Content creation. Content strategy. Content marketing. Content management. Content, content, content. You’d have to be a hermit to avoid all that’s being written about content right now. 

But wait. What is content? Why the hype? Is content relevant to all marketers? Good questions.

Content creation begins with all the things your company knows about your product and market that are of interest to prospective buyers. Because content has to be consumed (read, viewed, heard, or otherwise taken in), the second part of that first statement (“of interest to prospective buyers”) is critical. Undoubtedly, your company has lots of product and market knowledge, but if prospects aren’t interested, they’ll pass your content by.

Content is a hot topic because the internet, email and social media are so popular. Marketers used to push their messages on prospects. Now we attract prospects to us with useful, engaging, shareable information. Education and/or entertainment value are critical to shareability.

What’s useful to prospects? Straight up product information may not cut it since it might be seen as promotional and self-serving. The people who use your type of product often want to get smarter about using it. So information that helps a user get better results, save money, save time or save both is useful and valued.

Here are ideas for content types that attracts B2B customers:

1.  White Papers are educational, non-biased discussions of a topic of interest to prospective buyers, like a new technology.
2.  How-To Articles provide specific information on how to get the most from a product.
3.  Case Studies are problem-solution stories in which a customer has a challenge which is solved by your product. Often, the spotlight is on the user and the benefit he/she gets from your product..

Once you have an idea for some content, the next steps are producing it and figuring out where to publish it. Is it a web page? A blog post? A printed piece? All of the above? Where should you promote it?  If you don't have the expertise in-house, work with a freelance content expert for best results.

When you need help with content creation, content strategy or content promotion, contact me, Claire Cunningham at claire.e.cunningham@gmail.com

R-E-S-P-E-C-T   It's more than a classic hit by Aretha Franklin. Respecting your audience is a bedrock principle of great marketing.

A marketing program that doesn't understand and respect the audience's needs, concerns and journey won't connect. So it won't generate sales.

How do you ensure your marketing speaks to your audience? Here are 7 things you can do to develop a powerful, respectful marketing program.

1. Do your homework.  Study your customers.  Find out what that they like.  What they do.  What they want and need.  What's important to them.  You can get this from surveys and interviews. Sales people and customer service folks are sources of insight. Maybe there are articles you can read.
2. Apply what you learn.   Analyze the information you gather to find where your product/service's benefits meet a need or solve a challenge. That intersection of audience need and product benefit is where you'll find your core marketing message.
3. Be interesting.  You've identified a message. That's great, but the work's not done. Since you can't bore someone into buying, you need to grab attention. Humor could do the trick. Or an intriguing headline.  Or an eye-catching presentation. Test the best alternatives to see what connects with the audience.
4. Be engaging.  The very best marketing doesn't sound like marketing.  It sounds like one person talking to another.  A conversation. You can only achieve this if you really understand your audience.
5. Tell the truth.  Folks are good at sniffing out untruths.  And they're suspicious of hype.  Why risk ruining your reputation with even a small fabrication?
6. Be persuasive, not pushy.  You have a good story to tell, so tell it.  If you get too in-you-face, though, you may get pushed back. Gentle persuasion usually works better than a hard sell approach.
7. Invite feedback.  Check with your audience to see how you're doing.  What you learn can inform future marketing and make your program better.

Some companies think marketing is about touting product features. But really, great marketing is built on audience needs and wants. So why not take the time to know your audience? Show some respect for their experience, connect your product to their needs, and reap the rewards (sales, that is)!

Wait!  Don't get sucked into this frenzy without thinking first:

• What do you want your social media marketing to achieve?
• ​Which social media channels seem to best fit your product(s) as well as your marketing objectives?

• Who's your audience?
• Which social media channels does your audience use?
• How does your audience use these channels?
• When does your audience use them?
  
  

Your answers to the first 4 questions are critical to the shape of your social media presence.  For example, if you want to make special, Internet-only offers or set your company up as a thought leader, social media could play an important marketing role for you. If your product needs to be seen to be appreciated, Instagram is a possible channel. If your audience is business people, LinkedIn makes sense.  Ask  your customers and prospects if they use social media, which channels they use, what they use each channel for, and when they use each of the channels.

Social media marketing success depends on getting the right messages posted at the right times in the right places. (Just like any marketing.) Make sure the channels you use are the right places before investing time and money.

Businesses love “best practices”. That's because best practices promise successful outcomes. They're a system or technique that’s shown to yield statistically measurable better results.  In the best case, the use of best practices  can keep an organization sharp — leading to constant measurement and improvement.  In the worst case, it can boil down to  stagnation - establishing a standard way of doing things and then not changing for years.

How about marketing?  Are there “best practices” that apply? I think there are. Here's my list.

1. A PLAN Marketing needs a plan behind it.  A plan that supports the company’s business plan.  Objectives, audience, budget, tactics, and timing all need to be documented. Not that the plan should be chiseled in stone. The business world can change quickly. Plans need to adapt.

2. MEASUREMENT OF RESULTS There should be measurement so you can see how well your various tactics are working. That measurement can feed back into your plan and inform changes.

3. FREEDOM TO EXPERIMENT Marketing needs freedom in order to deliver the best results.  There needs to be room for experimentation and even failure. Often the only way to find the best approach is to try a bunch, some of which might not work.

Great marketing allows room for creativity. No amount of market research, customer retention management, or results measurement can take the place of the spark of human intuition or the power of a new idea. Some folks want certainty, and I'm advocating a certain amount of uncertainty.  The universe teaches us that uncertainty is part of life.  It keeps things exciting and opens up the potential for great leaps forward.

That’s my take on best practices in marketing.  What’s yours?

When you're running a business, WHO KNOWS YOU is critical.

Selling any product or service starts with awareness. Prospects have to know about a product before they’ll buy. They also want to feel good about the company behind it. The fact is, though, that many business people overlook the  importance of awareness. They want to jump right into selling something. Sadly, lack of awareness hurts sales.

How do you create awareness? You need to be visible. Here are some tools that can help you:

• WEBSITE/SEO  Most companies have figured out they need a website. However, putting up a site isn't enough. Your site needs to be found by the right people. The way to be found is by identifying the right keywords and optimizing your site for them.
• SOCIAL MEDIA   Being active and engaging on digital channels is essential.  Find out which ones your audience uses and how. Then develop a plan for how you'll use the vehicles to reach the right folks with the right messages.
• EMAIL  This is a great way to get to your prospect's in-box. Success depends on a great list and compelling message.
• ADVERTISING  This can be an effective and cost-efficient way to create awareness if you have a broad audience. Of course, that audience needs to be reachable through online, broadcast or other avenues.
• PUBLIC RELATIONS  News releases, features and case histories can get the word out about your product and company. This can be a slow way to build awareness, but the cost is less than advertising.
• TRADE SHOWS/CONFERENCES/EVENTS These are almost like a retail environment. Attendees come to learn about new things, “kick the tires”, and be entertained. It's a chance to add flash and sizzle to your presence. Make it fun. Make it memorable, too.

A combination of all the above will increase your profile in the market. Be sure to repeat, Repeat, REPEAT your message over time so it sinks in. Get known!

One of the hardest things about business blogging is coming up with something to write about constantly.  And I can tell you from personal experience that if you don’t plan topics ahead, you’ll be dead in the water in no time. Planning is critical. 

What should be in your editorial schedule?  Certainly not self-serving, heavily promotional stuff.  Put yourself in the customer’s shoes.  Think about their issues and concerns, and make your blog a place to come for helpful, knowledgeable assistance.

Want specifics? Here are some specific blog content ideas:

Re-purpose Existing Content  If you already have whitepapers and case histories, you may be able to rewrite them as blogposts.  Long whitepapers may even become two posts.

Conduct a Survey and Blog About the Results  Ask your customers and prospects a question or three that are relevant to your industry.  Gather the results.  Then report them and add your opinion in a blogpost.

Share and Comment on Industry Articles   Set up internet feeds on relevant topics.  When something good shows up, create a “sandwich” blogpost:  write an intro, share the link, and create a conclusion that showcases your thoughts on the article.

Infographics  Look at some of your existing content.  Can anything be pictorial-ized?  If so, you can have a graphic designer create an infographic that can be the basis of a blogpost. 

Crowdsource Blog Ideas  Ask blog readers what topics they’d like you to cover.

Answer Customer Questions  Your sales and customer service departments are great resources for finding out what questions people have.  Common questions can lead to answers that become blogposts.

Comment on Current Trends  Look through the articles in your feeds for a sense of trends.  You can also watch competitors.  When you spot a trend that affects your industry, write about it in the blog.

Interview Industry Experts  Interviews can turn into how-to’s or commentaries on the state of the industry.  Either makes interesting blog content.

Lists   Create short lists of tips, especially information that’s in high demand but short supply. Or you could provide the kind of information that helps customers use your type of product. Today’s list could be tomorrow’s infographic, giving you another blogpost.

Use these ideas to create a plan for your blog.  And please let me know what else has worked for you.

Blogs are definitely a “thing” in marketing. Lots of companies have them.
I’ve read quite a few blogs, publish my own and am a paid blog-writer.  Maybe that gives me the right to compose this list of blog mistakes. Maybe not.  But what the heck, the beauty and beastliness) of the Internet is that anyone can post just about anything!!  So reader beware. This is MY opinion.


Avoid:

1. Bad grammar, wrong punctuation, misspelling  If you want to be taken seriously, show up in a business-like manner.  You wouldn’t come to a business meeting in your jammies, would you? Misspelled words, poor sentence structure, etc. make you look unprofessional–even foolish. If you don’t know the basics, enlist a good proofreader. Or ask a friend to check what you’ve written. (Pay attention to your computer’s spell check, of course, but don’t rely on it alone.)
2. Tone that’s not authentic  The Internet is a come-as-you-are kind of place.  It’s a good idea to be yourself.  If you’re bubbly and upbeat, don’t go for a snarky tone … or vice versa.  It’s hard to keep up a façade, and readers will catch a false tone. 
3. Overt selling  The idea behind blogging is to attract interested people to you.  So good blogs provide useful information, not sales pitches.  Not that you can’t sneak in the occasional product reference.  Just don’t build an entire post around the wonders of your new widget.
4. Going on and on  You may see some advice that says longer posts are better. That’s because some search engines may factor in length as a sign of expertise. However, human readers prefer things that are brief and to-the-point. So my advice is to keep your posts to about 600 words.  Readers don’t have a lot of time.  Visuals can make your content more engaging.
5. Keyword obsession  Old SEO advice told us to load content with keywords to get picked up by search engines.  Thankfully, that’s not true anymore. In fact, you can get dinged for over-using a term. Please remember your blog is for people first.  Slavish use of keywords makes your content clunky and hard for humans to read. (SEO experts agree.)

Got more blog “don’ts”?  Let me know.

If you’ve decided a blog is right for your business, you’ve invested time and money into planning, researching, and writing.  But once you hit the “Publish” button, your work’s not over.  There’s more to be done.

Blogs are passive. The theory is that the right blog will attract the right people.  But don’t just sit back and wait for something to happen.  Prime the pump by promoting your business blog in the right places.  If you don’t take this step, you run the risk of having your blog  join the ranks of unread and languishing publications.

Here are some ideas for business blog promotion:

1. Email marketing to customers and prospects.  It makes sense to let your biggest fans know what you’re writing about.  You can use email to let customers and prospects know you have a blog.  You can use an email marketing program  to send regular notices when you have a new post or two.
2. Put a notice about the blog on your LinkedIn status.  This is a must for business blogs since it will alert your LinkedIn connections.
3. Add your blog as a discussion on your relevant LinkedIn groups. Since LinkedIn is a business-oriented social network, this is another must that will extend your reach to group members.  You can add your blog, or better, start a discussion to which you can post your blog as good advice.
4. Find relevant industry discussion groups, and post there.  The first step is to find the venues.  Then monitor discussions over time to see what topics are of interest and how you might fit in.  Often, the technique of starting a discussion to which you can later post your blog works well.
5. Post on Twitter, Google + and Facebook.  Even if your audience doesn’t use these social networks, posting here doesn’t hurt.  If nothing else, there’s SEO value.
6. Comment on relevant blogs.  This first requires researching relevant blogs.  Then post comments now and then when you have something of value to say.  Other readers may check you out and find your blog.
7. Guest posting.  If you find other, non-competing bloggers on your topic, invite them to write a post for your blog.  (Be very clear in your directions to them.)  They may return the favor, putting you in front of their readers.

The objective of all of these ideas is to get the right folks to read your blog, visit your website, think you’re a good company to do business with, and, hopefully, buy something.  That would make your investment of time and money worthwhile.