As we all know there is a huge amount of content online and it’s not static but constantly increasing and changing. For marketers, as the online environment continues to grow, it is no longer a case of simply creating content and hoping for the best. It has become increasingly important to ensure the right audience is discovering this content.
For many B2B marketers, content creation is often focused around resources like webinars and whitepapers. While lead generation content is a truly valuable tool, sometimes users prefer to read more engaging editorial. This has become essential for brands, as they work towards developing a community, reflecting authority, expertise and engaging with relevant audiences online.
As we’ve seen a shift away from content created solely for SEO to content that is created for relevant interested readers, we are now faced with a new issue – how to amplify the value of this content and get it seen by the right audience, amidst a sea of irrelevant content.
1. Produce more engaging content
Investing in the creation of quality content allows marketers to portray a brand message that will resonate with an online audience and drive them to develop an affinity for the brand in a meaningful way.
This is a marketer’s opportunity to connect with customers who are actively looking for a particular brand online, as well as those who aren’t even necessarily aware that they have a need for a product or service yet. For many B2B marketers, their content will be targeted and specialised, aimed to appeal to a relevant audience rather than the masses.
Develop educational or entertaining content in several different formats – be that informative arti-cles, interesting videos or up-to-date and engaging blogs, or a combination of formats – to provide a true value-add for customers of your category, services or products. So for example, if you are launching a new product, don’t just write about it, but consider creating an informative video on how it works too.
In order to increase the readability factor of editorial, there are some ways to make relevant readers more likely to click through to content. We looked through data on 150,000 article headlines on titles that were recommended across the Outbrain platform to discover what made readers click and discovered, for example, that people are 20 per cent more likely to read articles featuring an odd numbered list in a headline than even numbered ones – so make it nine ways to improve sales, rather than 10.
We also found that titles with eight words performed the best, receiving 21 per cent higher click through than average, and users are attracted to content with images; thumbnail images increased click through by 27 per cent.
When it comes to punctuation, titles ending with a question mark performed better than exclamation marks or full stops. While if you do need an exclamation mark, our studies have shown that three (!!!) received almost twice as many clicks as other punctuation marks.
Creating good, interesting content will not only appeal to readers when they reach it, but it also has a vital role to play in SEO; if users like your content, they will link to it and share with their friends – building links and increasing traffic – both of which help page rankings. Once users are on the site, keeping them there and engaged with other content will also help, as lower bounce rates are also good for helping pages continue to rank highly on search engines.
2. Earned media is content
You may have developed content specifically to exist on your website, but you should also consider earned media as content. Your PR efforts have probably yielded some great articles in leading publications, and the value of bloggers writing about your business or videos posted by customers cannot be underestimated.
Earned media includes all content assets that are not owned by you and can live outside your own online presence – on blogs, YouTube or anywhere else. It doesn’t need to replace driving traffic to your owned content assets, but it can surely augment your efforts.
3. Amplify your efforts
The explosion in social media over the last few years has increased the importance of sharing and recommendation. It has given marketers and publishers a new way to engage with their audiences, and also help them discover interesting content. Twitter and Facebook are useful channels for content marketing, while YouTube serves an incredibly valuable purpose for video content.
We’re seeing new platforms emerging all the time, and marketers should embrace these where appropriate, in order to help relevant users find content. Pinterest for example is experiencing incredibly fast growth with both users and brands. For a B2B marketer with strong visual content, embracing this platform through a presence or encouraging users to pin could lead to increased engagement and website visits.
Along with social media, marketers can distribute content through content discovery platforms (like Outbrain, StumbleUpon or Digg). These were built with the express purpose of helping people find new content. In the B2B arena, content discovery is emerging as a new way to help the right people find the right content for them, while allowing marketers to amplify and build relevant communities around these assets. Because of the nature of the majority of B2B content, its audience is targeted, and content discovery can help reach targeted relevant and interested users.
Content marketing and engagement doesn’t necessarily translate directly into immediate ROI or sales conversions, online or offline. However, it is a way to make customers aware of your existence, demonstrate credibility and build brand loyalty via deeper engagement. Content marketing is not a sprint, it’s a marathon – you need to be patient before your audience will be ready to move to consideration or purchase. With so much content already out there, you need to make yours relevant and engaging, to help the right eyes reach it.
