Tag: Content strategy

General

Make it an event: Delivering successful round tables

A group of men and women in business attire sat around a long narrow table. They are listening to one person speaking.
Moderating a round table at MIPIM 2019

Round tables can be a great event format for generating high-trust, peer-level conversations rather than one-way marketing, but what makes a successful round table?

You can use round tables to:

• Bring together senior industry stakeholders

• Share real industry challenges and workshop ideas.

• Kick off a campaign or as part of a campaign

• Means for gaining qualitative insights

• Generate a variety of insightful content

• Build a reputation as a leader within the industry and a brand around which experts gather.

How to deliver a successful round table?

PURPOSE: Have a clear aim. What do you want to get out of the people that you are gathering together in one place?

How do you want to use their knowledge and experience? Is there a particular question you want them to answer or a problem you want them to solve?

GUESTS: Think about the best combination of guests to deliver on your purpose.

You don’t want a group that is going to say similar things, so make sure there is a variety of voices with different experiences.

Will the people around the table learn something from each other?

Are there people who will challenge thinking and, therefore, help drive the conversation in a more interesting way and deliver better results?

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General

Content marketing challenges: Getting team buy-in

A big part of the content marketing battle is taking non-marketers with you, so that the content they create is purposeful and effective.

How do you build team trust with the content strategy and get buy-in, particularly when there are no quick wins?  

Here are some common problems marketing teams might face and ideas for how to navigate them.

Doing your own marketing? Some of these ideas will help you with content creation, too.

The content problem: Too busy

“I’ve not got time, I’ve got work to do.”

Solution: Think of ways of making content creation easier or more manageable.

Can you help come up with content pillars, 2-4 content themes to help with idea generation, or pre-approved topics to post about? 

If writing is challenging and time-consuming, can you come up with a framework for structuring a simple post or article?

For those who prefer talking rather than writing, they could try dictating their thoughts and ideas into a notes app on their phone or directly into Word.

Transcript apps like Otter.ai are also available.

This gets people past the blank page and makes it an editing job rather than writing from scratch.

For longer thought leadership pieces, ghostwriting might be the best option.

The content problem: Playing it safe

Staff stay in their comfort zone, such as simply sharing a company post without adding their own thoughts or don’t create a post from scratch.

Solution: Evidence, such as data, can show the impact of personal posts vs company posts.

But equally, is there someone in the team who is off and flying with LinkedIn content that you can point to as inspiration?

Maybe get them to talk through how they approach posting or share their top tips.

Content pillars and a framework can help here, too. Think of small steps they can take to help them get going and build confidence.

On LinkedIn, this could be adding meaningful comments to posts to get comfortable putting thoughts and ideas ‘out there’. This can build up to posting.

Commenting is a good strategy regardless of whether you are posting or not.

The content problem: Writing for the wrong people

Content isn’t written with the intended target audience in mind (eg, a particular client group) but instead is written for the author or to impress peers.

Solution: Help people understand who they’re writing for (and why), perhaps by identifying key audience members.

Can you make the people they are writing for real? For example, pick 2 or 3 people in the target audience that they know and then get them to think about what would be interesting to them.

The questions they typically ask or the challenges they typically have can be a good starting point.

The content problem: Copy is too salesy

People treat content as a barely disguised sales pitch.

Solution: Reframe the purpose of the content.

Rather than directly selling, the job of content is to make readers smarter or help them in some way. Ask the question: If a competitor wrote this, would you want to read it or engage with it?

The ‘sell’ of content is being a business that is helpful and knowledgeable: building know, like and trust with potential clients.

It’s about being visible and building a relationship, so when they want to buy, they know who they want for the job.

The content problem: Sporadic posting

Lack of consistency in content creation, particularly when results aren’t immediate.

Solution: What systems can you put in place to make it easier to post and add some gentle accountability?

Think of pre-written prompts, shared calendars or regular content planning chats.

Encourage posting on LinkedIn by sharing small wins such as a comment on a post, a new follower, a connection request and profile views.

The stats for individual posts will give most of this information. 

What other small successes can you highlight? For example, has regular posting led to a conversation in DMs or offline, or have they been recognised at an event because of their content?

The content problem: Don’t appreciate the skill and strategy

Everyone is an expert editor and content marketer.

Solution: Create a simple style guide or checklist that people can easily follow when creating and reviewing content.

Reframe the marketing team as editors working to protect contributors’ credibility, not just rewrite their content. 

What common problems have I missed? Let me know in the comments.

🖥️ Ready for more hands-on help with content creation? I offer content audits, ghostwriting services, writing and LinkedIn training. Get in contact to find out more.

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You might also like to read

B2B content mistakes to avoid (part 1)

B2B content mistakes to avoid (part 2)

How to make boring content more engaging

Audience engagement

B2B content mistakes to avoid (part 1)

AI-generated image

Mistake: Quantity of content over quality

I’ve done this, created content because I feel I should publish something, rather than creating something to meet a specific goal. I’m now better at being more targeted, though.

Yes, regular content is a good thing, but publishing for the sake of it doesn’t deliver on goals; it’s just adding to the noise.

Every piece of content needs to have a specific aim.

Before you create, define the content’s purpose. What do you want people to do as a result of engaging with this particular piece of content? What goal is it supporting? If you don’t have a clear answer, then either reframe it or ditch it.

Mistake: Focusing on the wrong thing in your B2B content

This is probably the most common mistake I see. It’s easy to talk about what is interesting to you and your business, what you’ve done, etc., but content is about the audience, not you. 

For content to land, what you say has to align with what your audience wants to hear.

We are all selfish when it comes to what content we consume; if we are giving it our time, it needs to give us something in return.

Continue reading “B2B content mistakes to avoid (part 1)” →
Audience engagement

Quick B2B content tip: Write for your target audience

Two of the many gingerbread creations at The Gingerbread City exhibition

My first quick content tip for 2026 is a reminder: Write for your target audience.

A trip to the Gingerbread City exhibition over Christmas was an example of missing an opportunity by not tailoring the copy for the people who would potentially be reading it.

Gingerbread City is an annual event held by the Museum of Architecture. Architects and engineers are invited to build models out of gingerbread, biscuits and sweets that reflect a particular theme.

This year the theme was play and each model was accompanied by a description and the name of the architect/engineer who created it.

Copy not written with the audience in mind

But in reading a few of the descriptions, it was clear that they weren’t really written for the people visiting the exhibition.

The space was packed with families (500 people were expected the day I went), and yet the language, tone and content of the copy appeared to be aimed at other architects.

The result? Few people were paying attention to the descriptions.

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General

Content marketing 2025: What’s worked for me and what hasn’t

From the type of content to the different platforms, timing and reader behaviour, creating and publishing content is a constant learning curve, isn’t it?

Here’s what I’ve learned from my own content marketing this year, what’s worked, what hasn’t…

LINKEDIN

Despite it feeling harder to get traction, my overall post impressions for the year were up by 15.5% on the previous year. 

I’ve had a post clock up more than 25k impressions and others that have barely scraped 150, and I’d like to say I fully understand why, but I don’t. (Anyone who says they know exactly how social media algorithms work is fibbing.)

Looking at my best-performing posts of the year, they are the ones with personal stories or a personal angle to a topic. Analogies and cultural references also seem to do well – my top-performing post was content lessons learned from the TV show Celebrity Traitors.

I have some go-to themes that generally perform well relative to previous posts. Outside of that, it’s difficult to glean many trends.

That said, impressions are a fairly hollow metric if I’m not reaching the right audience, building connections and generating opportunities, so commenting has been a big part of my strategy.

Continue reading “Content marketing 2025: What’s worked for me and what hasn’t” →