing up that stat because the organization can help you build a strategy. But it is legitimately a problem for marketers—or anyone in business, really—to pursue an initiative without a documented strategy. Otherwise, you’re just shooting in the dark, not knowing if what you’re doing actually works.

CMI’s latest study, which was sponsored by the creative collaboration company Hightail, suggests that marketers are finally getting better at content strategy. Below, you’ll find out why, in addition to five other major takeaways from CMI’s reports on B2B and B2C marketing.

1. Marketers are getting better at documenting content strategy

Both B2B and B2C marketers got better at documenting their strategies this past year. In 2016’s study, 37 percent had a documented strategy, versus 40 percent this year. B2B marketers, meanwhile, improved from 32 percent last year to 37 percent this year.

In both cases, it’s still stupefying that the numbers aren’t higher. As CMI pointed out in last year’s study, more than 50 percent of the most effective marketers have documented strategies. 70 percent (for B2C) and 72 percent (for B2B) said strategy was a factor in improving their success in the past year. Creating one has no downsides yet plenty of benefits.

So what exactly are marketers including in their strategies? The number one element was “a plan to operate content marketing as an ongoing business process, not simply a campaign.”

Overall, marketers seem to find their strategies effective. Nobody said their strategies were “not at all effective,” while more than 80 percent said their strategies were either “moderately effective” or “very effective.”

That’s a testament to how useful strategies are to a content marketing program—now, the question is if the more than half of content marketers without a documented strategy will see the light.

2. Social is the most popular type of content

As mobile usage explodes and the mobile web stagnates, social media has become the best place to reach customers. Not surprisingly, companies are using more social media content than ever.

In general, marketers are planning on creating more content: Only 2 percent said they were expecting to produce less, and 73 (for B2C) and 70 percent (for B2B) said they were planning on creating more compared to last year.

3. But email is king

For B2C marketers, Facebook and email take the top spot when it comes to content distribution. 89 percent of marketers said they use the channels for their content, 26 percent above the closest channel, Twitter.

B2B marketers put email at the top for usage, at 93 percent, followed closely by LinkedIn, at 89 percent.

In terms of pure importance, however, email blasts its competitors out of the water. As the charts above show, no other channel comes close to email’s importance as a distribution channel. That makes sense since email is one of the few channels that provides a loyal, recurring audience that you own. Also, it doesn’t hurt that customer email addresses are key for a variety of martech tools, such as CRMs.

4. Content software is underused

Data collection and analysis are at the heart of digital marketing, which is why analytics tools are the go-to resources for most marketers. Implementing a content marketing program without any analytics software would be like taking a class without any feedback—it would be impossible to know if you’re successful.

However, analytics aside, it’s somewhat amazing how many content marketers don’t use critical tools such as email platforms, calendars, and CMSs. Perhaps they’re sending out email manually, or using a physical calendar tacked to the wall? CMSs are required to publish content, so the fact that only about half of marketers are using them is difficult to square.

No matter the explanation, it’s obvious that software is a big area of improvement for content marketers.

5. Promoted posts are booming

Across B2B and B2C, promoted posts saw big leaps in usage, particularly for B2C, which jumped from 52 percent last year to an incredible 89 percent this year.

Social promotion also took the top spot for effectiveness according to B2C marketers, while B2B marketers put it four percentage points behind search engine marketing (SEM). It’s safe to assume that much of these gains are a result of recent targeting improvements introduced by Facebook, LinkedIn, and their ilk.

6. Brand awareness and website traffic are still top goals

Even though some marketers are obsessed with finding one-to-one ROI, plenty of others still want brand awareness more than anything. Even B2B marketers, whose ultimate goal is always direct sales, named brand awareness a key content marketing goal.

So how are marketers tracking these goals? Website traffic, mainly: 73 percent of B2C marketers named it their top metric, versus 78 percent for B2B. Website traffic was also named the main metric for providing “truly measurable results of content marketing efforts” by both B2C and B2B marketers.

That’s somewhat surprising because website traffic can be unsophisticated and lean on the side of vanity. For B2B marketers, one would think lead generation would be tops (though “sales” and “sales lead quality” did take second and third).

Perhaps the biggest takeaway of all, however, is that a significant portion of marketers don’t measure ROI at all: 25 percent of B2C marketers and 28 percent of B2B marketers aren’t tracking ROI. It’s baffling that B2B marketers measure ROI less than B2C marketers, considering how much easier it is (and considering that lead generation was named the most-used metric).

It’s obvious from the report that—despite certain improvements—content marketers still have plenty of room to grow.

[Correction: An earlier version of this article used data from CMI’s report that was released last year. All figures have been updated to reflect data from this year’s report.]

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