The concept of content marketing has been around since 1895, the year John Deere started circulating its magazine, The Furrow. Since then, many brands have proven the process works. But quantifying a return on investment (ROI) in the new frontier of online marketing can be challenging. There’s rarely an immediate 30-day turnaround on investment, which creates confusion and no small amount of anxiety. When content does take hold, however, the benefits can be very fruitful — and measure you must.

Before you drill down to measure an asset’s content marketing ROI, you need to examine and measure the value of your content marketing efforts as a whole. Marketing-related key performance indicators (KPIs) abound, but unless you understand which ones are important to your brand, you’ll find it nearly impossible to measure success. Continue Reading

It is no secret that content marketing has grown tremendously over the past few years. In fact, 93 percent of B2B marketers reported using content marketing as a part of their online marketing strategy. Though I think it is excellent that many website owners have embraced the concept of content marketing, with its more widespread use has come lots of differing opinions and tips from experts and practitioners.

One theme that is popular among content purists is the “Build it and they will come” school of thought. Many believe that if you create compelling content and publish it on your website or blog, your work is done; your audience will flock to it based on its merit alone. Yes, this may happen once in a while, but the chances are very slim. Content marketing is not a “set it and forget it” strategy, and those who treat it as such are putting themselves at a serious disadvantage.Continue Reading

Great content is a tremendous asset to any business. Creating and then not taking full advantage of that asset is a missed opportunity, and all too many marketers make that mistake. Using paid content to promote your content marketing across search, display, and social media networks will allow you to capture a significant volume of otherwise unreached prospects and help them turn into customers.

However, paid advertising content marketing strategies are not nearly as simple as choosing a budget and pressing “Go.” Starting with a poor strategy is as good as throwing money out the window; but with a solid strategy, paid online advertising is one of the least risky investments any business can make.

Here are six tips to make sure your paid content promotion strategy is built for success. Continue Reading

[Editor’s note: Happy Holidays! This week, the editorial team at Content Marketing Institute wanted to share some of the best content marketing blog posts we’ve seen from the CMI Online Training and Certification program’s roster of expert instructors. Today’s post originally appeared on Arnie Kuenn’s Vertical Measures blog on June 18, 2013.]

There can be a lot of thought, research, and development that goes into a piece of content. In putting together a robust content marketing plan, why not make the most of that investment? Getting the most mileage out of your content can be achieved with repurposing.Continue Reading

With every Google algorithm update, the goal is the same: to provide search engine users the most relevant and useful results possible. The latest “update,” referred to as Google Hummingbird, isn’t really an update at all. Unlike the Penguin and Panda updates that affected certain aspects of search engine rankings, Hummingbird is a complete overhaul of the entire search algorithm, as it has changed the way data is pulled for search engine results.

With 90 percent of search inquiries affected, Hummingbird is seemingly a big deal. However, Hummingbird was released more than three months ago, though not publicly announced until the end of September. Most people didn’t notice a difference. Google said Hummingbird in large part focuses on “conversational search,” which means paying more attention to a search string as a whole, rather than certain words or phrases. Additionally, Google will provide results as if you were having a conversation with the search engine, picking up on context of searches — especially when it comes to voice search.

So, what does this mean for you, your business and, more importantly, your content strategy? With past algorithm updates, marketers focused largely on creating quality content that is of use to their audiences, which begs the question, “Should I change my content strategy in light of Google Hummingbird?” The answer: It depends, contingent on your current content strategy. Continue Reading

Developing new materials for content marketing requires a great deal of effort, from coming up with an idea and researching the topic to content creation and promotion. There are often multiple people involved in the process: copywriters, designers, SEO specialists, social media marketers, and others, which can make content marketing quite the investment. Fortunately, great content can be repurposed into something new and different, continually furthering your investment along the way.Continue Reading

As content marketing gains recognition as a viable online marketing strategy, businesses are producing content of all types at an accelerated rate. But what good is compelling content if it can’t be found? The truth is, if it can’t be found by your audience, it won’t be very successful, which is why content optimization is such a crucial step in the content marketing process.

Through content optimization, you are providing essential data that search engines will use to determine what your content — and, by extension, your business — is all about. Search engines then use this information in the search results they display for relevant keyword terms or phrases. As content in the form of text, images, videos, and news is now included in these search results, the content optimization processes you use should be tailored to the types of content you are producing. Continue Reading

There are literally billions and billions of searches performed in Google every year. Wouldn’t it be great to harness that information and use it at will? Want to use it to help drive your SEO and content creation efforts? How about to better understand your target audience’s behaviors and interests? Well, there is a way and a great tool to guide you. Google Trends is available, and once you start using it, you’ll find it hard to stop.

During a recent CMI Twitter chat on small business content marketing, one participant expressed particular interest in ways Google Trends can be used for content. In response, here are a few features you may be surprised to learn about this versatile search tool. (And, if you’re interested, you can view the transcript of that chat here, or see the highlights in the SlideShare at the bottom of this page.) Continue Reading