unsexy, compliant and boring? the 5 missed opportunities of b2b content marketing…
DESCRIPTION
B2B Marketing Summit, 18 June 2013: Content marketing gurus too often focus on glamorous or quirky B2C examples. Lovely to look at, but not much help if you’re producing content about industrial air conditioning units, with numerous unenlightened stakeholders offering editorial advice. Catherine Toole suggests 5 key activities which support high-quality B2B content marketing. And nobody need volunteer to bungee jump off a space station.TRANSCRIPT
Unsexy, compliant and boring? 5 missed opportunities of b2b content marketing
@StickyContent
#b2bsummit
@catherinetoole
What makes content engaging?
1. RELEVANCE
Image from xkcd.com
Your domain of expertise
Your users’ information
needs
Based on seomoz research
Answer a question, grow your content ‘One of our clients that develops an enterprise software
solution has been developing “technology tips” based on
customer service queries for the past two years.
When reviewing analytics last quarter, we realized these
content marketing assets contributed to 5% of the overall
content viewed and 20% of the search queries received.’
Derek Edmond, KoMarketing Associates
What makes content engaging?
1. RELEVANCE
2. EXPERTISE
• Would you trust the information presented in this article?• Is this article written by an expert, or is it more shallow in nature?• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles? • Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site? • Does the article provide original content or information?• Does the page provide value compared to other pages in search results?• Would you recognise this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?• Does this article contain insightful analysis or information that is
beyond the obvious?• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
Customers are looking for "the real scoop" when they check out a corporate blog, says Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book.
"The first thing you want to see is something you won't get on the regular corporate site. The built-in expectation is something more insider, something more direct, more revealing about the product or about the issue…”
Blog and video• 211,000 page views • 2500 inbound links from top 8 articles • $2m sales
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The fence post blog • 850% increase in sales leads since launch
What makes content engaging?
1. RELEVANCE
2. EXPERTISE
3. EXECUTION
Click icon to add picture
What financial information do investors want from websites?
Individual investors are intimidated by overly complex IR sites
and need simple summaries of financial data.
Although users like the idea of webcasts, they rarely find the
time. But users like shorter videos to get a sense of who the
executives are through tone of voice, body language etc.
And users often prefer the much derided PowerPoint
slides.
Jakob Nielsen, useit.com
How do you create ‘enough’ engaging content?
We’re all publishers now...
4. Publishing structure Have a hierarchy
Manage stakeholders
Don’t let people create content without a ‘who?’ and a ‘why?’
Have a plan and stick to it
41
An extract from the foreword to Content Strategy for the Web (2nd Edition) by Kristina Halvorson & Melissa Rach by Sarah Cancilla, Facebook’s first content strategist.
42Extract from the foreword of Content Strategy for the Web (2nd Edition)
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5.
Here’s one I made earlier...
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© Sticky Content Limited
© Sticky Content Limited
Talk
Blog post
Article
Comments
3rd party site republish
User generated content
Retweets
Bookmarks
Further thought pieces
Bookmarks
Trending on twitter
New ideas for talks, blog posts
• Email subject line
• Homepage teaser
• Tweet
• Related products link
• Meta description
• Landing page snippet / A-Z entry
• Mobile site
• Tablet site
“We have a really hard time separating content from form. We have a really hard time imagining what something says, what its words are, might be disconnected from how it looks — or more important that if you are thinking about multi-channel publishing, how it looks might need to be different for every platform.” Karen McGrane
Senior management says no
Inspire a culture of content idea generation
Thank you for listeningwww.stickycontent.com/survey
@catherinetoole
@StickyContent; #b2bsummit