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Content Marketing Books: 21 Best Books For Digital Marketers In 2020
Updated: Aug 7
There are plenty of ways for you, as a digital marketer, to learn how to effectively utilize content marketing to grow your brand, service, or agency including watching YouTube, joining free or paid courses, hiring a mentor, and even plain old trial and error. All in all, learning from experts, already experienced in content marketing, will be one of the most effective and fastest ways for you to implement the right strategies to get your product or service in front of the right people.
If you enjoy reading or listening to eBooks to gain knowledge and you are looking for ways to generate new business for yourself, there are several books that are highly effective at teaching you not only techniques but also the psychology behind why people purchase a product or service.
In this article, we breakdown the best content marketing books you can read, in 2020, to help you go from a novice digital marketer to a master by the end of the year. Keep reading this article to find out the top books you can read or listen to today to help you with your content marketing.
Top 21 Best Content Marketing Books in 2020
Read on for a list of the top 21 best content marketing books you can read or listen to in 2020.
1. The Content Marketing Handbook: How to Double the Results of Your Marketing Campaigns
Author: Robert W. Bly
Why You Should Read This Book: Entrepreneurs, marketers, and small business owners looking to understand how content marketing, within integrated channels, can deliver phenomenal results and increased revenue for their business will enjoy this book. Bly teaches readers of The Content Handbook how to build trust, stimulate interests, and plan, execute, and measure content marketing in a multichannel environment.
2. Content Marketing: Essential Guide to Learn Step-by-Step the Best Content Marketing Strategies to Attract Your Audience and Boost Your Business
Author: Joe Wilson Schaefer
Why You Should Read This Book: This book is aimed at digital marketers interested in learning how to more effectively launching their digital and content marketing strategy. In it, you will learn eight proven strategies on how to effectively monetize the content you use when promoting your products and service as well as how to dramatically shift your thinking into the right content marketing mindset.
3. The Content Fuel Framework: How to Generate Unlimited Story Ideas (For Marketers and Creators)
Author: Melanie Deziel
Why You Should Read This Book: Author of The Content Fuel Framework, Melanie Deziel, is a trained journalist and award-winning content marketer. She shares with her readers a simple framework they can quickly implement for how to brainstorm and come up with topic ideas effortlessly. No more waiting for ideas to come to you, The Content Fuel Framework exactly how to produce consistent content your audience is looking to read.
4. Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break Through The Clutter, and Win More Customers By Marketing Less
Author: Joe Pulizzi
Why You Should Read This Book: Pulizzi teaches readers in his book how to cut through the noise, commotion, and bad information that is cluttering the internet. He also explains how to draw prospects and customers with epic content and information.
5. Conversation Marketing: How to Be Relevant and Engage Your Customer By Speaking Human
Author: Kevin Lund
Why You Should Read This Book: Kevin Lund teaches readers in his book, Conversation Marketing, how to earn your audience’s attention and cut through the crowds. In his book, you will learn how to tell meaningful stories, how to choose the right strategy to build your brand, and, most importantly, how to increase sales.
6. Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content
Author: Ann Handley
Why You Should Read This Book: Ann Handley provides an all-encompassing guide on how to create the publish the best kind of content to help your business thrive. Handley is a top marketing veteran and provides expert guidance and insight into the process of successful content creation, production, and publishing. She provides actionable how-to advice that is designed for one thing - how to get results. You will learn lessons for marketing your business successfully on various platforms including Twitter, LinkedIn, email, blogs, and other online assets.
7. Inbound Content: A Step-by-Step Guide To Doing Content Marketing The Inbound Way
Author: Justin Champion
Why You Should Read This Book: Champion describes, in his book, Inbound Content, your content must be valuable, relevant, and consistent. His book shows your exactly how to develop a unified strategy, create compelling content, and utilize your content to your advantage in order to build your brand.
8. The Content Code: 6 Essential Strategies to Ignite Your Content, Your Marketing, and Your Business
Author: Mark W. Schaefer
Why You Should Read This Book: The Content Code dives deeply into the true value of social media marketing and outlines the steps entrepreneurs can take to achieve better results.
9. Brand Identity Breakthrough: How to Craft Your Company’s Unique Story to Make Your Product Irresistible
Author: Gregory V. Diehl
Why You Should Read This Book: Brand Identity is a #1 Bestseller in Public Relationships and #5 in Small Business and teaches it’s readers how to properly brand their companies with digital marketing. You will learn how personable companies generate more traffic, more leads, and more sales with their ability to deliver the upfront value their audience can relate to.
10. Content That Converts: How To Build A Profitable and Predictable B2B Content Marketing Strategy
Author: Laura Hanly
Why You Should Read This Book: Content That Converts is intended for entrepreneurs and leads of B2B companies that want to learn how to utilize content marketing to drive predictable streams of leads for their business. In her book, Hanly provides a step-by-step process that business owners can execute to generate qualified leads and more conversions with effective and direct content marketing.
Reading this book will teach you how to develop a recurring content system and how to create long-form content that establishes you as a leader in your industry.
11. Practical Content Strategy & Marketing: The Content Strategy & Marketing Couse Guidebook
Author: Julia McCoy
Why You Should Read This Book: McCoy delivers a step-by-step guide for her readers on how to come up with a practical content strategy for your business.
12. Ultimate Guide to Link Building: How to Build Backlinks, Authority, and Credibility for Your Website and Increase Click Traffic and Search Ranking
Author: Eric Ward & Garrett French
Why You Should Read This Book: The Ultimate Guide to Link Building packs over 40 years of link-building experience from its authors, Eric Ward and Garrett French. By reading this book, you’ll learn how to execute a link audit and competitor analysis, develop a structured, long-term link building strategy, identify and approach quality, top-ranking websites with value propositions, and keep on the right side of search engine guidelines.
13. F#ck Content Marketing: Focus on Content Experience to Drive Demand, Revenue, & Relationships
Author: Randy Frisch
Why You Should Read This Book: F#ck Content Marketing focuses on helping entrepreneurs and businesses drive demand, revenue, and better relationships with content. The book pushes its reader to rethink their approach to how they communicate with their audience. Reading this book will teach you the Content Experience Framework, providing you as an entrepreneur what’s needed to leverage your content and engage your audience more effectively.
14. Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins
Author: Mark Schaefer
Why You Should Read This Book: Schaefer, in his book, Marketing Rebellion, teaches you why businesses must be built on human impressions instead of advertising impressions and why customer loyalty is dying and how your business can increase customer loyalty. You’ll also learn how to help your best customers do the marketing for you as well as actionable steps you can take to provide an immediate course-correction for businesses of any size.
15. Superfans: The Easy Way to Stand Out, Grow Your Tribe, and Build a Successful Business
Author: Pat Flynn
Why You Should Read This Book: Pat Flynn teaches the readers of his book, Superfans, the importance of having Superfans, people who will promote you and your products because they know you a made a difference in their lives.
This book caters to entrepreneurs and digital marketers from all realms including YouTubers, small business owners, and Fortune 500 companies.
16. Writing to Persuade: How to Bring People Over to Your Side
Author: Trish Hall
Why You Should Read This Book: Hall teaches her readers, in her book, Writing to Persuade how to write persuasively. She sets out the core principles for connecting with readers and offers a ton of value on how to communicate more effectively with your audience.
17. Content Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses
Author: Joe Pulizzi
Why You Should Read This Book: In Content Inc, Pulizzi teaches his readers the importance of building your audience, first, before creating your product. Pulizzi, in his book, breaks down the business-startup process into six steps, making it easy for you to visualize, launch, and monetize your own business. So no matter if you are looking to start a brand-new business or excel in an existing one, Content Inc provides all the knowledge you need to reverse engineer the traditional entrepreneurial model for more sustainable success.
18. Content Machine: Use Content Marketing to Build a 7-Figure Business With Zero Advertising
Author: Dan Norris
Why You Should Read This Book: "Content Machine highlights the best strategy for using content marketing to build a seven-figure business with zero advertising. Norris teaches the fundamentals of content marketing, how to create great content, and how to stand out from the crowded noise of today’s competitive market. Norris includes his story about how he grew his WordPress support business from scratch to over $1 million AUD annually in two years while only spending $181.23 on advertising.
19. Master Content Marketing: A Simple Strategy to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience
Author: Pamela Wilson
Why You Should Read This Book: If you are unsure about where to start when it comes to content marketing, Master Content Marketing provides you with a step-by-step guide through the content marketing process. Reading this book, you will learn how to come up with clear content marketing goals, see content marketing examples, and learn how to come up with ideas, headlines, and more to ensure your content is SEO-optimized to generate leads and traffic.
20. Content Marketing: Growth Strategies to Stay Ahead in the Changing World of Content Marketing and Maximize ROI
Author: Ralf Percy
Why You Should Read This Book: Published in 2019, Content Marketing, provides a step-by-step guide on how to build an amazing opt-in offer and how to build great landing pages that actually convert. With this content marketing guide, you’ll learn the fastest route to become a competent content marketing writer.
21. The Story Engine: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Content Strategy and Brand Storytelling Without Spending All Day Writing
Author: Kyle Gray
Why You Should Read This Book: The Story Engine illustrate the steps one must take to reap the benefits of inbound marketing. In the book, you will learn how to set yourself up for content marketing success as well as avoid the common pitfalls most content marketers fall into when trying to scale their content creation. You will also learn how to set yourself up for content marketing success and master your content strategy whether you are targetting businesses or consumers.
Conclusion
Becoming a better digital marketer and figuring out how to drive traffic to your website requires some trial and error, but by learning from experts who share their knowledge you should be able to cut the learning curve in half.
Effective content marketing can help you go from generating no website visitors to generating thousands of website visitors virtually overnight. With the help of some of these content marketing books, you will be well on your way to turning your website into a lead magnet with steady website visitors ready to convert.
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