Needless to mention, it is a busy time of the year for professionals, in particular, marketers. Amidst planning and executing holiday campaigns, planning for 2016, and preparing for annual reviews, as a marketer, you don’t just have loads of work on your shoulders but you should also be ready to face your struggles regarding daily content head on while you make a plan to overcome them in the coming year.
Creating engaging content is one of the most significant efforts for B2B content marketers. And, it is pretty obvious that engagement is an important sign of the efficacy of your efforts put in content marketing. Well, you are well aware of the reasons why engagement is crucial for content marketing. However, you might be struggling on how accurately you could generate more engagement from your B2B content.
Discussed below are some optimal content marketing strategies from experts: strategies that work!
Find how engagement can help you achieve your goals
Think along the lines of why engagement is the parameter you are seeking. In what ways will more comments and shares help you reach your goals? If you can see a correlation between your goals and shares, use a tool such as BuzzSumo to find out which content of yours and that of your competitors have engaged readers the most on a particular platform. What are your audience most interested in? Videos? Templates? Advice on a particular topic? Know the answer and create more content in that particular vein.
Do research
Content marketers have to involve themselves in research, augmentation and monitoring. But, research is the key. Make sure you are well aware of the questions your audience has been asking and stuff that keeps them awake all night. Remember that your real opportunity is the time prior to creating your content. Only research will help you find the content that will work; that will get shared, the headlines that will engage, content that will amplify and where opportunities will be.
Use your content “eliminate a step”
Your content might not engage your audience if it is not useful or interesting. That sounds simple, right? However, it is not easy to find out what exactly makes the most compelling and engaging content. Experts say that if you want to innovate something online, you have to find a desire that someone has, line up all the steps required to fulfill that desire and finally use technology to get rid of those steps. And, the same can be done with content too!
By eliminating a step from a process altogether, you can engage your audience and notice them come up with suggestive comments that end in exclamation marks: a sign of an engaged reader, prospect, and ultimately customer.
Get conversations going
Use your content effectively to ask questions, interest and engage your audience and then invite them to respond to your queries. Do all that you can to involve them in a conversation and engage right back! You would want to know that people are listening, and your ideas and responses are rightly recognized and appreciated.
Think beyond B2B
Remember to forget the phrase B2B. While that might have been your business model, it should not describe your style of communication. Instead, consider P2P: person-to-person. Choose more segmentation and personalization in the year 2016. If you have no idea on where to start, begin by talking with about 100 customers this month by phone or in person; you will inevitably collect insights you require to devise your master plan.
Give an open ear to your customers
Start listening to the feedback of your clients. Find out what they would like to experience as a customer and what really would have been important to them in the process of buying.
Don’t hesitate to do the unexpected
Engagement means action. Be creative and offer something bold, passionate, opinionated and above all, something unexpected. If you wish people to take some action, you must fire them up with excellent unexpected content!