By The Pollack Group
Creating content that stands out is easier said than done. There’s a surge of competition for views and social shares, while a recent report shows there’s been a 50 percent drop in content social sharing since 2015. However, there are underutilized channels for promoting B2B content. Agency president Stefan Pollack was featured in the Forbes Agency Council’s latest piece, ’14 Underused B2B Content Promotion Channels’, offering perspective on a key part of content marketing. Check below for his insight, as well as additional Forbes Agency Council views. View the original article on Forbes.
Podcasts
While podcasts are a huge channel with millions of productions and are in the “Wild West” of marketing, few channels have the same experiential aspects and depth of personality. Audiences are difficult to earn, but those that do listen are far more engaged and loyal than with almost any other type of content. Brands should learn to produce them and to do so well.
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1. LinkedIn
Not being active on LinkedIn is a big missed opportunity to get in front of other like-minded professionals from a variety of businesses. As social shares continue to become more highly produced, competitive and shared across a variety of social channels, I tend to find myself back on LinkedIn when I want to cut through the noise and bring my attention back to a professional B2B channel. – Jennifer Wentzo, coded{PR}
2. Annual Reports
You can create annual reports to catch the eye of your clients’ business prospects. For example, say your client “A” sells widgets and wants to target a business that would be open to buying widgets. Client A can create a deep dive into everything that has happened this past year, along with surveys and data about widgets. They can deliver it in an online, paper or video format. – Dustin DeTorres, DeTorres Group
3. Targeted Email Marketing
We recommend a well-targeted email program for our B2B clients. B2B customers expect highly personalized, targeted content, and email presents an opportunity to provide this right to their inbox. Email can be used for promotions or ongoing communication and can be triggered based on actions or sent on a regular cadence. Be sure to carefully manage your list to make sure you reach the right people. – Stephanie Shreve, PowerChord
4. Earned Media
Smart companies create a well-oiled content marketing machine, consistently deploying high-quality, relevant content and promoting it across channels. Brilliant companies use public relations tactics to boost content with earned media, finding relevant industry publications and strategically placing content. This gives them instant credibility and far greater exposure than just sharing on owned digital properties. – Keri Witman, Cleriti
5. Educational Content
Social sharing may have dropped in recent years, but educational content is still king. Most people try to take shortcuts, write fluff pieces and get surprised when nothing happens. Creating valuable content that educates—and finding paid opportunities to syndicate that content—will get your foot in the door. If the content is valuable, the rest will fall into place. – Blair Nicole Nastasi, Media Moguls PR
6. Your Company Intranet
Company intranets are wonderful channels for sharing/repurposing content like blog posts and bylined columns previously published in news outlets. We often forget that some of our most valuable publics are employees—and they can also be very effective influencers if they have compelling content to pass on. – Jeff Bradford, the Bradford Group
7. Review Sites
B2B review sites are rising to the top of search results, and in many cases, there are opportunities to share your case study content on these sites. Visitors are often prospects in the lower stages of the funnel, so it’s great for lead generation as well as authority building. Some sites, like FeaturedCustomers, don’t even include reviews. They simply re-share your best customer stories for you. – Scott Baradell, Idea Grove
8. Scoop.it
There are many great tools and channels out there to allow you to share content and to know what to expect when you do so. A large part of that is also working with experts to curate content. Scoop.it allows you to curate other content and to share it with other people in your industry. It is a great way to allow for the sharing of content. – Jon James, Ignited Results
9. Podcasts
See Above
10. Surveys
Businesses are still not using survey marketing enough! Proprietary information, especially data, is so meaningful for both journalists and the general public. Being the publisher of such information is a tremendous news hook, and when promoted correctly on a brand’s website and social channels, it can generate significant traffic. Survey marketing is a branding, SEO and PR tool at its finest. – Eric Fischgrund, FischTank Marketing and PR
11. SEO-Friendly Content
In the mad rush to get content out the door, people have forgotten how long the internet holds on to content. In my experience, a great article from five years ago can be far more valuable than this morning’s post. SEO that brings targeted viewers to your door is better than blasts that target just anyone. Identify your best content by way of data analytics and share that routinely. – Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group
12. Social Media Bookmarking Sites
Many digital marketers’ first reaction is to post on Facebook and Instagram. But there are millions of visitors that are on Reddit, Mix.com and YouTube. You can better compete for eyeballs on these important platforms, as many firms are overlooking millions of possible views. – Tom La Vecchia, MBA, X Factor Media
13. Influencers
We do a big portion of our influencer marketing work for the B2B marketing sector. We empower small business owners, entrepreneurs and thought leaders to generate beautiful content and share their story with like-minded peers, driving great conversation and engagement. – Maddie Raedts, IMA – Influencer Marketing Agency
14. A Mix Of Marketing Channels
There is no secret reservoir of opportunities. With the great diversification of “online,” audiences are almost entirely self-selecting. LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, networking groups—there are dozens of tactics and strategies. The “secret” is to never rely on any one of them. Keep your content multimodal and always multichannel. Just as in finances, diversify your portfolio. – Kirk Westwood, Glass River Media
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