Implementing a B2B Content Strategy: Consider How

 
"You don't start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle, because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world," writes Gladwell in the preface to What the Dog Saw.

Businesses are made of people, many of them in the middle. While everyone loves to talk to the C-level, the shift in the way people at all levels work, select and recommend service providers, and get things done is more notable in the thick of things, so to speak. Technology has made it even easier for people to connect with peers, collaborate, and get and give direct and indirect (through search) feedback.

There's a reason why social media has put a spotlight on being human - brands forgot how to tell stories. Along with a "me, too" characteristic of many B2Bs always in search of benchmarking and ways to validate their value props, companies forgot (more likely stopped funding) media integration. This first set of considerations presents some difficulties in the connected world we live in.

How can you get your story told?

Is a much more interesting question than "how can you get your message out?"

How many people know your story? Start there. Then, consider the difference between a book and a brochure - a book contains one or more stories based upon some disclosed facts, a book has personality. A brochure may contain lots of facts - in fact often as many as possible - and very little story. I'm not suggesting you write a book, just that you think about story as a point of view.

Even analyst reports tell a story, why cannot a brochure?

Made to stick works

How do you tell your story so that it sticks, gains momentum, and gets passed along? In Made to Stick, authors Dan Heath and Chip Heath outline the critical elements:

1. Simplicity - in our conversation last week, Avinash Kaushik talked about simplifying complexity. What's your core thought?

2. Unexpectedness - create surprise. Are there preconceived notions/myths about industry practices you could demystify?

3. Concreteness - make good use of analogy to drive a point home. Our brains prefer narrative

4. Credibility - do people trust you? Do people believe you?

5. Emotions - emotion prompts us to act. Will your customers care about it?

6. Stories - don't just present a PowerPoint deck full of data. Does your content inspire people?

B2Bs are afflicted by the curse of knowledge, which is the main theme of the book. They take for granted that their customers live and breathe their same air when it comes to their product or service.

Are you taking for granted what your customer experiences? Think about it differently. Start with their need or problem, and use simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and story in your content.

Consider editorial impact

The opposite of marketing fluff is not tons of hard data. The opposite of marketing fluff is, in fact, a decision. What's the point of view? What are your trying to communicate? How are you different? Between us here, how many people have reviewed and written that piece? If you operate by committee, consider elevating someone to the role of editor.

Editorial impact will determine level of engagement and your call to action. So it's no trivial decision. Your audience does matter, and that's why the context of your story needs to be modeled after what they see, experience, and think about. Remember that they're human, too.

Will your content be relevant to influencers and stakeholders?

Don't think of influencers as the very same people you hang out with as marketers - top blogs on AdAge Power150 anyone? You can do better. Think about those people who your stakeholders may go to for advice. Think for example about presidents of professional associations in your field, who may also be bloggers. 

In many B2B models, partners as well as key customers are big influencers. When you author good content coming from a well-differentiated POV (and business model), you can then socialize it and gain insights from feedback and conversations - both with influencers and stakeholders.

Interact and participate

It's important to remember that participation is also content - in many cases, it's what activates it and keeps it relevant. How is a post or article different from a brochure? Usually it's written more as a thought piece about industry conversations. And it seeks to be helpful in educating readers about a broader context.

Relevance is also measured as opportunity to interact with the content. Google Sidewiki may be changing the game even for your Web site. 

***

"Good writing," Gladwell says in the preface of What the Dog Saw, "does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head."

Yes, even in B2B we are people.

[mindmap by lucianop]

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Additional resources:

Developing a B2B Content Strategy: Start with Who

Writing Content for the Buyer's Decision Journey

Top Ten Reasons Why Your Content Marketing Strategy Fails

© 2006-2009 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.

Comments

[Rich Becker]

Valeria,

Truer words have not been written in the making of memorable myths. Yet, it seems to me so many don't tell their story because they just aren't sure what that story might be.

I cannot count the number of times that clients pass at the real stories behind their successes and focus on messages that don't matter too much to anybody. In some ways, that is what hurt the news release. Great stories left behind in favor of sales.

Good stuff. Something to think about this week, for sure.

All my best,
Rich

[Allan Schoenberg]

I'm a believer in that the best people to tell your stories are other people. We consistently look to our customers to help us talk about the exchange -- whether that's in our magazine, via social media, or with journalists. I think most B2B companies tend to forget this and they look internally at how much knowledge they have. Customers speaking on your behalf hit all six principles from Made to Stick.

[Harriet Meth]

Valeria,

Thanks for zeroing in on a critically overlooked marketing opportunity. Stories are such a powerful way to reach and engage people yet they are too often bypassed because they're not considered that valuable or strategic.

I agree with Rich that clients focus on messages that have no relevance for customers. There are so many stories lurking inside companies just waiting to be told. Unfortunately, a lot of people think story is just an anecdotal or one-dimensional tool instead of a narrative vehicle that can transport intriguing ideas (and yes key messages) to customers with impact and relevance.

[Mark Aronson]

Aesop is the godfather of narrative content. Speaking to the C-level folks, you get the executive summary alone -- an abstract generalization; the moral, if you will. True? Who knows? More important, who cares?

But speak to the field engineers or the reps or the district managers or whoever constitutes the middle and you get funny, engaging or hair-raising stories...FOLLOWED by the (by then) self-evident moral, which usually supports the enterprise's incredible expertise or customer service or plain old moxie.

Because you care about the story, you care about its conclusion. And that trumps bullet points any hour of any day.

[Jamie Favreau]

Thank you for posting this. I have been wondering how you get your story told. As Mitch Joel says, "It isn't about YOU, but about who KNOWS YOU." Which can be applied to your story and telling it for you. Seth Godin speaks of this as well. Just there is never a strategy really teaching how to help people tell your story. Thank you for showing me how.

[Mark Jaffe]

I couldn't agree with you more, Valeria

Robert Dickman, in a 2003 article published by the Society of Organizational Learning and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, defined a story as “a fact wrapped in an emotion that can compel us to take action.”

Story certainly is what causes us to become personally involved and create greater degrees of engagement in either personal or business communication.

I have written more about the effect of story on mobile advertisng at http://mobilemandala.com/2009/09/27/ten-reasons-why-mobile-advertising-has-not-reached-its-potential-6/

[Sreekumar J]

Hi Valeria,

Inspiring article. I felt this as kind of content consulting, free of cost.

Thanks for sharing useful information.
I have joined as Fan@ConversationAgent.

[Lynne d Johnson]

Valeria

This post couldn't come at a better time. I've been talking to brands a lot about being the chief storyteller for their brands by synthesizing what they hear in the digital world into a brand narrative. And though I'm mainly speaking in the B2C category, what you've shared here about B2Bs is really insightful.

Thanks

[Eric Morgenstern]

Good thinking and nice post! Creating relationships and positioning your B2B offerings as a "thought leader" allow social media to have a meaningful role as part of the storytelling. Here's our current take on social media for B2B: http://www.morningstarcomm.com/LuminaryBlog.aspx?id=1872

[John Bottom]

Valeria

Great post. Too often we are facts first and story second. In fact, when it comes to convincing people of the need for good writing, I may well use some of your words to tell my own story.

Thanks, John

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Rich - beware of the too formulaic approach. In some organizations the solutions or products parts are owned by one group, the brand by another. Which often means this really polar personality that doesn't stick at all.

@Allan - probably because you can't message your customers too much. Seriously, there's this constant need for group validation that prevents a company from developing a voice.

@Harriet - and to think that stories are what connect people to each other, including customers to companies.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Mark - caring about the story is as important as the story itself. I like how you bring in Aesop, I'm a student of the classics, so you just scored major points with me.

@Jamie - I drew a correlation between points made by people smarter than I, but thank you nonetheless for the compliment. In the reality of my B2B experience, I know that even this simple process is so hard to do. It's way too tempting to go after the complicated terminology to sound cutting-edge.

@Mark J. - looks like we're like minded, I quote myself sometimes, too. Thank you for the useful link. Mobile is the next point of interaction and it's all too personal to take it lightly.

@Sreekumar - see how lucky you are? Seriously, thank you for stopping by. You're very kind.

@Lynne - connecting some dots in my experience. Writing here has been a valuable use of my time as my thinking continues to be evolved by experience and conversations. Story appears soft and like all soft things, it tends to be underestimated. I saw, beware of the soft stuff, it'll get you every time.

@Eric - I'm not sure hat happened, but the link to your post takes me to an empty page. If you'd like to email me the proper link, I'll fix it in the comment.

@John - story is our brain's shortcut to remember valuable information. It's genetic and environment, born of necessity when writing had not been invented. People forgot facts, but remembered stories from generation to generation. The key is to embed the facts in your story as support actors.

[Adam Needles]

Hi, Valeria.

I like this reminder that we need to focus on stories -- especially in the B2B marketing realm. This too often gets lost.

I'd add to this that the story B2B buyers are interested in tends to be very 'solution' oriented -- one call-out of how ineffective product-centric content can be.

I'd also add that we should conceptualize and rationalize our content increasingly in terms of the dialogue that sales folk used to have with buyers but that no longer happens -- that 'trusted advisor' mentality that pervaded sales training of 20 years ago. Marketing more than ever is managing the upstream dialogue. And so the content and voice should map back to upstream stages of the education dialogue w/ buyers -- helps to better get our arms around this and figure out what we should write, when and where. And back to your point ... it should tell a story.

My two cents.

Adam Needles
B2B Marketing Evangelist
Silverpop

Twitter: @abneedles
Blog: http://www.silverpop.com/blogs/demand-generation/

[Valeria Maltoni]

Yes, I will dive in more on the when and where part as a follow up on my buyer's cycle post. This is something I'm doing a deep dive on as of late and it's really fascinating to me.

The other test I'm running is on providing content that helps our customers explain to their business counterparts the importance of their role to the business. They are tips, trends from our experience, and so on.