Content Marketing Tools, Tips and Resources: A Bufferchat Recap

Emily Ahlbum of Emagine joined #bufferchat to chat all about content marketing. How do you define it? Where do you find your best ideas? and more!

Catch our weekly Twitter chat, #bufferchat, every week on Wednesdays, 9 am PT/Noon ET/4 pm GMT, for valuable industry insights and networking with nearly 400 other smart marketers and community managers.

How do you define “content marketing?”

From Emily:

• Creating & publishing original, unique & valuable information to entice, educate and engage readers
• Distributing relevant content from other industry leaders
• Repurposing content (new or old) in various formats to continue the lifespan

From the community:

• “Content marketing is proving that you know what you’re talking abut and creating a good experience for your users.” @revaminkoff
• “Creating quality information and resources that will lead to a percentage of consumers becoming customers” @robertwilliger
• “Content marketing is the art of creating valuable content and sharing it with your audience so they end up loving you!” @MissSarahQ

See all the great answers to question 1 here!

Where do you find content ideas?

From Emily:

• Offline: I utilize the @emagineusa team as much as possible! They hear FAQs that I can use to create relevant content!
• Don’t forgot your sales team! They know know the challenges prospects face and exactly what type of content they need

From the community:

• “Find in inspiration from peers, customers, prospects. Be a critical thinker, consumer of content in order to create content.” @IlyaPR_
• “By listening well. We use tools i.e. @BuzzSumo & created a guide so you can utilize it, too: http://bit.ly/1KEdUSt ” @expwriters
• “We plan all our content way in advance (like, a year) on long-term industry themes. Then add topical stuff.” @jakeapeters

See all the great answers to question 2 here!

How do you determine the best content format for your audience?

From Emily:

• Find out where they are most active, research what format they share most and replicate with your unique content to attract
• Buyer personas helps to personalize and determine what type of content to provide in a format they prefer
• Social listening and monitoring gives you real time insights on how users are interacting with your content
• from there my AWESOME team of digital strategists keep me in check with advanced data and analytics to determine whats best

From the community:

• “Content strategy is not a “do once and check back a year later” kind of thing, it’s always ongoing. Test, review.” @katloughrey
• “Determine what your audience is most familiar with and push your content in that format” @sales_prodigy
• “Listen to your community. Have conversations. A/B test. Ask questions. Use analytics!” @jesserker

See all the great answers to question 3 here!

How often do you evaluate your content strategy?

From Emily:

• Constantly! The more you evaluate the more you can spend time creating content that your audience craves
• Also, the more you evaluate you can keep track of any changes in your audiences interests, problems, challenges

From the community:

• “For clients, every month, every 3 months, every 6 months. We are meticulous about data to find that perf strategy” @quietlyapp
• “How often? Every time I create anything. People change all the time, so does my #community! Gotta keep up” @berngaming
• “I re-evaluate it regularly, every few weeks. Look at metrics, are people engaging? What’s not working?” @lizdaponte

See all the great answers to question 4 here!

How do you track the ROI on your content ventures?

From Emily:

• Buffer provides awesome analytics and makes it easy to repurpose the content your audience engaged and interacted with most

From the community:

• “Various Social site analytics – especially where engagement can be seen. Also Google analytics & site comments & more” @cathywebsavvypr
• “Brand authority is the ROI of your content marketing efforts. Sales is further down the line.” @tonyxrandall
• “ROI is not always measured by $, but you do need to understand the costs of time: to prepare, respond, analyze” @toby_metcalf

See all the great answers to question 5 here!

What are your favorite three books on content marketing?

From Emily:

• I cannot live without @annhandley‘s books! “Everyone Writes” & “Content Rules” (w/ C.C Chapman)
• Another fave I can’t stop raving about is The Power of Habit…relates to all aspects of biz/life

From the community:

• Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi
• Start With Why by Simon Sinek
• Content Machine by Dan Norris
• Content Marketing Playbook by Sujan Patel
• The Content Code by Mark W Schaefer
• Jab, Jab, Jab Right Hook by Gary Vee
• Human to Human by Bryan Kramer
• The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott
• The Art of Social Media by Guy Kawosaki
• Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo
• Contagious by Jonah Berger
• On Writing by Stephen King
• Hubspot Blog
• Copyblogger Blog
• Moz Blog

See all the great answers to question 6 here!

What is your personal favorite type of content to create?

From Emily:

• The insights I utilize from the @emagineusa team, clients, & prospects help create a paper that readers can truly relate to.
• but truthfully, I never play favorites with my content ? creating visual content keeps me entertained and inspired.

From the community:

• “Love creating blog posts, love reading great blog posts (shout-out to @Moz) and finding incredibly informative infographics!” @Perfect_Search
• “I’m passionate about writing but secretly, I love creating images.” @danielleirogers
• “I enjoy creating content that my community enjoys. If I can enlighten, entertain or stimulate someone, I can smile.” @EliteYouTubePro

See all the great answers to question 7 here!

Thank you so much for everyone who joined in on this great chat!

Catch #bufferchat each Wednesday at 9 am Pacific/noon Eastern and join our Google+ community for the latest news. We also have launched a brand-new Slack community to continue these awesome conversations all week long! Join 500+ people there!

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Image sources: UnSplash