If you’re a b-to-b content practitioner, perhaps you have shared this experience: It’s planning time, and you’ve gathered the resident subject matter experts for a content strategy session. To encourage creativity and openness, you’ve brought homemade chocolate chip cookies and beer! You start things off with a reminder to the cross-functional team about how important it is to stay focused on audience persona needs and messaging, and you ask them to listen while you walk them through data about what worked over the past year. But while remote attendees are still struggling to get into the Web conference, the commentary begins:
“Why can’t we just update that cool e-book? The sales guys liked that.”
“Can you please make sure we have more demos? The engineers were really angry last year when we didn’t do new demos for all the product updates.”
“Whatever we do, it has to include viral videos. I mean…if those darned cat videos can go viral, why the heck can’t one of ours?”
So, you sigh, take another bite of cookie and try and explain why it’s really important to follow a rigorous, audience-centric approach with clear objectives in devising content strategy, and steer clear of trying to replicate the success of cat memes.
While the need for content strategy has always existed in marketing, the requirement has evolved, as the causal nexus of technology drives greater b-to-b consumer needs and those needs require more technology.
At SiriusDecisions, we’ve identified the need for unique content strategy approaches across three specific areas: content marketing, campaign content planning and Web site content. At our upcoming SiriusDecisions Summit in Las Vegas, we’ll present a SiriusLab session on the scope of content strategy and operations. During this session, we’ll cover why centralized content teams should assess their functional maturity to understand the current state, identify areas for improvement, and consider best practices to adopt. Here’s a sneak peek:
Surely, what we consider an advanced state in content strategy and operations will keep evolving, along with our efforts to engage cross-functional colleagues in content strategy. Join me and John Grozier at the SiriusLab session: “The Scope of Content Strategy and Operations” at SiriusDecisions Summit 2018 in Las Vegas to get the here and now on b-to-b content best practices.
Phyllis Davidson is Research Director, Content Strategy and Operations, at SiriusDecisions. Based in the Silicon Valley, she has 20-plus years of marketing and communications leadership experience, including roles in public relations, executive and M&A communications, global campaigns and content strategy, and demand generation. Follow Phyllis on Twitter @PhyllisMusings