Content marketing is here now and it’s here to stay. Content marketing is a way for your business to provide valuable information to customers while…
Content marketing is here now and it’s here to stay. Content marketing is a way for your business to provide valuable information to customers while establishing your business as a thought leader while earning leads and traffic. According to the results of a study conducted by B2B Marketing, B2B marketers identified content marketing (51%) as being the most important tool for generating leads, outscoring brand awareness (38%), thought leadership (34%) and sales (29%). As you begin to develop your content marketing plan for 2013, make sure you focus on the three C’s.
Creative
Creativity is important in content marketing. Creative posts stand out from the crowd, get shared and increase awareness of your brand. Get creative with all the content you plan to put out. In terms of the specific content B2B marketers prefer, social media was named as the most important followed by articles, e-newsletters, white papers and blogs. Layout an editorial calendar with tentative content and it’s publish date. However, trends and new news can make an impact in your content plan so make sure your calendar is a bit flexible.
- Reuse and rework content for various channels. You could take an older blog post and provide a new twist via your podcast. Another way to use that same piece of content would be to use the transcript in a newsletter or whitepaper.
- If you’re struggling with a content writer’s block, turn to trending topics or your personal favorites to write about. Tie in what you have to write about to what you want to write about.
Consistent
One of the most important aspects of online content marketing is producing it on a consistent basis. While social media is one space that demands consistency, a blog, email newsletter or anywhere else your share content are equally important. Even if you are only able to post so many times a month on your blog or a few times a week on your social networks, be consistent so your readers and followers know what to expect.
- 93 percent of business buyers believe all companies should have a social media presence according to a 2010 Cone Inc. study. It can be expected for that percent to be much higher in 2013.
- According to Brafton, 60 percent of brands add fresh content at least weekly and the broad majority use up to 12 formats suggesting that fast and steady and quality wins the race (2012).
Capture
Many B2B marketing businesses are focused on making sure their resource investment is worth the return. Make sure your business has a plan in place for capturing data to see what networks and types of content are the most effective in generating web traffic and sales leads. According to B2B Marketing, traffic from the web is cited as the number one criteria B2B marketers are using to measure success while social media interaction is way down on the list. When capturing data for calculating ROI, pay attention to where traffic is coming from and what types of content are the most successful in helping your business reach its goals, whether it’s newsletter sign ups, website traffic or overall sales.
As you get your content marketing plan ready for 2013, focus on being creative and consistent while tracking your efforts. Not every place to publish content will be equally successful so make sure you are calculating which methods of content marketing yield the greatest ROI for your business.
