createmycontent

[createmycontent]

Content marketing directly impacts sales, here are seven ways content marketing can be leveraged to increase B2B sales.

[createmycontent]

In the next phase of content creation, we're working with top-notch B2B Marketers to strategize and create engaging and relevant content.

[createmycontent]

Wikipedia says, “Personal branding is the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands”. And as per a Forbes article, “The term branding has long been relegated to companies, but today almost every individual has a personal brand”

[createmycontent]

Latest Podcasts on Marketing Below are the latest Podcasts on Marketing and related topics from various domain experts. These podcasts are updated real-time and arranged as per their dates. The most recent podcast is at the top and vice versa. You can keep scrolling down to view more podcasts.

[createmycontent]

This blog curates articles and resources on various aspects of B2B content marketing such as content writing , distribution , strategy and insights

[createmycontent]

These are the webinar slides of a webinar entitled "5 simple steps to becoming a content curation rockstar". These slides by Pawan Deshpande (CEO of Curata) has almost everything you need to know about Content Curation. As per 2012 Curata, Inc. annual content curation adoption survery, these were the top 3 content marketing challenges for marketers:

1. Creating original content

2. Having the time to do it

3. Finding high quality content

4. Allocating staff to do it

Content curation can partly solve some of the above challenges. But getting into how content curation can help solve these prominent content marketing challenges, it would be great to learn the what content curation is.

Definition of Content Curation:

Pawan deshpande has quoted Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy:

" A content curator is someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and the most relevant content on a specific issue online".

So, the content curation process can be summarized as a three step process: Find >> Organize >> Share.

Main objectives of Content Curation:

As per Curata survey, most marketers mentioned these as their top content curation objectives:

1. Boosting SEO

2. Establishing themselves as though leaders

3. Boosting brand visibility and buzz

Deshpande shared several examples as to how curation helped marketers of some of the leading global brands. Overall, it came out that curation helped revive dropping (or stagnant) site traffic, improved SEO, increased the quality and number of leads, reduced lead acquisition cost and enhanced thought leadership positioning.

On slide 18, Editor in Chief of CMO.com has been quoted as saying that readers actually prefer a combination of curated and original content. This strategy helped him increase CMO.com traffic by 100% within one year.

Similarly, the EVP Marketing of Connance has been quoted as saying that he had a "wild success" with an ebook launch. The curated ebook got downloaded about 500 times in a very short span of time.

As the quality of content improved with effective curation, newsletter sign ups, too, increased significantly for some marketers.

How to Curate Content

Content Curation, as per Curata, is a 5-step process:

1. Identifyidentify an area for curating content that is not too saturated (i.e., not too many competitors are focusing on this area). Second, the content you identify for curation should be relevant to your target audience. And third, the area you choose for curation must have sufficient content for curation for a long period of time.

2. FindOnce you have identified what content to curate, you can subscribe to related RSS feeds, news sites, niche blogs, trade publications, twitter hashtags, etc.

3. OrganizeYou need to think like a librarian when you organize the content you have curated. The main objective of organizing the content is to make the content easily searchable for those who visit your curation platform (website, etc.). Use very clear categories, tags, content clusters, use of indexing, archiving and content recommendations help visitors easily find what they are looking for.

4. ShareThis one is easy. Share your content everywhere your audience is - All social media channels, email newsletters, tweets, embeddable widgets, feeds, etc. Unless you spread awareness about what you have to showcase, how would anyone come to know that you have such a great content (curated+curated) on your website.

5. Add ValueValue addition has to be the core of every activity you perform. If you simply curate, without any value addition, it may just look like an aggregation of replica from various sources. You can add value by annotation (i.e., adding your notes, comments or explanations), analysis, summarizing, etc.

Fair Usage in Content Curation

Ensure that your are curating content not pirating content. This can be done by sharing only a portion of the original content (some sources say that you may share not more than 40% of the original content. However, I suggest that you use your discretion). The most important part of content curation is that you must attribute the source from where you curated the content. Just attribution would not be sufficient, you must drive visitors to the original content by hyperlinking your content with the original source.

Title:

5 Simple Steps to Becoming a Content Curation Rockstar

Content Format:

Webinar Slides

Published by:

Curata, Inc.

Number of Pages:

44

[createmycontent]

It would be safe to say that two most important factors considered by Google to rank web-pages are Content and Quality Links. Quality link building is an organic process. It takes its time. There is no short-cut to building links. Hence, the most important factor that you can control in this game of ranking higher is developing high quality content. High Quality content creation helps you rank higher for specific phrases or keywords. Another benefit of Quality content is that such content is often referenced by quality websites and bloggers. While referencing, they usually give a hyperlink to your content. As more and more hyperlinks from quality sources are directed to your page, your page's probability of ranking higher increases.

So, for a Marketer the mantra is to create, publish and distribute high quality content consistently. A relevant question here can be - "what do you mean by quality content creation?". Let's try to focus our energy here (on quality content creation). Later, of course, we will talk a little bit about distribution and some of the right ways to get quality backlinks. But, first, let us discuss the most important factor, i.e., quality content creation that attracts quality backlinks.

Quality Content Creation that attracts Quality Backlinks

Before Google, there were two major search engines - Yahoo and Alta Vista. They used to rank their research result totally on the basis of the content of the web-page. With Google, things changed. Google brought into picture a new algorithm that analyzed how many people linked to a page. Till today, after over 20 years, links are equally important component of Google's algorithm to rank web-pages.

Initially, when the criteria to rank was content, sites started stuffing their webpages with keywords. So, backlinks became a differentiator to rank. Sooner than later, though, sites started farming links (a black-hat technique) to rank higher. Links were being bought. Links were being exchanged. Google addressed this issue with its update (named Penguin). This update ensured that link quantity doesn't remain as important a criteria as the link quanlity. That means links from authoritative websites (e.g., NYTimes.com) would gain more importance than link from just any website. In fact, link from websites with poor reputation (e.g. spam websites) would impact the page ranking negatively.

Now, this seems to be working. This is a strong differentiating factor. Unless you really have compelling content, no authoritative sites would reference your content. This, in turn, means that only quality content can fetch quality links.

Examples of Quality Content Creation:

Quality content in any form or format is an asset. It helps search engine rank you high in search results, generate leads for you, builds authority; and attracts backlinks. As our focus in this article is backlinks (or inbound links), we will focus only on the role of content creation in attracting quality back-links.

As I said, consistent content creation is always the key. However, if the focus is to attract backlinks from content, some content formats work better than the rest. Visual digital assets, list posts, original research and deep-dive guides, for example, are some of the key digital assets that work better than other content formats. Let's explore each asset types a bit more:

1. Visual AssetsReaders have low attention span. A visual asset (such as an image, a diagram, an infographic or charts, etc.) can tell a long-story more effectively without using words. So, readers prefer such graphics. Website owners would love to share your images to strengthen their writeups. Sites that use your images or infographics can either embed your digital assets or give credits (and link back to the original source).

2. List PostsIn 2015, BuzzSumo, along with Moz analyzed shares and links of over 1 million articles. They discovered that list posts generated more backlinks than any other content format (even more than infographics and videos). Websites prefer to link to such content pieces because list posts usually present a lot of information in a few bullet points.

3. Original Research and DataOriginal research takes time. Companies conduct research to sell data. If you are willing to share your research data with other websites, you will surely attract dozens of quality backlinks. The only expectation from you would be the quality of your research work. If your website is not trustworthy, good websites would refrain from referencing your site. So, ensure that you present your research in the most professional manner. If you are relatively new into content creation, try not to spend too much time in this one. There is a possibility that you may not get the desired return on your efforts in the beginning.

4. Deep-dive guidePeople love to reference such guides. Quality guides are really hard to come by. A lot of companies are pushing promotional content in the name of white papers, ebooks and in-depth guides. Their goal is to collect contact information through gated content. If you are able to create genuinely relevant and comprehensive guide that can educate your audience, go ahead and create one. Websites and niche bloggers would love to link to your content.

Keep producing quality content and distribute them through relevant social channels. Email niche blog owners and influencers. Share your content. It is more important to spread awareness about your content within your target ecosystem. Even if your content creation is great but if no one knows about it, no one would link to it or reference it. So, do not leave any stone un-turned to promote your content. At the end, my suggestion to you is to keep doing this religiously for a sustained period of time. As I said earlier, this is an organic process and it takes time.  As more and more of your content is referenced, you will see an increase in your domain authority (as well as in the page authority). And gradually, you will keep moving up the ranks!

[createmycontent]

The 7 Secrets of Super-Successful Content Creation Teams - eBook

This is an insightful ebook on Content creation. Jonathan Kranz of Kranz communications says that the attention span of our prospects have become very small. And hence it is very important for Marketers to create compelling content to earn that attention. He further says that most Marketers have strong opinions about what types of content are most important for their respective audiences, the how part remains problematic.

What is this ebook about?

This ebook entitled 7 secrets of successful content creation teams talks about 7 important areas that need to be taken into consideration to create a successful content creation team. The 7 core areas are:

1. Securing support from the top

Outside of marketing department, content marketing often remains an obscure subject. It is often seen as one of the initiatives of marketing by CFOs or CTOs oe even the CEOs. The team at the top must see content marketing as a core strategy to educate a huge marketr that has the potential to be a customer base.

2. Aligning everyone in the company around a common clear "content mission"

It is common for organizations to have corporate mission statements. This ebook talks about creating "content" mission statement. Everyone in the company needs to internalize this statement and be consistent with regards to external communications. This appears to be a bit too much to expect. But, no doubt, this is a pretty fresh perspective.

3. Building Content creation team in concentric rings

It has been pointed out most organizations that have effective content programs always share at least one characteristic that is common: their content creation teams are built in three layers or rings. Inner most ring is of the core in-house marketers such as the marketing manager, content strategist, editor, etc. The next ring represents non-marketing resources such as subject matter experts or anyone else who can bring in fresh perspective. The outermost ring is of a network of writers, designers, geographers, etc.

4. Planning

This section talks about setting clear goals, innovating, restraining the naysayers within the company, accepting failures, etc.

5. Concentrating on Core Content

This one actually talks about Content types. Here, the ebook says that Marketers should focus on adopting a "pillar content" strategy. As per this strategy, the Marketers focuses on few asset types (such as ebooks, case studies, etc.) and all other formats of content (such as blogs, white papers, etc.) stem from there.

6. Repeatable process of content creation

Content is not going to be a one-time hard work. It needs consistency. Consistency can be achieved when the same tried and tested processes are repeated over and over again for several years.7. Investment in trainingThis one is the last, but an important, point in this "7 secrets of successful content creation teams" ebook. This section talks about training the content creation team to identify exciting content, developing general skills related to content creation, learning how to create specialized types of content, etc.

Overall, a good compilation of thoughts and views from industry experts!

Title : 7 secrets of successful content creation teams

Content Format: E-book

Published by: Kranz communications

Number of Pages : 18

PDF:  7 secrets of successful content creation teams

[createmycontent]

Today, everyone is pushing content. Some feel that it is important to produce content everyday to be on the top of the SERP. While others feel they need something new everyday for social media or email campaign. To some extent, it is true that if you are not producing enough content, your competitors will. Hence, it is important that we have to produce content at a very fast pace.

But, at the same time, it is important that your content stands apart. Else you would soon become a part of the content deluge. If your content is not liked, it certainly won't spread. Lesser page views means low ranking for the targeted keywords or phrases. This brings us to the second conclusion: the content should be high quality.

The need for outsourcing content creation:

We can safely arrive at two conclusions:

We need to produce content at a very high pace

The content needs to be of very high quality. It should be informative and engaging.

Now the question is how to produce so much quality content at such a high pace. There can be three scenarios:

Produce it in-house

Outsource it

Use a hybrid model - produce some content in-house and outsource some

Factors to be considered before outsourcing content creation

Whether you should produce the content in-house or outsource it depends on several factors. Some of the most prominent factors that are considered for this are:

Cost

Time

Infrastructure

Quality

CostWe need to figure out if cost of keeping an in-house team is more cost-effective vis-à-vis outsourcing.

TimeSigning up an agency is a long process. Freelance writers can start the work relatively quickly. But can the freelance writers be predictable? Can they deliver on time? How many freelance writers to deployed? Infrastructure We might think that content creation may be as simple as just writing some words on a piece of paper. In reality, the process of content creation requires a content strategist, a project manager, a number of subject matter experts and an editor. Additionally, you need resources to do intense secondary research (and primary research if time and budget permits). If  you have advanced content curation software then it is always an added advantage. Lastly, you need a network to promote or distribute your content. Do you have access to such a network? Have you invested in tools for content dissemination? If not, you might think of outsourcing this part to an agency. An agency would be happier if you allow them to take care of content distribution part as well (not just distribution).QualityQuality of content can't be emphasized more. if you don't have quality content, you're just producing large amount of junk everyday. This might sound harsh but this is what it is. No one has time to really move to the second paragraph of your 2000 words article if it is not making sense. If it is the repetition of something already published then not just the readers be disinterested to read it, search engines too would hate it equally.

Creating a Style Guide for content consistency

It becomes even more important to take quality into account when you are outsourcing your content creation to multiple freelancers or agencies or a mix of both. Each agency and freelancer would have their own understanding, viewpoints and writing style. It is possible that your content may lose it identity. While presenting your content to the masses, it should have a tone, style and identity of your organization. That is why it is important to have a company content style guide and all the content partners should follow the same style guide. Neil Patel talks in-dpeth about style guide in his blog

How to Outsource Your Content Marketing While Still Maintaining Quality

The importance of clear instructions to the outsourced content partner

In addition to the style guide, you must be able to send out very clear instructions for writing guidelines to all the members of your content ecosystem. Here is a sample of instruction for outsourcing a blog post. This also comes from Neil Patel's blog entitled

How to Outsource Your Content Marketing While Still Maintaining Quality

.

Here is another good example of providing good instruction by Hubspot in their blog

7 Secrets to Outsourcing a Killer Content Creation Team

The importance of effective feedback and iterations

Hubspot says it is equally important to consider the first piece of content a first draft. It is too much to expect that the first content piece is going to be the best piece of content. You should always be willing to help the writer tweak the content with your feedback. Here is a sample of a good feedback by Hubspot from the same blog entitled

7 Secrets to Outsourcing a Killer Content Creation Team

Proof reading by editor as well as subject matter experts within the company

Once the content is ready, the in-house editor should make sure that each article has the same tonality, authority and depth. On top of it, the content should not have grammatical errors. Sometimes, we expect the content creators to do the role of an editor. It is too much too expect.  Always remember that your content is going to be read by several decision-makers, influencers and advocates. Many of them would be the subject matter experts. If not, your content should be lucid enough to educate them in the simplest way. So, it is important that your internal subject matter experts and CXOs are the first set of people to do the proof-reading of the final copy of your content.

Take care of the legal stuffs:

For writing research report and case studies, your contractors might need access to sensitive data. It would, therefore, be important to decide beforehand the amount of information you would share. There should be strict internal policy in place. Internal employees should have an absolute clarity on this. Additionally, you must have a non-disclosure agreement in place. This will always give you the required legal protection.

Take decisions based on Analytics:

You should be able to classify content from agencies and freelancers on parameters such as engagement, actions, conversions, etc. Additionally, you should be able to benchmark your content with the content of your close competitors of the industry leaders. Sometimes, content from some sources may outperform content from the rest. Sometimes, your overall content may not be performing as great as content from other industry players. In such cases, you might take a deeper look at the audience you're targeting or the distribution channel you are using.

[createmycontent]

The impact of digital on India - Statistics

[createmycontent]

Content Marketing Statistics

[createmycontent]

Content Marketing Statistics - Create My Content - createmycontent.co.uk

[createmycontent]

Since the ROI of content marketing is not just about the revenue it generates, you'll have to determine other indicators. In this article, we are going to help you identify some KPIs to measure your content marketing efforts.

To determine the Content KPIs, two key elements need to be considered:

1. Specific objectives for a relevant ROI

It is impossible to carry out a content strategy without determining its objectives very precisely. Why do you want to create content? What do you expect? If your answer here is "Money", you are making a mistake! Your content can have an impact on your entire business: marketing and sales naturally, the general management, but also human resources or accounting. Your goals may be, for example, to increase traffic to your website, thereby improving your visibility, or improving your brand image and reputation.

2. Is my message past the audience?

Let's not forget the primary function of content: getting a message across. Before you launch body and soul into content marketing, you've worked on the message(s) you want to get through. So why not integrate this work to the extent of your return on investment?

Determine your KPIs

Now that you have answered these two questions, you are able to determine the performance indicators to follow to accurately measure the ROI of your content marketing. Concretely, the KPIs of your content strategy can be grouped into 3 categories: visibility, resonance and the relationship established.

1. KPIs related to visibility

These indicators are the most obvious to define and follow. They actually come back to defining who has read your content. To measure the visibility of your content, you just have to analyze the traffic on the website concerned and its origin, including social networks (the reach):

Number of visits

Sources of these visits

Number of clicks on social networks

2. KPIs related to resonance

This is to analyze the resonance generated by your content, in other words, the echo it has had on social media:

Number of shares: Retweet for Twitter, Repin for Pinterest or sharing for Facebook

Number of I like, like, favorites, + 1 etc

Number of mentions on social networks, forums, blogs

3. The KPI related to the relationship created 

These KPIs are very interesting but also more complex to analyze. The point here is actually to determine all the indicators to measure the interest in your brand/product generated by your content. Here, it is about studying the leads generated by your content marketing. In this process, we talk about Inbound Marketing. Inbound Marketing is a strategy of attracting traffic, loyalty to generate new hot prospects that will then be converted into a customer. Content is the core of Inbound Marketing. The KPIs here are the marks of interest more or less for your brand/product:

The number of members of your communities: Facebook fans, Twitter subscribers

The number of comments generated by your content

The bounce rate

The rate of returning visitors (those who visit you more than once)

The number of pages per visit

In conclusion, by analyzing these different indicators, you will gather a significant amount of information enabling you to improve your content marketing.

[createmycontent]

Before you jump into content creation, it's imperative to have an understanding of the majority of the choices available to you as a Content Marketer. The kinds of content you can create may appear to be limitless; however, it's reasonable that some content will be more qualified to your content strategy than others. Here are the nine kinds of content formats that may be a solid match for the objectives that you laid out for yourself.

The Company Blog

Your blog has a very positive impact on SEO. Web search tools love valuable content and will feature you higher on SERP if you continuously produce great content.

60% of organizations that blog gets more clients, as per a HubSpot study.

Blogs help you in positioning yourself as a subject area expert and a thought leader.

Prospects would connect with you as a reliable resource for data on your industry. Normally, they would want to purchase from somebody who not simply knows the business but rather is a specialist and an idea pioneer.

Blogs are cost-effective marketing investments. Each post you distribute is a long-term asset.

You can use free analytics tools such as Google Analytics to gain insights into your audience.

White Papers

It’s the best format for communicating product or service benefits, policy, etc. in short 2-3 pages.

Technology companies must create white papers for their busy target audience.

Too small content pieces fail to educate. And too much of content often turns off people with time constraints

White Paper distribution has become a norm in the B2B Marketing.

Technology Marketers should create White Paper for every product and/or service and classify them in the “resource section” of their website.

E-books

Whereas White papers are more of a scroll-down PDF file, E-books are generally more engaging. I find it easy to underline texts, for example, in e-books. From my experience, most Marketers prefer e-book formats if the content is lengthy.

Whitepapers are commonly 2-3 page files (sometimes extending to as long as eight to 10 pages as well) In comparison, e-books are at least 10 page long documents. Although there is no such thumb rule regarding the size of ebooks or white papers, it can be seen that ebooks are generally lengthier than white papers.

Just like white papers, ebooks are also very common digital assets that are distributed by marketers through digital channels.

Videos

Videos are proving to be the most-consumed digital asset (even in the B2B field). I feel there are obvious reasons for videos to be so popular. It’s certainly more fun to watch videos than reading books. Most like it because video communicates more through visuals and audio compared to texts and images. Here are some stats on video marketing that I gathered from the internet:

Email subject lines that include the word “video” see a 19% increase in open rates, and a 65% boost in click-throughs

Four times as many customers would prefer to watch a product video than read a product description

After watching a video, customers are 64-85% more likely to make a purchase

These stats give a clear message that Video Content can, in no manner, be ignored by B2B Marketers.

Infographics

Wikipedia says Infographics (a clipped compound of "information" and "graphics") are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly. This is actually a very precise description of Infographics. Just to see how Infographics look like, just do a quick Google search on Infographics and you would find a few.

Infographic is a great way to present a long story through a series of graphs, charts, images, etc.

Infographics are highly capable of driving home the information to the busy decision-makers very quickly.

Case Studies

MBA students go through hundreds of case studies. So, they would surely be aware of what case studies are. A case study is a document that showcases how an organization solved business challenges through their products and/or services. This usually represents a comparison between the problem-state and the present state.

Webinar

A webinar is a great knowledge-based-marketing tool. Influencers and decision-makers are invited to participate in an online meeting where a few professionals discuss important topics (often business pain points). Although the discussion is very generic at the beginning of most webinars, the latter part of the webinar showcases how the presenter or his company can solve the existing business pains through products or services. Most B2B Webinars are about an hour long and include a 15-20 minute Q&A time. I find webinars to be a great lead generation tool because no decision-maker would spend an hour on certain online discussion until they are really interested in the topic and/or the company that is offering that product or service.

Podcasts

Google directory says, "a Podcast is a digital audio file made available on the Internet for downloading to a computer or mobile device, typically available as a series, the new installment of which can be received by subscribers automatically."

For Marketers, it is easier to create Podcast compared to videos but lack of visuals must be compensated with the depth of the content. I love quality podcast because I can make use of my travel time to listen to the podcasts. We certainly can't read a white paper or watch videos while driving.

Reports

I have been watching B2B technology industry for several years now. Most common reports that are distributed by Marketers to decision makers are benchmark or comparison reports. Gartner’s Magic Quadrant is one such report that classifies key players in the industry into four categories. Similarly, Forrester Wave is Forrester's evaluation of vendors in a software, hardware, or services market.

In simple words, business reports are documents that present data and information to specific readers. So, reports can vary widely on the basis of target audience being served, industry focus, etc. A lot of reports are designed to target individuals with specific job roles. The best available reports are primarily surveyed reports. For small organizations, conducting large-scale primary research through the survey is often too time-consuming and expensive. Hence, many small organizations restrict themselves to developing reports only through secondary

[createmycontent]

In the last blog, entitled "Four Reasons why to have a Documented Content Strategy", we discussed why to have a well-documented content strategy. Once we are convinced that we should have a documented strategy, the next step would be to set the content goal. Strategy means analyzing the current state, envisioning the future state and setting smart goals. So, just like any other strategy, the content strategy must have a set of smart goals.

SMART Content goal:

SpecificMarketers must set very specific goals for each content. For some Marketers, the goal can be brand awareness. For some, it can just be the pure lead generation. For some, it could be educating prospects. Marketers targeting brand awareness, for example, should not aim lead generation from the same content. Any lead coming from such content should be considered a bonus. By looking at the statistics of B2B Content Marketing Spotlight Report by BrightTalk, it seems that most B2B Marketers adopt content marketing with an ultimate goal of lead generation. The BrighTalk report says that 59% of the B2B Marketers cite lead generation as their top content marketing goal. But this also means that 39% of the marketers do not consider content marketing as their number one tool for lead generation. It completely depends on the business you are in and the growth phase of business you are at. What is important is that you must have a well-documented goal for your content marketing efforts.MeasurableAnything that cannot be measured cannot go through A/B test. Marketers should be able to know how prospects engage with each piece of content. If a digital asset is not performing as good as other, Marketers should review the content, make changes and resend for distribution. It is also possible that the content should work well with a certain target audience and not with others. In this case, instead of changing the content, the distribution plan should be reviewed.AchievableOften B2B Marketers set unrealistic goals for their content and end up in despair. Some of them claim that content marketing doesn’t work for them. It is important to set achievable content marketing goals. Like every strategy to show results, there is a gestation period. Content, too, has a gestation period. Some pieces of content, here and there, may go viral and may fetch several qualified leads but quality content over a period of time to produce the result. More the content is read and shared, more it helps in improving search results on the SERP. Pushing content mindlessly to undefined target audience may even have an adverse impact. Instead of pushing content, it would be a much better idea to produce genuinely relevant content that can pull prospects.RelevantRelevance has always been important for businesses. You may have a great piece of content but if your content is not relevant to your target audience, it would not yield the desired result. Certain content that may be useful for a CMO may not be relevant for a Marketing Manager and vice versa. Whereas the Manager would prefer to read content that may help him in achieving operational efficiency by addressing tactical needs, a CMO might be interested in the more strategic content. Marketers, very often, distribute the same content to the CMO down to the Marketing Executives. Wrong interpretation of the engagement analytics is this case might give a skewed result.TimelyIf you bombard your subscribers with content every day or worst a couple of times a day, you will certainly end up overdoing. You must time your content judiciously. One quality content per week is good enough to keep your subscribers engaged. If you are able to produce really good content, you will be able to build a better than average top-of-the-mind recall. Similarly, if you are too sluggish with your content, no one would take you too seriously. And, certainly, there won’t be any anticipation of your content amidst your subscribers. If you are able to time your content to the level of hours, it will be even effective. For example, if you send an article every Friday between 7 pm and 9 pm, subscribers will start anticipating your content around that time every week. Broadly, you should keep your content available on your website and all your digital properties so that when your prospect begins his or her research, he finds your content.

[createmycontent]

B2B Marketers must embrace inbound strategies because they sell complex products and services to a highly educated set of people as compared to B2C Marketers. If you push the B2B prospects through repeated poorly targeted content, they would most likely withdraw. Moreover, by doing so, you come across as a low tech-savvy, aggressive sales company that is not just unprofessional but is unaware of the needs of prospects.

So, it’s not just moving away from cold calls and cold emails to content marketing. It’s about creating content that is engaging to your target audience. Your prospects should anticipate your content. This will happen when you establish yourself as a thought leader. A thought leader that can be trusted. A thought-leader that educates. It’s ultimately creating value through your content. It’s not just about content. You can’t be successful in business if you are not creating significant value – through your products or services or through your thought-leadership content.

In order to become an effective content marketer, you need to have a content strategy. Just like you need a digital marketing strategy to become a successful digital marketer. Or you need a hiring strategy to become a successful recruiter. Here are the top 4 reasons why every B2B Marketer must have a well-documented Content Strategy.

1. A well-defined Content Strategy saves time and money

If you have a well-thought-of content strategy, you won’t waste time on creating content around subject areas that won’t help you in meeting your content goals. Some content formats may work better for certain businesses whereas the same format may not work that well for another business. A content strategy will steer you away from taking arbitrary choices that not only waste your time (and the time of your team) but waste a significant amount of money over a long period.

2. Compared to traditional marketing, Content Marketing is more effective in the B2B space

All the research conducted around Content Marketing mention that content marketing is roughly 3X more effective than traditional marketing in the B2B space. This is a non-intrusive way of engaging with prospects. In fact, prospects willingly share their contact information to access gated content (Content that requires basic business card information of the person opening or downloading the content. The contact info is usually entered through a web form.).

3. Content acts as a Sales enablement tool

Not just Marketing but Sales and Account Management teams equally need quality content throughout the customer lifecycle. Content, in the form of Whitepapers, Case Studies, Reports, etc. are often used by Sales teams to move prospects from Awareness phase to Consideration phase. Whereas timely whitepapers about new product version or updates are used by Account Management teams for upselling. New case studies and reports also act as tools to reduce the post-purchase dissonance, if any.

4. Content is one of the most valuable assets for lead-nurturing.

Marketers must know that they can just ensure a good buyer journey and a great buying experience. It would be incorrect to think about pushing prospects into buying. Buyers will buy when they are ready to buy not when Marketers are ready to sell (as a matter of fact, Marketers are always ready to sell.). Hence, it would be appropriate for Marketers to focus on nurturing the lead or the prospect. One of the ways to nurture a prospect is to share quality content with the prospect from time to time. This will help to build trust. Nurturing prospects also involves educating the prospect with trustworthy content. This content should not be a product or service pitch or a sales collateral. Marketers should genuinely own the responsibility of educating prospects and help them buy the best product or service for their need.

[createmycontent]

B2B Marketers want to bring qualified prospects to their website. Then they want to engage with them and finally, they want to win the prospect. Marketers need to understand the stage of the buying cycle a prospect is at and accordingly share content.

Stage 1: Content Strategy to attract, educate and nurture (Primary Content)

The first step is to share with a larger audience a piece of content that creates interest in a prospect to click. This can be achieved through a quick message that is compelling enough for the decision-maker or the influencer to click. For example, an infographic representing the value of artificial intelligence in marketing would create an interest in a CMO's mind to learn more. Once, the CMO clicks on the link, he reaches the website where he reads not just that infographic but comes across several white papers, research reports, case studies, etc.

The CMO then drills down and learns more and more about the value of artificial intelligence. A savvy B2B Marketers who keeps a firm eye on web analytics knows that the CMO is keen on learning more. The B2B Marketers knows exactly what content the CMO read from the resource section. If there are gated content, the CMO must have left his business card information too. By now, the B2B Marketer has performed two of his tasks successfully - brought a qualified prospect to the website and pushed him further to the consideration phase. At the consideration phase, the B2B Marketer ensured that his website had enough content not just to educate the CMO but got an opt-in to be contacted.

Stage 2: Content Strategy when the prospect becomes a Sales Qualified Lead (Secondary Content).

Once the interest is established, the B2B Marketer should get in touch with the Sales team to plan the next steps. These could be an in-person meeting, free-trial, on-site demo, etc. It is important that the B2B Marketer should plan any further communication with the prospect only after consulting the Sales team.

Stage 3: Content Strategy when the deal is closed (Tertiary Content).

A good content strategy should go beyond a deal closure. Post closure, it would be advisable for the B2B Marketer to plan content strategy in consultation with the Account Management team. Every relevant product, services or add-on components should be communicated timely and effectively through nicely crafted white papers. Case studies should be shared regularly around the product or services to eliminate post-purchase dissonance if any. Ultimately, the goal of the B2B Marketer should be to create brand advocates.

Always remember the most important deliverable of content - value creation at each stage.

The most important consideration for a B2B Marketer should be that each communication should be a value-addition for the prospect. If the content is not adding value at a given stage of a buying cycle, it is not worth the effort. A great content strategy should contribute seamlessly to attracting, engaging, educating, nurturing the prospect. Once, the deal is closed, content should help in getting repeat business and in establishing brand advocates.