Introduction

A recently published report from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs noted that 93% of B2B Marketers are using content marketing. Let’s hope you’re not a part of the 7%. With such a high rate of content marketing adoption, competition is fierce. Not only is your content “up against” your direct competitors; you’re also fighting for attention against all other B2B marketers.

Let's say your content is about marketing automation, while another piece of content is about Hadoop. If your reader chooses to read the Hadoop article and forgets to return to your marketing automation piece, then you’ve “lost” that mini-battle. In this piece, I’ll cover tactics you can use to stand out from the crowd. Since everyone’s doing content marketing, you need to attract attention by being unique.

Create a perpetual motion machine of content.

Consider the top content marketers. They’ll publish multiple times per week on their blog (some may even most multiple times per day). They’ll create new videos, white papers, eBooks and webinars each and every month. They publish so much content that readers can’t even keep up (and that’s OK). And, they don’t sacrifice quality for quantity.

Marketers who create a perpetual motion machine of content are unique. And it’s this uniqueness that creates a sustainable advantage for them. Consistently churning out high quality content is not something competitors can easily copy.

Vary your content formats.

Good content marketers re-purpose their content. Great content marketers vary with a purpose. You’ll want to take that webinar and create multiple pieces of content from it: a Slideshare, a podcast, a white paper, a few blog postings (and a little bit of gravy to go on top).

But don’t pigeonhole yourself into a fixed set of media. If you’ve been doing webinars and blog postings for years, plan to do something completely different next quarter. How about a video-based comedy skit? Or a bus tour to visit customers? Maybe doing your next eBook in the form of an audio download (with 25% set to music)?

Marketo did a coloring book. Have a read through this Social Media B2B piece for more on that (and others).

Surprise people.

Each day at work, I either wear khakis or cargo pants (depending on how formal I feel like dressing). I pair a dress shirt with the khakis and a T-shirt with the cargo pants. What if I wore a suit and tie into the office? I’d be noticed and I'd receive comments from at least half of my co-workers (the other half would just think I’m unusual).

If people always expect you to do one thing, then do something completely different, to create attention. So do something that your audience isn’t expecting. Give them free product for a week. Write about a topic you’ve never covered before. Publish something that’s completely unrelated to your business.

Take a stand.

Rand Fishkin, Founder and CEO of Moz, took a stand against Google. By suppressing keyword data on organic search queries (but preserving that data for Google AdWords customers), Google is abusing its monopolistic position, according to Fishkin.

The statement from Fishkin drew a lot of attention. In fact, HubSpot’s Dan Lyons published a blog post with details of Fishkin’s stand, which he (Fishkin) communicated via video.

Fishkin didn’t stop by just taking a stand, however. The bulk of his video informed marketers about how to adapt to Google's changes. He provided a number of useful tips on how to work around “Not Provided” to infer some of the same data that we used to receive from Google.

So don’t just take a stand for the sake of it. Take your stand, then provide useful information related to it.

Produce and publish long form, ungated content.

Give us useful, in-depth content and “put it out there” for all to see. You’ll still need to produce gated white papers (to drive new leads), but add ungated content to your editorial calendar. A representative from Google once said, “we encourage original, high-quality content, since that's what's best for web users.” If your high-quality content is behind a registration page, then Google (and many others) will never see it.

Long form content is a golden opportunity right now: the field is wide open for you to produce useful content that both readers and search engines will love.

For info on how to produce in-depth content, have a look at these two resources:

1. Search Engine Watch: A Great Strategy to Create In-Depth Evergreen Content
2. Copyblogger: How to Write the In-Depth Articles that Google Loves

1. KISSmetrics: How to Regain Lost Traffic with These Remarketing Strategies
2. Buffer: 7 Big Facebook Changes You Should Know About for a Better Facebook Strategy
3. Social Media Examiner: Content Marketing: How to Attract People With Content
4. TOPO: Sales and the Buyer: Why Sales Misunderstands the Buyer
5. Copyblogger: How a Stay-at-Home Mom Built a Million-Dollar Business

Conclusion

With 93% of B2B marketers doing content marketing, the bar has been raised. It’s no longer enough to produce content. In addition, it’s no longer enough to produce quality content. You need quality plus uniqueness to reach today’s reader. Are you ready to think differently?

Related SLIDESHARE

Our SlideShare provides ten quick tips on content marketing. This was based on a webinar presentation, with a hat tip to Ethos3 who did a design makeover on our original deck :-)

10 Quick Tips for More Effective Content Marketing from DNN