Marketing Interactions

When a Blog is More than Just a Blog

I find it interesting that more B2B marketers are using Twitter and Facebook than they are blogs. This could be one of the reasons that the ROI on social media is lagging for many. Obviously you can't just Tweet your own content, but only sharing other people's stuff isn't doing much to drive traffic to your company, is it?

I help many of my clients incorporte social media into their eMarketing initiatives. Some of the hurdles that must be overcome include:

• How to generate ideas for blog posts.
• Loosening up the writing style to become more conversational.
• Finding people to write blog posts.
• Staying focused on buyers, not your company.
• Keeping it going over time.
• And the big one...finding TIME to do it in the first place.

Blogging requires dedication. Even if the tools are inexpensive, it's the time and creativity that's costly. So, in order to justify the value of blogging, I thought it might help to show you that a blog is much more than, well, a blog.

One of the questions I get asked most often is "How do we create all the content we need to continuously fuel our marketing programs?"

One way is by blogging. Start by removing the limiting vision that a blog is just one more thing on your marketing checklist. Think beyond the blog to how that content can be used in a variety of ways to reduce the effort it takes to fuel marketing programs. There are many ways to do this - here are a few to get you started.

5 Ways to get more value from your blog posts:

1. Use social media to share your blog posts. Instead of using the title + link standard, pick a pithy phrase to quote from it or ask a question that the blog post answers. Think helpful, rather than promotional (boring). Use hashtags to increase your exposure - which I admittedly forget to do. Leave enough space to encourage easy ReTweets so others can share it with their networks.
   
   The payoff? More traffic to your blog which increases the opportunity for comments, awareness and a boost to credibility. More followers, RSS feed subscribers...you get the idea.


2. Use blog posts in your eNewsletters. It's unlikely that your entire database reads your blog. If you create segmented newsletters (which you should), plan ahead and write blog posts that fit the themes or interests of your segments so you're ready to go at the time you publish your newsletter.
   
   The payoff? Interesting, conversational content designed to engage specific audiences. This drives higher engagement and also pulls traffic to your web properties. It also reduces the stress of creating yet more content for newsletter publication.


3. Use a blog post as a touch in your nurturing programs. Nurturing touches don't have to be lengthy, big-format content. In fact, a short meaty piece will actually be appreciated by your prospects. If you're going this route, plan for the topic and focus of the post in your nurturing plan and schedule it to be freshly posted to your blog when you need it.
   
   Another option with a blog is that you can create pages (instead of posts) which you don't need to include in the blog's navigation. This makes the production of content very easy and enables you to use the blog for other programs that you may not want to use "public" content for in execution. You may also consider hyperlinking to other "public" blog posts from within that article to extend the prospect's engagement with more related information.
   
   The payoff? Once again, less stress on writing content. But also ease in publishing that means marketers can publish content when they need it, not when the IT queue gets to it. Real-time is an important consideration. And, more traffic. 


4. Use blog posts to promote big-format, gated content. Got a new white paper coming out? Blog an executive summary with a link to the white paper landing page. Include a graphic of the cover. Just make sure that the blog post adds value whether or not your audience decides to download the bigger piece.
   
   The payoff? Lead generation combined with natural nurturing.


5. Syndicate your blog. Once your blog is up and running and you have a nice backlog of posts, submit it to sites that pull content from a variety of blogs that write for a specific audience. There are many of them out there covering a multitude of topics. Those sites need content. Why not yours? Just make sure it's about topics the audience cares about - this means no chest-thumping, self-promotional posts.
   
   The payoff? Deeper reach and wider exposure. The beauty of syndication is that the community sites will usually pull your posts directly from your RSS feed and be posted automatically to the community site. This means you don't have to do anything beyond publishing great posts to get all that exposure and build a bigger audience that's interested in what you have to share.  

Let's discuss the concept of natural nurturing (mentioned in #4 above). It's a concept I cover extensively in my book, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale.

Here's the shift in mindset - nurturing is not limited to the leads in your database - and it shouldn't be. Sharing consistently valuable information over time that addresses topics and issues of high-priority interest to your audience is nurturing. Whether you control their access and timing, or not. Make your posts human and you'll find people reaching out to you. Invite dialogue and you'll increase the interactive opportunities to build relationships through comments.

A blog gives you the ability to engage with prospects and customers over time, at their convenience. Consider that a nurturing program over a long-term B2B buying process may include one or two touches a month. A blog that's updated several times per week gives people much more opportunity to engage with your company, if they so choose.

You may not know who subscribes to your RSS feed are, but subscribing is an expression of interest on their terms. Take advantage of it to educate and inform them. Business will result.

In a world where buyers are taking advantage of self-educating, you need to be helping them do just that. A blog is a valuable tool when executed well. With planning, blog posts can also provide a steady stream of fuel you can apply to other uses - and that can bring a big sigh of relief.

Make 3rd Party Content an Opportunity Not a Necessity

Yesterday, I spoke on a panel at Marketing Sherpa's Email Summit focused on how to develop content for specific buying stages. One of the panelists presenting a case study said that they chose to use 3rd party content because prospects don't believe what vendors say - that they lack credibility.

Her reasoning is sound, but B2B marketers need to look at the use of 3rd party content as an opportunity rather than a necessity.

Here's a scenario to consider:

You license a white paper from a 3rd party that is considered an expert by your prospect segment and industry. You're providing content they value and they respond by opting in and downloading the white paper.

Don't let their engagement stop there. Instead, use the white paper as a hub or launching pad for sharing your company's expertise in relation to the subject matter.

Consider that a solid white paper likely makes 3 - 5 key points which are substantiated by research and or reputation.

Take each of those key points and create a series of articles that include your company's take on them, showcase your expertise and use a quote or two attributed to the white paper to substantiate them.

These can be short articles you can use to further engage the people who opted in for the white paper - think 800 to 1,000 words. You could also write a series of blog posts that link back to the white paper landing page to drive more downloads and opt ins from those who may have missed your original campaign.

By using the white paper as a hub you can create much more ROI from that white paper than just a lead gen campaign. Hitching your expertise to a trusted source can help to transfer your prospects' perception of expertise and credibility to your company.

When  tasked to create a high volume of content to drive marketing programs, you need to get creative about how to get more value from each and every resource. By looking at this effort creatively you can discover many ways to lighten the load and build credibility for your company at the same time.

Changing the status quo starts with elevating the awareness and respect prospects have for your company. As you do that you can also begin to shift their status quo about solving the problem you can help them with.

As you do so, you may find that your reliance on 3rd party content is reduced, or that you can expand the benefits you get from your investment. Or both.

Who comes first in your marketing content?

In my work with B2B companies, I spend a lot of time reviewing content - both old and new. I often play the role of an editorial supervisor and coach as I help them learn and tune their skills for developing engaging content. One of the things that I often see is that they think they're being customer/buyer focused, when in reality they've managed to slip back into the company's perspective.

Point of view is a slippery slope. There are nuances that can sneak right by without sending up any flags because we're still more comfortable with them. Even with the best of intentions, it's very easy to get sucked back into company speak.

Here are a few examples I've seen recently:

Here's what we want to give you vs. what your buyer wants.

This is often seen in "About the Company" pages on websites and in proposals prepared for buyers, email messaging, etc. Interestingly, if you know your customers, what you want to give them is likely close to what they want. But the response you get is based in large part on the reactions your audience has to the phrasing. Which one of these would resonate better with you as a buyer?

Our vision for your company is...

Your vision for your company is... here's how we'll help you get it...

Talk to us vs. Talk amongst yourselves.

We all know that content must have a goal, a call to action. What is usually the case is a request for the buyer to contact us, request a sales conversation, fill out our form, etc. In other words, most companies only care about getting the prospect to talk to them.

Consider the difference between helping ourselves and helping others. Case in point is social media. Being helpful gets you much farther than being self-serving. Which call to action is more interesting to you as a buyer?

Contact us for more information about...

To learn more about [topic], go ask your IT department how they...
Find out if your website manager has the ability to...
Discuss the idea of [topic] with your product manager to see if...

The secret here is that not all conversations that help sell your products and solutions need to be, or will be, between you and your prospects. There are lots of other conversations that must be had. So facilitate them proactively. You'll be remembered for it. And they'll come to you looking for more help given what they learn from the conversations you helped to jumpstart.

Start with us vs. Start with them.

Go look at any of your website pages. Is the first sentence focused on the interests of your prospects, or is it focused on your company? Which one is more engaging?

Real examples pulled today from interior website pages:

With [company's] enterprise class cloud computing capabilities, you have the trusted partner to help you assess cloud readiness, develop adoption strategies and identify business entry points.

Feel confident that you're keeping up with growth and change in your business while decreasing your communication costs.

That first example is has an element of sneaky that slides right by the people developing the content. Notice the company's name at the beginning? Well, their logo is all over the website, as well as on graphics.

Why is it that we think we have to keep telling people the name of our company when they're on our website? Secondly, calling yourself a "trusted partner" is self-serving chest thumping similar to "the leading provider of...." Use a testimonial or case study to make the point. 

These are just three examples that show why it's very important to step away from your content and evaluate it from the shoes of your prospects and customers.

Who comes first can make or break the conversation.

 

Content Must Drive Conversations

I read an interesting post by Peter Gracey over on the AG Salesworks blog that has a lot of merit. His point needed to be made. I can't even tell you how many calls I get that start with some version of the example below. The gist of his post is that when inside sales starts a call like this, they're doomed from the start:

“Hi Jim, this is Pete from AG Salesworks.  I recently sent you xyz document and I was calling to see if you’ve had a chance to look at it”

I agree 100%. My response is usually, "No, bye."

This said, I'm not saying that inside sales reps should avoid discussions related to the content your prospects view or download. Just that they need to do it differently.

In fact, the entire point of content marketing is to have it help you get invited into conversations with prospects. Right? Content alone will not sell a complex solution. Content marketing is about connecting with and growing relationships with your potential (and existing) customers. Once you've done that, the natural extension should be conversations. Then more content, then more conversations - do you see the rhythm?

If that's not what's happening - you're doing it wrong! Seriously.

What's wrong with the example above is the question that's being asked.

There's no context. Your prospect's mind is on a gazillion things and it's not likely that one of them is the white paper they downloaded. Instead, think about how your inside sales reps can use the information in the white paper to promote a useful conversation.

Try these ideas out:

"Hi Jim, this is Sam from ABC company and I saw that you downloaded our XYZ white paper. I was wondering if you thought the idea about X had merit?"

"Hi Sally, this is Norm from Solution X. You recently requested our paper on [topic] and we've had a lot of response to the statistic that [whatever it's about]. Would you agree that it's a concern for your company?"

"Hi Dave, this is Sally from Random IT Company. I've got an update on the case study that was in the paper you downloaded and thought you might be interested to know how things have changed since the company is similar to yours."

The point is that evey content asset you produce should be approached from a reader perspective as well as in relation to the type of conversations it can motivate. And not just between your company and your prospects, but also among those involved on the buying committee.

In addition, if you design the conversations well, they serve as a type of progressive profiling that helps you learn more about your prospects without putting them through the usual survey that we all recognize as self-serving with no added value for the prospect on the line. Initiating conversations based on relevant business reasons is how most of us talk with our peers and colleagues. It's time for inside sales to step up their game!

Your content should be motivating conversations based on the ideas you share even when  you're not in the room - but most certainly when you are involved in the communication stream.

Otherwise, what's the point?

The Power of Monotony in Content Marketing

I bet you're thinking, no way does the idea of monotony in B2B content marketing make sense, right? Monotony is boring. Monotony is the enemy. Same, blah, blah, blah will just drive our prospects away...

You're likely thinking that monotony is the droning on of someone about the same old stuff in a flat tone without inflection. Perhaps that last meeting you attended where you had to fight to stay awake. Or that last white paper you read that was so academic you kept reading the same paragraph over and over again before you realized you were stuck.

That's not what I'm talking about.

In content marketing, monotony means focusing on ideas for the long-term. It means reinforcing ideas that are core to educating your prospects. It means staying with those ideas over the long haul, exposing all the different facets of how the idea impacts your prospects' business success in relation to the problem they're solving.

The basic problem with monotony is that we (marketers) get bored. We want to write about new stuff. We think once we've shared an idea with our target audience that they've latched onto it and understand all it implies. This is why it's so hard for marketers to give up campaigns. Campaigns have a start and end date, defining your commitment to that idea. You know you'll get to move on to something new in a few months, so you have something to look forward to.

Well, I've got news for you. Marketing is not about what you find interesting and this type of short-term focus could be diminishing your prospects' buying momentum.

Here are a few reasons why:

• We know much more about the ideas we're sharing than our prospects do.
• It takes anywhere from 5 to 12 exposures for a new idea to stick.
• In late 2010, 95% of 2,500 leaders reported their top challenge is resistance to change.
• 50% of those leaders also indicated that breaking through the noise is becoming more difficult.
  [*last two statistics from Global Dialogue Center]

It's doubtful in a B2B complex purchase that only one person needs to be convinced to embrace change. Without cementing our ideas with our prospects, affecting change is made even more challenging. Our marketing content needs to focus on making them so conversant with our ideas that their ability to persuade change is elevated.

With complex sales, the amount of education, expertise and evidence information necessary to sway priorities and preferences to the extent needed to reach choice is staggering. Changing your focus on a whim, because something new and shiny comes along only creates friction with your leads because they must now choose to make the effort to re-orient themselves with your new idea.

It's like following along a path and constantly being bombarded with forks in the road. Choosing which one to follow when they were treading happily down the trail - learning everything they needed to know - causes fatigue, takes too much effort and makes them wonder if what they'd come to rely on from you was only a flash in the pan with no real substance to back it up.

Then prospects wonder - What if my experience as a customer with them will be like this?

If you truly understand the core ideas that impact the way in which your offering helps your prospects achieve their goals, then you'll find many ways to talk about that over the long term without boredom—for you, or for them.

Abandoning key ideas for the realm of something new can lessen the power of your marketing content. Embracing monotony with excellence requires a keen sense of creativity.

As a measure of your monotony skill, go review your marketing programs from last year and count the number of times your marketing programs related to solving a particular problem changed overall focus.

Now look at this year's plan and see how you can tighten the focus to close the gaps to make it simpler for your prospects to stay engaged. It's likely that you can make some shifts to create a more consistent experience for your prospects across the entirety of their buying process.

Most of all, realize that monotony can be a good thing for content marketing.

My Social Media Checklist

There's a lot of buzz about the social media site Quora. In fact, I Tweeted Mark Schaefer to ask him what he thought about it and he wrote this post. Had I just read the post, I'd be confident in my choice not to go exploring yet one more social site. But, it wasn't just a post. It was an entire {grow} community conversation with both sides represented. And now I'm wavering, darn it.

When I was a teenager, my father told me that whatever I chose to do, I should do it well. I've tried my best to live up to that. But there comes a point when adding one more thing to my plate can impact that intention. That's where I am with social media.

As I was reading the commments on Mark's post and adding my own, it ocurred to me that there should be a reasonable way to evaluate which social media tools and platforms will deliver the most value for me - both personally and professionally.

This is My Social Media Checklist:

Time:
How much time will it take to participate?
Do I have enough time to devote to it to do it well?
If I discover it takes too much time, can I delete my profile and leave, or will it be floating around out there forever, reflecting badly on my attempt?

Noise Ratio:
How many notifications will I get and is there a way to filter them?
Are the dialogues engaging or is it just a bunch of stuff I can see and participate in somewhere else? In other words, is it spam and repetition or is it useful stuff I won't see anywhere else that I already participate?

Value:
Are there unique ideas that will stretch my knowledge and contribute to my goals?
How hard is it to find them?
What might my participation there help me to do better?
How helpful will what I have to offer be to the people there?

Integration:
Will the platform extend the other things I'm doing?
Can I gain added value by mixing them together?

Goals:
What do I want my participation to help my achieve? (personally and/or professionally)
Are those expectations realistic?
What will I need to do to get there?

Business:
What impact could my participation there have on my business? Will it help me grow, bring me new clients, help me develop new services, sell more books, bring me new partnerships or get me more speaking gigs?

Conversations:
Are there exchanges that I want to contribute to?
Is there back and forth or is it one-off hit and runs?
How much moderation is there?
Are the same people dominating the conversations or are there new voices that I don't hear elsewhere?

Change:
What changes will I have to make to participate?
How hard will it be to learn to use?
Will I have to give up something else to do this right?

It's one thing to want to try out the shiny new tools that continue to show up, but at some point, that's not enough. There needs to be more. If I could add hours to my day, that would be one thing, but I can't. I need to make considered decisions about what I choose to participate in and why I make that choice.

When I evaluate what I already have on my plate, I'm pleased with the results. I get business and brand benefit from each of the social media platforms where I participate. I learn from the valuable ideas shared on them. Could I give one up in favor of a new choice? Maybe. But whatever I choose to replace it with had better deliver more value than I already get. And that's a tall order.

How do you choose where and how much you participate in social media?

What payoffs are most important to you?

Measure the Value Prospects Assign to Your Marketing Content

Pageviews and clicks are good metrics to know about but with the overwhelming amount of information available online, it's more important to focus on how much value your prospects ascribe to your marketing content.

There's a lot of talk about measures and metrics. I thought I'd share a few ways that I've found it useful to interpret prospect response. We've really got to start looking beyond traditional metrics if we want insights that help us build better relationships with our prospects.

Here are 7 factors to consider using to do just that:

• Time – Are prospects viewing one article for 5 seconds or spending the time necessary to read the entire piece? Do you even know how much time it takes to read the piece on average? Do your prospects stay for the entire Webinar or leave after the first 15 minutes?
  
  
• Depth – Do prospects read one page and leave your website, or do they tend to click on links to related information and travel more deeply within the site to explore that content more fully? Can you discern patterns that indicate where they are in their buying process? Viewing one content asset won't verify that. Viewing multiple related pieces will help you do so and help you create relevant ways to extend the dialogue.
  
  
• Storyline – Is it evident that prospects follow a directed path through your content or do they click around aimlessly on unrelated pages without settling on any of them long enough to learn anything? Are they intrigued enough to ask questions at the end of your webinar? Even better, do they sign up for another webinar on a related subject?
  
  
• Interaction – In addition to how many registrants your webinars get, measure the difference between unique attendees and total attendees—those who attended plus those who viewed the recorded version. A higher number of total attendees over time can be an indication that your content is considered important enough to revisit and view again, or that it’s been passed along and shared with others—hopefully those involved in the buying decision. Even better, how many questions or chats were posted during and post-event?
  
  
• Social – How many of your prospects and customers are sharing your Webinars, white papers and other content with their social networks via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or mentions in their blog posts? How many establish a dialogue with you, share something you share, follow you or subscribe to your RSS feeds?
  
  
• Opt In – What percentage of prospects who visit your landing pages are opting in for your gated offers? This includes Webinar registrations, newsletter subscriptions, online demos and other content offers. Opt in is permission and keeping it is directly related to their assessment of your credibility based on the value they've assigned to your marketing content. If this diminishes, they'll unsubscribe or relegate your communications to junk mail.
  
  
• Referrals – Are your prospects only visiting your website when prompted by an email? Or are they coming to you via social media, search returns or peer recommendations or on their own? Being findable is the new “black” for marketing. The more accessible your content is—regardless of where your prospects happen to encounter it online—the higher it's value. And this goes beyond removing forms to how much effort it takes to engage with it. How easy is it for them to understand and how quickly is that made clear?

All content is not equal in relevance or usefulness to your prospects. The overwhelming amount of content available online generates a lot of clutter and noise that your prospects must sort through to find useful information that addresses their needs. Let's face it, there's a lot of surface-skimming, repetitive content out there that adds nothing to the dialogue. The uniqueness of the ideas you share counts.

Their assessment of your content’s value is expressed through the combination of the factors shown above. Content perceived as valuable delivers immediate takeaways that leave lasting impressions, helping to motivate a higher willingness to trade their attention for your content whenever they see it.

These B2B Leads Suck! Really?

How many times has a sales team told a marketing team that the leads they source for them suck? My guess is that this has happened more times than we want to count. And, many of those times it was for good reason. But, even with marketers working harder to qualify leads and develop them to the point of sales readiness, I'm not seeing a huge shift in how sales teams approach them after the handoff.

This is evidenced by:

• Cherry picking and leaving the rest to sit unattended.
• Lag time in responding to leads sourced by marketing.
• Lack of formalized closed-loop processes that results in "those leads suck" when sales is pushed for feedback.

Therefore, I'm not convinced that the sales team's evaluation of marketing leads is all that accurate. In fact, research on sales effectiveness makes me even more suspect.

This includes:

• Less than half of all sales deals forecast result in wins. (CSO Insights)
• Only about half of salespeople are making quota. (CSO Insights)
• 20% of executive-level buyers said salespeople lacked knowledge about their products or those of their competitors. (McKinsey and Company)
• Only 15% of executive-level buyers are willing to accept a second meeting with a sales rep. (Forrester)

So, do the leads suck, as sales would have us believe? Or, are they avoiding taking responsibility for their lapse in developing the knowledge and skills that it takes to engage with buyers in today's buying process?

After all, in the case of those last two bullet points, salespeople got the meeting, but couldn't progress the relationship any farther. Not because of the quality of the lead, but because of the experience the buyer had with them. That's not a lead that sucked, it's a lacking in the salesperson.

Have salespeople been too slow to adapt to buyers taking control of the process—including that they have access to information they used to only be able to get from a sales rep? And, if marketers have stepped up their game to truly catch and keep the attention of buyers in the earlier stages by developing great content, is the transition to sales shining a light on these shortcomings by comparison?

Okay, before salespeople come after me, I'm not picking on you. I'm seeing the lack of alignment and enablement as an out-of-balance teeter totter. If one side goes up in value for buyers, it appears that the other side goes down.

Leads don't suck. If we think they do, it's our fault - collectively. In other words, both sides need to contribute to solving the problem. Otherwise we're spinning our wheels and getting stuck in the cycles of ineffective processes. And that helps no one.

If sales says leads suck then they need to say why and provide ideas for how to improve their development into opportunities. What's lacking? How would you do it differently?

If marketing is amassing all the research and insights to up their game, they need to share that information with the sales team to help them improve on having conversations that buyers find valuable. And I'm not talking an information dump that sales has to wade through. I'm talking about packaging that information up in helpful, easy-to-use ways.

Share the knowledge. Spread the wealth. I would hope that both sides can get behind those goals.

Just remember that a high majority of the leads you don't sell to end up buying a comparable solution from your competitors within about 18 months. So, do those leads really suck?

Where to Start Your Lead Nurturing Program

Getting started is often the hardest thing to do once you decide you want to create a lead nurturing program. Lead nurturing is about continuously engaging B2B prospects across their buying process by providing the right content at the right time to help them take the next steps toward purchase.

Your lead nurturing programs will differ based on how they are populated. So, consider the source of lead origination as you create your program. The first touch in a lead nurturing program after opt in should be related to the reason the prospect chose to raise their hand.

If you think about this, it's highly unlikely that a lead downloads a white paper because they're really saying "call me now, I'm ready to buy." So knock that off, will you?

If they opted in by downloading a white paper, for example, it's because they were interested in what they thought the information in the white paper would share with them. This means the first place to start in this case is with the white paper landing page - not  the white paper itself.

What's promised on a landing page to promote conversion can be much different than the information in the white paper. How many times have you been disappointed by a white paper after you've downloaded it? I can't tell you the number of PDFs I've downloaded that were touted as research white papers which in reality contained a couple of analyst quotes and a product features dump over 4 pages.

Assuming none of you would do that, make notes of the key promises on the landing page. Then assess the white paper to see how well those promises were delivered on. The promises caused the prospect to complete the conversion. How else can you use them to create additional content that will compel the prospect to click on the links in your nurturing emails?

The sources for lead origination will vary. A webinar is also a great source of lead generation. The same process applies - start at the source. Take a good look at it from your prospect's perspective. Step into your prospect's shoes and go through the process yourself. Review the email invitation messaging. Look at the promises made in the landing page content. Listen to the webinar again. Pay close attention to the Q&A and the post-webinar survey responses.

To create the first touch points in your nurturing program you need to consider your prospect's status quo.

Ask yourself questions such as:

• What current business situation could they be dealing with that made the promise compelling?


• What business goals would make the promise(s) relate to their top priorities?


• What further information than what was showcased in the white paper will help them learn more about solving the problem or reaching their goals?


• Which persona is most applicable to the types of prospects who downloaded the white paper, or will I need to segment the list?


• If I segment the list, how do the answers to the first 3 questions above change?

Once you've got your first idea, create an outline for developing the content.

• Include a premise. A premise is a short orientation paragraph that includes the promise of the content, what you want the prospect to learn and why it's important to them.


• Jot down three bullet ideas about what you'll share in the content article, to flesh out the premise.


• Note the white paper and any reference materials you know about. For example, I often do searches on topics when I'm brainstorming. I'll memorialize links to some of the best ones to help get my mind back in sync with the topic once I start writing.

Given the above, once your prospect has the information from touch one, what else will they need to learn about? A lead nurturing program should present a logical progression of ideas focused on helping them solve a specific problem as they move through their buying process.

The best way to get started with a lead nurturing program is to engage your audience on their terms in relation to the interest they've expressed upon opt in. In other words - get to their status quo and you'll find higher engagement because your content is talking about something that's instantly relatable to them.

Signs of Sybil in B2B Content Marketing

I'm likely dating myself, but sometimes reviewing the array of marketing content produced by a B2B company reminds me of the 1976 movie Sybil. For those of you who aren't familiar with Sybil, it's the story about a woman who manifests 16 personalities.

The problem, of course, with 16 personalities is that you never know which one will show up or what it will say or do. In a business context this confuses your target markets and undercuts your credibility - possibly in ways that damage your ability to close deals.

As marketers, we must be very cognizant that each and every interaction our prospects have with our marketing content either improves our relationship with them or introduces doubt. Even a neutral experience falls more on the doubt side than the relationship side.

The reason this happens is often that each content marketing asset, program or campaign is looked at separately. We create blog posts without considering our latest white paper. We hold webinars without considering what other content we have to back up the topic. We send demand generation emails without understanding what messaging is being communicated by corporate marketing.

The biggest upset of them all usually falls to the corporate website. When's the last time you updated your website content in parallel with your other marketing programs?

Is your latest white paper from 2 or 3 years ago?

Is your latest customer story just as dated?

Are you pushing a new solution but still featuring outdated content on the website?

Doe your microsites tell the same overarching story as your main website?

This type of disconnect is not new, but it's hitting the spotlight now because marketers have glommed onto that shiny new object - Social Media. The differences between old marketing and new marketing content are made more obvious as dialogue is compared to brochure speak.

As we've begun adapting to the conversational style of social media, we've often done so in a vacuum, without consideration for the other messaging that lives online.

You may have begun writing a corporate blog recently. But let me ask you this - If your prospects read your blog and then visit your website will they believe they're still with the same company?

Yes, the tone and style of blog posts will differ from the more formal content generally found on corporate websites, but the voice should still be recognizable.

If your blog posts are focused on your prospects but your website is all about how wonderful your company is and talks incessantly about your products and solutions without so much as a nod to your buyers, you're sending conflicting messaging.

When you consider that your buyers have embraced self-education and that they conduct the majority of the buying process on their own - without you - your marketing content and communications must interweave convincingly.

If you produce a highly entertaining video but your website content is dry as dirt your prospects and customers will wonder who's steering the ship. If your Twitter profile only displays tweets linking to your own stuff, step away from TweetDeck and re-evaluate. If your ebooks are conversationally written and educational but your white papers are chest-thumping product pushers, you've got the signs of dissociative content identity disorder.

The only way to assess the level of the disease is to step back and get the big-picture view. You need to evaluate all of your content, in each and every channel, online and offline to make sure every single content asset is building the story that represents your company as one distinct personality.

How many of you have signs of Sybil lurking in your marketing content?