In case you haven’t yet noticed, we’re really enjoying our recent foray into webinars and live events. The engagement level in an event format is a breath of fresh air for all of us who are being overrun with written content about content marketing.

So in light of that, we’re excited to announce that we are co-presenting a new take on our popular Customer-Centric Content Clinic webinar with our new friends at Wistia – focused a bit more on B2B video content.

The live version of the Clinic happens at 2pm 1pm Eastern Time, Thursday April 19, 2012. You can register for it here. If you’d like to have your B2B video content reviewed live during the Clinic, email Bruno at Brainrider.

Ezra at Wistia has even convinced me to shoot some live video during the presentation so that their post-production wizards can try to edit together something a little more interesting for the recorded on-demand version that we’ll share with you after the fact, using footage from our Brainrider Toronto studio and the Wistia studio. So that should be fun.

If you aren’t yet familiar with Wistia, you soon will be. They offer a very unique marketer-centric video hosting and analytics platform that we have started experimenting with. Think YouTube or Vimeo, but built from the ground up for data-hungry marketers like all of us. Here’s a link to Wistia’s How It Works page.

To get you pumped for the B2B Video Content Clinic on the 19th, Wistia’s second-ever third-ever webinar, here’s the first-ever Wistia webinar: Introduction to Video Marketing.

Developing content that connects with both customer needs AND your value proposition ensures that you’ll not only generate engagement, but also be in a position to monetize that engagement.

We co-hosted a live online clinic with our friends at Pardot sharing Better Practice advice on how to develop customer-centric B2B marketing content. As part of the Clinic, we reviewed a number of company websites to see what they were doing well from a content perspective, and gave them some practical advice on how to get their content working harder for them.

The slides went up on Slideshare right after the live event, and this morning we have added a synced audio track so that you can play back the entire webinar on-demand. Here it is…

White papers are a favorite form of subject-matter expertise content for B2B marketers who use content offers for lead generation. Still, relatively few marketers re-purpose a white paper into a variety of content assets to maximize lead generation results.

5 Truths of White Papers as a Marketing Tool

Truth #1: Most people don’t have the time or attention span to read an entire 20-page white paper from start to finish anymore.

Truth #2: Most white papers are about multiple topics, answer multiple questions, and sometimes even speak to multiple audiences in a single document.

Truth #3: Despite better search indexing of PDF documents, most of the subject-matter expertise locked inside white papers still isn’t easy to find via search engines.

Truth #4: A quality white paper is very expensive to produce when all of the thinking, researching, writing, editing, layout, design, and production costs are factored in.

Truth #5: The potential ROI of the knowledge inside a white paper is never fully realized if the knowledge is not leveraged in other ways.

Turn one white paper into multiple content assets

A well-written white paper is a great cornerstone content asset of a marketing program. It contains tons of rich subject-matter expertise that helps the reader solve a problem or make a decision.  In most cases, it will include knowledge that touches on a number of related topics in a fair amount of detail.

Those topics can—and indeed SHOULD—be extracted from the white paper and turned into shorter, more focused, more easily consumable content assets that complement the white paper.  Content re-purposing is a skill that requires an eye for discreet topics in a larger body of content, and the ability to re-write each of those topical sections into a tone and format different from, but related to, the original white paper.

Leveraging re-purposed content assets for lead generation

When developing re-purposed assets, strive to use the language and voice of a prospective customer. That means titling, tagging, and articulating key concepts using language that describes the problem or opportunity more so than the solution or benefit. Also think about formats that will perform well in natural search results, and string together multiple assets that deliver incremental levels of detail and insight as the reader moves from one to the next. When you draft and produce the content, be sure to include cross-links to the related content assets that suggest content consumption pathways for the reader.

Here is a diagram illustrating a recent client exercise where we re-purposed a single white paper into 8 additional content assets; 4 online resource pages to appear in their website resource center, and 4 associated 1-pager downloadable articles that are gated with short lead capture forms. The white paper itself is also gated with a short lead capture form.

By creating content pathways between related assets of increasing detail and insight, not only do we create multiple lead generation opportunities, but also some implicit lead qualification based on depth of content engagement; leads who read more content assets have a higher likelihood of being qualified leads.

Attaching tags to each content asset, article or post does very little for the SEO (search engine optimization) of any singular article on a B2B blog or website. Used properly, however, content tagging makes your blog or website much better.

When implemented as a tertiary level navigation alternative, content tags can generate high-relevance, well-optimized landing pages of aggregated content.  Tags in most content management systems (CMS) are also a great way to manage content syndication.

The SEO Value of Tags

The SEO value of tags (as well as categories) is not in the association of keywords with a particular article or content asset (as many believe), but instead in the aggregated content that appears on the tag/category page that most CMS platforms generate automatically. [Here are a couple of examples: the category page for Developing Content and the tag page for Search Engine Optimization that our WordPress blog auto-generates]

If you have lots of relevant content in the headers and article excerpts, the tag/category page will sometimes rank better against certain keyword phrases than any one article that’s listed on that page.  That, of course, depends quite a bit on how well those titles and excerpts are written to align with natural search query language of your prospects.

Using Tags to Manage Content Syndication

The other use of tags is to generate RSS feeds of subsets of your content to be merchandized and syndicated elsewhere.  We have clients who use tags to publish customized content RSS feeds for each of their major syndication partners, allowing them quite a bit of control over what content gets pushed out to each syndicating site’s incoming content feed.

Using Tags as a Navigation Interface

From a user navigation perspective, tags are usually the third or fourth option for a user to find content they’re looking for (after categories, search boxes, and ‘related’ links).  So in most cases, you’re probably not going to see a significant improvement in usability or user engagement by investing heavily in tagging strategy and implementation.

With that said, making your tagging better often boils down to treating them as tertiary categories that aren’t explicitly included in your top level categories, but are still higher order needs/pains of your target audience.  It’s not really about buzzy keywords or phrases you want to rank for, but about needs/pains your target is trying to find useful information about.  So using their own natural language is better, and using more descriptive phrases (3-5 words instead of 1-2) is usually better too.

How do you use tags on your blog or website? Are you measuring their impact on usability or SEO? What do you see?

Some B2B marketers have tried to tell me the email newsletter is dead.  I tell them they’re doing it wrong.  Email newsletters are still a very effective lead nurturing and intelligence gathering tool if used properly. Here are 6 tips for making your email newsletters engaging to your readers. Big shout-out to Kathryn Honderd at Pardot for contributing to this article! [skip to the visual illustration]

1. Open with an explanation of what it is and why the recipient is receiving it using clear but conversational language. (rather than some big header with images that will attract negative attention from spam filters)
2. Offer an unsubscribe link right at the beginning as well as at the bottom. (if they don’t want to receive it, you really don’t want to be sending it to them anyways do you?)  Also make it clear if it’s a one-click unsubscribe. It’s sometimes hard to predict what will happen when you click an “unsubscribe” link. This is much better for your company’s email reputation than having people click “Report Spam” in their mail client!
3. Give a clickable table of contents so the recipient can see all the information options at the beginning rather than having to scroll through the whole newsletter to see the articles.
4. Introduce each content item, but don’t try to cram the whole article into newsletter. The ‘Read More’ links keep it streamlined, easy to scan, easy to navigate, and easy to read. (and track engagement!)
5. Include 3-5 pieces of content from different categories and topics, and track relative interest.  Feel free to re-purpose existing content (blog posts, popular recent Tweets, etc.) and curate other 3rd party content (blog posts, forum discussion threads, Q&A threads, etc.) to assemble a diverse set of content options without needing to write much from scratch.
6. Use your email provider’s variable tag to include the person’s email address in the unsubscribe option. It’s just another way to make it easy and clear for the recipient to know what’s going on. (“Oh, it went to THAT account.” We all have multiple email addresses and list-serves that we receive email from. It’s nice to understand if you’re getting an email mailed to your company’s general inbox or to you specifically.)

What other email newsletter tips and tricks do you use? Share them in the Comments below!

If you have not seen Jeff Cohen’s terrific presentation on 16 Best Practices of B2B Corporate Blogging is is worth checking out (see below).

Our best practice recommendation:
Start with a content framework

All of Jeff’s recommendations are valuable but the first 7 can be addressed in a practical way by creating a simple content strategy/framework that answers the following questions:

• What business are you really in?
• Who is your target?
• What are their needs and pains?
• What is your value proposition?
• What does your customer really want to know, broken out into main categories?
• What are the key purchase decision stages?
• What Keywords should you target?

Here is an example of an older BrainRider content framework:

In order to efficiently draft your content framework, with input and buy in from key stakeholders we recommend using a workshop format so you can tap the expertise of your team.  Check out our post on “Content Planning” for an example of the workshop we use.

If you have the time input from the workshop can also be used to develop your initial topic list and create an editorial calendar with 12 months of high-value topics generated in less than half-a-day

But the key to success for your your blog is customer-focus ie blogging about “what your customer wants to know” not “what do you want to tell your customer”.  This simple focus and a disciplined content framework will go a long way in creating a successful blog.

More information

If you’d like some help leveraging the value of what you know to create more customers, click here check out how we work or contact us directly.

We can help you:

• plan your content,
• update your website,
• create new case studies and white papers,
• build new sales collateral,
• use marketing automation tools like Pardot, Marketo, or Eloqua
• leverage social media like twitter and LinkedIn for connecting with customers

Sharing what we know is what BrainRider is all about.

Developing B2B marketing content can be expensive in terms of dollars and time spent — and some tactics are better than others.  According to CMO council research on content ROI “only 22 percent of respondents say they are very satisfied with the caliber of technology content” and this issue is not just limited to technology brands.  But smart companies have learned how to tackle the challenge efficiently and effectively.  How do they do it?

MarketingSherpa’s Top 5 Content Tactics

Here are the top 5 tactics for creating content, as reported in MarketingSherpa’s 2011 B2B Benchmark Report:

1. Repurpose and reformat existing content: 64% of respondents
2. Encourage customers to submit testimonials and case studies: 53%
3. Recruit authors internally: 48%
4. Outsource to a consultant or agency: 27%
5. Use social media to encourage brand advocates to produce content: 20%

Content Development Best Practices

But MarketingSherpa’s data tells only part of the story.  The real answer is using the right strategy, tools, templates, work-flow, and performance measurement to create and refine your content.  Based on our experience working with large, mid-sized and small B2B brands we recommend the following approach regardless of the tactic that you are using to develop your content.

A Customer-Focus

Content development is not about you!  It’s about your customer.  They are the audience you need to satisfy with your content.  And if doing this sounds easy take an honest look at your current content.  How much of it is really customer focused?  And how much is “About Us, Why Buy From Us, Our Successe Stories, Our Press, Our Careers, Contact Us“. See this classic example of “all about us” website content:

While this tablestakes information does play a role in credentializing your company it is no longer enough to connect with and convert more customers.  To create effective marketing content with a customer-focus you need to focus on these three factors:

Findability

Findability is a combination of SEO and real-world communications clarity.  Is the value and relevance of your content structured to be findable by search engines and by human beings.  Does your title do a good job of describing it.  Does it include the right keywords.  Does it sound like something worth reading.  Does it connect with a customer need.  Does the description tell me what I will learn and why it is worth reading.  Is it structured to be scan-able with headers, sub-heads, lists, and highlights. Take a look at this example of search results for “3PL retail logistics best practices”.  Which result delivers the most findability?

Relevance

Relevance is defined by your customer.  They are searching, reading, and engaging with your content because there is something they want to know.  The more you deliver what customers are looking for — the more your content will be relevant.  So start by understanding what you customer wants to know.  And remember, what customers want to know changes at each stage of their decision process.  So develop content relevant to their needs and pains at each stage, from understanding the problem to evaluating different solutions to making a final decision.

Value

Content value is also defined by your customer.  Customers don’t care how much time, effort and money you have invested in creating content.  They judge content value on one attribute alone.  Is it useful to them.  Does it help answer their question or give them helpful insights.  Can they do something with the information that you have shared.  Practical advice is more valuable than theory.  Real-world concepts are more valuable than opinion.

For more information check out these practical resources:

• Content Curation & Repurposing: BrainRider’s hands-on B2B Marketing seminars share best practices, tools, processes, and tips you can use right away to improve your results.
• Advanced B2B Marketing Workshops: Website best practices, content strategy, content development, lead acquisition, lead nurturing and more
• Blog Post: How to plan website, sales collateral, email, blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other marketing copy for my business
• Best Practices Guide: How To Repurpose Existing Content
• Best Practices Guide: How To Curate B2B Content

Or contact us for more information

Understanding the decision stages B2B customers go through as they decide to buy from you and developing the content they are looking for at each stage is an essential B2B Marketing best practice.  Creating and sharing the information your customers want at each stage of their decision process will dramatically improve the findability, relevance, and ultimately the value of your content and increase qualified traffic, visitor engagement, and conversions.

Marketing Sherpa’s #1 lead generation best practice is: “IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT THEM (NOT YOU)“.  Understanding “What your customer wants to know” is how we apply that discipline.  But in order to understand what your customer wants to know, first you need to know more about your customer.

That idea leads us to Marketing Sherpa’s #2 lead generation best practice: “SEGMENT BY PROSPECT TYPE“.  We recommend starting with the natural segments in your audience.  For example, a C-level segment vs technical users.  While it is always helpful to have a formal segmentation analysis, our experience is that these segments can be roughly mapped out with learning from sales and other customer-facing teams. You can refine your segments over time with more robust analytics and data but a quick segmentation is a great place to start knowing more about your customer and what they want to know.

Let’s look at Marketing Sherpa’s #3 lead generation best practice: “CREATE CONTENT FOR EACH STAGE OF THE SALES CYCLE“.  This is all about optimizing the content assets you already have and identifying gaps you should fill.  At BrainRider we take this best practice one step further by mapping content against each stage of the decision process.

Here is a quick guide on how to map content for each stage.  First, model your pipeline by understanding the different stages a customer goes through when deciding to do business with you.  They key is to keep it simple while identifying meaningful differences in “what you customer wants to know”.  Here is the model we use as a strawman for our clients.

Key Decision Stages by Information Need

1. Defining the problem: education and thought leadership
2. Evaluate alternatives: solutions & product suitability
3. Negotiate & commit: credentials and decision support

And at each stage of the decision process you need to target your content to address differences in what your customer wants to know

1. Defining requirements: education and thought leadership

• They are casting a wide net and may or may not have an idea what the solution will be
• The information seeking has a broad focus using more generic and high-level search terms and keywords
• They may be seeing assistance with definition, scope, and internal buy-in.

2. Evaluate alternatives: solutions & product suitability

• They are searching for available options that will meet their requirements
• Keywords and search terms will be more specific and will start to reflect solution alternatives or categories
• Their goal is developing a short-list of viable alternatives

3. Negotiate & commit: credentials and decision support

• They have a solid understanding of how each alternative measures up and the decision maker is trying to get comfortable with committing to one of the decision alternatives
• Keywords and search terms will be much more specific and will be focused on specific solutions
• They are managing questions and building a case with various stakeholders

We then map specific differences in what each segment wants to know.  The chart below is the tool we use to simply map decision stages and content opportunities against existing, repurposed, and curated content.

Understanding what your customers want to know at each stage of their decision-making process

As always, we would love your input on how this planning compares to how you are marketing to your customers.  Let us know if you have any questions or would like to see real life examples of this tool in action.

Today’s B2B Marketing Best Practices include many powerful tools to help you acquire, nurture, profile and convert new customers. Marketing automation, lead nurturing, digital sales collateral, and social media can acquire and convert more customers for your business.

They’re all fueled with content.  Of course, the better your content the harder they work. Yet we often hear clients say things like:

“The content on our website is out of date but I’m not sure what to put on it.” ”We need to update our sales collateral and I can’t find the time.” ”We need a new case study and white paper but I’m having trouble choosing a topic.” ”I started blogging but stopped after a few weeks after I ran out of ideas for posts.”

There’s more: “Where do we get content for our marketing automation, email marketing, or lead nurturing programs?” ”I am not sure that Social Media like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube or SlideShare are worth the time and effort. How do I know if they’re working?”

It really boils down to this: “How do I make writing marketing content easier, cheaper, and more effective?”

The answer is to develop a simple and practical content plan for your business.  Creating that plan can take just 90 minutes if you focus on understanding what your customer wants to know.

Here’s part of the content planning workshop we run with our clients:

Check out our free e-book “How To Use Knowledge Marketing To Create B2B Customers”  Click here to download your free copy

If you’d like some help leveraging the value of what you know to create more customers, click here to contact Scott or Nolin … or any other BrainRider team member.

We can help you:

• plan your content,
• update your website,
• create new case studies and white papers,
• build new sales collateral,
• use marketing automation tools like Pardot, Marketo, or Eloqua
• leverage social media like twitter and LinkedIn for connecting with customers

Sharing what we know is what BrainRider is all about.

Staying on top of news, events, and conversations in your market is key to repurposing, curating and creating content. Consolidating all this information into a dashboard allows you to quickly scan and identify what is important.
Here are 6 steps for setting up a dashboard:

1. Use a content framework to choose the right sources

Focus your dashboard on the key categories and topics important in your market. Always ask yourself if the source is credible, authoritative, up to date, and related to what your customer wants to know. And focus on sources that are easy to manage and scan.

2. Use an RSS reader and feeds to build a 1-page dashboard

Many web sources such as blogs, websites, search engines, publications, and news outlets use Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds to share content. With RSS you can subscribe to the feed to get real-time updates. It is a great way to organize your sources. Setup an RSS reader, such as Google Reader, as your 1-page dashboard to manage and follow the best feeds.

3. Add fresh sources and trim stale ones

Search the sites, blogs, and publications you already visit to see if they offer an RSS feed and add it to your dashboard. Then look for industry analysts, associations, vertical publications, portals, forums, think tanks, academic institutes, and even competitors. Every now and then review your dashboard to ensure your feeds are relevant and fresh.

4. Don’t forget the big names in your market

If you’re not sure who they are, search for major industry events or conferences and find the speakers list. Search for them in your RSS reader or check out their social media profiles or websites. Chances are, if they have something to share, they’ll offer a feed.

5. Listen in to other sharing channels

While RSS feeds provide some of the best content, experiment with social media channels used in your industry such as Twitter, LinkedIn, user forums, and other sharing tools. You can often configure a custom feed from these tools.

6. Scan your feeds for gold

Discover interesting 3rd party content to curate and share. Spot gaps in what is available in the market. Learn more about what your prospects find relevant. Make it easy by scheduling a regular scan and capture session to discover content and use it for your own objectives.

Find our more about content curation and repurposing, including setting up a content dashboard. Attend Content Curation and Repurposing: A hands-on 1/2 day seminar for B2B marketers taking place in Toronto on 21st July 2011.