Best content strategy links of the week, December 12

This week we focus on content marketing, hashtags, personas and the future of law enforcement… Research: UK Content Marketers Are Confident, Lack Strategy At first glance this Content Marketing Institute report might appear to give us brits a whipping, but the news is actually good. According to the report we’re using a creative range of storytelling techniques – but when it comes to documented strategy, we must try harder.

Here’s the report in all it’s glory:

Nine of the best examples of content marketing from 2013 Looking through some of these campaigns I started to wonder if I was experiencing glorified advertorials. What do you think? Would love to hear your comments below…

Still, I do love the Chipote campaign, even if it’s just for the  music…

Oh, ok then – one more. This time it’s Brew Dog. I love the way they’ve pitched this – the uniqueness of craft beer, the roots of the company and how you can become more than just a consumer…

What is content marketing and why do you need it? I loved this definition of content in Christopher Ratcliff’s article: “Content should be one (or all) of three things: entertaining, interesting or useful. If the content isn’t any of the above, then the content has no value and we won’t stake our online reputation by sharing it. Your company might as well be pumping bilge down a pipeline and be thoroughly ignored for it.”

Topic analysis and top tasks Nice blog post by GOV.UK on their use of topics. I’m sure Google will love this even more as we move to more topic-based structures across the web. As Alice Newton writes:

“However, our analysis showed that the bounce rate on topics was high for a browse-type page, which implied to us that we could be meeting the user need better. One of the features we have delivered so far to address this is featuring on topics, which means that topic pages aren’t so static and cater better to returning visitors. Featuring has been used to good effect on the UK economy topic, for example.”

Use Hashtags More Effectively in Your Social Media Content: 4 Tactics Useful reminder. You’d be surprised how many major brands out there still forget the basics…

Cyd Harrell – The Challenges of Usability Testing Mobile Apps Always a fan of the UIE podcasts – and this latest pod from features some great info for anyone developing apps…

How to Breathe Life Into Personas Barnabas Nagy takes a closer look at personas with some great tips. Such an vital element of your content strategy that can easily become detached from reality.

And for a little light relief…I stumbled upon this video clip (and there’s plenty more). I can’t really believe that this could become a reality. I understand the reasons behind the robot, I just can’t believe how close to parody this video gets. The future of law enforcement indeed.

Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out like this (thanks to @ShowbizSimon for the link!):

I’d love to hear your views on any of the content strategy links above so please get involved in the comments below!

#contentmarketing #govuk