Blogging has not died — it has simply evolved from a consumer activity into a advanced marketing tactic.

The best marketers have figured out that if you’re going to have long-term success in this content marketing evolution, investment in owned digital properties is mandatory.

71% of marketers are increasing their spend on content marketing this year.  More specifically, 80% of marketers use blogging as a part of their content marketing mix, as reported by CMI and MarketingProfs in a recent benchmark study.

The key differentiation of the best bloggers (10k+_views per month) for each stage are as follows:

Invest in Your Owned Media

When looking at overall content marketing strategy, the best bloggers understand that their blog is just one piece of the owned media puzzle, and also focus on building up their website, micro-sites and social communities as well.

In addition to hiring resources for blogging, these marketers understand the importance of a governance team or center of excellence within their organization.

Production

Although content quality is more important than quantity, publishing blog posts on a consistent basis is still essential.  However, publishing a lot of short posts just to increase frequency will not lead to success. The length of blog posts is also important. More than 50% of their posts have 500+ words.

Don’t Be Afraid to Look Outside of Your Organization

To create content smart marketers use multiple resources such as internal staff, agencies, writing services and freelancers.

Publishing

The majority of bloggers we surveyed use the same tool for publishing content (a resounding 66% of respondents use WordPress over tools like Drupal or HubSpot.)

What sets apart the best bloggers is their ability to promote content in new and innovative ways.

Source: Content Marketing Forum, www.curata.com/blog
Keywords: Best Practices,Slider,Trends