The challenge, of course, is uncovering such gems. While you may think you need to scour the globe to find great stories, the true is they’re probably hiding right under your roof. The following are a few resources you may want to ping to build a library of stories that can boost the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts:

• Your Customers. There’s no better source to tap than your customers. Not only do they represent the audience you’re targeting, they can provide unique perspectives on issues they are facing that your audience can directly relate to.
• Sales Team. Every member of your sales team is on the front lines. Most of their time is spent communicating directly with prospects and customers online, on the phone, at trade shows or in person. Not only do they have a good pulse on what your customers’ biggest issues are, they’ve got volumes of stories they’ve heard from your customers and prospects while in the trenches.
• Customer Service Department. Your customer service department talks to your clients every day. They’ve heard just about every problem under the sun. Not only have they helped your customers through many of the issues your prospects are dealing with, they’ve built strong relationships with them along the way.
• Trade Show Attendees. While trades shows aren’t exactly located in your building, they’re under your industry’s rooftop, which is very important. Interviewing industry leaders and prospects at conferences, forums and other related events is another way to collect specific stories for your content marketing efforts.

Tapping these and other resources can help you build a library of stories you can weave into your marketing campaigns, blogs, videos, white papers, and build case studies around. But the first step is to uncover the storytellers. Once you’ve got a compelling story to tell, you’ll have your audience hooked and wanting more.

Do you have other resources you turn to for stories relevant to your market? Feel free to share them.

As the title suggests, great marketing content deserves nine lives. Having your marketing material sit idle in a single format — whether it’s a press release, white paper or case study — significantly limits the desired results for your corporate marketing campaign. The truth is, everyone absorbs information differently, and we all have different preferences on how we like to communicate online. Nowadays, limiting your content to a single medium might as well be considered a marketing crime because you’re probably losing money on opportunities that would otherwise present themselves through different social media tools.

With the content already written, the next step is to consider how you can repurpose the copy to get it in front of the real audience you’re targeting — your prospects and customers. With so many social media tools at your disposal, it is essential that you leverage them to increase your chances of reaching your target audience. The following are some of the top social media tools you should consider leveraging for all of your marketing content:

1. Website. Having the content on your website allows you to provide links on every marketing tool you leverage, which brings your audience back to where you want them in the first place, your company’s site.

2. Blog. How can a company expect to get the good word out there if they aren’t blogging about it? They can’t. A blog is a critical outlet to voice your thoughts and tie your messages with your industry’s hottest topics.

3. Newsletter. In order to successfully develop a monthly newsletter, repurposing content you’ve recently developed provides a recap of company announcements, unique insights, and industry news you’ve blogged about that your customers might not have come across.

4. Twitter. It goes without saying that any time you blog or make an announcement, you should also Tweet about it. However, because Twitter is an interactive tool, simply posting it is not enough. Repurposing your content to strike up a conversation is essential to spreading the word and positioning yourself as a thought leader.

5. Powerpoint presentation. Industry information in the form of trends, stats or graphics that you’ve included in a white paper, case study or blog can be repurposed into effective Powerpoint slides you can use in customer meetings or webinars.

6. YouTube. Any time you’ve got visuals, whether it’s a compelling screenshot or a videotaped interview at a trade show, posting it on a popular shared-video website like YouTube is another way to get your message out there and position your company as an industry leader.

7. Customer email. We’re always looking for a reason to touch base with our customers and prospects. And there’s no better reason than providing them with useful or educational content they can use to solve problems or make better business decisions.

8. Facebook/LinkedIn, etc. Online social networks and communities no longer limit themselves to family photos of your recent summer vacation. As one of the fastest growing social media tools for companies, leveraging popular online social networks is essential to any marketing program.

9. Contributing article. Online publications are always looking for good material. While they never encourage content that is self-serving, they often publish educational articles from executives and other experts in a particular field. If someone in your company is writing a contributing article, chances are your marketing team has already developed materials that can help support the key points they are trying to make in the article.

So, the next time you make a company announcement or post a blog, consider how you can repurpose or customize existing content for another platform. By leveraging multiple social media tools and channels, you are giving your marketing content the nine lives it deserves to reach your target audience, create new opportunities, and nurture your leads through the sales process.

In this post Steve Blank calls out some of the pitfalls of typical investor pitches and focuses in on how the more data you can present from your interactions with customers and prospects the better. It’s all about showing what you have learned and how it has made your company better.

I especially liked his call out of where you are in your startup cycle:

1. On the bottom, and least convincing are statements about your “idea.”
2. Next are hypothesis – “I think customers will care about x or y”
3. Better are facts from customers – “We interviewed 30 customers with 20 questions”
4. Even better is “Customer Validation”– “We just got $50K from a customer” or “we got 100,000 users spending x minutes on our site”
5. Finally if you’re ever so lucky – “Everyone’s buying in droves and we’re here because we need money to scale and execute”

Strive to be further down the list and communicate that to your investors. If you are looking to raise money, Steve Blank’s post is worth another look.

For B2B marketers, a key part of your lead nurturing program is establishing your business as a trusted resource for information that’s relevant to your customers’ needs. The last thing you want to do in your marketing efforts is come across as another tunnel-vision marketer trying to force feed your message down everyone’s throat. Each marketing touch — whether it’s through a personal email, company blog, newsletter, or any other social media tool — should position your company as a knowledgeable, thought leader that provides useful information that helps prospects in their decision-making process.

While my last post provided tips on how to attract customers in a hurry, nurturing those relationships takes time. Building the foundation for a strong business relationship starts with an open dialog that not only shows that you understand your customers’ problems and concerns, but that you are there to help. Here are a few things B2B marketers should consider when developing a lead nurturing program:

• Demonstrate that you understand and care about your customers’ needs
• Communication should be conversational
• Content should include timely, relevant information your customers can use
• Make yourself readily available
• Reply to inquiries and follow up in a timely fashion

Today’s customers are hungry for information, and they’re turning to the Internet to find it. By establishing yourself as a trusted industry resource they can turn to, they will pay attention to your future lead nurturing efforts. Once you’ve done that, you’ve set the foundation for a trusted business relationship. After all, most business deals aren’t won through the products and services, they’re earned through the trust of the people behind them.

Catchy headline: With the average screen time just a few seconds, you have to connect with the customer fast. That means the headline alone can make or break an opportunity. Keeping your headline or subject line simple and catchy is critical to getting your reader to take the next step.

Break it down: Remember that drop-dead gorgeous guy or girl you once saw across the room and when you started talking to them you couldn’t get away fast enough? Listen, as marketers we’re always tempted to tell the world everything we do and how we solve all of their problems. But for customers, it’s simply too much to digest in one sitting. Stick with a few strong key points or messages that can lead them in the direction you want them to go.

Appropriate length: As I mentioned earlier, while you might catch their attention with a clever headline, keeping their interest all the way through is another challenge. There is no set rule for how long blogs, LinkedIn or Facebook posts need to be, but keeping it concise is always something to keep in mind. Highlighting your key points using bullets or simple illustrations can also help deliver your message quickly, so they can take the next step you ask them to (see Call to Action).

Using the right tools: While I can spend another blog discussing this one, the tools you use to connect with your customers are critical. You don’t want to walk into a Red Sox Nation convention wearing a Yankee cap, right? Understanding where your target audience is, where they are doing their research, the online social communities they’re in, these are all critical pieces of information you need to find out to make sure you’re investing your valuable time with the right social media tools.

Always have a Call to Action: This simple marketing rule has been around forever, and for good reason. Customers won’t take action unless you tell them what to do. Make sure your call to action is seamless, such as a single click directly to the webpage you want them to go to. That only takes a few seconds, which is never out of the question when you’ve got your reader engaged.

As an online B2B marketer, social media is merely the tool you’re using to connect with customers and keep them engaged. The goal is to move them along to bigger and better places such as your website, or even better, your office. Figuring out the most effective tools to reach out to your customers and market to them is essential to achieving your social media objectives. I’d love to hear any tips you have for developing quick and effective messaging in your social media campaigns.

Blogging, when done correctly can be a very important of many different aspects of your overall marketing strategy. Here are five different ways I have used blogging outside of the blog itself:

• Repurpose blogs in your newsletter – One of the most common reasons companies don’t generate regular newsletters is a lack of interesting content. If you are blogging regularly, they are perfect for inclusion in your newsletters and generate very good click through rates.
• Populate dynamic content on your website – By using proper categories you can create custom posts that keep your web content fresh and relevant in different sections of your website. A perfect use of this tactic is on your industry pages.
• Link blogs through social media – This one is a no-brainer, yet people often still fail to use their blogs on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites to engage their community and solicit feedback and comments.
• Use a blog in press outreach – Often a short blog can be the seed of a longer and more detailed article that your PR team can pitch to publications. In this case your blog serves as an abstract for your idea and also establishes your expertise in a given area.
• Use your blog as a competitive sales tool – I have often used a blog as a way to address a corporate position on a competitive topic. You can do this without naming your competition (or not), but still highlight your key competitive issue and make your case. Your sales team can then reference this post that I have found to be far more effective than a static competitive grid. The nice thing about this as well is how flexible it is to address a changing competitive environment.

There are many reasons for blogging beyond what I mention here, including search, thought leadership, and customer/prospect engagement. Plan your blog and ensure that you get the most out of your investment in this increasingly important marketing vehicle.

As a former journalist, I understand what it takes to create daily content that captivates and educates your audience without burning out. The trick is you simply can’t go it alone. I can attest that although my byline was on top of every one of my newspaper and magazine articles, the final printed product was the work of a team of people who helped plan, research, interview, edit, and provided feedback before any of my articles saw the light of day. The same holds true for creating and delivering Web content. No one can regularly produce engaging content without help from a team of resources that brainstorm ideas and gather information that helps keep you in the loop of what’s happening in your respective industry. Here are a few ideas you might consider for helping you gather information for your Web content.

Leverage internal resources — Recruit everyone you can in your organization for potential ideas, stats, or stories they’ve heard. Build a team of internal experts in their particular areas to funnel articles, blogs, and other social media that is relevant to your industry. It really doesn’t take much on their part and you’ll gather more timely and useful information than you ever would, in half the time.

Talk / listen to your customers — The key to any B2B marketing piece is to engage your customers with useful information that’s important to them. If you want to know what your customers want to read about, what better way is there than to talk to them. You’d be surprised how many great ideas for blogs and articles can surface from casual conversations with the very people you’re writing to.

Follow relevant social media — While this goes without saying, following other blogs, articles, Tweets, etc. that cover your space can do wonders for content creation. Following daily conversations, the latest happenings, and hottest industry trends through social media feeds is another way to funnel ideas directly to your desk.

Surround yourself with a team of editors — As a writer, I know that we are our own worst critics. But I have to say that getting feedback from others, who aren’t as close to the material as you are, really helps. Having a team of resources to bounce off ideas, outlines and drafts can strengthen and clean up the point you’re trying to make. They don’t have to be trained copyeditors (but those with experience helps), but having a fresh pair of eyes to review your content before it’s published is always a good idea.

The point is, we can’t magically pull relevant content out of thin air, particularly if we’re working alone. It really takes a pool of resources to consistently create Web content that’s fresh and relevant to your audience. In a world where resources are plenty, use them. As a result, you’ll be filtering too many good ideas rather than scrambling at the last minute for content. And that’s a good problem to have.

These are just a few ideas to think for content creation. I’d love to hear about the different resources you use for developing relevant B2B content for your readers.

Here are the slides from that presentation. I would love to hear your feedback!

Following the presentation I will be making the slides available on Slideshare and on this blog. I’m looking forward to meeting everyone.

Guiltily holding your hand up? You’re not alone, but it is pretty well established that this approach no longer work. Playing the numbers game of less than 1% response on marketing outreach to unknown contacts doesn’t have a future.

Social media and the decline of traditional media have changed the marketing discipline forever. Broadcasting marketing messages to a vast population who may or may not care is a marketing formula for failure. It is more important than ever to tailor your outreach and messages to connect to people who care.

Tailoring your marketing to be interesting and relevant to the people who receive it will both increase its effectiveness and build relationships with your company’s customers, prospects, and contacts. This often difficult task can be made easier by utilizing social media to identify, listen to, and connect with the true fans of your company, your peers or competitors, and your industry as a whole.

Seth Godin, one of today’s most recognizable marketing visionaries, wrote about this on his blog titled “The circles (no more strangers).” In this blog he states “one true fan is worth perhaps 10,000 times as much as a stranger.”

If this is true, how do you know who your true fans are? How do you effectively market to them? What do they care about? Following are some suggestions of how you can use social media to guide a true fan marketing strategy.

Identify the right fans – The first step is simply understanding and knowing who your true fans are. True fans aren’t necessarily people who are evangelists of your company. They could be proponents of the broader category of technology that you sell or could even be fans of your competitors. Use social media to identify people online who have something to say about you, your competitors or your industry and follow them. Twitter is an ideal medium for identifying fans, but you can also identify relevant blogs, Facebook fans and LinkedIn group participants who will add to your list. If you could create a list of the 1,000 people who cared most about your industry and who influenced others, what would it be worth to you?

Listen to your fans – Once you have identified and followed the fans of your company and your industry, listen to them. Establish a process for regularly watching the trending topics of the people who care about your space.

Fish your pond, not the ocean – If all you are fishing for is fresh water trout, why are you looking for them in the ocean? Search is an extremely important component of your marketing strategy, but it isn’t precise. Google and other search engines require you to be highly specific in your search terms otherwise you are flooded with irrelevant data. Wouldn’t it be nice to refine search to the output from your true fans? Create a data feed from your fans outputs and then use search more effectively on broader terms. As someone who has worked in the security industry, looking at a Twitter feed of anyone who mentions “security” isn’t that useful. There is simply too much data. If I could search on that same term from the 1,000 people who care about my space, everything changes.

Engage with your fans – Once you know who your fans are and what they are talking about, you can more effectively interact with them. Reply to their tweets, comment on their blogs, or generate your own content that addresses an emerging topic that your fan base is talking about. All of this will serve to strengthen the connections to your closer community.

Market to your fans – Your true fan marketing list should be one of your most valuable marketing assets. As you establish these contacts your marketing promotions can become that much more effective and viral. Your fans should be at the top of mind when you do any of the following things:

• Solicit product feedback
• Launch a product
• Promote an event
• Publish a whitepaper
• Host a webinar or online forum

Give your fans the tools to market for you – The whole point of marketing to your fans is that they have reach and influence that you simply won’t be able to achieve. Generate promotional items and marketing content that your fan list can get behind, promote to their own network and evangelize on your behalf. Your pipeline growth from these efforts will be of a much higher quality and allow your sales team to be much more productive with their interactions.

Many companies spend an enormous amount of time and energy focusing on how to grow their contact database and marketing to that list. You need to spend time understanding who your fans are and using them to increase the quality of that list and the effective use of your limited resources.