We hear this plaintive wail from clients all the time: “With everything else going on, how can we ever keep posting fresh content to our website?”
Well, here’s a bit of tough love on this: keeping your website in tip-top shape is your job …not an interruption of it. If it’s hard for you to find time to generate fresh, relevant content for your site, then I’d respectfully suggest that your priorities are out of line with the fact that today’s website is central to every B2B’s marketing strategy, not some hobby off to the side like it may have been 10 years ago.
Second point: it’s not your job alone, but the whole company’s. HR should “own” the Careers and perhaps Management Bios sections …and therefore the responsibility for keeping them updated; Finance, the Investors section; Product Management or Marketing, the Products area …and so on.
We found some other hints that can make the job easier in a recent post over on GlobalSpec’s Marketing Maven Blog:
- Post material done for other reasons. These include press releases and an archive of your email newsletter …which every B2B should be doing to nurture its leads, anyway. White papers and technical articles fall into this category also; you should be doing them anyway in order to establish your firm’s thought leadership.
- Make sure product areas are up to date. Sure it’s obvious, but it’s amazing how many companies fall down here. You don’t “forget” to update your product; how then can you forget to update your prospect’s likely first view of it?? The secret is to make it a last step in the formal release checklist, just like the product documentation. 85 % of the content will be generated somewhere in the process anyway; it’s mostly a simple matter of polishing after that.
- Start a blog. Not only will this force new content creation, it’s also a great way to interact with customers/prospects who write comments to your postings. And again, you don’t have to do it all: enlist multiple contributors and publish a schedule.
- Go beyond the text. Content isn’t only copy; it can be photos, illustrations, podcasts and video, too. Add some of these to your most “dry & dusty” sections, and you’ll have a more engaging – as well as fresher – site.
These hints should make the job seem easier; but in doing it, just remember to stay relevant and incorporate your SEO-critical keywords.
