There is a lot happening that influences B2B content marketing. Legacy social media channels aren’t what they once were, and the media, particularly trade media, is struggling in certain quarters. (Property industry bible Estates Gazette has recently been rescued from closure, for example.)
But there are new areas and channels to explore, and you don’t have to run yourself ragged to get your content in front of and viewed by the right people.
In our first LinkedIn livestream of the year, Ayo Abbas and I looked at three areas to focus on with your content marketing for 2025.
This is an edited digest of that conversation (you can watch the replay here).
1. Doing more with less content
Stacey: There is so much more content being published now, and AI is making it easier to produce content, but that doesn’t mean it is all good. In fact, there is an increasing amount of AI slop. (If you are using AI, use it wisely.)
Rather than churn out new content, create fewer bits of quality ‘hero’ content and do more with it.
Hero content could be a report, white paper or a carefully researched and written thought leader series. It could be a content-led event such as a panel or round table, a live stream, podcast or video series.
With the right planning, you can repurpose it into many pieces of content and redistribute across different channels.
For example, create blog posts and articles from videos, podcasts, or events, create short clips from a longer video, and film events (or do a live stream) to create video content.
Making the most of what you are creating means you don’t have to constantly come up with new content ideas and create from scratch.
Ayo: There is a lot of really bad content being created using AI, but that means good content stands out. Make sure what you put out is the best you can make it.
Think of the little things like creating a proper title for videos rather than using a standard cover.
If you create a piece of thought leadership content, think about other ways to use it. And not just on the usual channels like your website and social media.
Are there 10 clients you can share it with who would find it interesting, for example? How else could it be used to help your business and fuel a conversation with a client or potential client?
Advertising is also an opportunity because you can use it to really target your audience. If you want to talk to housing associations, where are the business development people who work for them?
You can get a great piece of thought leadership on a relevant topic in front of key people by putting a couple of hundred pounds behind it.
It’s about being more strategic with your content.
2. Content collaborations and communities
Ayo: We don’t work in silos anymore; people crave connection, so you need to find ways to connect with people both online and in person. It’s a way to get your message out and another way of doing that is via third parties.
Think about who you can partner with. If you are a design team, is there content you can create together and push out to all your networks?
Understand your network and who can help you amplify your message.
If you are producing a report, who are the key people who have influence in that area? You could collaborate by showing them an early copy and agreeing that they share their thoughts on the day you launch.
It’s about thinking logically about the right people to have conversations and build relationships with who can help you move the needle on the debate about a particular topic. Who has the engaged community? Which societies, organisations and associations?
On Instagram, collaborations really amplify reach because your content appears in both feeds. You could do sponsored collaborations with key influencers with big followings. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money.
An example of this was an architect doing a sponsored collab with an architecture graduate with a big Instagram following.
It can be highly effective if you find the right people and communities.
Stacey: Given the media sector’s challenges, collaborations are like a new branch of earned media.
Similarly, the rapid growth of podcasts means there are opportunities to guest on industry or niche podcasts. Share the promotional material. It is putting yourselves in front of different audiences and you can do something similar with events.
You can also build communities around your own content. An example is when conversations take off in the comments on your posts, independent of your involvement, so if people start replying to others’ comments.
If interesting conversations are happening around your content, then it boosts your visibility, and people gravitate towards it. Your content becomes the place where good conversations happen, which is a good thing to be associated with.
You can’t necessarily engineer it, but encouraging people to comment, ask questions, and present options and ideas. Write in an open way that gets a conversation going.
It’s not about creating deliberately provocative content but rather encouraging a grown-up discussion. Your content still needs to align with your personal brand.
Even with a small number of connections and followers, you can become a micro-influencer if conversations are happening around your content.
Remember, the conversation often starts with you; reply to comments on your posts (don’t post and ghost).
3. Personal brand and storytelling
Stacey: Given there is so much more content being published and so much more AI-generated content, adding personality and human elements to your content is a good way to help you stand out.
There is only one you, shaped by a unique set of circumstances and combination of experiences.
The property industry always professes to be a people industry, but it’s rarely reflected in the content that gets published. Instead, it’s often dry and very corporate sounding.
Here are a couple of examples of where adding the human has really elevated a fairly standard post.
First is an MD/Founder announcing the acquisition of his business. Rather than simply announcing ‘delight’ at the deal, he took a different tack. It was a celebratory post with the deal details and what it meant, but he also talked about the journey to get there.
Not just what had gone right but what had gone wrong along the way to being in a position where a bigger company could buy the business. It was real, authentic and human. It made the post much more interesting and stand out from the sea of announcements on LinkedIn.
The second example is a post by a CEO starting his new job and talking about the first day. Rather than a bland post about ‘meeting the team’, he also talked about how it felt and how nerve-wracking it was.
It was relatable and honest. He came across as approachable and human. It was different and memorable.
Adding a human element can help open doors, and it doesn’t have to be OTT.
Ayo: People stick to the dry stuff because it’s what they’ve always done, and the property industry is very traditional but there is a changing of the guard.
There are new, softer, more human ways of communicating, and how far you go will depend on what you feel comfortable with. For some people, that’s going to be little steps, such as posting a bit about ‘what I’m doing’, maybe sharing a bit more, and ‘seeing how I feel’.
It’s about finding a level that is appropriate for the individual.
And employee advocacy is very powerful. On LinkedIn, people are more likely to believe something said by a person than a company. If you want your message to resonate, then that is a good way to do it.
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You might also like to read:
- Harness your content archive: A repurposing guide for built environment businesses
- Top tips for earned media: Op-ed pitches, press releases and press interviews
- From start to pitching: 7 B2B content creation and distribution tips
- Why you should humanise B2B content
- Improve B2B storytelling: Find the tension in the story
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