If you are a B2B marketing writer and editor or a content strategist you no doubt hit a dry well from time to time on what to write, how to write it or to whom the information should be customized to help.

It certainly wouldn’t be from a lack of people sharing their tips on what works, what doesn’t and how you can get free of the brain tangle. If that works to inspire you, I’d recommend swimming around with the likes of the Content Marketing Institute or Convince and Convert. @JayBaer is flat out awesome and committed to a “help-not-pimp” approach to content (more on this in a future post). But for me, walking where others have been makes me feel like I’m cheating.

If you’ve met me in person or taken the time to read anything I am even remotely satisfied with you know that I feel like I’m failing if I don’t ignite fires in people and get them to do something positive with it.

Don’t get me wrong. I love to see people building mousetraps with better bait, but I still find myself wanting to incite a thought riot of raw emotion at the core of the content experience.

Yeah … I know blah blah blah  on the last sentence unless you’re in my head, but here’s a tip to get at the hot molten center of what to write and why for any writing exercise. Stop thinking about content marketing or writing anything and listen to the music that gets you to dance like a fool, want to punch somebody in the face, cry the ugliest of cries or shudder at the thought of something horrible.

This, my friends, is raw emotion. Without it, your content is dead.

How does digging into your own emotional well ignite your content ideas? For me it creates an environment of empathy for the plight of people with whom I’d like to begin a discussion.

Using music to tap into human emotion

Rather than spin my wheels too early on formats like videos, infographics and the like, or channels such as email, social and other distribution vehicles, I push myself to think of the person I want to speak to and what they want and how I can help them get it.

Here’s a process I go through to get a little more primal with content development:

• How is my prospect like me?
• How is he or she different?
• What are they afraid of?
• What are they absolutely fired up about?
• What do they want coworkers and bosses to think of them?
• What do they hate most about their jobs?
• Who do they hate at their jobs?
• What do they hate about them?
• What does a good day at work look like?
• What would they rather be doing than working?

For me, that usually cools the meltdown in progress and helps me focus on people rather than  the blank page with a blinking cursor.

An immediate example as I write this, I’m listening to Burden in My Hand by Soundgarden. It is completely free of B.S., with nowhere to hide.  I needed to feel this to get me to think aggressively and without restraint. This “audio content” makes me:

• Angry at the status quo
• Intolerant of platitudes
• Eager to push people’s buttons
• Hopeful that being an irritant can yield a few pearls

For the sake of discussion, however, if it was this haunting, rhythmic remix of Amy Winehouse’s “Stronger Than Me,” I’d be a mess of emotion:

• A sense of profound loss; sad
• Flat out awestruck and inspired
• Ready to step out of other people’s shadows

If I ever feel the need to wet my pants in fear (rare), this cover of Led Zeppelin’s When the Levee Breaks by A Perfect Circle certainly does the job. Just a spooky song meant to unearth insecurities.

And, finally, if shuffle-play had managed to deliver Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street let’s just say I’d be in my most comfortable pair of shoes, if any at all. A ponderous moment with a declaration that, right now, just before the saxophone’s wail … is what I fight to get back to every time I feel scared, sad or uncertain. It’s the time of sunshine and lemonade stands in my life. Easy breezy.

OK … before I reveal too much of my own psychological makeup … the point is music smacks the beehive in all of us. Use it! There is no reason your audio, visual and/or textual content shouldn’t stir up the same emotions in search of some level of resolution. And, as we all know, resolution, sometimes, comes with the recognition that there are no immediate answers and a tougher fight ahead. For this, I highly recommend Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger.

You ready to kick some writer’s block butt now!?!?

If not, let’s talk.

April is here, and spring allergies aren’t the only thing coming back with a vengeance.  AMC’s highly acclaimed series Mad Men is back for a sixth season, and with it Don Draper in all of his advertising glory.  Draper’s personal life might be questionable but there is no denying his professional prowess.  He can conjure up a flawless ad campaign and pitch it to the client like a poet, and all this after a fifth of bourbon.

If only it were that easy.  Unfortunately the days of Draper are long gone and virtually everything done in the marketing/advertising industry has changed.  Which got me thinking, what, if anything, is still around that the ad men of Manhattan used?

After some research I found a tactic that even pre-dates the Mad Men era―corporate magazines.  A recent article from Teagarden.Tech suggests that corporate magazines have been around since the 1940s and perhaps even the late 1800s. Early corporate mags promoted their products to consumers through glossy print ads of Hollywood star endorsements.   Over the decades, the magazines shifted from pictures of celebrities to in-depth technology magazines for computer companies such as IBM.  The corporate magazine evolved from a consumer marketing tactic to a B2B tactic.

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As we’re nearing the end of March there is more than just spring in the air.  The craze of March Madness has arrived and with it, bracket frenzy.  The “science” behind creating your bracket and predicting where each of the 68 teams will end up is known as bracketology.  In reality, there is no real science behind choosing your bracket, but good guessing and a bit of luck.  In Vegas, this luck results in millions of dollars trading hands; in my four bedroom apartment, it’s $20.

Twenty dollars might not sound like much, but to four college guys that is a free case of beer.  I spent more time studying my bracket matchups than for my upcoming Accounting test, but hey, there was twenty dollars on the line and I wanted to make the most out of my $5 investment.  And that’s when I realized that marketing, in many ways, can be related to March Madness.  The industry is constantly evolving and every agency has to reevaluate their strategies to get the best return on investment.

Each year a new marketing tactic can change the spectrum of a company’s strategy, a Cinderella tactic if you will.  I don’t think anyone expected Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) to win a game in the tournament, let alone be in the Sweet Sixteen.  Much like FGCU’s surprising explosion in the basketball world, infographics have become one of the hottest content sharing tools in the matter of a year.  In fact, Content Marketing Institute’s esteemed Content Marketing: Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends Report didn’t even have infographics as a usage tactic in 2012.  A year later, infographics are at 38%, used more than 8 of last years tactics.

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My indoor cycling class (a.k.a. “spinning”) makes me want to puke. Literally. The instructor pushes us so hard, I can start to feel my lunch coming back for a visit. I finally figured out what made it so hard: it’s the cadence.

And THAT made me think about email frequency. If a cadence is too fast—in spin class or with email marketing – it can make you sick. Don’t you feel a bit queasy when you open your inbox after a short break and there’s a deluge of emails?

How do you determine the best email send frequency? Have you tested your assumptions?

Fortunately, Flint McGlaughlin of Marketing Experiments did a webcast, “When Should You Send An Email?” on this very topic. As you might have guessed, there is no one-size-fits all approach, but there is an overarching principal: synchronize your email’s delivery with the cognitive psychology of the customer’s purchase cycle.

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“Social selling” is getting a lot of press these days. Unfortunately, that means there’s also a lot of bad advice out there.

Google the term and you’ll get numerous hits on the imperatives of social selling along with strategies for building social presence to reach prospects, and software that mines social media for their digital footprint. Despite the numerous posts that urge sales to use LinkedIn, or caution sales not to misuse it, in my experience, some sales groups struggle to keep their LinkedIn profile updated, much less have a Twitter account or strategy to use either for social selling.

But, social selling is not just about salespeople connecting with buyers on LinkedIn (though that’s important) or sending out tweets that demonstrate thought leadership (though this can help.)

Social selling is about leveraging social media and technology to do things both sales and marketing should already be doing in order to do them faster and more effectively. It requires deep collaboration between the two departments around gathering and sharing data about prospective buyers, as well as using that data to engage them through social media. At its core, social selling requires you to do these three things:

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A SlideShare link from Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam caught my attention, stirred up some emotion and made me want join the fight against marketing hackery.

In How to (not) Fail presenter Martin Weigel speaks to the idea of “Dropping Truth Bombs on Marketing’s Bulls***!” The B.S. in question? The false logic of brand-first marketing in the digital age and calls for all of us to get real. And by real, I take Weigel to mean get relevant. Love me some truth and I couldn’t agree with this take more.

And, true to form, Weigel, W+K Amsterdam’s Head of Planning, delivers a tautly worded, visually engaging, and, at times, funny 110-slide manifesto for how we all can be a little more real in our LIKE-hungry marketing worlds.

Don’t let the 110 slides scare you … it’s a breeze and well worth the effort.

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Survey of college students by Leftbrain’s Jared Childs aligns with recent Harvard Business Review discovery that most social activity on mobile devices is done at home and not on the go.

It’s safe to say social media has changed the way the modern world works. If you weren’t convinced by LL Cool J’s repetitive Twitter plugs during the Grammys, then here are some stats for you: The number of Facebook users is predicted to climb to 1.5 billion this year, Twitter is putting out close to 500 million tweets per day, and, as of November of last year, the number of daily Pinterest users has increased 145% from January 2012.

After immersing myself in usage statistics, I was curious as to how my peers compared to national trends. So, I put on my lab coat and goggles in search of 50 guinea pigs (no animals were hurt in the making of this survey) and surveyed my friends on their social media use.

What better way to put out a survey on social media than by using social networks? I sent out the survey through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The respondents’ ages ranged from 19-51, with 76% in the 19-24 range. The majority (64% ) were female.

It seems my peers are, in many ways, on par with national trends when it comes to using social media. Much like the rest of America, smartphones were the device of choice (84%) for viewing social networks amongst my peers. Despite the heavy use of mobile devices, however, the respondents aren’t using social media on the move. The majority of people were most likely to use social media either while watching TV (49%) or in bed (26.5%)!

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I’m back in the saddle here at at the Content Desk after a brief stint living the Rock N’ Roll lifestyle in Los Angeles to see legendary rockers The Who.

A great show at the Staples Center, as evidenced by my phone video below. That said, as many of us in the information creation and dissemination business are wont to do, I found myself breaking down why this thing I had just experienced was so great and how it could apply to what I do for a living.  This time, however, I was having this pensive moment in a stretch limousine.

Don’t hate.

The Who — Staples Center — Jan. 30, 2013

What I came up with  are really five things The Who have done exceptionally well with their audio, video and live performance  content that you should emulate.

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With a dozen years in enterprise sales and a baker’s dozen building sales enablement organizations from the ground up, I’ve experienced the universal gap between marketing and sales through the eyes of sales. Now, as a sales enablement consultant in a demand generation agency, I view it through the lens of marketing. Yet my conclusion about why the gap exists and who can best close it remains unchanged.

From Silicon Valley start-ups to behemoths like IBM, whether in a sales role or managing sales enablement groups, it’s been my experience that marketing’s ability to satisfy the demands of sales has been universally poor and they own the problem. Thankfully. Because what sales wants is not what sales needs. Here’s how to leverage that premise to narrow the sales -marketing gap in your organization.

1) Define the Sales-Ready Lead

As a marketing exec, you know how many sales-ready leads (SRLs) you deliver to sales. You also know the rejection rate on those leads. But do you know why they are rejected? The most common response I get to this question is, “They weren’t qualified.” Yeah, but do you know why sales determinedthey weren’t qualified, or how it was determined? If you don’t know precisely why leads are rejected by sales you can’t manage outcomes. And that means you can’t forecast results.

To begin, gather your rejected leads, talk to the reps that rejected them and document their reasons for doing so. Take this information into a room with your sales management team and use it to hammer out what comprises a SRL, changing subjective information into metrics wherever possible.

Example: The rejection criteria “Not ready to buy” is redefined as “8 months or less for a decision.” Do this for every point, and then jointly present the new lead acceptance criteria to the entire sales organization. You will see an immediate drop in rejected leads, and corresponding uptick in SRLs moving into the sales pipeline.

2) Give Sales What They Need (But Not Necessarily What They Ask For)

Are you being hammered to deliver more leads? What your sales group needs is different from what they’re screaming for. If you’re running a good demand gen program, and you’ve clearly defined your SRL criteria, you’re already delivering leads. What’s needed instead is clarity on what you’re handing off.

In sales terminology, I think of this as “edusell.” Educate sales on the difference between “a lead” and a “sales -ready lead” and why swapping the former for the latter is a better deal. Commit to providing them every scrap of information you’ve gathered as the lead moves through the funnel and sell them on the value of using it to help them wring more sales out of the leads they have. 100% of the marketing organizations I’ve worked with had information immensely beneficial to sales that they didn’t share. Change that.

3) Get Involved at the Team Level

Get on the agenda for weekly sales team meetings and keep everyone current on your marketing campaigns. Don’t given them a pat-on-the-back overview; take a deep dive into information that will get them excited about what marketing is doing for sales. Tell them who are being targeted, what info is being gathered, and how they can use this information to engage their contact.

Review personas you’re targeting in key campaigns:

- Where do they fit in the organization?
- What business problems are they trying to solve?
- What are their challenges and where are their hot buttons?
- In what ways do your solutions uniquely correspond to each of these, and how can they connect the dots between them?

Give them the training and tools to take action with that information.

Share your events calendar and ask for rep involvement with upcoming programs. Sales teams are hungry for anything that will generate potential business in their territory and are often unaware of what marketing teams are doing. Don’t be afraid to solicit ideas or ask for help; joint work will drive better results. An obvious example is soliciting contacts and onsite assistance from sales reps for special events held in their territory. It’s an easy ask that will drive goodwill along with good results.

The gap between sales and marketing may be universal but its depth is determined by several factors over which you have immense control. Like Dorothy and her ruby slippers, you’ve always had the power to change things, you just didn’t know how to do it. Now, at least, you have a good start.

How important has analytics become for successful B2B marketing? The DemandGen’s latest report – Marketing Technology: The Road Ahead for 2013. Challenges, Opportunities and Key Priorities for B2B Marketers – tries to answer this and other technology related questions on the table for the year ahead. B2B marketing automation burst on the scene in the not too distant past, with companies acquiring platforms like Eloqua and Marketo with little thought of how they might actually employ them in their marketing efforts. While at the time this might have been seen as premature, those acquisitions might finally be paying off in spades – or at least the potential is there.

The accumulation of massive amounts of data, affectionately known today as Big Data, is defined by Wikipedia as:

A collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. The challenges include capture, curation, storage, search, sharing, analysis, and visualization. Examples include web logs, RFID, sensor networks, social networks, social data (due to the social data revolution), Internet text and documents, Internet search indexing, call detail records, etc.

For B2B companies, a smaller definition for the purposes of marketing might be any of the information and analytics that they accumulate on prospects and customers from any number of sources, including social media, prospect interaction, outside appended sources, and website analytics. While it may seem daunting, this data can yield a treasure trove of information that can take marketing to the next level.

In the DemandGen report, Malcolm Friedberg, head of LeftBrain DGA, a marketing partner of ours sums it up best:

The application of technology is rebirthing marketing and, quite literally, shaking our discipline to its core. New expertise. New agencies. New approaches. Sure, some of the same skills still apply, but there’s a complementary set that’s now essential. And while brand may not be dead, it certainly has a new, left brain-focused partner in crime: marketing analytics.

The marketing analytics revolution promises to help B2B marketers achieve new levels of professional excellence. Yet this endless horizon also has the potential to derail a whole generation of marketers.

The proliferation of technology is expanding so rapidly that it’s impossible to keep up with every niche product. The best marketers won’t necessarily be the ones with the best strategy or most skillful execution. Success will hinge on something much more pragmatic: understanding technology and how to apply it.

In the midst of this growing challenge, however, one thing is absolutely assured: The requirement for analytics-based decision making is here to stay. No matter which set of tools marketers use, we must continue to embrace this new standard. The renaissance of marketing is about measurement, accountability and ROI. And marketers that become skillful at extracting marketing intelligence from this watershed of integrated data will become tomorrow’s marketing leaders.

For all those companies sitting on marketing automation solutions, the time is ripe to start using them. Dive into the data and make sense of the analytics. It’ll point the way to B2B marketing (automation) success.

You can get a copy of the DemandGen report by emailing Mark Evertz at LeftBrain DGA.

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Chuck Swanson is Co-Founder of Digital C4 in Portland, Oregon. Chuck and his team help companies enhance their online brand and content visibility using proven SEO, Social Media Marketing, and Custom Content Creation and Blogging.