September 13, 2018

5 Actionable Tips from Content Marketing World Speakers to Improve Your Marketing Now

Everyone walks away from Content Marketing World inspired. Many of the talks provide fascinating insights and share good ideas. But in my opinion, the real holy grail of a good conference talk is a specific, actionable step I walk out of the room knowing I can take when I get home.

This year I was lucky to sit in on a few sessions that provided such gems. Here are a few great actionable tips that are now on my to do list and you might want to put on yours as well.

Write down your goals (and read them every day).

The first keynote talk of the conference came from Joe Pulizzi, the Founder of the Content Marketing Institute, and it covered a subject he’s written about before and clearly believes strongly about: writing down your goals.

He provided examples from his own life of how meaningful it is to set clear goals and remind yourself every day what they are so you hold yourself to them. He recommended the goals you write down be ambitious, tied to specific dates, and serve others in some way as well as yourself.

And he named five categories that he urged attendees to write goals for:

Career/wealth
Family
Spiritual
Mental
Giving

I’m still working out exactly what my goals in each category will be, but I plan to put them at the top of the to-do list document I consult each day so I have a solid reminder of where I want to be and keep working to get there.

Create (and use) your mission statement.

Does your company have a content mission statement? It should. If that sounds intimidating though, don’t worry. Andy Crestodina makes it easy with a simple template:

Our company is where [audience X] finds [content Y] for [benefit Z].

Plug in the relevant info for your company and you’ve got a line you can do a lot with. Andy recommends sharing it far and wide. Make it the tagline for your blog or even your whole website. Put it next to your email signup form. Add it to your social media profile. Tack it onto your email signature.

Your mission statement tells people why they should care about your brand’s content. It’s a good, concise way to pitch everyone that encounters your brand on why they should follow you.

Create a spreadsheet of microcontent.

Lee Odden gave a talk on influencer marketing which included this useful tip. Every interview you do with an influencer is full of quotes and insights. Why just use a quote from it once and be done? Instead, he suggested organizing all the valuable nuggets you get from your interactions with influencers over time into a spreadsheet.

In the spreadsheet, fill in each influencer’s details (name, company, position, link) so it’s easier to access those when you quote them. Categorize the different quotes based on what they’re about so you can more easily identify relevant ones to use as you create new content. And even if you don’t find the right quote for the new content you’re creating, your spreadsheet can help you quickly identify a good influencer to get in touch with to provide one.

This is useful for making your influencer marketing go further, but you can employ the same tactic for other types of microcontent as well. Add all the valuable statistics you find you may want to reference again to your spreadsheet (this is something I could definitely use). Pull in good examples of the types of tactics you write about and good social media status updates you may want to embed in future content. By having all this information well organized in one place, you can make your future content creation efforts more efficient while still always adding value.

Use details to immerse readers in your content.

Michelle Park Lazette’s talk on writing more like a journalist included a number of good suggestions to bring better storytelling to your content writing process. A few of them related to this idea that getting detailed and specific in how you describe what you’re talking about can bring it more to life for your readers.

She suggested paying attention to the sensory details of any situation you’re in – adding in a mention of smells, weather conditions, colors, or the looks on people’s faces makes the reader feel more like they’re there.

She also recommended, as often as possible, replacing adjectives with numbers. Saying a company has been doing business for a long time means less than saying they’ve been at it for 37 years. Getting specific adds believability to what you’re saying and makes it more real for the reader.

Do a validation audit of your content.

Margaret Magnarelli spoke on a topic I care a lot about in life as well as content: empathy. She shared the three phases that all empathic communication, professional and personal alike, must have:

Listen – Before you can do anything else, you have to actually hear what your friend or customer is saying. Listen to their complaints and pain points without inserting yourself into the story or trying to jump too quickly to solving the problem.
Validate – This is the step people most often leave off. After you’ve heard the person out, let them know you’ve listened and understood what they’re saying by repeating back to them what they’ve said. This shows them you were paying attention and get it. It’s an important step to them feeling like the communication is successful.
Suggest solutions – Only after the first two steps is it time to provide suggestions for ways to solve their problem.

You may already do a good job of addressing the problem and solution in your content, but there’s a good chance you’re skipping the validation step. Margaret recommends doing a validation audit of your content.

Go back through everything you’ve written to look for pieces missing the validation step and add it in. Doing this exercise will also help you get better at recognizing where and how to include validation in future content pieces moving forward.

My brain is spinning with all the ideas from the conference I need to now organize and put to use. Whether you made it to Cleveland last week or not, hopefully these actionable tips can help you create a plan to get something specific and useful out of Content Marketing World this year.

July 20, 2018

How to Make the Content Writing Process Easier (And Get Better Results)

Consistently creating high-quality content is hard. Whether you’re a professional content writer or someone

Image via picjumbo

without a writing background trying to figure out this whole content marketing thing – creating content requires a lot of work, and doing it well is an ongoing struggle.

I can’t provide any shortcuts to make content writing quick and easy, while still maintaining the level of quality good content marketing requires. But I can provide a few tried and tested tips that make the writing process easier, while ensuring the end results are still well worth it.

5 Tips for Easier Content Writing

Devote time to research.

As a reminder: I didn’t promise that these tips would make the work faster, just easier and better. Committing some real time to doing solid research before you start writing will help with both those things.

This is the step most likely to get lost in the shuffle when you rush your writing. You may think you can get by just getting words onto the page so it’s done. The problem is it’s much harder to write about something you don’t understand than it is to write on a topic you know well. Trying to pull information out of your brain that’s not there is difficult!

And obviously, doing your research upfront means your piece will be more accurate and include better information than if you’re essentially making guesses or making things up.

Unless you’re already an expert on the topic you’re writing about (and a lot of the time, even then), you have to make sure you do your research. Give yourself time to learn your topic well before you dive into writing.

Create an outline.

When I was in school, I used to rebel against this idea. Sure, every teacher recommends it, but I knew what I was doing. Why spend time on organization when I could skip that step and just get to the writing?

Soon after I started writing professionally, I realized how silly my earlier thinking had been. No matter how good of a writer you are, creating outlines can make you better, make your work process more efficient, and make writing easier.

This is especially true when you’re writing for the web. Between SEO and the way people read online (specifically, a lot of skimming), using headings and lists to organize your writing is important.

When you create an outline in advance you:

Determine the post will have a structure that makes it easy to read.
Can create advance opportunities for optimizing and including headings and sections that aid in SEO.
Give yourself a head start on the post that makes the actual writing part easier.

You know the writer’s cliché of staring at a blank word document? Filling that blank document in with an outline is easier than starting with the writing itself. And once you do start writing, the document won’t be blank anymore and you’ll have your initial notes and structure to guide you as go.

Find your writing time of day.

Mine is usually morning and early afternoon, but yours may be something completely different. Writing requires a lot of mental energy. It will be much harder to do well if you try to do it at a time of day when your brain doesn’t want to do that work.

Everyone has times of day when they have more energy and will be more productive. Start paying attention to how productive you are in the morning versus in the afternoon versus in the evening. Once you identify the time of day when writing’s easiest, start to plan your schedule around it. You’ll both be more productive and do better work.

Block distractions (but do take planned breaks).

The internet is very distracting. Writing requires focus, but it’s hard to keep that focus when you know Facebook or Buzzfeed (or whatever your go-to time waster is) is just a click away.

Here’s the thing: your brain does need breaks. You don’t have to swear off every distracting website on the web during your working hours, and doing so might actually be to your detriment. But if you let your brain wander off course every few minutes (or worse, seconds), then you’ll have a harder time getting your writing done and the distraction will show in a more scattered and unclear end result.

So decide in advance that you’re allowed breaks and plan out when you’ll take them. You can use something like the Pomodoro Method to time them out in set intervals or you can assign yourself a certain number of words or sections before your next break is allowed.

And if you have trouble keeping your focus in between the planned breaks, you can block all the distracting websites with a tool like Focus. It’s ok to need a little outside help to control your worst impulses – certainly better than giving into them and facing a harder, slower writing process because of it.

Don’t aim for perfection.

You should absolutely hold yourself to a standard of quality, but if you always aim for perfection in your writing, you’ll overthink the writing process and make things a lot harder on yourself. At some point, your writing has to be done so you can move onto the next thing. And trust me that you’re thinking a lot more about the words you choose than your readers are – most of them are skimming, remember?

Do commit to writing well. Make sure:

The information you include is accurate
Your word choices aren’t awkward
Your sentences make sense and read well.
You correct any typos or errors during the proofreading process (and don’t skip the proofreading process!)
And that your content is well designed to achieve its goals – whether that means educating readers, increasing brand awareness, or including CTAs to drive a specific action.

If your writing makes sense, provides valuable information, and is easy to read, then you’re probably good! Don’t drag down your process by overanalyzing every word choice to make it perfect.

At the end of the day, writing is subjective anyway and you’ll never make everyone happy. What’s most important is making sure your content writing is useful enough to help your readers and achieve its goal.

If you’re worried your staff is getting burned out trying to keep up with all the writing that good content marketing requires, I may be able to help. Get in touch to see if we might be a good fit.

April 2, 2018

How to Give Good Content Writing Feedback

Updated May 2022

We’ve all had the experience before. Someone delivers information in a way that makes clear they think you’ll know exactly what they mean, but you’re stumped. You are just not following what they’re saying to you at all.

This is one of the quirks of communication that everyone deals with at some point. Something can be so clear and obvious in your own head that you think expressing it to the person in front of you (or on the other side of that email) is easy, but what’s clear to you is confusing and muddy to them.

Freelance writers know the feeling of being on the other end of that email well. Most of us have had multiple experiences of hearing feedback from clients that doesn’t tell us what we need to hear in order to understand what the client means.

It’s tricky providing feedback well, but having a good relationship with any writer you hire depends on it. And giving good feedback early on in the relationship will help them learn what you’re looking for, so you won’t have to do as much work later on.

To help you effectively get what you’re wanting from a content writer’s work, here are some tips on how to give good content writing feedback.

1. Read the whole thing.

To start, you want to make sure your feedback is accurate and that means taking the time to read over the entire piece of content they’ve submitted. And really read here—don’t skim.

It’s embarrassing for you and awkward for the writer if they have to point out that you’ve asked them to add a section that actually already exists further down the page or with a heading you didn’t recognize. On top of being awkward, it wastes everyone’s time and you both have better things to do.

2. Get to it quickly.

I know you’re busy, but if you sit on a blog post or white paper for weeks, or worse, months before sending your feedback, that particular piece won’t be fresh in you content writer’s memory. It’s both harder and less efficient to make good updates if they barely remember the piece and the research they did for it anymore by that point. And some freelance content writers (this one included) put feedback deadlines in the contract, so you may miss your chance to get updates altogether if you wait too long.

So give yourself a deadline. Commit to reading over the piece and sending your feedback within a week or two of receiving it. And get it on your to-do list even sooner, if possible.

A note here: any reasonable person you work with will understand that life sometimes gets in the way. So if you your kid gets sick or you have a plumbing emergency that takes over your life for a few days, take the time you need! Your writer should understand. Just try not to make a habit out of slow response times.

3. Be specific.

While it’s obvious to you why the wording in that third paragraph just doesn’t sound right, or the overall tone of the piece doesn’t work—your content writer can’t see into your head. You have to explain it in terms that clearly communicate how to make the changes you want.

A few tips to help you do that:

Avoid general language.

Feedback like “this section doesn’t really work” or “this isn’t clicking” only tells someone that you don’t like what you’re looking at. It doesn’t tell them why. Sure, your writer could re-write that section to be all new wording. But if they don’t understand what you don’t like about it, there’s a good chance they’ll end up repeating whatever issue wasn’t working for you the first time.

Saying something instead like “the tone in this section is too formal” or “this sentence is too long, which makes it hard to follow” actually gives them something to work with when making changes.

Make notes and changes in the text itself.

Microsoft Word and Google Docs both provide features for tracking changes and adding comments within a document. This makes it possible for you to comment directly on specific wording or sections that demonstrate the issue you’re addressing. If you think some of the wording is muddy or confusing, point out specifically where you see that happening rather than expecting the writer to be able to figure it out. If you think there are claims in the piece that need to be better backed up with sources, point out which ones.

Matching your feedback to the particular pieces of the content it applies to will help the writer see clearly what you mean. They’ll learn both what sort of changes you’re looking for now, and how to avoid making those same mistakes in the future.

Provide examples of what you’re looking for.

Particularly when it comes to issues of tone and style, it can be hard to communicate exactly what you want using descriptive terms. If you can point to other blog posts or content pieces—whether on your own website or elsewhere—that illustrate what you’re looking for, it can help a writer figure out the right approach to take.

Pro tip: Even better, provide a style guide upfront that covers this territory. A good style guide increases the chances a writer will get things right on the first try, saving you both time in the editing process.

4. Be respectful.

Clarity is a big part of the good feedback equation, but respect is just as important. When you hire a professional content writer, treat them with professionalism.

What that means, in practice:

Negative feedback is ok, but tone matters.

That doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to provide criticisms. Anyone working in a creative field should have enough of a thick skin to take (respectful) criticism of their work.

Hopefully, the line between constructive criticism and being insulting or mean is clear to you. If it’s not, let someone else in your company be in charge of providing feedback for now and maybe consider therapy or communication classes to learn the difference, because it’s a pretty important life skill to have. I don’t mean that in a snide way, but as genuine advice.

Saying “this writing is awful” or “don’t you know anything?” isn’t helpful, but saying “this piece could really use some more work, could you take some time to do a little more research and find some data or case studies to back up your points?” is perfectly reasonable.

Keep things professional.

This relates to tone, but is worth saying on its own. Don’t yell at a content writer because you don’t like their work. Don’t insult their intelligence or use vulgar language to describe what you think of it. For the love of all that matters in this world, do NOT use racist, sexist, or ableist slurs in your response.

Every content writer you hire, whether they’re a freelancer or employee, is someone with a career and their own professional contacts. Know that if you’re the client or boss from hell, it will hurt your reputation.

Remember: writing is subjective.

One of the really cool things about language is that there are a lot of right ways to say the same thing. Someone can have a writing style that doesn’t work for you, but is still perfectly good writing. Remember that your opinion on this subject is not the objectively correct opinion.

When you’re paying for someone to write for you, you’re allowed to have an opinion on the writing—of course you are. But don’t frame your feedback as though you know the right way to say things and your writer is clearly wrong for not choosing the wording you would have. If you do, you’ll come off as arrogant and patronizing.

Instead, approach your feedback as an exercise in helping your writer understand how to come around to your preferences for style and tone—or better yet, the preferences you believe your audience has for style and tone. After all, you may be the client, but they’re not actually writing for you.

Final Words

A good working relationship with a freelance content writer can be extremely beneficial to your company and your content marketing program. Good feedback is an important part of being able to keep the writers you hire for the long term and get them to a place where they know how to deliver the kind of content you’re looking for. It’s worth spending time, especially early in the relationship, providing specific and respectful feedback to any writer you work with.

February 6, 2018

Should You Use Gated Content?

For many businesses, one of the frustrating things about content marketing is feeling like you’re investing a lot of time and money, putting a lot of value out into the world – but it’s hard to connect that work back to solid leads and sales. One of the tools content marketers have to bridge that gap and turn content into a more direct lead generation tool is gated content.

But while putting content behind a form means you gain something (leads and information), you also lose something. If you’re going to use gated content, you have to think carefully about why and how.

What is Gated Content?

Gated content is any content that’s only accessible to people that provide something in exchange for viewing it. In most marketing cases, that means personal information like a name and email address or business information like your title and business size. Sometimes it can also mean content that goes behind a paywall, so you can only see it after paying for it, but that’s more common for media publications than marketing uses.

4 Reasons to Gate Content

Gated content gives you a way to get something back for the content you put so much work into. There are a few good reasons to consider gating your content:

To gain leads

When a person hands over information about themselves to download your content, you end up with more knowledge about a potential future customer. You know what topic they’re interested in (based on what they downloaded) and how to get back in touch with them. That’s information you can do something with if they look like a promising lead.

To collect more information from your leads

A name and an email address can be enough to count someone as a lead, but the more you know about them the more you’re able to be targeted in your contact with them. Sometimes the form for a piece of gated content includes additional fields like business size and industry. And if someone that’s already a lead comes back to check out more of your gated content, you can ask for different information than you did the first time – you already have their email, but maybe they can tell you now the services they offer or their biggest business challenge.

It gives you an in to continue the relationship

Someone who views a blog post may find it valuable, but then leave the website and never return. When someone gives you contact information they’re showing engagement and giving you a way to keep the relationship going – something that can often be hard to pull off in content marketing.

It signals higher-value content

While content marketing is often all about providing value to your audience (for free), there’s definitely still a sense in our culture that a thing too easily gotten can’t be worth as much. For someone with that mentality, a piece of content they have to give something up for will immediately look more valuable than something publicly available to everyone. Putting content behind a form can therefore be a way of communicating that there’s something special about this piece of content, which can make it look more enticing to your audience.

5 Reasons Not to Gate Content

I’m going to come right out with a clear stance here: not all content should be gated. The benefits of leaving content publicly available on your website are too significant to gate everything.

Gated content creates friction.

Anytime you put a barrier between people and what you want them to see, you’re decreasing the number of people that will take that step. In some contexts, that’s ok. Having fewer relevant leads is better than lots of irrelevant ones. But a big part of marketing is creating awareness of your brand and product, and content has an important role to play in that. It won’t help people learn you exist if they can’t see any of the content you create because it’s hidden behind a form.

It can cause annoyance.

If someone doesn’t know enough about your brand to trust you and care about what you have to say, being hit with a form first thing asking them to hand over their information is obnoxious. Not only will they probably not provide the information you’ve asked for, but their overall experience on your website will be negative.

If you overuse gated content without taking the time to build up trust with freely accessible content, then you can expect your visitors to experience annoyance and frustration – clearly not emotions you want to cause in potential customers.

You lose out on SEO value.

When you put your content out of reach for prospects, you’re putting it out of reach for Google’s algorithms as well. Why would they want to rank a page that has partial information on it with a form to learn more rather than a page on the same subject that lays out all the information a searcher would need? If SEO is a priority (and it should be for most businesses doing content marketing), then most of your content should remain ungated.

You lose out on links.

This is related to SEO, but worth mentioning on its own. When a writer is looking for content to link to in a post or article that will add value to their readers, they’re less likely to choose a resource that their readers won’t find readily accessible. With some exceptions where what’s behind the gate is so uniquely valuable as to be worth it (original research being the main one), they’ll skip over your gated content and find a resource that’s not behind a form to use.

Your blog can be a tool to gain leads without gated content.

If your blog content is consistently useful and you promote your email list throughout the blog and website, then you can gain email signups and leads without putting your content behind a gate. Sticking your best stuff behind a form isn’t the only way to gain leads.

What’s Right For You?

Whether or not you should gate your content depends on three main things:

Your goals
Your audience
Whether or not you have content worth gating

If the main goals of your content marketing program are awareness and SEO, then gated content probably isn’t for you. But if it’s crucial to you to gain leads with your content and your blog isn’t doing the trick, then working up some especially high-quality resources to put behind a form could be a great idea. It all depends on your overall goals and if gating makes sense within the rest of your content strategy.

If You Use Gated Content

If you do decide to start using gated content, then it’s important to do so in a way that keeps your audience top of mind and helps you meet your goals.

Make sure your content is worth it.

First things first, if you put lackluster content behind a gate, people will resent you for it. And if you reach out to contact them after, you’re doing so at a disadvantage because they already lost their trust in you. So you have to make sure any gated content you create is top of the line.

Ask yourself:

Do I know this is a topic my audience cares about?
Is there anything in my gated content people couldn’t easily find with a simple Google search?
Will my audience walk away from this content having learned something they can use to make their lives or work better?

If you can’t confidently answer all three of those questions with a “yes,” this content shouldn’t go behind a form.

Don’t ask for too much.

There are definitely people who would be willing to download content that only asks for an email address, but will balk if you ask for their email, title, business size, industry, date of birth, name of their firstborn…you get the idea. The more time it takes someone to fill out the form and the more they feel like they have to give up, the harder you’re making it for them to say “yes” and complete the task to reach your content.

Think about starting small – just ask for a little information the first time a prospect encounters your gated content. If they come back for more later (a different piece of gated content, that is), you can ask for more.

Promote it like a product.

If you’re putting the time in to create content that’s of a high enough value to put behind a form, then you should commit time to getting it in front of people. Promote your gated content on social media. Plan other relevant content pieces you can use to help promote your gated content and work CTAs into them. Consider pitching relevant guest posts to other blogs that will include links to your gated content, to help get it in front of a new audience. You might even consider paid promotion if you want to make sure you get that much more out of it.

If you simply create it and sit around hoping people will notice and care, you’ll have done all that work for nothing. Help people find the content you worked so hard on.

A/B test forms and CTAs.

If you’d really like to ask for extra information in your form, but aren’t sure you can get away with it without losing leads, do some testing. Figure out different wording to put on the landing page, different fields to include on the form, and different language and designs for the CTAs you use to direct people to your gated content. It’s hard to predict what people will respond to and what wording or design elements will make a difference. You won’t know for sure what matters most unless you test it out.

Make sure you follow up with relevant messaging.

Once a person takes the step of providing their information to download your content, you have an opportunity to keep the relationship going. Don’t bombard them with email marketing, but do work up some follow-up emails that are relevant to the content they downloaded. Use those emails to see about getting them to sign up for your email list or urge them to take further action, like starting a trial or checking out relevant product pages.

Someone who goes so far as to provide you information in order to access your content is usually going to be a valuable lead, so figure out the best strategy for nurturing those leads once you have them.

Gated content may not be right for every brand, and no brand should make it 100% of their content strategy. But if you do decide it’s right for you, it may be a good way to bring in new, relevant leads that are likely to turn into customers. You just have to make sure you do it right.

August 8, 2017

10 Great Content Marketing Writing Examples

Updated August 2019

Anyone who works in content marketing is used to encountering bad examples. You get better at noticing the stuff that doesn’t work when it’s your job to make stuff that does. Because we’re so used to seeing bad examples, it feels really good to encounter examples of content marketing writing done right.

It can give us some inspiration in our work and, if we’re the target audience, be directly useful to us as well. To provide some of you with that feeling today, I’ve collected a few examples of great content marketing writing I’ve encountered. Enjoy.

Great Business Blogging Examples

For most companies that do content marketing, blogging is the biggest part of the job. Blogs give you the opportunity to provide fresh, useful content to your audience on a regular basis and they’re one of the best tools you’ve got for SEO.

But they’re also hungry beasts that demand a lot of work and never let you take a break. That’s caused far too many businesses to try to settle for lazy, cheap content on their blogs – or give up on them entirely within a few months of not seeing immediate results.

The brands that stick with it and provide consistently helpful and high-quality content are therefore in the minority.

HomeAdvisor

Homeowners tend to have a lot of ideas for projects they want to try and questions about how to handle everyday fixes. The Home Advisor blog HomeSource is packed full of answers and tips. The blog is a mix of practical tips like how to hire a good contractor or pack for a move, along with more fun topics like decorating your home and yard.

Probably the most common questions homeowners have are those about cost. Many people – especially new homeowners – simply don’t know what’s it’s normal to expect a home repair or update to cost.

In addition to the blog itself, HomeAdvisor therefore offers a True Cost guide to give you an idea of what your budget should be before you start a project, and help you rule out any contractors that charge outside of the norm. And since the company’s business model is based on matching homeowners with the people who do those sorts of projects, they of course offer a handy CTA on the same page to help you find relevant professionals in your area.

Rover

Rover’s got a bit of advantage over most businesses when it comes to their content. The company is all about pets (mostly dogs) – and we all know pet pictures are one of the most popular things on the internet. But in addition to taking advantage of the love people have for pictures of cute animals, the Rover blog The Dog People also provides a lot of useful information on topics important to pet owners, such as training and safety tips and answers to pressing questions like “do dogs recognize us on a phone screen?” (if you have a dog, you’ve probably wondered).

They’re one of the companies that can most successfully get me to click on a link in an email, because they do a great job of figuring out the things pet owners really do want to know.

Ehrlich

If you’re thinking “sure, their content’s good, but Rover has it so much easier than those of us doing marketing in areas less compelling than the cute dog industry,” here’s an example for you. The pest control company Ehrlich has a great blog, deBugged that provides lots of useful information about bugs and other creepy crawly-adjacent subjects.

Bugs aren’t a subject most of us go out of our way to do some reading on each day, but when you need to know how concerned you should really be about Zika virus or what to do about bed bugs, those posts will come in handy. And the rest of the time, you may find posts on topics like how long wasps live to be interesting as well. Like Home Advisor, they include CTAs at the end of their content where relevant so that person trying to figure out what to do about bed bugs knows who to call to help.

Great Examples of Longform Content

As content marketing is adopted by more and more businesses in all sorts of industries, finding a way to stand out is a challenge. One route many businesses are taking is creating content that goes really in depth. It takes more work, but if you can pack more of the information your prospects need into one longform piece rather than spreading it over a number of shorter pieces, many people will find that more helpful.

BigCommerce

The ecommerce industry has a low barrier to entry—starting an online business costs a lot less than building one with a storefront. But that doesn’t mean becoming an ecommerce entrepreneur is easy. New online business owners have a lot to learn if they’re going to get it right and stay afloat.

The BigCommerce blog includes its share of shorter pieces, but where it really stands out is with the long, comprehensive guides. A lot of websites publish blog posts claiming to be “The Complete Guide to” something, but BigCommerce backs those claims up with meaty posts that pack in a lot of useful advice, paired with examples of that advice in action.

One example of this, the Complete Guide to Ecommerce Personalization comes in at nearly 7,000 words. It covers the types of data you need to collect to make personalization possible, gets into detail (with examples) on the different types of personalization ecommerce businesses can use, and provides recommended tools for accomplishing each.

A business owner that starts out the post knowing nothing about personalization can walk away knowing exactly how to get started.

HouseLogic

HouseLogic, a content brand run by the National Association of Realtors has longform pieces available for download, including a a step-by-step guide to buying a home, as well as one for selling a home. The guides offer detailed information and advice, alongside cartoonish visuals that keep the content from feeling too serious.

In addition, they include spaces for the reader to fill in details specific to their own buying or selling process. That makes the guide that much more of a practical, useful tool for anyone using it.

Freshbooks

Freshbooks’ target audience for their accounting software is small businesses and freelancers. That’s a group of people that thinks a lot about pricing—figuring out how to charge for your services in a way that works for you and your customers is a fraught subject.

In order to provide their audience information so useful it could stand out in the marketing crowd, they put together an ebook that tackled the subject of how to switch from charging hourly to project-based pricing. The 70-page book is structured like a conversation between two relatable professionals and lays out the case for a different approach to pricing that can help service-based small business owners make more.

The book got reviewed around the web and collected positive testimonials from a number of key influencers. Not bad in our world of content saturation.

Moz

Speaking of content saturation, arguably the industry that has it the worst is marketing. Many of the earliest adopters of content marketing were marketing agencies and marketing software companies. Producing content about marketing that doesn’t repeat what’s been said before and manages to provide something truly useful is a huge challenge businesses face. But Moz is consistently good at it.

Any time I encounter someone looking to learn the basics of SEO, I send them The Beginner’s Guide to SEO by Moz. It’s thorough, but manageable. It’s written in a away that’s accessible to someone new to the concept, but organized to make it easy to focus in on specific sections when you just need a refresher on, say, keyword research.

The guide was produced several years ago, but is updated regularly to make sure the information stays accurate. It gains top rankings for relevant terms like “beginner’s SEO” and “SEO guide,” and drives traffic to the site.

Impressive Email Marketing Examples

For all the attention email marketing gets in marketing circles, it’s rare to see it done genuinely well. How many of the marketing emails that show up in your inbox do you consistently take the time to read?

The average office worker receives 121 emails every day. For a marketing email to stand out amidst all that noise, it has to be exceptional. Each of these brands has made it onto the shortlist of businesses whose emails I open and read every time.

Ellevest

An investment company focused on empowering women financially, Ellevest’s emails consistently combine a few things valuable to their audience: news and advice about investing, examples of women killing it in the business world, and coverage of feminist topics relevant to finance.

All of that is shared in a casual tone that feels fun and relatable. The writers at Ellevest know what their audience cares about, as well as how they (we, in this case, since I’m very much in their audience) write and talk. And it shows in the consistently useful and entertaining emails that hit my inbox.

Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that the newsletter’s name is a pun (What the Elle, get it?). I’m a sucker for a good pun.

Ann Handley

Speaking of puns, Ann Handley’s weekly newsletter called—wait for it…Annarchy —gets brought up as a top example of great email marketing for good reason. Every week she includes a helpful lesson about marketing and/or writing, as well a collection of recommended links and tools her audience will find helpful. A number of her suggestions have made their way into my bookmarks bar.

Her tone is friendly and personal. And if you reply to an email with a comment or suggestion, she answers back. (Ask me how I know.) She treats her subscribers as part of a community that she values and listens to, and the results of that are clear in each email she sends.

Shudder

Shudder’s newsletter The Bite might not have a clever pun in its name (missed opportunity!), but every email has information horror fans will find interesting. They share stories about the history of horror, homages to some of the best horror creators out there, and links about horror-related news and analysis.

The Bite’s editors clearly know their audience and treat each email as a chance to provide them a mix of original content they’ll care about and curation of some of the most popular and relevant horror content around the web.

Create Your Own Great Content Marketing Writing Examples

Content marketing is hard to do well, but seeing how other brands are pulling it off can help you to revisit your own strategy to consider ways to do better.

Hopefully these examples will provide some inspiration for your own content. And if you could use some extra help with content marketing writing for your business, that’s what I do. Get in touch to see if we might be a good fit.

Want more examples of great content marketing writing to check out? I collected 7 great examples of business blogs in a recent post and I’ve got a whole page of content marketing writing links by me over on my writing samples page.