Category: Content Marketing

In the latest report published by the Content Marketing Institute about content marketing trends for B2b organizations in 2016, they list that only 30% of those who were surveyed are effectively using content marketing, down from 38%. Those who are successfully using content marketing document their strategy, their editorial mission statement and communicate frequently with their teams. 76% of those interviewed also said they will produce more content than ever while 19% said they will stick to the same level of content that is being produced at the moment. 93% are going to use social media content while another 82% said they would also focus on case studies. An astounding 81% are still sticking to blogs and enewsletters as their preferred medium of content marketing. The most popular social networking platforms to engage in content marketing are going to be LinkedIn at 94%, Twitter at 87%, FaceBook at 84% and YouTube at 74%. This only proves that we must continue to emphasise on writing great social media content focused on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, while regularly publishing blogs, enewsletters, videos and whitepapers. Now, let us consider the importance of LinkedIn and twitter as against Facebook for B2B marketing. More focus on LinkedIn and twitter is required LinkedIn is certainly the most important of all the B2B channels out there. Surprisingly, most small companies do not use LinkedIn as a viable platform for their content marketing. This is strange because this platform evolved as a professional networking site. If you are looking at targeting business clients, you should first think about sprucing up your LinkedIn account more than anything else. This involves setting up a company page, regularly publishing blogs on LinkedIn, networking with the right kind of people and also being part of groups or starting your own. Similarly, Twitter is yet another tool that you will need to sue along with LinkedIn. The immediacy and interactivity that Twitter provides is really unbeatable. You could either ask your social media team to manage twitter accounts or outsource the entire process. But the most important factor is you must be able to use Twitter as much as possible, preferably alongside LinkedIn. Twitter can also prove to be a great place to propagate content that you regularly publish and use it as a tool to look for business leads. Most important professionals are available on Twitter and you only need to look so far to fight the right people. What about Facebook and videos? Though Facebook is a popular platform for content marketing, it is more of a B2C channel than a B2B channel. Thus, you might benefit from investing more money and time on creating great explainer videos which can be published on YouTube. This can also be shared on LinkedIn and Twitter, which will have a symbiotic influence on your content marketing strategy. We must note that there are many people who may not want to read through blogs or whitepapers. For such people, it makes sense to publish videos that are informative and entertaining in nature. Looking forward It is clear that content marketing investment is likely to increase in 2016. With so many people saying that they will publish more, it makes sense to come up with better topics and content strategies to keep up with the B2B joneses. LinkedIn and Twitter are certainly the most important platforms and social media channels for you to concentrate on. If you can also manage to create videos to be shared on YouTube and other social networks, your content marketing strategy is likely to be very successful.

Slowly, SEO has become an unsavory word that is not very well accepted in the industry, which is not how it should have been. Search engine optimization did take a darker turn during early and mid-2000s but it has slowly evolved to replace black hat techniques with hard work, great content, social media optimization and feedback from the target audience. All these techniques have made it possible for genuine and hardworking companies to appear in search results organically without breaking Google’s or other search engine companies’ rules. Moreover, SEO as people knew it could not have sustained itself anyway, because search engine algorithms keep changing. With this in mind, there has been a lot of focus on content writing and publishing. It is a well-known fact now that the more we publish blog, the more we might have a chance of appealing to our target audiences. Yet, there is a growing tendency to believe that what we are doing now may not be enough. It may be necessary to revisit the concept of deep content, which too fell out of favor in favor of ‘just writing’. How does deep content help you and what should be the process to follow? Deep content helps you to enable business information to be stored and managed in such a way that it is not only read by humans but also by computers. This means, writing needs to take a look at two things: human readers and computer bots. This does not mean stuffing content with keywords or phrases. Instead, it means that it may be necessary to change our thinking paradigms about publishing content online. Today, we are still using human language to store and express information online. This makes your content limited as computers cannot process language the way humans can. Probably, we will need to look at other options such as being readable by software programs and computers as well. This will require us to think about meta data first and then write content based on that. All this while, content writing has been done first, after which meta data is weaved into it. More and more companies are looking towards a meta-data first policy so that computers are taken into account as well. To move to a data-first world, we need to think from the point of view of software programs and computers. Deep content looks impressive but it may not be a practical solution While this looks simple, it may still be quite unworkable in most circumstances. First of all, though deep content sounds impressive, it does not sound natural. For example, a content writer might struggle hard to make content look natural, if meta data is first taken into consideration. This will result in a strained and labored effort which might turn off your human readers. The solution then is to actually hire data specialists who can work with content once it is written. Though data-first policy may see appealing, in most circumstances, it may appear artificial. A better technique is to get content written and then hire data specialists to focus on making the content readable by computers. This might involve creating another file specifically for computers or software programs, which is not such a bad idea after all. So, at the end of the day, though deep content seems like a good idea, it is not practical in most cases. We might have to follow what we have done all this while and focus on improving technical aspects once content is written.

A good case study is not very easy to write. It takes an enormous amount of research, observation and analysis. It is always based on measurable and traceable results. If you are planning to write a case study for your company, think about it for a while. Your case study is meant to explore possible solutions to a problem and finally reveal to the world how your solutions helped your client to solve it. Already, it should be clear to you that your case study serves the purpose of showing how a certain solution helped a client to achieve a certain goal. A little more about case studies The case study could be written for prospective clients, evaluators or researchers. Case studies that are primarily written for evaluators or researchers tend to be longer and more scientific than the ones written for clients or marketing purposes. In this article, we shall focus on writing a good case study for the purpose of marketing. Marketing-related case studies are shorter in length and require a clear picture of how your products or services helped a client. For this, you need to gather all the facts and figures in place. Secondly, you need to understand your client and look at your own solutions from their point of view. Your prospective client would be facing a similar problem and thus, wearing their shoes and writing from their point of view will help you to present the case study in a better format. Finally, the solution described should encourage readers to opt for your service or product. This means you need to be as honest and compelling as possible, without seeming like you are trying to persuade people into buying your offerings. Instead, you should aim to getting people to read your case study and make an informed decision. This boils down to crunching data, representing and explaining measurable ROIs. Let us take a look at a good and simple format of a case study. The method of writing a case study You need to first describe a business problem and then elucidate alternative solutions. Finally, you need to propose a preferred solution, which usually is what you offer as a product or service. To do this, you need to identify the problems of your subject (the business or client who is the topic of the case study) and explain why those problems existed, how they impacted them and what really was responsible for those problems. Next, you could point out statistics and figures from your research and data or from external resources, your case study will be strong when you have supporting evidence to the claim that you are making. Finally, describe how your solution helped your client to move forward. The format should be something like this. You can always alter it the way you want to: 1.     Introduction Here, state the key problems and issues. Come up with a thesis statement and summarize your analysis. 2.     Background Describe all the problems and maintaining factors. Also, discuss what the client has been experiencing and undergoing. 3.     Alternative solutions Here, you need to state a few alternatives and explain why these alternatives do not work. 4.     Proposed solutions Provide your own solution to the problem and describe how this solution helped your client. Include quotes, anecdotes etc to make it interesting. 5.     Provide recommendations The reason you are writing a case study is to attract more clients. Thus, provide recommendations to the readers and how your solution can be used by clients with similar problems. Looking forward A good case study helps you to attract the kind of audience you would want to attract. It helps to boost traffic, gain respect and also ensure that you are not left behind when every company is investing in content marketing. Case studies are becoming increasingly important along with whitepapers and eBooks.

It is common today to come across headlines that promise the world but lack all the substance they claim to possess. There is a simple term for this phenomenon: click-baiting. Click-baiting ensures that publishers have a constant flow of traffic, traffic that may not even be useful to them in the long-term. Audacious titles and headlines give a false impression to people and sensationalize blogs and articles. When this happens, people may click on the links and will usually be disappointed with the content and return less to your website. Click-baiting is one of the bad effects of SEO and content marketing. It started out as a practice to hook the readers and get them to click on your link and visit the page, so that your own advertisers feel impressed with the traffic statistics. As all bad practices would have it, advertisers soon begin to realize that the traffic is not of any importance. Those who are attracted by catchy headlines invariably are not the kind of audience that you or the advertisers are looking for anyway. With that in mind, let us discuss why you should avoid click-baiting in this article. 1.  Clickbait makes you look less authoritative Clickbait tactics are not used by respectable companies or newsrooms. We do not see Apple or Microsoft using clickbait techniques on their blogs. We also do not see the New York Times or Guardian using catchy titles to attract traffic. Their quality of content attracts their traffic and that is how it should be. When you use tactics like clickbaiting, you will look like a rookie or a novice who is trying hard to grab attention. Anyone who tries hard to prove a point usually doesn’t. It backfires on them. 2.    Clickbait attracts the wrong kind of traffic Those who are attracted to catchy titles may expect something sensational. Unless you are releasing a waterproof, dustproof iPhone which also can travel to the moon instantly, you should not indulge in sensationalizing your blog or your titles. The kinds of people who click on those links are basically looking for something sensational. When they see your article lacks the punch that they thought it would have, they leave your website disappointed. The rest of the people who are looking for serious content are usually put off by the presence of catchy titles. In the end, you get nothing at all. 3.    It is not a timeless solution Clickbaiting depends on terms and trends that reflect a fad in our societies. They are attractive and catchy only for a certain demographic and for a certain period of time. When the trend shifts, your content becomes irrelevant. No one will bother to go back and read your content again. This means, you cannot possibly create timeless content when you write catchy and trendy titles. Timeless solutions depend on the quality of the content and the seriousness of what is being published. If your article depended on titles to attract people, you probably are writing the wrong way. Focus on your content so that it speaks for itself To conclude, we can just say that you should focus on what you write. Hire excellent content writers who are efficient and talented. They should be able to write well without resorting to tactics such as keywords or clickbaits. This ensures there is a certain level of quality to what you publish. Eventually you will be respected as someone who writes content that is worthwhile and of high quality. At the end of the day, that is what is required to ensure that your readers keep coming back and probably convert as well.