Learn From Our Top 10 Content Marketing Posts of 2019

Content — it encompasses nearly everything we read, view, or listen to online, and as our CEO Lee Odden said years ago, it’s also the primary reason search began in the first place.

We’re especially proud of the content marketing successes our team at TopRank Marketing have achieved in 2019, for a wide-range of B2B clients. As 2020 draws close we wanted to share our top content marketing articles of the year — each filled with best practices, research, examples, and the latest trends.

The excellent content marketers who make our award-winning blog one of the most popular in the industry include Anne Leuman, Joshua Nite, Nick Nelson, and Lee Odden.

Collectively this compendium of our top 10 content marketing posts of the year serves as a valuable resource, loaded with practical examples and relevant topics for digital marketing professionals from CMOs to copywriters. We hope you find these articles helpful well into 2020 and far beyond.

We’re going to exclude our single most popular content marketing post — 50 Content Marketing Influencers and Experts to Follow 2019 #CMWorld — from the list, because it’s not quite an article, however you’ll still find it a helpful resource, recognizing 50 of the best professionals in content marketing including Ann Handley, Jay Baer, Pam Didner, Christopher Penn, and so many more marketing leaders.

Now, let’s move on to the top 10! These most popular content marketing posts of the year are ordered by a combination of search visibility and social engagement:

Our Most Popular Content Marketing Posts of 2019:

1. Take 2019 By Storm: Get Inspired By These 11 Content Marketing Quotes — Anne Leuman

With 11 inspiring content marketing quotes, it’s no wonder that Anne has garnered our most popular content marketing post of 2019, containing uplifting and memorable insight from Ann Handley, Tamsen Webster, Andrew Davis, Heather Pemberton Levy, Robert Rose, and others. Anne has gathered together a goldmine of inspirational quotes for B2B content marketers. Check out all of Anne’s posts here, and follow her on Twitter.
It’s important to slow down our #marketing to get the basics right. @annhandley Click To Tweet

2. B2B Marketing Examples: 7 Bold Examples of Interactive B2B Content — Joshua Nite

Senior Content Marketing Manager Josh showed how seven B2B brands have use bold interactive content in our second-most-popular content marketing post of the year. Featuring IBM, NASDAQ, HubSpot, DivvyHQ, VenturePact, Prophix, and SnapApp, Josh shared great examples to light your creative fires and open your B2B minds to the possibilities of interactive. Check out all of Josh’s posts here, and follow him on Twitter.

3. 5 Content Promotion Tactics To Make You (Almost) Famous — Lane R. Ellis

With five content promotion tactics to make you (almost) famous, including influencer co-creation, trend awareness, smart re-purposing, engaging interactive elements, and more, my article was our third most popular content marketing post of 2019.  Check out all of my posts here, and follow me on Twitter.

“Not only is influencer marketing one of the fastest growing areas in marketing, it’s also one of the disciplines where B2B brands are seeing trend-setting marketing performance.” @LeeOdden Click To Tweet

4. 5 Examples of Remarkable Content Marketing in Action — Lane R. Ellis

Offering five examples of how remarkable content marketing wins minds, hearts, and wallets with inspiring, relevant, and best-answer insight, this post by me showcased success stories from Sigstr, Oracle, Adobe Creative Cloud, PathFactory, NBC News Brand Studio and more, and was our fourth most popular content marketing article of 2019. Learn how remarkable content marketing is able to inspire us to reach out and try for newfound levels of success, through powerful storytelling and the kind of compelling and relevant information that provides best-answer results.

5. Wow Your Crowd: How Content Marketers Can Create Powerful Audience Connections — Nick Nelson

How can content planning set the stage for unforgettable B2B marketing experiences? In the fifth most popular content marketing article of the year, our Senior Content Strategist Nick digs into the essentials of audience-first planning, including building a concrete strategic framework, staying nimble and adaptive, and emphasizing emotional pull. He also shares insight from #CMWorld speakers Amanda Todorovich, Courtney Cox Wakefield, Margaret Magnarelli and other top B2B content marketers. Check out all of Nick’s posts here, and follow him on Twitter.

6. Embracing Interactive Content: 19 Statistics Every B2B Marketer Needs to Know — Anne Leuman

With 19 statistics every B2B marketer needs to know, Anne’s talents again featured on our year’s list of top posts, using compelling statistics that drive engaging content experiences that will connect on an intellectual and emotional level with your audience. Anne shares statistics from Buzzsumo, Content Marketing Institute, Ion Interactive Inc., SnapApp, Demand Metric, Cisco and others, combining to create deeper engagements with your target audience, improving message retention, and more.

7. Infographic: 5 Must Have Ingredients for a Great Content Marketing Strategy — Lee Odden

TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden has gathered together a goldmine of must-have ingredients for a great content marketing strategy in an infographic post that was our seventh most popular of 2019. Collaborating with the folks at Oracle Marketing Cloud, Lee showed how content marketing success really comes down to the five basic ingredients of goals, operations, insights, architecture, and measurement, and explained how to combine them to produce content that gets results.

Lee has also been the driving force behind the TopRank Marketing blog for over 15 years, and it’s posts such as this which have had professional marketers coming back for more year after year. Check out all of Lee’s 2,600+ posts here, and follow him on Twitter.

8. 15 Reports Charting the Future of Content Marketing — Lane R. Ellis

What does 2020 and beyond hold for content marketing? In the eighth most popular content marketing post of 2019, I dug in to this question through the lens of over 15 insightful reports loaded with B2B data to help savvy marketers define and chart an optimal content marketing future. I showed how the information in the reports combine to help you gain a clearer understanding of B2B content marketing while still keeping more than an eye open towards the future.

9. Less Is More: Time to Cut Content Bloat & Create Content Connections — Nick Nelson

Offering up tips on trimming down your writing to make it more punchy and concise, Nick has another of our top content marketing post’s of the year, curating advice from top wordsmiths in the marketing game, emphasizing how to overcome many of the most prevalent pitfalls today’s content creators face.

700 more words will not help you reach your goals any more than 7 more words. Create content that helps people. Do it efficiently. @randfish Click To Tweet

10. 12 Must-Have Marketing Skills for B2B Content Marketers — Joshua Nite

Rounding out our list of the top content marketing posts of the year Josh earned a second entry on the list with a close look at 12 important B2B proficiencies including SEO, SMM, influencer marketing, measurement, empathy, creativity, communication, organization, motivation, confidence, humility, collaboration & more. Are you using all 12 of Josh’s must-have B2B content marketing skills?

Thanks TopRank Marketing Writers & Readers

There you have it — the selection of 10 of our top content marketing posts for 2019. Special thanks go out to all of the excellent writers who have contributed truly stellar posts on content marketing topics throughout the year.

Please let us know which content marketing topics you’d like to see us to focus on in 2020 — whether it’s interactive, video, artificial intelligence, real-world case studies, or analytics, we’d love to hear your suggestions.

Many thanks to each of you who read our blog regularly, and to all of you who comment on and share our posts on the TopRank Marketing social media channels at Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.