Happy Saturday, Mélange readers! Today, we’ll talk about the three main issues facing modern content marketers today and how to avoid letting them become content bottlenecks, will learn how we can help employees feel more comfortable with artificial intelligence, will get tips on using LinkedIn for lead generation and will see a few examples of ways NOT to write solid marketing copy.
Avoiding the next big content bottleneck
Back in the olden days of content marketing (you know, the mid-2000s) the main problem facing marketers was that we had a lot of good content but very few channels. Then came the technology boom of 2007—including the release of the iPhone, Netflix moving from DVDs to streaming, Google announcing Android and Twitter becoming its own company and growing like crazy—which kickstarted a time of rapid development as software folks scrambled to create tools to help us take advantage of all of these new opportunities. Over time, this has allowed us to shift from broadcasting content via a single channel to achieving nearly one-to-one personalized content on multiple fronts.
So it’s clear sailing from here, right? Not necessarily, says Noah Brier in Martech Today. Because modern-day marketers are now challenged with a completely different issue: a bottleneck on the content side, not on the distribution side. Noah identifies three issues as the typical culprits: needing more content, needing better content or needing the ability to better coordinate your content. What’s the best way to overcome that bottleneck and drive content growth? Find out.
Help employees embrace AI
While its ultimate goal is to make our lives easier, the mere thought of artificial intelligence may seem overwhelming to some on your team, stirring up visions of arduous mathematical equations and high learning curves. But according to an article by Erika Morphy in CMSWire, by easing your company into the new technology, you’ll be able to accomplish the technological shift.
Interviewing research and technical directors, Erika provides a variety of tips for helping timid employees feel more comfortable with AI. For example, set realistic expectations on what they will learn and how long it will take them to become adept with the technology. As technology futurist Ian Khan points out, if it truly takes a minimum of two weeks to feel up-to-speed with a specific technology but the employee feels like they should have mastered it after a single week, it would be easy for them to feel disheartened. By setting and communicating clear, attainable learning expectations, employees can focus on absorbing the information without the constant, secret fear that they are falling behind. Read Erika’s entire article here.
Lead gen using LinkedIn
Are you looking for another way to enhance your lead generation activities? It may be as close as LinkedIn, still the top social network for B2B professionals. In Business2Community, JoAnne Funch shares a handful of tips for using LinkedIn to strategically generate leads.
First, shift your mindset B2B to P2P (people to people), ensuring that your profile reads less like a resume and more like a resource. Focus your profile summary on telling a story of your ideal client, their problem and what you did to solve it. Realize that you have about 6-8 seconds to make a great first impression on your potential client, and make your profile as client-centric as possible, speaking to your ideal client and making it easy for them to immediately understand why your company would be a great fit for their needs. Click here for the remainder of JoAnne’s tips.
Copy that misses the mark
First be clear, then be clever—that’s always been our motto for content here at Perkuto. And it sounds like Nikki Gilliland at eConsultancy would agree. In her most recent article, Nikki shares a few examples of marketing copy that shouldn’t have made the cut—but did—and provides specific feedback on how you can avoid falling victim to the same mistake.
For example, Nikki points out that B2B brands are especially susceptible to falling victim to jargon, pointing out one brand’s “About Us” section which explains that it “enables agile and perpetual improvement in mutual value between you and your customers.” Yikes! Nikki highlights Slack’s more straightforward, less-hyperbolic approach to communication as a model worth emulating—and we tend to agree. Check out all of her tips here.
