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Con­tent mar­ket­ing is one of today’s hot mar­ket­ing top­ics – par­tic­u­larly in B2B. It’s been fuelled by the per­cep­tion that tra­di­tional push mar­ket­ing doesn’t work in a social media driven world – it’s too shal­low, too manip­u­lat­ive, too inauthentic.

While this view is almost cer­tainly over­stated (plenty of push mar­ket­ing cam­paigns are still gen­er­at­ing healthy responses) it has a point. There is a wide­spread desire on the part of cus­tom­ers for more human, less spun com­mu­nic­a­tions that add value to their decisions rather than mud­dy­ing the waters.

The answer for many mar­keters is con­tent. While it is being touted as the bright shiny new thing, there is of course noth­ing really new about con­tent itself (white papers, for example, have been around for as long as the tech­no­lo­gies they talk about). The new news is really in the shift­ing of con­tent to the core of B2B mar­ket­ing strategy and the explo­sion of dis­tri­bu­tion channels.

Cre­at­ing com­pel­ling content

The key to devel­op­ing an effect­ive con­tent mar­ket­ing strategy is, as with all mar­ket­ing, rel­ev­ance. More than ever you need to step into your cus­tom­ers’ shoes. What are they strug­gling with? What do they need to know? How can you help them? (Note: help not sell.)

On top of this, why would your cus­tom­ers send your con­tent on to their col­leagues and fiends? What value are you adding? This brings me on to…

Con­tent shouldn’t be pass­ive or static or a one-off

Going back to the white paper, there is a danger that con­tent is viewed as the Switzer­land of mar­ket­ing – neut­ral, dis­en­gaged, pass­ive. The real­ity is quite dif­fer­ent. While con­tent does not assume the overt sales role of advert­ising or dir­ect mar­ket­ing, it should be any­thing but pass­ive. Good con­tent is a con­ver­sa­tion. It engages the audi­ence. It is part of a pro­cess (not simply the end of one).

It is crit­ic­ally import­ant to take the long view of your con­tent mar­ket­ing pro­gramme – how does one piece of con­tent lead to another? How and where are you invit­ing cus­tomer par­ti­cip­a­tion? What tools are you build­ing in to help cus­tom­ers achieve their aims (and which will give your con­tent a viral aspect)?

Think once, cre­ate many

As I men­tioned above, there are now a wider vari­ety of ways to deliver con­tent. So when cre­at­ing your con­tent, don’t simply stop at the usual sus­pects (eg vari­ations on a PDF doc­u­ment). Not every­one wants to read off screen.

So in addi­tion to ebooks, cre­ate vari­ations of the con­tent as a pod­cast, present­a­tion, video, an edit­able wiki, blog post, dead tree book, a news­let­ter, a webinar, an applic­a­tion or wid­get – and that’s just for starters. Of course, you don’t have to do the lot but by widen­ing out the media you use you will widen the reach and increase the effect­ive­ness of search.

And dis­trib­ute everywhere

There are so many dis­tri­bu­tion options for con­tent it’s stag­ger­ing. For PDF-like mater­ial (docs and present­a­tions) – check out Slide­share, Scribd, HubPages, Author­stream and Slide­boom. For video there is, of course, You­Tube (where you can cre­ate a branded chan­nel quickly and eas­ily) but also Vimeo, Daily­mo­tion and a bunch of oth­ers. For pod­cast­ing, there are iTunes, Pod­cast Alley and many more. And for com­munity there are LinkedIn, Biznik, Face­book or, if you want to cre­ate your own, Ning.

Then there’s pro­mo­tion which can cover everything from tra­di­tional media through to rich online media hous­ing your con­tent and on to Twit­ter, blogs, RSS, Deli­cious, Digg, StumbleUpon – the list goes on and on.

The trick, once again, is to take a hol­istic view of your entire pro­gramme. Although, import­antly, to also relin­quish con­trol allow­ing your audi­ences to share and dis­trib­ute your con­tent too.

Isn’t all this just thought lead­er­ship in new clothes?

Well yes and no. Thought lead­er­ship is a legit­im­ate and laud­able aim of a con­tent mar­ket­ing pro­gramme. But it is not the only aim. The end res­ult of pretty much any con­tent mar­ket­ing pro­gramme should be the per­cep­tion that you are the go-to people to talk to. How­ever, pure play thought lead­er­ship is not the only game in town.

If we have all learned any­thing in the last couple of years, it’s that com­munity mat­ters. Con­sumer gen­er­ated con­tent has already gained adop­tion in B2C. And B2B itself has a long his­tory of round tables and testi­mo­nial case stud­ies. What this means is that it is not always neces­sary to be the thought leader as long as you know the people who are and can get access to their heads and opinions.

5 approaches to try for starters

There are numer­ous approaches you can take to begin devel­op­ing a con­tent mar­ket­ing pro­gramme. Here are 5 to get you going:

1. Grow your own expert – every busi­ness has a few experts (in B2B they tend to have more than a few). Find yours and use their brain(s) mer­ci­lessly. If they are artic­u­late and present­able, use the rest of them too. Just make sure you remem­ber this is about help­ing cus­tom­ers (not show­ing off).
2. Rent someone else’s expert – short on experts? Need greater impar­ti­al­ity? Speak to an ana­lyst house to help you cre­ate high value con­tent without it being tain­ted by the sus­pi­cion of spin.
3. Make a stand – what do you hate in the mar­ket? More import­antly, what do your cus­tom­ers hate? Take a stand, rail against it, begin a movement.
4. Research – tra­di­tional or social research can arm you with invalu­able con­tent and an excuse to engage cus­tom­ers and pro­spects. Make it really good and it could get you on Radio 4.
5. Com­munity of gurus – bring cus­tom­ers and part­ners together to cre­ate a thought lead­er­ship com­munity. Run invitation-only sum­mits and round tables. Cre­ate a home for them online. Hang a forum off it for every­one else to get involved. Poll for opin­ion and incor­por­ate it into the discussions.

There are of course many, many other options.

I’ll leave you with a final round up:

• Con­tent is an import­ant tool for today’s B2B marketers
• It is fun­da­ment­ally about help­ing cus­tom­ers achieve more
• You need to take a hol­istic view
• Think once, cre­ate many
• Dis­trib­ute everywhere