An effective content strategy has become an essential part of every successful business – a whopping 90 percent of digital marketers now use a content marketing strategy, and nearly 70 percent of marketers are producing more content than they did last year. As a result, there are also thousands of top influencers in marketing out there who are sharing their expertise.
The top influencers work hard to cultivate relationships and maintain their position as an authority within the industry, so keeping up with what they’re sharing and what sites they’re visiting can help your marketing team stay ahead of the curve.
Fractl recently chose 21 marketing influencers based on a combination of follower count, regular Twitter usage, and a percentage of marketing-focused tweets. We analyzed the last 100 links that each of these marketers shared on Twitter over a two-day period (excluding links to his or her own site) to answer one question: What are they talking about, and how can it help my brand?
Here, I’ll walk you through three key insights to help you understand what top influencers are sharing and how you can apply them to elevate your marketing strategy.
1. Inc. is the most shared site followed by Entrepreneur and LinkedIn, with most links offering advice on how to start your own business.
A lot of the marketing influencers we looked at are entrepreneurs, so most of their Twitter feed is offering advice on how to become your own boss. Neil Patel, founder of Crazy Egg, shared this post on what you should know before starting your own business. Another great example is from WordStream founder Larry Kim, who shared his take on common characteristics some of the most successful entrepreneurs posses.
Key takeaway: For marketers, there are a ton of entrepreneurs and founders visiting these sites just waiting for the right introduction, so outlining an outreach strategy that targets these sites is a great way to generate leads.
2. Marketing influencers are interested in how to optimize your efforts on newer social platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.
“Out with the old and in with the new” is what influencers are saying about social networks, showing a particular preference for ones that rely on visuals. Mike Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner, shared this post on effective ways to build your brand on Instagram along with this post that offers the ultimate Snapchat tutorial. Additional tweets of his emphasized a focus on visuals, including how to elevate your content with stock photos and how to understand analytics from a visual-heavy site like Pinterest.
Key takeaway: Marketing influencers are interested in ways your brand can expand its reach through multiple channels, so an effective marketing strategy should include promotion on multiple social networks.
3. A majority of marketing influencers are visiting self-publishing sites: LinkedIn and Medium earned spots within the top 10 most shared sites.
Another trend is a preference for sites that rely heavily on user-generated content. SlideShare, Medium, and LinkedIn all earned a spot in the top three most shared sites for more than 25 percent of the influencers listed.
Due to the nature of these sites, though, there was no trend in what topics were shared, so posts spanned across a variety of verticals. For instance, some were more technical like this presentation shared by Moz founder Rand Fishkin on how to optimize search efforts while others were a detailed list like this Medium post on how to boost productivity shared by Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing.
Another site to promote more brand-centric content? YouTube. A great example is a video shared by Content Marketing Institute’s own Joe Pulizzi through their own channel that explores the evolution of content marketing.
Key takeaway: For more branded content, consider creating accounts on these sites to publish posts that might be more self-serving.
The big picture? Marketing influencers are a great source for best practices.
For any brand to be successful, it needs to find an established voice, and these influencers have crafted their own in order to help you elevate yours. Content marketing is a great way to help your brand distinguish its voice in a highly competitive market, and these 21 influencers are offering ways in which you can elevate your content. Review this post for the complete list of marketing influencers along with additional insights into what topics they’re discussing along with a list of sites you’ll want to include as targets in your next influencer outreach strategy.
Andrea Lehr is a Brand Relationship Strategist at Fractl where she works alongside a team of creative strategists to produce unique, data-driven campaigns about industry trends. When she’s not in the office, there’s a good chance you’ll find her running or challenging friends to a game of trivia.
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