5 Resources for Your Best Year (of Content) Yet

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Issue 27 | January 17, 2019 | 5 Resources for Your Best Year (of Content) Yet

Data is the new oil. Or at least, that’s a reasonable economics argument – it’s the modern-day resource that is most in demand. It’s how we spend our free time, making and consuming it in massive batches. It’s the product for sale at many of the biggest global companies today. It’s the north star for all of our business and personal decisions. What’s our spending this month? Let me pull up some data. Did I take enough steps today? Data time. What’s getting clicks on my website? You get it.

So, a present for you: some useful data about what’s happening in content marketing. Here are five resources on the tips, trends and best practices across the content value chain. Poke through – you might find some useful data to guide your 2019 content strategy.

1. The latest B2B research report from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI).

I love the CMI precisely because they gather data. Here’s their latest annual report on content trends among B2B marketers, where they report on what formats people are using, how they’re forecasting 2019 budgets and what kinds of technology they find useful.

2. And the B2C version.

If you’re more of a retail marketer, check out the B2C version. Retail marketing is a bit of a different beast, though the strategies for B2B and B2C reflect very similar trends. One key difference: B2B is more likely to use in-person events for marketing, while B2C is more likely to use offers and incentives. They both rank email campaigns and educational content as their top two most effective methods for nurturing an audience.

3. The Savvy Investor Awards.

Interested in what’s trending in the institutional white paper world? Financial marketing firm Kurtosys partnered with Savvy Investor, a “knowledge network” for institutional investors and pension sponsors that publishes industry white papers, and they recently put together an awards list. (Data point: a blog post I wrote in 2017 on financial content award winners was my most popular ever!) (Disclosure point: I blog for Kurtosys from time to time – see here, here and here.)

4. A roundup of year-ahead investment outlooks.

While you’re looking at Savvy Investor, take a gander at their selection of year-ahead outlooks and other recent content from many of the biggest financial brands. Since outlook materials are usually the single most popular kind of content for financial companies, it’s an especially valuable exercise to see what the competition is up to.

5. What the people want: DemandGen’s Content Preferences Report.

You have to sign up for this one (sorry…us content marketers can be so bothersome about that…), but it’s free and there’s some interesting stuff. It’s all about what the content consumers of the world are thinking – and I’m sure it’ll sound familiar. They’re tired of internet junk and they care more about getting information from a trusted brand. They love blogs and podcasts for preliminary research stages. They want good content.

Thanks as always for reading, and I hope you find these data bits and pieces to be valuable!

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