B2B Content Strategy

If you sell products or services to other companies, you're in the B2B (business to business) space. While most of the copywriting, blogging, and content marketing advice you read is general - or focuses on the business to consumer (B2C) market - much of it can be applied to developing a content strategy for your B2B company and website as well.

Econsultancy's B2B Digital Marketing Briefing focuses on key trends, challenges and best practices for B2B digital marketers. Based on the presentations given at Econsultancy's FUNNEL 2012 event held in London in November 2012, the guide includes thoughts and insights shared that day, case studies illustrating best practice and contributions from B2B marketing experts.

The expertise and reach of a B2B influencer can prove very valuable beyond the immediate return of a campaign. Influencers come in all shapes and sizes. Some have large followings; some don’t. Others have a significant amount of influence while others, less so.

Here, Bonnie Harris of Wax Marketing looks at some ways that B2B brands can benefit from relationships with B2B influencers from a wide variety of sources - social media, offline, etc.

Success in social media and organic search is only possible with an optimized content marketing strategy. If you don't have the latter, you may as well forget about being remotely successful with the former.

Marketers seem to spend their lives trying to reconcile science with creativity. Our marketing decisions are supposed to be driven by hard, scientific metrics based on ROI, signals and big data. Yet we're also supposed to create creative, engaging content that's driven by genuine human interest.

Like traditional advertising, content helps brands increase their profile and attract new customers. But it takes time and commitment to both create that content and also track its impact. Sales teams, under constant pressure to hit their quotas, often look for shorter-term solutions.

Content marketing is more than a consumer marketing trend. If you're a B2B marketer, this audience development tool can be extremely powerful when it comes to building customer bonds and generating awareness about brands that may otherwise have a difficult time telling their stories.

The Strategist picks the day's most interesting stories for the content aficionados who love the backstory and reading between the lines. Here are the gems you need to kickstart your Tuesday: The Changing Face of Content Authorship on the Web (Lance Haun) Here's a look into the power of distribution.

Everyone knows that social media is an invaluable tool for branding, networking, and consumer engagement. You might be surprised to know, however, that social selling can also be a staple for your B2B sales arm.

One of the big challenges with business-to-business content marketing is getting it in front of the people who you want to see it. Marketers like Red Bull and AmEx trying to reach a critical mass of consumers can distribute content through sponsored posts on Facebook and Twitter or distribution platforms like Outbrain.

Combining social media efforts with content has many benefits for B2B marketing campaigns: It generates leads, engages the followers of a business, and promotes brand loyalty. According to an infographic by Marketo, B2B Social Marketing Universe: The Vast Anatomy of a Successful Campaign, there are a few basic aspects to a solid campaign: The blog, social networks, visual content platforms, social news and message boards, post-campaign marketing analytics, and sharing buttons.

Back in the 1980s, intense consumer research helped Proctor & Gamble figure out the magic 3-step formula that drove consumer purchase. First, there was the Stimulus - usually a radio or TV ad - that grabbed a consumer's attention about a product.

Laut einer Studie von Forrester Research haben 57 Prozent der B2B-Entscheider, die zumindest gelegentlich Facebook geschäftlich nutzen, schon mal ein Like für eine Brand oder einen Händler vergeben. Und ebenfalls 51 Prozent haben schon einmal einen Post auf der Seite einer Brand oder eines Händlers veröffentlicht.

In den vergangenen Jahren wurde die Welt von Consumer-Startups überschwemmt. Diese Phase ist vorbei, der B2B-Bereich wird wieder wichtiger, glaubt LinkedIn-Mitgründer Konstantin Guericke. Im Interview erklärt er, wie sich der Wechsel bemerkbar macht, warum die Startup-Szene wieder älter wird und welche Bereiche für Gründer in Zukunft spannend sein werden.

Popular Today in Business: All Popular Articles Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital for any business in order to be visible on the web and attract more leads. Sometimes you need proof to upper management that all of the time you spent trying to please Google is paying off, and in a quantitative way.

Popular Today in Business: All Popular Articles Creating content is always a challenge for B2B marketers.Especially if it doesn't match up with your customer's goals. The Number 1 Rule of Creating Content is to write it with the customer in mind.

Knowing what to talk about in your marketing is always a contentious topic with marketer. Especially B2B marketers. You realize that you've got to speak to two separate sides of the same audience: the business audience, but also the personal/human audience.

Social technologies are breeding a new type of savvy marketing pro, tasked with reaching a more fragmented audience of customers, prospects and brand influencers than ever before.

What's the key to making good decisions about your content? Evaluating whether your content is effective-something we at Content Science have been thinking a lot about lately. And when you're considering the overall site? Your visitors' full experience and the underlying tools and teams? David Hobbs says the key is approaching your website as a product, rather than a project.

Edelman's Sponsored Content Report presents an analysis of the opportunity and ethics for public relations firms in native advertising (paid media).

By Heidi Cohen published November 18, 2013 As a content creator, you can produce the best content in the world, but if it doesn't break through the clutter and motivate your target audience to want to read it, it holds little value, no matter how well written it was, or how much time and effort you spent on developing, optimizing and distributing it!

By Kevin Cain published October 30, 2013 As great as it is to see so many B2B companies jumping onto the content marketing bandwagon, the reality is that many of them will struggle to drive meaningful business results. Why?

By Michele Linn published October 25, 2013 While the Content Marketing Institute team digs into our research stats each year to see what trends are characterizing the current state of B2B content marketing, we have also found that one of the best ways to advance the conversation is to look forward.

By Mike Murray published October 24, 2013 Content curation certainly has its supporters and detractors. Some suggest that it's no different than aggregation, while advocates contend that it's another way to share timely information and insights that support a brand and its corporate marketing goals.

By Carla Johnson published October 22, 2013 Thought leadership strategy is a common component of content marketing - and for good reason. It's true that thought leaders tend to be the most successful professionals in their fields, and thus exert the most influence over potential followers.