Analyzing 2022's highest-performing content pieces on The Juice featuring Elizabeth Irvine

Episode Summary

Welcome to the pilot episode of The Juice – Slice and Dice. The Juice is a content curation platform for B2B marketing and sales professionals and a distribution channel for brands who want to reach them. Our first guest, or co-pilot, is Elizabeth Irvine, the VP of Marketing at MarketMuse.

As content trends constantly change, keeping up with them is challenging. But sometimes, it’s important to recognize that all types of content can work for your company. And, as evident by this year’s highest-performing assets on The Juice, long-form written content still hits the mark.

According to data from The Juice, four out of five top-performing pieces in 2022 were long-form articles. In addition, one of those pieces is ‘225+ Content Strategy Resources to Help You Up Your Content Game’ from the MarketMuse team.

Since Elizabeth is running marketing at MarketMuse, we asked her to share why they decided to create their in-depth resource, the steps they took, and the opportunities that resulted. Elizabeth and our host Brett McGrath also analyze other top-performing pieces from The Juice and explain why they performed so well.

Guest Profile

Name: Elizabeth Irvine
What she does: Elizabeth is the VP of Marketing at MarketMuse.
Company: MarketMuse
Noteworthy: Elizabeth's professional background includes building three marketing departments from the ground up in the past 15 years. She continues to fulfill her mission by creating impactful, revenue-generating marketing organizations for startups.

Key Insights

Even evergreen content needs refreshment. Therefore, you must always be cognizant of possible changes. However, don't take that as an additional burden or pressure. Instead, think of it as a new opportunity for growth, as every update enables you to attract or retain customers. Take ‘225+ Content Strategy Resources to Help You Up Your Content Game’ as an example. The piece didn't comprise these many resources initially, but they added more based on the MarketMuse content team's continuous findings. ''If we published this piece and didn't come back to it, whether it was annually or semi-annually, it would be obvious how outdated it was. And if you don't update it, Google will know, and your audience will know. And so it's important to keep it fresh.''
Four out of five top-performing pieces on The Juice are long-form articles, which may come as a surprise because stats show that video is the most popular format among the general audience. Still, as our guest says, it is great to know that written content still drives attention and brings value. Therefore, a piece of advice for companies of all sizes, especially B2B, is to invest in content writers. ''I am surprised that it's mostly articles. [...] But yeah, four out of five being long-form content, that's great. I love that.''
Speak your customers' language. That's what the authors of these five top-performing pieces did, and that's why they see such engagement. Marketers often get caught up in professional terms and jargon, forgetting that their customers are most likely unfamiliar with them. ''You have to get outside of that and speak the language that your customers are speaking. Listen to those calls, go where they're learning, and incorporate that into your overall strategy.'' After all, the five pieces we discussed help us keep up with what's happening in the marketing landscape and take our content and overall operations to the next level. ''You may be able to leverage something in this article that can completely change conversions in your funnel or an area you hadn't thought of because you're using playbooks that you've used before.''

Episode Highlights

The Creation of ‘225+ Content Strategy Resources to Help You Up Your Content Game’

‘225+ Content Strategy Resources to Help You Up Your Content Game’ is on our top-performing articles list. It comes from MarketMuse’s content kitchen, so we asked Elizabeth to share how they came up with the idea of creating it.

”We would host ‘Ask Me Anything’ sessions in our Slot community after a webinar with the speaker to continue the conversation and expand the audience for that conversation.

And one of the questions we would always ask is, ‘What are you reading? What books do you always recommend?’ And the material that we got from that was wonderful. We realized that we had so much that we could share.”

Most, If Not All, Marketers Struggle With FOMO, That’s Why We See Such Engagement in These Content Pieces

Four out of five top-performing pieces are long-form articles.

Given that content trends change constantly, we wondered why these pieces got so much engagement. Elizabeth’s answer is somewhat unexpected but so accurate: FOMO.

”FOMO, but not in terms of shiny objects necessarily, but like, ‘What am I missing in my strategy?’ Marketers know they don’t know everything, especially if you’re managing a lot of functions.

The Juice is great because you’re able to keep up, and something like [the] ‘Buying Triggers’ [article] would attract marketers because they’re probably not speaking in those words regularly. Like, ‘Wait, buying triggers? What are my buying triggers?’ And I loved how that content outlined some examples to get marketers thinking.”

Having a Well-Received Piece Allows Us to Expand Conversations With a More Specific Audience

Companies that find content creation vital for their business strategy know that one successful piece is a source of new opportunities.

”An opportunity here is to slice and dice this up into persona-specific or industry-specific. This one is general: 225 content strategy resources. But what would we create for someone just starting a content strategy role at a new company? What are the ten things they need to help them kick off their 90-day plan without a hitch? That kind of thing. So, how could we create other segments of this in a more targeted way?”

Don’t Chase Quantity; Aim for Purposeful Content

Finally, Elizabeth and Brett agree that businesses, especially in their early stages, try to create as many pieces as possible to get in front of their target audience’s eyes quickly. However, growth results from your articles’ value, not from how many there are.

”You want to make sure that every piece has a purpose. What are we trying to accomplish with this piece? What do we expect it to do for our customers? And if you strategize like that around each piece, it’s going to be more focused. It’s going to be higher quality, and you’ll see more engagement from it.”

Analyzing 2022’s highest-performing content pieces on The Juice featuring Elizabeth Irvine