Podcast 26: Writing for millennials and why it’s not all me, me, me

The face of the global workforce is changing, and if you’re writing copy for a B2B brand then you’ve got a whole new audience to deal with. Those born between 1980 and 2000 are often considered to be Millennials or Generation Y’ers. And they’re taking over the workplace in unforeseen ways.

From the hype about being self-obsessed to the more accurate picture of people concerned about ethics in and outside the boardroom: there’s a lot of information (and misinformation) flying around about millennials at work.

But what are the real differences between Generation Y and X? Do these differences matter? And just what does it all mean for copywriters working on B2B marketing content?

In a world where nearly half of all researchers of business purchases are millennials: it means a lot.

In this episode, Fiona and I explore how millennials view marketing content, and how you can write with this age group in mind.

Listen now to find out:

  • How technology has shaped millennial attitudes to advertising and marketing
  • The different ways in which Generation X and Y perceive marketing
  • Why old-school marketing tactics are unlikely to work with the new generation
  • How to engage millennials through your copy
  • … and more

Download the episode here (right-click and “save as” to download). Or listen in the player at the top of the page.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Podcast 29: How we made an entire board game based on one blog post

In Epic Content Marketing, Joe Pulizzi talks about the task facing marketers as they fight to gain the attention of their audience: a.k.a. “breaking through the clutter”. It’s a big task, and it’s becoming harder each day.

It takes a lot of creativity and perseverance to make something that’s more than just noise being blasted at your audience. To make something that not only conveys the messages a brand wants to impart, but is also something that audiences will want to interact with.

Facing up to these challenges, we created Funnel! – a board game that focuses on the role of copy in content marketing.

In this episode of Good Copy, Bad Copy, I’m joined by Steve and George to discuss how we made Funnel! here at Radix.

Listen now to find out:

  • Why we wanted to make a board game
  • The importance of sharing ideas
  • How you don’t have to be a geek to make a board game
  • What it takes to whittle down game mechanics into something elegant
  • … and more

Download the episode here (right-click and “save as” to download). Or listen in the player at the top of the page.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Want an even more detailed look at the making of Funnel!? Then check out Steve’s blog post.

Podcast 96: how to make sure your B2B content is inclusive and diverse

In this month’s Good Copy, Bad Copy, we’re getting serious about diversity and inclusion in B2B marketing content.

Guest co-host Kavita Singh, Assistant Editor at B2B Marketing, joins David to share her experiences starting in the UK’s B2B sector as both an American and a woman of colour – and to lay bare the societal shifts we’ve lived through this past year.

We’re also thrilled to interview Natalie Narh, Content Creative at Ogilvy and Vice-Chair of Ogilvy Roots UK, about the importance of deliberation when approaching inclusivity in your B2B content.

Of course, it wouldn’t be the same without a copywriting tip of the month – this time shared by our *newly promoted* not-junior copywriter (woohoo!), Lizzie Cresswell.

Diversity and inclusivity: what can we do better in B2B?

As Natalie puts it so well in our interview, the content we create (even in B2B) is a “mirror to society” – and it’s up to us to include more people in that reflection.

You may well be thinking about what you could possibly do to be more diverse and inclusive in a piece of content about, say, SaaS platforms. But as Natalie explains, there are small, positive changes we can all make to address unconscious biases and practices that can marginalise and exclude minority audiences.

For example, we can put empathy first and ask ourselves questions like:

  • Who will approve this content before it goes live – and why?
  • How might somebody who isn’t “the standard” perceive this content?
  • Are we relying too much on the minorities within our business to drive the positive changes we want to see?

It’s a thought-provoking discussion that I think many of us could learn from. And as Natalie, Kavita and David explore in the podcast: not everyone always gets things right, so if called out, the trick is not to lash back – but to learn and move forwards.

It’s time we got comfortable with being uncomfortable.

You can find Natalie on Instagram and Twitter. The research sources she recommends in the discussion are Robin Walker and A Tribe Called Progress.

In this episode, you’ll find…

01.09 – Introducing this episode’s co-host, Kavita Singh

04:30 – Natalie Narh talks intentional inclusivity in B2B content – and what it means for marketers

19:00 – Kavita discusses the impact of Black Lives Matter and her experiences entering the UK’s B2B sector as a woman of colour

39:00 – Copywriting tip of the month by our own Lizzie Cresswell

Anything you loved in this episode?

(Or really didn’t? That’s fine…)

Tweet us at @radixcom on Twitter or pop us a message on [email protected].

Or, if you want to feature on the podcast itself, send us a voice memo our way.

How to listen 

  • You can download the episode here (right-click and select “Save As” to download)
  • Or you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts
  • Alternatively, add our RSS to your preferred podcast player
  • And don’t forget you can follow us on Spotify

Credits 

  • Huge thanks are due to Natalie Narh for your time and insight. It’s safe to say we’ve all learnt something important.
  • And of course, thank you Kavita Singh for agreeing to co-host with our David – it was great hearing you work together.
  • Finally, thank you Lizzie for the copywriting tip of the month.

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash

The B2B Content Audio Blog #1: B2B blog length and pricing

In recent years, changes to search algorithms have started rewarding quality. That’s just one reason why blog posts are getting longer, better researched… and more expensive.

This is the first of our new audio blog series, putting some of our most popular, interesting and useful content into an easy, listenable format.

In it, David recaps his 2017 post: Good news for clients: we’re raising our blog writing prices.

It explains why we’ve added new, longer blog options, and built in extra time to our other posts too. Now that search algorithms reward quality, we want to spend more time creating better thought-out posts.

You’ll also hear about:

  • The six kinds of blog post we write most often
  • The benefits of longer, better-researched content
  • Why the average blog just keeps getting longer

You might also like our longer, monthly discussion podcast Good Copy, Bad Copy: the B2B Copywriting Podcast.

How to listen

For now, you can use the player above, or download the episode here.

UPDATE: you can now subscribe to us on iTunes, and there’s an RSS feed here.

Get in touch

If you find the audio blog format useful (or even if you detest it), we really want to hear from you. Email [email protected], or tweet at us.

Credits

Audio editing: Bang and Smash

Title music: “Chinny Reckon” by the Nye Bevans

B2BQ&A 113: What’s the best B2B content EVER?

If you’re looking for the very best examples of B2B marketing content, you’ve come to the right place. Because – after a whirlwind of nominations, shortlisting, group stages, and voting – we’ve whittled them down. Nineteen contenders. Five finalists.

And, ultimately, one winner.

In a departure from our usual format, this B2BQ&A tries to ask a question posed by our host: “Just what is the best B2B content of all time?”

Along the way, we find plenty of B2B inspiration, cast an eye over audiences’ changing content preferences, and hear from expert judges like Andrea ClatworthyRobyn CollingeIrene Triendl,  Doug KesslerKatie Colbourne, and Rishi Dastidar… as well as our co-host for this episode, Rockee.io founder (and recently revealed sausage enthusiast) Matt Laybourn.

After about 80 episodes, it’s also our final podcast hosted by Radix Creative Director David McGuire, who’s leaving us to embark on a new adventure. (There’s plenty more B2BQ&A to come, though, courtesy of our new-look hosting team. Wait and see!)

You’ll find a full transcript of this episode at the end of this post… just keep scrolling.

So what can we learn from the best 19 examples of B2B content?

You can find the full list of nominees right here. And, reviewing the vote, here’s what we discovered:

1. In the end, great content wins

Yes, AI-driven filler is making search engine results a bit unreliable lately. But when audiences do find content with true value, they’re all the more likely to appreciate it.

As Matt says: “As much as there’s a there’s a shift in the landscape with Google search results, people will find and gravitate towards really good content… like: I found this awesome thing, and I want to share it with you.”

2. All content needs to earn the audience’s time

Judging the podcast category, Irene says: “There is actually something quite arrogant in assuming people are going to want to listen to you and your guests talk on and on for an hour, or however long the podcast is. So if you do that, I think you owe it to your audience to have something interesting to say and to be really well prepared. And that you’re offering them something that they can’t get elsewhere faster or better. And this is ultimately true for all content, really. People’s time is precious, and you can’t take it for granted that they are going to give it to you.”

Gulp. We’re doing our best, Irene. Honest.

3. Authenticity wins loyalty

The high number of podcasts among the nominees is testament to the rise of community marketing, and the power of getting people to identify with your content.

Matt puts this down to authenticity, saying: “People want to hear a natural conversation, not someone kind of regurgitating, I don’t know, frameworks or the best practice. It’s got to be an authentic thing.”

4. A little wit can even the odds

No spoilers, but among famous players like Adobe Marketing Cloud, GE, and Volvo Trucks, smaller names can really hold their own – all they need is a fresh, witty way to express themselves. Whether it’s a financial blog about Chicken McNuggets, a rhyming explainer video, or – yes – a dating app for cows, content is a realm where a bright idea can carry the day.

Speaking about Iron Mountain’s entry, Rishi says: “Wit and whimsy are rarely used tools in this world. On this evidence, one wonders why.”

Want to skip to the exciting bits? Here’s where you can find them…

4:22 – Best B2B Blog Post

8:52 – Best B2B Podcast

13:20 – Best B2B Long-Form Content

17:20 – Best B2B Video Ads

20:25 – Best Wildcard Content

24:21 – Grand Final: The Best B2B Content of All Time

Next time, if could be your question we’re answering

If you have a question about B2B content writing, we absolutely want to hear it. Send us a voice memo at [email protected].

And if there are any other thoughts you’d like to share (or if you’d just like to say hello to the podcast’s new hosts), you can connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter: @radixcom.

How to listen: 

Credits and thanks

Finally, David has a massive list of goodbye-and-thanks: everyone he’s interviewed or co-hosted with, everyone who’s listened, and everyone who’s sent us a copywriting pro-tip. Thanks to Gareth at Bang and Smash for sound editing heroics, and Hannah Beech for super podcast branding. And especially thanks to Emily King and Fiona Campbell-Howes for birthing this podcast and passing it on. Thank you.

OK. You know we promised you that transcript…?

Transcript: B2BQ&A 113 – What is the best B2B content of all time?

David McGuire: What is the best example of B2B content, ever?

Matt Laybourn: That’s a great question. Let’s ask the very best 10 B2B judges that we can find – and the voting public – to find out.

David: Hello, Listener, and welcome to B2BQ&A, the podcast where we go in search of an answer to your question about B2B content writing.

This is episode 113. And as this year marks the 10th anniversary of our podcast, we’re taking the very unusual step of trying to answer a question from me: “Just what is the best bit of B2B content, ever?”

To help me I’m joined by one of the judges from our expert panel. From rockee.io and the Sausage Factory podcast. It’s Matt Laybourn. Matt, hi! Welcome.

Matt: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here.

David: The Sausage Factory, I’ve got to ask you about that. That’s a new podcast, right? Love the name. Are you just talking about sausages a lot?

Matt: (Laughs) Yeah, so the reason behind it being called the Sausage Factory is because our perception – at least me and my co-host Mark Willis – our perception is we’re in a cycle of endlessly making content at the moment and not worrying about the quality of it. You know, the rise of AI and all of that type of stuff. So things have become a bit of a sausage factory. But the interesting side addition that I didn’t expect for this, is we now have this weird Venn Diagram of B2B marketers and sausage enthusiasts. And it’s kind of this little interesting crossover

David: That Venn diagram is a circle?

Matt: Yeah, you’d think so, but there’s been some discerning comments about certain types of sausages, which, again, is not something we expected to talk about on the pod.

David: Well, you’re very well qualified then if it’s a podcast about content that stands out from the run-of-the-mill because that’s what we’re trying to get to the bottom of today.

Before we go any further, I should probably introduce myself, shouldn’t I? My name’s David McGuire. I’m Creative Director at Radix Communications, which is the B2B tech writing agency. And the reason I get to take the self-indulgent step of posing my own question for this B2BQ&A is that after eight years, this is my last time in the host’s chair of this podcast.

Don’t worry, I’m handing over to a fabulous rotating roster of hosts: George, Katy, Steve, and if you’re very lucky, Kieran. And we have many more brilliant episodes in the pipeline for you. So don’t worry, there is more B2BQ&A to come, just not with me.

So if you do have any comments or suggestions, or you’d just like to welcome the new hosts, you can find Radix on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Announcer: @radixcom.

David: And if you want the show to answer your question on a future episode, record a quick voice note and send it by email.

Announcer: [email protected].

David: Right. That’s enough prevarication. Let’s get on with the serious business of finding the best B2B content of all time.

First, I should start by saying thank you to everybody who put forward their favorite examples of B2B content. We took all of your nominations, and we put them in front of a brilliant panel of 10 B2B marketing experts, as well as senior Radix writers, who helped us to create five category shortlists: best blog, podcast, long-form content, video ad, and a wildcard category for entries that kind of defied description.

We had a public vote, and the winner of each category went forward to the Grand Final, the voting for which closed just a few minutes ago. And in a few moments, we’ll reveal who won. Matt, are you ready?

Matt: I am very ready. I’m very excited. Let’s do this.

David: You sure?

Matt: Yeah. Come on let’s go.

David: Okay, let’s go.

Voiceover: Best B2B Blog Post.

David: Blogs are such a staple of B2B content marketing, it’s no surprise we’ve got lots of strong contenders here. So thanks to Andrea Clatworthy at Fujitsu and Robyn Collinge of WeTransfer who helped our Head of Copy, Matt, and Senior Copywriter George compile the shortlist.

Now, they very particularly enjoyed Beam’s How to Write a B2B Blog Intro that isn’t Boring AF and Hank Barnes of Gartner’s The Tyranny of More, but ultimately the four they selected were as follows:

  • Andy Raskin’s The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen,
  • Assure Hedge’s The Chicken McNuggets’ secret ingredient is not what you think…,
  • Tom Roach on The Wrong and the Short of It,
  • and Velocity Partners’ A Stakeholder Through the Heart.

So Matt, having been writing blogs for a while it feels to me like they’ve changed in nature a lot over the last few years in B2B; that they’ve become more of a mainstay of the content strategy where once they might have been SEO filler, I guess. Is that something that you kind of recognise? Why do you think it might be?

Matt: Yes, it’s an interesting mix at the moment, because you know, things like programmatic AI are starting to kind of make the pendulum swing the other way a little bit again, because we’re getting this kind of overpopulation of essentially facts-based articles. They don’t have editorial quality to them, they’re just telling the reader what they probably were looking for, for that search term.

And it’s funny enough was talking about this earlier, but some of that is fine. Some of that is fine, someone wants a very simple answer to a simple question. But then you start to lose the quality of, you know, where does the editorial come in, where does the tone of voice the brand, the real kind of in-depth, exciting solution-based content to those terms really start to come in.

So, blogs are going through a bit of a whirlwind. And I think it’s harder for brands at the moment, just because of the way Google is trying to figure out how to deal with essentially an influx of content. The barrier to entry to make content could not be lower at the moment, so how do we discern the difference between good, bad and ugly, I guess, at the moment. And Google doesn’t quite know that yet, because I’ve seen so many marketers going, “I just see bad content on search result pages at the moment.”

The battle to be relevant and to be interesting is getting harder and harder. So I don’t know – I’m kind of thinking the pendulum swinging around a little bit and doesn’t quite know where to land at the moment.

David: I think, until Google can sort that out, it might be social and other places, that really will help to reward the best blog content, I suppose. The more there is of this kind of wide base of low-quality content, the more that the real imagination has to stand out.

And I think that’s something that we’ve seen in the winner – with all of these blog posts – but in particular, in the winner, which is Assure Hedge – I think they’re now Alt 21 – which is The Chicken McNuggets secret ingredient is not what you think… which was voted the best B2B content of 2021 by our listeners, and it’s won again here.

Andrea Clatworthy said, “Fab this! Quite long, but a great story, which I enjoyed reading.” And Robyn Collinge agreed. She said, “I bloody love a metaphor to help me understand complex things.” And it’s super to see a blog post that’s built around the kind of storytelling that AI will never be able to do. And people actually recognising the value of that

Matt: A hundred percent. And I think that’s the interesting thing. As much as there’s a bit of a shift in the landscape with Google search results and things like that, people will find and gravitate towards really good content. So social groups, Slack groups, internal sharing groups, and things like that as well, they’ll be like, “I found this awesome thing, and I want to share it with you.”

So the best will still rise above it. We’ve just got a bit of a slight traffic issue in the short term. But normal service will be resumed I’m sure, don’t worry.

David: So congratulations to you, Assure Hedge, the best B2B blog of all time.

Announcer: Best B2B Podcast.

David: Loads of nominations we got here, which is a bit of a surprise given that when you talk about B2B content, podcasts might not be the first thing you think of. But I guess it is all about getting that community who’ll identify with your content, stick up for it, and end up nominating it for things.

Matt, you’re a podcaster yourself and you judged this category, along with Doug Kessler of Velocity Partners and Irene Triendl of Say What? So, what did you think?

Matt: It was a really interesting category. The thing that I was listening out for… so I kind of did my own research recently to get my own pod up and running and go, “What are the things I really like in a podcast?” And one word always comes up, and it’s authenticity.

So a lot of people listen to podcasts on the go on the move – trains, buses, whatever it may be – and they want to hear something that is kind of a natural conversation, not someone kind of regurgitating, I don’t know, frameworks or the best practice. It’s got to be an authentic thing between two or three people. And that’s what I think the very best in this category do for us.

David: Irene also sent us some audio and she found this category pretty tough to judge, I think.

Irene: I have to say, this has been a lot harder than I thought; it’s a tough category. I think for me, the key thing is, there is actually something quite arrogant in assuming that people are going to want to listen to you and your guests talk on and on for an hour, or however long the podcast is. So if you do that, I think you do owe it to your audience to have something interesting to say and to be really well prepared. And that you’re offering them something that they can’t get elsewhere, or can’t get elsewhere faster or better. And this is ultimately true for all content, really. People’s time is precious, and you can’t take it for granted that they are going to give it to you.

David: Out of a long list, there were quite a few that caught the judges’ eye. I think that between you, you commended Agencyphonics by Cactus, Everyone Hates Marketers by Louis Grenier, Uncensored CMO by Jon Evans. And I know Doug Kessler was particularly a fan of the Electronic Propaganda Society by Mathew Sweezey.

But ultimately, it came down to:

  • Adobe’s Audio White Papers for Marketing, voiced by Malcolm *actual* McDowell,
  • Gasp’s Call to Action,
  • Help Scout with Jay Acunzo’s Against the Grain (which is kind of a video program as well, but that’s fine),
  • and Peep Laja’s How to Win.

And by an absolute landslide, Call to Action took it.

So congratulations to Gasp. That was nominated by Fractional CMO, Graham Fraser, and Doug said…

Doug Kessler: Fun and sweary and it’s got a fun voice to it. Good guests list. They package it up well as a show with segments and everything – I like that.

David: Matt, this one stood out for you as well, didn’t it?

Matt: Yeah, it really did. I’m a massive Rolling Stones fan. So the fact that he had “I can’t get no call to action” as a theme tune… Well, that’s not the sole reason, obviously but okay, I’m interested from the very first 30 seconds, you’ve got me. But no, again, it was everything I love about a podcast where it’s just authentic good conversation.

So I listened to a really amazing one the other week with Chris Paouros. And it was just it really got to me. Really powerful conversation, learning more about the person behind the marketer as well. So I loved how that transcended just kind of the normal marketing conversation. So a really deserved winner.

David: Yeah, I’m glad you called that one out because, Chris Paouros, among other things, runs Proud Lilywhites. And as Spurs fan myself, and someone who you know LGBT Spurs fans are among my very favorite people in the world. You know, always deeply grateful for what Chris does. So to actually hear her interviewed was super.

So brilliant, well done to Gasp and the Call to Action podcast, you are officially the best B2B podcast of all time.

Announcer: Best Long-Form B2B Content.

David: So classically, when you think of B2B content, it’s long-form stuff that often you’ll think about. But this category had, in the end, no white papers and no ebooks on the shortlist. (Thanks to Maureen Blandford, founder of Serendipitus, and Jason Miller of Tyk, for helping Katy Eddy compile this shortlist for us.) Having said that, obviously, we had good examples, but I think there were fewer than they were expecting. Do you think there might be a reason why we might, relatively speaking, see fewer examples in the long-form category?

Matt: I think it’s just so much harder to maintain people’s attention, is the really simple answer. We’re in an environment now where you have seconds to get someone’s attention. So much emphasis is on messaging and short-form at the moment. So for something long-form, that someone could sit there for more than 15 minutes, if I’m honest, to stand out, all of a sudden this is a very challenging category. And the best really have to have something quite incredible to keep people hooked.

David: I think you’re right. And often the thing is that because they’re about something very specific as well, they might not ever reach a very wide audience. I think Andrea Clatworthy made the point that sometimes the best content is so super targeted, it’s not even necessarily in the public domain. You know, a lot of these things will be gated. So it’s probably quite understandable that we had relatively few to choose from.

But we did have some good nominees, and the judges particularly liked After the Virus by Cognizant, but ultimately the three that they picked and agreed on, were:

  • Ahrefs’ The Beginner’s Guide to SEO,
  • Maxon Motor, their product catalogue,
  • and Velocity Partners’ The search for meaning in B2B marketing.

Now the vote in this category was really close; there were two votes between first and third place.

The winner was Ahrefs and Matt, this was actually your nomination wasn’t it?

Matt: Have I tipped the balance with my vote here? Yeah, it’s rationale behind it is going back to this point: it’s got to be something pretty incredible to keep you hooked. And this is a piece of content I go back to time and time again as my source of authority and credibility because it’s just an incredibly in-depth, clever, well-written, well-structured guide on how to set up fundamentals in SEO. And it sounds like a boring subject, but so many people must have to go back to this and go, “Okay now I’m gonna jump to this chapter. I’m gonna go to that chapter.” And I’m kind of a weird sucker for content UX as well. And the way they just have everything displayed perfect on the page, they have social proof, excellent categorisation blending in with videos infographics, imagery, and really good, high-quality, authoritative, written content. It’s an absolute treat.

David: And Katy, our Senior Copywriter here agreed with you, she said, “This huge guide could have been overwhelming, but mercifully, it’s not. The writing’s really accessible but without skimping on detail. It’s easy to navigate. And it’s visually clean with cute icons and useful diagrams. For Ahrefs, this format is easy to revisit and update when best practice inevitably changes. And it’s simple for readers to revisit the relevant bits whenever they want a refresher.” Just as you’ve done. So I think you’re both well agreed on that.

So congratulations to Ahrefs, your Beginner’s Guide to SEO is officially the best long-form B2B content of all time.

Announcer: Best B2B Video Ads.

David: Okay. I mean, this is always the eye-catching one because when you think of like, when B2B gets creative, when it gets humorous, when it sparks emotion – it’s often short videos that we’re talking about.

So we’re really grateful to Joel Harrison, Editor-in-Chief of B2B Marketing, and Basware’s Katie Colbourne for helping our Head of Development, Kieran compile the shortlist. The judges enjoyed Lenovo’s Metal Review video, but with some conflict over whether that was really B2B, the shortlist came down to:

  • Adobe Marketing Cloud’s Click, Baby Click,
  • GE’s Datalandia – Devamping,
  • Iron Mountain with Iron Mountain Protects Your Backup Tapes,
  • and The Epic Split by Volvo Trucks.

This was the closest category; we actually had a tie in the public vote. So we went back to the judges and found that only one had placed in all three of their top three favorites. And that is Iron Mountain. It was originally nominated by Rishi Dastidar who said, “How do you make *checks notes* storing backup magnetic tapes interesting? Why not try some rhymes and a charming animation style? Wit and whimsy are rarely used tools in this world. On this evidence one wonders why.”

And among the judges, Katie Colbourne agreed she said, “This engaged me quite a bit as it used real-life examples of things we all do and are guilty of. So it had that emotive and connection element. It was also fast-paced, and it was funny from the off.”

What did you think of it, Matt?

Matt: Yeah, I completely agree with those comments. Super engaging. I was kind of wondering what this is at the beginning because you’re like, “Is this gonna be another boring B2B video, please don’t be boring.” And then you’re like, “Okay, this is funny. This is interesting. This is engaging.” But it focused on the problem. It was like, here’s a very clear problem and they’ve gone about it in a really creative way and given it different environments, and then taken it in towards a solution, and it’s absolutely perfect for short-form content, did everything you wanted it to do.

David: It shows that with a bit of thought and a bit of creativity, you can really cut through because there are some big hitters in this category, right? The Epic Split, which is many people’s immediate thing that they think about as great B2B content came third in this category, you know. And so you compete with big hitters like Volvo Trucks or you know Adobe Marketing Cloud who always – and GE – who always do these funny emotional videos, just shows with a bit of thought and a good script, you can really compete on that playing field and stand out.

So, well done Iron Mountain, yours is the best B2B video ad of all time.

Announcer: Best Wildcard Content.

David: Now, some of the nominees didn’t fit neatly into any category. So we created this extra one. Thanks to Rishi Dastidar, who’s Senior Writer at venturethree – and also a darn fine poet – for helping our senior copywriter Steve get to the bottom of this shortlist.

So ultimately, they chose:

  • Drawbotics’ Your Favorite TV Shows Brought to Life With Amazing 3D Floor Plans,
  • Gartner Magic Quadrant – yes, all of it,
  • Hectare Agritech and Tudder,
  • and Turtl’s Kill the PDF campaign.

Matt, Rockee helps marketers to get feedback and understand what people really enjoy about their content. So, with access to that information, do you see new formats, new approaches? If we run this in five or 10 years’ time again, might there be completely different kinds of B2B content? What do you think the future might hold?

Matt: Yeah, it’s really interesting, because we started to get feedback we just simply weren’t expecting, where people are asking for slightly different formats of where things work. So for example, you posted for the digital webinar, or something like that. It’s quite interesting, because people go, “This is too long, I want to see shorter versions of it.” So immediately, you’re getting data there to go, “Look, I can take this into maybe four or five snippets, I can put it into social short form. I can even take it to YouTube short form – I can make something really interesting and engaging when I have a long-form piece of content.”

So there’s a huge evolution happening. And that’s what the audience is asking for. It’s related to something they consume in a snappier format or that goes to the precise problem that they’re trying to solve. So that’s something we’re seeing straight away from Rockee at the moment is there’s a kind of a move away from longer form. So that’s something that’s certainly emerging.

And the other one is around creators as well, that that goes back to that authenticity piece, less around AI at the moment, but people who can, you know, rise up as a profile for their brand. An example is Todd Clouser, who used to be at Refine Labs and is now at lavender.ai. He does an incredible job of just making short comic videos that are related to the problem and the solution of the brand he works for.

So yeah, interesting trends emerging. I think it might gravitate towards those creative formats in the next couple of years, for sure.

David: So more profile for kind of, you know, individual personalities, and potentially more atomisation of bigger content pieces.

Matt: Yeah, a hundred percent. We’re moving to snack form type of stuff and we’re on a diet from long form. And yeah, that’s certainly what the audience is asking for. But it’s very competitive; using feedback is a great way of getting an insight as to which are the most juicy bits that you can focus on.

David: So we took the vote for our wildcard content, and Hectare Agritech and Tudder, which, if you don’t know, is their dating app for cows. Again, it was voted the Best Content of 2019. It ran away with this category once again. And Rishi Dastidar sent some audio to explain why he thought it was well-deserved.

Rishi Dastidar: It’s a very simple idea. The idea of a dating app for animals: cattle and sheep. I love the wit here. It’s a very simple idea, but it’s been executed really well. And that cross-pollination just really does cut through and raises a smile.

David: So well done, Hectare Agritech. Tudder is the best, I guess, B2B dating app of all time?

Announcer: The Grand Final.

David: So this brings us to the moment of truth. We have our five finalists:

  • Assure Hedge: the Chicken McNuggets blog,
  • Gasp with their Call to Action podcast,
  • Ahrefs with their SEO guide,
  • Iron Mountain with their hilarious video,
  • and Tudder, the dating app for cows.

Matt, are you ready to find out what is officially the best B2B content of all time?

Matt: Come on, I can’t wait any longer The suspense is killing me. Let’s do it.

David: Okay.

In third place… we have Hectare Agritech with Tudder.

In second place… it’s Assure Hedge with The Chicken McNuggets secret ingredient is not what you think.

In first place… it’s Gasp with the Call to Action podcast.

I think a few years ago you would never have thought that the best B2B content of all time would be a podcast, would you?

Matt: Definitely not. I don’t think people thought podcasts would ever pick up and no one would listen to a B2B podcast. But love this, I love this winner, thoroughly deserved. It’s real content, real people doing real things.

David: What is it you love about it?

Matt: I’m gonna say authenticity again. It’s real people, you know, having a good conversation, finding out about their experience, how they got to where they are, their expertise, their knowledge, beautifully framed, entertaining. Entertaining is probably another key word; I’d happily listen to it anywhere I go. So, yeah, incredible winner.

David: I mean, obviously, there’s an element to it of: “It’s a public vote, you know.” And with any competition like this, where it’s open, of course, it’s a subjective choice. And, of course, there’s an element of who will get people to vote for you.

But, for me, that’s kind of why podcasts are so good. It’s about getting that community that identify with you. And so the fact that they’ve won, shows the strength of their community, and it shows it’s working, right?

Matt: Yeah. 100%. And that’s what they’re kind of designed for. There are little subsections of all of our various parts of B2B marketing in different markets, and you want to meet up with fellow people who have the same opinions and kind of the same, you know, ambitions and thoughts and things like that. It’s great to see those communities come together, you know, loyal fan base and like good authoritative content. It’s a beautiful mix.

David: Yeah, I think the reason that we have the judges involved in this process, to do the shortlisting, is ultimately, the winner is always going to be subjective; everyone’s going to have a different view. But all of our five finalists – indeed, all of the 19 shortlisted examples – are worthy winners, and hopefully, fairly inspiring examples of good B2B content. And that, ultimately, is what this question was about. It was about you know, finding examples, finding ideas, finding some inspiration. So hopefully, we’ve managed that.

Well done, Gasp. Well done, Giles Edwards. Well done, Call to Action.

So, there you have it, the best B2B content of all time. Thank you to everybody who nominated. Thank you to everybody who voted. Thank you to all our judges. And, of course, thank you, Matt, for joining us to analyse it and go through these with us. I hope it’s been interesting.

Matt: It’s been incredible. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on.

David: And Matt, if people want to hear more from you, or hear the Sausage Factory – experience the sausage – where would they find that?

Matt: So you can find us on any good publishing channel. We’re on Spotify, we’re on Apple podcasts. Or you can visit rockee.io. And we’re very much trying to dissect what does great content look like in modern B2B, over all of those formats. So yeah, come and have a look.

David: Through the medium of tasty sausage snacks, presumably?

Matt: Through sausage-based analogies and jokes. Yes.

David: B2BQ&A will be back soon, albeit without me. I’d like to thank everyone who’s co-hosted over the years, everyone who’s let me badger them with impertinent questions, everyone who’s sent us questions of their own or copywriting pro tips.

I’d especially like to thank Emily King and Fiona Campbell-Howes for starting this fabulous podcast. And most of all, I’d like to thank you listener for joining me this past 80 or so episodes. Until next time, make great content.

David and Matt: Goodbye!

B2BQ&A 103: What was the best B2B content of 2021?

This month’s B2B content question comes not from one of our lovely listeners, but from us here at Radix. And if you’re looking for content marketing inspiration, you’re in the right place – because we asked you: What was the best B2B content of 2021?

In our quest to find the answer, we invited you to vote for your favourites among eleven great content examples, in three semi-final categories:

  • Best short-form or standalone content
  • Best long-form white paper or report
  • Best B2B content programme or hub

The winner of each category went through to the grand final. But who did you vote as your overall champion?

In this podcast, we reveal the results – with expert analysis from our shortlisting panel: Atlassian‘s Content Strategy Lead for Software Teams, Ashley Faus; Nadya Khoja, Head of Content Strategy at Boast.AI; and me, David McGuire, Creative Director here at Radix Communications.

We also hear bonus nominations from the fabulous Doug Kessler, Luan Wise, and John Espirian.

You can listen to the podcast in full now, or read the transcript at the end of this post.

Inspiration and ideas: what can we learn from this year’s best content?

Both Nadya and Ashley had some interesting thoughts to share based on the best content shortlist, which could be useful for anyone planning their content for 2022.

Great content starts with humanity

Content needs to speak to the individual if it’s going to work. “Maybe a few years ago, B2B was focused on clunky data reports and heavy text,” says Nadya. “Not a lot of focus on engagement, or thinking about your audience as an individual human. So it was refreshing to see how creative this content was.”

Ashley agrees: “I feel like the tide is finally starting to shift where people remember that B2B does not mean you’re selling a faceless brand to a faceless brand. There’s humans behind the brands, and humans on the other side of the screen. What we’re seeing with the shortlist this year is, hey, if you’re going to do B2B content, and you want to be competitive, you have to think about those humans behind the screen. Because there’s some pretty stiff competition.”

Credit the audience with some intelligence

In B2B, your reader is often an expert in their job, so recognise that in your content. But that doesn’t mean your content shouldn’t be easy to digest.

Ashley says: “All of these finalists treat their audience like they’re smart. They know they’re not going to trick anybody into buying anything. And so they make it very clear and very easy for the reader to consume content, get educated, and get empowered.”

Copy and visuals need to work together

It’s no longer enough for your content to be just well written, or well designed. Words and images need to work together. “You have to be able to really marry the type of story you’re telling to the design and create that visual narrative,” says Nadya.

This is even the case for traditionally less-visual formats. “You wouldn’t normally think of a white paper or report as having visually engaging elements,” Ashley adds. “But all our finalists in that category were really well designed.”

White papers and reports need a story to tell

As well as presenting factual information, the best long-form content helps the reader by offering a clear narrative structure or angle.

“When you think about white papers,” Nadya suggests, “You think about a faceless, gated piece of content. But the finalists were really interesting; they provided a unique angle on the data, rather than just a bunch of numbers. The purpose of the white paper is really telling that story.”

Don’t overlook the power of a strong title

Without giving away too many spoilers, both our experts recognised the impact of a strong title in the voting. “Having really good copy and an engaging title can do a lot more than really great content alone,” comments Nadya.

Ashley concludes: “There’s a lot to be said for surprising and delighting the audience.”

In this episode, you’ll find…

1:00 – We welcome our guests, Ashley Faus and Nadya Khoja, to B2BQ&A

2:20 – What does this year’s shortlist tell us about the state of B2B content?

4:10 – Best short-form or standalone content

8:10 – Best white paper or research report

12:10 – Best B2B content programme or hub

18:40 – Ashley and Nadya share their key takeaways. What can we learn?

20:30 – The Grand Final: we reveal the best B2B content of 2021, as voted by you

Have you got a question for B2BQ&A?

We can get you the answer!

Send us a voice memo at [email protected]. And if there are any other thoughts you’d like to share, you can find us on LinkedIn, or tweet at us: @radixcom.

How to listen

Credits

  • Firstly, a big thank you to our expert panellists Ashley Faus and Nadya Khoja, for all your help collating the shortlist, hosting the voting, and sharing your wisdom.
  • Thanks to Doug Kessler, Luan Wise and John Espirian for telling us your favourite B2B content of 2021 – you’ve given us some great inspiration.
  • And last but not least, thank you to everyone who nominated and voted this year! We can’t wait to see what you come up with in 2022.

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash.

Transcript: B2BQ&A 103: What was the best B2B content of 2021?

David McGuire: What was the best B2B content of 2021?

Ashley Faus: That’s a great question. Let’s ask the audience!

David: Hello, listener; you are extraordinarily welcome to a special end-of-year edition of B2BQ&A. Usually, this is the podcast that goes in search for an answer to your question about B2B content. But this time, we’re asking the question, you’ve provided an answer, and in the next few minutes, we’ll crown 2021’s best B2B content. We’ll discuss the nominees with two brilliant guests and hear some content nominations from friends of the show. But before all of that, some introductions. My name is David McGuire, I’m Creative Director at Radix Communications, the B2B tech writing agency. And I’m delighted to say that I’m joined by the wonderful panellists who selected the shortlist for this year’s best B2B content. We have Ashley Faus, Atlassian’s Content Strategy Lead for Software Teams. Hi, Ashley.

Ashley: Hey, good to be here. Excited to talk content.

David: And we have the Head of Content Strategy at Boast.ai, Nadya Khoja. Hi, Nadya.

Nadya Khoja: Hey, how’s it going? Excited to be here as well.

David: It’s amazing to have you both here. Thank you so much for dialling in from across the Atlantic and different time zones. I imagine the weather’s very different where you both are at the moment as well. Listener, if you want to have your say on the shortlist, or if there’s any great content you think we’ve missed you can, as always, find Radix Communications on LinkedIn or you can tweet at us @radixcom. Or if you want us to answer your question on a future episode, record a quick voice note and send it by email: [email protected].

Okay, so let’s get on with it. So before we get into the first category, let’s talk about the shortlist overall. This has been another bumper year for B2B content in terms of quantity. All the experienced writers I know have been really busy. But has that translated into quality? What do you think of the shortlist and content in general this year? Nadya?

Nadya: I was pretty impressed by the shortlist of content. I think typically when you think of B2B content, or at least maybe a few years ago, this was more of the case. But a lot of B2B was heavily focused on, you know, the clunky data reports without like, heavy text, not a lot of imagery, not a lot of focus on engagement, or actually, you know, thinking of your audience as an individual human that’s reading it, and it was very targeted towards like, the bigger brand itself. So it was refreshing to see the shortlist and see how creative some of the B2B content and just like the content structuring itself was, a lot of really great stuff came out of that.

David: Sure. And what do you think, Ashley?

Ashley: Yeah, I agree. I feel like the tide is finally starting to shift where people remember that B2B does not mean that you’re selling a faceless brand to a faceless brand. There’s humans behind the brands. There’s humans on the other side of the screen. And so I think that what we’re seeing with the shortlist this year is really starting to show, hey, if you’re going to do B2B content, and you want to be competitive, you have to think about the humans behind the screen. And there’s some pretty stiff competition. And I also think that putting these things into more of a hub, not just oh, here’s one experimental piece of creative content, but it’s really a mindset shift to focus on the audience. I think that’s what this year’s shortlist demonstrates.

David: Amazing. Well, let’s jump in then, to the first of our three semi-finals. It’s the best short-form or standalone piece of B2B content. We had four nominees in this category: Assure Hedge’s blog post, “The Chicken McNuggets’ secret ingredient is not what you think…”, Postmark’s digital comic “Postmark Express: Journey to the Inbox”, Telenet’s interactive piece “Faites le test: Quel type d’entrepreneur êtes-vous en matière de wifi?” and Venngage’s infographic “8 Graphic Design Trends that Will Define 2022”. Ashley, what stood out in this category for you?

Ashley: Oh man, so many things. I actually really enjoyed walking through this category. I think that all of them had really great visuals, they were all connected, even if they were a standalone piece of content in terms of like a blog post, but it was very clear that it was part of a larger strategy. The Assure Hedge blog post, you would never think that, you know, a hedge fund would have an interesting read. And you would also never think that it would be about a chicken nugget. And so I think that the surprise of that was just really delightful. And then obviously serves their audience really well and helps them tell their story about their clients. Same thing with the Postmark Express, like, why would you make a webcomic? How fascinating. And then obviously, Venngage, you know, everything, the infographics really step up the game for data clarity and data storytelling, not just from a design standpoint, but really making it clear.

David: Absolutely. Nadya, was there one or more that stood out to you or anything that you kind of took away from the shortlist?

Nadya: Yeah, I think the really interesting thing about this shortlist is even the one piece that was a blog post didn’t really, like, it was a very unique blog post. And I think when we think of a short-form piece of content, it’s rare that people will create, you know, a comic, for instance, like that’s not the first thing that comes to mind. Quizzes, sure enough. But I think yeah, more interactive, more kind of these smaller snippets of engagement that tell a bigger story, let the audience pull away something that they can draw their own conclusions from is something that came across from this section. Especially, yeah, the chicken nugget piece like a hedge fund talking about that, but even so, it wasn’t really about the recipe behind the chicken nugget, right. They were connecting it back to hedge funds. And I think I referred to this in the past as what I called mashup content. It’s like taking this trendy theme or something that’s a little bit more pop culture and tying it back into an adjacent theme is really useful in content. So I’m not surprised that they stood out in this category, too.

David: Yeah. So I think, you know, Nadya, you might have hinted at it there. But I mean, Ashley, you hosted this semi-final on your LinkedIn feed. We also added in the votes that were emailed direct to Radix. So would you care to confirm that the winner from this semi-final?

Ashley: I believe it was Assure Hedge – the story of the Chicken McNugget.

David: It absolutely was. Congratulations Assure Hedge goes through to the grand final. Now, let’s hear who Doug Kessler of Velocity Partners thought had the best content this year.

Doug Kessler: Favourite piece of b2b content this year. I like to book Ask Your Developer by Jeff Lawson. It’s called Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers. And when in the 21st century hardcover book people don’t think of that as B2B content. But it is and it’s excellent. It’s really well done. I also really like, second is the MailChimp, presents shows they do a whole series of shows that are really well made, and you got to envy that – it’s good shit.

David: Thanks, Doug. All the best to you for the new year. Our second semi-final is for the best long-form white paper or report. This one had three contenders: “Polarised perceptions of corporate health and wellness” by Aetna International, “The Electric Opportunity” by Kalibrate, and “Customer data breaches: when will you find out” by Skurio. Nadya, I know white papers are not always your favourite content. But you kindly agreed to host this poll for us on LinkedIn. I hesitate to ask, but what did you think of the nominees?

Nadya: Um, I was surprised. You know, I feel like when I think about white papers, I think about the faceless gated piece of content that no one is allowed to see unless you give an email, and then you’re really surprised by what you get. Luckily, in this case, at least for me, all of these pieces were ungated so I was able to actually take a look at them. And yeah, I was impressed with a lot of them. I think they were really interesting. And they provided a unique angle on the data rather than just presenting like a bunch of numbers to an audience. Which I think is the purpose of a white paper report is really presenting that angle and telling a bit of a story with the data that you collect. In most cases, these are the purposes behind white papers and reports. I think they all did a good job in doing that. I don’t know what you what your opinions were on them.

David: No, I agree. I’m biased because embarrassingly enough for the nominations, I had nothing to do with it, but I did write one of these. Ashley, can I ask if there are any that stood out for you though?

Ashley: Yeah, I actually thought this category was really strong. I think that you know, first having them on gated so people can actually get the story and speak to the humans I think is huge. This is another shift that I’m seeing in content, which I personally support a lot, which is the shift in mindset that just because somebody fills out a form, they are not necessarily a lead. They are not an MQL if they fill out ten forms, and so instead really empowering the reader by giving them the data in an actionable way. The other thing too, all of them were really well designed. And so it’s funny, you wouldn’t normally think of a white paper definitely, in some cases a report, as having some visually engaging elements. And so yeah, I was really impressed by everything in this category. I was having a hard time picking.

David: Sure. And that was something that we didn’t have to do that our audience did, by emailing us here at Radix and also voting on the poll on Nadya’s LinkedIn. So Nadya, could you confirm the winner for us, please?

Nadya: The winner was Kalibrate’s “The Electric Opportunity”.

David: Yeah, absolutely was, so congratulations to Kalibrate who join Assure Hedge in the final vote. But who did Marketing Consultant and Social Media Specialist Luan Wise think should have won this year?

Luan Wise: Hi, my name is Luan Wise. I’m a Marketing Consultant and specialist in social media, my favourite B2B content this year? Well, I think as the most downloaded app of 2021, Tiktok, it’s taking the world by storm. And at the same time, it’s presenting this whole new challenge to marketers who are questioning how they might get involved, and if they need to get involved. So I’m nominating Tiktok’s own in-app resource, the business Creative Hub, which shares the latest trends, advise best practices, it’s a really good quick cheat sheet for brands to get all the information that they need to build business cases, make decisions, and get inspired.

David: Thanks, Luan, we appreciate the nomination. So we come to our third and last semi-final, the best B2B content program or hub. There were four strong contenders here, the “Animalz blog”, Atlassian’s “Team Playbook”, Canvas web content “What will you design?” and “Realise Your Vision” by Sohonet. Ashley, Atlassian are in this category, of course. So perhaps I’d better ask you first, what stands out for you here?

Ashley: Sure. So I actually, this is another really strong category, I’m very glad I did not have to vote in the semi finals, because this category is great. So obviously, I have been a huge fan of Animalz and the team over there for a while. I think that they write smart content. It’s very intelligent. It has a direct path into sales without being salesy. They educate, they empower their audience. And then that makes you say, man, I need to work with these people. So they’re an agency. So love Animalz, I highly recommend people check out their work. Obviously, Atlassian I am a huge fan of the content that we create. The thing that’s so cool about the Team Playbook is that it’s really meant for teams and everything is actionable. And it’s completely ungated. And so we are very passionate about empowering teams. And so if you go to the Team Playbook, there’s a ton of stuff to help you run better retros, there’s great information about roles and responsibilities and helping teams work better together. So I love that. And then Canva again, I think that their whole experience to go from SEO into templates and then a very smart conversion path into product, without it being overly salesy. I thought they did a great job. I was actually not as big of a fan of the Sohonet hub. It was very…it was visually beautiful. But I was struggling a little bit to kind of see the tie ins that I think the rest had in this category. So again, I think that it’s strong, but I from my perspective, the other three were much stronger.

David: Yeah, I think that’s probably fair. I was personally I think a big fan of the way Sohonet just curated stuff with a very defined target audience and just curated stuff that would just be really really interesting for them. Nadya, what stood out for you about this category?

Nadya: Yeah, it’s funny because I mean, I’ve having been a part of with clients or with teams, rebuilding and redesigning the resources hubs or the content hubs for a lot of different sites, these are usually the ones that are my go to reference points. So I’m not surprised that in this category, I think yeah, I like the Animalz, blog. Animalzs have done such a great job with becoming a thought leader in content, through content. Because I remember when they first kind of were starting out, and they were kind of doing a little bit of guest posting here and there. And then just like kind of exploding into the leaders of how to do content. Same with Atlassian, like I referenced the Atlassian Content Hub and various different products through Atlassian as a resource as well. I have my own, like, my own biases around Canva versus Venngage. So I won’t speak too much to that. But yeah, I think I do agree with you, David on Sohonet. I think that it was extremely, it was very specifically curated, you could tell that they were targeting a really, really specific audience. I mean, I didn’t necessarily I’m not the right audience, for them. But visually appealing, I watched the video was really unique, like really showed the, they’re talking about the soul of a story. And I think they kind of captured that with the video. I think maybe in terms of like the technical element, it would be cool to have like a snippet of that play automatically so that people don’t have to click in and watch it, and they can just see that unfold. So there may be like some technical changes I would have made on there. But this particular page, I wouldn’t, I don’t know if I would call it a content hub, seemed more like a page. So I don’t know if it was in the right category. That just kind of highlighted the different partners are people that they were giving a shout out to. So that’s the one piece where I’m like, I don’t know if it made sense in the same category and if it really competed in the same way.

David: As some of the others. Yeah, absolutely. Well, this poll was fought out on my LinkedIn page, as well as in the Radix inbox, so I can officially congratulate Animalz whose blog has been awarded this year’s best content hub. And congratulations Animalz, you complete our lineup in the Grand Final. Before we move on, and see who won the winner of winners, who did the relentlessly helpful LinkedIn guru, John Espirian back as having the best content this year?

John Espirian: My vote for B2B content of the year would be for Gong, which is a revenue intelligence platform, firmly in the B2B market. And they are non-boring, and they really stand out on LinkedIn through their relatable posts. They do a lot of text only content, which, if you look at a lot of B2B tends to be very image focused or document focused. But this is very much text based. And it really works well. Their engagement is just off the scale, there’s no one particular post that I would pick out. It’s their consistency of presence, and the light heartedness of tone that really gets them a lot of attention and a lot of business. And surprise, surprise, they’ve now got almost 100,000 followers, they’re doing a really good job, and a great example to follow.

David: Thanks, John, and season’s greetings to you. So we have our grand final line up. We have Assure Hedge. We have Kalibrate. And we have Animalz. Voting was underway for a week on LinkedIn. And by email, I can confirm it closed a little while before we recorded this. Before we reveal those results, can I ask each of you for a final thought, something that the listener can learn from the shortlist this year? Nadya, can I come to you first?

Nadya: Yeah, I think there’s probably a few different elements here. Because we’re looking at different parts of content and different functions of content. I think the thing that stood out is, again, design and copy comes back to everything. So a lot of people say like copy is everything. I don’t think that’s it designs, not everything. I think you have to be able to really match and marry the type of story you’re telling to the design and create that visual communication, visual narrative. And that’s really the example behind everything that stood out here across each category. So that’s my takeaway.

David: Absolutely. Ashley for you, what can the listener learn from the shortlist this year?

Ashley: I think that the biggest thing is that all of these finalists treat their audience like the audience is smart. They know that they’re not going to trick anybody into buying anything. And so they make it very clear and very easy for them to consume content, get educated, get empowered, and oh, by the way, if you do need our services, or you do want to buy something from us, it’s very clear how you do that. But they’re not. It’s not a thinly veiled sales pitch. There’s no hard selling in any of the content, it’s basically just saying, we know our stuff so well and we respect you as an audience so much, that we know that when you’re ready, you’ll come to us and we can help you solve your problem. So I think that’s the biggest thing is just respecting the audience, and moving away from such a hard sell for content.

David: Amen to that. Thank you. Thank you so much both for the takeaways there. And for all the help you’ve given us in putting the shortlist and the vote together this year. It’s very much appreciated. So it’s time to reveal the final results. So the combination of the email vote and the LinkedIn poll. I think we could probably agree that all three of the finalists would have been a worthy winner. But this is the bit where they’re on tenterhooks, so according to the audience, in third place, we have Animalz.

Ashley: I’m like.. I thought.. I would have put Animalz as like first or second. Again, Kalibrate was great, but I’m surprised.

Nadya: I’m surprised too

David: Well, it’s comes down to the vote. In second place, we have Kalibrate with “The Electric Opportunity”. Which means that the winner, and this year’s best b2b content as voted for by our audience is…

Assure Hedge with their blog post, “The Chicken McNuggets’ secret ingredient is not what you think…” There you have it. It’s a surprising one. But that’s officially the best content of the year, according to the audience. What do you think? Happy surprised? How do you how’s that make you feel?

Nadya: I’m not surprised that they won. Especially when you give people like a short list of titles, people are going to click – it’s clickbaity, right to so people probably clicked on that first, they probably read it in its entirety, eventually get through the rest of the list. And they’re like, so that’s part of one of the reasons I think that you know, having a really good, really good copy and a really engaging title can do a lot more than just having a really great piece of content.

David: Oh, a title is so important. You know, so much of the of the time of a copywriter should be spent on the title and the first few lines. Ashely, how about how about you?

Ashley: Yeah, I agree with Nadya, I think I think the fact that the title was so quippy and the story was so unexpected. I think the other interesting thing is that because it was very unexpected, like the other two, you can kind of see the thread of what their goals are and how they’re positioning themselves as thought leaders and how that directly ties to business. And so I think that Assure Hedge all the way around. It was just kind of like, oh, this is how interesting. And so I think there’s a lot to be said for surprising and delighting the audience.

David: Absolutely. I don’t think that ever gets old. And there you have it. The best B2B content of 2021 is Azzure Hedge. Huge thanks to you, Ashley and Nadya for your time today and for all that you’ve done to bring all this together. Thanks also to everyone who nominated to everyone who voted and to all the nominees. There’s so much good stuff to learn from in this shortlist. Please remember listener it could be your question that we answer in a future episode.

If you have a question for B2BQ&A to answer, email, a voice memo to [email protected]. Or find us on social media.

David: I’ll see you next month for another B2BQ&A, when we’ll be trying to answer the eternal question: how would you keep your content fresh when you’re writing about the same subject all the time? Until then, make good content, have a wonderful festive season, whatever and however you celebrate, and remember, winning is a bit like old age, it isn’t everything but it’s certainly better than the alternative. Nadya, thank you so much. And goodbye to you.

Nadya: Thank you so much for having me. It was nice to be here. Take care.

David: Absolute pleasure. And thank you to Ashley. Thank you ever so much.

Ashley: Yeah, this was super fun. I’m glad we crowned a winner for this year’s best content.

David: And thank you listener Take care. Bye bye.

B2BQ&A 104: How can you keep your B2B content fresh?

Nobody likes B2B content that’s repetitive. It’s boring to write and – more importantly – it’s unlikely to be successful if your audience feels like they’ve heard it all before. But if you often have to write about the same products, services and ideas, keeping your content fresh and compelling is easier said than done.

It’s a problem B2B marketers and content creators face all the time. So we were delighted when Chelsea Groome of Fierce Content gave B2BQ&A the perfect excuse to go in search of an answer, by asking:

“If you’ve been working with a client for a long time and their product hasn’t changed much, how do you keep their content fresh?”

Not to brag, but we think we found the *perfect* expert to respond to this.

When you think of an (essentially) one-product B2B brand that still always has a mountain of relevant and valuable things to say, Xero has to be right up there. And Content Strategy Lead Richard Allardice (or “Dice” to his friends) agreed to dive into what marketers and writers need to keep in mind… with bonus insights from his colleagues Amy Stephens and Sarah Webb.

Joining us as guest co-host this month (and sharing some great insights of her own) is Kate Terry, Head of Demand at Turtl. Kate gives her perspective on personalising content down to granular levels and in using analytics and insights to constantly update and improve content.

We also have the joy of hearing from Claire Goodfellow, a copywriter at Radix, for the copywriting tip of the month. Stay tuned to learn the secret to clear, concise sentences.

You’ll find a full transcript of our podcast at the end of this post.

So, just how do you keep B2B content fresh?

Between Dice, his colleagues, and Kate, there’s plenty of advice in this episode. Here’s a handful of suggestions…

1. Consider the wider landscape

Your product might not change much, but the challenges your target audience face probably do. So think about the wider context: where, how, and why your product is used.

“Your product isn’t the only thing that changes,” says Dice. “The people who use your product will change; what they understand will change; things in the world will change.”

Remember, the information your customers need extends beyond your specific product. So if you’re struggling to keep your content fresh, consider angles that might be indirectly related to your main focus. Use your organisation’s broader sector expertise, and you’ll likely build up a relationship of trust between your audience and your brand.

2. Lose the “publish and done” mindset

With all the work that goes into creating a content piece, it’s easy to get into the habit of publishing, promoting, then moving on to the next one. But often, digital content can be updated after the fact – so even after you’ve published it’s always a live project.

Kate sees Turtl users doing exactly this. She remarks: “We see people doing things like changing the order of the content, changing the title, trying out different tests to see how the changes make an impact on readership.”

Dice goes further, and says every content team of a certain size needs to have someone who is specifically tasked with revisiting each piece, and ensuring it’s always up to date.

3. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

Having said all this, it’s worth remembering you’ll likely get bored of your content before your audience does. Not everything needs to be improved, and not always in the way you might think. So look at the data, and understand what’s working.

“Sometimes the answer is ‘no’,” comments Dice. “Sometimes a feature has not changed, we’ve written it up really well and it works… But things change around that; the context changes. Your company’s style might change, and you might want to weave that back in because otherwise that piece of content is going to start to sound a bit stilted in comparison.”

In this episode, you’ll find…

1:00 – We welcome our co-host Kate Terry, Head of Demand at Turtl

4:00 – We put Chelsea Groome’s question to Dice

22:55 – Kate and David share their highlights and thoughts

28:10 – Our copywriting tip of the month: write succinctly

Have you got a question for B2BQ&A?

We’re here to help! Send us a voice memo at [email protected]. And if there are any other thoughts you’d like to share, you can find us on LinkedIn, or tweet at us: @radixcom.

How to listen

Credits

  • Firstly, thank you to Kate Terry, for all the insight you shared as co-host.
  • Thanks to Chelsea Groome, for your brilliant question.
  • A massive thank you to Dice, Sarah Webb and Amy Stephens for giving us the benefit of your experience.
  • And Claire Goodfellow, thank you for that essential copywriting tip of the month.

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash.

Transcript: B2BQ&A 104: How can you keep B2B content fresh?

Chelsea Groome: If you’ve been working with a client for a long time and their product or position hasn’t changed much, how do you keep their content fresh?

Kate Terry: That’s a great question. Let’s ask Dice from Xero.

David McGuire: Hello listener, you are very welcome to B2BQ&A, the podcast where we go in search of an answer to your question about B2B content writing. This is episode 104.

Kate: In a moment, we’ll ask Xero’s Content Strategy Lead Richard Allardice, or Dice to his friends how you keep content fresh when you only have one product. And later we’ll get a copywriting tip of the month from junior copywriter, Claire Goodfellow.

David: Before that some introductions, my name is David McGuire. I’m Creative Director at Radix Communications, the B2B writing agency. And this month, our guest co-host is Turtl’s Head of Demand, Kate Terry. Kate, thanks for joining us.

Kate: Hey, David, thanks for having me today. It’s really great to be here.

David: Oh, it’s fantastic to have you here as guest co-host. Lots of change going on a Turtl and kind of new products and surfaces and things, I understand, lots for you to do.

Kate: Yeah, a lot to do. That’s for sure. We’re in kind of high growth mode right now. So we’re really excited about some of the new product developments that have come out and new ways that we can help people make amazing and engaging B2B content. So yeah, lots coming out of Turtl these days, but all good stuff.

David: Yeah, we talk about Turtl a lot on this show. Listener, there’s no kind of affiliate relationship going on, I promise you. But there’s lots of new things there where there’s kind of more like a personalization, kind of ABM type vibe to it now.

Kate: Yeah, that’s right. So what you can do with Turtl is actually personalise your content at scale down to the individual or account level and you can use all of your data and insight and intent data you have, connect that up and turn that into a really automated process. So it’s a huge leap forward if you’re interested in personalising content down to your end user and then getting data back from them on how they’re engaging and kind of getting really granular account insight.

David: Yeah, I mean, anything that contributes to the death of the PDF is okay in my book. Kate, in your first official duty as guest co-host, would you mind telling the listener how they can get in touch with us?

Kate: I’d be delighted. So listener, if you have any comments or suggestions, you can find Radix on LinkedIn or Twitter @radixcom. Or if you want us to answer your question on a future episode, record a quick voice note and send it by email: [email protected]

David: That’s brilliantly done. Thank you very much.

Kate: Right, it’s time to hear this month’s question. So who do we have?

Chelsea: Hello, this is Chelsea Groome from Fierce Content. And my question is, if you’ve been working with a client for a long time, and their product or position hasn’t changed much, how do you keep their content fresh?

David: Thanks, Chelsea. That’s an important question and something copywriters and marketers have to think about a lot. Though, if it’s okay with you we’ll broaden the terms from talking about just clients, so we can help our in-house listeners too. I’m chuffed to say I got my absolute first pick to answer this question. Because when I think of a brand that’s created a mountain of really fresh content around essentially one product, I think of Xero.

So I was knocked out when their Content Strategy Lead, Dice agreed to tell us how they do it. This is a little longer than one of our usual interviews, but he had so much good stuff to say I think you’re going to want to hear it. I started by asking Dice Chelsea’s question: just how do you keep content fresh?

Dice: Yeah, so I spent a bit of time thinking about this, it in some ways does depend on the size of the company, or the size of the client you’re working with. Because one thing that you know, I’ve experience lately working in a bigger place is that to keep something fresh, it needs to be someone’s job. So someone needs to be tasked with looking after that page or that product or keeping across what’s changing needs to be someone’s responsibility.

And that sounds like a really, you know, obvious thing, but a lot of the time, you know, companies I’ve worked with in the past sometimes people don’t do that. They put something out there excited. It goes out into the world, but it’s not someone’s job to look back and say, “How’s that thing going and does it need changing, and does it need improving?” So I think it’s really important to make it someone’s job to own it, be responsible for it and have the clout to be able to change it.

And another really good point that Amy Stephens who’s a Content Strategist on my team made as well, when we were talking about this, is that part of that job needs to be helping your organisation or your company be comfortable with making changes over time.

So sometimes, if you are working with a client or a company, and there’s a lot of approvals, a lot of review needed, that process is really unwieldy, there’s a bit of a reluctance to change it. Now that we’ve said it live, we don’t want to go back over that again. So part of the job of owning it is to prepare your company or client for the fact that things need to change and be flexible and, and adapt to what’s happening out in the world or happening with your product.

And I guess the other part of that is that it’s not just enough to be someone’s job, that someone needs to be watching regularly, you need to be monitoring. And so what are you actually monitoring, before you put it out there, you need to think about what is effectiveness or success going to mean for this particular thing, and what kind of metrics might be looking at, and you actually need to go and look at them, you know, sometimes I think people, you know, rest on their laurels a little bit, put something out there, it’s beautiful in the moment. But don’t watch to see what happens.

The founder of AppSumo, a guy who I follow called Noah Kagan, he talks a lot about this idea of what you track will grow. So it’s not his own idea. It’s one that he adopted from someone else. But the idea is that if you’re looking at it, and you are paying attention to it, and you’re interested in the numbers, then they will grow because you will, you know, take action or do things, even if they’re minor to, to move those things onward. So what you track will grow, and I’d add to that what you track will improve. So if you are looking at it and monitoring it, then it’s going to get better, as long as you are doing your due diligence.

And I think that if it’s a product, that might mean checking in with the team, and forming a relationship with the team, who build the product, so that you can keep each other abreast of, for example, what’s changing with your target audience. So your product isn’t the only thing that changes, the people who are using your product will change, what they understand will change, things in the world will change.

A really good example of that for us, as a UK example, is Making Tax Digital. So that wasn’t a thing X number of years ago, but then it became a big UK government initiative. And it’s highly related to our product. And so we need to be talking about that, and being really up to date with what has been said about Making Tax Digital, because that’s what our target audience need to know in the hearing. And then they need more information about it.

So you need to be looking at it connected to that product team. So you know what changes are coming ahead of time, you don’t want to be behind there. And you need to be connected to your audience, you need to be talking to them and finding out what they are hearing or not understanding, not just to do with your product, but to do with the landscape. You know, what else? What else is entering that information landscape that they might need to know? Or you might need to adapt according to.

David: Yeah, absolutely. So it’s the product, but it’s also the context in how it gets used and who’s using it and what they’re using it for. And those kinds of things on the kind of copy level, if something is not changing that much like, you know, say there’s a feature in Xero, that’s a popular feature, it’s always been there, and it’ll always will. Is that something where you would change, just kind of on the writing, on a copy level, you’d change up how you write about it regularly? Or is it something where you’re kind of refining it, you’re testing and learning? And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and you can kind of you know, afford to talk about the same thing that the same way.

Dice: I think that there’s something really important in the “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” thing that you just said. There’s a temptation, I think, when it’s your job to write or refine – or if you’re trying to get work with a client, you know, because you are inherently motivated to get more jobs and do more work – to make change, yeah, to change things and tweak things and carry on.

And I think that impulse is a good one. Because most of the time things can be improved. You know, perfection is hard to achieve. What does perfection even mean? You can improve things but I think that there’s also something that people need to think about is that it doesn’t need to change. Sometimes the answer is no, sometimes it’s a feature that has long acted in the same way, has not changed. We’ve written it up really well and it works.

But you know, like I said, things change around, that the context changes. So your company’s style might change, you might change some things in your style guide, words that you might use or phrases you might use or a proposition or some nicety of language that you might start to use. And you might want to weave that back in. Because otherwise, if you don’t, that piece of content, even if the product stays the same, it’s going to start to sound a bit stilted in comparison to the other stuff.

So what can happen is on a bigger website, the top line pages, the landing pages, the home page, get the latest and greatest sort of brand propositions and feel really fun, if that’s the tone of voice for your company will feel really fresh, out of the deep pages of the product that we built 10 years ago, we generally not specifically Xero, you know, doesn’t have that same tone or the same messaging. And so while the facts or the accuracy might stay the same, the way you talk about it, your tone of voice, and your flow, and your style might need to change as well.

The other thing that happens in a large company is that writers change. So you know, the team of writers or the writer that worked on something a year ago might have changed. And so that’s where, again, this depends on the size of the company, the role of an editor really comes in when you’re looking at your publication, and you’re looking for that evenness.

So I’m the editor, I’m looking at this publication. I often try to think of a website as a publication and you know, having and editor who’s always looking at their publication, and to try and keep it as fresh and interesting. And what have we published before can we bring to the front? What are we trying to push out there that’s new? But you also don’t want to have unevenness, where part of your website is losing connection with what people need, and a part of it is really well connected.

So that might be slightly long-winded answer to your question. But essentially, like I think, yes, you would be careful, you want to just change stuff for the sake of it. And, but you also want to make sure that when new writers come in, and new ideas come in that you actually allow those to come to the surface.

So if a new writer comes in and provides a new perspective on a page, maybe incidentally, “Hey, I’ve just been looking at this page, you’re my colleague, I see that you wrote this a year ago, I think it’s awesome. But I think that, you know, we’re kind of moving to the style of shorter sentences, more clipped. And some of these longer sentences, you know, like, there’s a bit of research out there now that says that people find that kind of hard to read in a digital context. So like, how about we update that based on this new style guide entry we have now which says, we’re trying to aim for sentences of 20 or fewer words.”

Kind of an abstract example. But all of those things together, yes, you should be looking at them and monitoring them. But the level of change should be based on, you know, a few things, including whether it’ll have any impact and whether it’s actually needed.

David:  One of the things that really strikes me about Xero is that in terms of the content that you cover, the field of subject seems to be really pretty broad, but the audience seems to be really clearly defined. So it feels like almost anything that you might want to know about running a small business successfully, you can find on the Xero website. There’s a lot of small business information on there, obviously, there’s, you know, a lot of partner stuff as well.

Is that kind of a conscious thing to kind of own that space, because a lot of your customers are kind of, you know, owner/managers of businesses, so to kind of be a one stop shop like that?

Dice: Yeah, Xero’s business and accounting software, and it does a lot of stuff. You can add any number of, you know, 1000 things to it, you can integrate, almost, you know, so many things with it. And I think that I guess one of the challenges probably in the early days is when people hear accounting, with it comes with some perceptions for a small business person, genuinely of perhaps fear or concern or you know, or a lack of understanding.

So I think what’s really important if you are trying to help people use or promote or get people to use your product, if it’s an area that people may be a little bit anxious about or unsure about, you need to build up trust and authority you need to help people understand or see or get the feeling that you know what you’re talking about.

And so you’re right on the website, there’s a lot of information about our particular features because it’s a very featured product. There are a lot of things that it does. But the other thing we need to do is to help – we’re going back to that idea of the context of that landscape. The landscape in which we exist as a small business, trying to keep across the records and the finances, and you know, it’s a busy time, there’s a lot going on when you’re running a small business, or if they’re an accountant trying to make sure that they are keeping a record so when it comes to them to do their returns, it’s not, you know, problematic.

And so the landscape is already a complicated one, you’re running a business, it’s a lot going on. And so what we need to be able to do, and the content we provide is to assure people, “Hey, we’ve got some products that can help you out, use this product for X thing, we’ve got that covered. Hey, if you are a small business, and you’re trying to run your business, here’s how we can help you do that, here’s how you can choose a business name or here’s how you start a business in this particular country”. And, you know, with the side benefit that if you use Xero that will actually be easier as well. So it is a conscious thing.

So Xero, like many other companies, you know, take one of these strategies on board, which is to both inform people on their product, promote it, and help people within the wider landscape in which they work.

So really, like that depth of content is about generating trust, it’s also about generating awareness. So I might know about the company Xero, and I might go look for it. But I might not know about Xero, I might just have a problem. So my problem is, when I go to my accountant, at the end of the financial year, with a plastic bag full of receipts, they get a little bit irate with me, and suggested that I do something more digitally and modern focused. And so the problem is, you know, how do I do accounting? Or like, how do I keep my record straight, and so they know their problem, they don’t know that we that we have a solution for it.

So if they are looking for that problem, and then we would like to help them with that problem, we would also like them to know that we are a good solution to their problems. So you know that is why, you know, on a website like Xero’s, and this is not a strategy specific to us. You see that different content because we’re trying to solve the “do you know about a product? What does that product do?” problem or question, answer their question, but also answer the like, the use case question of like, “I have this life or business challenge, can you help me out with that?”

David: And there are so many challenges involved in running… I guess that also – going back to the original question – gives you loads of space to find ideas and find new and interesting and fresh perspectives and things to say.

Dice: Yes, yes. Like I think there are lots of different ways to help people feel assured, or calmer or feel like their financial records are taken care of. But also, it’s also worth saying that there are like really classic common things as well, that don’t really change that much.

For example, in these, when it comes to surprise, anybody starting a small business from a single person operation through to 10,20,30, 40 people, like they’re really really busy, you know, there’s just a lot going on, and they don’t have a lot of time, and that I don’t have a lot of time, it’s not something specific to us or our product, it’s just a, like a business challenge. And a difficult thing, because there’s just so much going on.

And in the beginning, you’re really just winging it, you know, especially if you’re just one person. And so while yes, we can put a different spin on or a fresh angle on being across things and being up to date and being ready for tax time. And we do that regularly. Some problems, or some challenges are kind of evergreen, which is that if you’re a business person, you are time poor. And so that’s kind of like a thematic thread that might go through a lot of content for any company publishing for small businesses, including ours.

And so like you kind of have this sort of like deep themes, and then on top of that, you might have a fresh angle. The latest campaign the New Zealand based one is taking tax out of the sort of too-hard basket, their angle is that, you know, people that get feel like taxes and returns are complicated and too hard. And you know, what we are saying is that doesn’t need to be you know, and so that’s, you know, it’s a fresh angle, but on a classic take, which is: tax is complicated. You are busy. We can help you.

David: Yeah. So you’ve been talking with your team. What other practical tips have you got for the listener about how they could keep their content fresh?

Dice: Sure. Okay, so, a couple of great points from Sarah Webb and Amy Stephens on my team. Amy talked a little bit about not just understanding your target audience but understanding the industry,  you know, the wider industry and what’s happening in that area. So what is changing in terms of the words that are used, what is changing in terms of the language or the themes that are emerging in terms of the technology, and what’s available to people.

So obviously, you need to be aware of that as a business where your business sits in there anyway. But as a person dealing with words, you need to also be listening for what language is changing. So you can appear up to date and modern and fresh, as you say.

Another good point that Sarah and my team made was you have to think about being proactive and reactive. So proactive measures of keeping fresh, going out and finding out industry trends, talking to users, monitoring different sources of data. So this is an interesting one that we could do a whole podcast on, which is, how do I listen or understand what people are saying.

So it’s things like looking in search logs, or looking at surveys or looking at other data that people have created, gathered other research that people have done, to understand what people are thinking, what their mental models are, what they don’t understand. So that’s proactively understanding your audience.

And then there’s some reactive stuff, which is when people write to you or say something to you, or you hear customer feedback. And sometimes that customer feedback depending on the size of the company won’t necessarily come directly to you. So you might need to, you know, ask around, is there a source of customer feedback? Do we do surveys, do we have any NPS data, any NPS feedback that we might make use of that’s really…? You want to get that pipeline of information coming towards you, or go and find it.

And also, in terms of being reactive, or proactive, you need to keep across, if you’re not writing everything on your website, which often is not the case. Or if it’s small, maybe you are, you need to be looking across what’s going on everywhere else and making connections.

So if someone else is running the blog, and you’re working on the feature information, you need to make sure that you are sharing notes, and putting things out accordingly so that you are not publishing disparate information, and that actually, they complement each other, you know, so things appear smooth, so that it makes sense when someone lands one in one place versus another and that as a person goes between them it feels coherent, and created deliberately.

David: That’s awesome. Dice, if people want to get more wisdom from you on content, and copy and more stuff like this, where’s the best place for them to hear from you?

Dice: If you have a question, and you want to reach out to me, feel free to follow me on LinkedIn and drop me a message. Always happy to chat.

David: Thanks, Dice for giving us such a full and well-thought-out answer. And thanks to your colleagues to Sarah and Amy, hello to you. Plus, thanks, Chelsea, of course for asking the question in the first place. Kate, there’s a lot in there. Could you pick out something that stood out for you?

Kate: Yeah, definitely. I really liked everything that Dice was saying. And one thing that I think is particularly interesting is this idea that your product isn’t the only thing that changes, I think it’s weirdly easy to forget that if you’re a team who actually is quite focused on what you’re doing, and what you’re bringing to market, and that’s a great place to be in, especially for myself, in demand working with sales, they’re really interested in what exactly we want to say about our product.

But I think you know, from a marketing and content perspective, it’s really important to remember the context that your audience is in, that the individuals you’re speaking to are in. And I really liked that focus that he had on kind of, you know, understanding the context and keeping up with the changes that are happening in the space that everyone’s operating in.

David: Sure. I mean, so much of it is about defining the space where you’re going to write content and understanding what your clients and your customers and prospects want to know about that you know about, as well, you know. For them, it’s, you know, it’s how to run a small business a lot of the time or, you know, and other elements of that.

And then I get, you know, for Turtl, you know, there’s a lot in there about just kind of the psychology of content, and that stuff that people will find interesting. I think one of the things also that I found interesting about Chelsea’s question is where she was saying, “how do I keep it fresh, I keep writing about the same thing all the time”.

And obviously, if you’re writing about the same thing all day, every day, but somebody is reading, once in a while, maybe the stuff doesn’t get as stale as quickly as you think. And maybe you don’t need to change it as quickly as you think. And that was one of the things that I thought was interesting. We’re always more focused on our stuff being the same all the time than perhaps the audience is.

Kate: I think that’s so true. And it’s again, such as easy mistake to make where because it’s not fresh to you, you assume that it’s not fresh to your reader, when actually, it might be working just as well as it did on day one. So I liked what he said about understanding what you do need to change and you know, reinvent and make sure it’s keeping up to date.

But actually, there’s some things that you might not necessarily need to change. So that kind of links up as well to understanding the data and making sure that you are actually tracking what is still working, what is still engaging people versus what might have dropped off and is no longer really resonating with your audience.

David: For a lot of people, of course, it’s all about the content production. And then you know, when you publish the piece that feels like the end of it, and you know, what Dice was saying about having someone whose job it is to go back and check.

One of the things that can be really interesting that you might have a perspective on is, obviously Turtl is a format that you can keep changing stuff live, after you’ve published it. And I’m kind of interested, do people actually go back and do that? Or do they have this attitude that once it’s done, it’s done and they’re on to the next thing?

Kate: Yes, people definitely go back and change and update and tweak their content. It’s something that we really encourage our customers to do. And it’s something where they’ve never really had access to the data to be able to do that in a meaningful way. So it’s pretty exciting, because it gives you a new way of working where instead of, you know, we like to think about the kind of old school publication mindset versus this more evergreen mindset.

And it actually changes the way you think about content all the way from when you’re creating it down to when you publish it, because if you publish it with the idea that you can go back and update it in mind, you’re going to have more, you know, it just informs how you actually write it, the kind of way that you write it, maybe in a way that you can either go back and regularly update it to keep it fresh, or just recognising it as like a pillar piece of content that you can create other things off the back of.

So what we see is people doing things like changing the order of the content, changing the title, trying out different tests, where they’ll run and see how different changes make an impact on readership and on the different pieces of the content that people engage with.

And even things like images, you know, you can really get as granular as you want to with testing things out. But one of the things we really like to talk about is this evergreen strategy, and how can you actually repurpose the content you already have and make the most of it?

David: Yeah, I think that’s probably a whole different podcast there. But that change in mindset from publication and done, to “this is a thing that’s live and your contents a thing that you have to keep working on”. I think some people… “I’ve not got time to write the stuff that I’ve got to write now, let alone keep it up to date!” But, you know, that’s absolutely the case that now that we’re in the digital world, there’s no reason for it to be one and done, I guess.

Kate: Yeah, exactly. Now it’s time to hear our copywriting tip of the month. So it’s from a Junior Copywriter at Radix, Claire Goodfellow.

Claire Goodfellow: Hi, I’m Claire, a Junior Copywriter at Radix. And my favourite copywriting tip is to use fewer words. Read over your sentences and ask yourself, can I say the same thing in less words? The chances are that if you can, it will make your writing clearer, more readable, and more concise.

Kate: Thanks, Claire. I love that tip. Brevity is so important. And it’s really great advice that I’ll pass along to my team as well.

David: I’m sorry to say that it’s all we have time for this episode – already! Kate, please would you thank this month’s contributors.

Kate: I would love to so thank you to Chelsea for such an awesome question. And of course, to Dice for answering it with help from Sarah and Amy, and thanks to Claire for the great copywriting tip.

David: And thank you, Kate, you’ve been an excellent co-host. It’s like you do this all the time. I hope it hasn’t been too painful.

Kate: Not too painful, no. Thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed it and learned a few great tips to take away as well.

David: Oh, thank you. It’s great to have you here. Listener, remember it could be your question we answer in a future episode. If you have a question for B2BQ&A to answer email a voice memo to [email protected]. Or find us on social media.

I’ll see you next month for another B2BQ&A when we will try to answer the question: how do you measure content quality? Until then, make good content and remember, do one thing every day that scares you. BOO! There; there’s today’s. You’re welcome.

Kate and David: Goodbye!

 

B2BQ&A 106: How can I make boring B2B subjects more interesting?

This month’s question gets to the heart of what it means to be a B2B copywriter: the tension between our technical subject matter, and the need to be compelling, engaging, and clear.

Dave Briggs, marketing manager at Nash & Co Solicitors, asks: “How can I take a fairly dry – some would say boring – non-sexy service, such as law, which is often laden with jargon, and turn it into something people actually want to read?”

To answer, we needed some serious inspiration. So we put Dave’s question to B2B copywriter and all-round creative firebrand Katherine Wildman of Haydn Grey – and as our guest co-host we called upon the woman behind WeTransfer‘s breezy tone of voice, senior creative copywriter Robyn Collinge.

This episode also includes a writing tip from freelance copywriter Mel Barfield (also known by her alter-ego AllCopyMel) and some more inclusive writing advice from language consultant Ettie Bailey-King.

You can read a full transcript of this episode at the bottom of this page.

Want to make B2B less boring? Here are Katherine’s tips…

Let go of your ego

To see what’s interesting about a subject, we have to really understand it. And often, that means we have to ask the big, dumb questions about what it is, what it does, and why. Making experts answer those questions clearly is a real skill, and it can take a willingness to look more ignorant than you are. (Katherine calls it “applying intelligent naïveté”, and that’s a phrase I’m 100% stealing for my next meeting.)

Meanwhile, Robyn shared that WeTransfer uses a similar approach: ELI5, or “explain it like I’m five“.

People and scenarios

The most exciting part of a product or service is usually the people who use it, and what they use it for. Failing that, it might be what might happen if you don’t use it. Just like Katherine’s dad used to make his insurance work interesting by telling stories about climbing Huddersfield’s mill chimneys, we can hook the reader into what we’re saying more easily if we illustrate it with a narrative.

Voice makes a huge difference

It’s not just about what you say; it’s how you say it. The language we choose can do a lot to set content apart, surprise and entertain the reader, or just make their life easy. In some B2B markets, just saying something clearly is enough to make you stand out. But as Katherine points out, we need to strike a “lovely balance” where we don’t overcomplicate things, but we do still use the right terminology to be taken seriously.

People, posts and resources on this topic

Helpfully, Katherine’s provided us with links to several of the things she mentioned in our chat…

What you’ll find in episode 106…

1:15 – Meet this month’s guest co-host: WeTransfer’s Robyn Collinge

2:30 – Copywriting pro tip: Melanie Barfield on using the Hemingway editor

3:19 – We hear Dave Briggs‘ question, and put it to Katherine Wildman

18:30Robyn shares her perspective on making B2B interesting

27:15Ettie Bailey-King explains why euphemisms reinforce stigma

Got a question, or a copywriting pro tip?

B2BQ&A is your show, and we’d love to feature you on a future podcast.

Send us a voice memo at [email protected]. And if there are any other thoughts you’d like to share, you can find us on Twitter @radixcom.

How to listen: 

Credits

  • Thank you, Robyn Collinge for co-hosting; we’re glad we could make your podcasting dream a reality.
  • Cheers, Dave Briggs, for the question. I hope you found the answer helpful.
  • Thanks, Katherine Wildman for answering Dave’s question so brilliantly.
  • Last but certainly not least, thanks to AllCopyMel and Ettie Bailey-King for your amazing writing tips.

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash.

Transcript: B2BQ&A 106 – How can I make boring B2B subjects more interesting?

Dave Briggs: How can I take a fairly dry, some might say boring, non-sexy service such as law, which is often laden with jargon, and turn it into something that people actually want to read?

Robyn Collinge: That’s a brilliant question. Let’s ask Katherine Wildman from Haydn Grey!

David McGuire: Hello listener; you are extraordinarily Welcome to B2BQ&A, the podcast where we go in search an answer to your question about B2B content writing. This is episode 106.

Robyn: In a moment, B2B copywriter Katherine Wildman will share the methods she uses to get to the bottom of what’s interesting about boring and complicated companies. We’ll also get a copywriting tip from Melanie Barfield, and some more inclusive writing advice from Ettie Bailey-King.

David: Before all of that, though, we should introduce ourselves. My name is David McGuire. I’m creative director at Radix Communications, the B2B writing agency, and we have a brilliant guest co-host this month. If you work in marketing, it’s someone whose words you have almost certainly read, basically on a daily basis. It’s WeTransfer’s, senior copywriter Robyn Collinge! Robyn, welcome.

Robyn: Thank you. Hello. I’m unnecessarily excited to be here. At the risk of making my life sound way more put together than it actually is, I mentioned to David that I had just put being on my first podcast and a list of goals for this year. So here I am.

David: That’s amazing. It’s like serendipity. Here we make wishes come true. That’s what we do. Well, would you like to perform your first official duty as guest co-host and let the listener know how they can get in touch with us?

Robyn: Yeah, I can certainly try. So listeners if you have any comments or suggestions you can find Radix on LinkedIn or Twitter @Radixcom… or if you want us to answer your question on a future episode, record a quick voice note and send it by email to [email protected].

David: Done like a pro. Sounds you’ve been doing it for years.

Melanie Barfield: Hi, I’m Melanie Barfield, aka @AllCopyMel. I’m a freelance copywriter. And my copy tip for beginners is to just chuck your copy into the Hemingway editor. It’s at Hemingwayapp.com. And it highlights any issues in different colors like where your sentences are too long, or where you could shorten and simplify your copy to make it more punchy. You can’t take it all as gospel, but it’s a really quick, free, visual way to see at a glance where you could simplify your copy.

Robyn: Thanks, Melanie. That’s a great tip. I’m a bit of a slave to Google Docs myself, but I’ll definitely give it a try. Now who is asking this month’s question?

Dave: My name is Dave Briggs. I’m the marketing manager at Nash & Co Solicitors in Plymouth. And my question is, how can I take a fairly dry and some might say boring, non-sexy service such as law, which is often laden with jargon, and turn it into something that people actually want to read?

Robyn: I love this question because I’m such a huge advocate for writing like you speak. I’ll tell anyone that will listen that one of the biggest misconceptions about writing or like communicating in general is that using unnecessarily long and complex words will make you sound smarter. When in fact, I think it just does the opposite. And it’ll just intimidate and alienate your audience. So I can’t wait to hear from Katherine as she tackles this question.

David: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think as B2B and tech copywriters, ourselves, we spend all this time making dull things interesting and complicated things simple, but maybe we don’t spend enough time breaking down the “how” of that; how we do that in practice. So as you say, to answer Dave’s question, I contacted one of the most creative B2B copywriters, I know, Katherine Wildman at Haydn Grey. And I started by asking her Dave’s question: how do you take a non-sexy, boring subject that’s laden with jargon and turn it into something people actually want to read?

Katherine Wildman: I was thinking about this and my dad was an insurance underwriter, which is about as dry as it gets, isn’t it? But he used to come home from work and tell us stories about climbing up the mill chimneys in Huddersfield where I grew up. And he would only tell us when he’d done that, he wouldn’t tell mum he was about to, but he would tell us, and he would tell us about the people in the mill and the people who worked there. And it was always, always, always about the people that he talked to.

And I think the thing that I approach any project like this with is just a raft of very simple questions. And I saw a great thing on LinkedIn that said, “We don’t ask daft questions; it’s called applying intelligent naivety”. And it’s something…

David: Ooh, I like that.

Katherine: Yeah. Isn’t it lovely? It’s really nice. And people go, like, you know, “Ooh! Aren’t you clever”, which is always nice. And I think it’s about sitting with people in the room and making them, forcing them, to break it down for you. Which means you have to pretend to be far more ignorant than you might be.

Or you might be extraordinarily ignorant. I did a project about cryptocurrency recently. And I had to ask a lot of really basic questions, which is, “But what do you mean? But what do you mean? So what is it? So what? Why does that do that?” And the secret to making people break it down, which I find very hard, is to shut up. And just look like you don’t know what they’re saying, until you understand what they’re saying and don’t pretend to know.

So it’s a question of making sure that you could then take it to another parent in the playground, or to your elderly mom, or your grandma and say, “Oh, I’m doing this project. And what they do is XYZ”, and until you can break it down to XYZ. So it’s not X with the flourish, Y with a flourish, Z with, you know, some little acronyms thrown in; it has to be broken down so that you understand it. And once you understand it, and you can feed it back to them, then you’ve absolutely cracked it.

And then how you then make that glossy and interesting, I think is you, you throw it back to them. And then you sort of get a feel for where they want to go with their tone of voice. So whether they want to be edgy, or they want to be very, very sturdy run of the mill, or perhaps for some people, just the simple fact of breaking it down into Janet-and-John English is enough to make them stand out.

So at that point, I would look at what other companies in the field are doing in the UK and abroad. You’ll find like particularly Australia, New Zealand companies can be really quite wacky where we won’t go that far. But you can see where you could take it and see where you can pitch them in the middle of all the the competition that they’re trying to gain business from or do business alongside, how can you make them stand out?

So then you bring along, you know, the Voicebox kit? Nick’s brilliant kit, where he’s broken down these 11 voices? And you can show…

David: For the for the audience, this Nick Parker’s kit, yeah?

Katherine: Yes, sorry. So Nick Parker’s brilliant Voicebox kit, which, mine is getting ragged around the edges. And Nick has these brilliant examples of how the financial companies write about themselves, how do insurance companies write about themselves, and you can see people’s faces light up in the room where they go, “Oh, so we could do that!”

They’ve never thought that they could do anything other than this “business-focused solutions”, all of the stuff that we wade through every day, and become a little bit more human and a little bit more approachable and a little bit more understandable. And then it makes life easier for everybody. And then and they can choose and you can see you can read the temperature in the room as to where they want to go with it.

And all of a sudden, you’ve got this very dry, turgid, verbose, reams and reams of copy that become like a conversation. And as soon as you’re having conversation, somebody wants to engage with you.

David: Absolutely. And one of the things I was interested is that you were talking very much about how your dad was telling stories about how the, you know, not that so much the insurance but what was being insured and what the insurance meant. Are there kind of… once you’ve got the way that you’re writing about the subject, then there’s the issue of what you write about, right?

Katherine: Yes. So then it’s a question of asking people to paint you a picture. So if they have, for example, policy insurance in place, what happens if something goes horribly wrong? And then what happens if they have this policy in place and how they can sleep at night? It’s all those human emotions where you’re basically wanting to either save people time, save them peace of mind, save the money, make them money? How does their life improve by having this in place?

And again, it’s those Janet-and-John flinty details where somebody can come to it afresh and just read it and understand straightaway what you’re talking about. They’re not having to try and decipher the language. And it just makes it simple and accessible and your work is to break down those horrible pages and pages of words to just go “Actually, what does that actually say?”

And usually, the ratio is usually about sort of six paragraphs to half a paragraph, really. And there’ll be a bit nervous about that, because that’s very bold and scary. But also it saves so much time. Particularly if you’ve then got a messaging framework in place, and then everybody’s lives are just so much easier.

And I think another layer that I would throw on when you’re doing your competitor research is if there’s something where you can look at reviews online. And I know Jo at Copyhackers talks about this, which is mining for voice of customer. So it could be that you’re looking at Trustpilot, it could be that you’re looking at Google ads, it could be that you’re looking at what people are saying about the competitors, and what they do well, can you take that line and apply it to your company?

And ask the people in the room why they come to work every day. What is it that gets them out of bed? What is it that makes them feel like they’re making a difference? Because people in big businesses don’t tend to get asked questions like that, you know, “How did you get here? Why are you here? What makes you, you know, sit on the train for an hour every day again, now, to come and do this? It’s not just so that you can pay the mortgage. What is it that lights your candle about it? And can you share a little bit of that passion?” Because people will have a story to tell. And there’ll be something, there’ll be a nugget, that hand on the door in the doctor’s surgery where they turn round and they just say something and you’ve just got that gold dust, you’ve got that line.

David: Yeah, absolutely. Is there an element with something like commercial law, for example, where you need to use a certain amount of the right language or else people might feel that you’re not taking it seriously, or they might not take you seriously? Because I know, from a stakeholder’s kind of point of view, they’ll go, “If we don’t say the right words that all our competitors are saying…” then you know, the audience… if the audience is already in a world where some jargon is fairly established, is there a balance, there?

Katherine: There’s a lovely balance to be achieved. And as well, Mr. Google needs the words doesn’t he? Mr. Google needs the search words, but I think there’s a way that you can scatter them, rather than drown us in them.

Vikki Ross put a beautiful post on LinkedIn just last night about “You need to be careful where you pitch the language because you’re trying to say something that’s too technical for your audience, you’re going to exclude that audience. And if you say something that’s too simple, they don’t want to be talked down to her or explained to.” So there’s that pitch of where you’re going to be and as well paying heed to Mr. Google, who does need to find this lovely company in the midst of everything. It’s making sure that the people who need the product can get the product.

Catherine Every, again, did a brilliant post about a crypto ad, and you read this ad that she posted on LinkedIn; wouldn’t have a clue. And I think as copywriters we understand quite a lot about quite a lot of things. I looked at this thing, I thought that could be in a foreign language for all I know. But what was so clever and what Catherine highlighted was the people that need to know will know that that’s exactly for them. So it cuts out everybody else. So you’re speaking exactly to your audience.

And that’s again, that’s your audience research. That’s understanding how far down the buyer journey people are. If they’re doing policy three, do they really need to read these documents again? No. Do you need to attach them? Yes. Can you make their lives easier? Yeah, probably very much so. Even if it’s just the way that you lead into, and some people do it, and they’re quite irreverent, you know,”Read this later”.

David: Are there go-to questions or approaches that you have? You know, if you’re trying to pull out what’s interesting in a dull subject?

Katherine: So I always start every project with you get as many people as possible on the call, from the really senior people, to the sales team, to the marketers to everybody.

And my first question is, “So what do you do?” And then the secret is to shut up. And they will all, they’ll wait for everybody else to chip in. And the secret is to shut up until everybody has said every little last thing they could possibly say and then they’ll chip in again. And your thing is to just be quiet.

And then my next question is “So why should I care?” And it’s it gets to be… People say after I’ve drilled down into these, you know, it was like a therapy session. And I’ve had people in tears. I’ve had people resolving longstanding problems that have been going on in the business, but it’s a question of asking “why”.

And then this is another Copyhackers tip, which is “So that… So that… You do that so that…” and it gets people right down into the absolute essence of why they do what they do. And how and for whom. And it’s you just… people come up with things that are really surprising. And it’s a question of until you absolutely understand that you can’t go any further down that particular line, you keep asking.

And for me, the hard thing is to not pretend that I know and to presume, so have confidence that the people that you’re talking to know what they’re doing and why. And you are just there to be the mirror and to ask questions and to get them to tell you about it.

David: It’s that, what was it, intelligent naivety? It’s that thing, isn’t it? That sometimes I think that we have as external writers, we kind of have a licence to be the dumbest person in the room.

Katherine: Totally.

David: If you’re an in-house marketer, saying, “I don’t know what that means”, even if you’re pretending not to know what that means, must feel really painful because you’re undermining your status. Whereas we, you know, we have a licence to say, “What does that mean?” And even more cheekily, we have the licence to ask “So what? Okay, why do I care?” Or when someone goes, “Oh, we’re the best at this”, “Can you prove that?” No, we have to ask rude questions and stupid questions.

Katherine: Absolutely.

David: And that naivety is a superpower.

Katherine: It’s an absolute superpower. You’re absolutely right. And I’ll tag team. I work a lot with an art director, Keith Noble, and he and I will tag team until you’ve absolutely drill down. And if they won’t let me into the nuggets, Keith will try. And by the end of it, we’ve just got to the heart of it. So he’s got his design ideas. I’ve got my writing hook.

But also it’s that scenario thing. And these are all things, like…. the first copywriting book was Andy Maslen’s, “Write to Sell”; it’s the one book I’ll never lend to anybody. It’s full of squiggles, turned over corners, it is… That’s the thing that doesn’t leave the bookshelf. And he does that scenario asking in that. “So what happens if I come to you for this product? What happens if I don’t come to you for this product? What won’t happen if I come to you for this product? What will happen if I come to you for this product?” And by the time you’ve got to the fourth one, they’re telling you all the lines that you need for the website.

So it’s… Andy did psychology and you can so tell in the way that he writes because it’s all people. It’s all really quite simple what we do. But fascinating, because it’s all people, same thing. And everything is connected all the way through. So I’m sure you find this as well. You go from project to project to project and people start telling you the same things. You’re like, “I did on the last project. I’ve just learned about this”, because the trends emerge in business, and we just get to kind of sometimes we ride the wave, we’re a little bit ahead of it for people and other times we’re catching up.

So yeah, we do we have licence, licence to thrill.

David: Thanks again, Katherine; that’s a really helpful response to Dave’s question. I’ll put links to Haydn Grey and all the other resources you mentioned in the show notes. Robyn, what stood out for you there?

Robyn: Quite a lot, actually. I really love everything Katherine said. And I think particularly this idea of asking the basic questions, like I’m such an advocate for asking stupid questions, or as Katherine put it, applying intelligent naievety. It’s so good.

David: I’ve been searching for that phrase.

Robyn: I can’t wait to casually drop into my next meeting.

David: Yeah, absolutely. Just just as copywriters you get to be the dumbest person in the room. And I think as we said, it’s just a superpower. That licence to ask that slightly rude question that as grown-up business people were not supposed to ask, right?

Robyn: Yeah. And I think I’m actually really glad you guys spoke about that. Because sometimes I think as a writer, I worry that I come off a bit rude if I’m in meetings with people and briefings and I’m sitting there going, “Yeah, but why? Why is this important? Why should I care?” And so it’s, like, really reassuring to know that other people also sit there and ask these kinds of stupid questions.

David: I genuinely once did a talk where people I, I was speaking at an event and I smuggled I’d got my kids out of school and I smuggled my kids into the event. And I got someone on stage to explain what they do, and they were an accountant. And they’re like “Ah, we do this and that” and I literally put my like five year old daughter in front of him just to go “Why? Why?” until he said something that she could understand like why you do these things. And then I had my son who was slightly older and slightly ruder, and I got him to just kind of keep asking, “So what?”

Robyn: I love that, like getting your kids in there an early age. It’s funny, you should say that as well. Because something we often do that we transfer as like a little exercise, this type of stuff is ELI5. Have you heard of that before?

David: No, no, I haven’t.

Robyn: Erm, so it’s a little acronym, which usually I’m pretty anti-acronym, stands for “Explain it like I’m five”. So I think it comes from like a Reddit thread, where people just kind of go to get simple explanations to like, I guess, concepts or problems or questions. But I guess the clue’s in the name, the idea is that you want to explain something, the way you’d explain it to a five year old or in a way that a five year old would understand.

So like sometimes if we’re getting a brief in about a new tool, or a new feature at WeTransfer, we’ll do it as an exercise with like our product marketing managers and break down this thing, the way that we would explain it so a five year old would understand it.

Or sometimes in my head, I think as well, “Would my grandparents understand this?” Because one of the things about WeTransfer with our free product our audience is so broad, so we have to make sure everyone can kind of understand what we’re talking about. And so yeah, like breaking down functionality and explaining the way you could do a five year old’s a really good kind of thought starter, for when you’re writing copy about things.

David: But that’s the starting point for the copy, if you like, not the finishing point, because obviously, you have a lot, you know, your pro users and your bread and butter users, you know, are going to be kind of, you know, marketers, designers, you know, experts in their job and stuff as well. Right?

Robyn: Yeah. And then we do actually have a slightly different tone of voice for our pro audience, which I really like.

So we have a paid subscription service at WeTransfer, WeTransfer Pro, we also just dropped, WeTransfer Premium as well, where you get unlimited everything. And but yeah, with our kind of pro and premium audience, we know that these kind of small business owners, creatives, they work in agencies, so we’re able to be a bit more kind of tongue-in-cheek sometimes with our copy and really make specific references to the creative industry. Like, we can make jokes about like kerning and pixels.

And we understand it will alienate some people, but the type of people we’re going after will get the reference. And, you know, we can kind of empathise like, “Oh, we know working with clients can sometimes suck, but we’re here to help you!” They’re just these little nuggets that we know this audience will relate to.

David: Absolutely; so much is about kind of knowing your audience. So how do you take it from being easy to understand and being clear, and to actually take it into something that’s engaging and that people actually actively enjoy?

Robyn: Yeah, it’s quite… It’s tricky to kind of put your finger on it sometimes, especially because I started at WeTransfer as the very first copywriter, like four years ago. So I actually got to establish the whole tone of voice and kind of put that together. So it’s largely based on my own personality. You put it into a formula. “Okay, this is how we make it sound appealing” because it’s just kind of, “Okay, how does it sound in my head?” which makes you know, documenting our style guide and stuff difficult.

But I do have like a few go-to methods that aren’t just “Get inside my head and see how I’m talking about it.” I think I can’t remember where I heard at first, so apologies if I’m like misreferencing someone, but I read this idea that copywriting is rarely about writing about products, it’s more writing about problems. And Katherine does kind of touch on that when she talks about finding the human emotion in what you’re writing about finding your brand’s “why”.

Because when you’re writing, I guess a landing page copy or even email copy, something where you’re trying to convert someone, you’re not really writing about what your product is, you should be writing about the problem it’s solving for them. So how is your service or product, making their lives easier? What’s it solving for them? What frustration are you removing from their life? Like how will their lives get progressively worse if they didn’t invest in whatever you’re selling? And that’s kind of something I’d keep in mind. You shouldn’t be writing about your product, you should be framing it as “What’s the problem and how are you the solution?”

And also trying to avoid just saying “we” and “I” and talking about yourself; you should always kind of be writing in the second person. And yeah, using things like “you” and “your” and yeah speaking directly to people.

David: Absolutely. Like I used to… write a lot of work in the public sector. And, you know, there was a lot of kind of very kind of jargon-filled stuff. And, you know, at the time I was writing PR, I was having to get into the newspapers and stuff. I was like, well, fundamentally, why should people care? And usually anything that you as an organisation want to communicate, there’s a reason that you’re communicating it, right? You need to tell somebody, and they need to know, because of something. And actually, it’s the “Why, why are you…”

There are very few things that are actually intrinsically boring, you know, that that actually, it’s how they wrapped up, it’s how they’re presented. But when you get down to it, somebody needs to care about it, because it makes a difference to them. And why do they need to know?

Is that kind of what it comes down to? Who, who you’re talking to? How would they talk about it? And why should they care? If you got those things, you know, then you’re automatically making it a bit more engaging, I think.

Robyn: Yeah. And I think what you’re saying about nothing’s ever boring, it’s… all of the copywriters I know, are just inherently curious people, like they want to get to the bottom of things, you know, we end up in late night Google and Wikipedia rabbit holes, like about some random subject, and I think, kind of getting that passion to translate to whatever you’re writing about is a real skill. And, yeah, quite often, just breaking things down to their simplest format.

And, you know, I had a previous manager who, whenever I’d write copy would just be like, “Okay, but what are you trying to say? What are you trying to say? What, Why? Why should I care? Why should I? Say it in less, like say it in…” and I think he would say like, “Say it in three sentences. Now try and say three words” and really get to the core of what you want to say. I think once you can do that, yeah, you can. You can get people to care about it.

David: Before we wrap up, there’s time for some more inclusive writing advice from Ettie Bailey-King.

Ettie Bailey-King: No euphemisms. Steer clear of euphemisms, coded language, or awkward, anxious workarounds for talking about people’s identities. Just be clear, and specific and accurate. Euphemisms signal discomfort, and they reinforce stigma.

If you’re not sure whether something is considered a euphemism, then you might want to run it by some people from that affected community. Or you could very quickly check on social media and see who’s using that language. Is it being used by people from that community? And are they using it with what looks like energy, enthusiasm and pride? If not, it’s potentially the kind of euphemism that’s used by people outside the community, and just reinforces otherness.

So some examples of euphemism here might be the way that many white people will use the word “diversity” when they actually should be talking about anti racism, or anti white supremacy, or anti oppression. Or the euphemisms might be terms that you might have heard in the past, for example, “handicapped”, which used to be a phrase that was used for disabled people.

Robyn: Thanks Ettie for that tip, and listener, you can hear more inclusive writing advice from Ettie next time. Thanks, also to Katherine and Melanie, for sharing your advice in this episode, and thanks to Dave for the question. Hope you found our answers useful.

David: And thanks to you, Robyn; you’ve been an awesome co-host. Delighted to have been your first podcast experience. I hope it’s not been too traumatic.

Robyn: No, honestly, I’m thrilled. Had a great time.

David: Absolutely come back any time. And remember, listener: it could be your question we answer in a future episode. If you have a question for B2BQ&A to answer, email a voice memo to podcast@radix -communications.com, or find us on social media.

I’ll see you next time for another B2BQ&A. Until then, make good content and remember: no subject is inherently boring, though I did once write about a company who drilled very precise holes in very hard metal and that… yeah, I have to concede that one.

David and Robyn: Bye!

B2BQ&A 106.5: How to make boring B2B subjects more interesting (part 2)

This month’s question gets to the heart of what it means to be a B2B copywriter: the tension between our technical subject matter, and the need to be compelling, engaging, and clear….

Wait. Didn’t we cover this already?

You might remember last time, we asked Katherine Wildman of Haydn Grey and WeTransfer’s Robyn Collinge:“How can I take a fairly dry – some would say boring – non-sexy service, such as law, which is often laden with jargon, and turn it into something people actually want to read?”

The question came from Dave Briggs, marketing manager at Nash & Co Solicitors. And Dave, we’ve got another answer for you. We wanted a perspective from the client’s side, so we got in touch with Brian Macreadie, who has a long history of making legal stuff interesting as Head of Marketing at Addleshaw Goddard.

You can read a full transcript of this episode at the bottom of this page.

Here’s some of what Brian had to say

1. Newsflash: commercial law is sexy

Often, topics that seem dry on the surface aren’t actually anywhere near as boring as you thought. Take law: “I think the law is pretty sexy,” says Brian. “It’s an industry full of incredibly smart, busy, often pressured people making really big risk-decisions to keep companies safe. And so I’ve always found it to be alive with emotive issues and human angles.”

2. Focus on how the subject impacts real people

If you’re looking for an interesting angle, focus on outcomes or barriers to progress that potential clients will care about. Brian explains: “If we can find sources of tension in our client’s worlds and offer a strong opinion about that, it’s likely to be more evocative.”

3. If bringing a topic to life feels nerve-wracking, you’re doing it right

Brian’s time-honoured approach is to “hire a great agency and let them do their thing”. But if a creative approach is going to provoke a response in your audience, you should it expect it to challenge you too.

“If the ideas that we get pitched by our agencies don’t make us equally excited and nervous, we’re probably not pushing things hard enough to stand out,” he warns. “If a piece of content of a piece of marketing doesn’t actually move us, and I mean  genuinely evoke a smile, or a wow, or some serious intrigue, it almost certainly won’t move the reader or listener either.”

In this short and sweet episode, you’ll find…

1:01 – We pose Dave Brigg’s question to Brian Macreadie

1:50 – Brian shares his thoughts on turning marketing on its head

6:37 – David shares some thoughts too

Have you got a question for B2BQ&A?

To get your question answered, just send us a voice memo at [email protected]. And if there are any other thoughts you’d like to share, you can find us on Twitter @radixcom.

How to listen: 

Credits

  • Thanks again, Dave Briggs for your exciting – some might even say sexy? – question
  • A huge thank you to Brian Macreadie for the fresh perspective and insights
  • And thanks to you, for listening

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash.

Transcript: B2BQ&A 106.5 How can I make boring B2B subjects more interesting? (Part deux)

David McGuire: Let’s have a bonus episode about making boring B2B subjects interesting. And this time, let’s ask Brian Macreadie at Addleshaw Goddard.

Hello listener, you are extremely welcome to – well, let’s call it episode 106-and-a-half of B2BQ&A, the podcast that goes in search of an answer to your question about B2B content writing. My name is David McGuire, I’m Creative Director at Radix Communications, the B2B writing agency. And as it’s just a sort of mini episode, I don’t actually have a guest co-host this time. We’ll put that right next time.

You might remember last time we answered this question from Dave Briggs…

Dave Briggs: My name is Dave Briggs. I’m the marketing manager at Nash & Co Solicitors in Plymouth. And my question is “How can I take a fairly dry – and some might say boring – non-sexy subject, such as law, which is often laden with jargon, and turn it into something that people actually want to read?”

David: We got some brilliant answers from Katherine Wildman and Robin Collinge but they are both copywriters. So I thought to give us a marketer’s perspective, I got in touch with someone that knows this territory really well and who has long experience of making legal stuff interesting. That’s Brian Macreadie, the Head of Marketing at Addleshaw Goddard, and Brian was kind enough to send us this…

Brian McCreadie: Hi, I’m Brian Macreadie. I’m the Head of Marketing at an international law firm called Addleshaw Goddard, and I was asked the question, “How can I take a fairly dry – some might say, boring – non-sexy service, such as law, which is often laden with jargon, and turn it into something people actually want to read?”

I guess I have to protest before I provide an answer; I think the law is pretty sexy. Without it, trade can’t happen and it’s an industry full of incredibly smart, busy, often pressured people making really big risk decisions to keep companies safe. And so I’ve always found it to be alive with emotive issues and human angles.

So if anybody wants a fresh perspective on the law, you can go to our law firm website, https://www.addleshawgoddard.com/poetry/ and get a whole bunch of fresh perspectives where we’ve invited poets to offer what they think about the law. So just sharing that in case anybody wants a different viewpoint on the law.

But back to the question, how do we find more interesting angles on topics that might on the surface seem quite dry. So I’ve worked in several B2B industries, and the same answers apply to law as other subjects, I find.

So one possibility is to not necessarily focus on the law and instead, focus on how the law impacts people. If we can find that the outcomes that potential clients and buyers care about, or their barriers to progress, then that can become the focus of what we want to write about. If we can find sources of tension in our client worlds and offer a strong opinion about that it’s likely to be more evocative.

So a process I often follow is to consider the human that we’re aiming to help have a clearer view on how our topics impact that person, and bring those impacts to life in the most interesting way possible, perhaps using stories or humour, provocation, strong opinions. Essentially, we’re just looking for the most interesting aspects of the topic, and then bring that interesting aspect to life somehow.

So just a couple of quick examples, maybe to elaborate on that. So my team and I once delivered a real estate law seminar, where we looked at what was changing in real estate. But to make that point more provocatively, we twisted the theme to focus on what was turning real estate on its head for the people that worked in the industry. And then to further bring that to life, when guests arrived at our physical seminar, we suspended a city upside down over the heads of the people as they walked into the room just to kind of make the point.

Just one other example may be, at the start of the pandemic, we wanted to offer fresh perspectives to clients on how to transact amid all the uncertainty. So we summarised the top five to seven issues that decision makers should consider when delivering major corporate transactions back in that surreal environment we found ourselves in during the initial lockdown. And then to bring that to life in the most interesting and relatable way we brought the surreal times to life of the pandemic using Picasso-inspired imagery.

So those are a couple of ways forward and and us marketers don’t necessarily need to come up with those creative ideas or those leaps. We don’t need to do that ourselves. If we each have creative ideas then great, but we’re of course often better served focusing I find on the objectives and the strategy and the calls to action and the results. So if we each need some new inspiration, some new creative ideas, the time-honoured answer is to hire a great agency and let them do their thing.

But there is one last little imperative of that I wanted to share, if the ideas that we get pitched by our agencies don’t make us equally excited and nervous, we’re probably not pushing things hard enough to stand out. Every marketer that I know, their threshold for what makes them nervous varies; I find the competence to push boundaries comes with time. So the convenient truth is just to push it as hard – that’s right for us and right for the brands that we work with.

But I think we must each always remember that if a piece of content, if a piece of marketing doesn’t actually move us, and I mean by that, genuinely evoke a smile, or a wow, or some serious intrigue, it’s almost certainly won’t move the reader or listener either.

And just to close, you know, the writer Robert Frost offered some sage advice on that when he said,: “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader; no surprise for the writer, there’s no surprise for the reader.” So if it doesn’t surprise or evoke us in any way, it won’t evoke the reader. So we do have to find that creative twist ourselves or with agencies.

I hope that helps. But just want to say one last shout out for the law. It’s an amazing B2B sector to work in.

David McGuire: Oh, Brian, I knew you’d be great at this. Thank you so much. And I couldn’t agree more: it is not about somehow making a subject sexy or interesting. It’s understanding what’s already inherently interesting about it, and bringing that to the fore. And a lot of the time, that is the human element.

And I love the point about needing to feel a little bit nervous about your ideas, but that everyone’s mileage may vary, of course. Plus, Robert Frost! What’s not to like?

Dave, I hope you’re satisfied not just with last month’s answers, but also with the insight that Brian’s given you here. For those of us who aren’t lucky enough to work in commercial law, well, there’s plenty we can apply there too.

So very short and sweet episode this month. We’ll be back answering another in a bit more detail next time. And remember, it could be your question we answer in a future episode. If you have a question for B2BQ&A to answer email a voice memo to [email protected] or find us on social media. You can also get in touch with us on Twitter @Radixcom or on LinkedIn.

Next time we’ll dive into a question and a bit more detail with all the normal stuff like copywriting pro tips that you’d expect. I’ll see you next time for another B2BQ&A.

B2BQ&A 107: Which kinds of content work for which B2B audiences?

In this episode of B2BQ&A, we answer a great question from Richard Hatheway, Senior Manager for Ezmeral Marketing and GTM at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

He asks: “I have influencers, decision-makers and end-users that I have to engage, so how do I determine what type of content to use for those different target audiences?”

And as you’d expect, we’ve put together an all-star podcast to answer.

First, we put Richard’s question to Claire Drumond, Head of Marketing, Jira Software & Agile Solutions at Atlassian. But that’s not all; you’ll also hear from our guest co-host for this episode: Maureen Blandford, Managing Director of B2B Unleashed.

Meanwhile, Matt Binny brings an assortment of tried-and-true copywriting tips, and we get more inclusive writing advice from Ettie Bailey-King.

You can read a full transcript of this episode at the bottom of this page.

Want to figure out what content works best for your audiences?

Briefly, here’s what Claire recommends:

1. Ask your audience

If you want to know what kind of content your audience wants, Claire suggests you simply ask. Not only can you get insights into your content, but it’s also a chance to connect with your customers.

“We have a really robust community,”  Claire says. “Sometimes we will just poll the community and ask for feedback on the content before we actually publish it. And people love to give their feedback; they love to have been mentioned, and they love that we ask.”

2. Tie metrics to outcomes

Monitoring general traffic can help you see how well your content is ranking in Google, and to see if it’s reaching a wider audience. But an even better way to know that content is working is to see if your audiences are inspired to do something.

“If there’s an action that we’re asking that audience to take, we can measure if they’re actually taking that action – whether it be sign up for something, or if it’s just to read the next article,” Claire explains.

After all, you publish content for a reason. If your audience aren’t inspired to act, it’s not doing its job.

3. Think about the person at each funnel stage

If you have the time and resources, you can map what you know about your audience at each stage of their buying journey, and create content to help. But rememeber it may be a different person reading each piece.

“We like to create content for basically every stage of the funnel, and there is a different person that will find that content useful at every stage in the funnel,” says Claire. “We think that buying our products and using our products is a team sport so we make sure that we’re targeting the whole team and not just the buyer.”

What you’ll find in episode 107…

3:11 Matt Binny shares his favourite copywriting pro tips.

3:55 – We pose Richard Hathaway’s question to Claire Drumond.

16:54Maureen Blandford shares her wisdom on content for influencers.

22:35Ettie Bailey-King reveals the importance of affirmative language.

Got a question? B2BQ&A will find the answer.

To get your burning B2B content question answered, just send us a voice memo at [email protected]. And if there are any other thoughts you’d like to share, you can find us on Twitter @radixcom.

(The same channels work if there’s a copywriting pro tip you’d like to share.)

How to listen: 

Credits

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash.

Transcript: B2BQ&A 107 – Which kinds of content work for which B2B audiences?

Announcer: “I have influencers, decision makers and end users that I have to engage. So how do I determine what type of content to use for those different target audiences?”

Maureen Blandford: I love that question. Let’s ask Claire Drumond from Atlassian.

David McGuire: Hello, listener; you are exceptionally welcome to B2BQ&A, the podcast where we go in search of an answer to your question about B2B content writing. This is episode 107.

Maureen Blandford: In a few moments, Claire Drumond will tell us how Atlassian match different kinds of content to a broad set of audiences. We’ll also get copywriting tips from Matt Binny, and some inclusive writing advice from Eddie Bailey-King.

David McGuire: Before all of that though, some introductions. My name is David McGuire. I’m Creative director at Radix Communications, the B2B writing agency. And I am thrilled to welcome a brilliant guest co-host for this episode. Dialling in all the way from Chicago, it’s the Managing Director of B2B Unleashed, complex sales superfan and stakeholder whisperer par excellence. Maureen Blandford. Maureen, welcome.

Maureen Blandford: Always delighted to be with you all. Thanks for having me.

David McGuire: Thank you for being here. So I think possibly – I have to check this – were you B2B Unleashed last time you were on here, or is this new to the listener?

Maureen Blandford: I think I was in my last role. So this is new. So I launched B2B Unleashed a little over a year ago.

David McGuire: Cool, okay. So if it’s a new idea to the listener, what is B2B Unleashed? I’ve got to ask that before we start.

Maureen Blandford: Well, and I appreciate it. So it kicked off as a management consultancy focused on helping B2B organisations get off legacy mountain. So we’re all drowning in legacy, legacy tech, legacy processes, legacy mindsets. So focusing really on the gaps between product marketing, sales and success. Both the siloed humans and the siloed tech stacks, and soon to be unleashing some tech to support that hopefully later this year. So a lot of wins for functional area leaders within B2B to be slaying, if they just talk more to their compadres and other functional areas.

David McGuire:That sounds much needed. I can’t wait to see the tech as well. Maureen, before we answer this month’s question, would you mind telling the listener how they can get in touch with the show?

Maureen Blandford: Absolutely, you know I can. So listener if you have any comments or suggestions you can find Radix on LinkedIn, or Twitter @radixcom. Or if you want us to answer your question on a future episode, record a quick voice note and send it by email [email protected].

David McGuire: Perfectamundo! Thank you.

Matt Binny: I’m Matt Binny, freelance writer from Falmouth in Cornwall. My copywriting tips are as follows. When I’ve finished writing, I like to let it rest for a while; I go make lunch, a cup of tea, probably then another cup of tea. Then return with fresh eyes and improve. I always read copy out loud, very common tip for a reason as it’s very, very effective.

I also like to reread copy if I was someone with sort of no knowledge on the topic, or the product or service, and ask myself a few questions: “Does it tell me what I need to know?”, “Would I buy?” And also “Am I bored out of my mind?” is always a good one too.

Maureen Blandford: Thanks, Matt. Some things are classic for a reason and tips like that are popular because they really work. Now, who’s asking the question this month?

Announcer: Richard Hatheway, Senior Marketing Manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, asks: “I have influencers, decision makers and end users that I have to engage. So how do I determine what type of content to use for those different target audiences?”

David McGuire: Thanks, Richard. That’s something we content writers get asked a lot. So it’s great to have an opportunity to answer it on the show. B2B tech in particular has lots of potential audiences and big squiggly buyer journeys. So I caught up with Atlassian’s Head of Product Marketing for JIRA Software and Agile Solutions, Claire Drumond. And I started by asking her Richard’s question: just how do you figure out which content works, for which audience?

Claire Drumond: The best way to identify what content works for specific audiences is to ask your audience. And I think that we often forget in the digital world when we’re creating content that we actually can talk to customers and see what they think. So that’s one perspective on it.

Another way that I know that it’s working for a specific audience is, if there’s an action that we’re asking that audience to take, we can measure if they’re actually taking that action – whether it be to sign up for something, or if it’s just to read the next article, or if it’s just to scroll through the article. We create a lot of long-form content and I know that it resonates based off of some of those metrics.

And I also have the luxury of seeing content that I create resonate with a specific audience when it gets tweeted, and I get @ mentioned on Twitter or on LinkedIn. And if I’m lucky, it’ll spur a pretty awesome conversation in social media. So I hope that answers the question. It’s mostly just about tracking and seeing if there’s a specific action that you wanted the user to take, and if they’re taking it, then you know that it’s resonating. And if they’re not, then you need to tweak the content.

David McGuire: That’s interesting, because your metrics that you track are outcome-based then. They’re to do with the next thing, the next action, rather than just traffic or something like that.

Claire Drumond: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I think traffic is not indicative of the success of the content itself. It just shows if you’ve been successful at distributing that content and getting people to it. So I think that traffic is an interesting indicator for if your content is going to rank in Google, or if it’s going to reach a wider audience. But I don’t think that it’s a great indicator of if the content itself resonates.

David McGuire: Sure. You were saying about asking your customers. What does that look like? I mean, do you literally call them up? Do you have a poll? How does that work?

Claire Drumond: So we have a really robust community and sometimes we will just poll the community and ask for feedback on the content before we actually publish it. And people love to give their feedback, they love to have been mentioned, and they love that we ask. And so it’s a nice two-way conversation.

And it’s a nice way for us to connect with our customers. And just make sure that whatever it is that we’re publishing, not only resonates with them, but it’s helpful, because we like to create a lot of content that actually helps people do their jobs.

David McGuire: Do you have a sense then of when you look at different audience groups, different people in the decision making unit – or maybe you’ve got decision makers over here and you’ve got budget holders over there, and you’ve got users somewhere else – do you see that different kinds of content resonate for different kinds of audience?

Claire Drumond: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So an example of that is we create a lot of content around Agile best practices, for example. And I know that this content isn’t for our primary buyers, because the buyers that are purchasing our products are looking for more specific details about the actual tech specifications, or the product or features. They’re not really looking for best practices.

However, the people that are the end users of our products need the best practices, because that will help them be successful with our products. So we know from talking to customers, that best practices are a really useful way for the end users to understand how to do Agile and how JIRA can help them. But you wouldn’t get a lot of tries, “try” clicks, from that content because those aren’t the buyers. They’re enabling it.

So I think we have to target different areas of the funnel with different types of content and that brings you closer to trying the product and being successful in the product. But it’s far beyond just a landing page that gets you to try the product as soon as possible. So we like to create content for basically every stage of the funnel, and there is a different person that will find that content useful at every stage in the funnel.

Something that I think is unique with Atlassian is that we think that buying our products and using our products is a team sport and so we make sure that we’re targeting the whole team and not just the buyer.

David McGuire: I think that’s really good advice for anyone. There’s so many complex – sales and kind of distributed decision making units going on in B2B, especially in tech. So when you’re thinking about different stages of the funnel, is that always different roles at different stages of the funnel? Or is it sometimes one person moving through a buying journey? Or is there a mix of those things?

Claire Drumond: I think it’s a mix. It can definitely be one person, especially in smaller teams, where they become aware of us because of maybe an ad or because we published Agile best practices, and they were looking to do some new Agile rituals within their team. And they come to us, and then they end up touching all of the content through every stage of the journey until they finally try the product. But I find it more common that it’s multiple people who are touching the content in the funnel.

David McGuire: So you’ve got all of these people, you’ve got all of these buying journeys, all of these funnel stages. How do you make sure you have every angle covered? I mean, is it even possible to do that?

Claire Drumond: I think it’s possible. And we rely really heavily on SEO research to see where there are gaps. So if you pull branded keywords, or associated keywords, non branded keywords that are associated with our product, like say “scrum boards” or something like that – that is related to the product, but not directly. And we realise that we aren’t ranking for those keywords, then I think there’s an opportunity there.

So we know that we should have content in this category, we know that there’s a decent amount of search volume for it. And we are being outranked by maybe a competitor, or maybe by scrum.org, or something like that. So it’s possible if you’re looking at your SEO research on a regular basis to see where the gaps are, and to continue to create content to fill those gaps.

And sometimes it’s your own content that’s ranking that you didn’t intend to rank for those keywords, and you wanted something else to be there, you want your customers to reach something that isn’t accessible. Then you have to basically try and figure out how to compete against yourself and rank over what is there – which we do a lot. We do a lot of that.

David McGuire: Yeah, that sounds like an interesting challenge. So if the marketer that’s listening to this has maybe limited resources for content or don’t have the luxury of producing the big mountains of content that you can produce at Atlassian, where should they focus? Would you say – is there one part of the audience or one funnel stage or something else? Where should they start?

Claire Drumond: I think that if you are just starting out, and you don’t have a lot of resources, I think you need to look at two areas of the funnel. One is, what are you creating content around to be a thought leader in that will help customers understand the concepts that are related to either your product or whatever it is that you’re trying to create a funnel for.

What is that category? What does it look like, from a competitive perspective? What does it look like, from your own perspective? What are you blogging about? And are you ranking for those related keywords? If you’re not, who is? And I think if you look at that competitive landscape for that theme or subject, you can pretty quickly understand where you need to start developing content, thought leadership content.

And I’m talking about evergreen content that’s going to stick around for a long time, not blog posts that are about what’s the latest thing in the news and are going to be irrelevant in a week. I don’t think that’s worth anybody’s time if you’re just starting out and you have limited resources.

So I would say look at that evergreen landscape and start there. And then of course, you also need to make sure that your branded keywords are also SEO optimised and that you have links to those pages so that you can continue to create some domain authority around your branded stuff because that’s the most critical. So I think, top of funnel thought leadership content and very bottom of funnel branded keywords. Those are the two places that I would focus your attention.

David McGuire: That’s great. That’s so helpful. Thank you. Is there anything else on this topic that you wanted to say to the listener that we haven’t already covered?

Claire Drumond: Sure, I think the only other piece of advice that I would give from a content strategy perspective is, if you only have 10 chips, and you need to figure out where’s the best bet, make sure that it’s what is the most useful for your customers, and not the most useful for you.

Because if you create content that is useful for your customers, you will always reap the benefits of that, versus what you think you want to write about. I guess just put your customers first, put yourself in their shoes, and I think your content strategy will follow.

David McGuire: Amazing. Amen to that. Thank you. Claire, if the listener wants to hear more from you, or from a content team at Atlassian, and get more kind of wisdom from you, is there somewhere they can kind of find you online?

Claire Drumond: Sure. You can follow me on LinkedIn at Claire Drumond or on Twitter, @clairedrumond. And I definitely post stuff on LinkedIn and on Twitter, sometimes. You can definitely keep up with us there. And I do podcasts and stuff like this pretty regularly, too. So if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll be able to see what I’m up to.

David McGuire: Oh, thanks again, Claire. That is a really helpful response to Richard’s question. Maureen, there is a lot to dig into there. Did Claire say something that resonated with you?

Maureen Blandford: Yeah, you know, that was really great. A couple of things for me in particular that I love her shining the spotlight on is – the first one is that remembering that we can actually talk to customers and see what they think.

I actually love when we see copy directly from customers, whether it’s quotes, or whether it’s you were just lifting their language and using it because I think the most attractive copy is the stuff that’s going to resonate the most with customers. And that’s a great way to get it is by actually talking to them.

And the other thing I think it can’t be said enough is outcomes. So when thinking about all the different folks you’re trying to connect with, keeping in mind their outcomes, rather than your stuff. I thought that was brilliant for her to cover.

David McGuire: Yeah, absolutely. So you can kind of measure the outcomes that you’re looking for. But also think about being helpful and the end game that your customer has in mind.

So I think part of the thing in B2B and part of the thing I wanted to talk to you about in particular is quite how complex the decision making unit can look like in a B2B organisation. I know this is something you have experience of. So are there particular audiences that you feel are more important than others – if you’re trying to move someone through your funnel?

Maureen Blandford: Yeah, one of the areas I think we miss as B2B marketers, and we partly miss it because it’s hard and we partly miss it because we’re drowning. And that is B2B influencers. So not Kim Kardashian style, not who we’re mostly seeing on TikTok, although those people are all great, too.

But when you think about growing your reach, and your influence, B2B influencers are huge for that because they have a trusted network of their own, that if they buy into what you’re promoting, or what you’re advancing, they will, often unpaid – I don’t think I’ve ever paid an influencer – they will scale that message. So you’re really able to grow your unpaid reach.

So, for instance, one of the strongest B2B influencer communities that I’ve seen on Twitter is kind of the CIO or the transformation influencer community. And boy, those folks are generous. And if you can be a valuable part of their conversation, you’re included and you’re scaled and they are then more likely to look at articles you’ve written or be willing to publish or cite your folks as trusted sources. So it’s complicated to get there. But once you do, if you put the work in, how they grow your unpaid reach is just, it’s phenomenal. And I think it’s an underused channel in B2B today.

David McGuire: That sounds amazing. So, where would the listener begin to find those people and begin to build those relationships?

Maureen Blandford: So for me, Twitter for B2B influencers is the best. I kind of think of Twitter as where the influencers live and LinkedIn is where kind of the real people live. So it’s not work I do on LinkedIn, I’m sort of active. But on Twitter, just start by listening to the conversations, and start to jump in as who you are, as opposed to your brand, although I suppose you could. I’ve always started kind of with the humans, and that’s what I recommend. And sometimes people will engage with you, and sometimes they won’t. And that’s not the point. The point is just to start planting seeds, and hearing what they’re talking about. Because then speaking of outcomes, you can then approach them based on the outcomes that you know they care about, because you’ve been listening and watching the space. So I would start on Twitter, and I would start by listening.

David McGuire: That sounds great. And obviously, you know, the buyer journey in B2B. I mean, it can take months and more sometimes. How do you keep your audience’s attention? How’s their attention span over something that long while they’re going through that process? If you have kind of only limited resources for content, how can you possibly cover that?

Maureen Blandford: Well, it is for me, the resource is time as opposed to money. And that can be hard when you’re juggling the 50 million things that marketers are expected to juggle on the regular.

So for me, the thing you have to think about influencer relations – it’s kind of like learning a new language – is if you invest the time to understand it at the beginning, the payoff is just exponential in the end. Once you know how to engage with influencers, you just do it as you breathe, it takes very little time during the day. But it does take time to get immersed in the short term. And I’m not sure how to quantify that really, except to say it takes time.

David McGuire: Time – the thing that we all have so much of. Thank you, that is really insightful, kind of adds another layer to the conversation. And insightful as ever, I’d have expected nothing less. So, thank you so much. Before we wrap up, though, there is time for some more inclusive writing advice from Ettie Bailey King.

Ettie Bailey-King: Use affirmative language. So affirmative terms are words and phrases that are very clear, specific and positive. It’s words and phrases like saying “disabled person,” “has paraplegia,” “has schizophrenia,” “deaf person,” “autistic person”. This affirmative language is distinct from the kinds of negative and shaming language that you might have heard, potentially in the recent past, or when you were younger.

So negative and shaming terms might be a phrase like “retarded,” or using euphemistic language about someone’s disability and saying that they are “confined to a wheelchair,” for example. Well, it’s not true and it’s not accurate. Wheelchairs typically liberate people. So use affirmative language to make sure that you’re being accurate, and celebratory about difference.

Maureen Blandford: Thanks so much, Ettie. That’s definitely something we all need to keep in mind and, listener, you can hear more inclusive writing advice from Ettie next time. Thanks, also to Claire Drumond and to Matt Binny for sharing your advice in this episode. And thanks to Richard Hatheway for the question. We hope you found the answer useful.

David McGuire: And thank you, Maureen for being such a brilliant guest co-host, as ever. I hope it hasn’t been too painful an experience this time.

Maureen Blandford: It’s always a pleasure, David. Always a pleasure. Thank you.

David McGuire: Oh, bless you – cheque’s in the post. Remember listener, it could be your question we answer in a future episode. If you have a question for B2BQ&A to answer email a voice memo to [email protected]. Or find us on social media.

I’ll see you next time for another B2BQ&A. Until then make good content, and remember Sun Tzu said: “If you know your audience, and you know yourself, you need not fear the result of 100 blog posts”. But then again, he also said: “Don’t believe every quote you read on the internet”.

David and Maureen: Goodbye!