Tag: Content marketing

Audience engagement, Repurposing, Video

Getting value from panel events and podcasts

Panel discussion at MIPIM 30th edition event on 'UK: Regeneration & Waterfront Developments.' The stage features four seated male panelists and one female moderator standing at a podium. A large screen above displays the panel title and participant names and roles: Moderator Stacey Meadwell (Freelance Editor), Cllr Jon Collins (Leader, Nottingham City Council), Steve Dunlop (Chief Executive, Scottish Enterprise), Mark Sitch (Senior Partner, Barton Willmore), and Cllr Huw Thomas (Leader, Cardiff Council). The event branding and social media information are also visible on the screen.

Panel events and podcasts are powerful platforms for raising your profile as a thought leader to a broader network, expanding your brand reach beyond your own social media connections and email list.

These powerful formats help your audience connect with you or your team’s expertise on a more personal, human level. It can help build connections and brand trust, and open doors to other opportunities and conversations.

Panel events and podcasts foster brand storytelling in a way that builds trust and familiarity, especially compared to more polished written communications.

But you and your business want to come across well and get the most out of the experience or event. Here are just a few tips to get you started.

Invited guest: Delivering your message effectively

Tip 1: Align your messaging with the theme and audience

Do some preparation ahead of your panel or podcast appearance. The audience has turned up or downloaded the episode to hear a conversation on a specific topic, so make sure your messaging aligns with the overarching theme.

If you go off topic or fall into a marketing pitch, you risk damaging audience engagement or, on a podcast, being edited out.

Equally, to engage the audience, make sure you are speaking their language. What is their level of technical knowledge? Use plain English with a clear point of view, as it will always land better than jargon. 

Tip 2: Give the right answer

Listen carefully to the question you are asked and answer that. There is a danger of being overprepared and answering a question you anticipate rather than the one being asked, or giving too much away too soon.

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Audience engagement

How to write B2B content with purpose

A person sitting outdoors holding a black notebook titled “MISSION” on their lap. They are wearing blue jeans, a white top, and a black bracelet, and a white-and-brown tote bag rests beside them.
Photo by David Iskander on Unsplash

What is the business purpose of your B2B content? No one is putting fingers to keyboard for fun, but how do you angle your content so that it delivers on your goals while still engaging the audience?

Business goal: Raise visibility and become an authoritative voice

Through your content, whether that is on LinkedIn, your website or a newsletter, you need to demonstrate a good understanding of the sector/industry you work in. Obviously.

It’s important to have ideas or a fresh take. Talk about the problems that no one else is talking about, or if it’s ground that has already been well discussed, can you add a unique take?

Lots of people talk about well-known problems and challenges, but few are offering a way of navigating issues.

Can you highlight alternative approaches and a means of delivering a positive change? Is there a different way of doing things that isn’t really talked about? Can you move the conversation on in some way?

Could you spearhead a campaign behind which you can rally industry peers to make a material difference to your sector?

Building a reputation as an authoritative voice takes time and consistency, but it opens a lot of different doors:

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General

B2B content marketing: 3 areas to focus on in 2025

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.

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What journalists want

New UK Government agenda: How to engage and build visibility with B2B content

Ayo Abbas, Stacey Meadwell and Shirin Iqbal

Four months into the new UK government and more detail on its agenda is emerging, but how can you use B2B content to engage with that agenda?

Speaking ahead of the budget, I went live on LinkedIn with co-host Ayo Abbas of Abbas Marketing and special guest Shirin Iqbal of Shirin Iqbal Consulting to talk about how to get involved, align your content strategy, boost visibility and position yourself as a sector expert.

We all work with built environment clients, so our examples come from that sector, but the overarching strategies apply to any industry.

Here are the edited highlights of our conversation and you can watch the replay which includes our budget predicitons here.

What channels are available for built environment firms who want to share their knowledge and expertise?

Ayo: You have to understand which areas you care about and where you can add to the conversation – which parts of the story you want to focus on.

Then, look at who is talking about these issues and championing causes. For example, in the past few years, Architects Journal has talked about retrofitting rather than knocking down buildings.

Then there are associations and campaigning groups like the London Society and non-government groups like Business First.

The government also puts together expert panels such as the New Homes Accelerator. Who’s on those panels, and how can you join that conversation? Plus, there are consultations where they ask what the industry thinks.

It’s all an opportunity for you to join the conversation.  

Shirin: There are also thought leadership articles, trade press, panels, conferences and podcasts.  

Add your voice, not just to add to the noise, but to add value to the conversation and really showcase your expertise.

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Repurposing

Using paid, earned, shared and owned media channels effectively

For the September episode of the B2B Comms Breakdown, built environment marketing expert Ayo Abbas and I went live online to discuss how you can use paid, earned, shared and owned media channels effectively.

Here are the edited highlights of that discussion and you can watch the full chat here on Ayo’s YouTube channel.

What are paid, earned, shared and owned media?

The ‘PESO’ Model was developed by Spin Sucks as an integrated approach to communications.

The graphic below gives much more detail, but a very short and simple explanation is paid = advertising etc, earned = media coverage etc, shared = content distribution via things like social media, and owned = blogs and newsletters etc.

Our conversation focused on three main questions starting with:

Have magazines had their day (earned media)?

STACEY: Ad revenue has fallen through the floor and most publications have got slimmer or even disappeared. Obviously, there’s still an online presence, but are they worth trying to get into?

I would say yes; I think there is still great value in having that third-party endorsement from these publications.

It can help in building trust if you are quoted or your comment piece is published.

A lot of publications are under-resourced at the moment; they need good content, so there’s an opportunity if you are producing good quotes and pitching in really good, pithy, punchy comments.

Quality is the key, it’s got to be good, and you do need to put your head above the parapet a little bit, particularly with opinion pieces.

AYO: When I started out in PR in 2000, industry publications were a lot chunkier; they were full of ads. And now, when you look at the print editions, they are flimsy.

But there is newer media, like Substack, where you can pay £150 for a year and get the content you want from particular writers. There are some amazing writers, and you’re happy to pay for that.

So, there is still a market for quality writing, but the format of how we get content is different.

Have magazines had their day? Yes and no.

STACEY: There are also other earned media avenues to explore. A lot of publications also have podcasts and host panel events and conferences.

Those are opportunities to pitch for and an opportunity for third party endorsement.

What other avenues are open for getting more traction for your content (paid and shared)?

AYO With social media, you can be your own publisher. If you look at LinkedIn, you could go to town if you use it to full effect.

There’s a reliance on just posting once and thinking it’s done. But instead think: ‘How can I get more bang for my buck from wherever I’m pushing this piece of content?’

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