Improve Your Content Marketing Today: Does Your Content Need a Makeover?

This is my third time attending “The Marketing Nation Summit”, Marketo’s annual user conference focused on the latest Marketo features as well as content marketing trends and best practices.  I’m excited to share that this year’s conference taking place in San Francisco’s Moscone Center is bigger and better than ever. The highlights from the event will help you to rethink your content marketing and determine whether your content needs to improve.

Bringing a Publisher’s Perspective to Content Marketing

One of the highlights from today was the opening breakout session by Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs. Ann started her career as a journalist at the Boston Globe and began the session by sharing the importance of bringing a publisher’s perspective to content marketing. Many marketers can relate to the challenge of creating content marketing pieces that seem to go nowhere. As Ann said with the rapid growth of content marketing today “We’re all publishers. All of a sudden.” But what can we do to improve?

Ann shared some ways that marketers can put on their “publisher’s hat” when it comes to developing quality content including defining our mission, telling stories about people and telling these stories well.

Five Ways to Generate Quality Content

Ann expanded upon this by diving into five key ways marketers can go a step further and generate content beyond this publisher’s mindset including:

1. Think about  “experience” not just the narrative (Ann used a website for app developers as an example that provided a calculator for determining how much it would cost to build an app)

2. Have empathy (hint: use the word “You”)

3. Place lots of small wagers and maybe get a little crazy

4. Have a can do DIY attitude

5. Real time. Look for what no one else is talking about.

These are all great reminders to focus on what matters when it comes to content marketing – creating quality content that provides solutions and stands out from the crowd. Remember who you are writing for and place yourself in their shoes. Would you read your content pieces?

Need to improve your content marketing? Contact Launch Marketing today. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest B2B marketing tips and trends.