Content Promotion

There’s a lot more to content marketing than just posting regular blogs to your website.

The industry knowledge your business possesses and the client experience it has gained over time are potent sources of information for creating a range of digital assets. With the right content strategy, you can tap into this knowledge to produce content that:

• Showcases your business’ expertise and experience
• Positions your company as an industry leader
• Educates your audience and help them along the sales funnel.

Producing content other than blog posts can initially seem daunting. Why do you need to write a whitepaper? What’s the point of creating an eBook, and when is a video more appropriate for capturing leads? 

To answer these questions, consider the big consulting or market research companies. These companies produce in-depth trend reports and content on specific topics and industries every year. Such content is usually gated and targeted toward decision-makers. Where do these firms get their information to produce such reports? You guessed it right—they tap into their organizational knowledge. Not only that, they repurpose the content over time.

You may not be running a global multi-billion dollar company, but you too can produce valuable content for your clients and prospects and use those as powerful lead magnets.

Here are six types of content we recommend every B2B company should produce. You should also recommend these to your clients if you are a digital marketing agency.

Whitepapers

Whitepapers may have a reputation for being bland and dense, but well-written whitepapers can truly differentiate your business from your competitors. As we mentioned in another blog post, people read them because they have to, not because they want to.  This is because whitepapers usually have a formal tone, are written for specific audience types, and focus on a single topic from a high level. The audience is usually well-versed on the topic but needs guidance to solve a problem or make a critical decision. When you give readers such information at their fingertips, a well-written whitepaper becomes a well-received resource that establishes your company’s authority. It becomes an essential resource for gaining trust.

Your whitepaper should explain a single problem and offer a solution without being too hands-on or coming across as overly promotional. It’s a high-quality report that persuades your audience with evidence rather than hype. You are educating your readers, not selling them anything.

eBooks

The cool and casual sibling of the whitepaper is the eBook. Presented in a less-formal style, they can be a how-to guide, highlight company research findings, or explain a new service. Typically, eBooks are not as specific as whitepapers when it comes to topics. Oftentimes eBooks cover a broader topic with the content broken up into chapters covering various subtopics. Thus, the content flows less cohesively than in a whitepaper because whitepapers have sections instead of chapters, but the eBook is designed for the reader to skim through.

Also, just like printed books, eBooks often have tables of contents. They also make heavy use of diagrams, imagery, or infographics. Another feature of eBooks is that critical points are often highlighted for the busy reader. 

Like whitepapers, eBooks are high-value resources that can improve your lead nurturing processes.

Case Studies

Case studies are a written portfolio of your company’s work. Unlike eBooks or whitepapers, case studies are usually not gated. They are primarily available as web copies instead of downloadable documents, although exceptions exist.

Like eBooks and whitepapers, case studies show your business’ expertise and commitment to solving customer problems. A case study structure is divided into distinct parts:

• The client problem: what challenges was the customer facing?
• The effect of the problem: how was it affecting your customer’s business? For example, losing revenue, lower customer satisfaction, and complex processes taking too much time.
• When and how was your business involved: how did the client find you? Why did they hire your business?
• What did your business do to solve the customer’s problem: this is usually a detailed description of which products or services you recommended and how those were pivotal in solving the problem.
• What else did the customer get: other tangible and intangible benefits besides the immediate solution?
• Testimonial: did the customer leave any feedback?

As you can see, properly-written case studies can become persuasive social proof. In some cases, long-form case studies can be written as eBooks, or multiple case studies can be bundled into a downloadable resource.

Videos

When it comes to video marketing, everybody seems to know its importance, yet nobody seems to do it enough. The thought process behind this is that videos are too time, resource, and cost-consuming to produce, and there is not enough ROI. Yet, videos are a compelling means to convey your message. And they don’t always have to be created with professional actors, lighting, and studio setups.

Your video library can reside in a few places. For example, an introductory video from the CEO can be featured on the main page or landing pages. How-tos, onboarding, and explainer doodle videos can be featured on public or private documentation sites. These can also be on your YouTube channel. People subscribe to such channels when you convey enough helpful information. Think about Google or HubSpot video series as an example.

The types of videos you post can be as varied. Many companies post their webinars online. Similarly, you can post client interviews, new product launches, or award ceremonies, to name a few.

Sites like YouTube allow you to add closed caption subtitles to videos. The text is fully crawlable by search engines and, if SEO-optimized, may often feature on the first page of search results.

Another place to post videos is your social media channels. Social media videos can have a broader impact depending on your type of business. Think of TikTok as an example. Many people think of it as too consumer-oriented, yet brands are slowly but surely using it for awareness and conversion.

The key to video success lies in the content’s quality. When presented succinctly, valuable information can leave a long-lasting effect on the viewer, priming them to return for more.

Infographics

If pictures are a thousand words, infographics are worth the adage (beside videos). These are short forms of content, usually freely downloadable and not gated. Infographics are often part of eBooks as well.

As the name suggests, Infographics show information in a graphical manner. The information is typically statistical in nature. They can show current status, predictions, comparisons, or even how-tos. For example, if you are a luxury car wholesaler, you may want to add an infographic on your website showing the top ten cars based on their market shares, user satisfaction level, and features. By showing such statistical figures through images, you are advising your B2B customers (retail car dealers) on which cars they should buy from you and stock up on. If you are a Fintech company, you may want to advise your website visitors about the top 5 sources of cloud waste.

Outreach Content

The final item on our list is what we call outreach content. We named it so because although such content can be used for inbound marketing, you are not hosting it on your website—you are reaching out on the Internet for potential leads.

The first type of outreach content is your guest blogs (yes, we know, we said this article is not about blogs). You write these blogs on reputable third-party sites where many of your target audience may congregate. For example, if you are a digital marketing firm, you may want to start a publication on Medium or create irregular LinkedIn articles. If you are a tech start-up, you may want to publish on sites like InfoQ, Dev.to, or Hackernoon. Writing in industry-famous publications and linking to your site can help build brand awareness and develop quality leads.

You can create the next type of outreach content on Q & A sites. Your B2B content marketing strategy can target sites like Quora and Stack Overflow and answer questions from possible leads. Again, such content establishes your brand authority. However, such sites usually have algorithmic rules to deter brand promotions. For example, your answer in Quora will not be directly visible if it contains links to your products or services. But the best thing about such content is that it can be featured on Google Answer Box for some queries.

Finally, we have social media posts and email newsletters as outreach content. You may not be creating something new here but using these channels to promote existing content. Writing email copy or social media posts requires careful planning and targeting specific customer segments (email) or hashtags (social media). And unlike blogs, whitepapers, infographics, or videos, social posts or email campaigns happen on a recurring schedule.

Besides promotion, emails are often used to announce new products or service offerings, explain a business decision to customers or suppliers, or even acknowledge and correct previous mistakes. Social media is a powerful tool for answering customer queries and highlighting user-generated content.

Final Words

So there you have it—our list of six types of content you should consider for your B2B business. It may not be possible (or even relevant) to tap on all six, but that’s where you can talk to an agency like ours. We are always keen to hear about your content needs and help you create both content strategies and content.

So you have published your latest and greatest blog post.

You have worked hard writing it, ensured you have primed it with carefully-researched keywords, and followed all the golden rules of SEO. Catchy titles, meta descriptions, H2 headings, and perfect header images are all there. In fact, the blog might have been written by the talented folks of ProDataSkills. Google Analytics is showing traffic hitting your page.

But not at the rate you would have loved. 

It’s been a week, and the schedule for your next post is in about another week. Why isn’t traffic spiking? You know you did everything you could have done to attract more traffic.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works anymore. As much as we’d like our blogs to go viral on their own merits, it doesn’t work in a crowded world wide web. You need to tell people about it. Don’t depend on just Google.

So how do you reach a wider audience smartly and effectively? Here are six techniques you can follow.

Technique #1: Make it Shareable

The first step to getting more traffic to your blog post is to make it shareable. Even if your blog post attracts healthy traffic, you want to build on that success and keep the cycle going. What better way to do it than to get the people who read it to share it too? That’s why your blog site should have sharing option. Many sites allow their blogs to be shared on social media, email, or even instant messaging apps. This helps people to share your article without manually copy-pasting the URL.

Technique #2: Share on Social Media

This is the most straightforward strategy but one that’s often missed. You must inform your followers about your blog post on every social media channel your company has a profile on. LinkedIn, Twitter, Meta company page—you name it.

You can use a free tool like Canva to create a simple graphic with an intriguing excerpt from your blog and post it on social media. And don’t worry—it’s totally fine to post the same graphic on multiple platforms. If you aren’t using graphics, you can use the same or different text-based messages in all the channels. There’s a high probability your audience is different on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Instagram. So copy/paste and post away.

What’s also essential is using relevant hashtags in your social media posts. These will show your post in the timeline of whoever subscribes to those hashtags. This will help those people find your blog.

And don’t think you can’t post the same message about your blog multiple times on the same channel. The Internet (and social media in particular) is a superfast freeway. People won’t remember what they saw three weeks ago. Even if they do remember your post about the blog, at worst, they won’t click on it, and if it resonates with them, they will repost or share it. We recommend you follow this strategy for blog posts with strong potential to increase your viewership, followership, or sales.

So, how often should you post about the same blog? It depends on your number of followers, how often you post, and the channels you are posting to. As a rule of thumb, wait at least two weeks before posting about the same blog.

Finally, if you have the budget, consider purchasing social media ads to boost your post. Although doing it for every post isn’t practical, it certainly helps to spread the word about blogs you want most people to see. 

Here at Professional Data Skills, we promote our blog posts through social media. We also ensure any articles we have written for our clients are promoted on social media channels.

Technique #3: Send an Email Newsletter

Think nobody reads your email newsletters? Well, you might be surprised to see some stats from this HubSpot blog. The average email open rate across all industries sits between 20% to 30%, and the clickthrough rate is between 1.2% to 3% (see Mailchimp and Smart Insights). 

However, think about the 1.5% of your database who open the email and click on your blog’s link. If you have 5,000 email addresses in your database, that’s still 50 people who are getting interested. Many of them might share it on their own social media channels.

Technique #4: Use Backlinks

If your blog post is part of a topic cluster, adding links from the pillar page and the other posts to your blog (and vice versa) makes sense. It doesn’t have to be only for topic clusters—as long as your article can be referenced from another blog, put a link pointing back to it. That way, traffic hitting your newer blog posts can also be aware of the original article.

Technique #5: Post on Multiple Platforms

Most publishing platforms will have strict rules about publishing duplicate content. But some may have more lenient policies. You could post your blog on those platforms (e.g., Medium) and add a disclaimer like “this article was first published on…”. Like topic clusters and backlinks, you can reference your original blog from articles you publish on different platforms. By submitting your blog to an external publication, you are spreading your knowledge to an already established network that could be far larger than your existing following. 

Rule #6: Use Q&A Sites

This goes back to our social media promotion technique. People look for answers on sites like Quora, Reddit, or Stack Exchange. Regularly answering industry-related questions on these sites establishes your brand as a thought leader and allows you to promote your blogs.

Let’s say your company offers a SaaS solution for workspace health and safety management. One of your blog posts is about the top 10 similar platforms. When you answer questions related to such topics (e.g., “what are some well-known workplace incident management tools?”), you could answer the question and provide a link to your blog.

Final Words

So now you have seen a few techniques to present your blogs to a broader audience. As you can see, apart from running ads, all these methods are free. All that’s needed is a little time and effort.

If you want to create thought-leadership or deep-dive, hands-on blogs for your technology company, our expert content creators will be more than happy to help. We can create well-researched content related to your products and services, promote them through social media and email campaigns, and report on subsequent engagement rates. To know more, contact us today.