Content marketing

What’s Trending: Set (and Hit) Your Objectives

Strategic marketing starts with a destination in mind. Setting your objectives is a way to hold your marketing accountable for specific results: This campaign should improve awareness, as evidenced by an increase in social media followers. Without clear objectives in mind, and a plan to meet those objectives, we’re just committing random acts of marketing.

LinkedIn Marketing just published our new Guide to Objective-Based Advertising. We want to help marketers focus in, nail down what they’re setting out to do, and ultimately experience greater success. 

This week’s roundup can help you meet your objectives, too. Read on for a detailed guide to SEO auditing, conventional-wisdom-bucking B2B branding advice, and more.

What Marketers Were Reading and Sharing Most This Week:

1. Failure Is Always an Option (and an Opportunity)

“While failure is inevitable, framed correctly, it’s also a tool.” Anna Hrach shares her tips for turning a marketing fail into an optimization opportunity.

2. 7 Reasons Why an HTML Sitemap Is a Must-Have

Organize your content with an HTML sitemap to increase search engine visibility, organize content for your audience, and more. Eli Schwartz delivers the goods here.

3. Why We Removed 3,000 Pieces of Outdated Content From the HubSpot Blog

Okay, we all know why you remove dead content: it’s good for SEO and user experience. What’s intriguing here is how Aja Frost and her team determined which content to get rid of, and she describes the process in highly useful detail.

4. Content Marketing, Employee Advocacy, and the Future of B2B

This podcast episode from MarketingProfs features Marketing Insider Group CEO Michael Brenner in a wide-ranging, 25-minute talk about the state of the art in B2B content marketing.

5. 4 Trends and Tactics to Help B2B Marketers Drive ROI

This grab-bag of tips from Kelly Miller covers content creation, marketing team structures, new technology, and more. There’s bound to be a useful tidbit in here for every marketer.

6. Why Content Strategy Is at the Heart of Digital Transformation

Content marketers, take the wheel: Clare Forster makes a convincing case for why (and how) the marketing team can lead transformation for their organizations.

7. Deadlines Will Improve Your Content Marketing ROI By Nearly 2.5x

Never underestimate the motivating power of a ticking clock. Jordan Teicher explains how deadlines boost efficiency, with plenty of data to back up his claims.

8. Marketers Should Consider Breaking These Four Unwritten Rules Of B2B Branding

There’s no shortage of articles about how B2B marketers need to loosen up and be empathetic. Thankfully, this piece from Udi Ledergor digs deeper, highlighting taboos that modern marketers should feel free to smash. 

9. 10 Pillars for a Video Content Marketing Strategy

Writing about video is like dancing about architecture. Fortunately, this blog post includes a video to illustrate the handy tips from Adam Turner.

10. Why Marketers Should Care about Employee-Generated Content

In this video interview, Jay Baer makes the care for employee advocacy as a powerful content creation and promotion tactic. 

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