Repurposing and Repackaging B2B Content to Keep Your Audience Engaged
by MGB2B
Your brand has many needs: developing products that meet the needs of your clients, keeping your clients happy and satisfied with your offerings, maintaining a steady workflow between your marketing and sales teams, staying one step ahead of the competition… the list goes on and on. So when it comes time to develop content like white papers, blogs, bulletins, newsletters, and more, it’s no wonder that task can often fall by the wayside. Your brand’s own content can sometimes take a backseat to the hundreds of other priorities you and your team manage on a day-to-day basis.
You Should Know Two Things About Your Struggle with Content:
- It’s okay!
- There’s a way to create new content to distribute to your audience without actually creating new content.
You Might Be Thinking… “That Makes No Sense.” But Hear Us Out:
By taking existing long-form content you’ve created, like white papers, tech bulletins, or published studies and turning them into shorter, eye-catching, digestible content like blogs, infographics, and videos, you’re still creating new content without putting in as many man-hours that the former requires.
Writing something like a white paper takes a significant amount of time, research, and understanding of the subject. Your audience appreciates these types of content, but in an age where “content is king” and attention spans seem to shrink by the day, sometimes they don’t always reach the audience they should. By taking your extensive white paper and breaking it down section by section, you’re providing your audience with the same content, just in a form they haven’t seen yet. So you might capture the attention of someone who doesn’t have the time or patience to read a full white paper. As an added bonus, when you create these types of content and post them on your website and various social channels, you can link back to the longer-form content (and require an information capture to reveal it), so you’re accomplishing two goals with one post.
So How Do You Evaluate B2B Content for Repurposing?
Choosing the kind of content you want to turn into social-friendly posts is the biggest challenge you might face. When starting out, you’ll want to evaluate your library for two things. The first being, ease of digestion. What we mean when we say that is: how complicated is the message we’re trying to get across, and how difficult will it be to convey that in an infographic, video, or blog? The second thing to evaluate is time. How long will it take us to turn this white paper into something we can get out to the masses?
If you need to hold multiple brainstorming sessions, followed by multiple rounds of development, followed by multiple rounds of edits, it might be best to leave that content as-is. If you have something that you already know can be broken down easily (and quickly!), start there. As time goes on, you can hone your skills, and eventually tackle those harder-to-understand pieces. But for now, start slow, and be sure you’re crafting messages that will resonate with your audience.
Continue ReadingB2B Myth of the Week: LinkedIn Is Just for New Hires
by MGB2B
The Myth: LinkedIn Is Just for New Hires
The Truth: LinkedIn Can Generate Leads and Position Your Brand as a Thought Leader
LinkedIn’s abilities go far past finding new hires, and B2B brands should begin to use it more effectively. What you may not know is that LinkedIn can help generate leads and position your brand as a thought leader within your industry. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 97% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for content marketing. LinkedIn has proven itself to be more than a networking platform, especially for B2B marketers. Visitors aren’t only looking for job listings. In fact, most of them are looking at content to help them improve at their jobs. So if you want to be a step ahead of competitors, LinkedIn is a good place to start.
Here Are 3 Ways B2B Brands Can Use LinkedIn More Effectively:
- Be Active in Industry Groups. LinkedIn is a great platform to target people and companies based on industry. It allows your company to connect with people who have similar interests. This makes finding people who might be interested in your product easier. LinkedIn offers a variety of groups and ranks them based on activity. Find a relevant and active group to join and get involved with others. Joining an active group is ideal because more people will interact with your posts. It’s important to be active in the groups that you join. Being a part of groups that are relevant to your industry will help your company form relationships that can transform into leads and customers.
- Become a Thought Leader. Thought leadership is a valuable asset because it gives your brand authority within your industry. If you’re a thought leader, people will be more likely to trust your company and the information you share. Most people will base their first impression on of your company profile, so make sure that it’s engaging and reflects your brand’s unique qualities. Develop a memorable headline that shows people why they should want to do business with you. Get involved in existing conversations and start some of your own. Share relevant and valuable information. And most important – create some of your own. Creating content and sharing it on LinkedIn not only allows you to establish your brand as a thought leader, but also drives users to your website.
- Generate Leads with Sponsored Content. In 2017 LinkedIn introduced a feature called Lead Gen Forms. When used with the platform’s Sponsored Content program, the quality of leads and ease of capturing them increases tremendously. Personal information is pre-filled because it comes from the member’s LinkedIn Profile, so the data is reliable. Plus, Lead Gen Forms make it easy to track and calculate your ROI. LinkedIn makes advertising to the right prospects simple, accurate, and highly targeted.
B2B Marketers often overlook how useful LinkedIn can be to their brand. Just being on LinkedIn is important, but when used correctly, it can open up a wealth of opportunities. With over 500 million members to interact and engage with, generating highly qualified leads might be easier than you think.
Continue ReadingHow to Make Your B2B Content Stand Out
by Emily Swet
The B2B content marketing landscape is like a riptide. It moves strong and fast and has the potential to sweep your marketing out to sea if you don’t have a plan in place. But your content needs to do more than stay afloat – it needs to stand out. Here are a few tips to make sure you do both:
Know the Basics.
Before you can think about standing out, make sure your team nails the following:
- Identifying the valuable organic keywords for your market.
- Creating standout content optimized for search, but written for a human.
- Leveraging that content with visuals and rich data.
- Using strong calls-to-action wherever relevant to bring leads in.
Create a Content Mission Statement.
An ambiguous goal results in ambiguous results. A clearly defined mission statement can help define your goals in the content marketing process. Knowing what you want your content to do helps you decide what to create, where to post it, and how to promote it. Here are two examples to get the ball rolling:
- “Our content will increase qualified leads by ___% annually by providing a resource on purchase decisions” or
- “Our content will establish our brand as a trusted authority in the field of ____”
Don’t Imitate Your Competitors.
It’s tempting to look at what the other guys are doing and hop on the bandwagon. Don’t. Instead, look at what your competitors are offering and analyze it. What customer needs aren’t being met? What questions can your brand answer that they don’t? And how is your brand voice different from theirs? And on that note…
Deliver What You Promise.
Your content must give your audience what they are looking for. If it doesn’t, scrap it. Even if you aren’t giving them the ol’ bait n’ switch, content that promises a deep dive and doesn’t deliver will leave your audience feeling duped and annoyed.
Be Authentic.
This one goes across the board. Customers are savvier than ever before and have comparison tools in their pockets. Be forthright and truthful to your brand in your voice, in your campaigns, and in your content, and your audience will respect your authenticity.
Analyze What Worked and What Didn’t.
Conduct A/B testing throughout your campaigns to determine what’s a success, and what isn’t. Once armed with that info, you can tweak your less successful campaigns to mirror what worked in others. You can test everything from headlines and visuals to ad placement, social channels, and call-to-action placement.
Don’t Rely Solely on Organic Reach.
Social channels continue to change their algorithms, making organic reach more difficult to rely on. Paid distribution is far more effective in connecting content to potential leads.
Whatever you choose, don’t wait too long. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 72% of B2B marketers say having a strategy in place has contributed to the success of their programs. The longer you wait to adopt a content strategy, the harder it will be to rise above the tide.
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