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Top 10 Marketing Articles for 2020 (and What We Can Learn from Them)

2020.

What a year.

Before we close this chapter, letโ€™s revisitย our top 10 most-visited marketing articles published or extensively updated and republished in 2020, including lessons learned that you can apply to your own content marketing strategy.

Side note: our site has been around forever (in digital marketing years), so a significant portion of our organic traffic is from content that is 1-10 years old. But this post focuses on what new and republished content performed in 2020.

1. How to Create a Webinar from Scratch in 10 Simple Steps

How to Create a Webinar

No surprise here, but our number 1 most popular post of 2020 is an update of an evergreen post on webinar creation. In mid-March, as the world shifted to remote everything, I dug up this post and gave it a reboot, with new tips, images, and other details. It went from an okay performer to the most popular post of the year.

Key Lesson:ย Updating and repurposing old content can give your website a bigger boost than publishing a brand-new post.

2. How to Communicate with Your Customers During the COVID-19 Crisis

How to Communicate with Your Customers During the COVID-19 Crisis

During the start of the pandemic, I was hesitant to cover COVID-19 on the blog because we arenโ€™t a news site (never will be, either), and most of our content focuses on marketing tactics and strategy that tend to be evergreen, and I didnโ€™t want to be stuck with a glut of outdated content.

But once it became clear that Coronavirus was the new normal, I published this post from contributor Ann Smarty, and it killed it in terms of organic traffic, becoming our #1 most popular piece of content directly mentioning the pandemic.

Key Lesson: As the world shifts, so must your content strategy. Covering news-worthy topics can result in a serious amount of organic traffic too.

3. Podcast Statistics for 2020 โ€“ Charts and Data

Podcast Statistics for 2020 - Charts and Data

Jay started writing these podcast statistics posts based on research reports way back in 2015. Every year, as new reports are published, he writes a new version of the post.

This year, I tested leaving the 2019 version live after we published the 2020 version. I wanted to see if both articles would rank organically for โ€œpodcast statisticsโ€ because 2019 statistics are still interesting for certain people. I monitored the results for roughly 4 months, and the 2020 version never overtook the 2019 version in the SERPs, so I finally setup a 301 redirect and, as of today, this post is position #3 for podcast statistics (this changes all the time).

Key Lesson:ย Rewriting content on an annual basis can deliver a steady stream of organic traffic.

4. 101 Content Ideas to Add to Your Editorial Calendar

Content Ideas

Hereโ€™s another great example of how updating and republishing content can improve your rankings and give your content new life.

This post, originally written by Nathan Ellering in 2015, was getting some decent organic traffic and ranked around position 10 for โ€œcontent ideasโ€ phrases. But it was woefully out-of-date (it mentioned Google Plus) and not a great first impression of the Convince & Convert brand.

I asked C&C strategist and content extraordinaireย Anna Hrach if she could update and add a fresh spin. She narrowed it down to 101 ideas (it was originally 105), and added new, fresh examples. I made Anna a co-author and organic traffic increased significantly. The post also performed well in our weekly newsletter, with the highest number of clicks in all of 2020.

Key Lesson: Make sure your existing content delivers a great first impression. If your content ranks but is stale, itโ€™s time for a refresh.

5. 11 Social Media Changes to Make in a Coronavirus Worldย 

11 Social Media Changes to Make in a Coronavirus World

Once it became clear that COVID-19 wasnโ€™t going to end anytime soon, our fearless leader Jay Baer immediately sprung into action and assembled a panel-discussion webinar on Social Media During Coronavirus with C&C social media strategists Zontee Hou and Lauren Teague.

Not only did this webinar generate over 1,000 registrants and exceed our Zoom webinar limit, but it was an easy, excellent starting point for written content. Shortly after the webinar, Jay turned the same content from the webinar into this blog post, becoming our 5th most visited new post of the year.

Key Lesson: The fastest way to create new written content is by turning your video or webinar content into a written asset. We call this content atomization, and it is a no-brainer.

6. How to Create a Successful Virtual Event for Your Company

How to Create a Virtual Event for Your Company

The first piece of pandemic-related content Jay created was this page on his speaking website, 7 Virtual Event Success Factors. I knew this would be interesting to our Convince & Convert audience, so once I got our post on โ€œHow to Create a Webinarโ€ republished, I did keyword research, made some updates, and published an updated version of the article for this blog on March 23. It ranks well and still receives considerable traffic. It also performed in our weekly newsletter.

Key Lesson: You donโ€™t need to always re-invent the wheel. Updating existing content for different audiences can help you achieve quick wins.

7. 18 Marketing Tactics to Try in 2020

Before COVID-19 was a thing, contributor Brandon Anderson pitched this article to me based on research he did in his companyโ€™s content tool, Ceralytics. Admittedly, the topic of โ€œmarketing tacticsโ€ wasnโ€™t exciting to me at the time, but he was convinced it would perform well, and he was right!

He used Certalytics to find a topic that people are searching for but there isnโ€™t a lot of content on, and it worked.

Key Lesson: Make sure your content creation is backed by keyword research.

8. Five Things Social Media Managers Must Do In the Age of Coronavirus

Social Media Manager - Coronavirus

This is the post that inspired the webinar that inspired Jayโ€™s post on social media changes in the age of Coronavirus (whew). Published on March 18, Lauren Teague wrote this based on advice she gave to her clients on what to do in mid-March.

Key Lesson: Write what you know. Talk about whatโ€™s happening in your business. If itโ€™s relevant to your current clients, it will be relevant to your prospects and future clients as well.

9. Ten Content Marketing Statistics for 2020

Content Marketing Statistics

People love data. They love facts. And they just love statistics. If youโ€™re in martech content marketing, you know thereโ€™s a big competition over who can own all the marketing-related statistics searches. And this post (almost) owns some of them.

Key Lesson:ย Take another companyโ€™s research and add your own spin and angle. Theyโ€™ll love the publicity, and youโ€™ll love how much easier it is than creating a report from scratch.

10. Top 20 Best Content Marketing Examples for 2020

Best Content Marketing Examples

The only other thing marketers look more than statistics are examples. We created this post to showcase our client work and other work we love. It ranks number 2 for โ€œbest content marketing examplesโ€, and I think it would have been higher on the list if we published it earlier in the year (we published this post in October).

We also turned it into a nifty PDF download.

Key Lesson:ย Everyone loves examples (not just marketers), AND theyโ€™re a great way to highlight your partners and clients.

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