BEST PRACTICE: Unsexy, compliant and boring? 5 missed opportunities of b2b content marketing, Catherine Toole, Sticky Content

Unsexy, compliant and boring? 5 missed opportunities of b2b content marketing

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#b2bsummit

@catherinetoole

London| 18–21 February 2013 | #SESLON

What makes content engaging?

1. RELEVANCE

Image from xkcd.com

Your domain of expertise

Your users’ information

needs

Based on seomoz research

Answer a question, grow your content ‘One of our clients that develops an enterprise software

solution has been developing “technology tips” based on

customer service queries for the past two years.

When reviewing analytics last quarter, we realized these

content marketing assets contributed to 5% of the overall

content viewed and 20% of the search queries received.’

Derek Edmond, KoMarketing Associates

What makes content engaging?

1. RELEVANCE

2. EXPERTISE

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?• Is this article written by an expert, or is it more shallow in nature?• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles? • Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site? • Does the article provide original content or information?• Does the page provide value compared to other pages in search results?• Would you recognise this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?• Does this article contain insightful analysis or information that is

beyond the obvious?• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?

Customers are looking for "the real scoop" when they check out a corporate blog, says Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book.

"The first thing you want to see is something you won't get on the regular corporate site. The built-in expectation is something more insider, something more direct, more revealing about the product or about the issue…”

Blog and video• 211,000 page views • 2500 inbound links from top 8 articles • $2m sales

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The fence post blog • 850% increase in sales leads since launch

What makes content engaging?

1. RELEVANCE

2. EXPERTISE

3. EXECUTION

Click icon to add picture

What financial information do investors want from websites?

Individual investors are intimidated by overly complex IR sites

and need simple summaries of financial data.

Although users like the idea of webcasts, they rarely find the

time. But users like shorter videos to get a sense of who the

executives are through tone of voice, body language etc.

And users often prefer the much derided PowerPoint

slides.

Jakob Nielsen, useit.com

How do you create ‘enough’ engaging content?

We’re all publishers now...

4. Publishing structure Have a hierarchy

Manage stakeholders

Don’t let people create content without a ‘who?’ and a ‘why?’

Have a plan and stick to it

41

An extract from the foreword to Content Strategy for the Web (2nd Edition) by Kristina Halvorson & Melissa Rach by Sarah Cancilla, Facebook’s first content strategist.

42Extract from the foreword of Content Strategy for the Web (2nd Edition)

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5.

Here’s one I made earlier...

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© Sticky Content Limited

© Sticky Content Limited

Talk

Blog post

Article

Comments

3rd party site republish

User generated content

Retweets

Bookmarks

Further thought pieces

Bookmarks

Trending on twitter

New ideas for talks, blog posts

• Email subject line

• Homepage teaser

• Tweet

• Related products link

• Meta description

• Landing page snippet / A-Z entry

• Mobile site

• Tablet site

“We have a really hard time separating content from form. We have a really hard time imagining what something says, what its words are, might be disconnected from how it looks — or more important that if you are thinking about multi-channel publishing, how it looks might need to be different for every platform.” Karen McGrane

Senior management says no

Inspire a culture of content idea generation

Thank you for listeningwww.stickycontent.com/survey

[email protected]

@catherinetoole

#stickycontent; #b2bsummit