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 – not least MMC Learning’s own bitesize on-demand short courses and our content marketing summits – 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.
All are penned by experienced practitioners who have proved through their content that content marketing works in terms of building brand and building an engaged following that are then more likely to take you up on your offers.
The books included are:
- Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pullizi
- Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
- They Ask, You Answer by, Marcus Sheridan
- The Content Code by Mark Schaefer
- Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller
- Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by, Gary Vaynerchuk
- Conversation Marketing by Kevin Lund
- Marketing Rebellion by Mark Schaefer
- Superfans by Pat Flynn.
In Epic Content Marketing, Joe Pullizi (multiple author and founder of the Content Marketing Institute) outlines a step-by-step process of developing content that informs and entertains your target audience. He demonstrates, using brands like LEGO, Coca-Cola and John Deere, how to position your company as a trusted expert in your industry, building a brand that helps you to increase sales.
This book’s framework gives clarity on how to determine your content niche, how to develop your content marketing strategy, how to grow your audience and how to measure the effectiveness of your content.
In Ann Handley’s book, you’ll learn how to create content that supports business growth with a guide to attracting and retaining customers with great writing.
Ann argues that our words are today’s currency. Our writing can make us look smart, fun, competent, and trustworthy. It also has the potential to make brands look boring.
The founder of Marketing Profs, Ann shows how to write better, how to give your audience the gift of a great story, best practices for creating trustworthy content steeped in rules of journalism, and shares some of her tips around the best content tools to get the job done.
In a revolutionary text we use at MMC Learning, Marcus explains how you should stop selling and start answering questions to get the business results you want.
The author explains how brands should focus on the questions and problems that buyers are asking and searching for online and address them honestly in their content and highlights five types of content that specifically help position any brand perfectly to help potential customers searching for answers online.
In this book, you’ll learn how to break through the wall of tons of information. An academic with a thriving real-world consultancy, Mark takes a deep dive into the value of social media marketing and the steps companies should take to achieve measurable results.
The book explores the connection between brand and content transmission, how to build “shareability” into all your content, and the new role of promoting your content online in a competitive, digital world.
Presenting a fresh take on the Hero’s Journey, Donald Miller – a New York Times bestselling author – creates a business story framework around seven universal elements of powerful storytelling to build brand value in the eyes of customers.
This book challenges you to recognise that the customer is the hero of their story and it is your role as a guide to help them make informed choices to achieve the transformation they seek.
As a result, this book will transform the way you talk about your brand, what you do, and the value you offer to customers.
Prolific social media user and business builder Gary Vaynerchuk shares how to build a dominant market positioning by mastering social media marketing.
He talks about creating quality content in a consistent way that adapts to the right social media platform and target audience as the main way to be more successful in a noisy social world.
A colourful book, Jab Jab is jam packed with examples including Whole Foods, Netflix and more across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and more.
Kevin lays out the importance of brand development and why it is necessary to connect with your audiences for longer term business sustainability. He also explains why brands should keep communication with customers as a high priority.
The book includes tips on how companies can increase their sales and retain customer loyalty for long-term success by adopting a more humane tone. In modern times, a real storyteller is someone who can find solutions to customer queries and get the best outcomes.
Marketing Rebellon is new for 2022 and is already considered one of the best content strategy books that help build a realistic framework to empower marketers with strategic implementation.
Every chapter is full of considered, creative and applicable ideas that actually work, not least the advice on creating personalized ad copy that leads to genuine and engaging human connections.