Marvel Comics can be considered to be one of the greatest examples of content marketing of all time. When Hasbro and Marvel joined hands to launch the famous comic book series ‘G.I.Joe – A Real American Hero,’ in 1982, they had a simple marketing strategy under their belt – provide a rich backstory for their action figures.
Within the first two months of releasing the comic book, their target audience of boys aged between 5-12 years, owned two or more G.I. Joe toys, when the comic book only had two background stories.
7 years later, this series was touted as one of Marvel’s strongest titles, with 2 out of 3 boys in the same age group owning at least one G.I. Joe action figure.
Some marketing strategy that was, eh?
A lot has changed since then and currently, with the social media and other newer marketing channels, opportunity can be seen knocking our doors every day.
Content marketing is all about storytelling because, in the end, we all become stories. If you are someone who is looking to learn content marketing and become a killer marketer in no time, given below are 9 blogs on content marketing (in no particular order).
Top 9 Content Marketing Blog for marketers and startup founders:
1) myHQ Digest
myHQ, India’s largest coworking community, which is trying to revolutionise the way people work one day at a time, has a segment called the myHQ Digest for freelancers, entrepreneurs and bloggers alike.
On their blog, you can find content pertaining to startups, dream workspaces, about starting a business from scratch, setting up virtual offices, tax filing for both entrepreneurs and freelancers, workstyle hacks, artificial intelligence and so much more!
So, for all your work-related and workspace related queries – head to myHQ Digest NOW!
2) Content Marketing Institute (CMI)
Content Marketing Institute is the reigning king in the world of content marketing. It is a premier global content marketing education and training organization which teaches enterprises and brands the art of attracting and retaining customers through compelling and multichannel storytelling.
Founded by Joe Pulizzi, a leading content marketing evangelist, their content marketing blog has ranked as one of the top blogs in only eight years of their existence. They cover all bases from helping you put together an effective content marketing strategy, how-to-get-started guides, competitive analysis, content marketing samples and more.
Notably, CMI also regularly conducts surveys of marketers in both the B2B and B2C fields, compiles and releases annual reports on those surveys. The blog and the institute are themselves great resources if one wants to know what is trending in the content marketing realm.
3) HubSpot
So, you might have come across HubSpot Inbound Marketing Program mentioned on several profiles on LinkedIn, right? Want to know why it is so popular that everyone wants to get HubSpot certified? We’ll tell you why.
HubSpot offers a full stack of software for marketing, sales, and customer service, with a completely free CRM at its core. Where their blog is concerned, it is a top content marketing blog featuring posts outlining the results of Hubspot’s research and experiments alongside featuring everything about the world of Marketing, Sales, Service and News Trends.
HubSpot, who actually first coined the phrase ‘inbound marketing’ talks extensively about it and mentions all core content marketing fundamentals like Email Marketing, Buyer Persona, Blog Generation and more.
Last but not least, they have also touched upon burning topics like e-commerce, cryptocurrency, website plugins, videos and more. Therefore, this library of content marketing fundamentals is one you must absolutely not miss out on.
4) IZEA Influencer & Content Marketing Blogs
The blog boasts of having ‘shareworthy’ content and ranks among one of the top marketing blogs around. It doesn’t shed light on content marketing but covers related topics like Influencer Marketing and Social Media Marketing which is under the same big bucket of content marketing.
It offers myriad listicles on top social media tools, Brand Marketing, Email Marketing, Landing Pages, Niche Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and lot more.
Also, they offer infographics to help you consume complex topics easily like ad targeting, social media, webinars etc. which teach you the ins and outs of marketing and other relevant updates.
5) Buffer Blog
A unique and one-of-its-kind social media listening and scheduling program, Buffer also happens to offer an excellent content marketing blog! It is said to be the poster child of blogs on content marketing and its blog gets shared thousands of times!
The company’s blog covers content marketings topics revolving around social media marketing, top in-demand skills to have, how to use video content to your advantage etc. It possesses all necessary resources and helps marketers with its webinars too.
Since Buffer is all about social media, it goes without saying that it obviously has terrific content too since there can be no social media without content.
Articles you may like:
- 8 super-effective social media listening tools for every marketer
- 11 free content distribution platforms to drive insane traffic to your blog
- The real power of personalised marketing & how can brands ace it
6) Animalz
Headed by content enigma Jimmy Daly, it is a flashy one-of-a-kind content marketing blog which offers strategic and plenty of thought-provoking ideas. They do not care for ranking the first in SEO and drawing traffic, rather wants to start a discourse over content through its well-crafted opinion pieces.
You have blog posts in the form of ‘Episodes’ viz ‘Episode 12: 3 Challenges to Producing Great Content,’ and ‘Episode 13: Why Don’t More People Refresh Their Content, ‘ etc.
They also have a rich piece, titled ‘Dissecting the Success of 100,000 Page View Blog Posts, or this one on ‘Writing Better Blog Titles. So, if there is a go-to blog that I can recommend to you, it would definitely have to be this one.
7) Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a top SEO research tool which uses their own bot and index, and which is updated every 30 minutes with fresh data being made available to their users within 30 minutes of refreshing the actual index. Also, it boasts of having a ranking database of roughly 45 million keywords from 9 different countries.
I can go on and on about it, however, since we are talking about content marketing blog here, Ahrefs also possesses a really cool blog. It is not as vast as Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and HubSpot, nonetheless, they have covered SEO extremely well since they are all about SEO.
Their content is authentic and backed by data which is a rarity in the world of SEO where several hoaxes are also discovered. Be it a how-to guide for beginners, finding your way around WordPress, drawing organic traffic getting your content to rank on Google or even SEO strategies – Ahrefs has it all.
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8) First Site Guide
First Site Guide hand holds you into the world of blogging and is a fantastic resource for people willing to learn blogging, and even for veterans who are looking to add more skills and tips in their kitty.
Be it starting your personal business blog/site, or showcasing your hobbies, offering suggestions or just sharing pictures/videos etc – it is a web for everyone and especially for people willing to grasp the fundamentals of blogging.
9) BuzzSumo
It is another great original research tool and helps you know which content performs best for any competitor or topic. Top brands like Expedia, HubSpot and even Yahoo! employ this tool. Like Ahrefs, their content marketing blog focuses less on overarching content marketing strategy and more on optimisation of content and leveraging it to the maximum.
They do touch SEO sometimes, else, they generally delve deeper and teach you about promoting your content, headline optimization, how to do online content analysis/audit, using influencer marketing to promote content, Facebook engagement and more.
To become a killer ‘anything,’ you need a resolute commitment to task, perseverance despite encountering obstacles and learn and implement!
Go through all the above top content marketing blog mentioned by use, preferably invest in a good content analysis tool like BuzzSumo and focus on writing good content and promoting it. This is all you need to be a killer marketer in no time! Ciao!
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