Content Curation Critical to Evolution of B2B Buy Cycle

Unlike with consumer brands–in which marketers count on their audience to often make impulsive purchases–purchases in the B2B industry are well-researched and contemplated beforehand. With B2B budgets running in cycles, the buying behaviors of company decision makers also runs in a cycle: The B2B Buy Cycle.

As more content is uploaded to the Internet everyday, the practice of content curation is not only becoming crucial for a B2B brand to display its thought leadership, but also for the overall evolution of the B2B Buy Cycle. Here’s why:

1. A buyer needs to be able to find your content before they even consider your product or service. Buyers use a plethora of sources–trade shows, industry publications, websites, catalogs, search engines, and social media–to complete each part of the Buy Cycle. But, in order for your product or service to even be visible in that buyer’s process, they must be able to find your content in that sea of information. Content curation makes your content easy for them to find, not to mention presents your content in an organized and succinct way.

2. It’s crucial for buyers in any stage of the Buying Cycle to perceive your brand as strong and reliable. According to this, “people must perceive your business as highly competent, knowledgable, and ethical, which is the key to winning confidence and ultimately leads to a contract.” Whether you have the kind of content that proves this or not isn’t the only factor to take into consideration–this content should also be organized and presented in a manner that leads buyers to perceive your brand as strong and as the best.

3. Phases within the B2B Buy Cycle are speeding up. That means the window you have to make an impression on a buyer is shrinking–and becoming more crucial. Content curation makes research easier for buyers. They find curated content quickly, and, unable to find competing brands’ products or services (or unwilling to pick through search results, “because I’ve already got a few good ones here”), move on to the next phase.

4. Online influence is ever-important–and content curation can develop and aid your thought leadership. You can create and maintain industry dialog, generate leads and interest, and engage more throughout the Buy Cycle. Taariq Lewis has a great argument for how content curation creates vendor preference.

Why Content Curation Will Soon Be as Familiar as Googling

The Internet has empowered the consumer, enabled the small business, and challenged the credibility of the corporation. Throughout the last decade, we’ve witnessed the tremendous growth of the Internet–and of society’s dependence on it. But with this evolution has also come the increase of information and data–of content–on the web. And more content means more sifting through results, and ultimately, more wasted time searching for that Diamond in the Rough.

Content curation addresses and solves this problem.

As more content is being posted to the web on a daily basis, as the presence of brands, businesses, and consumers on social networks is increasing, and as more people are labeling themselves “Experts,” the need for content curation has become apparent. And there is no doubt that the importance of this will increase in the near future. “Content Curation” will soon become a word used in everyday language, like “Googling” and “Card Catalog.”

Why is curated content so crucial for a business?

It’s time efficient. And time is money. For many, time is important, limited, and extremely valuable. And time-lost can often be a bigger deal than money-spent. With curated content, a user doesn’t have to waste time sifting through irrelevant search results before finding what she intended; she is served an organized and curated set of information specific to the brand, audience, or other desire.

It increases leads (and therefore sales and profit). Curated content provides the user with more relevant content, which increases the probability of generating more worthwhile leads and ultimately, enables more successful sales. And the user has more time to for this stage because they aren’t wasting time sifting through irrelevant results.

It increases the value of a business or product. More time, more leads, and more profit ultimately means more value. A business becomes more valuable. The reputation of a brand becomes more valuable.

And I believe that proving value with curated content–and communicating that value to the audience–is what may monetize the publishing world’s Digital Revolution. The widespread challenge in the industry has been making money online; but many businesses and consumers may eventually pay for curated content if that content is quality. And if a publisher can turn that around and prove it to his advertisers, they’ll probably pay more for ad placement and/or CPM.

But the public first must understand the concept of content curation: When one walks into a library, he doesn’t just walk up to a shelf and read the binding of every book to find the one for which he’s looking; instead, he uses the [electronic] card catalog. The catalog provides him with the exact location of the exact book he wants.  So why, then, shouldn’t this be the same on the Internet? If someone is looking for specific content, why might they search for that content and be served false positives, such as a URL with a word in the content’s title? The card catalog doesn’t direct one to such results. So, as the Dewey Decimal System was created to simplify the search for content in a library, content curation exists to simplify the existence of relevant and important information on the Internet.

Tag! You’re IT! …Or Something Like That

Foursquare was my motivation to get out of bed this morning.

Okay, so not THAT foursquare. This foursquare. Seriously. I jumped up when my alarm went off so I could complete my first check-in at Wired Puppy, an amazing coffee shop on Newbury Street. They have a mayor, but I’d like to oust him as soon as possible.

I rarely have trouble getting out of bed and starting my day–and if that was a real issue for me, I doubt I would be blogging about it in any context to an audience of potential employers. My true purpose of that lead (or lede) was to catch your attention. Make you read on. Question what foursquare is–and wonder, “What’s so great about this platform that makes it a motivator?”

The real-time, real-world functions and opportunities of the social media space is what intrigues me. The gaming and virtual world side of this space, albeit interesting, is not a platform that I participate in on a personal level. I enjoy being the same Khrista across all platforms. (It’s worthwhile to note that some of my interests and activities as a child directly correlate to my interests as an adult. I rarely played video games; my sisters and I got a Nintendo one Christmas and played it non-stop for a week or so, but that was the extent of it. I didn’t like playing dress-up and hated playing with Barbies–I preferred creating newspapers, advertisements, radio shows (a mix of DJing, interviews, and talk radio), and sketching designs of clothes and of my dream treehouse.)

But foursquare successfully combines the real-world function of social media and the status-attaining dreams of the virtual-world platform. The combination is tasteful enough where someone with nonfiction interests like me is okay with becoming the mayor of someplace in the foursquare platform. It is real enough where I am physically doing the activities–the extent of the fantasy is documenting these activities in the virtual world. Now killing dragons and demons as Khristazar the Warrior Princess: not quite my  cup of tea.

Here’s a few worthwhile reads on how businesses are using foursquare in the social media space:

foursquare for Businesses, from foursquare
Foursquare Beats Twitter to Local Advertising Goldmine, from Mashable
Product Buzz: FourSquare for Business, from Digital Media Buzz

Play foursquare with me.