The content marketing world is a vast sea of information, and the only way to stay afloat in it all if you are into content marketing is by reading. It doesn’t really matter if you’re looking for simple tips to promote your small business. Reading books on content marketing will help you develop your thoughts and give bucket loads of lessons and knowledge that are imperative for success as well!
What Books Should I Read for Content Marketing?
Choosing the best book to read about marketing shouldn’t be complicated. Nonetheless, since you do not want to pick any random books, you could be wondering, ‘what are the best content marketing books to read?’
If you are an aspiring content marketer or just curious about the industry and want to know what it’s like to be in this field of work, here is a list of top three books that will teach you all there is within your career path:
I. They Ask, You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer
With an upwards of 4 billion people on the internet today, writing blog posts is often the most effective way to market your business. This is because customers are asking questions online.
With this book, you can learn the secrets to attracting these customers and converting them into paying customers. It explores how to use inbound marketing as a strategy for building relationships with your target audience, knowing how to attract top talent (at a reasonable salary), an effective way of sifting through the information, and providing relevant answers based on what your customers need.
You will also experience real-life examples of businesses that used inbound marketing to win new business. From the simplified step-by-step guide on how you can profit from inbound leads, the author helps you figure out what questions your audience is asking, discover if writing content for those questions is the right move, and shows how that content can convert inbound traffic into paying customers. He also discusses why it’s important to create great headlines and calls to action that get customer attention.
II. Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content
This book explains how to create content that makes your business thrive. The author outlines a practical guide that business owners and content marketers can use to attract and retain customers with digital communication. The secret? It all starts with great writing.
In her book, Ann Handley shows how anybody who writes—even CEOs or engineers—can become “content specialists” by learning a few fundamental principles for creating better web content. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s an email, a web page, a blog post or article, presentation deck, video script, or even tweets and Facebook posts.
Everybody Writes will give you the confidence to become a more influential writer who can engage and persuade customers with every word. Its simple writing tips such as “know your audience” and avoiding jargon can help any business owner talk more directly to their clients, prospects, and employees.
III. Brand Identity Breakthrough: How to Craft Your Company’s Unique Story to Make Your Products Irresistible
If you want to know how the world’s best brands became the biggest and most recognizable, this is the book for you. This was one of my favorite books I read in 2016 because it made me realize that we can replicate these famous brand experiences just by telling our own stories.
It also taught me about iconic markers across iconic brands such as Nike, Apple, or BMW. For example – simplicity and authenticity vs. hype and noise are crucial factors when designing your brand identity (the product itself doesn’t matter much).
It was so engaging that at some point, I had to find essay writers online to do my assignment as I sunk my head into this book. An interesting finding is that “consumers today heavily care about the experiences they get than they do about aspects like quality, price, or other objective measures of value.”
I found this book interesting because you can take away most of its principles and apply them to your business. You can also personalize them according to who your customers are—for example, if you run a content writing agency that allow students to buy assignment online like us, or rushessay.com you’ll want your brand story to revolve around ‘authentic content creation’; if you run an engineering firm, then it could be all about ‘innovation’ and so on.
Another cool part was how the book broke down each iconic brand into dozens of sub-brands. For example, you can create your own Apple – Music or Finance App or specify a particular aspect like simplicity or hype. It’s pretty neat!
In Closing
This has been my favorite nonfiction reading list of 2016, and I hope to add more in 2017! Which books do you think should be put on this list? Let me know in the comments section below as well as any other thoughts/questions!
