Content Marketing

Content marketing is the planning, creation, promotion and measurement of content for a specific audience and intended to inspire a business outcome. With over 90% of B2B and B2C marketers engaging in content marketing, it’s more important than ever to make sure your content stands out from the crowd.

As the only blog to be named #1 content marketing blog three times by Content Marketing Institute, TopRank is dedicated to helping marketers understand the opportunities, best practices and current trends in the world of content marketing.

Browse our content marketing articles to find tips, guides, expert interviews, conference liveblogging and best practices.

Why Content Marketing is More Important Than Ever for B2B Brands

Nick Nelson on Jun 30th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

In his recently published eBook, Corona Marketing, Joe Pulizzi recounts how he and his wife launched the website Content Marketing Institute in 2007 at the exact time as a devastating financial crisis was beginning to unfold in the United States.

“At the time, we believed things couldn’t have been bleaker,” Pulizzi writes. “Looking back though, this was absolutely the best time for my wife and I to start a business.”

Why is that? Because their commitment to providing useful, helpful and relevant content – even at a time where it was difficult to drive direct revenue with that content – paid major dividends as the market recovered.

Why Content Marketing is More Important Than Ever for B2B Brands

Manufacturing Runs: 9 Summer Content Marketing Tips Drawn from the Diamond

Nick Nelson on Jun 23rd, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Baseball and content marketing are two of my greatest passions. When I think about it, there are some intrinsic similarities between the two that aren’t hard to see.

Much like content marketing, baseball is rhythmic and methodical by design. Sure, there are the flashy home runs (and it helps when your favorite team *ahem* set the all-time record a year ago), but at its core, baseball is about strategy, patience, and sequencing: Accept the inevitability of failure and learn from it. Take good at-bats, call the right plays, string together base runners, manufacture runs.

via GIPHY

Sadly there is no baseball season right now, but if there was, it’d be inching toward “the dog days of summer” – a term given to those stretches in July and August where the relentless heat and daily grind start to wear on ball players as they battle their way through a marathon 162-game schedule.

Manufacturing Runs: 9 Summer Content Marketing Tips Drawn from the Diamond

How To Level Up Marketing Content From B2B Influencers

Joshua Nite on Jun 18th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Why do you even need a content person for influencer marketing?

After all, the influencers are providing the content. You just have to collect their pearls of wisdom, make them look pretty in a PDF, and you’re good to go, right?

I’ll confess, on my first influencer marketing project, I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing there. Over the last few years, however, I’ve come to understand the role that content marketers can play in shaping influencer content.

It’s the content lead’s job to shape the conversation with the influencer. We have to ask the right questions, and provide a structure and framework to elicit thoughtful, detailed responses.

How To Level Up Marketing Content From B2B Influencers

20 Marketing Jokes for Marketers Working from Home

Joshua Nite on May 28th, 2020
B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Content Marketing

I’m not here to lie to you: Sheltering in place is getting pretty old.

I do count my blessings, of course. My family and I are healthy. My wife and I both can work from home; our kids are pretty great; we actually enjoy each others’ company.

Still. There are only so many loaves of bread you can bake, puzzles you can solve, board games you can play before the ennui sets in.

If you’re like me, you could use a laugh right now. And I need to exercise my comedy muscles before they atrophy.

And in a world where people are still writing articles called, “Should You Include Humor in Your B2B Content,” we need constant reminders that people like jokes. People like to laugh. Laughter brings you closer to your audience and creates a connection.

20 Marketing Jokes for Marketers Working from Home

Hyperspace: 5 Surprising Marketing Lessons From ’80s Arcade Games

Lane Ellis on May 27th, 2020
Content Marketing

What can marketers in 2020 learn from the low-resolution stand-up video arcade games of the 1980s?

Here are five surprisingly-modern marketing lessons that we can learn from and implement today, with roots that come directly from vintage ‘80s arcade games.

Slap that fire button and let’s warp ahead and take a nostalgic look back at a simpler time in both video gaming and marketing, and then hyperspace ahead to today’s vastly different landscape.

1 — Defender: Fire & Forget for a Constant Content Cadence

Photo by Author

Williams Electronics’ Defender is my all-time favorite stand-up video arcade game, an insidiously difficult side-scrolling spaceship-protecting-the-world shooting match juggernaut from 1981 programmed by early video game legend Eugene Jarvis.

Hyperspace: 5 Surprising Marketing Lessons From ’80s Arcade Games

Why SEO & Influence are Critical to Pandemic Era Content Marketing

Lee Odden on May 25th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing, SEO

On this Memorial Day of 2020, it is important we remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice serving our country – not only in the military, but those on the front lines of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you to first responders, law enforcement, healthcare workers and all that support them!

The health and economic crisis we are all facing now compounds the many other uncertainties of our time including trust and expectations in the brands we buy from. The COVID-19 pandemic and our society’s reaction to it have changed the reality we have lived with into something different and very digital.

Why SEO & Influence are Critical to Pandemic Era Content Marketing

How to Hit a Marketing Home Run with Experiential Content

Nick Nelson on May 7th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

While their importance pales in comparison to many other things taken away by our society’s ongoing lockdown, I do find myself missing sports. Going without them during a difficult time causes me to appreciate the comfortable routine and reliable distraction they provide all the more.

Those who know me will not be surprised to learn that I’m longing for baseball especially — everything from strikeouts and singles to slides and steals. But there is no part of the game I miss more than home runs.

Home runs are among the most satisfying individual achievements in sports. When a batter goes deep, he takes care of everything, going from home plate to home plate and putting a run — or more — on the board single-handedly. It is the literal representation of “covering all your bases.”

How to Hit a Marketing Home Run with Experiential Content

5 Examples of Effective B2B Content Marketing in Times of Crisis

Anne Leuman on Apr 30th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

There has been no greater disruption to business in the modern era than the COVID-19 pandemic. For many, it seems as though the world has stopped turning. For marketers, it seems as though now is the worst time to try to promote anything.

But as our CEO, Lee Odden, said, “While there will be a period of adjustment, these changes do not mean the work stops. It doesn’t mean companies don’t need information, solutions, support, products and services.”

And he couldn’t be more right. Your audience may even have a greater need now for your solutions or expertise. They’re trying to navigate through this uncertain time, too. And they’re looking for help now more than ever before.

5 Examples of Effective B2B Content Marketing in Times of Crisis

Break Free B2B Marketing: Sruthi Kumar on Creating Memorable Experiences

Joshua Nite on Apr 21st, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Online Marketing

Marketers are in the business of attracting attention. All of our tactics, our strategies, our goals boil down to: Did we get someone’s attention and inspire them to take action?

The key to modern marketing is that we have to earn that attention. There will always be someone on who is louder, funnier, more talented, or just less shameless than your brand is willing to be. The only way to truly capture and sustain someone’s focus is to earn the right to their time.

How do you earn attention? By providing remarkable experiences. By showing you care about your audience, you know who they are, and that your brand is here to help and to entertain them.

Break Free B2B Marketing: Sruthi Kumar on Creating Memorable Experiences

Where’s the Marketing in Content Marketing? 10 Essential Promotion Tactics That Drive Results

Lee Odden on Apr 13th, 2020
Content Marketing

My marketing journey was born out of SEO roots, where the priority of content promotion has always been high in order to create the kind of accountable marketing performance that matters. In contrast, I see a lot of brands putting the majority or all of their investment towards content creation without qualitative or quantitative effort towards the promotion of that content.

An imbalance of content creation and promotion is not only frustrating potential marketing performance, but it’s wasting the investment made in creating great content. What good is that great content if no one sees it?

Below are 10 content promotion tactics that have stood the test of time and go beyond email blasts, social ads and simple social sharing on brand channels. When promotion is included in the content planning and creation process, it becomes part of a content marketing system that drives the kind of relevant, useful and engaging content customers are looking for.

Where’s the Marketing in Content Marketing? 10 Essential Promotion Tactics That Drive Results

5 Ways SEO Can Shine a Light on Your Unseen B2B Content

Joshua Nite on Apr 2nd, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, SEO

“Look, marketers. Everywhere the light touches is content beloved by customers.”

“But what about that shadowy place over there?”

“That’s our unseen content. We worked hard to create it, but nobody ever visits it.”

“That’s really depressing.”

“That’s life.”

Okay, sorry to bring the room down. And I’m also sorry to say that it gets worse. A recent study found that 69% of all web content is not seen by consumers.

The remaining 31% is our kingdom.

Fortunately, there are many ways to create content that beats the odds. For example, you can co-create with influencers, or experiment with interactive content that inspires social media sharing. But what about the content you have already created? The really good stuff that never caught on with an audience?

5 Ways SEO Can Shine a Light on Your Unseen B2B Content

How Authentic Content Builds Brand Trust in Uncertain Times

Nick Nelson on Mar 19th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

These are strange times indeed.

As I write this, I’m sitting in my home office, because my employer – like so many others across the country and world – is doing what it can to help stop the spread of COVID-19. This is the type of event that casts new light on just about everything, including the topic I’d planned to tackle today.

No business wants to act or appear opportunistic right now. That goes without saying. But the truth is that marketers, brands, and creators of all kinds can make a positive difference. Being legitimately and authentically helpful in a moment like this can have a lasting impact.

How Authentic Content Builds Brand Trust in Uncertain Times