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Nick Nelson

Top B2B Marketers Share their Content Marketing Predictions for 2021

Nick Nelson
Nick Nelson on Dec 22nd, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

B2B Content Marketing Predictions 2021

Even in the steadiest of times, content marketing can be a difficult field to project forward. The craft is fluid and fast-changing by nature. When customer preferences and behaviors are evolving, which is always, so too must the ways we reach and engage them.

Needless to say, predicting what lies ahead for content marketing is especially tough right now, as we wrap up a chaotic year of 2020 and stare into the uncertainty of 2021.

That doesn’t mean we won’t try!

As organizations lay out plans and strategies for the coming year, it’s vital to get a bead on trends and threadlines that will shape the terrain. Where should content marketers and strategists be setting their sights? Which challenges and opportunities stand out? What will be the keys to success?


Top B2B Marketers Share their Content Marketing Predictions for 2021

Why Digital Customer Experience Will Be A Top Focus For B2B Marketers In 2021

Nick Nelson
Nick Nelson on Dec 8th, 2020
B2B Marketing

Business woman working behind two monitors.

Catching a movie in a packed theater. Crowding into a stadium with tens of thousands of fans for a sporting event or concert. Attending a bustling business expo in a convention center brimming with industry peers.

All of the above are previous mainstays that went noticeably amiss this year, lost to the ruthlessness of 2020 along with so many other in-person experiences. And while such large-scale gatherings will surely return to our lives at some point, the undeniable reality is that we don’t know when. We do know it won’t magically happen once the calendar flips forward. Analysts believe physical events may not return until 2022.


Why Digital Customer Experience Will Be A Top Focus For B2B Marketers In 2021

Incredible Content Marketing: 6 Tips for Infusing Credibility into B2B Content

Nick Nelson
Nick Nelson on Nov 10th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Business-woman at Computer Image

One of my favorite moments from The Simpsons is when the hilariously incompetent physician Dr. Nick burns down a building by mishandling a clearly marked chemical tank, and then exclaims, “Inflammable means flammable?! What a country!”

via GIPHY

“Incredible” is a word that can spark similar cognitive dissonance for marketers. Sure, it might technically be defined as “impossible to believe,” but if your content isn’t credible, would anyone describe it as incredible?

Quite the opposite. In this business, incredible means credible. So let’s explore the cornerstones of creating credible, and thus truly incredible, content marketing.


Incredible Content Marketing: 6 Tips for Infusing Credibility into B2B Content

How To Move From A Pilot B2B Influencer Marketing Program to Always-On Success

Nick Nelson
Nick Nelson on Oct 20th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Light Bulb Turned On

It sure is a good thing that the internet turns off at 10:00 PM every night, and doesn’t flip back on until 8:00 in the morning. And thankfully, business buyers completely tune out after they finish work, which is always at 5 o’clock sharp in this world of reliable and universally consistent routine.

Marketers and brands would really have their hands full if these things weren’t true.

Wait, what’s that? None of them are remotely true?

Welcome to the World of Always-On

There is no off-switch. The internet is open for business 24 hours a day. Buyers and decision makers are engaging with content in unpredictable patterns, thrown further askew by the pandemic-driven disruption of workday archetypes. An increasingly lengthy and complex buyer’s journey challenges B2B marketing strategies to be more versatile, agile, and perpetually present than ever before.


How To Move From A Pilot B2B Influencer Marketing Program to Always-On Success

New Research: How B2B Content Marketers Are Impacted and Pivoting During the Pandemic

Nick Nelson
Nick Nelson on Oct 6th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Professionals Wearing Masks and Bumping Elbows

Each year, Content Marketing Institute releases a new version of its B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report, providing a timely contextual snapshot of the discipline at large and its ever-shifting landscape.

Needless to say, this year’s edition hits differently. While there is always change and evolution afoot in the annual study’s findings, 2020 has been a year of unprecedented upheaval for our profession, along with most every other.

The impact of COVID-19 on B2B content marketing is a direct and prevalent focus in CMI’s latest report, which helps leaders and practitioners in the field understand how their peers are reacting and adapting to a disruptive global event.


New Research: How B2B Content Marketers Are Impacted and Pivoting During the Pandemic

5 Ways B2B Marketers Can Boost Productivity and Focus

Nick Nelson
Nick Nelson on Sep 21st, 2020
B2B Marketing

Focused and Productive B2B Marketer

Across every industry, profession, and discipline, work productivity is in peril.

How could it not be? Outside distractions have mounted over the course of the year, from a global pandemic to rampant social unrest to a headline-hijacking presidential election, all in the midst of economic turmoil. Through it all, many of us have been acclimating to a remote work setting that upends our established workflows and routines.

Frankly, we all deserve a pat on the back for being able to stay focused on work at all. So go ahead and give yourself one. But with plenty left to accomplish here in 2020, there’s little time to sit back and take a beat.


5 Ways B2B Marketers Can Boost Productivity and Focus

B2B Marketing Technology in 2021: 5 Key Focuses

Nick Nelson
Nick Nelson on Sep 14th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Online Marketing

Marketer Using Laptop Keyboard

If the 1982 movie Blade Runner and its dystopian depiction of what the world would look like in 2019 were accurate, this is what we’d have been living through last year:

via GIPHY

Needless to say, our predictions of society’s future state, and technology’s long-term evolution, are not always on the money. While certain aspects of Blade Runner’s vision might’ve been frighteningly accurate, Los Angeles is not yet inhabited by flying cars or giant video advertisements projected onto the entirety of skyscrapers.

With that said, today’s marketers can much more easily look ahead to 2021 — suddenly only a few short months away — and make educated guesses about what the year will hold. Many of the marketing technologies that will transform business and drive strategies are already on the rise, if not gaining mainstream traction.


B2B Marketing Technology in 2021: 5 Key Focuses

Your Guide to Effective Storytelling in B2B Content Marketing

Nick Nelson
Nick Nelson on Sep 3rd, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Book Laying in Front of Tranquil Lake Scenery

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a guy who understands content. He was the featured keynote speaker at Content Marketing World three years ago, and his company HitRecord empowers creators to collaborate and produce awesome stuff together.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt also understands storytelling. He is an actor, director, producer, and writer who has appeared in numerous beloved movies and TV shows. His work as an author includes a series of works called The Book of Tiny Stories.

“The universe is not made of atoms; it’s made of tiny stories,” the tagline asserts.

Given his experience and expertise at the intersection of content and storytelling, it’s worth listening any time Gordon-Levitt speaks on these subjects. So I definitely took notice when the film icon suggested recently that the future of storytelling lies not in movies, but video games.


Your Guide to Effective Storytelling in B2B Content Marketing

A Day in the Life of a Content Marketer During the Pandemic: Challenges and Tips

Nick Nelson
Nick Nelson on Aug 13th, 2020
Content Marketing

Working at Home with Cat on Laptop

I’ll never forget the night that everything really changed.

It was my wife’s birthday, March 11th. I took her out for dinner at a lovely restaurant in South Minneapolis, and for a couple of blissful hours, over exotic cocktails and delicious food, we unplugged from the loudening noise of a worrisome outside world.

After we walked out of that restaurant, there would be no more tuning out.

Stepping out from the darkly lit building, I looked down at my phone, and tried to process the sudden rush of stunning headlines:

WHO declares global pandemic. NBA suspends season. Trump addresses the nation. Tom Hanks has coronavirus. Tom Hanks!


A Day in the Life of a Content Marketer During the Pandemic: Challenges and Tips

New Features and Sneaky Techniques to Boost B2B Marketing Engagement on LinkedIn

Nick Nelson
Nick Nelson on Aug 6th, 2020
B2B Marketing

B2B Marketing Engagement LinkedIn

For B2B brands, this is an opportune time to be focusing on LinkedIn for marketing. But doing so in the right way is paramount, because it is very easy to get it wrong. (And so many marketers do.)

The social media platform’s strengths as a B2B marketing channel are undeniable:

  • More than 700 million professionals from around the globe, all with rich profile data including locations, job titles, seniority and more. Not only do members share these details openly, but they are motivated to keep them updated and accurate, for purposes of career development and professional identity.
  • Ability to easily surface mutual connections and opportunities for personal introductions, via 1st-degree, 2nd-degree, and 3rd-degree connections.
  • A variety of messaging, publishing, and advertising tools to reach highly targeted professional audiences in an inviting context and trusted environment.

New Features and Sneaky Techniques to Boost B2B Marketing Engagement on LinkedIn

Boosting and Deepening Engagement through Empathy in B2B Marketing

Nick Nelson
Nick Nelson on Jul 30th, 2020
B2B Marketing

Business Professional Taking Notes Intently

Empathy is more than a buzzword. It’s not a box to be checked, or an added finishing touch for content. If B2B marketers want to successfully engage human audiences and break free from the deluge of irrelevant messages swirling around today’s customers, empathy needs to be at the center of all strategic initiatives from start to finish.

What Does Empathy Mean in B2B Marketing?

Empathy is defined simply as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. But I’m not sure that characterization fully does it justice in the context of modern marketing.

I rather like the way Zen Media CEO Shama Hyder described empathy in the better creative teamwork guide we helped our clients at monday.com put together:


Boosting and Deepening Engagement through Empathy in B2B Marketing

Should B2B Brands Join the Facebook Advertising Boycott?

Nick Nelson
Nick Nelson on Jul 14th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Facebook

Facebook is Under the Microscope

Facebook has always presented an interesting conundrum for B2B marketers. It’s not a business-centric platform, necessarily. But with so many active users (nearly 2.5 billion at last check), keeping Facebook out of a brand’s social mix has been tough to justify.

Recent developments are making this decision more complicated than ever.

Facebook and Trust: A Rocky Relationship from the Start

When the world’s largest social network first came into existence in a Harvard dorm room, nearly two decades ago, it was known as “The Facebook.” An instant-message conversation between founder Mark Zuckerberg and an unnamed associate around that time later came to light, and … it isn’t pretty (via Business Insider):

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.


Should B2B Brands Join the Facebook Advertising Boycott?