B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®

B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

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.

 

Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from Google

Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from GoogleAaron Goldman is an accomplished digital marketer that I know through MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit conference. He reached out to me while writing his new book, “Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from Google”, and asked if I’d like to contribute. Such a request is a great honor to me but unfortunately, I never did end up sending anything to Aaron even though he was incredibly patient and went out of his way to make it easy.

I know what you’re thinking: Smart AND nice guy? Yes indeed, that’s Aaron and now he’s on a blog tour to promote his new book, graciously stopping by Online Marketing Blog with a video recognizing how TopRank Online Marketing “Acts Like Content” (Chapter 7) as well as offering insights from the book on the value of content for marketing. Overall, the book offers 20 lessons “straight from Google’s playbook” that I think you’ll get a lot of value from. Check out the video:


Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from Google

Social Media SEO Success with Blogging

Army Golden Knights

Army Golden Knights: SFC Dave Herwig (@gkdave), SGM Steve Young (@gksteve), LTC Joe Martin (gkjoe)

My presentation on how to leverage Social Media SEO to improve the reach and effectiveness of blog content for marketing at OpenCa.mp DFW this weekend ended up being a lot of information in a very short period of time. The use of a video interview I did with Brian Clark as the segue into my presentation ate into some of the 30 minutes I had to present plus I simply had too many slides.

(Thanks to Lt Colonel Joe Martin for the photo taken right after the presentation. His team were literally sponges for information at the event.)


Social Media SEO Success with Blogging

Brian Clark on Content Marketing with Blogs

Brian Clark CopybloggerOpenCamp’s Sunday schedule included presentations on blogging that included Chris Pirillo, Brian Clark and myself. I caught up with Brian before he gave his presentation to give us a little preview. John P. ended up using the video as the segue between Brian and I as we changed microphones.

Watch as Brian talks about the importance of planning content and understanding its purpose in order to be effective with blog copywriting. He also mentioned that traditional media is still doing some things right and we new media types would do well to identify what those things are and use that insight for our own publishing and content marketing efforts.


Brian Clark on Content Marketing with Blogs

Blog Marketing & SEO: A Recipe For Success At SES SF

Lee Odden & Sally Falkow At SES San FranciscoIt’s been several years since I have seen TopRank CEO Lee Odden contribute to the panel ‘SEO Through Blogs & Feeds,’ so I was eager to sit in on this session to close out my first day at this year’s SES San Francisco.

Joining Odden on his panel, moderated by Craig Macdonald, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Covario, was PRESSfeed President Sally Falkow.

As Odden states, creation and promotion of a successful business blog is just as simple and just as complex as planning a friendly dinner party. How, exactly? More on that shortly.

While Odden opened the session, let’s begin with insight from Falkow as her remarks help expand the notion of traditional blogging.

“According to Google,” Falkow states, “a blog is simply a webpage with a feed.”


Blog Marketing & SEO: A Recipe For Success At SES SF

Content Marketing Optimization – SES SF 2010

TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden gave a solo presentation at Search Engine Strategies 2010 on content marketing optimization.  Following is a summary of Lee’s comprehensive presentation including 10 essential steps for your organization to achieve success.

The core of any search or social media marketing program focuses on content.  But what exactly is content marketing?  It’s creating and distributing relevant content to attract, acquire and engage customers which you know detailed information about.

It’s different than search – where you’re seeking in-demand phrases and creating content.  In content marketing, which grew out of the B2B marketing space, you’re developing personas.  In addition to this you should activate the intersection of search and content marketing.


Content Marketing Optimization – SES SF 2010

Smarter Ways to Get Content Ideas for B2B Blogs

One of the most common challenges of business blogging is sourcing content. The range of things that can interrupt content creation are important obstacles to overcome because without content there is little reason for readers to return.  Blogs are fairly easy to start and if you’ve been a reader of this blog, chances are pretty good that you have started your own blog (personal or for biz) at some point in time.

Many of the companies TopRank Marketing consults with have either started business blogs and need help or want to start a new blog to advance a variety of business goals. In fact, in our blogging survey earlier this year, 95% of respondents indicated they incorporate blogs as part of their search engine optimization efforts. Many others use blogs for public relations, customer service, product support and recruiting.


Smarter Ways to Get Content Ideas for B2B Blogs

Content Curation Definitions & Context for Content Marketing

content curationCompanies are realizing the value in “brands as publishers” and are making real commitments to the creation of content in their online marketing mix. It’s no longer enough to provide fundamental features and benefits information about products and services to succeed competitively online. Consumers and of course, business buyers, seek additional information, resources and others to connect with on the topics of interest to them.  Some companies choose a pure creation strategy and find it to be a formidable undertaking, especially creating unique and valuable content over a long period of time.

Within the field of content marketing, curation is becoming a popular topic of discussion. Blending a mix of new content with the filtering and management of other useful information streams is a productive and manageable solution for providing prospective customers a steady stream of high quality and relevant content.  Pure creation is demanding. Pure automation doesn’t engage. Curating content can provide the best of both.


Content Curation Definitions & Context for Content Marketing

Beyond Google: SEO and the Social Web

google88 billion (OK, 87.8, we rounded up). That’s the number of search queries Google web properties are responsible for each month according to comScore.

Core to many search marketing strategies is to “Fish where the fish are” and make no mistake, the fish are decidedly hanging out on Google. YouTube, Gmail, Blogger.com and many other online services from Google make its presence ubiquotous in the online marketing world.

Now imagine if Google disappeared tomorrow. What would that do to your marketing? What would it do to your business?

Some of the people reading this post have experienced such a disappearance. Not of Google going away, but the experience of their own sites or pages disappearing from high visibility positions within Google search results.


Beyond Google: SEO and the Social Web

B2B Search Engine Optimization: Focus on Content SEO

MarketingProfs B2B Forum is coming up quickly next week and I will be presenting about an hour of essential search engine optimization tips and insight specifically for B2B web sites along with Vocus Product Manager of PRWeb, Jiyan Wei.

There’s a tremendous opportunity for B2B marketers to leverage SEO to increase prospect acquisition and to facilitate after the sale support and upgrades.  Most B2B marketers create a substantial amount of content to guide prospects through sales cycles that are much longer than companies selling consumer products/services.


B2B Search Engine Optimization: Focus on Content SEO

Key Questions to Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy

I’ve been thinking about how entering the content marketing space is not for the faint of heart. It can be a signifcant undertaking both in terms of resources and a change in an organization’s approach to marketing and sales. Obviously, content marketing is better for some companies and industries than others. Outside help also makes a difference.

While increasing numbers of companies are realizing they  must provide more than product information to satisfy customers, many of those same companies fail by implementing random tactics and missing out on benefits like better search visibility.

In order to take full advantage of the significant gains in search traffic that are available with a content focused marketing effort, it’s essential to answer some key questions:


Key Questions to Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy

5 Ways to Leverage Real Time Search in Your Online Marketing Mix

real-time searchSince late 2009 when Google introduced real time search, the concept has gained a lot of attention.

Today, real time search is at the top of the priority lists for all the major search engines – Google, Bing and Yahoo!.

As part of the new technology, Google is combining live updates from sites like Twitter with the latest news headlines and blog posts in search results.

For web searchers, real time search means the ability to discover breaking news the minute it’s happening.

For marketers, it presents a whole host of opportunities to increase online visibility. Here, we’ve provided five ways to leverage real time search in your online marketing efforts.

 


5 Ways to Leverage Real Time Search in Your Online Marketing Mix

5 Tips for Better B2B Branding

Think branding only falls in the B2C court? Think again.

In fact, three of the top 10 brands in 2009, as ranked by Interbrand, generate a sizable amount of revenue from their B2B customers: IBM, Microsoft and GE.

As a B2B marketer your brand is your most valuable asset.

B2B branding is less about cool, hip monikers (the Apples and Starbucks of the world) – and more about thought leadership.

Particularly in down economies, B2B prospects and customers conduct significant research leading up to purchases. That means you as a marketer have to educate them early on, and establish your brand as a trusted resource that gets their problems and has the solution.

To help your organization be seen as the thought leader it is, we’ve identified five B2B branding tips:


5 Tips for Better B2B Branding