Joshua Nite

5 Content Marketing Shortcuts That Cost You in the Long Run

Joshua Nite     B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Content Marketing

Content Marketing Shortcuts to Avoid

You know what they call a shortcut that actually saves time?

The route.

That was the wisdom my dad gave me the first time we went hiking together. Sometimes when you look at the map, it looks like there’s a better path. But the route is the route for a reason. Chasing a shortcut feels like making progress — but it might not get you to the trail’s end.

Marketers dig shortcuts. Or, as we call them, “hacks.” It makes sense: We’re usually overworked, understaffed, and expected to work wonders. A content marketing hack promises to cut a straight line through a tedious process, increasing efficiency and boosting results.


5 Content Marketing Shortcuts That Cost You in the Long Run
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Joshua Nite

What Does ‘Quality’ Really Mean in Content Marketing?

Joshua Nite     B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Content Marketing

Quality in Content Marketing

Have you heard the good news about quality content? It’s the latest innovation that’s sweeping the nation. It’s going to revolutionize your content marketing efforts. If your current strategy is to crank out crappy content, then quality content is going to blow your KPIs away!

Okay, sarcasm aside: Every content marketer knows their content needs to be good to be effective. We call it “quality,” or “value,” or “usefulness.” But all of these traits can vary widely depending on your audience. For example, conventional wisdom might say that 500-word blog posts don’t connect with readers. But that word count may be just the right length for the people you want to reach.

So, when we get into the specifics, quality is relative and highly subjective. But it’s possible to define quality content marketing in a more universal way:


What Does ‘Quality’ Really Mean in Content Marketing?
Nick Nelson

Becoming a Better Marketer by Embracing Your Passions Outside the Office

Nick Nelson     B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Digital Marketing

How Our After-Hours Passions Elevate Us as Marketers

In the first post I ever wrote for the TopRank Marketing Blog, I reflected on the marketing lessons I’d picked up through my baseball blogging hobby. Helping build an online community at Twins Daily has instilled many important fundamentals that, I feel, make me better at my day job.

I’m always fascinated by this interplay. We spend so much of our time each week alongside our coworkers, but are often unaware of the interests and side hustles that drive them outside of the office. Those very passions can be such integral parts of who we are and how we operate.

More recently, this has been a topic of focus for our friends at LinkedIn*. In April, Jason Miller wrote a piece about following your dreams while staying committed to your career, and in June, Sean Callahan profiled a LinkedIn marketer who moonlights as a DJ.


Becoming a Better Marketer by Embracing Your Passions Outside the Office
Alexis Hall

How to Rally Around ROI & Prioritize Your Digital Marketing Efforts in the Face of Budget Cuts

Alexis Hall     B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Digital Marketing

Prioritizing After Marketing Budget Cuts

Ask any marketer if they’ve ever had to contend with the shrinking or deep cutting of their budgets, odds are you’ll get a deep sigh and a “more than once” response.

Organizations are always looking for efficiencies and ways to tighten their financial belt, and marketing departments are among the first to be placed on the chopping block because it all comes down to ROI—something many modern marketers find hard to prove

In fact, according to a recent report from Demand Gen Report and BrightFunnel, 58% of B2B organizations surveyed said their current ability to measure and analyze marketing performance “needs improvement” or worse.


How to Rally Around ROI & Prioritize Your Digital Marketing Efforts in the Face of Budget Cuts
Nick Nelson

Calling All Content Marketers: Sound Off in Our Content Marketing Planning Survey!

Nick Nelson     B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Content Marketing

2018 Content Planning Survey

We’re all in this together.

Granted, it might not always feel that way. The current environment we operate in as marketers is a competitive one. But we do have the power to collectively drive our discipline forward, toward greater efficiency and productivity. This begins with sharing knowledge, and improving our understanding of the most prevalent challenges and obstacles being faced.

In this spirit, we’ve partnered with our clients and friends at DivvyHQ to whip up a new 2018 Content Planning Survey, and we’d love your input.

What’s Inside the Survey

The idea is to gather data from a wide range of marketers in efforts to form a clear and accurate picture of how today’s content teams operate and where the key opportunities lie.


Calling All Content Marketers: Sound Off in Our Content Marketing Planning Survey!
Joshua Nite

4 Spooky Marketing Lessons from Classic Halloween Monsters

Joshua Nite     B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing

Halloween is objectively the best holiday of the fall-winter season. You don’t have to go broke buying people gifts. You don’t have to cook an enormous meal (then pass out after gorging on turkey). The only obligations for Halloween are to play dress up and eat candy!

Not to mention I’m somewhat partial to the holiday’s aesthetic. Give me skulls and bats over tinsel and garland any day of the week, and twice on Friday the 13th.

Sure, there’s a horror/scary element to Halloween. But it’s a fun, safe kind of scary. If you’ve spent an hour on social media recently, you know there are scarier things than ghoulies and ghosties.

But Halloween isn’t just fun. It’s educational, too! I realized this year that some of my favorite Halloween monsters are hiding valuable lessons for marketers. For example…


4 Spooky Marketing Lessons from Classic Halloween Monsters
Caitlin Burgess

Behind the Marketing Curtain: An Interview with Social Customer Care Wiz Dan Gingiss, McDonald’s

Caitlin Burgess     B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Social Media

Behind the Marketing Curtain with Dan Gingiss

Social media marketing has become an important part of any brand’s digital marketing mix, helping brands of all sizes foster customer connections and engagement. But as more consumers use social media to “ring the bell” and gain access to the person who can help solve their problems, many find the social bell is out of order when it comes to customer service.

For social media wiz Dan Gingiss, McDonald’s Corporation’s Senior Director of Global Social Media, customer service is arguably one of the most important pieces of social media marketing.

“Social media is the first and only channel where customers can talk back, marketers need to listen and engage,” Dan told me in a recent interview.


Behind the Marketing Curtain: An Interview with Social Customer Care Wiz Dan Gingiss, McDonald’s
Caitlin Burgess

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: 6 Tips for Helping Your Marketing Team Work Better Together

Caitlin Burgess     B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Digital Marketing

Who doesn’t love a good inspirational quote on the power of teamwork?

Teamwork makes the dream work.

TEAM: Together Everyone Achieves More

Teamwork: Simply stated, is less me and more WE.

Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success.

There’s no “I” in team.

We’ve all heard them. We’ve all said them. But can we all say that our marketing teams actually live by them?

For you marketing managers out there, there’s little doubt that you strive to support and enable great teamwork within your organization. After all, you’re likely managing an integrated marketing strategy that requires all hands on deck to get something cohesive and effective out the door. However, breaks in communication, bottlenecks, missed tasks, discontent and finger pointing can still be a daily struggle.


Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: 6 Tips for Helping Your Marketing Team Work Better Together
Joshua Nite

10 Infographics to Guide Your Content Marketing Strategy

Joshua Nite     B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Visual Marketing

Your brain can identify and retain details of an image in 13 milliseconds. That’s less than a 20th of the time it takes to blink your eyes. So it’s no surprise that visual content is on the rise as attention spans shrink. If you could choose between a consumer spending 20 seconds with a wall of text or 20 seconds with an image, it makes sense to go with the latter.

In other words, people like looking at stuff. As such, infographics are rapidly becoming an essential component of a solid content marketing strategy. Free tools like Canva and Pixlr make it easier than ever to turn your data into compelling visual content.


10 Infographics to Guide Your Content Marketing Strategy
Joshua Nite

Feeling Stuck? 5 Tips to Restart your Content-Creating Brain

Joshua Nite     B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Content Marketing

Blank space: Great when it’s a song by Taylor Swift, not so great in content marketing.

No, wait. I already used that analogy. Now I need a clever new intro to this post about overcoming writer’s block and resetting your content brain. I’m staring at a white screen, trying to put words together, intimidated by all that blank space.

Hey, that’s like the Taylor Swift song… no, wait.

If you’re a content creator, the previous two paragraphs likely sound familiar. There are few things more intimidating to a writer than an empty page. Sometimes, despite your best efforts—the caffeine, the snacks, the just-right Spotify playlist—your content-creating brain just won’t turn over.

It’s almost like humans weren’t meant to sit at a desk in front of 1-3 huge monitors all day long, isn’t it?


Feeling Stuck? 5 Tips to Restart your Content-Creating Brain
Caitlin Burgess

5 Key Insights from TrackMaven’s 2017 Digital Marketing Analytics Performance Report

Caitlin Burgess     B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Digital Marketing

In today’s changing digital landscape, marketers know that having good data and analytics are vital for understanding the impact of their digital marketing efforts. After all, in order to drive performance and prove ROI, you have to be able to measure what’s working and what’s not so you can address issues and capitalize on opportunities.

While digging into your brand’s own web and marketing analytics is an absolute must, understanding how you measure up to your industry peers can bring more insight and context—something TrackMaven’s 2017 Digital Marketing Analytics Performance Report aims to help with.

To create the report, TrackMaven used its digital marketing analytics platform to analyze a year’s worth of data—including social media performance, blog performance, public relations performance, and website health metrics—from over 700 businesses. The end product not only highlights trends, but also provides benchmarks and analysis of the most effective marketing channels across 13 industries and 39 sub-sectors.


5 Key Insights from TrackMaven’s 2017 Digital Marketing Analytics Performance Report
Caitlin Burgess

Showing Some Love: 7 Sweet B2C Valentine’s Day Marketing Examples

Caitlin Burgess     B2C Marketing, Digital Marketing

While Valentine’s Day has been traditionally known as the day couples honor their love and affection for one another, it’s turned into the fourth-largest shopping day of the year with attached and unattached consumers making holiday purchases for the special people in their lives.

As a result, smart B2C brands and marketers are upping their Valentine’s Day marketing game by getting creative to tap into new audiences, boost awareness and drive sales.

With that said and in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, below we share some clever, sweet and endearing Valentine’s Day marketing examples from B2C brands.

#1 – M&M’s

Chocolate is arguably one of the top go-to Valentine’s Day gift items. But with probably thousands of options to choose from, candy makers face some stiff competition.


Showing Some Love: 7 Sweet B2C Valentine’s Day Marketing Examples