5 Ways to Win with B2B Content Marketing & Social Media
Posted on 09. Apr, 2012 by Lee Odden in B2B, B2B content marketing, B2B Social Media, Blog, btob marketing, content marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media
In the world of B2B online marketing, content and media have been used in a variety of forms to educate and persuade customers across long buying cycles with great success. Over the past few years I’ve heard from many B2B marketers that prospects are leading themselves through much of the initial phases of awareness, interest and consideration by consuming useful content discovered through social channels and published by the brand.
The result of smarter content and social engagement is a more qualified and educated consumer by the time they get to sales discussions which can mean a shorter sales cycle and even an impact on order volume and referrals.
Content marketing on the social web is a hot topic in many areas from SEO to Public Relations. Despite growing popularity, many marketers think “more content” is content marketing. What matters with content marketing is the thoughtful creation of information designed for a particular audience and specific outcomes as an individual object and as part of an overall strategy.
Content is educational and a tool of persuasion that can guide prospective customers in the journey from awareness to advocacy, across the entire customer lifecycle.
For a more qualitative approach to content, here are tips on how to make the most out of your content marketing efforts on the social web:
1. Planning
While experimenting with social media applications and platforms is a practical first step, many B2B Marketers seem to think that it’s a strategy. Goals, audience, and approach can allow for social experimentation but also provide companies with some structure and accountability toward achieving business outcomes with social content.
Social content plans don’t need to be set in stone. In fact, with social media content, it’s important for such plans to be adaptable and capable of analytical input and iterative improvements as data increases through growing network participation. A plan will help marketers better evaluate and scale their social media initiatives as well.
2. Prospect Centric
Companies that view social media platforms simply as a distribution channel for self-promotion often fail to create value for the very customers they’re trying to reach.
People don’t typically use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogging, Pinterest, and other social applications for keeping tabs on corporate press releases, product announcements, and promotions. Reasons for social media usage are most often personal. According to a Pew Research Center study, “two thirds of social media users say that staying in touch with current friends and family members is a major reason they use these sites.” With engaging on personal networks, consumers certainly connect with the brands they like, but contrary to how many brands behave with social content publishing, those connections are part of the social web experience, not the reason for it.
B2B marketers can achieve much better success with social content by empathizing with customer needs, interests, goals, and pain points across the buying cycle. Seeing things from the prospect’s point of view will help B2B marketers develop a content and social media approach that serves as a solution or facilitator to creating the kind of social content that resonates, engages, and gets shared. As prospect-centric social content gets shared, many of those who engage will refer or become customers.
3. Give to Get
Along with self-promotion, B2B marketers have a tendency to expect social communities to behave the way the brand wants them to. The guideline I like to share with B2B marketers that want to foster community and engagement is: “Give to get.” That doesn’t mean, give a sales pitch to get a sale.
Instead, provide something of value before expecting anything in return. In fact, it’s smart to find out more specifically what consumers and those who influence them find valuable as inspiration for a social content plan. Deliver useful information, listen to how audiences respond, and make adjustments. Then repeat.
The investment in creating value that is thoughtful for both customers and the brand’s business objectives is where consumer and corporate needs are met with social content.
4. Promotion
A lot of B2B marketing budgets have invested in creating content for companies, but many purists feel that great content should be left to attract attention based purely on the quality of the information. There’s a feeling that if content is really good, it will attract traffic and engagement all on it’s own. That’s a naïve perspective, especially in a competitive category and it also makes some strong assumptions about whether there is a preexisting community for the brand, or not.
With a hub and spoke publishing model, themed content is published into a repository that represents a “go to” resource for topics that the brand wants to be known for. At the same time, that content can be promoted through spokes or social channels among communities that are interested. People often rely on content promotion to discover what’s new. Promotion can attract traffic, social shares, and links, which can all serve as useful signals to search engines and improve standard and social search engine visibility.
Promotion works best with content that deserves to be shared. That kind of content makes a promise to social networks that it’s good. If a B2B brand can consistently create, optimize, socialize, and promote great content, the community will respond with shares, referrals, engagement, links, and even sales.
5. Analyze and Optimize
As they mature in their social content journey, B2B companies develop social profiles, publish descriptions, and contribute content at various intervals as part of their social media participation. They may even actively optimize social content with search keywords and social topics as a way to empathize with what consumers are looking for and talking about on the social web.
A missing piece of this puzzle is the importance of ongoing monitoring and analysis. There’s a process I call, “The cycle of search and social improvement” that involves creating and optimizing social content. As useful content is created and promoted, it gets shared and attracts fans, friends, followers, and subscribers.
As the community grows, even more sharing of links and traffic is involved with brand content. The increase in engagement, search visibility, and social sharing provides a rich set of data with which the brand can improve content creation. It’s a cycle of hypothesis, implementation, and analysis that can improve how effectively a brand is able to refine social content effectiveness at inspiring business outcomes.
A version of this article originally appeared on my ClickZ Social Media Smarts column.
If you’d like a deep dive on these topics with plenty of how to’s, then check out my new book: Optimize published by Wiley and available this week.
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5 Ways to Win with B2B Content Marketing & Social Media | http://www.toprankblog.com
Content Marketing Tactics Now Critical to All Businesses [INFOGRAPHIC]
Posted on 09. Feb, 2012 by Joe Pulizzi in B2B content marketing, Blog, Branded Content, content marketing, Fun Stuff, infographic, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media
I bumped into my good friend Chris Baggott from Compendium yesterday at the Online Marketing Summit. Every conference we run into each other at, Chris pulls me aside and says, “Joe, here we are at this INSERT NAME conference and a content marketing conference has broken out”.
The point? Everyone is talking content marketing these days. The practice and integration of the creation and distribution of valuable, compelling and relevant content to attract and retain customers has never been more critical for brands of all sizes (see this Coca-Cola content marketing example if you want some proof).
It didn’t used to be the case. Even though I’ve been trying to get corporate marketers to use the term “content marketing” since 2001, only recently has it caught on (see this Google Trends chart below. If content marketing were a stock, we’d be living the high life.)
To further establish the point, our friends at Blueglass Interactive put together this handy infographic, featuring a number of Content Marketing Institute’s B2B content marketing research statistics. Also thanks for our friends at Mashable for covering this with some additional commentary as well. Enjoy!
The original post is titled Content Marketing Tactics Now Critical to All Businesses [INFOGRAPHIC] , and it came from The Content Marketing Revolution .
SAS on Results-Driven Blogging for B2B Brands #cmworld
Posted on 08. Sep, 2011 by Lee Odden in B2B, B2B content marketing, Blog, content marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
The B2B Track during day one of Content Marketing World in the “Gold Room” was jam packed for each session. That includes this session about Corporate Blogging and Globalizing your Editorial with two speakers from SAS and Intel. Since the topics were so different, I decided to split the liveblog post into two. This is part one.
Speaker: Alison Bolen @alisonbolen Content Editor SAS
Presentation: Results-Driven Blogging for B2B Brands
Alison’s presentation focused on corporate blogging and the blog program at SAS (a $2 billion business analytics company).
The history of SAS and social media started in 1976 with the first SAS Global Forum, 2004 internal blog program, 2006 SAS communities launched, 2007 the first external blog launched and in 2011 the transition to the WordPress platform. You can find SAS blogs here: blogs.sas.com
Alison works in the Public Relations organization at SAS along with 8 other corporate journalists.
How to Grow a Corporate Blogging Program
Develop a strategy: Find out where the current corporate strategies are and find a hook into them. For the SAS blogging program, there were 3 main goals: to align with PR, Marketing and Customer Support.
Blogging supports each stage of the funnel:
- Identify the problem / opportunity
- Research solutions
- Evaluate
- Consider
- Purchase
SAS blog efforts are meta data enabled: by persona, by category, by industry. For content to be relevant and valuable it must be persona based and aligned with steps in the buying process.
The next step in corporate blogging strategy development is to find the right content. Ask these important questions: Where do stories live? (Word Docs, PPTs, Videos, Live Events) Where does knowledge live? (Sharepoint, White papers)
Now it’s time to find the right people. Alison gave the example of two SAS bloggers that write for distinct audiences.
Blog Planning with Monthly Assignments. All posts are due on a specific date each month. The most timely posts are published first. Breaking news and fillers are published as relevant. A schedule ensures there is content to work with each month.
Another planning option is to focus on one specific topic. For example, each Quarter, focus on a specific topic for each blogging contributing to that particular blog.
Another angle on corporate blog planning involves themes every week. Example: Monday (Getting Started Articles) Wednesdays (Topics the Blogger is Trying to Learn & Documenting that Process) Friday (Posts in reaction to a particular topic from other blogs)
Tap Internal Subject Matter Experts: If the organizational structure supports it, you can divide blogging assignments by areas of specialization. Example: 16 Think Tank team members for healthcare at SAS that includes authors who specialize in specific areas. They are assigned to blog on their area of expertise at least once a month.
Have a blog that new bloggers can contribute to in order to show their commitment. SAS also has an internal blog network of 700+ bloggers that also acts as a testing ground.
If you have a group blog, you must have an editor. No assignments and nobody in charge = NO CONTENT. A blog editor is a content chaser, people watcher and project manager – not necessarily a corporate communications person.
For events, plan across blogs as needed. Map topics and aspects of the events to be covered by the different blogs in your organization to ensure coverage.
If blogs don’t work out, retire them.
Coach and advise, don’t micromanage. Be patient with different learning styles. Don’t pre-judge and expect too much.
Results: Customer Support – Positive comments and links to your blogs.
Results: Marketing – Bloggers invited to speak at conferences, getting calls from journalists, posts picked up by industry publications and bloggers getting invites to write books
Results: The New PR – Journalists contacting SAS after seeing blog posts. It’s the new PR.
Results: The Blog is the top news source on the sas.com website. In fact. compared to other news pages on the SAS site, the blogging effort is blowing other content out of the water in terms of traffic.
I think Alison gave some really useful ideas for blog content and planning. One of the most common objections I hear from companies that really should be blogging (and not all companies should) is that they have difficulty with creating content on an ongoing basis. It’s a big mind shift and kudos to SAS for having 8 Corporate Journalists on staff.
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5 Ways to Deliver B2B Marketing Content that Sells (Without Sabotaging Sales)
Posted on 15. Jun, 2011 by Carmen Hill in B2B content marketing, b2b marketing, B2B Social Media, babcock and jenkins, Blog, carmen hill, content marketing, content strategy, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Guest post by Carmen Hill, Social Media and Content Strategiest for Babcock & Jenkins, an integrated B2B marketing agency in Portland.
Could giving away too much great content actually sabotage sales? As unlikely as it sounds, this is exactly the concern that recently came up in a discussion about B2B content marketing.
There’s always a risk that prospective customers will take the information you give them and then use it to buy from your competitor instead. But the bigger risk is that they never find you or consider you in the first place, especially when 70% of the buyer’s journey is complete before they ever contact sales (SiriusDecisions).
Here’s one more thing to consider: 95% to 99% of people will bail rather than fill out your registration form. And of those who do register, the majority will not provide a correct phone number.
“Sales cannot step in and educate your audience until the audience is willing to hear from sales,” says my colleague Eric Wittlake, senior media director at Babcock & Jenkins. “Based on these figures, somewhere between 98% and 99.8% don’t want to hear from sales even though they’re interested in your information. You need to let the content do the selling.”
Here are 5 ways to do just that while ensuring a smooth handoff to sales when buyers are truly ready to talk to them.
1. Talk to sales early and often
This not only assuages any concern that you’re stealing their thunder, but also gives you the inside skinny on what buyers need to know before buying your products. What questions do they ask? What objections do they raise? What content might get you in the door ahead of your competitors?
2. Get your stories straight
Marketing and sales may not be telling the same chapters of a story, but you are reading from the same book. Be sure to follow a consistent narrative that deepens over time and leads to a happy ending.
3. Identify the “pivot point” when sales needs to step in
At a certain point in a complex B2B purchase, you absolutely need a sales rep or sales engineer to meet with the buyer and scope out the right solution for their specific needs. Tag content that might indicate strong interest or intent to purchase and include a compelling reason for prospects to share their (real) contact information and/or agree to a meeting. For example, the next step for someone who uses your online product selector might be to talk to a sales engineer for a customized configuration or ROI report.
4. Make it easy to take the next step
Don’t ruin a good story with a lame finish. Provide a simple stepping-stone to the next stage of the buyer’s journey—and remove the friction. No one wants to fill out a long registration form with a bunch of questions a telemarketer or sales rep will ask again anyway. As Ardath Albee notes in a recent post, “The way in which online dialogues are transitioned into 1-to-1 sales conversations can either keep your prospects’ buying momentum moving along or stop it cold.”
5. Measure and share success
Once you’ve mapped content to each stage of the buyer’s journey, use a Web analytics tool such as Omniture to track how well it performs:
- Is your audience responding?
- How much time do they spend watching or reading your content?
- Do they click through to the next level of information?
- Does a prospect that engages with a particular asset eventually buy something?
Ultimately, the best way to answer the question of whether or not your content is giving away too much (or not) is to directly map that content to pipeline revenue or closed sales.
How much information do you think a buyer should get to see without talking to sales? How do you or your clients strike the right balance? I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.
(Babcock & Jenkins is a Convince & Convert client)
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