With great exposure comes great responsibility…
You’ve just written a tech content marketing masterpiece that is sure to provide huge value to your B2B customers and the industry as a whole, so now what? You need the right exposure for the piece so that the world can make use of your epic content. Below are five tactics to get the most bang for your buck – so to speak…
1.Build your social media following
First things first, you need to revise your follower lists across your channels, so that when you do post and cross promote your content, you already have your B2B target audience identified and in place. Seek out the people who write about topics that align with your company and offering; journalists, publishers, influencer, bloggers. Follow companies within your industry but in a different niche. Make sure you follow all your suppliers, and the companies you supply to as well. When you post on any platform, look to see who is interacting with your content already and get ideas from that, it will give you more of an indication of who else to add to your list of accounts to follow. These things all take time, but if you aim to add a few targeted followers each day, you’ll be well on your way to creating a solid base of people who are looking for the information you are proactively sharing.
Ensure you interact with the content your followers post, the best way to get people to follow and engage with you content, is to do the same for them. Simply posting the content you have created is not enough anymore. Sharing meaningful information with your followers that you gather from other sources will establish the fact that you are knowledgeable within your industry and there to help, not just promote your own products or services.
2.Slice and dice your long form content to share everywhere
As you are writing your blog or social post, keep in mind that you’ll be extracting different aspects of it to share on different platforms, and in a variety of ways. As a B2B marketer, your content will often go through several rounds of changes before being finalised, so make the most of your approved copy.
A title that offers a solution can go a long way to getting more views on social channels in the B2B sector– people are generally searching for an answer to a question or problem they have come up against, so using the answer you are providing in your title can engage your reader instantly. Subheadings can also be used on social media to draw viewers in. You’ll use larger chunks of your article for LinkedIn and as abstracts to place on your website or in news feeds.
Everyone loves visuals. Tweets that include an image are 150% more likely to be retweeted, according to a recent study by Buffer. So, ensure you include them in your content, you can then share those infographics or images you used independently with links back to your post.
3.Include expert and industry leader quotes and contributions
We all like to hear from people we already know and trust in our industry. Don’t be afraid to reach out to experts, leaders and influencers in your market for information. These people are a great way of gaining exposure for your work and they often have thousands, if not millions of their own followers too. This can be as simple as using a quote that supports an idea you are exploring. Or you can take it as far as setting up an interview with the person of interest. The interview will not only bring views to your article, but can be used by said person for their site and driving traffic back to you. It can also be used independently as a news piece, and chances are it will be linked to and cited by others looking for similar substantiation for their own work.
4.Create a video teaser for your posts
Cisco has projected that more than 80% of all Internet traffic will be video by 2021. Does this mean that you have to get a production crew together and start filming the next hit feature? Luckily, no. But introducing a video strategy will be something many businesses are looking to implement this year. We are seeing a lot of B2B tech businesses create videos to drive traffic to their sites, make dry topics more interesting or highlight experts from their companies. Why not use this idea to promote content as well? Start small and create a simple video to drive traffic back to your site where you’ve posted your content. There are a ton of tools out there to help you create videos in just minutes, without the need for a videographer or expert, or heavily investing. Here is a list of some great software you can try out.
And if you want to take things to the next level, here’s a comprehensive article from Vidyard. It lays out some tactics to help you maximise the impact of B2B video for popular social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook, with the aim of generating interest and fostering relationships with prospects and customers.
5.Reuse your content
If you’re in tech B2B content marketing you probably already know that original content creation requires a lot of hard work and ratification can take a while. However, with a little planning, creativity and long-term thinking, you can make one piece of content work really hard, from sales enablement and lead generation to thought leadership. Check out another of our blog to read about some key strategies that you can employ to reuse and recycle your already-approved B2B content.
If you would like to discuss any of the ideas we’ve covered in this blog, or any other ideas you’d like to see us discuss, get in touch.
