Jim Burns

To capture attention and deliver value, your content must be relevant to your buyers and readers. 

It might be cliché to say buyers are inundated with information, but I don't see organizations really committing to strategies that deal with this reality. 

While many have changed the way they market over the last three to five years, I don't see corresponding changes in the way they create content. 

I call the traditional approach a "point production" method. Sometimes this is referred to as "one and done." I put the emphasis on "one" -- one blog, article, webinar, whitepaper, video, etc. 

If we are committed to creating relevant content that works for our organization and our readers, it must be created to speak to a specific individual, specific interest or issue, buying stage, industry, competitive context and other relevance factors. Not all of them together. 

...

Today’s content marketing requirements and opportunities are straining traditional corporate thinking, policies and processes.

How has your company adapted policies and procedures to accommodate the “democratization of content creation” with the shift from centralized, “professional” production processes, to a distributed or (hopefully) agile creation process?

A common occurrence we experience when creating video vignettes for companies provides a good example. This involves the internal review process that is based on traditional thinking, policies and procedures.

First, some context. We typically create content for our customers, to address their buyer’s journey: their issues, challenges, opportunities, options, etc. This content is educational in nature. Hopefully it delivers insights bordering on “...

At our recent SMEI breakfast we had an excellent conversation on customer -- and video -- interviews. As a result, I suspected that most B2B marketing professionals don't have a successful framework for thinking about, much less acquiring, effective customer interviews for marketing and selling content. Follow on conversations with organizations large and small confirmed my suspicions. 

What do you call them? Success stories? Testimonials? Case studies?  What is the "come from" behind your approach? What is your primary intent? To have your customer tell your prospects things about you that you can't (or shouldn't) tell yourself? 

Or are you "coming from" a perspective of "helping buyers make effective buying decisions" by getting your customers to share insights that address specific buying questions -- by role, issue, buying stage, solution alternative? 

What is the...

We live in a world that prefers to receive information asynchronously. But we tend to focus on using live, synchronous delivery methods. This is a key source of high costs and low results in every area of a business. I cannot overstate the importance of this idea and distinction, as well as the implication for individuals and organizations.

First, some simple definitions.

Synchronous communications happen at the same time with all participants. Synchronous communications tend to be traditional voice-based conversations to deliver intended messages. They can be conducted in person or over the phone or web.

Asynchronous communications do not occur in the same time. Communications experienced asynchronously are consumed "on demand" at a time of choosing by the recipient. Asynchronous communication rely on content to package and deliver core messages -- audio content such as voice mail, text...