3 rules to inform your content marketing strategy

Many B2B companies are still adapting to the new opportunities of content marketing, and too many are still playing by the old rules. This involves with massively wordy, downloadable eBooks and content designed for the Desktop Era. Content marketing has changed along with the larger trends in technology and with shifting consumer preferences for how people access information and engage with content online, and your B2B content marketing strategies need to change along with it! Here are some new rules of content marketing that any B2B firm can benefit from:

Make it "mobile first."

Mobile devices now represent a majority of internet usage, and many people are using smartphones as their primary device for accessing the Internet. But mobile devices aren’t just for teenagers or millennials, and they’re not just for consumers – more and more B2B buyers are using mobile devices to conduct research about…

Content Marketing is more than just publishing content...

When Doug Kessler (Velocity Partners) published his Slideshare ‘Crap: the single biggest threat to b2b content marketing’ it rightly got a lot of attention (one million views and counting). [slideshare id=15931787&doc=velocitycrap-130110064100-phpapp01] I think that the popularity of this Slideshare was not only because of the great title, but because it highlighted the challenge of getting cut-through as more B2B brands are spending more time on content marketing. Now B2B buyers cannot move for the flood of Ebooks, blog posts, and infographics (which are getting longer by the day!). According to the CMI:  74% of marketers say they are producing more content than they did a year ago, but 70% of content produced gets wasted each day!  From my experience of working with brands and training marketers on content marketing, there seems to be a common experience with initial adoption of Content Marketing.  You know you need to be doing something, so you start…

Increasing your reach by getting off your B2B blog and writing for others

The benefits of business blogging and personal blogging are well-known in terms of improving search visibility, delivering traffic and raising your profile but often it is hard to get audiences to come back to a blog on a business web site and engage. A standard approach most business bloggers adopt is to seed blog content around the web - tapping into social media platforms, websites, groups, hubs and communities - with the goal of getting people to click the link and return to the website to take action. Blogging, in this sense is, a very worthwhile activity. But it also a little bit spammy and has to be managed carefully to avoid coming across as being self-absorbed. As most companies are blogging in order to improve visibility, stimulate greater website traffic and foster deeper engagement - a more inclusive blogging distribution strategy is…

Using video for brand storytelling

There is no shortage of people out there telling us that marketing today is all about storytelling, and that if you want people to connect with your brand, you need to tell stories that they can relate to. Of course, this is easier said than done, so in this post I wanted to introduce you to some ways of determining what story you should tell.

Making a video about your product

When you first consider making videos about your product, the natural tendency is to think about making videos that revolve around the product itself - demonstrating its features and benefits. This is our connection to traditional sales-focused advertising talking. Here is a Fairy Liquid advert that anyone based in the UK of 30+ years should remember. It is a good example of a product-focused advert that clearly shows some awareness of the importance of ‘story’ and emotional connection –…

Examples of 3 Facebook Applications that every B2B organisation needs on its brand page

You will know that on every brand’s Facebook Page there are four app thumbnails, three of which are customizable and whose positions can be moved. I've marked them 1 through 3 below. Some companies choose to use this space only to feature their Page’s Like count or Facebook’s 'Notes' and 'Map' apps. These companies are not making the most of their precious Facebook real estate! In this article I'll show examples of 3 better alternatives.

Essential apps for your Facebook page

Much like the cover photo, apps are a feature of the Page that capture the attention of Page visitors first. For B2B companies that want to squeeze the most value out of their Facebook Page, there are three essential apps that should live on the Page at all times: Newsletter app Resources app Testimonials app.

1.…

Five implications for B2B Content Marketing

The Content Marketing Institute recently published its latest 2014 B2B Content Marketing Report, which contains some interesting insights about the role content marketing plays in successful B2B marketing strategies.

The implications for content marketing in 2014

Viewing the report got us thinking about the way the content marketing realm has broadened for B2B marketers. Here are our top five take-aways from the report which B2B enterprises can use to leverage your content marketing strategies for the next year. 1. Content marketing is increasingly accepted in the marketing strategies of all B2B businesses Now we need no special marketing report to believe that. The rate of acceptance however comes as a surprise. A wonderful surprise that is. The report found that 93% of all B2B marketers use content marketing in their marketing mix.

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Plus 4 examples of videos aligned with business goals

We find that many of our B2B clients have a lack of confidence about their businesses suitability to video (or should that be the other way around?). They think that in order for a product to work in a video it needs to be entertaining in itself. But that is just not true - there are plenty of stories behind every business that are best communicated using video. In many cases it is often easier with B2B as the target customer is often more clearly defined and understood. What is more complicated with B2B video is that marketers need to work harder to convince a number of decision makers in an organisation. Here is an example of how we used 2 short videos to increase a B2B clients website by 10% - it only took 1 month to achieve this…

Ideas to increase visibility and sharing on Slideshare

I thought this was a nice piece of content marketing by Slideshare, so thought it was worth sharing to highlight Slideshare’s ongoing importance if you market to professional B2B audiences. As Dan said in this previous post on 7 Reasons B2B marketers should love Slideshare: "Assuming that you’re a B2B marketer, and have good content that can be directly used or re-purposed for Slideshare, we think that Slideshare is a grossly under-utilised tool, especially since the “Pro” version launched" This new Slideshare from Slideshare is worth scanning if your a B2B Marketer since it’s a nice summary of what worked for companies recently with examples. SlideShare Zeitgeist 2013 from SlideShare Apart from the deck itself, the content marketing I…

Managing the Content Marketing Avalanche

Managing Content Marketing can often feel like getting caught in a relentless wave that you can’t fight against, so when speaking at the #B2Bconf from B2B Marketing managing this challenge is what I chose as my theme. I selected 10 key areas to help with planning in the year ahead based on the latest research and my experiences of content marketing. Most who work within B2B Marketing have bought into the power of content marketing to create leads, indeed any marketer who has worked in B2B industries for some time will tell you that they practised Content Marketing before Joe Pulizzi and the Content Marketing Institute created the category. In this post I’ll give a brief summary and recommendations based on the research and trends I covered in my talk with links to more detail. My Slideshare is embedded at the end of this post.

Trend 1: A planned,…

Content marketing Survey on B2B marketing

The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, undertook a survey sponsored by Brightcove, to ask over 1,200 B2B Marketers in the US the key marketing tactics from last year and to discuss their focus for 2014.

 'Heading into 2014, many B2B marketers are feeling more confident than ever about the effectiveness of their content marketing strategies,' said Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and author of Epic Content Marketing. 'Though the industry is still in the early adoption phase of content marketing, it's clear that many are seeing success and are continuing to increase their tactics and devote more resources, and budgets, to producing great content experiences.'

Key content marketing survey findings included:

93% of B2B organisations are using content-based tactics and 73% are producing more content than the previous year.86% have someone who oversees content marketing strategy30%…