A Year in Blog Posts: TopRank Marketing's Most Popular Content Marketing Posts of 2016

Each year, marketers are investing more time, effort and resources into creating content. The good news is that 45% of organizations believe that they have been more successful this year than they were last year.

The key indicators to this success has been largely due to increasing the quality of content, developing a strategy and prioritizing content creation.

As a content marketing centric agency, TopRank Marketing has covered various topics throughout the year that are aimed at helping other content creators find their way in a sometimes tricky industry.

Instead of just selecting our favorite posts of the year, we let our readers decide what was most useful. The 10 posts below represent our most shared content marketing posts of the year.

What's Inside

1 Top 10 Content Marketing Posts of 2016
2 Find Your Content Marketing Mix
- 2.1 If you liked this, you might also enjoy the following articles:
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Top 10 Content Marketing Posts of 2016

#1 – 10 Daily Habits to Create More Powerful Content

If you’re not steadily improving your writing, you’re actively moving backward. – @NiteWrites
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To truly become a more effective content marketer, it’s important that you make steady, incremental improvements over time. If you try to do too much at once, you may become overwhelmed. By working these ten daily habits into your writing routine over time, you might be impressed to find just how much you can improve in a short amount of time.

#2 – 20 Jokes Only a Marketer Could Love

It’s well past time for marketers to get serious about comedy. – @NiteWrites
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Did you hear the one about the marketer that got fired as a tap dancer? Unless you’ve read this post, the answer is likely no. TopRank Marketing Content Lead and resident comedian Josh Nite created these jokes just for marketers like you.

#3 – 5 Magical Tactics for Repurposing B2B Marketing Content

Snackable content can be managed & repurposed like ingredients to create a main course. @leeodden
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With the diversity of expressions buyers search for and the demands of producing a variety of engaging content on a consistent basis, one has to wonder why so many B2B marketers insist on publishing content once and with a singular theme. If you truly want to get more value from content investments while providing a greater variety of information to prospective customers, many B2B marketers are repurposing. Find out how in this post.

#4 – 4 Components of a Killer Content Marketing Plan on LinkedIn

People spend time on other social networks, but they invest time on LinkedIn. – @JasonMillerCA
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If you’re looking for best practices on publishing content on LinkedIn, there is no better source than the team from LinkedIn Marketing. Jason Miller and Alex Rynne shared 4 incredibly insightful and actionable insights in their presentation at Social Media Marketing World. In this post you’ll find samples of common objectives, key metrics and action items for success.

#5 – 7 Ways to Optimize Your Web Content for Humans & Search Engines

In case you haven’t heard, SEO is not dead. @CaitlinMBurgess
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Gone is the notion of marketers only needing to to focus on optimizing content for search engines. Today’s customers (and search engines) have become much more savvy which means that marketers need to focus on creating a great user experience for their readers. This post provides you actionable tips for optimizing content for both humans and search engines.

#6 – 8 Ways to Build Credibility & Trust with Content Marketing

Your content can be ignored if you don’t establish credibility and build trust. – @NiteWrites
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If you’re going to invest time and resources into creating content, it MUST create value for your audience. If it doesn’t, the likelihood of it being seen, read or shared is very unlikely. This post offers some insightful tips that marketers can use to begin building credibility with content.

#7 – Long-Form Content on Social Media: Pros, Cons, Examples & Best Practices

As the digital space gets more cluttered, marketers are embracing new ways to stand out from…
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Long-form content is no longer reserved strictly for blog posts, eBooks or other traditional forms of content. Social media platforms also offer a variety of opportunities to create more in-depth content for your readers, where they’re spending the majority of their time. This post takes a deep dive into the do’s and don’ts of creating long-form content for social media.

#8 – What is a Content Marketing Strategy (And Why Do I Need One)?

Content marketing allows you to give your audience tailored, relevant and meaningful information. -…
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Even though the vast majority of companies are producing content at an astounding rate, over 50% still aren’t sure what success looks like. Key to developing an impactful content marketing program is developing a content marketing strategy to serve as your roadmap. This post provides insight into 7 elements that every marketer should include in their content strategy.

#9 – 20 Must-Have Content Marketing Tools for Blogging

Content marketers tend to be the MacGyver of the marketing world. – @NiteWrites
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For many years, content creators have worked to cobble together solutions for concepting, creating and publishing blog content. And that is not always an easy (or fun) process. If you’re tired of the “old” way of doing things, this post provides 20 incredibly helpful tools to make blogging efforts easier, and more effective.

#10 – The 4 Essential Questions Your Content must Answer

If someone won’t even take credit for the content, how trustworthy can it be? – @NiteWrites
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As soon as someone hits your content the clock starts counting down. On average, readers will decide in less than 15 seconds whether they want to engage or need to move on. To get more readers to jump for joy (instead of jumping ship) make sure that you quickly answer these four questions to keep them engaged.

Find Your Content Marketing Mix

At the end of the day, the most important indicators of content marketing success are dictated by your readers. If people enjoy your content, they will share. Let 2017 be the year that you focus on creating a substantial impact with your content marketing program.

Disclosure: LinkedIn is a TopRank Marketing client.

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