What piece of seemingly insignificant web content causes 44% of your visitors to leave if it’s missing – and 51% say is the most lacking content on vendor websites? Learn the answer and two more critical but often neglected assets.

If your website is designed to be responsive, where your content appears depends on what device the reader is using -- and even how the device is oriented. Now that we live in a multi-screen world, the idea of keeping online content "above the fold" is meaningless. Learn more about leaving the idea of "above the fold" behind.

Some results in a recent B2B web usability report were surprising. Specifically, the report found that two types of website content that most marketers don't even think about play a huge role in helping B2B buyers move forward with a vendor. Learn more about the report, including why 55 percent of potential B2B buyers might not trust your website content.

These days it is essential for marketers to consider how readable their content is on tablet screens. For content marketing design best practices, try these 3 guidelines for creating eBooks that will work well on tablet devices and smartphones.

Last year CMI blogger Jennifer Watson wrote a terrific article, The Audience Content Marketers Can’t Afford to Ignore – But Almost Always Do, that discusses how content marketers often forget our most important audience – sales people! In her article, Jennifer cites data from the American Marketing Association that says sales people spend 30 hours a month creating their own sales materials and that 90% of marketing deliverables aren’t used by sales. When I worked corporate in a previous lifetime before the Internet, I saw this first hand. Sales reps were forever creating their own marketing collateral even when it already existed. Talk about frustrating! Continue reading

You can find dozens of really good applications, books, and blogs on how to simplify your work, become more productive, and manage your time. Much of this advice is good, but it doesn’t cover how to manage the deluge of “tasks” that come along with social media and creating content: e.g. responding to invite requests, direct messages, answering blog comments, publicizing content, reading blogs, following people, monitoring online reviews, etc. If you’re feeling anxious or overwhelmed – and many of the content marketers I talk to are (big time!) – the solution isn’t “manage your time better.” Instead, it’s about changing how you work in response to how your job has changed.Continue reading

Over the years, I’ve had many B2B manufacturing clients want to include what I refer to as “so what?” information on their Websites, blog posts and press releases. This “so what?” information includes seemingly useless facts such as the square footage of the manufacturing plant or that the company has purchased new equipment. When I get these types of requests, I’ve learned to ask, “Why is this important?” As a content creator, my job is to think like a reporter. The fact that a company spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase new equipment is important – my job is to find out why.Continue reading

Editor’s note: We’ve updated our annual Manufacturing research study for 2023. As the author of 2010 B2B Manufacturing / Processing Industry Report, I got an inside look into how manufacturers use content marketing. You can read the findings by downloading the report, but the one finding that struck me was this group’s top marketing goal: brand awareness.Continue reading

In the early days of the Internet, web content was an afterthought. The main focus was the printed product brochure. Once the brochure was complete, it was then added to the website, usually in the same format in which it was printed. Because of this history, some B2B companies still consider a website an “online brochure,” a misconception that causes a lot of trouble.Continue reading

At a recent presentation I gave, a gentleman in the audience asked how he could develop content for his business website. A plumber by trade, he and his partner had already optimized and “tricked out” their site for Google Places. I began rattling off ideas . . . but it wasn’t until a few days later that I realized that people don’t need help with understanding the type of content to create (e.g., guides, e-books, white papers, etc.). Instead, people need help with generating the ideas in the first place.Continue reading

As a B2B marketer or content creator, your job is to create pieces of original content that address the needs/concerns/challenges of your audience. As you know, however, the B2B sales cycle, which can be quite complex, often includes more than one “audience” type as buying decisions are made by teams of people: the purchaser, the end users, the internal champion, the department head, etc. So what happens if you’re a small company or department, you have two or more distinct audiences – i.e. techies who want product features and management types who want bottom line benefits – and your budget doesn’t allow you to produce separate content for each audience type?Continue reading

Did you know that your Web analytics application is a wealth of information when it comes to generating ideas for new content? If you are like many people I know, you may look at the top 10 or 20 keywords to give you a good macro view of the search phrases people used to find your site. However, looking at many more of the keywords that people use to get to your site can provide a a lot of ideas.Continue reading