I have already written on this site about how social media are requiring B2B content marketers to take their expertise to market in different and better ways. The logical extension of that, and which we yet see few companies doing, is to develop a point of view and publish it simultaneously. This accelerates lead generation, and engages an audience in developing the intellectual capital.
The online world , including social media, has provided a wealth of opportunities for B2B content marketers to take content to market more quickly and less expensively than ever before. But as with many new technologies, it has first been exploited to automate existing processes. For example, the first cars were built by the same companies that made horse-drawn carriages. They were essentially horse buggies with engines bolted on and it was years before wheels and suspensions, for instance, began to evolve into anything resembling those we see today. The earliest refrigerators were made by taking the ice boxes that preceded them and installing a condenser on top; it was a long time before anyone started hiding the mechanics in the back, adding a freezer compartment and so on. The first mp3 players were essentially digitized Walkmans. It took Apple, of course, to recognize the potential of the player as a conduit to an online music store and myriad other possibilities, changing the format forever.
Although it happens more quickly, and in greater volume, online publishing still looks a lot like print publishing digitized. White papers are produced and hosted on white paper syndication sites, columns are published on firms' own websites, and by-lined articles on third party websites. But they are still stand-alone articles; they may be grouped with others that address the same industry or function, but otherwise, they are disconnected from those around them and they are static. Some of them of course have the facility to be commented on, but that's arguably the most basic facility of Web 2.0.
There are several facets of online publishing today that allow for a much more powerful model. Articles can be extensively hyperlinked from and to places deep within them. They can be improved and updated after publication. They can be linked and related not only to pieces which preceded them, but retroactively, to those which succeed them too. Readers can comment, critique and contribute, and those contributions can be incorporated into a point of view.
So how does a company do that? Like this.
By the time they commit resources to producing a point of view on a topic, most companies already possess a wellspring of expertise on the issue at hand. It may be in the heads of subject experts, in the PowerPoint presentations they have delivered to their clients, buried in studies they have conducted, or located in other places that are difficult to make available for public consumption. Nonetheless, the expertise is there waiting to be captured and an audience attracted to it. The way to do that is to change the process of developing and marketing a point of view from a sequential to a concurrent one.
Point of View Development and Marketing: Old and New Processes
Long before they publish a point of view, marketers can create a website or landing page devoted to the topic that presents their firm's expertise on the issue in shorter, less substantial (but still substantive) forms. A company with deep insights on a topic that sets up a blog to communicate its insightsâ€"especially if the topic has been largely overlooked in the marketplaceâ€"has a tool that can spark customer attention and interest. And by using messaging services (e.g., Twitter) and posting comments in LinkedIn, Facebook and other social networking sites, that company can quickly build an audience for that blog.
But the blog should not be the only thing that company puts on a topic microsite, as we call them. News and feature articles published in the online editions of business journals are of keen interest, as are other pundits' blog posts.
Continually replenishing these article links helps keep readers coming back to the site. Polls and surveys can provide quantitative data that help thought leaders demonstrate the severity of an issue and how many companies are struggling with it. Diagnostic tools can help prospects diagnose themselves, and discussion forums can allow viewers to post and answer questions - to join in the discussion. Well-orchestrated and continually nurtured discussion forums can foster lively debates and excitement on the site. (The consulting firm McKinsey has a collection of topic microsites here which runs often-extensive essays from managers outside the firm.)
Visual content such as videos and presentations can help attract viewers to the site long before the full point of view appears. Producing and posting informative video clips of subject experts discussing the issue at hand, the purpose of the microsite, and how it will evolve, add personality to the site. Some of the materials gathered during research, such as interviews with practitioners, can provide fascinating material for readers, especially if they are videoed as they are conducted.
So while it develops its point of view on a topic, in the first month a company can concurrently publish material and grow an audience. This has several benefits:
- Builds an audience early in the process
- Engages the audience in developing the POV
- Gives an early indication of how well the POV is resonating and where to improve it
B2B marketers have the opportunity to power up their points of view, to make them much more effective at spawning good leads. Few firms yet use the natural hyperlinking quality of the Web to make sure that each new item of content mutually reinforces existing ones, or that they all build to a consistent - if composite - point of view. Doing so requires a much different approach to developing and marketing content- one that runs these activities in parallel, shifts prospects' eyes from paper and PDFs to microsites, and aggregates content to show a firm's command of a topic. Companies that master this approach will take the lead in thought leadership marketing.