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Content Marketing Tips You Can Bank On from Intel, Kraft, SAP & Content Marketing Institute

Lee Odden
Lee Odden
Content Marketing, Online Marketing

content marketingIn a recent study by Content Marketing Institute, it was reported that 54% of B2B marketers will increase their spend on content marketing over the next 12 months. Pouring more money into content doesn’t automatically result in success.

As with wise investing for financial success, marketers need to back up their content investments with a plan, resources, goals, measurement and many other answers to questions their competition aren’t bothering with.

This doesn’t mean you need some grand, perfect strategy to see a return on content development spend. But it does mean having a clear vision and approach. To help guide you in this content marketing journey, here’s advice from some of the top content marketers in the industry including pros from Intel, SAP, Kraft, and the Content Marketing Institute.

Joe Pulizzi – Content Marketing Institute

@juntajoe

Tip #1 – Understand the Why
Why are your creating content in the first place?  What impact can you have on the customer that doesn’t involve your product or service?  What is your higher purpose?  This creates your content marketing mission statement.

Tip #2 – Find Alternate Resources
Don’t be afraid to outsource.  Most companies outsource some part of their content marketing.

Tip #3 – Find Your Niche
You can’t be everything to everybody.  Focus on your content area that you can be the leading expert in the world, and focus on a specific buying group when you do it.

Pam Didner – Intel

@pamdidner

Tip #4 – Plan Ahead

An editorial calendar is essential.

Tip #5 – Stories Resonate

As long as you can find stories that resonate with your audiences, then you can create content. Stories are everywhere, the key thing is to listen and observe. Be open-minded.

Tip #6 – Communication is Key

Reach out to different groups (internal) and customers (external), or even your management. For examples, challenges on product development, customer testimonials and founding father’s stories, even company values. Frankly, there is a lot to talk about.

Michael Brenner – SAP

@brennermichael

Tip #7 – Be Inspirational
Companies have to inspire their existing experts to start building their personal brands and becoming content creators.

Tip #8 – Distribute in Multiple Channels
Businesses need to build dynamic content destinations. Become like a publisher and think like a digital news site.

Tip #9 – Curate Content When Appropriate
You eventually realize that using your own resources is not enough. You don’t know everything and will never have enough budget to create all the content your audience seeks. So content curation is a core component of effective marketing and content strategy.

Julie Fleischer – Kraft Foods

@jfly

Tip #10 – Budget for Content
Great content doesn’t just happen.  It takes copywriters, designers, photographers, directors, editors…and in our case, culinary professionals.  There are absolutely ways to be cost-efficient in the development of content, but don’t underestimate the need to invest

Tip #11 – Engage Your Followers
20,000 recipes on KraftRecipes.com have been contributed by our member community.  Engaged, passionate consumers can be your best source of content.  So long as you have a content management system in place that enables smart curation and you have business rules around that curation, your consumers can be more than your best advocates, they can be your best creators.

Tip #12 – Follow Up Regularly
Remember that you can’t just drop a piece of content into cyberspace and forget it.  Leverage SEO and integrated support to get the most possible out of each piece of content you promote.

After evaluating many, many different content marketing case studies and examples over the past year, it’s remarkable how few companies coordinate their efforts or follow a plan. Hopefully these tips from some of the top voices in the content marketing world will help inspire you to get some of the important questions answered about your content marketing investments.

What advice would you give to other readers for more successful content marketing planning, execution and measurement?

About Lee Odden

@LeeOdden is the CEO of TopRank Marketing and editor of TopRank's B2B Marketing Blog. Cited for his expertise by The Economist, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, he's the author of the book Optimize and presents internationally on B2B marketing topics including content, search, social media and influencer marketing. When not at conferences, consulting, or working with his talented team, he's likely running, traveling or cooking up something new.

Comments

  1. Ryan Northover says

    March 14, 2013 at 8:05 am

    Great tips from some of the best in the business!

    • Lee Odden says

      March 15, 2013 at 9:28 am

      Agreed!

  2. Felipe Kurpiel says

    March 14, 2013 at 8:49 am

    I really believe that one of the most important aspects of business is the planning part.
    With that being said, I am in totally agreement with the lady from Intel!
    Nice tips by the way!!

    • Lee Odden says

      March 15, 2013 at 9:30 am

      Failure to plan is a plan to fail. True with content marketing like anything else. Thanks.

  3. Ohio SEO says

    March 14, 2013 at 11:19 am

    This is awesome. I can’t imagine doing content marketing and not having a why?/where?/when? plan in place. If you’re just throwing content around and don’t care to monitor it’s effect on your business, then it seems pointless to do so in the first place.

  4. Stephan Hovnanian says

    March 15, 2013 at 8:04 am

    Superb list. You know what’s amazing, how 4 totally different people can put together such a cohesive list. The more you let that sink in, the more you realize how achievable a good content marketing strategy can be for a single company. Well done!

    • Lee Odden says

      March 15, 2013 at 9:29 am

      Thanks Stephan. These folks are on the front lines and behind the lines. That means invaluable perspective.

  5. Lee Odden says

    March 15, 2013 at 9:30 am

    Glad they will be useful Jessica.

  6. Slavek Piwowarczyk says

    March 18, 2013 at 6:09 pm

    Straitforward and to the point. Now print out, stick it to the wall and follow 🙂

  7. Slavek Piwowarczyk says

    March 18, 2013 at 6:09 pm

    Straitforward and to the point. Now print out, stick it to the wall and follow 🙂

  8. Amber King says

    March 19, 2013 at 11:06 pm

    Great tips. It is not enough that you have a blog, you should make sure to use it to get your message across. These are what you need in order to make your content work. Thanks for sharing Lee.

  9. Sheetal Sharma says

    April 3, 2013 at 9:17 pm

    Great post! Thank you for writing and sharing this post.It will definitely help me in polishing my role as a content writer and doing justice to my responsibilities at Synechron.

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