The recently-released Content Preferences Survey found that 75 percent of the respondents - who were business executives across a variety of industries - want the sales messaging curbed. They want value from content, which is the first touchpoint for many B2B customers.

What kind of content are you offering your prospects? If it's just brochures and sales materials, it's probably not what the executives want. They want meaty pieces, like white papers and case studies, that explain the value of your product or service offering and apply it to their problems.

Some other takeaways from the survey:
  • 75% of respondents encourage solution providers creating content to "curb the sales messaging."
  • 55% of respondents advise solution providers to "focus less on product specs and more on value."
  • 88% of respondents cited white papers as the top choice of content type to research a business topic or solution.

If you don't use white papers as a part of your marketing mix, or you've gotten behind on white paper writing, it's time to step up your efforts. And if your team is too busy to write, consider contracting with a freelance white paper writer who can craft engaging pieces using the techniques of renowed white paper writer Mike Stelzner.
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You'll have to forgive me for another comparison to something kid-related (the first one being What Cake Pops Can Teach You About Content Marketing). 
Content marketing may not seem like a piece of cake. After all, it requires patience, thoroughness, and time management skills. But like a children's birthday party, it's possible to really enjoy your company's content marketing efforts, if you know what to do.   
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Identify your audience. A party full of little girls may gravitate toward a fairytale theme; little boys will most likely prefer something with dinosaurs. Unisex parties need activities that both genders will enjoy that's also age-appropriate. It's the same with content marketing - identify who the ideal reader is of your white paper or case study and what the biggest problems are that he or she is facing. Go beyond simple demographics, like job title and industry, and dig deeper. Is the reader male or female? What is her temperament like? Create a persona, name the persona, and have your content written to address her problems.
Focus your efforts. Ever tried to herd a group of four- and five-year-olds into party activities? They're excited to be at the party and want to get to the good stuff: cake and ice cream. Your prospects want to get to the good stuff, too - how to solve their problems. Focus on those problems, and make sure that the description of your solutions aligns with them.

Be prepared for the next part of the process. At a kid's party, you need to have the next activity or piece of entertainment ready to go, whether it's pizza after half an hour of free play at the venue or the clown making balloons after lunch. Same thing with your case studies and white papers: have the next logical item available as soon as possible. For a case study, that means having another case study waiting in the wings for release. For a white paper, that means being ready to field calls from interested prospects or making calls to warm leads who have downloaded the white paper.

Know that there will be dawdling. No matter how great the party or content is, there will always be someone reluctant to join in the fun (or act on your solution). Be ready to show your prospect over the phone or with a demonstration how you can solve their very specific problem.

For more information on how I can help you with your case studies, visit my Case Studies page. If you want to learn more about content marketing in general, download The Content Marketing Cookbook today. Or you can just sent me an email at christine[at]christineparizo[dot]com.
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According to the latest study by the Content Marketing Institute, 60 percent of business-to-business (B2B) companies are ramping up their content marketing spending for 2012. The study also found that:

  • 90 percent of B2B companies are using some form of content marketing
  • B2B companies will invest 26 percent of their total budgets on content marketing
The changes to Google Panda have made content marketing a necessity, particularly for B2B companies who need real content to get found in search results. Content marketing includes white papers and case studies, two things that are specialties of mine. If your B2B company is looking for a writer who can also research and interview, contact me. Your competition is already spending money on content marketing, so don't get left behind - or at the bottom of search results.
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Copyediting may seem straightforward, but it isn’t. As more people enter the field (some who are untrained), it’s important to know what a copyeditor is, what a copyeditor does – and what a copyeditor does not do. Here are the five biggest myths about copyeditors, debunked.

MYTH: Copyeditors don’t need to know style guides.

If you hire a copyeditor that isn’t familiar with style guides, you are essentially hiring a proofreader. Knowing the nuances between, say, The Chicago Manual of Style and The Associated Press Stylebook is what separates serious, professional copyeditors from dilettantes and amateurs.

MYTH: We don’t need a style guide.

A style guide or style sheet is an essential tool for a copyeditor – and for writers. It ensures consistency throughout documents and for entire projects. It’s important to choose a house style guide or create one for communications, and to note deviations that relate to different projects on style sheets that may or may not be incorporated into the style guide at a later date.

MYTH: Copyeditors will rewrite the document.

Copyeditors make simple revisions and note changes to make manuscripts grammatically correct and consistent. However, they do not substantively edit manuscripts or rewrite text line by line. For substantive editing, you’ll need to hire a professional editor who has experience with that kind of editing.

MYTH: Copyeditors work fast.

Copyediting, by its very nature, is a slow process. To copyedit properly, the copyeditor needs time. Most copyeditors prefer to give documents a read-through before they start, dive into the documents and copyedit, and then give the document a last pass, particularly if it’s a long, complex document. This doesn’t apply to quick edits and proofreads of news stories, but it does apply for more technical documents and for anything that isn’t time-intensive. The rule of thumb is, the more important it is, the more time a client should allow for copyediting.

MYTH: Copyeditors will catch everything.

No matter how thorough a copyeditor is, some errors will still slip through the cracks. That’s because no one can catch every error in every document. Good copyeditors should catch almost everything in a manuscript. If it’s a mission-critical piece, clients are better off hiring two people to review the document or manuscript: a copyeditor for mechanical and content issues and a proofreader for punctuation and other errors that the copyeditor might have missed. 

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Ever since my first PodCamp (PodCamp CT, October 2010), I've been a PodCamp die-hard. I love the energy, the sessions - and the lessons learned. So Saturday was no different; I attended PodCamp Western Mass at the Kittredge Center at Holyoke Community College to brush up on the latest in social media and marketing. Here's what I learned:

Augmented reality is really cool.
Morriss Partee gave an incredible session on augmented reality, which pretty much left me speechless. Your smartphone can actually link to restaurants as you move it around and scan the area, or you can point it at a building and it will tell you what that building is. Retailers and restaurants need to get listed on Yelp right now if they want to be a part of this. 

Not only was that incredible, but it brought up some interesting ideas for content marketing: what if your prospect could aim their phone at your business and be presented with not just your name and contact information, but with a quick value-add that they could view on their smartphone?

Going mobile is the way to go.
In Mary Wiseman's session on mobile, she demonstrated how using QR codes can be a fantastic marketing opportunity. At one wine shop, she looked at 80 bottles of wine - and only three had QR codes! 

Imagine the possibilities. QR codes may go the way of the CueCat, but mobile is here to stay. By 2013, most people will be hitting the web with a mobile device. There is a tremendous opportunity to optimize your website for mobile, and that includes writing for the mobile web. Even Ms. Wiseman noted that companies need to optimize their newsletters for mobile devices to avoid frustrating readers. Get her presentation at ht.ly/9hSnn to learn more - but here are the big takeaways:
  1. Always figure out your mobile marketing objectives.
  2. Reward early adopters when you use mobile marketing.
  3. Remember that QR codes can drive people to a sales page, a landing page, or your home page, so market accordingly.


Social media requires work.

As @jimmckeever noted in a Tweet, social media success requires a mix of old-school marketing and high-tech to get eyeballs to your site.
Drilling down to the more specific, as Jaclyn Stevenson noted from Alfonso Santaniello's session on Google+, "Don't compare Google+ to other social networking sites. In fact, that goes for all social sites." That means that, for each site, you have to think about your audience and your strategy and tailor your messages accordingly.
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LinkedIn is a powerful tool for B2B marketers, yet it gets widely neglected in a Facebook- and Twitter-centric marketing world. Even with over 150 million members, marketers forget about the power of a well-crafted LinkedIn presence. Even worse, individuals forget about the power of a completed LinkedIn profile.
In my marketing experience, I've created LinkedIn pages for my clients - and I've spoken on how to effectively use LinkedIn for both job seekers and small business owners. The result of this is a free ebook for my newsletter subscribers, "6 Ways to Get Linked."  In it, I explain:
  • What your profile needs to be complete
  • How to use Groups and Answers to network
  • What you should do to keep your profile updated

Sign up for my newsletter at www.christineparizo.com/contact.html and check the box to get "6 Ways to Get Linked!" If you need a LinkedIn page for your company, let me know - I can help you with that too.
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Alien Cake Pops
Recently, I made Toy Story alien cake pops for my son's school friends. The recipe is far from easy, but the idea of taking a shortcut and using a cake pop mold for regular cake mix didn't appeal to me as much as making the pops the old-fashioned way.  In the process, I learned that making cake pops isn't so different from content marketing:
  • They require careful planning. Cake pops are not something that can be made all in one sitting. I spread out my cake pop-making efforts over several days to make sure I'd have time to complete each step correctly. Content marketing also can't be completed in one sitting; it's an ongoing effort that requires budgeting time and resources.  
  • You'll get your hands dirty. Despite owning one of those neat cookie-ballers (a device that looks like an ice cream scoop and creates perfectly round balls of cookie dough for baking purposes), I still had to use my (carefully washed) hands to mold the pops. Content marketing can't be done in a hands-off manner; to make sure your content is broadcasting the right message, sometimes you have to roll the content balls yourself. 
  • You're going to need patience. Cake pops don't form overnight. Neither does compelling content. Both need nurturing, molding, and planning to come out just right.
  • Shortcuts won't do the trick. Believe me, I researched cake pop molds and was not impressed with the pictures of lumpy, overflowing cake pans. That's why I started from scratch. With content marketing, it's tempting to try to repurpose something else or cut corners, but 
  • The result is completely worth it. The cake pops were super-cute and apparently a big hit at my son's school. (And tasty, too.) When content marketing is done properly, it becomes a big hit by driving traffic and assisting with sales and credibility.
 
 
"May you live in interesting times" is considered to be an old Chinese curse. After all, "interesting," according to the American Heritage Dictionary, means "arousing or holding the attention; absorbing." Nothing in there says that "interesting" translates to "positive." Think of the last car accident you saw; most people slowed down and looked because it was interesting. 

Right now, we live in interesting marketing times. With the advent of social media, marketing seems to get squeezed down to 140-character Tweets and short Facebook updates. But B2B marketers know better. We know that B2B marketing can only use a little bit of this strategy, because our products are complex and require more explanation than a Tweet allows. Content marketing has surfaced as the answer to this conundrum: case studies, white papers, and blog entries are all ways that B2B marketers can cut through the clutter of short information bursts and provide a substantial amount of information to prospects and customers.

The key, then, is to leverage content to appeal to our prospects. We need to do the research on them, find out what their pain points are, and how we can solve them with our products and services. We need to look closely at their organizations to find out what is already working as well as what isn't working at all, and then we need to communicate our solutions clearly.

These are definitely interesting times for B2B marketers as we further split from B2C marketing tactics to appeal to our customers, some of whom still see Tweets and Facebook pages as frivolous and expect more from us. We'll rise to that challenge and provide content that answers their questions.
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MIDNIGHT. © Marek Kosmal | Dreamstime.com
Most people have grand plans for the new year: lose weight, get to the gym, read The Classics. No matter what your plans are, here's a resolution your business should take to heart:

Review Your Marketing Copy.

Of course I'm going to say that, but really, look carefully at what you're using to promote your business. Your website may be full of content from several years ago, before your business evolved, or you may not have the content you need for the resuls you want. Review it, and ask yourself a few questions:
  • Is it up to date?
  • Is it accurate?
  • Is it well-written?
  • Is it grammatically correct?
  • Is it getting me the results I want?

If the answer to any of these is "no," reconsider how you write your copy. Consider outsourcing to a professional if you can't seem to find the right words. Also consider a content plan - what you want to have as your marketing content. Maybe you're moving toward blogs and special reports, or maybe you've found that, in a vastly electronic age, you want to give prospects tangible takeaways like brochures.


No matter what you want to do, I'm here in 2012 to help you get your copy into shape. Yes, your copy can go to the gym, too, and I'll be its personal trainer.

Happy New Year!
 
 
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This Monday's guest post is by Allison Biggs, a Graphic Designer whom I've partnered with to offer some great deals for entrepreneurs.  I've discussed graphic design at length with Allison, and she not only really knows it well but creates fresh, modern designs for entrepreneurs.  In fact, her passion is helping entrepreneurs succeed by providing them with the marketing materials they need to get noticed.
 
Good graphic design helps you make that all-important positive first impression.  It gets you noticed and helps you communicate effectively with your potential clients.  We all know how valuable a first impression and clear communication can be, so then why do so many business owners skimp when it comes to hiring a graphic designer?

Many small business owners have developed a small voice in the back of their mind that tells them that they should be able to do everything on their own.  Because they are capable, intelligent human beings they should be able to handle everything from producing their product to managing their bookkeeping, and yes, even producing their own graphic design.

Others believe that hiring a designer is too much of an investment.  I urge you to consider that working with a graphic designer can not only grow your bottom line with increased business, but also save you time and money.

Lastly, many entrepreneurs believe that a good product will speak for itself.  In an ideal world, I totally agree with you.  But, that's not the world we live in.  People's attention spans have grown short, and if your product is going to have a fighting chance, it needs to look its best.

Hiring a professional graphic designer to assist you with the development of your business has many benefits.

1. A Graphic Designer can save you time.

I've tried to do my own bookkeeping.  Yes, I CAN do it.  It's painful, and it takes me three times as long as it should, but it is possible.  The question is, is it the best use of my time?  My answer: not really.  I now pay someone to do it for me who completes the task in a fraction of the time, and I now use that time on design.

I know that it is possible for many of you to create a brochure, but my question is the same to you.  Is it the best use of your time?  

Given the choice, would you rather spend your time working with a client, capitalizing on your talent and bringing in $75/hour, or would you rather spend eight hours staring at a blank computer screen and battling your printer in an attempt to make somewhat professional looking business cards?  Yeah.  That's what I thought.

Let the designer take care of your design so that you have more time to do what you're good at.

2. A Graphic Designer can save you money.

This can go in a few directions:

a.  Because most business owners are not familiar with the technicalities of graphic design, they may go ahead and design their own marketing pieces, only to bring it to a printer and have major revision fees tacked on because they did not set up their files correctly.  Professionals understand how to use standard graphic design programs, what color modes print properly, and scary terms like bleed and cropping.

b.  I have seen many cases in which business owners will design their own branding materials, and one year into their business realize that what they created really isn't working, and that it would probably be wise to bring in a professional.  All of the money they spent on printing their original items like brochures and business cards was essentially in vain.

c.  Professional graphic designers are familiar with the legalities of the trade.  We know that it is absolutely necessary to purchase licenses for the images and typefaces that we use in projects.  Without these licenses, you could face legal action, which I guarantee is not cheap.  Bottom line – that clip art and those free fonts that you found on the Internet?  Not going to cut it.

3. A Graphic Designer will bring attention to your business.

Design is about communication- it's a language unto itself.  Successful design will take the message that you want to share to the world and send it directly to the people you want to reach and deliver it in a way that they can receive.  A professional graphic designer understands the many subtle techniques used to craft these messages and deliberately uses them to get all eyes on you.  

More attention means more customers, and more customers means more cash in your pocket.

4. A Graphic Designer will provide you with a professional, polished image.

We live in a society that runs on perceived value.  "What is perceived value?" you ask.  Perceived value assumes that the better something looks from the outside, the more valuable it must be.  What this means for business owners- no matter how amazing your product is, no matter how unbelievably talented you are, if you're not presenting yourself in a shiny package, people will instantly decide that what you have to offer is simply sub-par.  While this seems extremely unfair, don't let this point keep you from being a successful entrepreneur.

A professional graphic designer can help you develop a brand that matches the quality of your products and services.  They can provide you with beautifully printed business cards and brochures.  They can design a logo that not only gets attention, gains recognition, but communicates the ideas and values behind your business.

Allison Biggs is a professional graphic designer specializing in brand development and print design.  Visit her website at www.amdesignworks.com.