Lead Generation

Go On! Get Your Story Told.

Here are the six books that in our view are “must reads” for content marketers in the B2B space. If you read nothing else, read these six. Taken together they provide a solid grounding in most of the really important challenges facing content marketers. They give an overview of best practices that every marketing generalist should know. And they connect a LOT of dots for you that frankly, might not be so easy to connect for yourself. Lastly, don’t feel overloaded. Some are brief and all are concise and very well written, making them relatively quick reads. (NOTE: if possible, we recommend reading them in the order of our list.)

1. Elements of Content Strategy,* by Erin Kissane

2. Content Strategy, by Kristina Halvorson

3. Get Content Get Customers, by Joe Pulizzi

4. Content Rules, by Ann Handley and CC Chapman

5. eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, by Ardath Albee

6. Letting Go of the Words, by Ginny Redish

Taken together these books will ground you in the fundamentals of some essential practices: understanding the basic elements of content strategy and information design; how to create a content strategy that’s practical and able to be implemented; how to support collaboration across multidisciplinary teams to create, maintain and enhance great content; how to follow the examples of others who’ve been successful using compelling content to attract buyers; how lead generation, nurturing and marketing automation can be organized along with great content to support complex B2B sales cycles; and how to write great copy that’s not only tight and persuasive but equally importantly works on the Web.

There are many other good books on content marketing, but these are the best we’ve seen in covering some fundamental ground. Do yourself a favor and check them out, along with the terrific sites and blogs of the authors and their organizations.

* Asterisk denotes Kindle Reader, Kindle App or other ebook versions available.