What’s Trending: Say Bonjour, Ciao, Güten Tag and Cheerio to Advertising Week Europe

Advertising Week Europe just wrapped up in London. Our colleagues at the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions EMEA blog have spent the whole week soaking up insights and hanging out with brilliant marketers of every stripe. And thankfully, they’re bringing home some cool B2B insights for the rest of us.

Advertising Week provides a good reminder for marketers: Always keep your mind open and ready to learn. The more we learn, the better we do—and the more we realize how much we have left to learn. It’s a privilege to work in an industry with so many opportunities to put new knowledge into action.

We’ll get our shot at Advertising Week in September. Until then, this week’s roundup of trending content can help you keep your mind open and expanding.

What’s Trending in Marketing This Week:

1. Why Does User Intent Matter So Much To Your SEO?

If your content is destined to live online, it only makes sense to understand how it will help web searchers achieve their goals. In this CMI guest post, Julia McCoy explains how to account for user intent with each piece of content.

2. The State of Social Media Demographics: 2017 Benchmarks [Infographic]

It’s seems like just yesterday we were introduced to the concept of the “second screen.” In this introduction to a well-crafted infographic by the team at Tracx, HubSpot’s Amanda Zantal-Wiener juxtaposes current trends with ancient history to explain mobile’s current role.

3. Mapping Keywords to the Buyer Journey in SEO

Columnist Janet Driscoll Miller provides her process for mapping the right keywords to the right content and measuring their effectiveness.

4. Broad vs. Niche Content: How to Find the Right Content Marketing Balance

Now that sales departments share their metrics with the marketing department, it’s on marketers to make sure content programs account for the entire funnel. TopRank Marketing’s Joshua Nite helps you achieve balance by demonstrating what unbalanced content looks like.

5. Retain Your Talent: Why Video Is Valuable to Your Content Strategy

I’m guessing “produce more video” isn’t among most marketing directors’ first dozen answers to the question, “how can we better attract and retain talent?” Forbes contributor John Hall explains why it should be.

6. Storytelling Is Not a Strategy

Connecting content to ROI is a concept we advocate for (and facilitate) here at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Contently Chief Marketing Officer Kelly Wenzel agrees, noting that content marketing budgets have grown too big for brands to rely on intuition.

7. Refining Your Distribution Strategy: Why You Need to Do This Now

Ever feel like you’re producing too much content for too little ROI? You’re not alone. Fortunately, Manita Dosanjh has a fix: “Bring distribution into every phase.”

8. 5 Types of Video Content Perfect for Each Stage of the Customer Journey

We’ve already discussed video’s hidden ability to retain talent. In this CMI guest post, Juan Mendez expounds on a more familiar application of video: achieving marketing results. The post features, what else, videos to illustrate Juan’s points about video, including this example of an “about” video from HubSpot.

9. Closing the Skills Gap: Your Marketing Team Is a Technology Team

There’s a decent chance that CMOs will spend more on technology than CIOs this year. With more tech resources comes more responsibility. Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard helps you create a culture of learning to ensure you’re capitalizing on all your newfound tech.

10. 6 Google Analytics Data Points You Can use to Drive Content Campaign Success

Entrepreneur contributor Aaron Agius helps you harness the power of Google Analytics beyond SEO, providing six GA insights that, when implemented correctly, lead to smarter marketing.

For the latest insights from Advertising Week and beyond, subscribe to the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions blog.