This is the third installment of our three-part workshop: How to Stand Up a B2B Marketing Program in One Quarter.
Now that you have a batch of content ready to go, you’re finally ready to share it with the world. Before you push anything live, take the time to piece together an amplification strategy that leverages your network and gets more eyeballs on your content. Measure the performance of your content, evaluate feedback, and consider how you want to iterate the next batch of content you create. Finally, reflect and formalize the processes and systems that will support your content program going forward.
This month, you’ll get yourself into position to publish all that original content you’ve created, then you’ll push it live and see how it performs. You’ll also reflect on this entire project and plan your go-forward moves. Here’s this month’s weekly breakdown of content tasks:
Week 1: Create a replicable amplification strategy.
There’s a whole universe of people who can help amplify your new content if you know where to look for them. The individuals on your team, your own professional network, company advisors and investors, and strategic partners to name just a few. A replicable amplification strategy should include an “easy ask” to these people - one that includes pre-drafted language, a URL, and instructions about when to share - as well as a plan to promote via your company’s own corporate accounts.
Other avenues for promoting content include paid ads, email signatures, and your company newsletter. Determine which avenues you want to use and pull them together into a simple checklist that you can follow each time you have a new piece of content to promote.
Week 2: Push that content live!
This is the fun week - when you finally get to share your new content with the world. After you push “go” and deploy your amplification strategy, your task is to pay attention to (and engage with) the feedback, inbound requests, and comments your new content generates. Having a new piece of content is a great reason to reach out to people - so don’t be shy about emailing clients, partners, and peers with a “we just released this article / podcast / white paper, would love to know your thoughts.”
Week 3: Figure out what makes sense to measure.
You’ll get a much better idea of your content’s performance if you take a snapshot of your relevant metrics - views, opens, click-throughs, listens, followers - the week after you post something. In addition to tracking the numbers that are easy to measure, pay attention to the inbound opportunities generated by your content.
Add these performance metrics (both quantitative and qualitative) to your editorial schedule to give yourself benchmarks to reference when considering future content. Eventually, you’ll be able to use this information to track trends and inform the content you choose to produce.
Week 4: Get your systems straight.
The final step to any quarterly project is the requisite post-mortem. Reflect on what worked, what didn’t, what you learned, and where you’d like to take things next. Then create an ongoing editorial process to follow in the coming quarters. Be sure to include systems for how to ideate content (for example, open a company Slack channel and solicit input from the wider team), expand your amplification strategy (for example, testing out a paid channel), and gauge success (for example, setting measurable goals like building your subscriber base to 2500 by EOY).
Review the first installment of this workshop: B2B Content Marketing: Setting Your Strategy and Marshalling Your Resources
Review the second installment of this workshop: B2B Content Marketing: Ideation, Creation, and Distribution
As always, I'm available to chat about your growth, content, or anything else marketing related. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to me at jamie@fuelcapital.com.