A Spectacular List of 240+ Tips, Tricks and Resources for Content Marketing

From beginners to old-hats, we all have something to learn about content marketing. We know you have better things to do than spending your days scouring the web for the info you need, so we’ve taken the liberty of doing that for you.

Behold our epic list of the very best tips, info and resources to kick-start your content marketing strategy.

Understanding content marketing

• What’s the difference between content marketing and copywriting? (Copyblogger)
• The three essentials of breakthrough content marketing (Copyblogger)
• If you’re not content marketing, you’re not marketing (Content Marketing Institute)
• What is content marketing? (AdAge)
• The art of content marketing (Smashing Magazine)
• 7 reasons content marketing is better than link building (Search Engine Watch)

Using content marketing for SEO results

• An optimized framework for better content marketing and SEO (TopRank)
• Get SEO value from your content marketing campaign (Pubcon)
• SEO content marketing: 4 ways to generate potential customers and convert them (Stepcase Lifehack)
• Content marketing and SEO: a marriage made in mountain view (Vertical Measures)
• Content marketing and SEO: the world doesn’t need another blog post (MarketingSherpa Blog)

Tips for setting up an editorial calendar

• 3 components of a content marketing editorial calendar that works (Copyblogger)
• How to create an editorial process to publish web content (Reach Customers Online)
• How to build a blog editorial calendar even if you don’t know where to start (Pushing Social)
• How to create a social media editorial calendar (Search Engine Watch)

Building followers on social networks

• 8 guaranteed ways to increase social media reach (HubSpot)
• Building a community with social media: 3 things you must know (The Mogul Mom)
• Online community building: rules of the road (Social Media Today)
• Why you need social media followers who won’t ever buy (HubSpot)
• 4 ways to grow a Twitter following that matters (Social Media Examiner)

Building an email subscription list

• How to get more subscribers for your email list (Copyblogger)
• Why periodically deleting email subscribers makes sense (Blog Marketing Academy)
• Get more blog email subscribers with this quick step-by-step process (Pushing Social)
• How I increased my email subscribers by 500% in one week (Social Mouths)
• How to find 697 email subscribers the first year (Business 2 Community)
• 13 ways to get more email subscribers (Digital Telepathy)
• The 7 high-converting places to add email sign-up forms to build your list (Social Triggers)
• Five ways to make your email marketing work better (Copyblogger)
• 7 tips for crafting an email call to action that works (Business 2 Community)

Creating effective calls to action

• Call to action buttons: examples and best practices (Smashing Magazine)
• 10 techniques for an effective call to action (Boag World)
• How to: call to action (SEO Smarty)
• 34 incredibly strong calls to action to make your visitors click, phone or buy (Cowley On)

Generating content ideas

• 6 ways to create new content ideas (Business Know-how)
• The big list of content calendar events (distilled)
• 7 ways to generate blog content ideas using web analytics insight (Content Marketing Institue)
• 13 ways to make idea generation a daily habit (Blue Glass)
• 60 proven ways to generate unlimited article writing ideas (Wake Up Cloud)

Tool to help you find content

• Clipboard (Bookmarking service)
• News.me (News curator)
• Curate Me (News curator)
• StumbleUpon (Social discovery service)
• Strawberryj.am (Social link curator)

 

Must-see slide presentations

• F%$#! Link Building. Content Markting FTW (SEOmoz)
• From content to customer (ELOQUA + JESS3)
• How to build a better Inbound marketing machine (Marketo)
• A case for content (ELOQUA + JESS3)
• Content strategy: content is king! (Karen McGrane)
• Are content strategists the next corporate rock stars? (Mark Fidelman)

Must-read blogs

• Brian Solis (Technology and business)
• Post-Advertising (Marketing)
• Web Ink Now (Marketing and leadership)
• Marketing Interactions (Marketing)
• Idea Launch (Content marketing)
• Chris Brogan (Business and marketing)
• Content Is Currency (Content marketing)
• Sparksheet (Content marketing)
• Copyblogger (Content marketing and copywriting)
• Heidi Cohen (Marketing)
• Joe Pulizzi (Content marketing)

Must-follow Twitter users

• Rand Fishkin (CEO and founder of SEOmoz)
• Dharmesh Shah (Founder and CTO of HubSpot)
• Dan Martell (CEO & Founder of Clarity.fm; Co-Founder of Flowtown)
• Hiten Shah (Co-Founder of KISSmetrics)
• David Meerman Scott (Author of 8 books including The New Rules of Marketing & PR)
• Copyblogger (Advice from the editorial team at Copyblogger Media)
• Jay Baer (President of Convince and Convert)
• Mari Smith (Author of The New Relationship Marketing)
• Michael Stelzner (Founder of Social Media Examiner)

Must-circle Google+ users

• Leo Laporte (Founder of the TWiT Netcast Network)
• Darren Rowse (Editor of ProBlogger and Digital Photography School)
• Guy Kawasaki (Author and former chief evangelist of Apple)
• Gina Trapani (ThinkUp creator, This Week in Google host, founding/former editor of Lifehacker)
• Chris Brogan (Professional speaker and New York Times bestselling author)
• Jeff Jarvis (Author of Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live and What Would Google Do?)
• Mike Elgan (user-voted #7 most recommended person to follow on Google+)
• Christina Warren (Entertainment Editor of Mashable
• Vic Gundotra (Senior Vice President, Engineering at Google)
• Amber Mac (Owner of MGImedia, Speaker at The Lavin Agency, TV Host on CTV and Podcaster at TWiT)

Must-listen podcasts

• Dishy Mix (Business and marketing)
• Total Picture (Business)
• Six Pixels of Separation (Digital marketing)
• Marketing Over Coffee (Marketing)
• Duct Tape Marketing (Small business marketing)
• The Social Hour (Social media and technology)

Must-join LinkedIn groups

• Social Media Marketing
• Digital Marketing & Social Media
• Social Media Today
• The Content Wrangler Community
• Content Strategy
• Marketing Communication

Must-follow Pinterest boards

• Marketing+ (Andres Ossa)
• Marketing (Gary G Social Media)
• Marketing Maven (Mindy Koch)
• Content Marketing (Robin Yearsley)
• Content Marketing (Media Tapper)
• Content Marketing/Blogging Infographics (The Catalyst Partnership)
• Guerilla Marketing (Joe Sonnefeld)
• Marketing (Justine Fritz)

Best brands using Instagram for content marketing

• Warby Parker
• Puma
• Boston Bruins
• Sharpie
• Starbucks
• NPR

 

Content publishing tools

• Tweetdeck
• Seesmic Ping
• Hoosuite
• Buffer
• Hello Txt
• Shareaholic

Whitepapers and eBooks

• What is a white paper, anyway? (That White Paper Guy)
• 4 tips on finding fantastic content for your white paper (Content Marketing Institute)
• Free places to publish a white paper (That White Paper Guy)
• How to write and use white papers in your content marketing strategy (SEO Copywriting)
• White papers versus e-books(That White Paper Guy)
• How to write an eBook part 1: why it’s a good idea (Blogging With Amy)
• How to write a high-quality eBook in 30 days (Copyblogger)

Slideshows

• Increasing your blog traffic with SlideShare (Daily Blog Tips)
• How to use SlideShare for your content marketing [10 tips] (Business 2 Community)
• Top 5 SlideShare marketing tips (Convince and Convert)
• 8 ways to get the biggest marketing bang out of SlideShare (Mashable)
• 5 tips for an effective SlideShare presentation (socialfresh)

How to write super blog titles

• 10 sure-fire headline formulas that work (Copyblogger)
• 18 resources to help you write better blog titles (Blogussion)
• 20 ways to write kick-butt titles for your blog (Business 2 Community)
• How to master the art of exceptional blog titles (HubSpot)
• Throw out your keywords and go creative with your blog titles (Webenso)
• Are your titles irresistibly click-worthy and viral?! (SEOmoz)
• Blog titles: how to write winners even if you suck at it (Traffic Generation Cafe)
• Defeat writer’s block with a blog title worksheet (Inbound Marketing Agents)

Places to find royalty-free images

• Flickr Creative Commons
• Compfight
• Creativity 103
• Geograph
• Open Clip Art
• Photo Everywhere
• CreativeCommons.org
• Pixabay

Places to find guest bloggers

• My Blog Guest
• Blogger LinkUp
• Triberr Bonfire
• Guest Blog It
• Guest Post Exchange

Places to find blogs for guest-posting

• Alltop
• Technorati
• Blog Catalog
• Blogarama

 

Using video for content marketing

• 5 reasons why you should use video in your content marketing (One Spoon At A Time)
• 16 Tips to boost your YouTube marketing strategy (Daily Blog Tips)
• Killer tips to making web videos and marketing them like a pro (Marketing Pilgrim)
• 29 tips to make your video marketing easy (Social Media Examiner)
• 5 tips for video marketing (iBlogzone)
• How to use video to obtain expert status (Internet Marketing Tools)
• How to get hundreds of extra video views with one simple strategy (Katie Freiling)
• 12 tips for effective video marketing (itbusiness.ca)

Places to seed videos

• YouTube
• Daily Motion
• Vimeo
• Flixya
• Hey!Spread
• Vid.ly
• Facebook Video
• Pinterest
• Flickr

 

Content marketing infographics

• 22 ways to create compelling content/ (The @Steveology Blog)
• The content marketing matrix (Smart Insights)
• The content marketing explosion (Business 2 Community)
• Content marketing usage (by tactic) (Content Marketing Institute)
• The content grid (Business 2 Community)
• The 21 types of content we all crave (Content Marketing Institute)
• Seven content marketing tips from top chefs (MarketingProfs Daily Fix)
• The rise of content marketing (inBlurbs)
• The top 5 challenges in creating content (TechValidate)
• How people spend their time online (Alltop)
• A brief history of content marketing (Content Marketing Institute)

Tips on making infographics

• How to create great infographics (.net magazine)
• Tips, tricks and resources to make your own gorgeous infographics (The Next Web)
• How to make a shitty infographic (jwz blog)
• Infographic tips (Remarkablogger)

Resources for making infographics

• StatSilk
• Hohli (online charts builder)
• Creately (diagrams and flowcharts)
• Visual.ly (Find and make infographics)
• IBM Manyeyes (create visualisations with your own data)
• Google Public Data (explore and visualize large data-sets)
• Wordle (tag clouds and word visualisations)
• Gap Minder (fact-based world stats and data sets)
• Chartsbin (interactive maps and charts)

 

Tools to help you curate content

• Storify (Social media aggregator)
• Pinterest (Image bookmarking service)
• Tumblr (Media-focused blog platform)
• StumbleUpon (Social discovery service)
• Bundlr (Bookmarking service)
• Clipboard (Bookmarking service)
• Scoop.it! (Social media aggregator)
• Taptu (News curator)

Repurposing your content

• How to intelligently repurpose your content across platforms and why (Business 2 Community)
• 5 great starting points for content recycling (Content Marketing Institute)
• Repurposing content: a key content marketing strategy (Accendo Digital)
• 12 ways to repurpose content (Lead Liaison)
• Reposted vs. repurposed content – what’s the difference? (Business 2 Community)
• 5 ways to repurpose your blog posts (Marketri)
• Three ‘R’s of content marketing: review, refresh, repurpose (MKTX)
• 3 ways to repurpose old content to create new premium products (Business 2 Community)

 

Connecting with thought leaders

• Use Twitter to find thought leaders in your industry (PCWorld)
• 5 tips to get industry influencers to follow you on Twitter (Business 2 Community)
• How to find influencers and measure their impact (Myack)
• How to get influencers to promote your stuff (Backstage)
• How to get your blog noticed and promoted by super influencers (Pushing Social)
• How to find the most influential people on Twitter in your niche (Stay On Search)
• How to find key influencers (Lockergnome)

Tools to help you find thought leaders

• Klout
• Addict-o-matic
• Tweet Grader
• Monitter
• Tweet Level
• Twitalyzer
• WeFollow
• Social Mention

Places to find people for outsourcing

• Odesk
• Freelancer
• 99 Designs
• Contently
• Dribble

Tools to track your blog stats

• Google Analytics
• KissMetrics
• MixPanel
• Chartbeat

Tools to track your social media stats

• TwentyFeet
• TweetStats
• TweetReach
• Crowdbooster
• Hootsuite
• Sprout Social
• Viral Heat
• PeopleBrowsr
• Page Lever
• Simply Measured

Image credit: Nikti