It’s 2020 soon, can you believe it? A fifth of the way through the century. New year and new decade. Chances are, your teams have been hard at work setting goals and direction for the coming year. And yes, we’ve been doing the same thing here at Concured.
Before we look ahead to the coming year, we have to take a moment to look at 2019. After all, it helps to know where you are before talking about where you’re going.
2019, quite frankly, rocked. Every year, more companies are learning about who we are and what we can do to supercharge their content marketing initiatives. We’ve been named as one of the most disruptive companies in the world. We’ve received awards for being pioneers in AI. We’ve also been chosen to contribute to Forbes. In other words, things are looking up.
We have no doubts that 2020 will be even better.
For 2020, we resolve to create more clever, engaging, and useful content for our readers. We want to become your go-to resource for answering the question: what’s next?
At Concured, we know that one of the biggest issues that you face as enterprise-level content marketers is the eternal question, ‘what do we write about?’ There’s no data-driven consistent strategy in place, which leads to a lot of hit or miss content. Think about it like noodles being thrown against the wall in the hopes that something sticks.
This isn’t to say that we’re anti-noodle. We’d just much rather have a solid game plan and playbook because it’s more effective. In other words, if our solution can guide you into creating something that your audiences love… it’s a win.
Every day starts with the intention to make our platform and company better for you.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at how we’re planning on creating more clever, engaging, and useful content for our readers. What’s on the docket for 2020?
How are we going to conquer in 2020?
Rebranding
As we’ve matured as a company, we’ve taken on several clients and have discovered certain ‘sweet spots’ where our platform and that niche work very well together. Sometimes, there’s just something about a niche that really clicks, but we needed to get that experience under our belts beforehand to really recognize it.
Now that we’ve gotten that experience with our clients, we recognize that we can walk with them further and cater our brand toward their needs. The rebranding efforts will make our brand more accessible, friendlier, and hopefully more interesting to you.
We’ll be finishing our rebranding at some point during the first quarter of 2020. You’ll be seeing all kinds of changes, including speed improvements, content changes, alterations in the site architecture, and more. It’s a full revamp, and it’s something that we’re very excited about.
The Takeaway
As your brand matures, it’s sometimes necessary to rebrand to make the brand more relatable and the site more usable.
Refreshing and Revitalizing Existing Content
Concured is nearly 5 years old, and we’ve written quite a lot during that time. A scant few of those articles have stood the test of time, but most have not fared as well. We were just getting the hang of it and learning to trust our tools. Refreshing and revitalizing our existing content is a priority for the coming year.
Content should not only be beautifully designed, but it should educate. It should have up to date links. It shouldn’t be advocating old concepts and old platforms. It should also provide as much value as possible, given the knowledge of the author at the time. And, for that matter, there is always room to write better.
What this entails is a content audit. Here is where we take a look at each article in our library and ask the hard questions.
- How did this article perform when it was new?
- Is the information in this article up to date?
- Can this article be combined with other articles to make something better?
- Can additions made to this article to make it more useful and impactful?
- How does this article fit in with the modern conversation
- Are there better ways that we can optimize this article for SEO?
Let’s take a look at this article that was published in 2015 titled ‘Biggest Mistakes of Legal Content Marketing.’ In it, we talk about the mistakes that are often made in legal blogs.
While this article talks about some of the mistakes that are made in legal content marketing, it could still go further. We could expand that article out to offer 10 mistakes that are often made in this type of content marketing… we could also expand on solutions about how to avoid those mistakes.
Looking at the headings, there is room to change those headings for the skimmers as well as make them more accessible and relevant to the search engines. This would be done by peppering keywords throughout the headings and the document. In talking about the things which are listed, we could even potentially spread the discussion out to encompass several articles or link this article to other articles around.
The Takeaway
No piece of content is truly set in stone, and if there are opportunities to make the content better by improving it, updating it, or even eliminating it from the blog it should be taken. Enterprise content marketing managers should take the time to update their content at least once a year.
Keep Making Improvements to Concured
We’re big believers in “eating our own dog food”, as they say in the tech industry. We use Concured internally to help us plan our content marketing strategy and see what topics are popular in the industry at the moment. Each new generation of the software makes it better and better as we train it on new topics and improve our algorithms.
Because we use this platform to make suggestions about what we should be publishing, we are essentially creating our own success story and case study. We’re also able to make changes faster, so we’re constantly on the lookout for areas where we can improve. Many tweaks to the platform can be made within the span of days.
Our goal is to have the best content intelligence product on the market, of course.
The Takeaway
We’re interested in helping our clients produce the best, smartest, and most relevant articles possible for their audiences. By making consistent small improvements to Concured and using our own product, we’re providing a great advantage to those who use our platform.
Creation of More Ebooks
Ebooks elaborate on topics that aren’t easily covered in a simple blog post. They are usually about 3k words and they usually center on problems and solutions that a brand can offer. We’ve already written several of these (Check out our resource section), but there are still many more things to talk about.
We’re planning on adding at least one new book to our library every quarter, along with producing some interesting and fascinating blog posts that you can read. All of this is with an eye toward making sure that we are providing the most value to you, our readers.
The Takeaway
Ebooks are valuable tools for anyone who uses content marketing on their sites. They can be used as ‘freebies’ to get people to sign up for the mailing list. They can also be used to increase SEO value. Devising and distributing more ebooks should be put out front for any site that wants to get the attention of their reader base.
More Listening
Reader engagement is important here at Concured, so we are opening the doors for dialogue with our readers. We welcome email and suggestions about what we can do next. We welcome thoughts and authoritative conversations. We realize our job is to help you convey the right message at the right time to the right people.
You will see more opportunities to interact with our site when we finish the rebranding.
The Takeaway
Clients are the foundation of your site and should be valued. By listening to your clients, you’ll be able to create potent content that’s more likely to win their hearts and minds, not to mention pocketbooks. Take the time to perform competitive intelligence, run surveys, and more… it can only make you a better brand.
Right now, we’re working diligently to nail down the complete content calendar and strategy. It’s got a lot of cool things in it, including video, revamped content, interviews, and more. We want to give you more of a glimpse behind the scenes, too. You might find some how-to articles and other works that you can’t find anywhere else.
We’re thinking of our resolution as the guidepost, as the mission statement for this coming year. We think that you, as our customers, are absolutely brilliant, and we want to help you achieve all of your goals for the coming year, and that includes answering the biggest, most imposing question that most content marketers have: what’s next?
If you’ve got ideas about content that you’d like to see, don’t hesitate to contact our team using the contact page.