Last year, Content Marketing Institute had an interesting post, “Is April Fools’ Day Worth the Risk for Brands?” It’s something interesting to consider. The main points were if you’re going to do it, it must be well thought out, and the humor should integrate with your brand. You should also immediately reveal it’s a joke, and don’t let the content interfere with your product or brand.
That brings me to another CMI piece, “With Great Content Power Comes (Yep) Great Responsibility – What Will You Do With It.” This article talks about the ethics of content marketing (because yes, words matter), and to ask certain questions when creating content:
-
Are we meeting someone’s needs?
-
Are we considering how to make things better?
-
Are we considering multiple viewpoints/opinions?
-
Are we serving a higher purpose or just the purpose of profit?
-
Does the company’s ethics align with my own?
A lot of the examples and advice is based on large companies, but the takeaways can be applied to any writer, who works at any scale.
There are a lot of other great resources around creating solid content that resonates with people. Here are a few:
“The Secret to Content Marketing for Startups” on Medium: Figure out your pillars, and what you want to be known for, write for specific people or avatars, create content that solves problems, stick to a schedule, and know it’s a long game.
“Experts Share How to Get Episodic Content Right” on Content Marketing Institute: Set a theme, figure out how to keep people hooked, and be a storyteller.
Grain: A tool to record, clip, and share video calls with your team so you can summarize meetings and easily share insights.
“Why a Content Formula Isn’t Lazy – It’s a ‘Hallmark’ of Bingeable Series” on Content Marketing Institute: A case study of Hallmark’s movies and why they work (people like familiar faces and stories, sequels, and prequels).
“How To Do a Competitive Content Marketing Analysis” on Content Marketing Institute: Look at your competitor’s content and figure out what works and what could be improved on (keywords, content types, etc.), tag and analyze topics and look at the quality and quantity.
“How To Set Up a Content Scoring Process for Better Decisions” on Content Marketing Institute: Decide what to measure (exposure, engagement, conversion, shares on the quantitative side and consistency, clarity, discoverability, relevance, and engagement on the qualitative side), standardize how you rank your measurements, and create worksheets.
“How the New York Times A/B tests their headlines” on TJCX: Everyone A/B tests and apparently about 29% of the New York Times articles have multiple headlines.
“Is There Such a Thing as the Best Word Count for SEO?” on Content Marketing Institute: Structure and semantic optimization matters more, as well as search intent and how useful and fresh your content is.
“Know the Basics of Link-Building to Boost Your SEO” on Content Marketing Institute: Backlinks help with search engine rankings, and some ways to get those links include guest posts, case studies, and infographics.
“Is Google AMP Worth It for Your Email Marketing?” on Content Marketing Institute: AMP can be tricky, but can be used in lots of ways, such as for bookings, shopping, and polls.
“Do You Really Want a Zero-Click Ranking on Google?” on Content Marketing Institute: Lots of Google searches don’t result in people clicking on a link. You can write your content to optimize for people to either click or not click.
