Brody Dorland
Kansas City
Marketing Leader | Content Nerd | Entrepreneur | Former Co-Founder @DivvyHQ (acquired) | Former VP of Marketing @discover_lytho
Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Brody Dorland
How to Write Copy That Converts: 9 Secrets Revealed
It feels like a conundrum: 41% of social media users think brands are overly promotional, yet 75% of B2B content marketers say sales is an organizational content marketing goal. Another 83% prioritize lead generation, and 74% strive for lead nurturing. As content marketers, we know conversions boost our return on investment and justify our reason for being. However, we walk a fine line. We need conversions, but if we get too promotional, we risk scaring away the consumers we hope to attract.
How to Select the Best AI Content Writing Software
An Adobe survey of 2,600 marketers from eight countries found that 88% of respondents indicated that demand for content had at least doubled over the previous two years. Moreover, most said they expected it to continue to grow over the next two years. Whether writing a weekly blog, posting on social media multiple times daily, or sending various emails to target audience segments, your team has to juggle ideation, planning, creation, and publication for multiple channels.
How to Craft Content for Decision Makers: 9 Insider Secrets
If we needed to identify a single pain point that every B2B marketing team can relate to, it would be the challenge of reaching decision-makers. And this challenge is pretty universal across industries and marketing channels. However, this group holds the purse strings, so you must find a way to bring your brand, product, or service to their attention. Direct sales are often a turn-off for this group, as most prefer to do the research themselves and decide when and how to connect with a business.
The Hottest Content Marketing Trends for 2023
In the latest Content Marketing Institute trends reports, 70% of all B2C businesses and 71% of all B2B companies are employing content marketing strategies to reach new and existing customers in 2023. These percentages have grown steadily over the last decade, with the biggest increases coming during the pandemic. Content marketing is undoubtedly a worthy investment, but the most successful strategies can change so fast it makes your head spin.
6 Benefits of a Modular Content Approach
Your enterprise content team constantly produces assets to attract and convert customers. Throughout each piece you create, there are uniform themes and blocks of content. As a result, content management can be challenging. Reusing content helps your team be more efficient, consistent, and productive, and you’ll be able to do this much better with modular content. So, what is modular content? And what are the advantages of this approach? What Is Modular Content?
Can You Measure the ROI of Content Marketing? 6 Metrics You Must Track
One of the hottest topics for any content marketer is the story of ROI. Without proving the ROI of content marketing, your enterprise team might not get the budget or resources it deserves. Yet, so many of us struggle to connect the dots in our content analytics, regarding how they demonstrate lead acquisition, conversions, and revenue. To measure content marketing ROI effectively, you need to determine what success looks like, which translates to goals.
The Ultimate Guide to Content Reporting
When you master the process of content reporting, you’ll never have to fear those C-suite meetings where they ask you to justify their investment in your content operation. To avoid the dreaded eyerolls — as a recent moz.com post points out — simply follow a few tried-and-true steps to communicate the real value of their investment in a language your corporate leadership will understand. Here’s how.
Introducing DivvyHQ's Content Marketing Template Pack
You and your content operations teams will have a much straighter path to success when you have a roadmap to guide you. For most content teams, that roadmap is a documented content strategy that dictates your plan — the who, what, where, when, and how — to reach your ultimate objective. But when you start peeling back the layers of your strategy, you expose the need for a wide variety of guides — or templates — that come in handy at different points in your process.
How to Scale Your Content Marketing Operations
For starters, more resources will require strong documentation and systems so new people can follow the process. You’ll need to document your strategy, workflow, and calendar. You should also consider repurposing and reusing older content, leveraging collaboration, and using data to drive your growth.
8 Books Every Content Marketing Manager Should Read At Least Once
Content marketers love words and are usually avid readers. Perfecting your craft requires reading about trends, strategies, and more. So, what are the content marketing books you should read? We’ve got a list of books that can influence your content strategy, content operations, and every other facet of content marketing. By making these books part of your library, you’ll be a wiser content marketer and be able to infuse new ideas into your enterprise team.
How to Calculate the True Cost of Content
Has your executive leadership ever tasked you with calculating the ROI of the content your team produces? This exercise is no small feat and most would probably take a shortcut and just report on the basic costs of initial content creation. But when you sit down and think about the entire content lifecycle, there are additional operations, technology and governance costs that should be factored in.
The CXO's Guide to Digital Asset Management
If you’re a chief experience officer (CXO) at a large company, proper digital asset management can help you deliver stellar experiences to your customers across their customer journeys. Since providing prospects and customers with valuable content and positive interactions is the key to superb experiences, managing all these communications is a must.
Running Out of Fresh Content Ideas for Your Blog? Read This
Your blog is the centerpiece of your content marketing. It’s the living space where most audiences find you, so you have to keep feeding it. However, sometimes the well of ideas can run dry. Coming up with new content ideas for your blog requires a lot of work, but you can operationalize it with the right approach and stay tuned into what your buyers want.
What is Content Discovery and How Can You Make the Most of It?
Getting your content in front of your target customers is essential to content marketing success. But with so much online noise, helping your audience discover your content can challenge even the finest enterprise content teams. Today we’re taking a closer look at various technologies that are driving content discovery, and techniques we can leverage to make the most of that tech. What Is Content Discovery?
Never Miss a Content Publishing Deadline Again!
Do deadlines give you anxiety? That’s a normal reaction, especially if there aren’t processes and tools in place to help you meet them. Enterprise content teams often have high throughput goals, managing lots of projects for various products, brands, and locations. So, how are those content publishing deadlines working for you? If your team is coming off the rails and tasks are piling up, it’s time to rethink your content workflows (or create them!).
How Mature is Your Operation?
When we’re onboarding a new Divvy client, one of the first things we ask in our initial discovery call is for the client to rank the maturity of their content operations on a one-to-five scale. A one represents low maturity (i.e. “we’re just getting started”), and a five means that they’re a well-oiled content machine and the content assets they produce are integral to their organization. Most content teams fall somewhere in the middle.
How to Run an Integrated Marketing Campaign [with Examples]
How do you immerse your prospects and customers with messaging that forges unbreakable connections with them? An integrated marketing campaign does exactly that, providing them with stellar experiences and cohesive messaging again and again until they become brand advocates. HubSpot’s Allie Decker experienced that transformation herself during her own customer journey.
Enterprise Content Marketing: Being Agile When Change Is Needed
Enterprises are notorious for having content conundrums. Typically, that’s because lots of stakeholders are part of the process. That presents unique challenges. That doesn’t mean you can’t have successful enterprise content marketing that’s agile and adaptable. The question on the minds of many content teams is how to do this in a way that’s consistent and streamlined. Let’s dive into the question and answer it.
The Why and How of Content Modeling
Content modeling allows you to organize and manage all the types of content you produce, their components, and their relationships with each other. It’s an essential part of an efficient content operations and governance model, allowing your teams to leverage those components and relationships for a seamless experience for your audience.
How to Create Great Reactive Content in Real Time
Is it ever a good idea to be reactive versus proactive? In most cases, you’d probably think no. As an enterprise content team, you are planners, strategists, and anticipators. So, being reactive may seem counterintuitive. However, reactive content provides a way to create thought leadership and solution-focused content to “react” to industry news and trends. So, how can you create this content? And is it possible to do it in real time? Let’s dive into the topic. What Is Reactive Content?
How to Create and Use Benchmark Reports in Content Marketing
If you want to understand the quality and performance of your content, comparisons are critical. Content benchmark reports offer a way to evaluate against your past efforts and your competitors, and gather insights on how you can improve. Enterprise content teams are constantly iterating and improving content to drive traffic and capture leads. With benchmarking, your content analytics don’t live in a vacuum.
Editorial Calendar Templates: Pros, Cons, and What to Look For
Editorial Calendar Templates: Pros, Cons, and What to Look For In Content Marketing Toolbox, Content Planning, Tips & How-Tos Editorial Calendar Templates: Pros, Cons, and What to Look For2022-06-282022-06-28https://divvyhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/DivvyHQ-Logo-Final-no-icon.pngDivvyHQhttps://divvyhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/calendar-on-desk_1672px-604x270.jpg200px200px How streamlined are your content marketing efforts? Do you have documented workflows?
The Content Marketer's Guide to Keyword Targeting in 2022
Content marketing is both science and art. Content needs to be relevant, engaging, and have a hook. There are also technical elements to consider. One aspect of content creation that requires both is SEO. Keywords need to flow naturally while also having the right volume, intent, and placement. To ensure both parts are seamless, it’s important to understand the concept and practice of keyword targeting.
A Modern Approach for Greater Results
The origins of creative brainstorming date back to 1939. Ad executive Alex F. Osborn was the father of formal brainstorming techniques when he became frustrated with his team’s inability to generate creative ideas (see the video below to learn more about him). But brainstorming, in a less formal sense, has been something humans have done for eons. How else did we become a civilized society?
How to Identify and Increase Content Assisted Conversions
Conversions are the end goal for most enterprise content marketers. However, determining the source of those customer acquisitions can be tricky. Yet, it’s critical to identify content-assisted conversions because that’s what proves your content marketing ROI. The basis of attributing these comes down to tracking tools, often including (but not limited to) your content analytics.
Is Marketing Strategy Different from a Marketing Plan?
Marketing strategy vs. marketing plan? Don’t get hung up on the theory and semantics, like the ancient theologians who debated questions like “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” into the wee hours every night. Instead, let’s set out a working definition of each term and put both strategy and planning to work to boost your corporate bottom line.
8 Templates to Help You Plan Content in 2022
Planning in content marketing enables enterprise teams to stick to a strategy, ensure consistency, and meet production goals. When you think of content planning templates, you likely think about spreadsheets for editorial calendars. Gross. That’s not what we’re going to talk about today. Instead, we will give you something more helpful than those posts.
What Is a Web Content Request Form and When to Use It
A web content request form is an intake method for capturing and documenting content requests, usually from other teams inside your company, such as SEO, sales, executive leadership, or support. For instance, suppose your sales team needs a blog post that will drive a major prospect and others in their niche to schedule a consultation.
How Should You Structure Your Marketing Operations Team?
Enterprise marketing teams have big goals to hit around content throughput, campaign alignment, and inbound leads. With so many moving parts, your marketing operations team is the engine that makes it all work. To hit objectives and drive efficiency, you’ll want to make sure your marketing operations team structure is solid. This process typically includes careful consideration of how you’re using your resources and technology, along with digging into workflows to understand where gaps are.
Content Ownership: How It Affects Creation, Marketing, and Governance
When it comes to organizing, planning and producing content, one of the biggest struggles your enterprise might be facing relates to who owns it. Without defined owners across all areas of content, it’s easy for projects to go off-script, hit roadblocks, or hang out in review purgatory. Having clarity around content ownership shapes how you create, market, and govern it. First, let’s define what content ownership is and who those owners might be. What Is Content Ownership?
Metadata Management: The Key to Deriving Value from Digital Assets
Enterprise content marketing teams create lots of digital assets. Managing all these requires collaboration between your content operations staff and technology partners, both of which are critical parts of your ecosystem. A big part of this organizational effort is a reliance on metadata. Metadata management can be complex without the right strategy and systems (like a content marketing platform) to support it.
All You Need to Know (and Do) About Content Taxonomy
Have you ever had to scour your content archives looking for a past article to cite in your next blog post, but gave up in exasperation? You know it’s there. You created it. You just can’t find it. You’ll be happy to know there’s a solution – a content taxonomy. Think back to your high school biology class. You’ll probably remember your frantic search for a mnemonic device to help you remember how to classify plants and animals by categorizing them by specific terms.
The Complete Guide to Content Lifecycle Management
When you create content, you’re giving life to ideas. Each idea is conceived, matures, blossoms, and makes its way out into the world to do something good. But the story of the content lifecycle doesn’t end there. There are many steps, from ideation to distribution to preservation, within that lifecycle.
Content Reporting and Analysis: The Tape Measure of Marketing
With today’s data capture, analytics, and AI-driven technology, large marketing teams can easily take content analytics even deeper when they put content reporting and content analysis to work.
5 Practical Ways to Make Sense of and Use Vanity Metrics
“Should I use vanity metrics to inform my content strategy?” new content platform users often ask. It’s a question larger content teams should tackle as they work their way through their numbers.
6 Ways to Increase the Watch Time of Your Videos on Social Media
Videos are a content format that generates lots of engagement. Your target buyers are consuming video content, and the more they watch, the likelier they are to convert. So, how do you increase the watch time of videos on social media? Does Video on Social Media Perform Well? First, it’s important to talk about the potential for using video in social media marketing. So, what does the data say about video and engagement? On average, people watch 16 hours of online video per week.
Is Your SEO Strategy Aligned with Your Content Marketing Strategy?
The larger your company, the larger your challenges. That principle holds even more true when your teams struggle to execute effective SEO for content marketing. The key to that sweet spot between traffic-generating SEO and engaging content is alignment. When you align your SEO and content strategies, you’ll generate ROI like a well-oiled machine. But you can’t align these strategies without one thing: content collaboration.
How Much is Your Content Marketing Process Costing You?
What a Waste – How Much is Your Content Marketing Process Costing You? In Content Marketing, Organizational Change What a Waste – How Much is Your Content Marketing Process Costing You?2022-01-122022-01-12https://divvyhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/DivvyHQ-Logo-Final-no-icon.pngDivvyHQhttps://divvyhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/What-a-Waste-604x270.jpg200px200px They say process makes perfect.
We're Going to Force You to Do Content Marketing Right
Content marketing has the power to redefine your brand. It generates leads, supports thought leadership, and engages stakeholders. But this practice can also be executed poorly. Too many companies are still approaching content with shotguns and spam cannons. There’s little-to-no strategy backing their content initiatives and they aren’t targeting content for specific audiences, segments or personas. Occasionally, these companies walk through our front door.
Is Your Organic Traffic Down? Check These 7 Things First
Picture this… It’s an unusually warm Monday morning in mid-December. Coffee in one hand, you fire up your laptop and head straight for Google Chrome to check your content analytics dashboard. With the flurry of blog posts your team released last month, you’re excitedly expecting a huge rush of organic traffic. But upon a focused review of your traffic report, your expectant smile turns to a silent scream. Your organic search actually dropped – by a lot.
A New, Tactical Model for Building & Promoting Thought Leadership
Thought leadership can be a powerful strategy in content marketing. When you focus on building and promoting thought leadership, you are investing credibility and trustworthiness. Every brand wants to earn the trust of its audience. Content marketing allows enterprise teams to do this, and thought leadership is one spoke in the content strategy to make it happen. Why Focus on Thought Leadership? Content marketing saturation is a real thing. It applies to almost every industry.
How to Increase Your Site Authority with Every Piece of Content You Add
We talk a lot about using top-quality content to position your brand as a thought leader in your field. On the search engine optimization (SEO) side of things, that positioning is something that search engine algorithms can not only spot, but they end up translating it into a concept known as site authority.
DivvyHQ vs. Basecamp: Comparing Content Marketing Platforms
With the complexities and nuances of planning, producing and publishing a wide variety of content, content marketing teams inevitably end up with a stack of tools. Of course we all feel some platform fatigue from time to time, but with the right software, content teams can be more productive, organized, and consistent. In determining which platforms will be the best fit for your organization, it’s good to compare the options.
Do You Have an SEO Strategy for Visual Content?
Humans are visual creatures. We absorb a lot of information just from imagery, and that translates to content marketing. Visual content can hook users and be instrumental in search engine rankings. So, the question is, do you have an SEO strategy for visual content? If it’s not currently part of your content strategy or it’s not a current point of emphasis for your enterprise content team, it’s time to rethink its value in terms of SEO. What Is Visual Content?
How to Create Inclusive Content that Connects to a Wider Audience
It’s not uncommon to see brands get in some hot water these days due to some sort of insensitive message or a less-than-subtle pander that alienates a big chunk of existing customers. Today’s cultural and political climate almost requires brands commit to a balancing act that supports a wide variety of movements. So how should brands handle this? Get inclusive content right, and you’ll keep your current target audience and expand into new markets.
How to Keep Your Webinar Audience Engrossed Till the End
So, you’ve taken the plunge. You’re taking your company’s content strategy to the next level with webinars. But how do you engage your webinar audience? How do you keep them glued to their seats until the very end? Start with a Topic That Will Engage Your Webinar Audience Here’s where all the time you spent creating your buyer personas will pay off in spades.
Does Clickbait Still Work? 8 Headline Tips to Attract the Right Eyeballs
I used to roll my eyes when I saw clickbait headlines. “Yeah, right,” I’d sneer. Fake news, right? Yes, usually. But now I study those same headlines. “Why?” you may ask. Clickbait headlines have only gotten their poor reputation because they promise way more than they deliver, as Content Marketing Institute’s Ann Gynn points out. But you’ve got to admit; they’re catchy. Which is why I now study them. You should, too.
Content Utopia: How to Create Branded Content That Sells
To reach the fruitful land of content utopia for your brand, you need to master writing content that sells. That doesn’t mean salesy language. Rather, branded content that sells is rich, compelling, and motivating. It moves your prospects from “not sure” to “all-in”. This type of content isn’t just for the bottom of the funnel (BoFU). It should be a principle for every stage of the buyer’s journey. Perfecting high-quality branded content that converts, isn’t easy.
Need for Speed: What is the Ideal Blog Publishing Frequency?
“Is there an ideal blog publishing frequency?” is a question I often hear from our prospects and customers. It’s no wonder. For many larger companies, scheduling blog posts is a guessing game at best. Unfortunately, even some content teams for large, established brands don’t really have a coherent blogging strategy in place. As a result, their content calendar looks like a random patchwork quilt. Do all audience segments want to read posts at the same frequency?
Content and Links: The Two Most Important Ranking Factors
There is only one thing standing between your brand and complete obscurity: your website’s ability to be found by potential customers when they search online for what your company produces. Optimizing your website for search stands on two main pillars – your website’s content and links both from and to it. Google and other search engines change their website ranking algorithms almost continuously.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Brody
Contact Brody, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack