The 40 Most Helpful Tips from the Content Marketing Institute

If you follow FEARLESS on social media (click the icons above to find our pages), you’ve probably seen us share articles from the Content Marketing Institute. And for good reason: they’re such a darn good resource!

The Content Marketing Institute is an educational organization dedicated to helping anyone who wants to learn about content, learn about it. They draw articles from content marketers across the world, many of whom are movers and shakers in their industries.

What’s even better is that they write for audiences that aren’t necessarily in the “content world.” So if you’re not a content marketer and want to learn how to improve your SEO, conversion rates, or brand storytelling, they’re going to be a very helpful resource for you.

To help you get a feel for the kinds of things they write about, I put together this list of what I consider the 40 most helpful tips they’ve written about in the last six months or so. I hope that they’re as much help to you as they were to me.

More than that, I hope they give you the information and tools you need to take your content to the next level.

Here are the 40 most helpful tips from the Content Marketing Institute…

1. Creating great content only matters if you get people to see and read it. So focus on search engine result page (SERP) rankings. (Source)
2. Be informative, authoritative, and write from your own point of view. (Source)
3. Adapt your strategy and approach to your budget size. (Source)
4. Long-form is great, but not for everything. Optimize your content length for the user experience. (Source)
5. Spend time doing smart keyword research. (Source)
6. Set rules and boundaries, both for yourself and for all the contributors you’re working with. (Source)
7. Never lose sight of your company goals. You’re there to drive the business forward. (Source)
8. An efficient content pipeline will keep your production moving forward and help you meet your deadlines. (Source)
9. Make sure you’re reviewing your analytics on a regular basis to know what’s working, what isn’t, and what you should be focusing your efforts on. (Source)
10. Engagement matters, but it’s a means to an end — growing your audience, leads, and conversions. (Source)
11. Be skeptical of what the vanity metrics are telling you. (Source)
12. Leverage outside sources. You should be drawing attention to all content that helps your customers, whether it’s owned by your business or not. (Source)
13. Quality matters, but so does quantity. Work on improving your writing speed. (Source)
14. Create (and stick to) a content calendar. (Source)
15. Don’t be afraid to deviate from your calendar when there’s an important event in the news. (Source)
16. Have a fully thought out and planned social media strategy. Invest some time in setting goals and objectives for your business. (Source)
17. Use stock photography sparingly. (Source)
18. Don’t self-sabotage because you haven’t thought through some basics things your content needs to have, like executive buy-in. (Source)
19. Be creative. Push boundaries. (Source)
20. If you need to refresh a blog post with updated information, don’t just update the old page. Republish it as something brand new. (Source)
21. Gather and use original data. (Source)
22. Help make that data much more communicable through data visualization. (Source)
23. Remember that you are a brand storyteller. The singular piece of content you’re writing right now is part of a much larger narrative — your company’s narrative. (Source)
24. Stay on top of current trends and predictions. Even if they don’t all come to fruition, you’ll be grateful to know about the ones that do. (Source)
25. Analyze and optimize for conversions. (Source)
26. Build a pillar page and create a topic cluster around it to shoot up your website authority. (Source)
27. Listen to your audience. They’ll tell you what they want to hear from you. (Source)
28. Write as a guest blogger to take advantage of other people’s audiences. (Source)
29. Always provide substance. Cut out or beef up thin content. (Source)
30. When the unexpected comes up, like in the case of COVID-19, take the time to build an interim content strategy to account for and adapt to the changes. (Source)
31. Don’t be fake news. Fact-check! (Source)
32. Readers are leaders. Read blogs, books, and other content to keep your mind engaged and ideas fresh. (Source)
33. Email isn’t dead. (Source)
34. Invest the time in bringing stakeholders and other team members on board with content marketing, even if they just don’t get it. (Source)
35. There are plenty of AI tools out there that can help you improve your writing. Consider using some of them. (Source)
36. Audit your content regularly. (Source)
37. Consider a more narrow, targeted approach to stimulate leads and business. (Source)
38. Use tools and apps to keep yourself productive and sane. (Source)
39. If you’re going to hire a ghostwriter, collaborate! (Source)
40. It’s not just about what people read. It’s about what they see. Invest in high quality visual storytelling. (Source)

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