Fractal Friday Digital Marketing Round Up #52
Weekend inspiration and essential marketing content from the world of MMC Learning.
And a collection of all our best posts on all things content strategy and content marketing from the last twelve months.
A YEAR OF FRACTAL FRIDAY
We’ve been doing this every Friday for a whole year.
We love creating it. Hopefully, you love receiving it.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK:
“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.” ― Octavia Butler
WHAT DOES 52 WEEKS AND 52 FRACTAL FRIDAYS MEAN?
That’s 52 Fractal Fridays with approximately 8 purposefully curated links each week – meaning if you’ve been with us from the start, you’ve had 432 individual links of inspiration – each probably containing three to five tips or ideas each.
That’s a mind boggling 2,160 inspirational ideas and tips delivered FOR FREE in the last twelve months.
If you’ve ever got a single benefit from this email, can we ask you to do one thing for us?
Please forward this post to at least one colleague and tell them you think they should subscribe too!
WHY MOST MARKETING PROFESSIONALS FIND CONTENT MARKETING HARD – AND THREE WAYS TO MAKE CONTENT MARKETING EASIER
Survey statistics from SmartInsights indicate that around 60% of organisations still don’t have a documented content marketing strategy that drives the marketing activity of their business.
Astounding when you consider the huge volume of effort businesses seem to put into marketing. Marketing without true focus that an entire team or business can rally behind.
We recently chatted to Geraint Holliman about content marketing strategy and asked him three big questions.
WHAT ARE THE POSITIVE BENEFITS OF CREATING A CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY ON AN ORGANISATION’S MARKETING?
Marketing is about growth. And content marketing is about creating customer focused assets and material that help guide their decision making and ultimately encourage them to choose you.
There are also a wide range of benefits that creating a consistent content marketing strategy has on the effectiveness of an organisation’s marketing.
Here’s five to start with. What else would you add?
WHAT ARE THE POSITIVE BENEFITS OF CREATING A CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY FOR A MARKETING PROFESSIONAL?
In lots of businesses, lone marketers struggle to get heard and fight against negative perceptions about marketing, especially content marketing.
And in organisations where you might be part of, or leading an established team, are you ever really sure that what you are doing is going to lead to the results expected?
That’s when having a defined content strategy helps you not only position the value of marketing, but your own value to the organisation too.
If you’re in any doubt as to how the value of creating a documented content strategy can help you build influence with your peers and improve your marketing career prospects, then check out this list of points.
WHAT ARE THE BEST CONTENT MARKETING BOOKS AVAILABLE? A LIST OF NINE ESSENTIAL CONTENT MARKETING BOOKS TO HELP MARKETERS CREATE CONTENT
Marketing with content that engages target audiences has fast become one of the dominant marketing strategies in the 2020’s.
Many marketers will argue they have been doing it for decades – Seth Godin alludes to seeking permission to interrupt customers by surprising and delighting them way back in his 1999 book Permission Marketing.
There are a huge amount of resources available – but distilling ideas from great books and applying them is one of the easiest and low cost ways to start your content marketing journey.
Here’s nine books that we think offer the best current thinking on content marketing.
HOW TO MAKE CONTENT MARKETING EASIER – THE CONTENT MARKETING ENGINE CHECKLIST
As part of his involvement in our latest content marketing masterclass, we asked Geraint to outline his 12-step content marketing engine – a set of core steps to producing an efficient and effective content marketing strategy designed to deliver results.
AND FINALLY….
SEVEN WAYS TO SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVE YOUR CONTENT MARKETING SKILLS
It’s becoming especially critical to marketing roles at all levels to understand the theory behind creating content, linking it to marketing strategy and business goals and being able to craft intelligent, entertaining and persuasive content that takes prospects on a journey to wanting to work with your business.
It can be both deceptively easy if you believe the rising tide of gurus peddling their own approaches to content marketing yet overwhelming at the same time.
In this post, we’ve updated an earlier four point post on how to improve content marketing skills, strategy, writing and creation with more tips.
Thanks for being with us. Don’t forget to share with a colleague!