Content marketing remains at the forefront of every B2B marketer’s mind. Econsultancy partnered with Adobe and recently published their Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing: 2014 Digital Trends which proved that B2B marketers are significantly more likely to call out content marketing as one of their top-three priorities for the year ahead (44% for B2B compared to 28% for B2C).
Since the majority of your competitors are focusing on content marketing, blogging alone will not cut it anymore. How you repurpose your content can have a major impact on traffic, shares, and leads. Don’t create a weekly blog post and never think about it again. If you publish a piece that gets significant traffic, take note and use it in the future. Ebooks and digital magazines are a great way to build your email list, and you can easily turn several similar blog post into an one ebook or a digital magazine on mobile app.
Another way to use previous blog posts to expand your reach is by utilizing SlideShare. SlideShare receives over 60 million unique visitors each month, most of whom are in the B2B space. You will gain a wider audience for content that you’ve already created, and it will help with SEO, as well. Here’s our ultimate guide for integrating SlideShare into your content marketing strategy.
Optimize Your Profile
Like LinkedIn and Twitter, your profile and headlines matters, for branding as well as SEO purposes. Pay special attention when crafting your Headline (Use up to 255 characters and include relevant keywords), your Bio (you have up to 655 characters) and Tags (which will make it easier for your target audience to find you. For a more comprehensive blueprint on how to build the perfect profile, check out this post.
Make Sure Your CTA’s are Relevant and Clickable
What CTA’s get the most clicks? At Social Media Today, they recommend:
“When deciding which offer you want to use to entice CTA engagement, consider the marketing funnel and where your offers reside. Top of the funnel offers like ebooks, guides and whitepapers have a much higher probability of receiving click-throughs and conversions. Middle of the funnel offers like case studies and webinars will have less engagement. Bottom of the funnel offers like free assessments and demos will have the least amount of engagement.”
Make Your SlideShare as Social as Possible
Just like with your blog posts, your content isn’t going to share itself. It is critical to distribute your SlideShare on relevant social media channels, and to make it as easy as possible for others to share as well. One of the best ways to encourage sharing is with a free social media service called ClickToTweet. With this tool, viewers can easily tweet an actual quote from an individual slide or a “Twitterable moment” — a quote or data point that people will want to share. Here’s a presentation on how to set ClickToTweet up. Be sure to include a hashtag so you can continue the conversation.
Authorize Your SlideShare Profile with Google+
We’ve discussed the importance of Google+ Authorization before. Quick Sprout did a case study of Catalyst, a company that saw a 150% boost in traffic after implementing Google’s authorship markup and getting the rich snippet to show up for its content.
You can authorize your SlideShare profile with G+ as well. By doing this, whenever your SlideShares surface in Google search results, your profile picture will be added to them. Besides establishing credibility and legitimacy to your content, authorship can improve click-through rates on your content. For step by step instructions on how to set this up, see this blog post.
Consider LeadShare
LeadShare is part of SlideShare’s pro (AKA paid) service that allows you to collect customer leads through your presentation. When you activate LeadShare, the viewer will see a popup contact form when they download your presentation, after the presentation, or if the presentation is embedded in a different blog or website. These leads are then stored in your dashboard, so you can follow up with each visitor individually.
Track The Effectiveness of Your Campaign
When it comes to content marketing, there is no exact science. In the beginning, it takes time and experimentation to learn which distribution channels are right for your audience. Google Analytics will become the your best friend. Track the unique views, downloads and shares of each SlideShare you publish. Are these people turning into leads? The only way to learn is to record and benchmark.