Category: General

Content marketing, General, Writing tips

6 tips for creating B2B content which connects and engages

A B2B content strategy can build brand visibility, but what does the tone and style of your content say about your brand? 

Is it a conversation starter? Is it relatable? Does it make you approachable?  

Business is forged on connections, and content can be the start of a relationship with a potential client, customer or collaborator. 

There is a misconception that ‘sounding professional’ means stripping out the human and personality and making content sound a certain way (corporate).

However, the tone of content contributes to how a brand is perceived; being easy to read, approachable, and relatable is simply more engaging. 

Content that sounds like it’s written by a human for another human is still professional. 

Here are some ways to make your content sound less corporate and more approachable:

1. Jargon and technical language

Never assume people understand technical language and jargon; you don’t want to alienate readers because they don’t understand what you mean.

You don’t want your content to be a slog; what impression does that leave? At its worst, jargon can come across as intimidating, arrogant or a cover for something. 

Clear and easy to understand is more engaging and cleverer.

2. Conversational language

Don’t substitute everyday words for something fancier: Facilitate/help, commence/start, utilise/use, etc. Use the terminology your audience uses (that’s what they will use in Google searches). 

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Content marketing, General

Content Strategy: How to stay ahead in a fast-changing world

Content creation takes time and effort but is only part of the story. For content marketing to work, it needs a strategy behind it.

The November B2B Comms Breakdown LinkedIn event I co-hosted with built environment marketing specialist Ayo Abbas focused on getting a good strategy in place and how to stay ahead in a fast-changing world.

A video replay is available (scroll to the bottom), but here’s a summary of the conversation:

What is a content strategy?

Ayo Abbas: HubSpot’s definition of a content strategy is:

“Planning, creation, publication, management, and governance of content.

“A great content strategy will attract and engage a target audience, meeting their needs while driving business goals.”

I think that’s a pretty good definition. I’d probably use the word distribution rather than publication.

When it comes to content strategy, it’s all about how you distribute and reuse content in more places to keep getting the most out of each piece.

Stacey Meadwell: Hubspot covers the key elements. The starting point has to be the purpose – why are you doing it, and what do you want to get out of it?

What is the end goal, and what does success look like after publishing the content?

If you don’t know the point of it and what you want to deliver, how can you ensure it achieves your goals?

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General

Mastering B2B thought leadership in a noisy world

Going live on LinkedIn to talk about thought leadership

What is thought leadership? How do you become a thought leader?

And how do you pitch your thoughts and opinions to publications or secure guest spots on podcasts and panels?

This was the topic of October’s B2B Comms Breakdown LinkedIn webinar with my co-host Ayo Abbas of Abbas Marketing and special guest Aceil Haddad of MATT PR.

Here are the edited highlights; scroll to the bottom for the full video replay of the full discussion.

What is thought leadership?

Aceil Haddad: For me, it’s demonstrating an opinion backed up by your expertise and your experiences.

In a world full of noise, people are more and more looking to experts to understand the minefield that is life and how to get over issues.

It’s sharing challenges and making people feel they are not the only ones struggling, especially with the economic climate we find ourselves in.

I think thought leadership is particularly important as we navigate through it together.

Ayo Abbas: You can be a subject matter expert but not a thought leader; you can be something really good at something but not sharing it with the world.

So it’s about vocalising it externally. It’s about opinion but also solutions. You look at stuff from a different viewpoint and angle but share different ways of doing things and how to solve problems.

Solutions are important. There’s a lot you can do in terms of talking about what’s wrong with the world, but leadership and being viewed as an expert has to have a solution.

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General, Social media

Lessons learned from making 3.5 videos to use on social media

My third interviewee, theatre director Sara Joyce

I’ve talked about experimenting with content on LinkedIn, but confession time: I cheat.

I use Instagram and YouTube for my hobby (theatre blogging), and those have become a bit of a playground for trying new stuff.

(Yes, this is how I spend my free time.)

My most recent experiment started with an idea for short and snappy video interviews with creatives that would satisfy my love of talking to people and give me a point of difference from other theatre bloggers.

At the same time, I was mulling over interview-style content for my business social accounts but hadn’t settled on a format that I liked and which might work.

This is where trying stuff out has helped, not just in developing my technical skills but also in refining and developing the idea and format.

I’ve only made 3.5 videos, but each is an improvement on the last, and I wanted to share the journey and a few of the things I’ve learned so far.

🎥 Video 1 – the self-tape lesson

My first interviewee was writer/director Rebecca Holbourn, who I know and was happy to be my guinea pig.

The idea was to send 5 questions; they would video their answers and send the recording back to me. I’d then edit, adding in title cards and questions.

Rebecca said that self-taping her answers took a while to get something they were happy with.

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General, Social media

Rules of engagement: How to magnify your visibility on LinkedIn

Photo by Anthony Hortin on Unsplash

Engagement is a piece of the LinkedIn jigsaw that gets overlooked, but an engagement strategy is crucial to elevating your visibility and boosting impressions* on your content.

Rule 1: Engaging with other content

Do you comment on other posts? Writing comments on other people’s posts is great for your visibility.

Your profile pic and headline are attached to your activity on LinkedIn. So the more places you engage (react/comment/click to attend an event, etc), the more people who will see your photo, name and what you do.

But more than that, adding a meaningful comment is an opportunity to share your knowledge and expertise or how you think, your values and who you are with a bigger audience.

If you comment, the author will likely get notified, and those reading the comments will see what you’ve written. Some people who’ve already engaged will get notified that you’ve added a comment.

The post may even appear in some of your connections’ LinkedIn feeds, highlighted as a post you’ve commented on.

See how commenting can magnify your presence on the platform? Not only that, it can magnify your presence in between and alongside posting your content.

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