staceymeadwell, Author at Stacey Meadwell

B2B content marketing: Selling without the sell

Do you read adverts? What about advertorials and promoted content? How about an article that helped you solve a problem or from which you learned something?

It is getting increasingly hard to sell to people. Ads are a turn-off, and content that whiffs of marketing can quickly lose the attention of a target audience and potentially damage the author’s credibility.

The problem with content marketing is it’s a long game. Building brand awareness, trust, and respect takes time and patience. It’s a subtle, slow-burn sell by positive association.

And that can be hard for those in the business used to ‘closing the deal’. Is it selling if it hasn’t got a direct sell or direct references to products and services?

The answer is yes, but measuring the results of content marketing can be tricky.

What good content market is

Good content marketing is at the top of the sales funnel. It’s about building a relationship and trust with potential clients, demonstrating your expertise and experience by offering something useful and valuable to them without seeking anything in return.

Put yourself in your potential client’s shoes for a moment:

💻 What can your content give them without you getting anything in return?

💻 Will they learn or discover something

💻 Will it make them think about something afresh?

💻 Will it change their mind on a familiar topic?

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Press releases, What journalists want

Finding a strong story angle for B2B press releases

‘How can I come up with a good angle for my press releases and content?’

It’s something I know PRs wrestle with, particularly as non-comms people in the business don’t always understand what is newsworthy or how journalists work.

And it’s something I faced as a regional features editor, visiting the same cities several times a year. Some markets hadn’t changed since the last time they were covered, but I still had to find a fresh feature angle.

I’d love to present a formula for making something worthy of a press release or coming up with a strong story angle, but there isn’t an easy one.

What I learned is to look at a story from different perspectives. So here are some things to try or consider which could help shape a story… or article.

Research

What sort of stories do your target publications typically run? What detail do they generally include, and what is the hook they use for similar stories?

You need to be up to speed with these things anyway, but a quick scroll through some similar story might reveal the angle you need to go for.

It will also highlight if certain information is always included and where there might be a barrier to certain stories getting picked up.

For example, for property investment deals, some publications/websites may only publish stories with the price paid and the yield.

Target audience

This should also be part of your research. Who reads the publications or websites you want to target with this release? What sort of information is helpful and useful to them?

I regularly used to get press releases from a company which made window boxes which was never going to be something that would interest commercial property agents and developers.

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Interview tips

Video: Press interviews and using ‘no comment’

Why no comment might not be the best response in an interview with a journalist

Over the years, as a journalist doing press interviews, I had a few interviewees respond to questions by saying ‘no comment’.

It was an answer that said more than was probably intended and not always the best response to trickier questions.

In the video, with a bit of help from Banksy, I explain why and how you can turn a tricky question into an opportunity.

Full video transcript:

There’s a quote that artist Banksy uses that he got from the Metropolitan Police.

And the quote is:

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Repurposing

What is content repurposing, and why repurpose?

What does repurposing content mean? And why should you repurpose your B2B content?

Think of content repurposing as redistribution or broader distribution, making sure a piece of content you’ve created gets seen by as many different people as possible.

Another way to look at it is return on time invested.

You’ve created a piece of content for a purpose. It takes time to write, edit and get signed off (or filmed or recorded), and time is money.

So, you want to maximise the value of your time and content. Making sure it gets seen by as many of the right people as possible will help you achieve that.

How do you repurpose content?

There are different ways of repurposing content, which break down roughly into four areas:

1. Multiple-channel approach

This is where you publish the same piece of content on several different channels that you use for your business.

For example, you make a video and publish it on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube, embed it in a client newsletter and put it on your website. That’s five different channels.

If you use Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, you could publish it there too.

2. Break up a longer piece of content into smaller pieces

Longer content, whether an article, report, longer video or podcast, can be repurposed into smaller chunks of content for different channels.

For example: Take your thought leader article or white paper, pull out key sections/points/quotes, and turn them into a series of shorter LinkedIn posts, blog posts or Tweets.

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Repurposing, Video

Video: Post-event content strategy – are you making the most?

Watch for examples of a post-event content strategy

I’m no stranger to events having been moderating panels and round tables for more than a decade (and doing event write-ups).

But there is one thing that organisers regularly miscalculate with their post-event content strategy:

How much content the discussion will generate.

Why is a write-up from a panel event or round table valuable?

💡 Bigger audience – content can extend your event’s reach beyond the people there.

💡 Longevity – your event lives on in your content beyond the ‘thanks for coming’.

💡Promotion – A good write-up can help build interest in your next event, maybe a bit of FOMO.

💡 Time-saving – It’s relatively easy content you don’t have to write from scratch.

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