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50 Things We’ve Learned About Content Marketing
Well, not “we” as in us. But the folks at Animalz also know a thing or two about content marketing. They provide content marketing solutions to some of the top SaaS brands in the world.
Hashing out strategies with the best brands in the industry means their team has gathered quite a bit of knowledge on the matter. This is stuff that propels the best blogs out there! We think it can help level up your content, as well.
Obviously can’t squeeze in all 50, but here are some that really jumped out at us:
- Content that lives alone dies alone. Blogs are libraries, not publications. A single blog post is rarely enough to rank for a competitive keyword.
- The fundamental problem with content marketing is that non-subject matter experts are writing for subject matter experts. There are a few ways to work around this, but nothing beats the simplest approach: develop subject matter expertise.
- Writing is an art, but content is an acquisition channel. Use writing as the foundation upon which to build complementary skills.
- Nail the writing/promotion ratio. AKA, spend at least as much time promoting content as you do creating it.
- Promotion and distribution are overrated. Put 90% of non-writing effort into organic search. Bursts of traffic from social media and communities are fickle.
- You don’t need an audience. If search is your primary acquisition channel, you’ll never build a true audience. Instead, you’ll tap into a continuous stream of people with a problem to solve.
- Overproduction hurts SEO. Creating too much content (1) makes your site hard to navigate, (2) waters down the effect of good links, and (3) turns you into the “boy who cried wolf”—i.e., it makes promotion difficult when you do have a great post to share.
- Writing for fictitious personas doesn’t work. Instead of asking, “Who is our target reader?” ask, “At what level is our target reader thinking?”
- Specific, non-obvious content wins. Interview people who aren’t already well-known in your industry, and don’t publish more content just because the editorial calendar says a post is due.
- Great content has texture. Words, rich media, subheads, and quotes are neatly arranged to keep readers moving through the piece.
Dang, and that’s just 1/5th of it! A ton of takeaways in this one.
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8 Common Facebook Ad Myths, Debunked
Regardless of what’s happening with Facebook in the news right now, their platform is still a great way to get more traffic, conversions, and sales for your company. Because of that, there is a ton of information out there on how to create effective FB ads. Some of this info is just plain wrong.
Today we’ve got a blog post written by a guy who has managed over $3M in Facebook ad-spend. He clearly knows Facebook ads, and he’s debunking some common myths for us today.
Here we go:
Myth #1: You have to laser-target your audience. Facebook offers a ton of ways to target people, which is why laser-targeting became a thing. But, Facebook’s own algorithm is really good at finding people who are likely to convert on your website. Keep your audience broad and let the algorithm work its magic.
Myth #2: Facebook ads are not effective for B2B. This is a killer myth for B2B companies. Facebook allows you to target by employer, industry, job title, and a whole bunch of other work-related data points. But, best of all, Facebook allows you to create a lookalike audience which automatically finds people similar to your audience.
Myth #4 (yes, we skipped #3): You need to invest in getting page likes. Forget about page likes, don’t waste your ad budget on “like” campaigns. Just because someone likes your page, doesn’t mean they’ll ever buy from you. You can still run a very successful ad campaign with very few page likes.
Myth #5: You should retarget all your site visitors. Retargeting visitors is always a good idea, but not all of them. Run different retargeting campaigns based on which pages people visited. People who view your pricing page should see a different ad than someone who just viewed your blog.
Myth #7 (yup, we skipped another number): Relevance score is the most important metric. Relevance score does matter, but not as much as ROI. Regardless of what Facebook says about your ad, if your ROI on it is good, that’s all that matters.
Dive into the post to see all of the data that backs these claims up.
Watch
Stay Wild. We Are.
We were gonna do a real write up for today’s Watch, but then decided the Carnage writers’ chat transcript about this video was way more fitting.
So for your reading pleasure, a look behind the scenes of how we pick content for the Watch every day:
- Mark: i got watch covered
- Jordyn: oh word
- Mark: it’s for jackson hole
- Jordyn: shout out jackson hole
- Mark: it’s a bunch of animals and nature things. its very pretty https://youtu.be/ZilLlKIpakA
- Jordyn: flying into their airport is f*cked UP you’re like, so close to crashing into mountains. wow yes
- Mark: the video is really f*cking pretty. i want to climb into it
- Jordyn: the fleet foxes crooning viewers too! make sure you add it. that copy line…crooning
- Jordyn: haha
- Mark: and theres baby animals! cows and otters and such
- Jordyn: damn those tetonsss i wanna go baaaack. so many bebbiesss. omg the bear cub falling!!!
- Jordyn: “It may be national puppy day today, but our watch is crawling with other rambunctious bebby animals”
- Mark: just gonna copy this entire conversation for the write up
Any questions? Just watch it. We clearly love it.
Just think, you could hire the writers who wrote up today’s Watch to write content for your company. For real, we’re available. And don’t worry, we’re much more professional than that when we have to be.
If you’re looking for a team of writers who understand how to connect with an audience, give us a shout.
“Awareness of our forward motion, of the tick and tock as we move from yesterday to tomorrow… it gives us perspective and patience if we let it. Or it can stress us out. Up to us. What will you do with the next one?”
Seth Godin
