Google alone handles 3.8 million online searches every minute. That equates to 5.6 billion searches every day. And, every time one of these searches is relevant to your business, you stand a chance of attracting new clients or customers. One of the surest ways to leverage these searches, secure more impressions, and drive more cumulative traffic to your website is through the development and promotion of content.
However, gaining SEO traction isn’t the only reason why you need a bulletproof content strategy. Having a curated store of informative, engaging, and useful content can help to establish your brand identity and convey a sense of authority within your target market.
There is a seemingly endless amount of approaches you could take in forming an on-brand content strategy for your B2B company. Instead of sorting through them all in an attempt to find just the right one, it’s going to be more helpful to extract the themes and components that are common to all of them.
We’ve done this work for you in the creation of this B2B Content Strategy Checklist.
This checklist contains elements and ingredients that are fundamental to virtually any B2B content strategy. Integrating them with the right weight and focus for your business can be thought of as a kind of science-meets-art form.
At Orogamis, we specialize in bringing content clarity to our clients as part of broader branding consulting. Our expertise in brand strategy extends to every functional area of business operations; content is just one piece of the puzzle.
Let’s get started.
Content is just another word for information.
Information can be graphical, animated, text-based, musical, or even tactile. Before the advent of the internet, businesses consumed content through physical trade publications, networking events, postal mail, radio spots, and billboard advertisements, just to name a few examples.
The birth of the digital paradigm has changed all of that. The online content of today can be thought of as just about any digital asset that accomplishes one or more of the following goals:
This means YouTube videos are content. Tweets are content. FAQs are content. Any information that is developed for any of the above-four reasons is classifiable as content.
So, where do you start in forming a smart content strategy for your business?
We suggest using this checklist as a template. While your business might not benefit from all of the content examples listed here, most of them are likely to have at least some value for you when used in the right way.
Without further ado, below are 20 checklist items that make up a modern content strategy for B2B companies like yours.
Video content is dynamic, engaging, and memorable. It’s also fairly time- and resource-consuming to create. But, with the right brand engineering and a little technical know-how, video content can be evergreen while paying back dividends in the form of leads for years to come.
Online content consumers remember 10% of what they hear and 65% of what they see. Infographics have been shown to increase reading comprehension by as much as 50% compared to text-based data presentation. Want to be remembered? Make an infographic.
Research shows that, for B2B brand audiences, live streaming is as much as 82% more preferable than blogs or social media posts. And, with so many different platforms available (Facebook, YouTube Live, Younow, Twitter, and others), it’s never been easier to go live.
Considered a ‘cousin’ to infographics, content visualizations help your brand audience to digest complicated and multi-faceted information, faster. Here are a few great examples.
61% of B2B marketers rely on webinars to source new leads, and for good reason. Webinars are an outstanding way to foster engagement and interactivity with prospective clients, and they can be developed and executed for little to no hard costs.
Think Tik Tok is just for teenagers and internet celebrities? Think again. This micro-video mainstay is quickly gaining steam as a B2B marketing platform with very real reach.
Recently, networking giant Cisco hosted a virtual trade show that allowed users to “walk around” and engage with their brand without even leaving their offices. Use of VR/AR is a great example of out-of-the-box thinking for B2B marketers of all ages and stripes.
The very first blog to ever be published online was created in 1994. These days, it’s hard to be taken seriously as an established business without one. Blogs allow you to keep your brand audience apprised of current events, new hires, product releases, and more. And, they’re easily shareable across a variety of social media platforms.
FAQs are fantastic for content strategy because of their utility and ease of use. They’re especially helpful for B2B companies that provide a technical product or service.
A press release is typically formatted to be a no-nonsense, fact-based announcement for fast, public dissemination. When it’s on-brand and distributed through the right channels, a well-conceived press release can generate just the kind of buzz your company needs to drive new revenue.
Even though most social media posts are more impactful when they include images or video, sometimes all it takes to engage with your audience are a few thoughtfully constructed sentences. A conversation-starting question, a link to a thought leadership article, or giving kudos to an employee, client, or business partner all qualify as smart social media activity.
Ebooks can contain immense value for your target audience. They can be offered for free or in exchange for an email sign-up. Because they’re typically long-form and more detailed, they’re highly desirable for those looking for ‘deep dive’ information relevant to their lives, businesses, or other interests.
How to write an effective Ebook for B2B marketing warrants a checklist of its own. In lieu of that, here are some pros and cons of a few notable, recently penned Ebooks in the B2B space.
Newsletters are typically sent via email to an established subscriber base. They can contain links to your blog, nested images, and a variety of other elements that can prompt engagement. They’re also great for consistency: your customers will come to expect your newsletter every month or quarter, which is outstanding for ongoing brand awareness.
On-page content is anything hosted within the domain of your website. Examples include service or product pages, technical information, and virtually any copy (read: words) that can be indexed by search engines. Off-page content are links and descriptions that point back to your website.
The difference can seem subtle, but it’s important in an overall content strategy.
White papers are thorough, extensively researched reports or guides that tackle a specific problem or use case, and they typically include the issuer’s opinion or philosophy on the problem being explored. They’re light on salesy language, and they’re mostly used as a way to demonstrate how well a company understands subject matter relevant to their industry.
For the purposes of this checklist, white papers and case studies are interchangeable terms.
The words you’re reading right now are a prime example of longer-form, authoritative, and informational content. Checklists like this one present the reader with bite-sized data that is actionable and current, and they’re typically bookended with summary paragraphs that contain light, branded language.
It’s hard to have a serious conversation about B2B content strategy without mentioning podcasts. Podcast audiences are prime B2B prospects; in fact, nearly half of all podcast listeners have an annual household income surpassing $250,000.
Getting a podcast up and running is remarkably easy. All you need is the wherewithal and a platform. One we like is Anchor.fm.
Nothing gets a content consumer interested more than the prospect of free stuff. Get creative with a contest or giveaway, and use a variety of the content types mentioned on this checklist to get the word out and drive engagement.
More and more, we’re seeing big names like Dove and the NBA leverage the power of ideas spread through current events to further their brand recognition goals. Newsjacking can be tricky, but when it’s done tastefully and with the right intentions, the emotional appeal can be incredibly powerful.
An app absolutely qualifies as content. In fact, it’s probably one of the best examples. A well-designed app with high utility can immediately endear your brand audience to you, and the same goes with Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) or other development tools you might make available for free or for a nominal fee.
No matter what vertical you operate in and no matter how long you’ve been in business, your B2B company has something to say.
Your content strategy encapsulates and integrates all the myriad ways your company speaks to the world. When combined with an overarching brand strategy and a clear direction, content can become your best ally in marketing your business and making a memorable impression on the people you’re trying to reach.
We understand that piecing all of this together and making it work for you isn’t always straightforward and easy. That’s why we’re here to help.
Orogamis specializes in providing structure and guidance to brand imperatives like content strategy. We demystify digital marketing and branding so you can focus on the core of your business.
We’d love to engage with you, contact us.
But even if we don’t, that’s ok, too.
Our hope is that this content strategy checklist has provided actionable value to you; because, after all, that’s the entire point.
Good luck!
