Content Marketing/Writing

Great B2B Storytelling in Content Marketing

Posted by M. Sharon Baker
Great B2B Storytelling in Content Marketing

I’ve just completed the first draft of an advisory for B2B marketing with an agency I’m excited to be working with. I’ve done a ton of research on what’s happening in B2B marketing and content marketing, where one of the themes is the adoption of storytelling. Naturally, I found myself wondering:

Who’s doing great B2B storytelling?Ike snip

I know one super example – Cisco Systems.

Cisco created its own IT superhero, Ike Theodore (IT) Willis, and made highly entertaining animated videos about Ike’s IT challenges.

Ike has his own Facebook page and seven video episodes at last count. His popularity prompted Cisco to create its own IT Championships where 3,000 IT geeks slugged it out for a chance to win a trip to Hawaii.

Don’t be surprised if Cisco turns this into an annual challenge. What a great demonstration of going way beyond thinking of the customer to create engaging content that its customers – IT geeks – look forward to receiving and coming back to see what’s next.

But Cisco’s efforts don’t stop there.

The California based networking giant also produced a short documentary about how service providers – one of its target customer groups – pioneered the development of the telecommunications network in a series called The Network Effect. It not only garnered a lot of YouTube love but it was broadcast on TV.

The Network effect is being called a good B2B example of Transmedia storytelling. What’s that? It’s a term coined in the entertainment and movie business the refers to dividing chunks of a story across multiple platforms to form one cohesive narrative.

So who else is doing great B2B Storytelling?

I have a list that I’m developing for a second post, but in the meantime, tell me who you have noticed in the comments below.

 

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Case Studies/Content Marketing/Writing

Case Study: New Pages, Blogging Boost Traffic for Law Firm

Posted by M. Sharon Baker
Case Study: New Pages, Blogging Boost Traffic for Law Firm

One reason I haven’t been too attentive to my blog is that I’m knee deep launching a blog for my client Integrative Family Law. I’m helping Carol Bailey and her team dip their toes in the blogging waters as part of an overall content marketing strategy to attract new clients.IFL Logo Snip

As editor of the blog, I gave them a list of 25 potential topics on divorce and family matters, which are their main practices of law. We launched the blog after I rewrote some of their website pages.

The attorneys chose from the idea list or come up with their own topic and then I edit out legalese, write a headline, add subheads, and come up with a question to encourage comments. Then I source potential photos and add them to the posts. I also upload the posts and manage their editorial calendar.

Summer is typically slow for divorce attorneys, but nonetheless, unique visitors to the site jumped 16 percent from May to July, which shows how adding new and relevant content to your website and blogging can have a large impact.

What are we writing about?

Divorce is big business, and people have a lot of questions about many aspects. We’re starting out with a lot of basics, jumping on news when it shows up in national media outlets, and including statistics to offer a variety of topics.

Here are some of the headlines:

  • Child Custody, Divorce & Moving: What Parents Need to Know
  • Get Parental Rights in Writing & Avoid This
  • Protecting Your Heart during a Divorce 
  • DOMA is Unconstitutional; What the Ruling Means
  • Divorce: How to Pay Less & How to Survive 
  • Divorce: What you Need to Know & Do Financially
  • Divorce with Children: What You Need to Know 
  • Divorce: 4 Things You Need to Know & Do Now
  • Divorce Statistics for Washington State, the Nation

  

In addition to the blogging, I’m writing a Divorce Guide that we’ll have available for prospects to download in exchange for their email addresses so we can create an email list of prospects to nurture.

 

 

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Content/Content Marketing/How To/Websites

How a Service Firm Tackles Content Marketing: First Step – Rewriting Web Pages

Posted by M. Sharon Baker
How a Service Firm Tackles Content Marketing: First Step – Rewriting Web Pages

u2scp19bI’m in the midst of helping a client rewrite her company website. Her business had dipped, and she wanted to land more traffic from specific keywords, ones she knew were shuttling most of the business to her competitors.

For the most part, her site was a gigantic brochure, talking all about her firm, not about what her team does for people or how her services are different from others. Like many companies, she wrote the copy herself, many years ago when she first launched her website.

But now, her brochure site no longer works.

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Content Marketing/Public Relations/Writing

Creating Content for Three New Customers

Posted by M. Sharon Baker
Creating Content for Three New Customers

copyright Lisa Harkins

Writing and creating content for customers keeps me busy and steals time from keeping this blog updated.

I’ve added three new clients in the past month or two and want to share them with you.

I’m the perfect target audience for the largest of the three, the Gail Harker Creative Studies Center.

If you’ve read my Longer bio and contact web page, you know I once thought of pursuing an art career and that I like to draw.

I first learned about Gail when I wrote about a fiber art exhibit at the La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum for the La Conner Weekly News.

Copyright Lisa Harkins

The Gail Harker Creative Studies Center moved to La Conner and now occupies the town’s architecturally significant barn, which was remodeled in the late 1990s.

If you’ve visited La Conner, you’ve seen it as you’ve come into town.

The center offers color, design, stitch and fiber art courses, taught by internationally known artist, author and educator Gail Harker.

Gail basically has a master’s degree in texture and fiber art as well as contemporary embroidery, also known as stitch.

More than 1,500 students have studied at the Center, which offers professional and diploma programs in design and stitch. Several of her students have gone on to win national and international acclaim.

Gail has a wonderful blog; its well written, has fabulous photos, showcases students and their art and contains lively guest posts by her students.

Copyright Jarina Moss

But only her students seem to know about the blog, and the school, so I’m helping her turn up the volume and get noticed.

First, I created a press room page for the website, and then I wrote a press release about her move to La Conner.

We leveraged the press release to pitch the media about the Center’s graduation exhibition, which helped 350 people learn more about the colorful art that takes place at the studio.

copyright Gail Harker

Now, we’re telling the world about the center’s first online course, Level 1 Color Studies.

In addition to generating interest in local newspapers and magazines, I will be looking for blogs Gail can guest post on, associations she can join or learn from.

I will also add the center to the worldwide radar screen by getting listed on education sites.

We’ll also be leveraging her base of students, and have created an email campaign that highlights content pertaining to the onlince color studies course.

And I will be pitching Gail’s story and the Center to national trade and women’s publications.

I’ll be writing about my other two new clients, Intuit’s Small Business Blog, and BB Ranch, a new Seattle butcher shop, later this week.

In the meantime, check out Gail’s blog and send me any PR ideas or suggestions you may have, or simply tell me what you like about Gail’s blog.

Bookmark it or sign up for the RSS feed – you’ll enjoy looking at the amazing art these women create.

 

 

 

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