Content Marketing Glossary
Content isn't what it used to be - and that’s what makes it so powerful.
With emerging trends and technologies in creating and distributing content, chances are you feel somewhat overwhelmed by the terminology and endless opportunities.
That’s why we’ve created a comprehensive content glossary of the most commonly used terms in our content marketing services. So that we can have human conversations around the core concepts.
Above the Fold #
The first thing people will see on your homepage when it’s first loaded (without scrolling). The content which is above the fold needs to persuade users to further engage with other parts of your page.
Advertorial #
A form of promotional content piece, which aims to seamlessly blend with the native journalistic content. Advertorials distinguish themselves from traditional content marketing pieces in that they expand upon or align with the narrative of the publication they are embedded within.
Blog #
A frequently updated web page featuring articles, opinions, discussions and other relevant content that aligns with your brand’s and customers’ interest. The opportunities with a blog are endless. Not only will you strengthen brand personality and credibility, you’ll also have the opportunity to drive traffic and boost SEO.
Brand Evangelist #
If you accept that the primary role of content marketing is to ‘nurture’ prospects, then contributing towards creating brand evangelists is one of their most sought after outcomes. Brand evangelists live and breathe the brand, create word of mouth and in a generalist sense, have adopted the brand as part of their identity.
Click Bait #
Typically an article with a catchy headline that entices the user through to the content piece through manipulative means. These articles are often low effort and low in end-user value (think listicles). There has been a trend away from creating these kind of articles in content marketing as users seek deeper content that seeks to educate, inform or entertain and as promotion channels become saturated.
Content Strategy #
Content strategy focuses on the process of planning, developing and delivering content that educates, entertains, inspires and engages your audience. The goal is to support prospects on every touchpoint of the buyer journey.
Call To Action (CTA) #
A critical part of your content marketing your CTA’s compel the user to take a desired action. This could be in the form of subscribing to your newsletter, share your content with social networks or check out other pages on your website.
Copywriting #
Is the act or occupation of writing copy for advertising purposes. Copywriters writing in the realm of digital marketing are challenged with multiple short formats and need to establish attention, empathy or trust with audiences in very limited attention cycles.
Content Brief #
An outline of the key components and objectives of a content piece. A well outlined content brief will inform the content team of the purpose, background, key performance objectives and timelines they need to meet to create a successful piece.
Dead Link #
A reference link within a content piece that has lead to dead page and given a 404 error. Dead links in competitor content provide a content marketer with an opportunity to offer the webmaster an opportunity to replace said dead link with their own newer content. The active scouring for such scenarios is referred to as the ‘skyscraper technique.’
Duplicate Content #
Where Google finds substantive blocks of content within or across domains completely match or appear considerably similar. When marked as such, Google will see your content as unoriginal and devalue the content.
E-books #
A longer form of content marketing where a booklet is put together to educate the customer on a particular concept. These publications are usually presented in .pdf or .epub formats and create the foundation or ‘effort’ piece for a larger strategy that takes the sub-chapters and segments them into smaller content pieces.
Evergreen Content #
Content with no ‘expiry date’. Evergreen content provides value irrespective of when people stumble upon it. It contains valuable information to readers and never goes out of date.
Ephemeral Content #
A common trend within social platforms, including Facebook and Instagram where content appears for a certain amount of time. Most often, ephemeral content lasts for 24 hours and are often in the form of videos or photos.
Featured Snippet #
Introduced by Google to enhance the value of their search indexes with important meta data. Featured snippets take core topic information and embed them into search pages. They are increasingly an important marker in content marketing to qualify the value of a content piece. As an authoritative piece of content is highly likely to get a featured snippet.
Fresh Content #
A term for the application of a time value factor to the Google core algorithm that came with the Caffeine update in June 2010. The purpose of which was to give advantage to ‘fresher’ content without dated information over older, more thorough pieces. This update also gave rise in response to the practise of a content ‘refresh’ for such pieces.
Guest Blogging #
The practise of creating and hosting content on external web properties to your branded ones. The benefit of which is the ability to leverage new organic audiences and promotion which your website wouldn’t have within their sphere of influence or authority.
Ghostwriting #
A content piece that is professionally written, but officially credited to another individual. For example, this can occur in the creation of a slogan, a script, an ad campaign, marketing plan or even in the songwriting industry.
Inbound Link #
A link back to your website from an external website. A great signal of authoritative and valuable content, and great for building the SEO value of your page.
Infographic #
A visual appealing content piece which summarises complex concepts in a way that is easily understood by consumers. This could include statistics, graphs or other relevant information for the message you wish to convey.
Keyword #
Keywords are words that your audience typing into search engines when looking for information online. It is worth spending time to analyse these keywords to create content relevant to your audience and to optimise your website pages.
Keyword Stuffing #
Over optimising your web page with a ridiculous amount of keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results. This is likely to result in unreadable content, a negative user experience, and may even harm your site’s ranking. In the present day look to write holistically for your topic as search engines have evolved well beyond keyword frequency as a major relevance signal.
Listicles #
A short form piece of content presented wholly or partly as a list. Very common in channels where attention is at a premium and developing a frequency of touchpoints with your audience is the goal.
Lead #
A potential customer that has shown interest in your brand, products or services. Prospects are typically captured when they respond to an ad or call to action by sharing information such as email, phone number or even a social media handle.
Link Building #
A secondary objective of modern content marketing, content pieces that are built to establish authority on a topic and referenced by others, thereby garnering links, which can accumulate to a great worth of SEO value.
Newsjacking #
The practise of capitalising on the news cycle and writing content that is either directly or closely related to a piece of news that is trending. Writing a timely and comprehensive piece is key to getting exposure here.
Promoted Post #
A promoted post is a paid advertising option on Facebook that allows you to reach a broader audience. It lets you boost posts that are already performing well and looks just like any other post that might appear on a user’s newsfeed.
Persona #
A semi-fictional character that represents your ideal customer as if it was a real person. The development of a persona can help you understand the customer journey and navigation on your website to then craft personlised content and messages accordingly.
Query #
The word or phrase used by a searcher to satisfy a search request. These can a sub categorised into three forms, transactional, informational & navigational.
Retargeting #
Often achieved through tracking technologies such as cookies, content provides an early piggy-back opportunity to identify and re-target users using alternate channels such as paid search and social media.
RSS #
Rich Site Summary and Really Simple Syndication. Rss feeds aggregate content from a number of different sources. A required technical addition to any blog which is producing a large volume of content as it allows for that content to get picked-up and distributed by external operators.
Readability Score #
Given the variety of layouts and content formats on the web, readability has increasingly become a factor in producing content. Primary amongst its scoring methods is the Flesch readability score which factors average sentence length and average number of syllables per word into an output that scales ease of reading from 5th grade level to college.
Syndicated Content #
Syndicated content is when third-party sites republish content that was originally found elsewhere. If your content is syndicated to a third-party website, you’re still getting credit for it and there’s usually a link back to your website.
Skyscraper Technique #
The creation of content to replace dead links (see dead links). The skyscraper technique became a popular approach to link building which involved creating authoritative content that allowed webmasters to replace dead links in existing articles.
Snackable Content #
Content created in bite-sized pieces that is easy for consumers to digest as they scroll through their feeds, and is easily shared with their social networks. Snackable content captures users who don’t have enough time or patience to consume long, text heavy articles.
Seeding #
A brand awareness, scattergun approach to distributing content. Seeding involves the placement of links throughout the web on public forums such as Reddit, Digg & Stumbleupon in an attempt to get picked-up as a topic of conversation amongst those communities.
Thought Leadership #
Content designed to solidify you as an expert and authority in your field. The goal is not to advertise your brand, product or service directly, but instead put yourself up as a go-to source for information and educate your audience through helpful content. In this way, you will promote your brand indirectly – without the marketing pitch.
Tone of Voice #
Tone of voice is not so much about what you say, but rather how you say it and expresses your company’s personality. In order to develop a unique tone of voice it is important to look at your company’s core values and who your audiences are. Consumers may not always remember what you said, but most definitely how you made them feel.
USP #
USP is the acronym for unique selling proposition. What makes you you? Finding your USP and convey it may require some hard soul searching and creativity but it’s one of the major keys to effective content creation in a high competitive market.
User-Generated Content #
User-generated content describes any type of content such as vlogs, videos, audio files, texts images or other forms of media created by consumers rather than brands. Brands will pick up on this content and share it on their website, social media platforms and other marketing channels.
Vlog #
Simply put, a vlog is a blog in video form. Vlogs have become one of the most popular types of digital content. It can be entirely video-based or may be combined with supportive texts and images.
Whitepaper #
An in-depth report or guide about a particular topic and the problems that comes with it, created with the purpose to educate the reader and solve issues involved. It is a long-form type of document similar to an eBook The difference between the two is that whitepapers tend to be in more technical and the opinions expressed is often backed up by comprehensive research and statistics.
Web 2.0 #
The second evolution of the internet beyond webpages, where social platforms full of dynamic user generated content arose such as Facebook, Myspace, Reddit and Twitter. Web 2.0 has a spiritual emphasis on web based communities and the open sharing of information.
YouTube #
Owned by Google, Youtube represents the most popular video sharing site on the web today with billions of videos uploaded. The wide spectrum of content such as music videos, vlogs, how to guides, tutorials and much much more makes Youtube a great platform to share your content. Many users, especially the younger generation, prefer the wide variety of content available on Youtube over traditional television.
Zeitgeist #
Leveraging cultural movements or ‘being part of the cultural zeitgeist’ involves taking a culturally identifiable piece of content and layering your brand message on top. Whilst doing so it’s important to act as to add another voice, rather than to distract or impose on the conversation.
