Kari DePhillips is the owner of The Content Factory and co-founder of Workationing . She's been featured everywhere from Fast Company to Forbes to NBC News for her management style and digital marketing expertise, and Thrive calls her a "limit‑breaking female founder." See all posts by Kari DePhillips .

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By now, you probably already know how to pick the right SEO keywords and how to write a blog post that generates organic traffic and converts – but what about your content marketing skills and strategy? Are they as strong – and targeted – as they should be?

We’ve been studying and honing the craft for years, and we’ve seen content marketing work ROI wonders for all of our clients, from the national brands to the small businesses. If you’re interested in making a career out of content marketing, you don’t need a degree to do it – you just need to start by reading the right articles and putting them into practice.

We’ve rounded up the articles we’ve found most insightful and the tips at tactics we use every single day. Wait until you see what they can do for you! Open your Evernote and save this blog post, because you’re going to want to go back to these articles over and over again as you implement your updated (or new) content strategy. And if you took one look at this list and immediately started having a panic attack – don’t worry.

We realize content marketing isn’t easy, and it does take a lot of time, research and testing to get it right. If tackling the content marketing beast solo doesn’t sound like your idea of a good time and you’d rather outsource content marketing, we’ve got you covered – contact us for details.

For those of you who are still with us, here’s everything you need to know about content marketing (via the leading experts in the industry):



How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy – 9 Articles to Read Before You Even Get Started

16 of the Best Articles on Creating Website and Blog Content That Converts

Everything You Need to Know About Actually Marketing Your Content, in 9 Links

Our 5 Favorite Sites for Content Marketing Tips

If you checked out some of the links we shared you might have noticed we have a few favorites. What can we say? When we find a site that “gets” content marketing, we tend to keep an eye on them and pay attention to what they have to say. If you’re looking for experts to follow both on your RSS feed and social media, we recommend starting with these:

Social Triggers. Derek Halpern is like that straight-shooting cousin everyone has who can occasionally come off as a know-it-all until you start taking his advice and realize he’s right. Every. Single. Time. SEMrush. SEMrush articles have well-researched, actionable advice and the company’s webinars are never a waste of time. In fact, watching SEMrush webinars has become a company-wide practice over here at The Content Factory. They also make our favorite keyword research tool, SEMrush Pro, which we love so much that we became an affiliate! Click here to try it for free for a week! Moz. The Moz Blog focuses on the analytical side of content marketing, and is constantly sharing the latest research along with tips on how to optimize and analyze your content marketing efforts. Their Whiteboard Friday video series is a #MustWatch. HubSpot. You can subscribe to one of the three categories in the HubSpot blog (marketing, sales and agency) but we’ve found great content marketing ideas in all three. Fair warning: be prepared for them to contact you, because they’re going to put your contact info to use. Content Marketing Institute. Updated about once a day, this blog is easy to stay on top of and is always worth checking out, especially if you’re already well versed in content marketing but are looking for ways to improve your efforts and results.

If you’re the head of a content marketing team, we hope you’ll use this page as a primer for your new recruits — we know we will! (Truth serum time: it was a major reason we decided to compile this blog post in the first place.) We did our best to choose guides that aren’t only useful until the next algorithm change, but are tried and true practices you can use for years to come.

That said, we’d love to collect more articles and publish a part two! So if you have any links that you’re glad you bookmarked, share them in a comment!

More Content Strategy and Marketing Guides Worth Reading:

If you got value out of this content, you might also want to check out the comprehensive guides below, which we’ve developed based on our experiences with content writing and and marketing. We’ve written and promoted over 30,000 pages of content for our clients — and we’ve learned what works and what doesn’t (as well as which tools to use to get the job done). If you know of any marketing managers or small business owners who could use help with content or content marketing, consider sending them one — or all – of these guides.

Or Get Hands-On Content Marketing & SEO Training Online

Overwhelmed by all this info? Get the training you need from the experts at TCF! Our Content Writing & SEO Training Series will get you up to speed on everything you need to know about digital content writing, keyword research and boosting your organic search traffic. Check out our free webinar on common SEO mistakes to get your toes wet, then pop on over to our course syllabus to see what you’ll learn and sign up!

Still have questions? Interested in hiring TCF to take care of this for you? @ContentFac on Twitter or contact us, and we’ll get back to you ASAP.

Are you a lady in SEO? We’ve got a killer Facebook group you’ll want to check out ASAP! You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers – with a lot of actionable advice and support from other women slaying it in the industry.