No More Random Acts of Content

By: Todd Clouser

AI has made it too easy to forget that good content marketing isn’t a check in the box.

It has shown us that it’s not just about being consistent, but consistently delivering content that makes your audience think (or have an a-ha moment).

So with thousands of generic, AI-written pieces of content being pumped out every day, how do you become your industry’s go-to for information?

We believe it’s through building an audience of super fans that spread your message for you.

But how?

Well, you start by evaluating your current content strategy.

Look through your blog, podcast, webinars, or anything else you create on a regular cadence. If your goal is to build an audience, you should be able to answer two things with everything you create:

1. Who is this meant for?

2. What do you want to happen if/when this person becomes a fan?

Pause for a moment. Look at your latest content pieces and answer those two questions.

Most people will answer like this:

1. [INSERT ICP]

2. Request a demo/see retargeting ads

These are short-term goals.

And if you're constantly striving for short term success, you're setting yourself up for long term failure. When building fandom, we have to strive for different goals.

As an exercise, list out your ICP in three areas:

Top Down - The person who needs to sign off on any change you would implement

Middle Out - The person who needs to implement the change.

Bottom-Up - The person living in your product everyday.

Once you identify these groups, look internally to see who matches these roles on your own team.

This is where you start your new content journey.

Your goal is to make these people publicly known and accepted as experts.

But before you go ahead and make them famous (or as famous as one can be in the B2B-verse), you have to know what they’re trying to accomplish with their content.

And this is where that second question comes into play, “What do we want to happen if/when this person becomes a fan?”

Rather than thinking about this in a tactical sense of the action they’ll take (request a demo or see an ad), think about what you want to leave them with. This can vary by company, but here’s a good structure to follow:

Top Down:

The purpose of turning your top-down audience into fans is to change the way they think about the world to align with yours. These are the strategic decision makers within your target accounts, so in many cases, if they’re not bought in, the rest doesn’t really matter. This is where your strategic narrative plays a huge role.

Middle Out:

Once you’ve achieved the goal of getting strategic buy-in, you have to set them up for success. The people implementing these programs are likely new to it and need detailed instructions on how to be successful. This is where your tactical how-to content comes in.

Bottom Up:

This is the modern day evangelist program. The B2B referral playbook 2.0. This content shows the end user of the product that you’re built for them. You understand their day-to-day because you’re living it right there beside them. Think of any company that ever said “Built for [target audience] BY [target audience]. This content walks the walk instead of just talking the talk.

But you may still be asking yourself, “Okay, but how do we do that? And how do we do that cost effectively?”

One of the most effective ways to do this efficiently is by creating series.

• A series for each person you identified earlier that matches the target.

• A series that is built with those long-term outcomes in mind.

• A series that eliminates random acts of content and ensures that everything you create has purpose.

We believe creating content this way is so powerful because it makes the host more memorable than if they were creating random content.

And the first part of building an audience is being remembered for something.

Stay B2B my friends!

- Todd