Marketers have a tough job on their hands: Confidence in what we say is diminishing; a buyer’s access to independent experts is a tweet away; and social channels are so noisy that it feels impossible to be heard. The challenges are daunting and, exacerbating the problem, executives are demanding more rigorous performance metrics. To ensure you are reaching the right people and ultimately driving positive return on investment (ROI), you must consider engaging in a content marketing programme.
B2B content marketing, the production of publishing industry-quality content that informs, entertains or inspires readers without overtly selling any goods, can help a company overcome the challenges mentioned above. The act of publishing materials (such as e-books, infographics and videos) that help buyers improve existing skills or develop new ones, is a reliable way for marketers to earn back consumer trust, reclaim their ‘expert’ status and even cut through much of the social web’s clamor.
The challenge most marketers face is not only in producing quality content, but also publishing enough content. A study by social media analytics firm Sysomos found that 71 per cent of tweets are ignored. Only the largest companies with the biggest budgets stand a fighting chance at filling the public’s insatiable appetite for new content. For the rest of us, the goal is to get more out of each piece of content we produce. Here are three practical ways you can extend the life and reach of each piece of content you produce:
1. Stagger distribution
Publishers do not only control content, they also control distribution. Social media now gives marketers that same power. Do not cede it by distributing your newest asset over all channels all at once. Each social channel has its own unique audience. Spread distribution over time and across multiple social outposts to extend the lifecycle of the content and increase the potential audience.
For example, if you are an IT consultancy, you may want to publish an e-book contrasting risks and rewards of deploying the iPad across global enterprises. Begin by sending the file directly to your prospect database. A week later, release the asset broadly on your blog. Twitter is a great way to point new viewers to the file, so tweet out links to the blog post. You should also consider sharing it right away with your Facebook fans. Then take a break. Let the conversation wane. Now look for discussions being held on sites like LinkedIn and Quora. Share your e-book in a way that adds value to relevant conversations. Later, post it to SlideShare and tweet links to that file. Have the members of your team who played a role in the creation of the file share it on their personal Google+ or Facebook profiles. Try tweeting at different times of the day to make sure you are sharing during the working hours of all major countries.
Remember: You control more than the content. You also own the distribution.When it comes to quality marketing content, the individual parts are often greater than the whole. That is, the value derived from chopping your content into smaller pieces, and distributing those ‘nuggets’ through traditional and social media channels can exceed the impact of the source file.
Continuing the example above, the community manager could pull a dozen compelling quotes from the e-book and turn them into a series of tweets. Feedback from the public could be repackaged in the form of questions to the company’s Facebook fans. The PR team could turn individual chapters into articles contributed by executives to various trade publications. Popular themes could be converted into blog posts from subject matter experts.
3. Reimagine it
In Content Rules, authors Ann Handley and CC Chapman challenge marketers to ‘reimagine’ their content. That is, to take what worked once and not repeat it again, but re-work it in fresh and new ways to draw inspiration from their own work.
Imagine for a moment that your team had published the e-book on iPads across the enterprise. Now imagine the asset was a smash success. Your prospects gladly gave up information for an early download, your blog enjoyed a surge in new traffic, your tweets were retweeted early and often, the SlideShare hosted version enjoyed thousands of views and the Quora community appreciated your value-add. What do you do next?
Certainly you can update and re-issue the guide in the future. And, depending on its popularity, it’s probably a solid strategy. But what can you do between the first version and the second version that will keep the content fresh and alive? You can reimagine it.
Take the same concepts and express them in new media. You could turn the e-book into a series of videos, perhaps interviews with different IT directors with varying perspectives on the role of the tablet computer. You could host a webinar in which two IT directors with opposing views debate the issue. Or maybe you could create an infographic that juxtaposes the risks against the rewards? It’s simply a matter of taking your concept and research and applying them to different formats. The heavy lifting has already been done.
