The B2B content flywheel playbook - with Dave Gerhardt
Jun 25, 2024
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Dave Gerhardt, founder of Exit Five, and Erik Jacobson, founder of Hatch.fm, explore the power of a B2B content flywheel. They dive into building effective content strategies, emphasizing feedback and collaboration. Discover how to create engaging content for platforms like LinkedIn and the value of newsletters in driving community engagement. The duo also discusses the evolving role of social media in B2B marketing, pondering whether X/Twitter remains relevant. Join them for actionable insights to elevate your content game!
The content flywheel approach emphasizes ongoing content creation and repurposing to engage audiences meaningfully across various channels.
Analyzing audience signals is crucial for refining content strategies and creating relevant topics that drive engagement and alignment with audience interests.
Utilizing newsletters is an effective way to build relationships with audiences by providing deeper engagement and leveraging social media insights.
Deep dives
Understanding the Content Flywheel
The concept of the content flywheel revolves around continuous content creation and repurposing across various channels to enhance audience engagement and trust. It emphasizes not just repurposing content, such as turning a podcast into a blog post, but also actively creating content tailored specifically for the platforms where the audience engages. This strategy requires marketers to analyze audience signals and interests over time, allowing them to evolve content strategies effectively. By leveraging feedback from past content, businesses can create more relevant topics and streamline their overall content production process.
Utilizing Signals for Content Strategy
Analyzing audience engagement signals is crucial for refining content strategy, as it helps marketers identify topics that resonate well with their audience. For example, by examining previous webinars, a team can pinpoint which topics garnered the most interest—thus informing future content creation. The discussion highlights how certain topics, such as marketing planning, significantly outperform others, providing insights that should drive upcoming webinars, articles, or podcasts. This signal-driven approach is essential for creating content that is not only relevant but also inherently aligned with audience needs.
Choosing a Channel to Start the Content Flywheel
Selecting a primary channel to kick off the content flywheel is fundamental for success, particularly when starting from ground zero. For B2B companies, platforms like LinkedIn are seen as prime starting points due to their lower barrier for entry and the potential for immediate audience feedback. It's recommended to focus efforts on one main channel before attempting to spread across multiple platforms, which can dilute efforts. By honing in on a single channel, marketers can cultivate a feedback loop that boosts understanding of audience desires and maximizes the effectiveness of content strategy.
The Value of Feedback Loops
Feedback loops are indispensable in content marketing; they enable marketers to glean insights from audience interactions that inform future content creation. The iterative nature of feedback helps marketers experiment and adjust strategies dynamically to suit audience interests and trends. For example, running polls or asking for feedback in newsletters can generate valuable insights into what content resonates most with the audience. By cultivating an environment where audience input is encouraged, companies can effectively tailor their content and engagement strategies.
Integrating Newsletters and Relationship Channels
Utilizing newsletters as relationship-building tools complements broader content distribution strategies by directly connecting with subscribers without the interference of algorithms. Newsletters serve not only as a collection point for audience insights gathered through social media but also create a dedicated space for deeper engagement with the audience. The content within newsletters often results from analyzing social media interactions, transforming popular posts into expanded discussions. This synergy reinforces audience relationships while propelling growth through targeted, valuable content.
Dave Gerhardt (Founder, Exit Five) and Erik Jacobson (Founder, Hatch.fm) share approaches for building a B2B content flywheel in 2024.
Here's what was covered:
(4:08) - What is a content flywheel?
(10:06) - How do you get started with a content flywheel?
(19:27) - The content flywheel process
(26:21) - The thought leader + content team structure
(31:55) - Content distribution goals and approach
(44:43) - Who should help get the best content from the Thought Leader?
(46:45) - Curating your LinkedIn feed
(47:53) - The value and approach of newsletters
(50:43) - Is X/Twitter still a viable channel for B2B?
(54:01) The most important part of a content strategy
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Hatch is a video-first content production agency that helps B2B marketing teams create video podcasts, video series, and short-form video content so they can run an efficient content engine, and be seen as experts in their industry.