B2B search engine marketing and B2B marketing depends heavily on content marketing. Without content marketing both would be severely handicapped, in fact crippled. According to a recent survey close to 33 percent B2B marketers rely on content marketing, which is up by 7% from last year figure of 26%. And over 90 percent B2B marketers are engaged in content marketing of one form or the other. If you are not investing substantially, well, you are missing the bus and are likely to be left behind. B2B SEO needs destination strategy for keywords and content marketing does just that. Content marketing increases your social media visibility and helps in link building. Having said this, the moot point is quality of content is more important than quantity of content. Therefore producing content, enough content, is always a challenge.With average content, gaining social media visibility and good links is possible but difficult. However, with quality content it is both easy and possible. For excellent results in B2B SEO your content has to be relevant to the search results. Here are five components of B2B SEO content marketing:
Aggregate your information
There is a sea of information out there, but how do you curate what you need. Instead of subscribing to large number of mailing lists or social media lists, make a short list of resources that will be useful to you. For example
- A dozen of important Twitter feeds about your industry
- A small set of Google alerts, you cannot have a long list as this information is time sensitive and you need to set aside time to assimilate everything.
- RSS reader of relevant publishers – this complements whatever you find on Twitter and Google alerts. RSS reader will help proof check content for relevance from trusted publishers.
- Brief list of email subscriptions
Competitor research
To build up your B2B SEO you need to know what your competitors are doing in terms of content marketing. Keep a watch on the keywords your competitors are targeting, the links they are acquiring, and monitor social media to read their tweets, shares, likes, and comments.
Check what type of content assets your competitors have on their website. Decipher their keyword strategy. Observe your competitor’s website design, website layout, content assets, and website structure. Also make a note of their social media profile and keep a close watch on their social media activity.
All of the above can be done by manual site auditing of a competitor’s website. However, there are a few paid applications for crawling competitive domains, which can be used for the same if you have the budget.
Developing content marketing plan:
Now with the above mentioned tactics you have all the data on your competitors. It is time you made a plan, however, this is easier said than done as most marketers struggle to put pen to paper. The easiest way is to pen and organize ideas to keep track of all the information. There are applications and tools like Google drive (for collaborative work), Evernote to keep track of ideas and make draft notes on strategy. And several other tools like Shareist, etc.
Linking
The secret to a successful content marketing strategy is how well your network has been developed to ensure maximum visibility of all your content assets. This work begins before or at the inception of your content marketing campaign. There are several tools like RavenTools and Buzzstream or traditional CRM tools like HighRise that could be considered.
Remember link building means relationship building. And for that you need to refine your communication and establish direct connection with real persons that manage sites, social media profiles, and publications of those that you are targeting.
Evaluate performance
Keep a starting point and benchmark performance. This can be revised at a later date but make a beginning. It is true that every organization will have its unique measurement criteria as goals differ from organization to organization.
Keep in mind you are not going to hit a home run the very first time you run a campaign. You have to persevere till your goal is realized. If you sacrifice your quality in favor of quantity or if you lower your metrics just to feel good, you are essentially harming yourself. Second make provisions for a decent B2B marketing budget. Cutting corners when a campaign is on will harm your campaign and make it difficult the next time. Good Luck!!
