Lots of content marketers entered the ring this year. But who was still standing at the end? Which authors and posts had the most impact on your thinking? Which posts did you share with your colleagues?

We have been analyzing this year’s social data with the help of our new Top Author Report to produce our first league table of the sumos that are making the most buzz. We call them the Buzz Sumos. For no reason.

Methodology

We wanted a clean fight, so you have to have some rules. We analyzed articles that were specifically about content marketing and we included any author who wrote at least 5 posts about content marketing this year. Our list includes authors that focus almost exclusively on content marketing and authors that write about a broad range of topics including content marketing.

We have produced two BuzzSumo top ten league tables:

1. authors with the highest total shares of all their content marketing posts, and
2. authors with the highest average shares for their articles on content marketing.

We have also provided a handy link to the most shared articles of each author, so you can review what has been working so well for them this year. Maybe my young friend, you will step into the ring next year.

You can argue some authors benefited by publishing on sites with very large audiences but they still produced content which was consistently shared more than other content. But is this really a time to argue? The fight’s over, here are the winners…

Top 10 Content Marketing Sumos

(Based on Total Shares)

The top Sumo creating the most buzz in 2014 was Neil Patel. His content marketing posts were shared a remarkable 115,000 times this year.  In a word: BOOM.
But there were nine other Sumos with stellar shares too – and here they are  (the number of posts are the number of posts about content marketing remember):

	Author	No Posts	Total Shares	Most Shared Posts
	Neil Patel	71	115148	View posts
	Lee Odden	78	66362	View posts
	Kevan Lee	24	57914	View posts
	Joe Pulizzi	53	35432	View posts
	Jayson Demers	27	34324	View posts
	Eric Siu	11	29273	View posts
	Jeff Bullas	23	28311	View posts
	Jay Baer	37	24938	View posts
	Demian Farnworth	14	23670	View posts
	Michael Brenner	65	23440	View posts

 

What’s their secret? They can’t tell you, because it’s a secret. But one thing they share is persistence.

These 10 inaugural content marketing Buzz Sumos write regularly and consistently about content marketing sharing their views on trends, tools and top tips. They collectively wrote over 400 posts on content marketing this year. If you were reading about content marketing in the last 12 months you are very likely to have read articles by them. Quality and quantity.

The most shared content marketing post was by Kevan Lee on the ideal length for online content, which was shared over 30,000 times. (it was 5,288 words and some nice charts, which it now turns out is empirically ideal). You can see the most shared posts on content marketing this year on Buzzsumo.

Top 10 Content Marketing Sumos

(Based On Average Shares Per Post)

So total shares is one way to keep score. But is it better to look at who got the highest average shares per post? Maybe that shows more consistency?

You don’t have to choose, because we did both lists. Roll up the 10 Sumos with highest average share per content marketing post.

Rebekah Radice tops our second top ten league table which is based on the average shares for an author’s posts on content marketing. Rebekah writes about a wide range of topics and is well known for her advice and tips on social media marketing. Rebekah wrote  5 great posts on content marketing this year and achieved an average of 3,200 shares per post. Rebekah’s top post was “5 Ways Brands Use Visual Content to Maximum Effect” which was shared more than 4,000 times.

Neil Patel is remarkable for producing consistently high quality content. Neil wrote 71 articles, more than 1 a week, and still achieved an average of 1,600 shares per post.

	Author	No Posts	Average Shares Per Post	Most Shared Posts
	Rebekah Radice	5	3217	View posts
	John Boitnott	5	3109	View posts
	Eric Siu	11	2661	View posts
	Kevan Lee	24	2413	View posts
	Demian Farnworth	14	1690	View posts
	Neil Patel	71	1621	View posts
	Brian Clark	16	1376	View posts
	Lindsay Kolowich	13	1357	View posts
	Jayson Demers	27	1271	View posts
	Kelsey Libert	14	1252	View posts

 

There’s some overlap as you can see, but there are some different players in here too. So what matters more – breakout posts that go huge (Neil Patel’s top post had nearly 16,000 shares),  or consistent form?
If Rebecca had written 71 posts and maintained her average across them, she’d be top of the totals table too.

It’ll be interesting to see who shakes these lists up in 2015. Place your bets…

Who Are Your Top Content Marketing Sumos?

Who is your content marketing sumo this year? Share the people that had an impact on you this year. Check out how their posts were shared using BuzzSumo, just use the author operator, for example:  author:steve rayson

You can also run reports similar to the one above using our brand new Top Author Report. Available on our BuzzSumo Agency and Enterprise plans.