“PR degrees always ignore B2B” is a common complaint of marketing departments and agencies. As an associate lecturer in PR at Southampton Solent University, I’m trying hard to fix this problem. Even though students are not familiar with B2B brands, I’ve been able to use many inspiring examples that show the students there is more to life than consumer brands like Nike, Apple and Marmite!
I managed to persuade Tim LeRoy, Marketing Director of PC manufacturer Novatech, to take a guest lecturer spot in the course I teach. As an agency, there is continual pressure to be the one with the good ideas, so his lecture on Monday was a great opportunity for me to take notes and learn from one of my clients.
Tim’s lecture was insightful, entertaining and educational. He used both consumer and B2B brands to demonstrate that when it comes to using social media, the channel is far less important than the story. His approach reflected social media – particularly Twitter – as it was packed with sound bites that captured his message perfectly.
‘Great stories’ was one theme of the lecture. Tim was an early learner: he told us that “Whoever tells the best stories goes home with the most marbles”. In fact your story is so important “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”.
Tim also spent some time explaining the challenges of brands using social media: it’s different from other types of media. Tim summarised this beautifully: “The majority of people use social media to waste time. Brands should be respectful of this.” Brands must also remember that social media should not be dull, and that “People share emotions they don’t share facts”.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Finally Tim explained the importance of SpongeBob Squarepants to B2B social media. Well, not really! He explained how Novatech used an apparently misguided purchase of Spongebob alarm clock digital photo frames to inject personality, humour and humility into their campaigns. The clocks became an in-joke, with both staff and customers photo-shopping colourful cartoon character into different pictures. The company turned a pile of unsold stock into a way to create a more personal relationship with customers, building loyalty and engagement, and (of course) ultimately selling out of these initially unsellable yellow gadgets.
The fact is it’s far too easy to make B2B social media a dull corporate newsfeed. Possibly the most inspiring lesson I took from Tim’s lecture, was that more effort should be made to entertain and engage through content. Additionally, an element of fun should be injected into campaigns.
While I believe that PR and marketing students should be taught about B2B, I also believe that there is a lot that B2B marketers can learn from Tim. Here are a few ways you can become more entertaining and engaging through your content:
Challenge the clichés by having fun with them
It is no secret that B2B is perceived as dull, and it certainly doesn’t help that many marketers are failing to challenge the boring cliché of a B2B environment.
Thankfully, content marketing has offered these B2B marketers a lifeline. While there is, and always will be, a place for the highly technical, in-depth pieces, platforms like social media have made it possible for marketers to inject levity into their content. Consider overcoming the typical B2B stereotype, and have fun with your content. Being engaging, sharing stories and being amusing when appropriate, allows you to showcase the human side of your company which in-turn has the potential to increase share-ability. Making your customers and prospects laugh through video marketing, or piquing their interest by occasionally using an infographic instead of a whitepaper, are two effective ways to make your content more engaging and entertaining.
Raise the Creative Bar
I’ve touched on the use of infographics, which are particularly effective in grabbing an individual’s attention, as they allow you to be creative and entertaining, yet remain informational. If you are new to infographics, consider practicing on free tools such as infogr.am or piktochart.com.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth 900,000 words, to be precise. If a video has 30 frames per second, then a 30 second video is worth 900,000. With this in mind a Vine must be worth 180,000 words. Six seconds x 30 frames? You get the idea.
Consider using video to showcase your company story, an interview with your CEO, or even a product demo.
Repurpose your Content
Often a lot of time is invested into the creation of good marketing content, but equally as often it is used once and then forgotten. With the content landscape growing, if you have any hope in succeeding you are expected to churn out piece after piece of good quality, highly engaging content, all the while facing time and money constraints.
While it may not be viable to create a continual stream of brand new content, there is nothing wrong with reusing, or even better, repurposing old content. All the time that a piece of content is of value to a prospect or customer, it should remain of value to you and your content strategy.
Here are a few examples to give you an idea of how you can go about repurposing your old content;
- Turn a blog post into a series of short YouTube videos
- Take a tip sheet or whitepaper and create some infographics from it.
- Create some 15 minute podcasts from a previous webinar, as it is an effective way to reach those who may not have the time for a traditional webinar.
The post The B2B marketing lessons I’m learning 15 years into my marketing career! appeared first on The B2B Guide to Social Media.