Content: the ideas, the substance, the actual value behind every touch point and experience we create as marketers. Content is the fuel of B2B marketing and for good reason. Content gives savvy businesses a way to deliver a snapshot of the brilliance and expertise available to clients and prospects. In the complex journey of the B2B buyer, companies that serve up content that helps people understand or do their job better earn the right of attention. After all, as Velocity mentions in their B2B Content Marketing Strategy Checklist, “People care about their own problems much more than they care about your products.”

Google has largely been the driving force behind championing helpful content vs sales content. Their belief in democratising findability rewards the most championed and shared content pieces. The most recent ‘Hummingbird’ update from late 2013 continued this trend by placing increased emphasis on external links and social mentions, making search findability only as good as the masses believe it should be.

This creates an issue for many a marketing department. Not only does content need to be published regularly, it needs to be incredibly insightful in addressing customer issues and needs so that it’s shared and seen by people in the industry. Most often, the potent expertise and insight that’s needed lies outside the marketing team, with the people who work on clients’ issues day in, day out.

It is clear when talking to someone who has previously worked in B2B marketing that it is a struggle to source content from employees who are already stretched too thin in the work place. However, with search marketing being increasingly left to the masses, can companies afford not to adjust their employee and marketing culture to facilitate many (or all) employees’ contribution to content development? The future of B2B marketing will require a more natural outflowing of the employee culture and knowledge bank in order to raise brand profile and create desirability amongst prospects and potential talent.

So how does a brand humanise itself and bring employees to the forefront of communications? Humanising marketing communications brings a whole bag of challenges – particularly for controlling brand teams! Companies may come across obstacles when trying to develop a culture of content in the work force, whilst simultaneously trying to manage that content without killing it off. Another challenge companies can face is the competitive poaching that comes from giving employees the spotlight.

A company will expand their power of content and gain abundant rewards will if they are confident enough in their work force to eliminate their brand polish. Therefore, marketing managers should spread the same strategy throughout the work force. If companies prepare like an editorial team, utilize employees’ contributions and make the most production-wise every piece of useable editorial content will come into place.

B2B organisations can start small and grow. Why not:
· Facilitate employees’ dialogue on the company’s behalf on Quora.
· Encourage employees to publish company or industry related blogs on LinkedIn’s new publishing platform.
· Identify staff who could share the visual world of your business on the new work/life image platform, Somewhere.
· Share company micro-moments and thoughts via Instagram videos.
· Set up unmonitored Google Hangouts between career applicants and employees.
· Hey, even set up some of your staff for a rousing Ask Me Anything session!

It is also worth noting we are in the era of content marketing, but the content required is increasingly outside the capabilities of the marketing department. How can you start to humanise your communications in small way today to start putting these practices into place?

 

By Matthew Walko, Head of Strategy at Omobono

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