121 CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGIES: TIPS, RESOURCES, EXAMPLES, TOOLS, & MORE!

Below is a conglomeration of content marketing strategies. We have compiled what has become a fantastic resource for our company. We hope you can use it for your own. We have content marketing articles, tips, resources, examples, case studies, tools, inspiration, and more. This post starts with the tips, but don’t forget to scroll down to see the other amazing resources and tools!

We will constantly be adding to this list. Enjoy!

CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGIES:

• Technical Hacks for Content Marketing - Awesome slide deck from Justin Briggs on how to utilize technical SEO for content marketing.
• How to Scale Credible Content -  Joe Griffin at iAcquire writes how their company scaled the identification of credible content producers.
• Twenty experts weigh in on solving their biggest content marketing pain points.
• Weird, Useful, Significant Internet Marketing - Great slide deck by Ian Laurie from Portent at SearchLove.
• The Case for Content: 620% Organic Growth - How adding quality content to different types of pages can increase traffic greatly, by Geoff Kenyon.
• How to Increase a New Website to Over 100,000 Organic Visits per Month - Great advice on content strategy here by Nick Eubanks.
• Data-Based Content Marketing That Won’t Break the Bank – One of the best pieces on content marketing, by Kane Jamison. It outlines how to utilize data with your content.
• Content, Conversion, and Calls to Action: Untangling the Ugly Mess - Joel Klettke writes about the importance of understanding your customer buying cycles.
• Why Creating Tools Can Be a Better Investment Than Creating Content – Awesome Quicksprout post about how creating tools can be the best content.
• Don’t Silo Me, Bro: Integrating Content Strategy Across Disciplines - Good content strategy post by Adria Saracino on the Distilled blog.
• Viral Content from ViperChill – This is a collaboration of the most popular posts from ViperChill. Great stuff here.
• Two great posts on MOZ about evergreen content here. One by Chris Fielden and one by Nick Eubanks.
• Creating and Developing Content Assets - The five stages of high quality content development by Venchito Tampon.
• Content With a Purpose: From Search to Conversion to Lifelong Customer - Slide deck from Mackenzie Fogelson about how to strategically use content to achieve business goals.
• The Content Marketing Manifesto – Great slide deck by Rand Fishkin. It talks about how content is the keystone to inbound marketing.
• 10 Unconventional Keyword Research Tips for Content Ideas - Some unique ways to generate content ideas.
• The Definitive Guide to Copywriting and the Advanced Guide to Content Marketing - Useful guides by Neil Patel at QuickSprout.
• How to Win Fans and Influence Users – Great slide deck about repurposing content to get the most bang for your buck by 97th Floor.
• Creating a Multi-Channel Content Marketing Strategy - Post on BlueGlass about combining earned media, paid media, and owned media.
• 5 Strategic Steps to Big Content -The process of creating big content by Mackenzie Fogelson.
• The New SEO Process (Quit Being Kanye) – Great post by Mike King (ipullrank) about the evolving SEO process and how content should be utilized.
• Awesome post by Jason Acidre about how to maximize evergreen content to fuel your sales and marketing. A must read.
• The New Rules of Big Content Promotion - Good tips from Simon Penson at Zazzle about the keys to promoting big content.
• The 38 Most Creative Content Ideas I’ve Ever Seen - Experts share their thoughts on creative content ideas.
• How to Become a Content Brand - Great insights about how some of the leading content brands operate.
• Bad Linkbait Needs to Die – Great post by Cyrus Shephard on MOZ about the benefits of creating linkable assets.
• Content Marketing through Email - John Doherty shares some great advice about a neglected strategy: content marketing through email.
• Great and useful content marketing checklist from Siege Media.
• 72 Ideas to Energize Your Content – There are some good ideas here to help mix up your content marketing efforts.
• How to Build Links to and Through your Branded Content - Good, actionable tips on utilizing your content with link building.
• 60 Experts Reveal Their Favorite Content Marketing Books – If you want to read books about content marketing, here’s a solid list.

DATA GATHERING TOOLS:

• http://data.gov.uk/ – The United Kingdom’s Open Data Project.
• http://www.data.gov/ and http://www.census.gov/ and http://www.bls.gov/cex/ – The U.S. Government has some good data available as well.
• https://books.google.com/ngrams – Google N Gram Viewer.
• http://www.gapminder.org/ – Gapminder shares lots of different data sets often.
• http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory – Google Public Data.
• http://www.reddit.com/r/datasets/ – Datasets on Reddit.
• http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home – Google Consumer Surveys.
• https://www.surveymonkey.com/ – Survey Monkey.
• http://www.quora.com/Data/Where-can-I-find-large-datasets-open-to-the-public – Good list on Quora of more data sets.

DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS:

• http://www-958.ibm.com/software/analytics/manyeyes/ – Many Eyes from IBM.
• http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/ - Create interactive data visualizations.
• http://www.google.com/drive/apps.html#fusiontables – Google Fusion Tables.
• http://www.statsilk.com/ – Create interactive graphs, maps, and charts.
• http://visual.ly/ and http://infogr.am/ and http://piktochart.com/ – Easily create infographics.

Feel free to reference http://pointblankseo.com/visualizations from Jon Cooper for a deeper dive on data visualizations.

MISCELLANEOUS TOOLS & RESOURCES FOR CONTENT IDEA GENERATION AND CREATION:

• https://github.com/abenzer/represent-map – Map making tool on Github.
• http://xaviershay.github.io/tufte-graph/ – Graph making tool on Github.
• http://www.portent.com/tools/title-maker/ – Content Idea Generator tool from Portent.
• https://socialcrawlytics.com/ – Use Social Crawlytics to see what types of content your competitors are sharing.
• http://raventools.com/blog/tools-instant-content-ideas/ – 15 free tools for instant content ideas.
• http://flowsmapper.geo.census.gov/flowsmapper/map.html – Nice map/data tool from the US Census Bureau that can be used to generate content ideas.
• http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/instant/about.html – Google instant search / DONT HIT ENTER (h/t Wil Reynolds).
• http://memegenerator.net – Make memes.
• http://www.tagxedo.com/ – Create pretty word cloud pictures.
• http://www.greenlaneseo.com/outdated-content-finder/ – Awesome tool from Bill Sebald: Find old, outdated content that needs updating.
• http://www.google.com/trends/ – Google Trends.
• http://ubersuggest.org and http://soovle.com and http://www.wordstream.com/keywords – Keyword idea generators.
• http://radurls.com/ – Tool that finds trending URLs in real-time – Use for content generation.
• http://buzzsumo.com/ – Social insights for content marketing campaigns (and SEO too).
• http://trendsmap.com/ – Real-time Local Twitter Trends map.
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday – Useful resource from BBC to find news content from the past.
• https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch – Facebook Graph Search.
• https://twitter.com/search-advanced – Advanced Twitter Search (sentiment, question).

For more content (and other related) tools, check out this awesome post by iAcquire: http://www.iacquire.com/blog/200-online-marketing-tools-from-pubcon/

PAID CONTENT DISCOVERY & MARKETING TOOLS:

• http://disqus.com/
• http://nrelate.com/
• http://outbrain.com
• http://stumbleupon.com
• http://zemanta.com
• http://taboola.com
• http://simplereach.com/
• http://www.sharethrough.com/
• http://written.com/
• http://newscred.com/
• https://contently.com/
• http://www.onespot.com/

EXAMPLES OF GREAT CONTENT:

• http://www.matthewisabel.com/projects/deathrates/geographic.html – Mortality rates in the U.S. – data fromhttp://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_04.pdf
• http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/cinemagraph/ – Collection of cool cinemagraphs.
• http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/10/13/russia/ - Amazing piece by the New York Times.
• http://flowingdata.com/2013/10/14/pizza-place-geography/#more-32532 - Pizza place geography around the country.
• http://www.businessinsider.com/we-found-where-the-hipsters-are-coming-from-2013-9 - Analysis of where the Brooklyn-area hipsters are coming from.
• http://www.dangersoffracking.com/ - Cool visualization of information about the dangers of fracking.
• http://www.yeedor.com/data-portraits/ – Beautiful visual data portraits by Yeedor. Here’s a cool one about coffee statements: http://www.yeedor.com/self-portraits/coffee-statements-2011/
• http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/slate_labs/2013/10/united_sports_of_america_map_if_each_state_could_have_only_one_sport_what.html - If a state could have just one sport, what would it be?
• https://mozy.com/blog/infographics/mustaches-who-made-them-famous-and-who-followed/ – Infographic about moustaches and who made them famous.
• http://www.simplybusiness.co.uk/microsites/googleplus-for-small-businesses/ - Awesome interactive small business guide to Google Plus.
• http://hereistoday.com/ - This one really puts things in perspective.
• https://www.sweatergenerator.com/#/main/landing – Fun microsite and campaign by Coca Cola.
• http://www.happier.co.uk/infogram/amount-top-companies-earn-per-second.html – How much do the largest companies make per second?
• http://planefinder.net/ – Live plane tracking tool.
• http://www.cabletv.com/the-walking-dead – The Walking Dead interactive graphic.
• http://www.concerthotels.com/minimal-music-quiz - Really fun and addictive music quiz that wouldn’t be too hard to make.
• http://www.techadvisor.co.uk/test-centre/mobile-phone/iphone-5s-vs-peppa-pig-phone/ - Funny comparison of an iPhone 5S and the Peppa Pig Phone.
• http://www.rehabs.com/explore/your-face-on-meth/ – Great interactive visualizing your face on meth.
• http://www.footballasfootball.com/ – NFL team logos redesigned as European football (soccer) badges.
• http://www.matthewisabel.com/projects/deathrates/geographic.html - Mortality rates in the U.S. for various afflictions.
• http://www.concerthotels.com/100-years-of-rock – 100 Years of Rock Music.
• http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/income-upshot - What does a person’s income say about their life?
• http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/11/07/interactive-this-is-how-much-money-twitter-owes-you/ - A tool released the day after the Twitter IPO that calculates how much Twitter “owes” you based on your follower count.
• http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1600-Pennsylvania-Ave-NW-Washington-DC-20006/84074482_zpid/ - The White House listing on Zillow.
• http://dev.citysdk.waag.org/buildings/ - Buildings in the Netherlands shaded by color based on when they were built.
• http://www.thistothat.com/ - A very simple but very useful tool. A testament to the fact that content and tools do not always have to be beautiful and amazing.
• http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/who-gains/#/?start=1985&end=2008 – When income grows, who gains?
• http://incoming.shopify.com/ – A real-time look at sales from around the world on Shopify sites.

“BORING” PAGES ON YOUR SITE – MAKE THEM FUN!

• http://mailchimp.com/2012/ – MailChimp made their annual report fun.
• https://www.airbnb.com/annual/ – Airbnb showed their company progress in a beautiful way.
• https://www.distilled.net/contact/ – Even a “Contact Us” page can be used for quality content (scroll down and watch video).
• http://www.quicksprout.com/contact/ – Funny and useful contact page from Neil Patel.
• https://www.distilled.net/about/people/ – Another from Distilled. Make your “Meet the Team” page entertaining!
• http://moz.com/about – Beautiful and informative About page from MOZ.
• http://www.andrewreifman.com/# – Show off your skills (click on About section).

WEBSITES FOR INSPIRATION:

• http://flowingdata.com/
• http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/

If you have any suggestions that should be added, please email us at info [at] wallaroomedia [dot] com

Post by Brandon Doyle