On the surface, content marketing seems like a fancy way to describe blogging. It’s actually a comprehensive term that includes a variety of different mediums, including a well-published blog. As your B2B business embarks on this content marketing journey, there are an endless number of routes to take for sharing content, and you hold the key to discovering the best routes. After your firm conducts client research, including brand personas and keyword research, you can determine the most effective ways to reach your target audience.
Types of Content to Create
When it comes to B2B marketing, there’s no shortage of opportunities to spread the message of your company through content. Here are some to consider as you seek to reach your target audience.
- Byline articles – Whether it’s a blog post or an article in a newspaper or magazine, well-written content is still a tried and true way to reach an audience.
- Speaking engagements – Seminars and conferences put you directly in front of your audience, allowing you to increase your status as a thought leader in your industry.
- Interviews – Sitting down with a journalist or podcast host gives your employees an opportunity to speak passionately about your B2B company with an increased reach.
- Infographics – Visual graphics are essential to any content marketing plan, and infographics give your B2B business’s audience valuable content in an easy-to-consume format.
- Videos – Video continues to be one of the most popular ways of reaching an audience, and a recorded series or live stream can be a useful tool for your company without breaking the bank.
- Case studies – Your employees are the experts in their field, and a case study allows them to prove that status to prospective clients.
Where to House Your Company’s Content
Having a library of quality content is only beneficial if your business is able to deliver it to your target audience. Luckily, there are a number of different avenues for storing and disseminating your company’s content.
- Website – Think of your B2B business’s website as the hub for all of your content. Any blogs, videos, interviews, articles or graphics that were produced by or include someone from your company should be stored on your website.
- Facebook – With an average of 1.73 billion daily users, Facebook remains the social media titan. As your business builds a relationship with your target audience, Facebook can be used to share informative content and light-hearted posts such as team photos.
- LinkedIn – As a professional networking platform, LinkedIn is great for sharing case studies, blog posts or anything with B2B jargon that might be out of place on Facebook.
- YouTube – Essentially the Facebook for videos, YouTube is an easy and effective way to host and share videos with your B2B company’s audience. It takes time to build a following on YouTube, but the videos can be shared on other platforms and embedded on your website.
- Contributed content – While you churn out content on your own, don’t forget about your potential ally in the media. Consider pitching a blog post or op-ed to a local newspaper or business publication, allowing your B2B business to reach a new audience and increase credibility in the eyes of your audience.
The best part about having a fully stocked inventory of content is the ability to repurpose and reuse it again and again over time. That blog post that received a lot of engagement can be made into a series of graphics with quotes from the employee who wrote it. A case study could become a seminar. Webinars can be trimmed into shorter clips to share periodically on social media. Each time your company reshares content, it expands your reach and extends the life of the content.