If this is indeed the case, what can we learn from publishers that will help us become better brand marketers? Well, here’s a few thoughts.

Write to your audience: Any niche magazine knows its audience. They know their interests (which is essential for attracting advertisers), they know industry trends and their readers’ problems and concerns. Instead of touting their products and services, publishers produce and deliver content that caters to the specific needs of their audience, not their own.

Provide meaningful content they can use: Part of the reason people subscribe to magazines or industry journals is to educate themselves and gain deeper knowledge from experts about a particular subject. The same applies to someone researching information online. In most instances, they want to keep up with industry trends and hear what credible experts have to say about the problems they’re dealing with and available solutions.

Think like an editor: My partner at Mindlink Marketing, Scott Olson, wrote an excellent article entitled, “Need sales leads, think like an editor,” that highlights key strategies for leveraging social media for lead nurturing. The bottom line is delivering interesting, relevant content not only establishes a connection with your readers who remember you when they are ready to purchase, but builds your brand in the eyes of consumers.

So, whether you’re blogging, tweeting, advertising, refreshing your corporate website, or pushing new, downloadable content in the form of webinars, whitepapers or case studies, brand marketing is becoming more and more about publishing. Heck, even the oldest marketing activity — word-of-mouth communications — has gone viral. As I wrote in a previous blog, “How social media enhances the customer experience,” social media allows marketers to establish their brand, build stronger relationships with their customers, and immediately fan out the flames when disgruntled customers express their opinions across Twitter, Facebook, or some other online social community.

This is why brands are getting serious about becoming media companies, which according to Pulizzi’s article, is the direction many leading marketing experts believe content marketing is headed in 2011.

While commenting on popular topics can potentially drive more traffic to your blog, as B2B marketers, it should not be the driving force behind your content development. From a sales and marketing perspective, if your material is not attracting your target audience your efforts will be all for naught, no matter how much you increase your blog traffic.

The strategy for any corporate blog should be to deliver valuable content to your target audience, whether it’s educating them about a relevant topic or generating interest in a solution that solves their problems. This works for both lead generation and lead nurturing programs. While discussing your customers’ business challenges and demonstrating how your products or services solve their problems is relevant material for your readers, attracting a broader audience sometimes requires all little creativity such as getting into the mix of timely stories that are relevant to your industry.

I’m not saying you need to become an ambulance chaser who scours the Internet for any story that matches your top keywords. If the story is not relevant to your readers, it’s probably not worth writing about. Any attempts to bridge your company with a hot story that’s not relevant to your readers can be viewed as a vain attempt to take advantage of a particular situation. However, when a timely story is relevant and you can provide real value to your target audience, that’s when you’ve struck blogging gold. Providing your perspective on a hot topic, and linking to that story, can significantly increase your blog traffic.

The approach is fairly straightforward. Take a little time each week scanning articles related to your industry. Talk to others in your company about potential angles or perspectives that bring a fresh perspective to the hottest topics in your industry. Lending your knowledge and expertise on subjects important to your readers can provide real value they can use when trying to resolve specific business challenges. In other words, chasing more qualified blog traffic doesn’t require you to become an ambulance chaser on the Internet. All that’s required is delivering relevant content that’s valuable to your target audience.

Recently, there have been a number of articles about how social media helps businesses connect with customers and quickly resolve customer complaints before they gain momentum across the Internet.

In the article, “Turning to Twitter to fix restaurant complaints,” the popular food chain Chipotle describes how a customer Tweeted on the spot their disappointment that a Fort Worth, Texas, location didn’t have corn tortillas. Chipotle, which has employees dedicated to social media, immediately had the Denver, Colo.-based corporate office call the local manager about the situation before the customer even left the restaurant. Now that’s customer service!

The reason businesses are taking notice stems from the idea that if someone with 1,000 followers writes a negative review about a company, 1,000 people will believe whatever is said about the company. Social media enables businesses to provide instantaneous customer service that can help curb problems and enhance the customer experience.

Because of these types of stories, organizations are beginning to catch on. In a recent survey by communication agency Cone, 86% of consumers now connect with companies on new media, an 8% jump from last year. As more and more businesses are building a presence on new media sites, corporate marketers should be forewarned about the increasing interest in brand engagement via new media.

Mike Hollywood, Cone’s director of new media, said “the best new media strategies are those that balance relevant content with timely promotions and ongoing company-consumer dialogue.”

With 59% of respondents saying they make purchases with companies they engaged through new media, it’s becoming increasingly clear that businesses should be making it a priority to include social media in their corporate marketing strategy to provide the level of customer service needed in today’s digital age.

While the process of writing headlines for your B2B marketing materials is both fun and challenging, writing an effective one is not as easy as you would think.

The goal of every headline, of course, is to grab the reader’s attention. If your headline doesn’t make a good first impression that motivates your readers to want to read more, don’t get me wrong your article will still be read, but not by as many readers as you had hoped for. But a well-written headline that strikes a chord with readers can significantly increase the amount of readers that are compelled to read on. And for your B2B marketing and lead generation programs, that’s a beautiful thing.

For B2B headlines, there are a few things that are critical in capturing the attention of your audience, and they primarily revolve around benefits. Capturing the value or how the reader will benefit from the article, whitepaper, blog, etc. can greatly improve your ability to expand your readership. When writing your next headline, here are a few things to think about:

Readers eat up numbers: Nothing excites people researching products or services like reading about the financial benefits they can receive from your products. Including hard numbers, percentages or any statistic that instantly shows how your readers can improve their bottom line will make a great first impression on any readers.

Highlight pain points: Businesses trying to solve problems are always looking for experts that understand their space, their top concerns and pain points. If you’re able to squeeze in your headline specific terms that keep them up at night, they will most certainly read on.

Be straightforward: Trying to be too clever with your headlines can sometimes work against you. If readers don’t understand your wit or dry sense of humor you can lose them, or not make a connection at all. Also, don’t create misleading headlines that promise one thing, but deliver another. With the limited amount of time people have to research materials, being straightforward with what they can expect is always the best way to go.

Keep it punchy: While great headlines can vary in length, keeping it short makes it both easier to read and gets straight to the point. There’s a funny term I learned in journalism called energy leaks, which basically describes unnecessary conjunctions such as “that”, “but” or “so” that deflate the energy or power of your stronger adjectives. In other words, if any word in your headline doesn’t strengthen your point, get rid of it. Your headlines should only include words that excite and influence your audience to read on.

Feel free to share any of your favorite B2B marketing headlines or stories about how a specific headline eventually led to new business. I would love to hear them.

As marketers, we’re always trying to keep it simple. We know that if the message gets too convoluted, it can impact how the industry perceives your brand, not to mention the success of your campaigns.

I once worked for a niche company that did a few things great. As a result, they quickly earned a stellar reputation within the industry. Their clients trusted them so much that they begin asking if the company would take on additional services that were outside the scope of their core offerings. To make their customers happy, the company invested in the resources and began offering the new services to other customers. Over time, however, they couldn’t deliver on the expectations for the additional services. As a result, they began to lose the trust they initially earned with their clients. Then they realized, instead of being a jack-of-all-traits, they needed to reel things back in and rescaled their service offerings. They got back to what they did best.

The moral of the story is to focus on what you do best.

While your company’s product offerings will expand due to mounting pressures from shareholders and the growing competition, the key to handling these marketing challenges is to always focus on the strengths and value of what your company does. I’ve provided a few thoughts on what marketers should focus on when the company is growing.

In this case, Hummer built their product for the wrong group and failed to understand their brand. The Hummer brand is built on gas guzzling excess. Trying to suddenly change directions and market to energy conserving, environmentally conscious groups was bound to fail.

This is an extreme example, but could you be doing the same thing? See if any of this sounds familiar:

• Do you send emails to your sales database without segmentation?
• Do build features to meet new market needs instead of prioritizing the needs of your true fans?
• Do you build a generic website that doesn’t speak to the specific needs of your primary audience?

Take the time to understand your value and your audience. Lots of companies say they are applicable to a broad horizontal market, but often this is evidence of the company not wanting to take the time and make the hard choices to decide who they really are selling to.

It’s better to delight a smaller group and grow from there then try to please everyone. That is a sure path to failure.

Aside from your marketing campaigns, your sales force is the front line of your company. They are out in the field talking to your customers and prospects, following up on the leads you’ve provided them. Because of this, it’s critical that both sales and marketing are on the same page. If there’s a disconnect in what each party is saying to customers it can impact the success of your campaigns and the ability to close sales.

So close yet so far

Having worked for a number of startups and large companies, I can tell you it’s often the case that people sitting one cubicle away don’t really know what the other is up to. So, you can imagine how challenging it can be to ensure entire departments are delivering the same messages at all times.

As marketers, were always coming up with ideas on how to create campaigns that draw in our target audience. More often than not, the brainstorming sessions, content creation and development, and strategy meetings take place exclusively under the marketing tent. So, how is your sales team suppose to stay on message when they don’t usually get word of your marketing campaigns until the leads start funneling in? Therein lies the disconnect between sales and marketing.

Get reacquainted

What’s ironic is that as marketers we try to do much of it all by ourselves — from strategizing our outreach programs to developing creative campaigns that pull readers in. Sales is often the last department we consult with to help us come up with ideas that hit a cord with our target audience. But why? The fact is, sales should be one of the first departments we turn to when developing our core messages. As I mentioned in a previous blog, most of your sales team’s waking hours are spent communicating directly with your customers and prospects (i.e., your target audience). They have a good pulse on what your audience’s biggest issues are and get an earful of your customers’ problems every day.

Since we’re both working towards the same overall goals, it’s time sales and marketing get reacquainted with one another. We need each other to be successful at what we do. Instead of waiting until the quarterly or annual corporate communications meeting to update sales on what numbers the marketing department has achieved, we need to communicate more on the front end, before everything rolls out. Doing so can help improve your quarterly and annual numbers.

Including sales in your marketing brainstorming sessions, getting their feedback on your concepts, and scheduling regular meetings to keep them in the loop about upcoming marketing campaigns is critical to developing more hard-hitting messages, keeping the message consistent across the organization, and generating more quality sales leads.

The key to turning on the thought leadership engine is by focusing on your company’s strengths, experiences and differentiators, and delivering something of value to your audience. When developing content for a thought leadership program, there are a few things you need to consider, including:

• Industry expertise. Having a deep understanding of your sector is the first criteria for thought leadership. Since startups are formed by individuals with vast knowledge and experience in a particular field, this is something you should focus on to demonstrate your expertise and start building confidence with your audience.
• Foresight. You simply cannot position your company as a thought leader without promoting forward-thinking ideas. Thought leaders take existing ideas and move them ahead. They embrace the possibility of change, and are confident enough to share their innovative ideas across various platforms.
• Practical execution. A thought leader’s ideas should not be so far out of reach that they can’t apply to the here and now. Your ideas must be practical and executable. With industry constantly evolving, it’s critical that a thought leader has a clear vision of how to push today’s ideas to the next level and beyond, without losing touch with your audience.
• Customer-centric message. Thought leaders aren’t perceived as opportunist; they’re viewed as people who want to help others. They don’t focus on products or sales. Rather, they address the industry’s top challenges and educate their audience on where the industry is headed, and what steps are needed to tackle evolving issues.
• Building relationships. A company cannot become a thought leader without building strong industry relationships along the way. Initiating conversations, establishing relationships, and pushing the envelope can set the foundation for a thought leader that other businesses view as a knowledgeable, “go-to” resource.

Creating thought-leadership content is all about taking ideas to the next level. Using social media to share your ideas is the first step in positioning your company as a valuable resource people can turn to when seeking advice to resolve problems. For startups, developing a voice through blogs, webinars, public speaking, contributed articles, and other social platforms, is critical to earning a reputation as a true thought leader within your industry.

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.