Generating content for B2B marketing can get quite challenging. The inhouse technical specialists don’t have time to write, and the writers in the marketing team usually don’t fully understand the technology/product/market and hence fall short of creating compelling content or generating ideas. People wait for processes to kick into place to enable valuable content creation, which can fuel their inbound marketing. This is true for case studies, whitepapers, thought leadership articles—the usual heavy duty B2B marketing content.
But there’s content all around you, and you don’t have to wait for a calendar or processes or technical discussions to get going. Here are three ways in which we created content or found content creation opportunities in the week gone by.
1. It’s in the award nomination forms
The PR team of our client company was getting an online form filled up for nomination to a prestigious industry magazine award. The team had criss-crossed various departments gathering relevant info, got it all approved by the CEO and raced to meet the deadline. And made it! Phew!
What happens to this form now? It’s likely to get forgotten and will gain some relevance when the company actually bags the award. Then there would be the frenzy to get a press release out.
But wait a minute, we thought, that’s a lot of good content in the form. Let’s do a couple of blogs from it. And maybe an internal mailer to the employees, as chances are high that most wouldn’t know of the great strides made by the company in that particular area. We checked with the CEO, he agreed!
The form has content which is already researched, written, and approved by the CEO. All we need to do is repurpose it into blogs and a mailer. And I suspect an infographic is lurking somewhere in there as well.
2. It’s in the presentation given at an event
One of the Co-founders of our client company was invited to speak at a webinar hosted by another company. The marketing team sat with him and thrashed out a presentation for the webinar.
We looked at the presentation, and came up with at least five blog ideas from it. The content outlines exist, so do the notes from the speaker. A smart team can now do blogs and an infographic out of this. And then a mailer with links to the blogs and infographic could be sent to the prospective customers’ database! Isn’t that a lot of content being generated?
3. It’s in the conversations
Content is not always created through research and formal questionnaire driven discussions. It is often created when you hear the top team (maybe the Co-founders) having a discussion on a tricky project. Or when you sit to have lunch with them and they tell stories of customers and employees. As soon as you hear a story that is reflective of the brand, seek permission to write it. Or shoot it/design it/Vine it.
The stories are all around in the organization. Keeping your ears open is key.
