I don’t know about you, but there are times when I spend so much time writing that I type myself into a corner. All of the words start to blur, and my eyes see something like this: “sadofinaisfnaosdfiasmdofinaoifnaosdfnasdiofnsaoifn.”
Our hectic schedules, tight deadlines and ambitious goals drive us and make our professional lives worth living. But sometimes we focus more on churning out as much content as possible than we do on whether said content actually makes sense and is meaningful to our audience. So for this week, I wanted to spotlight a few articles that help us, even encourage us, to take a step back and remember that our customers are people (shocker) and we should be speaking to them as such:
- The first step is balancing content quality and quantity: You know that sinking feeling you get when a content deadline is looming or a campaign launch date gets pushed up? You’re not alone. However, as marketers we understand that more content is being released every day, so we’d be remiss if we didn’t get our perspectives, resources and our brand out there. What if I told you, though, content quality doesn’t have to suffer? Instead, we need to strike the right balance between content quantity and quality. After all, your buyers still want clever, concise and thoughtful content. If you don’t provide that, they’ll simply move on to someone else. What I love about this article is that it shows how brands can expand the breadth of their content library by licensing resources from third parties, tracking social feedback and onboarding peers and customers to co-create content.
- Let advocates tell your story: I have to tell you, I’m a self-proclaimed advocacy and influencer nerd. I’m fascinated by the idea that if you focus time and effort on building relationships, sharing valuable information and communicating in a transparent way, you can build an army of marketers to share your story with the world! Need more proof? This article from Chief Marketer validates the value of brand advocates. More important, it shares some great insights around how to identify happy customers, start conversations and cultivate those valuable relationships.
- Speak to your buyers how you’d like to be spoken to: Have you ever read a nurture email or piece of content aloud and responded, “YUCK”? I’m sure there are times when your buyers do the same. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we insist on jamming our content with buzzwords, convoluted sentences and tired old sales speak? Now I’m not talking about product- and brand-focused information. There’s always a time and place for that in our content mix. I’m talking about speaking to our buyers like they’re sitting in a large group in a conference room and reading your white paper during story time. Sometimes, we B2B marketers need to take cues from our B2C counterparts. This article provides some helpful tips for cutting the complex tech language and speaking to our buyers like the living, breathing humans they are.
Now that you have the basics in place, you can start to refine your content strategy and plan for the future. Our Content Preferences Survey can help you understand the content formats your buyers prefer — a great starting point!
