Content Marketing Glossary

Above-the-fold

Above-the-fold refers to the content that appears before you need to scroll. The phrase was originally used to describe content in a newspaper that lived above the fold in the paper. 

Analytics

Simply put, analytics are the stats you collect. You can make data-based decisions that improve your marketing efforts by understanding analytics and monitoring them.   

Audience

Your audience is a highly defined group of people you plan to target with content in hopes of them engaging with your brand. 

Backlinks

Backlinks are links to your site from other businesses. They’re preferred by search engines and establish your site as an authority.  

Blogging

Blogging is the act of writing strategic content that’s meant to educate, engage, and convert customers. For many brands, their blog, coupled with social media channels, is the crux of their content marketing strategy.

Brand awareness

Content marketers often work to promote brand awareness, meaning they’re helping people discover and learn about your company and its products. 

Branded content

An influencer or advertiser creates and shares branded content in hopes of connecting with an audience in an authentic, non-salesy way. The brand pays for it, but the influencer or advertiser shares it. 

Buy-in

For content marketing to work, you need buy-in from your leadership team, which means you need them to see the value of content marketing and provide the necessary resources to make it happen. 

Content

Used to communicate to an audience, content can take many forms including blogs, articles, podcasts, videos, eBooks, social posts, or webinars.  

Content audit

A content audit is a thorough review of your existing content meant to show you what you’re doing well and where you can improve. 

Content brief

A content brief is a set of guidelines often meant for freelancers. A content brief for a blog post, for example, would include information about the brand’s tone and audience, the article’s goal, and key points to cover.

Content marketing

Content marketing is the strategic act of creating and distributing content to your target audience with the intent of motivating them to take action. The action varies, but in many cases the goal is to encourage customers to learn about or purchase a product. 

Content marketing strategy

A content marketing strategy is a plan to create, promote, and measure content. Your strategy is a roadmap meant to guide your content choice by defining your overall goals, audience, and mission. 

Content workflow

A content workflow explains how a piece of content is created and published. Your workflow likely includes these stages:

• Generate content ideas
• Identify keywords
• Create content briefs
• Assign creators
• Set submission dates
• Review and edit content
• Complete content admin, like adding metadata and images
• Promote it

Conversion

If a customer takes the action you wanted, it’s called a conversion. If you want customers to make a purchase and they do, for example, it’s a conversion. 

Copyediting

When you copyedit, you review and edit written content and check the pace, grammar, readability, and interest. 

Curation

To curate content is to put together a collection of focused content. You can curate your own content or include work from third-party, non-competitive sources. 

CTA

A CTA is a call to action. It’s what you want your audience to do. A CTA could be a link leading customers to make a purchase or download an eBook. 

Editorial calendar

An editorial calendar helps content managers track and monitor pieces of content. By marking submission, editing, and publishing dates on a calendar, content production stays organized.  

Evergreen content

Evergreen content holds its value through time. Due to its longevity, evergreen content usually doesn’t focus on timely topics and instead focuses on information that will hold its relevance.

Goals

While you likely know the meaning of this word, in the content marketing world, goals are measurable benchmarks. Your goal includes specific KPIs that you’ll use to gauge success.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a collaboration between a brand and a creator. Brands pay influencers who have sway in their niche to create promotional content on the brand’s behalf.  

Keyword

Often used to describe search engine optimization tactics, keywords are the search terms used to find online resources. You can use tools to identify keywords and create content that focuses on that keyword in hopes of organically connecting with your audience. 

Landing page

A landing page is a web page created specifically for a marketing campaign. They’re often used to track visitors or capture additional information. 

Newsjacking

Newsjacking is the practice of generating content derived from headlines in hopes of leveraging the popularity of the topic. When you craft a blog article in response to industry news, for example, it’s newsjacking. 

Owned media

Owned media is content your brand controls, like your website, blogs, and social channels. If you created and distributed it, you own it. 

Paid search

When you invest in paid search, you invest money into digital ads that you only pay for if they’re clicked.

Persona

A persona is a description of your ideal customer. It provides helpful insights that combine both demographic and behavioral data and helps marketers target their content to the right people. 

Sales funnel

The sales funnel identifies the stages customers go through to make a purchase. Many funnels include the following stages: 

• Awareness
• Discovery
• Evaluation
• Intent
• Purchase

Search engine optimization 

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of using specific tactics to help your content gain higher search rankings. 

Visual content

Visual content describes content that’s pleasing to the eye, like pictures, videos, or graphics.