Whether you're a beginner to content marketing or have some experience, this book is a great read, either to give you a great overview or some tips and insights you may not have thought of!

The Definitive Guide to Strategic Content Marketing: Perspectives, Issues, Challenges and Solutions by Lazar Dzamicand and Justin Kirby (Kogan Page, 2018), is the next book to add to your holiday reading.

Takeaways for your business:

Write, write, write: Search engine results drive traffic to your website. But you need to be in the search engine results. Create blog articles that speak to what your customers are searching for and get in the game.
Content definitely has a role to play in conversion, especially when you use content to get access to a piece of valuable customer data e.g. email address.
Content marketing must be strategic. In other words, don’t write whatever you feel like. Write what supports your strategic goals and supports your business. Think before you write!

This book is about getting an overview of the kind of impression your content is making. It is hugely detailed and researched, aiming to be a comprehensive view of what content is and how it supports business. It is definitely anchored in the bigger picture, going beyond blog content and talking about the whole of your digital marketing assets.

While it won’t help you do a content audit of your own blog content, it can help set what you are doing in context and give you confidence that you are on the right path.

The book has the lofty ambition of bringing together the debate about content, in all its forms, in one place. But in my experience, these debates resonate far less with business owners and far more with marketing theorists. So some of this book will – let’s be honest – feel unnecessary and impractical.

However, bear with me!

I took a lot of notes from this book, and felt there was a lot that could be applicable to small business bloggers.

For example, the authors talk about the Hero, Help, Hub model of content, which is a great foundation for any small business blog, or content archive. Hero content is content that emotionally resonates with the audience. Help content serves a purpose and answers a specific customer question. Hub content is the place where your company can create an ongoing dialogue and become a trusted friend or adviser. I’ll cover this in more detail in another article.

I enjoyed some of the case studies in the book; others I felt didn’t add as much. I also personally didn’t get much from the chapter focused on rebutting the idea of content marketing, saying that it is nothing new. I get that the authors wanted this to be a comprehensive book, but I didn’t think this section added much.

There is an interesting discussion on the role of ethics in content marketing and references to up-to-date examples like Cambridge Analytica and the concept of ‘fake news’.

I personally believe that this is a must read if you are in the market field.The book is well structured and full with information.

3.5 stars
I wanted to read and review this book with the hopes of gleaning useful ideas for marketing my business. I came away with more questions than answers about what content marketing is (or isn't), as well as interesting ideas on the major shifts around marketing. I appreciated how the authors provided numerous perspectives from industry leaders and recommendations for further reading. This book is written for readers who are serious about marketing, and the format allows you to skip to the sections you'll find most relevant. Readers with little to no marketing experience might not find it as useful.

I most enjoyed learning about storytelling, story doing, and story living, the concept of content as it relates to purpose and culture, and the authors' concept of empathic utility. The case studies were both interesting and helpful. One of my favorite quotes in the book was from Dan Roam, "Whoever best describes the problem is the most likely to solve it."

I received an e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

If you're starting out in content marketing, or indeed need a brush up of your skills, I'd definitely recommend this book.