In a month packed with Valentine’s celebrations and Oscars commiserations, content marketers have made their own contribution with inspiration and insights aplenty
The days are getting longer and spring is approaching fast. Are similarly temperate times ahead in the world of content marketing?
Content creation
Finding inspiration is a perennial struggle for content creators. It’s a wonder they can think of anything original to say at all, let alone consistently generate the type of content that puts competitors in the shade.
But in February, many content marketers spotted the opportunity for a thorough content spring clean. Performing a wide-scale audit could be exactly the shakeup your content marketing strategy needs, revealing the green shoots of content excellence as well as the fruitless weeds to be cast adrift into what remains of winter’s bitter chill.
Repurposing is another way of generating juicy metrics from underused content. Content curation (publishing relevant content from external sources) was a hot topic at the end of 2016, and, as discussed on Content Desk, has already made significant headway in audio and visual output. Now repurposing is all the rage – giving content originally used for one purpose a new lease of life by rejuvenating it for another.
Read more:
Use content repurposing and auditing to get more results out of less content: Business 2 Community
What the Ladybird Books for Grown Ups teach us about repurposing content: Content Desk
Distribution
Methods available for distributing content are diversifying and evolving all the time. Popping a post on a blog every so often just won’t cut the mustard anymore. Instead, content marketers are exploring new avenues (and revisiting some old ones) to achieve maximum content reach.
Perfecting the possibilities available from tried and tested formats such as email and video marketing is an ongoing task. These are the godfathers of content distribution, and their importance is growing all the time.
But the irrepressible evolution of content distribution provides new food for thought. Content marketers believing they are on top of trends like mobile and influencer marketing may need to think again – such trends show no signs of going anywhere and are developing all the time.
Read more:
A study suggests 2017 will see marketers use more resources on email marketing: MediaPost
Research on where mobile video content is most effective: BizReport
Research and insights
If there’s one thing content marketers find attractive, it’s the cold hard currency of facts.
Data-driven insights are essential for content marketers, whether for account managers unpicking the success of their campaigns or for writers determined to gain maximum content reach. This is particularly true when assessing ROI, a feature of the digital world likely to become more important than ever in the year ahead.
On top of this, there’s a range of new research to be aware of. From broad research on “less is more” content strategies to insights on the B2B-content marketing link, there’s lots for content marketers to get their teeth into.
Read more:
Tips on how to make the most of marketing analysis insights to boost ROI: bizEDGE
The value of producing less content with greater depth: BuzzSumo
Report on how B2B businesses are using content marketing: SpiceWorks
by Tom Lawrence. Contact him here.
