There are numerous opportunities in B2B content marketing to create content that stands the test of time. Unfortunately, we often see labour and love lost, wasted on building quality content that becomes irrelevant after one campaign. Below are a few ways you can create content that remains relevant and maximises your B2B content marketing investment.
Evergreen B2B content marketing
Evergreen content is timeless. You can read it today, and the message will still be relevant to you a year later. Evergreen content generates traffic to your website long after you have published it.
What are some types of content to avoid if you want to keep it evergreen? Content about a technology trend or a market change will quickly lose its relevance. How many people even remember the Y2K “bug”, or care about how to take advantage of the dotcom boom? These were interesting for a bit and died a quick, painless death by irrelevance.
On the other hand, certain types of B2B content marketing stay in style for a longer period of time:
- How-to content: Someone out there will always be a beginner at something that is relevant across the decades, like hiring their first team member. ‘How-to’ content rarely goes out of style when you pick an evergreen topic.
- Definitions / what-is content: B2B content is full of opportunities to define things. Have you created a new category of professional service? Are you a specialist in a niche domain? Create a “what-is” blog. The first comprehensive, well-structured web page to define anything can be relevant for years. You also have the opportunity to be picked up by Google as a Featured Snippet which does all sorts of good things for your brand and your SEO.
- Business advice: In my experience, people are always looking for advice on certain things, either to spend less money or time on a venture or process. Business advice generally stands the test of time, and can easily be updated year-to-year or as your own body of knowledge increases.
Repurposing B2B content
Creating fresh content can be time-consuming. Create it yourself and you take away big chunks out time out of your day: content creation is an absorbing activity. Outsource the content and you still need to spend time on the brief, plus money on your external resources.
The simplest way to get money out of your existing content investment is to repurpose your content. Of course, you cannot repurpose all your content. Your primary focus should be relevant or very popular content. For example, you can repurpose ‘How-to’ content because there is always a client starting out and needing guidance.
Some ways to repurpose content in B2B marketing include:
- Make a blog or report into an infographic. Infographics summarise information quickly, and use a visual index to grab attention from people disinclined to read a long post.
- Transcribe a video and use it as the basis of an article. This is especially appropriate if your video lacks polish & wasn’t scripted or premeditated. The video could be self-shot, or a low-res recording that you wouldn’t ‘feature’ anywhere on your site. The article, however, can be as polished as you like.
- Lengthen and/or improve an existing post. You might write 4 blogs in a month, and decide to work more on the one that performs the best. You might also go to an older post from last year or the year before, look at what is still getting views, and improve it.
Atomic B2B content marketing
Content atomisation is the process of taking pillar content like whitepapers and webinars and dividing them into smaller, easy-to-consume pieces such as blogs, articles, infographics, and podcasts. If you are short on ideas, your solution might be in the content you have already published. For example, an eBook on ‘The ultimate guide to starting your eCommerce store’ can be broken down into blog posts that you share on your website and social media accounts.
You can use Google Analytics to establish which content performed best and has the best potential to be atomised. Focus on the keywords that drove traffic to your site, which content clients most engaged with or shared. By atomising content, you can increase the traffic to your site by spreading out content. Breaking down a single topic into several pieces, you can become a trusted authority figure, reducing your bounce rate and increasing clicks.
Once you have your content, it is time to distribute it. Look for the channels that align with your B2B content marketing strategy. Just because a platform exists, it does not mean that you must post content there. You know your target audience and how best to reach them. Their preferred platform might be a blog post, podcast, YouTube video, or a short email.
Distributed atomised content on different channels
Consider social media channels to repurpose your content. Leveraging social media platforms can help you reach more people that might not have seen your content when you first published it. In addition, you can break down your B2B marketing content into shorter posts that you post on a daily or weekly basis.
The other more advanced channels are YouTube videos or podcasts. If you have a large following, you can create a YouTube channel or start a podcast to talk about your content in more detail. Podcasts and YouTube channels are excellent ways to repurpose B2B marketing content because clients are more inclined to listen or watch you talk while they multitask.
Keep B2B content marketing relevant with webinars
An excellent way to keep B2B content marketing relevant is through webinars. Unlike physical events, webinars don’t need to cap attendees because of venue size or travel restraints. Webinars fit into people’s behaviour of wanting the option to participate from the comfort of their homes and workplaces, behind a laptop or phone. Additionally, they are a cost-effective way to market your business with a potentially large audience.
The best way to create evergreen content from webinars is to address topics that are both relevant and timeless. For example, a “tax-time” webinar is timely, once a year, every year. An added feature to boost the performance of your webinar is to make the session on-demand. After all, your content will maintain relevance after the event date has passed.
Make visual content that remains relevant
Visual content is slowly but surely catching up with written content in B2B content marketing. Eye-catching visuals can compel a person to read your content and become familiar with your brand in a short amount of time. Even when it comes to social media, say LinkedIn you are more likely to read a post accompanied by an image, gif, video, or infographic. You are more likely to have a higher engagement rate if you add exciting visuals that give a reader a break from reading.
When it comes to infographics, you do not have to come up with brand new content. Try repurposing old content and shortening it to fit on an infographic that quickly summarises a post. You can also do this in reverse. You can use an infographic to come up with content for written pieces. The beauty with it is that you can use the short sentences as different pieces. For example, if you list seven simple steps to move your business online from a brick-and-mortar setup, each step can be an additional short piece. You can spread this content out in a week.
Infographics can also be regularly updated in line with the passage of time (e.g. one for each year). This infographic can be refreshed and then posted on different social media platforms to educate your clients.
B2B content marketing with Resonate
Resonate is a full-stack marketing agency with content marketing experience focused on business-to-business clients. Learn how we can boost your B2B content marketing strategy with blogging, eBooks, webinars, and social media content.
