3 Simple Steps to Helpful Tech Content Marketing

Being useful must be part of your entire company’s DNA — not just the DNA of a small, centralized team.

— Jay Baer, Youtility

BeUseful-JayBaer-convinceandconvert
Credit: Convince & Convert

Because of my previous life as a technical writer, where 100% of my writing was education-related, this quote resonates with me a lot. I enjoyed helping people learn how to use the software I wrote about, explaining the benefits to the features developers worked so diligently on. It also resonates with me as a content marketer because helpful tech content marketing is a bit of a rarity out there. Truly helpful content that shows how a tech product solves a problem or demonstrates how it helps prospects overcome obstacles.

Why helpful tech content marketing works

  • It brings you closer to your audience.
  • It instills confidence in your audience.
  • It creates a strong bond between you and your audience.

Setting up your content marketing programs to be helpful can strengthen the relationship with your audience and become a powerful tool in your arsenal.

How to create helpful tech content marketing

Step 1: Crowd-source your useful knowledge

Yes, it’s still a popular tactic right now, especially as new social media platforms pop up and business is using it more often for customer service. There’s no reason you can’t use it for your tech content marketing programs too. That’s not to say you should only solicit marketing ideas from your community, though that can be one tactic. By opening your horizons to different inputs, your content marketing programs become more diversified and you get a better sense of what’s out there.

For example, why not involve a wider variety of employees in the creation of your tech content marketing? Different employees in different departments have unique experiences and knowledge that may be useful to your audience. Use them to flesh out your content pieces or to get ideas for new content types, or to find out what they’re talking about.

Step 2: Re-invent what you’ve already created

Aside from the improved SEO juice you’ll get when you revisit previously published content, it’s also a necessary process for any tech company. Your audience changes all the time as your content targets different parts of the sales funnel. Technology updates and evolutions mean your own tech products are constantly being enhanced too, leading to basic updates of your marketing material. The underlying obstacles your products help customers overcome may remain the same, but the way you help them do it has changed.

So, how can you re-invent your tech content marketing pieces? Why not:

  • See if there are new links you can update in a blog post?
  • Add new ideas to a list post?
  • Refresh the images in your e-newsletter?
  • Insert new data into a landing page?
  • Update sales data in an email series?
  • Create a new success story by interviewing your sales staff?

Step 3: Measure what you’ve created

Let’s state the obvious here: we’re all afraid of metrics and analytics. We don’t know what we should be measuring, how we should measure it, and what to do with the data afterward. And that’s okay. Content marketing metrics and KPIs are even more complicated than that, but it’s something all tech content marketers should do. You’ll want to see how you’re progressing, and upper management is always looking for the quantitative numbers to justify your efforts. 😉

Jay Baer suggests measuring the categories of “metrics that matter“: consumption, advocacy & sharing, lead generation, and sales. How you do it is up to you, but you should do it regularly and efficiently.

Create more helpful tech content marketing

Are you sold on the idea of your marketing being “helpful”? It seems like a simple idea, and an obvious tactic that tech companies would use in their marketing, especially when you see the effects it can have on your bottom line. And if your entire company has embraced the idea of helpfulness, it’s easier to create the helpful tech content marketing pieces your audience craves.

How are your efforts going? Is it a tough slog or are you having success with it? Share with me in the comments as I’d like to hear how it’s going.