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# Content Marketing Experiments That Worked for Us in 2024
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December 19, 2024 by  in
!
**We’ve turned our content program into something of an R&D lab this year. With a full-time, dedicated marketing role at our agency, we’ve had plenty of opportunities to test new ideas before recommending them to clients.**
As we wrap up 2024, I want to share what's worked well for us this year, so you can use these insights to inform your 2025 content strategy. (And I get to do a "year in review" without calling it that. 😊)
## **Communities as a Sounding Board**
We’ve relied on communities like LinkedIn and Superpath as sounding boards for testing and sourcing content ideas. Two tactics worked particularly well:
1. **Run a poll to gather insights**, then reach out to respondents personally to ask follow-up questions or schedule an interview.
2. **Reach out to folks with hot content marketing takes** and then invite them for a conversation or guest post.
"" is a great example. We tested potential headlines in a LinkedIn poll before writing the article. The feedback steered us away from using the term “blogbusters” in the final piece *and* connected us with readers who became sources.
*Another nice trick: I created  to gather feedback instead of the standard poll feature. The image got a lot of engagement and allowed me to use longer “answers.”*
Other pieces that benefited from this approach in 2024:
* " A deep dive into content attribution, packed with insights from people who responded to a LinkedIn poll on that topic.
* " A Q&A interview with Island’s Head of Content & Comms about content and PR, based on a LinkedIn post she shared on the subject.
## Content Formats Unlocked by AI
AI allowed us to experiment with content formats that previously weren't viable. Such pieces would have been too time-consuming relative to their expected longevity and traffic potential.
Two formats proved particularly valuable:
1. **"Newsy" articles responding to industry updates and trends**, like “.” We created this piece in just a few hours with the help of .
2. **Q&A interview articles**, like “.” Previously, transcription and processing the interview would have taken hours, but AI now handles most of the workload, making this content type viable for our blog.
*AI impacts content creation in three ways. For excellent content, it enhances quality without saving time. For good content, it can reduce production time. Most interestingly, it makes previously unviable content formats possible by significantly reducing effort requirements. ()*
The results: our two items about Google’s updates attracted around 5,000 new visitors — much more than we expected. And  got shared by most interviewees across their networks (which is what we hoped for but weren’t sure of).
💡 *Speaking of AI unlocks: We’ve been using AI writing tool  to create our newsletters. Lex takes the style, content, and metrics of your previous newsletters directly from Kit and uses those references to spin up your next email from input you provide (e.g., an article draft or an outline).*
## Unconventional Content Concepts
We launched several initiatives this year that were unconventional in their format or in their approach:
1.  We added an option in several blog articles allowing readers to request an emailed pricing breakdown (”What would it cost to produce something like this for *your* blog?”).
2. **:** A free tool we built that analyzes decaying content in your library based on your GA4 data. Revive identifies which articles have lost the most organic traffic, helping you prioritize your  efforts.
*Our CEO Ty Magnin shares the launch of Revive with a post and video .*
Each of these concepts has generated more than 500 new email addresses for  (and both launched in the second half of the year).
*The sign up boxes that let you request pricing breakdowns for some of our content.*
## Multiple Thought Leadership Voices
We've always aimed to share forward-thinking, insightful, and sometimes contrarian perspectives on content marketing on the Animalz blog.
This year, articles like “,” “,” and “” hit that mark.
But there was a twist in our 2024 approach: not all thought leadership came from us. We also featured insights and hot takes from people who aren’t on the Animalz team (anymore), such as Mark Rogers, Megan Morreale, and Jess Cook.
Some of our most impactful pieces this year:
* **“Stay Strong: Never Let AI Fill Your Blank Page”** really resonated with many content marketers. We still see people share and mention the article, and it’s an important reference internally for how we think about AI usage.
* **""** (by Mark) was one of our most successful articles this year and still gets mentioned regularly in online conversations and on sales calls.
* The Q&A interviews we did with Megan Morreale and Jess Cook brought fresh perspectives that resonated with both their audiences and ours.
*Senior leaders at Salesforce sharing their enthusiasm for our perspective on AI's role in content creation. 😻*
## Strategic SEO Refreshes
We've traditionally paid less attention to SEO for our own blog, despite having strong domain authority and good SERP positions for many content marketing terms.
This year, we followed the playbook we often recommend to customers: investing effort into refreshing existing content instead of only producing new pieces.
We  to find high-potential refresh candidates on our blog, then put on our white gloves to update some of these classic posts, mindful of preserving what made them special while sprinkling on some SEO magic.
We updated information, added new sections, and did subtle keyword optimization that the originals lacked. Examples:
While less exciting than creating new content, these refreshes saw substantial traffic gains after the updates.
**🔔 Reminder for 2025:** Don’t overlook unsexy tactics that work.
## What Will Work in 2025?
There’s only one thing we’re really sure about for content marketing in 2025: experimentation will be a must. You’ll need an R&D mindset when everything keeps changing, so you quickly learn what works and what doesn’t.
We’ll make sure to keep trying new things while being even more disciplined about our content marketing experiments:
* Defining clear hypotheses
* Tracking progress and results systematically
* Documenting and sharing learnings more frequently and publicly
* Doubling down on what works
We’d love to hear what you think will work in 2025 — add your thoughts to . 👇️
##### 
Tim is the Director of Marketing and Innovation at Animalz. He's also the creator of  for macOS. Tim lives in Koh Samui, Thailand. 🏝️
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