Though it can seem difficult, every B2B brand is capable of finding stories and producing great content.
If you follow these nine steps for producing great B2B content, you’ll be on the fast-track to delighting your customers and celebrating inbound success.
Start with the objective
All too often objectives are far-reaching and/or fuzzy. Make sure you and the team involved in your content creation are very clear on the objective. Here’s an example of a killer content marketing program with a laser-sharp goal: GM’s Corvette Quarterly magazine exists solely to convert Porsche buyers into Corvette drivers.
Understand your audience
It’s okay, desirable even, to create content for not only your buyers, but also for those who influence your buyers. But at some point you need to draw a line. Don’t lose focus on who will be reading your content and where possible identify personas and share with your team.
Avoid product- and sales-driven content
‘Me’ is the enemy of ‘we.’ Remember, your customers care more about your knowledge than they do your products. Self-referential content is marketing collateral with a new name. Create content about what you know, not what you sell.
Invest and market your content
You aren’t just competing against similar vendors when it comes to content. You are competing with every publisher, bloggers, trade journals, Twitter influencers, and even daily newspapers. Make sure you invest in your content; create a unique point-of-view and don’t forget to market your content.
Create a content calendar
The content you create should be planned, yet flexible enough to adapt to inspiration. It’s also vital to think about creating multiple uses out of a single asset.
Build a content team
Al Gore is famous for saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” This couldn’t be truer with content marketing. Content marketing is a team sport. Your colleagues are vital to the creation, distribution and socializing of your content. Identify employees who are active content creators, and inspire them to contribute.
Recycle your content
I saw a great presentation by Scot McKee on content recycling at the B2B Marketing Summit. Developing Content takes time, money and effort to create so you need to maximise your investment. Wherever possible repurpose and recycle your content and share across all platforms. It’s quick, cheap and easy to do and will give you a huge return.
Find a chief content officer
Find a chief content officer internally or hire one. While everyone in a company may be responsible for content, one person needs to be accountable for it.
Be interesting
Let’s face it; many of us are not writers let alone creative ones. Content marketing is a new strand of marketing DNA. If you lack the skills internally then hire a journalist or a specialty agency to work with you.
