Content Remains King: 5 Tips to Reign Supreme

Many moons ago, the media mogul Sumner Redstone coined the phrase "content is king." 

Redstone uttered this now-famous phrase because with the proliferation of broadcasting, movies and other media outlets, he knew content was more important than distribution mechanisms. There would always exist channels of distribution (albeit in varied forms), but content was always going to be necessary.

Still True Today

Redstone's proclamation “Content is King”  was never more true than in today's online marketing world.

In business to business marketing, relevant content of value to prospects feeds Internet marketing, blog posts, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, direct marketing, public relations, and other online channels.

Proof Positive

Here’s proof that content remains king: According to Marketing Sherpa’s 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report-SEO Edition, “content creation works the best, but takes the most work.”

Another data point:  A recent study by TechValidate shows content marketing is a central tactic in the modern B2B marketers’ toolkit for generating demand. 90% of respondents reported a significant slice of their marketing budget is devoted to producing content.

Tips to Reign Supreme

If effective content fuels business to business marketing, and helps with SEO, web traffic, lead generation and other key metrics, what’s the best way to consistently churn out compelling website copy, blog posts, guest blog posts, whitepapers, press releases and more?

Here are 5 tips to “reign supreme” with your marketing content:

1) Let the customer speak:    Develop marketing content that answers the question “what’s in it for the prospect?”   Avoid “we we” text, and content that talks only about the company. Keep front and center the needs, wants, and problems of prospects for content that offers specific value.  Take a close look at your products/services, discover what motivates the customer and prospect, and write about that.

Read further as to the importance of discovering what to write about, not dictating.

2) Match the content to the audience:   Folks who have just discovered your product or service likely do not want lengthy and detailed technical white papers.  They are simply looking for high-level information to orient themselves to your offering.  Be sure content addresses those folks early in the sales cycle.  Likewise, develop and offer more detailed content for those later in the cycle, who seek specifications and other details to see if your product or service is a good fit. 

It’s all about being strategic in content delivery, addressed in a previous post.

3) Recycle and repurpose:  My colleagues and I at Market Strategies and PR claim to be the “greenest marketers around” in that we recycle content in a myriad of ways. A customer case study or analyst research paper is transformed into a press release, a blog post, a Tweet, a direct marketing offer, and web copy.  Be resourceful, seek out nuggets of information and recycle it to fuel their content machine.

4) Be concise:  A recent blog post addressed this same issue. 

People don't read.  They scan. 

In the spirit of brevity, I'll keep this tip short. Remember that with marketing content, “less is more.”  And by all means, avoid buzzwords and marketing speak!

5) Tell a story:  Stories are easy to remember.  Instead of an assortment of facts, technical specs or other dry content, help your prospects gain value by telling a compelling story. A story provides a lesson. Business storytelling is no different. The trick is to take the time to create a meaningful story of value.   


(PRWeb post about generating compelling press releases puts it this way: "As content creators, we are storytellers." )


Go Forth - May Your Content Reigneth Supreme! 

Buzzwords and the Bull***t Generator

The buzzwords are getting to me.  Previous B-to-B Blog posts have addressed this same topic, but lately I’ve got buzzword fatigue.

In meetings, I’m hearing phrases like: “Dial it back”, “Let's get on the same page”,  “Let’s table this”, “Circle back”, “leverage”, “disconnect”, “synergize”. Are these words supposed to streamline communication and boost work camaraderie?

They seem to be having the absolute opposite affect.

Much of marketing-speak is the same way. Why make it difficult for prospects?  Why put a high falutin name to a product to make it so much more complicated then it is, which only serves to confuse?

Example:  why call something a “manual scribing implement” when it is simply just a “pen”? 

Please Hold the Fluff

A fast look at high-tech marketing materials reveal a plethora of meaningless marketing words including:

• Leverage
• Empower
• Best-of-breed
• Functionalities
• Integration
• Mindshare
• Synergistic (ergh!)

The Bullshit Generator

Today’s exercise of wading through volumes of buzzword-laden documents reminded me of a funny website I recently stumbled upon called “The Bullshit Generator”

The online calculator randomly generates phrases like:

• streamline innovative methodologies
• enable dynamic communities
• reintermediate user-centric networks

Just hit “enter” and you’ll get gems like: “Seize mission-critical convergence” Wow!  What fun!

Less is More

Corpspeak, buzzwords, lingo and marketing-speak can drive me crazy.  It drives readers crazy, too.  Fluff adds no value.

And I’m guilty of generating these terms myself.

The trick is to make copy concise, clear, and actionable.

Keyword: Usability

I’ve been lucky enough to participate in several “Writing for the Web” workshops as part of Nielsen Norman Group Usability Week Conferences.  

When writing for the web, or in any marketing communications,  experts  remind us: that “people read very little on Web pages. They tell us “marketing communications folks not to waste word count on generic, feel-good material. It's not going to make prospects feel good anyway. They care only about getting their problems solved as quickly as possible so they can leave your site.”

Amen to that!

Enough Said

I just visited the Bullshit Generator again and it randomly spewed this phrase: deliver cross-media schemas.  There are a few clients I know who would love that phrase, but what the heck does it mean?

Please, hold the fluff!  

5 Lessons Learned from Blogging

The more I read about social media marketing from those many pundits out there, the more I see the following types of content:

• blog posts that cover blogging
• tweets that talk about using twitter
• blog posts that share tips for using twitter
• tweets with pointers about blogging

Goodness knows this B-to-B blog you are reading right now takes this well-worn approach with several recent posts about managing Twitter for business-to-business marketing.   It’s clear to see that Twitter has captured my attention over the last year, in fact I’ve several more Twitter related posts in the hopper.

And in much the same spirit, let’s turn our attention to blogging.

Yes it’s a blog post that covers blogging!

Through work with my own blog, and client work for other corporate blogs, presented here are….

 5 Lessons Learned from Blogging

Lesson 1: It Pays to Be Consistent

The beast needs to be fed.  That means starting a blog is the easy part, keeping current by creating updated posts is much more difficult.  Case in point:  this blog has the goal of 4 new posts per month.  Take a look on the left side index and you’ll see I’m averaging less than 4 posts per month.  It’s effective to “post when you have something to say” so be sure that the main thrust, focus of the blog sufficiently engages and inspires you to “keep on talking” and posting.

Stuck for ideas?  Those smarty pants at Hubspot give some great pointers on keeping business-related content fresh and “feeding the beast”. (warning, lots of food analogies so best to read on a full stomach)

Lesson 2: Take Time to Engage

No matter what the blog post topic, asking pointed questions, soliciting feedback and engaging readers is powerful.  A recent client project involved inserting an online survey into a blog post, which was an effective way to turn a passive reader into a participator.   There are many great tools out there but Zoomerang is an especially easy and powerful one.

Lesson 3: Consider SEO

Folks write about this topic in much more detail so it’s worth a look at their insight.  For our purposes, be sure to make yourself familiar with SEO best practices like using keywords.  Within a post, be sure to embed links to your website, other blog posts, or other key websites. In the world of b-to-b marketing, a blog is a powerful way to improve search results. Post titles and content should contain the keywords that your customers and prospects search. For instance, this is a blog about marketing, business-to-business marketing communications, and marketing strategy.  Those are words that should be tagged and used as much as possible.  It is worth it to take the time to know which keywords are more relevant to you or your clients.

 SearchEngineLand.com is the premiere source to check for other tips.

 Lesson 4: Remember Nobody Reads

Web users are overloaded with content – and social media posts are getting shorter and shorter.  The Twitter 140 character limit has trained web users to scan, and take short “information snacks” instead of digesting lengthy, complex content.

Keep this in mind when creating blog content.  Chunk out information in easily digestible segments.   Develop information-carrying subheads.   Break out titles into lists, top lessons learned, etc. to make it easy for your blog readers to digest your information.

Lesson 5:  Share  and Share Alike

Blogging is a powerful way to elevate you or your client’s brand, showcase industry leadership, and raise overall visibility of products and services.  Don’t just post, though.  Share!  

Use Twitter to link back to the post.  Showcase the blog post content on the home page of your website.  LinkedIn offers several ways to share links to blog posts by topic, either on your profile or within LinkedIn groups. Add your blog post to directories like technorati for maximum exposure.

What are the lessons you've learned from blogging?

An Error Page Error: How Hootsuite Missed the Mark on Effective Marketing Communications

I use Hootsuite daily. 

You likely know that Hootsuite is a useful social media dashboard application.  It helps manage client’s multiple social networks from one website.

Specifically, I spend a few hours each week writing relevant Tweets of interest, and scheduling updates to my client’s Twitter account, as explained in previous blog postings.

You might also know that late last week, Hootsuite was one of the applications that was affected by a severe service outage.  Hootsuite crashed for almost a full business day.

How Did The Crash Happen?

I’m over-simplifying here, but here’s how I understand it. Hootsuite is one of several applications that use Amazon web services and databases to provide “cloud computing” capability so users can log onto the applications from the cloud. 

There was a total, unforeseen failure of Amazon's web services and database functionality (not the Amazon site itself, but their web services). Unfortunately all recovery or fail-safe strategies crashed as well.

Other popular websites and services that went dark that day were Reddit and Foursquare. They were crippled or outright disabled well into the early afternoon.

Other folks far more technically savvy then me are writing about this outage, and putting it in its proper perspective.

A Marketing Communications Challenge

My concern in this post is a little more mundane, but relates to marketing communications.  

Hour after hour, as I tried to unsuccessfully log in to Hootsuite, what was displayed was very snarky error page.  (pasted above). 

More than snarky, it was downright rude.  As the error page said in multiple languages:   “Owls need a break sometimes, too. We’ll be back in action, but in the meantime go outside and flap your wings around, you may find that flying aint’ very easy.”

Granted, after about five or so hours a more professional and “Kinder” error page was displayed, but this one really missed the mark.

Missed Opportunity for Positive Branding

The error page bugged me every time it was displayed.  

It created a certain perception about Hootsuite's service and brand.

Even though it wasn’t a critical situation by any means (nobody died), I lost a few hours worth of work since the outage resulted in losing 4 or 5 days worth of Tweets scheduled in advance.

So here’s to paying attention to content on an error page.  Seeing a directive to “go outside and flap your wings around” set quite a negative and dismissive tone, and wasn’t an effective use of positive branding or marketing communications.