5 Must-Read Content Marketing Blogs You (Probably) Haven’t Heard Of
When it comes to content marketing blogs, most of us are aware of the major players in the space. HubSpot, Content Marketing Institute and CoSchedule are all great, but there’s a wide collection of lesser known outlets out there that are awesome and you’ve likely never heard of them.
The following list is comprised of our five favorite content marketing blogs based on content quality, publishing frequency, actionable insights, and anecdotal evidence:
Convince and Convert
What: The Convince & Convert blog is fueled by a team of advisors that offer strategic digital marketing services to Fortune 500 companies. They focus extensively on content marketing, social media, digital analytics, email and organic search. In addition to strategic consulting, the firm also runs Convince & Convert Media, a fast-growing education company that produces six podcasts, a digital magazine, email, webinars, and white papers.
Why we’re fans: We’re fans of the Convince and Convert blog because they continuously expose readers to new and effective content marketing tools that align with the strategies they teach and have found to be most successful from their experiences.
Recent articles we’ve enjoyed:
- The Formula to Calculate Content Marketing ROI
- How to Uncover Hidden Content Opportunities with Topic Archaeology
- A Simple Content Marketing Case Study That Works
The Drip Email Marketing Blog
What: Drip is an email marketing solution that makes it easy to intelligently automate your email efforts, qualify your leads and shorten your sales cycle (they were recently acquired by Leadpages.)
Why we’re fans: The Drip team does a nice job pairing high-level email marketing best practices with “swipe-and-deploy automation ideas.” Much of the content centers upon how to use Drip to generate and nurture leads. They highlight the importance of recipient segmentation and automation workflows, as well as provide tips associated with email etiquette and how to increase open rates and engagement.
Recent articles we’ve enjoyed:
- How to Become a Marketing Automation Expert: 9 Skills You Need to Get & Keep the Job
- 3 Email List Segmentation Essentials: Tags, Custom Fields and Events
Bizible’s Pipeline Marketing Blog
What: Bizible is a B2B marketing attribution and revenue planning platform that enables companies to measure and plan for revenue. Their platform automatically tracks marketing interactions across different channels, provides measurable insights, and helps companies understand and impact future decision making.
Why we’re fans: Much of the Bizible’s content centers upon revenue attribution and measurement. For us this is extremely relevant. With our content service it’s absolutely necessary that we not only drive revenue, but institute strategies and tactics that tell us where the revenue is coming from and why. Bizible’s content provides a winning blueprint to do so.
Recent articles we’ve enjoyed:
- Revenue Attribution 101: Tracking, Connecting, and Crediting Marketing Touchpoints to Revenue
- Marketing Forecasting: How to Build a Strong Foundation for Every Marketing Strategy
- Why Annual Planning In B2B Marketing Is Seriously Flawed, And How To Fix It
Bidsketch
What: Bidsketch is proposal software used by freelancers, consultants, and agencies to create professional looking client proposals at accelerated rates. On their blog they generate and publish content that speaks to the psychology behind closing large deals and managing client relationships.
Why we’re fans: The Bidsketch blog is unique from others on this list as they typically publish anecdotal content that speaks to ways they use content to help grow their business. For instance, they discuss the importance of using content to build trust and establish credibility. They also speak to the importance of “awareness”. I.e., why publishing educational content, hosting webinars, and putting together videos is necessary for capturing leads, nurturing them, and converting them into paying customers over time.
Recent articles we’ve enjoyed:
- How to Supercharge Your Sales Pipeline with Content
- 10 Free (or Nearly-Free) Marketing Strategies for New Entrepreneurs
- 4 Common Website Mistakes That Could Be Turning Potential Clients Away
POST-Advertising
What: Unlike the other blogs on this list which focus more on content marketing itself, POST-Advertising is an editorial series by Story Worldwide that discusses the importance of “storymaking” or the art and science of crafting and delivering stories that are uniquely ownable by a brand as well as welcomed and valued by their audiences.
Why we’re fans: For our done-for-you content service, the underlying notion of “storymaking” helps to inform our decisions when it comes to developing content. The POST-Advertising blog does a nice job weighing in on how to institute a disciplined, tested, and repeatable way for creating digital stories that are unique to a client’s brand.
Recent articles we’ve enjoyed:
The content marketing community is fortunate that there are so many individuals willing to share such valuable information to further the community as a whole.
By no means is this list comprehensive, and of course, it is based on personal preference. There are many exceptional content marketing blogs not mentioned in this post that we strongly encourage you to check out!
