Everyone is drowning in content, 
which is often of little value. To help you make the most of your reading time, I’m sharing five of my favorite content-marketing articles and highlighting what I think makes these articles special.
Create, Distribute, and Share: 15 Essential Content Marketing Templates by Jodi Harris, Content Marketing Institute
This article contains lots of great tips including length guidelines for content ranging from blog posts to YouTube videos. Don’t miss her “9 Rules for Serving up an ‘Appetizing’ Headline” and “9 Simple Tips for SEO Success.”
How to Create 10x Content by Rand Fishkin, Moz
The author gives advice on how to develop content that is “10 times better than the best content” for a particular keyword or phrase. The advice includes getting a deep understanding of why people are interested in the topic, addressing the issue in a new way, and presenting the content in a different way.
How to Create a Best-in-Class Infographic Series in 6 Steps by Richard Silvester, Content Marketing Institute
These step-by-step directions cover everything you need to know to develop an infographic series, from choosing your theme and crunching the data to marketing the series. Among other tips, the author recommends having three to eight infographics in a series.
Link Building Case Study: How I Increased my Search Traffic by 110% in 14 Days by Brian Dean, Backlinko
This outlines the “skyscraper” technique whereby you take good content (a “link magnet”) and make it better. Among the suggestions: take a good list and annotate it with helpful information. The article inspired this annotated list.
How to Transform Complex Data into Understandable and Shareable Visuals by Clare McDermott, Content Marketing Institute
The author reports on an interview with Scott Berinato, author of Good Charts: The HBR Guide to Making Smarter, More Persuasive Data Visualizations. Berinato recommends that non-graphics professionals who want to create better charts use tools such as Plotly, Datawrapper, and Quadrigram. For visual exploration, he recommends Tableau and old-fashioned sketching.
That’s what I’ve been reading. What about you? What material have you found helpful?
