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…
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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.
Claudia Winkleman is the host of BBC’s The Traitors and Celebrity Traitors in the UK
As a fan of BBC’s Celebrity Traitors, it struck me how adept the editorial team is at repurposing and distributing content about the show. What can B2B content creators and marketers learn?
I’m a recent convert to the show, hooked in by the celebrity competitors and now working my way through the back catalogue of the ‘civilian’ series. But I don’t just watch the programme.
I also listen to the follow-up podcast Uncloaked and watch the Traitor reveal clips on social media, which are spliced from the Uncloaked videos.
The main Traitors programme is the hero content, sort of like a report, white paper or panel event in the world of B2B content.
To capitalise on the interest in the programme and potentially capture a wider audience, the spin-off content operates in two different media: podcast and video podcast.
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.
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?’
Think of content repurposing as like redistribution. Photo by Ravi Sharma on Unsplash
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.
