ICYMI: Content Marketing Metrics, Top Podcasts for Productivity and More Articles

Take a look back at this week’s review of the most engaging articles on social media marketing and productivity. The most popular topics include identifying the top key content marketing metrics, what do the most successful people do before they go to sleep each night, what are the top eight ways planning will make you a better content marketer, outreach tips for public relation specialists and a list of the top podcasts for better productivity, work-life balance and the pursuit of happiness.

Plus additional tips, tricks and tools you can immediately implement into your social media marketing.

To read the full story, click the headline of each article.

17 Key content Marketing metrics to Start Tracking Today

By Aaron Agius
Jeff Bullas

Content marketing can be one of the most effective ways to generate and convert leads, but it’s only effective if you make well-informed improvements to your strategy over time.

And, of course, you can only make these types of improvements if you have the data needed to inform your decisions.

Effective content marketing is a synergy of two skillsets and you need to combine the science and data discipline of a scientist with the creative genes of an artist.

The art and the science

This excerpt from an infographic from Kissmetrics provides a great insight into the mindset required for successful content marketing. The art?

How will it make my audience feel?
Will it stand out?
Does it tell a story?
It needs to have that little bit of magic! Data doesn’t touch hearts.

But replicating the magic is where content marketing metrics tracking comes into play. According to management guru Peter Drucker,

“What gets measured, gets managed”

Take his words to heart by reviewing the following 17 key content marketing metrics I’ve identified to optimize your content planning strategy for higher sales and greater visibility

10 Things Highly Successful People Do Before Going to Sleep

By Rhett power
Inc

Before they close out the chapter on the day, successful people typically have a routine they follow. They have a set of actions that inspires, refreshes, and renews their passion for their business plans and personal life goals. Before you go to bed, try these 10 things so you can wake up ready to tackle the day ahead.

1. Reflect on the day’s successes and failures

Successful people don’t get down about any failures. Instead, they reflect on what worked and what did not work. They focus on the positive and use any missed targets as information for success in the future.

Related: Food, Sleep, Exercise: Why You Seriously Need All 3 to Be Successful

2. Express an attitude of thanks

Before you retire for the evening, think about people who helped you succeed in the day. Did you express gratitude? If not, consider ways to thank others.

3. Write down your plans

Whether you’ve been in the digital PR biz for years, or you’re a recent grad starting your first job, you stand to benefit from a few tips for building and maintaining valuable relationships with influencers at target publications.
That’s why I’ve teamed up with my digital PR team at Clearlink to compile a list of our favorite outreach tactics.
Finding an email address

Eight Ways Planning Will Make You a Better Content Marketer

By Meg Hogan
MarketingProfs

As a marketer, you know the industry is a mixed bag of talent. Some marketers are creatives, others are Type A planners operating on the assumption that everything should follow a predetermined sequence.

Although all types of personalities have a role in marketing content creation and management, great marketing comes from a balance of the proverbial left and right sides of the brain.

If you’ve ever started a new job or taken on a new client and asked for brand guidelines, core messaging, or a content schedule only to be met with blank stares or to never get a response to that email, this article is for you.

Yeah, you could totally wing it blog post by blog post, tweet by tweet. But if you truly want to build brand awareness and create meaningful relationships with your readers, followers, and customers, planning is a must.

Here are eight ways planning will make you a better marketer.

36 Authoritative Outreach Tips for Digital PR Specialists
By Cosette Jarrett
Moz

1. Share prospect lists via BuzzStream

BuzzStream allows you to share prospect lists with fellow digital PR specialists to view one another’s notes on specific publications and their staff. You can use this tool to see which email templates have worked for your coworkers in the past and which contacts they’ve found that you haven’t. Knowing the history of communication between that publication and your colleagues is essential.

2. Use Rapportive to narrow down your guesses

Can’t find an email? Rapportive might be your answer. This Gmail plugin helps you pull up email addresses for your target editors and journalists, based on guesses you enter into the “recipient” line of a new email. You can make up to five guesses at a time. When you find a winner, you’ll see the full name and image connected to the recipient’s LinkedIn profile pop up to the right of your screen.
Although you don’t need to reflect on all your goals before bed, do a quick review of your short-term goals. Write down urgent and important plans for the following day.

21 Podcasts to Listen to for Productivity, Work-Life Balance, and the Pursuit of Happiness
By Becky Kane
todoist Blog

The sheer amount of information that we have at our fingertips at every moment of every day is overwhelming. There always seems to be one more must-read article, webinar, or online course that promises to make us more successful – at work, at home, and everywhere in between. I don’t know about you, but for me too much information leads to paralysis, a.k.a. throwing up my hands and succumbing to the temptation of my Facebook feed. Not productive.

While there are a lot of excellent systems out there for efficiently getting through a large amount of daily content, the best method I’ve discovered to increase the amount I learn in a day while maintaining my sanity (not to mention my productivity) is listening to podcasts.

For people who love to learn and hate wasting time, podcasts are a godsend. They have the power to turn everyday tasks like commuting to work, cleaning the house, cooking dinner, and working out into prime opportunities for self-development.  They cover every topic you can imagine and can fit into any time frame, from a 5-minute break to an hour-long car ride.  They give your eyes a much-needed break from the screen, and the best ones are downright entertaining in addition to being insanely useful.

Thanks to their growing popularity, there’s no shortage of high-quality podcasts to listen to that help us become more productive employees, more effective leaders, savvier entrepreneurs, more knowledgeable individuals, and generally happier human-beings. I’ve put together a list of 21 go-to podcasts with their short descriptions as well as a few of my favorite episodes to get started.  Some are practical. Some get more philosophical. All are informative, insightful, and well worth a listen. Check them out and let me know what you think in the comments section below!