Developing Robust Online Content to Keep Prospects and Customers Engaged

Developing Robust Online Content to Keep Prospects

and Customers Engaged

MarketingProfs

Business-to-Business Forum June 8-9, 2009

Some Takeaways

The Great Content Shift

• Content-oriented marketing is undergoing a radical transformation.

• Broadly speaking, this transformation has content moving from:

– Promotional to non-partisan – Highly controlled to less controlled – Occasional to ongoing

– Corporate voice to authentic, personal voice – One-way to conversational

The Golden Road to Great Content

1. Start with a Marketing Strategy.

2. Make Content Useful.

3. Consistent Message/Diverse Voices.

4. Content Depends on Platforms and People.

5. Don
t Be Afraid to Lose Control.

Start with a Marketing Strategy

• Aside from providing you with a framework for content

development, starting with a marketing strategy gives you a way of measuring the success or failure of your content efforts.

• Ask yourself:

– Who are you producing content for?

– What sort of content does this audience want?

– How do they prefer to consume it?

• Consumption habits are changing quickly with social media and community content increasingly influential, as this PJA/Toolbox survey shows http://tinyurl.com/5h86sy.

– What do you hope to accomplish with your content?

Make Content Useful

• Create content with your audience in mind by asking yourself,

"Even if someone never works with us, would they still find this content valuable."

• Focusing on "use value" should also get you out of the "content

= copy" mindset. Tools and apps are content, too. (HubSpot's Website Grader - http://website.grader.com/ - is a good example of tool as content.)

• Finally, if content is valuable in itself, there is a higher probability that people will share it with others. And sharing is GOOD!

Consistent Message/Diverse Voices

• Starting with an overarching strategy and brand framework serves to keep your message consistent.

• Your brand message should remain consistent across channels, but you don
t have to speak with the same voice everywhere.

• Voice, tone, and presentation should vary according to the medium (blog, video, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.).

• Actively participating in various media - listening, learning, contributing - shows you what works best where.

Content Depends on Platforms and People

• Content marketing requires an infrastructure consisting of platforms (blogs, podcasts, webcasts, social networking sites, etc.) and people who are accountable for producing and managing content.

• Accountability is key because the successful implementation of your strategy calls for people participating, responding, and contributing on an ongoing basis.

• The good news is that most of the popular platforms for staging and syndicating content are free (LinkedIn and YouTube still don
t charge to set up corporate pages).

• Nevertheless, nothing is free. The investment in paid media is being shifted to human capital: the people (you, your employees, and your

Don’t Be Afraid to Lose Control

• As David Meerman Scott says in his excellent ebook

(http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/documents/Marketing_ROI .pdf), it is time to lose control of your marketing.

• Useful, shareable content is by definition surrendered to the community: you want to lose control of it.

• Anyway, you
ve already lost control! There
s content out there - blog posts, reviews, etc. - produced not by you but by your customers, your critics, and your competitors.

• You can't control this content, but if you listen and participate you can influence it.

• Timely and thoughtful participation means: an internal function responsible for monitoring the conversation and jumping in when appropriate.

Panelists

Philip Juliano

VP, Global Brand Management &
Corporate Communications, Novell

• Over 25 years of brand and corporate communications experience.

• Voted one of America's 20 most influential marketing executives of 2008 by B2B Magazine.

• Currently leading brand and corporate communications efforts around the globe for Novell, a leading technology company. This includes rolling out a new corporate

positioning: “Novell. Making IT Work As One.”

Valeria Maltoni

Director, Marketing Communications, SunGard Availability Services

• 20 years of experience (10 online)

specializing in marketing communications, customer dialogue, and brand management.

• Handpicked by Fast Company as an expert blogger, built one of the first online

communities affiliated with the magazine.

• Contributor to Marketing Profs Daily Fix,

Marketing 2.0, Social Media Today, and The

Chris Penn

CTO, Student Loan Network

• Visionary in new media with an

intuitive sense for how marketing and community outreach should be done.

• Chief Media Officer of Edvisors, Inc., and the Student Loan Network.

• Founder and producer of the multi- award winning Financial Aid Podcast.

Mike O’Toole

President and Partner, PJA Advertising and Marketing

• Helped guide PJA's successful expansion into San Francisco and oversaw the agency's acquisition of interactive capabilities.

• Advises senior marketers at clients such as Novell, GE Healthcare, and Infor on

messaging, advertising strategy, and

marketing accountability.

Matthew T. Grant

Moderator, Doctor of Philosophy, Thought Ronin

• 15 years in corporate communications with the last three focused on social media and content marketing.

• Public speaker on topics ranging from business method patents to designing the user experience to Nazis in popular culture.

• Tall guy. Glasses.

Resources

• From Novell (http://www.novell.com/home/index.html) – Video Contest: What Do You Do With Linux?

(http://tinyurl.com/orprb6)

• From Valeria Maltoni (http://conversationagent.com/) – Why Blog + 25 Tips to Make it Work (PDF-

http://conversationagent.com/WhyBlog%2B25TipstoMakeitWork.pd f)

• From PJA (http://www.agencypja.com/agency/web+development.php) – From Blue Sky to Bullet Points (PDF -

http://ebooks.agencypja.com/?p=10)