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Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

Influencer marketing is evolving, and so is the way brands measure success. That’s why Meltwater is proud to announce a new partnership with YouTube, integrating YouTube’s Creator Partnerships API directly into our Influencer Marketing platform.

Introducing Verified YouTube Data in Meltwater Influencer Marketing

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Smart social media campaigns can drive, enhance, and/or support PR and marketing activities. Even smarter social media campaigns embrace integration. When a campaign is so successful that it makes a difference for its cause, seeing it from the outside can be envy-inducing. But we can learn from successful PR and marketing campaigns by taking stock of what they do right—and emulating—without duplicating their process.

Charity-focused social campaigns are among the hardest to connect with (perhaps due to lack of budget or ideas). There needs to be a spark to spur action. So, we gathered a few examples of how successful social media campaigns empower health-related causes.

When an organization’s goal is to reduce 25% of international cardiovascular heart disease cases (CVD) and strokes by 2025, you know the gloves are coming off. Geneva-based World Heart Foundation has been celebrating World Heart Day every September 29th for the past 16 years. They advocate for funding and prevention of heart disease and strokes by globally broadcasting their dangers; since those diseases kill the most people worldwide.

Their global scale means that increasingly—social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Instagram—play a big part in their campaigns. Instagram and Twitter especially, were utilized this year to encourage people around the world to take ‘Healthy Heart Selfies’ (exercise and health related selfies) and post them with the #PowerYourLife and #WorldHeartDay branded hashtags. These, in turn, were curated by the World Heart Foundation, shared on its website, and branded social channels.

Queen Latifah and her mother, working with the American Heart Association, joined the cause by sharing their experiences on Youtube and encouraging others to do the same. It’s difficult to find influencers willing to offer their personal experiences; so when a celebrity opens up conversations about their family health details on social media, with the goal of informing and inspiring others in support of your cause, it’s a coup. Latifah’s generous contribution to World Heart Day was exactly the endorsement every campaign needs.  

Rise Above Heart Failure

From across the pond in England, UK comes the quit smoking campaign by the NHS, funded by Public Health England (PHE). It kicked off this past week (October—get it!?) and runs through the month. Using a Facebook Messenger bot as a smoking cessation cheerleader, the bot sends encouraging private messages to those attempting to quit. Though the bot is an important aspect of the campaign, #Stoptober is supported by other social channels, including Twitter @stoptober, Instagram #Stoptober, and their informative official site.

The Movember Foundation has set itself quite the bar. From its humble 1999 beginnings in Adelaide, South Australia—when 80 men raised money for the RSPCA by growing mustaches—the popularity of the campaign has spread to the European, African, South, and North American continents. With that, the focus has changed from supporting our furry companions to global men’s health and has since raised $710-million worldwide. In 2012, Movember hit an impressive benchmark when more than one million men signed up to grow a November mustache for charity.

Starting as a distributed and grassroots’ effort, how was Movember able to mobilize to this level of success? 

Beyond the low barrier to entry, Movember fundraising sites have always been geo-specific, allowing participants to build local rapport. But both the local and international community are easily found on Twitter or Instagram using #movember or by following @movember on Twitter/Instagram. With a number of global events planned, traditional media kits for journalists  are available on the official website. Offering a traditional PR approach doesn’t mean they’ve ignored other social platforms, since Movember is a global enterprise, its activities have always played out on social channels. In addition to Twitter and Instagram, you’ll find Movember on Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat, as well.

This year, expect to see even more content, photos, and videos on social platforms. Watch as the Movember Foundation encourages participants to document mustache growth on Snapchat or Instagram Stories while fundraising; or to interview fellow participants on Periscope. In December, part of the Movember Foundation’s continuing challenge is the question of how they’ll extend their brand for year-round donations. As they say: “The Movember Foundation is the only charity tackling men’s health on a global scale, year round. We have one goal: to stop men dying too young.” (Emphasis mine.) Let’s hope people hear their message.

As PR and marketing pros we’d love to know the secret sauce for a successful campaign. However, finding this elusive formula can be near impossible. But, the first step to success might be benchmarking your industry to spot trends that work. Put searches into your media intelligence platform, read up on what is working for others, adjust the formula for your brand, implement what seemingly works, and discard what doesn’t.

Let us know if you’re interested in seeing how this can work.

Hashtags for Health: Successful Social Media Campaigns

A thought leadership program for your brand’s executives can have wide-reaching impacts on your brand. If your executives have the ability to connect with audiences genuinely​, it’s important that they share their opinions about your company’s value proposition. Beyond name recognition, implementing this type of program allows you to discuss your brand story, in your brand voice; it can also open up opportunities for speaking engagements, conference panels, and other industry-related leadership gigs. Here are actionable guidelines to submit pieces to reputable media outlets as a guest blogger, bookmark and follow it when you’re ready.

Becoming a guest blogger or contributor on a popular website is a great way to build your personal brand. Publications are always looking for new contributors and do accept guest bloggers as guest blog posting is great for search engine optimisation (SEO). However, pitching proposals and guest posting for popular websites can be time-consuming. Each website has different requirements and instructions, such as including the right backlinks in your posts. To help you save time on sorting through the requirements and gathering information, we scoured the top websites for their submission guidelines and instructions on how you can start guest blogging for these websites that you feel are a good fit for your content marketing strategy.

Reading tip: How To Amplify Your Brand With a Blogger Outreach Campaign

Here is a quick overview of the publications and how to contribute as a blogger to the website with instructions and guidelines:

Guest Blogging and Contributor Guidelines and Instructions for 10 Popular Websites

Forbes.com is a high-quality website that focuses on news and information about business, investing, technology, entrepreneurship, leadership and affluent lifestyles.

To guest post: To be a regular contributor for guest blogging, you need to fill out this Google Docs form. The form will ask you for your LinkedIn and Twitter profiles, the concept for your “Forbes page” such as overall theme and story ideas. It will also ask why you are expert on the topic, and you will need to provide samples of your guest work.

Huffington Post is a publication that covers news, blogs and original content about U.S. politics, entertainment, style, world news, technology, and comedy.

To guest post: According to their contact page, visit this Google Doc page to submit your guest blog post idea and your author bio. They are looking for succinct, shareable and satisfying articles that will also perform well with SEO. Here is a helpful blog post on how to become a regular contributor. If you are a current contributor to Huffington Post, read this article.

Fast Company is a popular online business publication that covers technology, ethical economics, leadership and design. It says it is written for progressive business leaders to inspire readers and users ‘to think beyond traditional boundaries, lead conversations, and create the future of business,” according to their About page.

To guest post: According to their guidelines for submitting articles, your articles should be well-written, have the relevant keywords in your guest post, be between 750 and 900 words and be exclusive for Fast Company. They need to be complete, search engine optimized, top-notch and unpolished articles that are intended for Fast Company’s audience. Articles should have a tone appropriate to Fast Company and be written by a person, not a PR department. They are only accepting articles for their leadership section. Articles should be submitted to Associate Editor Rich Bellis at rbellis@fastcompany.com. They don’t want pitches, abstracts, outlines, press releases, or interview offers.

Entrpreneur.com is a publication geared toward business owners who are starting and growing their businesses. They cover actionable information and practical tips for startups.

To guest post: To become a contributor, fill out the form on their contributor page. It is almost identical to the Forbes contributor form in that they want to know your contact information, your LinkedIn and Twitter profiles, themes, story ideas, why you are expert on the topic, and samples of your guest blog work.

Inc.com is an online publication that writes articles for small businesses. They provide entrepreneurs with advice and tools.

To contribute: Visit their contact page to learn more and under “contributing to Inc.” they say to be a regular columnist, email contributors@inc.com. They don’t clarify on what they are looking for when it comes to guest blogging but your email should follow what Forbes contributor form and Entrepreneur contributor page are looking for with submissions.

Business Insider is a business publication that covers industry topics such as financial, media and technology.

To guest post: According to their contact page, you should email contributor@businessinsider.com and mention that you're submitting for a free guest post in the subject line. You should also consider sending a final draft of your article, a proposed headline, a brief author bio, and inbound links to other articles you have published. You may want to review their authors’ page to get an idea about what other contributors are writing about. Quality content marketing is an effective SEO strategy so make sure that you submit guest blog posts that are high-quality.

Business2Community is a publication that covers breaking news and top trends in social media, digital marketing, content marketing, social selling and social business.

To guest post: To contribute, visit their become a contributor page. As a guest, you will then need to read their contributor guidelines and fill out their online application form that includes your contact information, your website, and three writing samples or guest articles that show that you know the topic and you have quality blog posts from either your own blog or other guest blogging sites.

Social Media Today provides news, trends and best practices on social media and digital marketing.

To guest post: To become a contributor or blogger, there are two ways. You can register with the website to create blog posts that go directly to the website. They are looking for bloggers who want to provide exclusive posts that meet Social Media Today’s standards and will rank high when it comes to SEO. You can also set up your account to take in posts from the RSS feed of your blog. Social Media Today can pick from those posts to post on their blog. To learn more, visit their blogger approval and posting page.

Mashable is a publication that prides itself on being the “go-to source” for technology, digital culture and entertainment content.

To guest post: To contribute write blog posts, visit their submit news page. Fill out the form on the page to submit a guest post pitch, tip or article. They will ask you what type of submission: exclusive story, a news update, a hot tip, an editorial suggestion or other.

PR Daily is a daily news website that delivers news and advice about the PR, marketing, social media and traditional media worlds. Ragan.com delivers practice advice, real-world solutions and field-tested strategies for today’s communicator.

To guest post: To become a blogger or contributor to PRDaily.com and Ragan.com, visit the submit news page. They are looking for basic contact information, topic and your article. They will want to know if it is an aggregated news story, original story or column, a previously published blog post, a tip or other.

What other popular guest blogging sites would you add to this list?

An earlier version of this post appeared on the Knowledge Enthusiast blog.

This article was written by Matthew Royse from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

How to be a Guest Blogger on 10 Popular Websites

Content marketing is a newish role, and we can’t always find that person with a journalism background. So what do you do? Spotting and mentoring talent has become an important skill for content marketing managers.

Creating engaging content continues to be a focus for content marketers, with 2016 Content Marketing Institute research citing it as the top priority for B2B (72 percent)  and B2C (56 percent) marketers. Content as a priority is due, in large part, to the difficulty in having the resources to create compelling content that maps to the varying stages of the buyer’s journey.

Many marketers pursue increasing their freelance writing budgets or syndicating content to fill those gaps. And although those are great tactics, they overlook a frequently underutilized content resource: your current staff outside of the content team.

Early in my content marketing career, I spotted a departmental administrative assistant with some extra time on her hands who had a knack for proofreading and copyediting. In fact, it turned out she had been doing significant research and rewrites for one of our team’s writers on a regular basis. Like any smart content marketer would, I sat down to talk to her about career goals and asked if she was interested in pursuing a marketing career. Once I found out that she was, I gave her bite-sized writing assignments, kept track of customer praise for her work and met with her regularly to provide mentoring and feedback.

In a few months, I was able to make the case for promoting her to a writer position on the team. Not only did this broaden our team’s writing bench strength, but it also launched her on a career path she’s still on today. As the manager who saw that initial spark, that feels great.

Who are good candidates for content mentorship? Of course, not everyone is interested in joining your content team. Many employees are happy to be right where they are with a full plate of duties. Still, I have consistently found content rock stars in a few of the same roles:

Product Managers: With insight into your product road map and a knowledge of your customer’s key issues your customers bring up, these folks can help you identify the day-to-day problems your customers face and how to fix them.

Sales Reps: Your sales team spends every day talking to prospective customers. If they’re engaging in social selling, they can be a great resource for the latest trends and news that you can build off of for your content, not to mention insights on thought leaders to quote.

Data Analysts: Whenever you see a great piece of content that involves slicing and dicing an organization’s user or customer data in a meaningful way, you’ve likely been consuming the work of a data analyst. They can help pinpoint unique and exciting data while deriving insights your customers find interesting.

Customer Success or Community Managers: If you’re looking for stories to elevate and real life examples for how your product or service is making a difference in customer lives, these are the folks who can uncover the right stories to feature.

Executive Admins: These professionals often have a better sense of what’s going on in the company—from what partnerships are in the works to what the CEO said in his most recent media interview—than anyone else. And thanks to spending the bulk of their days on executive communication activities, they typically have sharp and efficient writing skills.

Ideal Buyer: In many cases, your organization has someone in the functional role that your company sells to (B2B), or has numerous people who make up your typical consumer base. If they have access to and experience with your product or service, they’re a valuable resource for your content team.

How to start mentoring new content team members

Once you’ve identified a couple of prospective content mentees, how do you begin a mentorship relationship with them? It all starts with a conversation. Set up a private in-person meeting to talk to them about the content team’s needs and ask them about their career goals. How do their goals and your content needs overlap?

This conversation will serve as the foundation for your mentorship road map. During your initial meeting, you’ll be looking to determine what sort of role, if any, this person is interested in and how to make the most of their time. By the end of the conversation, you’ll want to know:

Do they have an interest in writing for the blog or creating other written resources?

Do they have another skill or talent, such as photography, videography or illustration, that they can use to produce content?

What unique perspective or information do they have that you can amplify?

What expertise can they contribute to the content team?

While it may seem time-consuming, even daunting, to set up a series of meetings to recruit employees onto your team, this approach is more successful than sending out a blanket call for blog authors or another narrow, tactical request. Why? Because instead of framing your appeal through the lens of what team members can do for you, you’re approaching them from the perspective of how this opportunity can assist them in their career.

Your company culture will dictate if you will want to setup a more formal mentoring program, or if a casual approach is best. Regardless of which approach you take, a few common best practices will come into play:

Set clear expectations. How often will you meet? How long will the mentoring last? What is the result? Make sure both parties are aligned.

Define a goal, and how to get there. In this context, it could be writing a specific number of blog posts, completing an e-book, or creating a template.

Encourage and inspire your mentee. Invite them to content team brainstorms. Acknowledge their contributions in all-hands meetings.

Celebrate their success and attainment of their goals. Provide timely, constructive feedback.

For more ideas on how to increase your content team by nurturing internal talent, check out our e-book In-Sourcing Your Content Creation.

Non-Marketing Employees: An Untapped Content Resource

How many sales kits or pricing sheets do you receive from vendors every week? I’m guessing that you get at least one. And I bet you trash most of them before reading them, if you’re anything like me.

This behaviour points to a huge problem, one we marketers don’t really like to talk about. When we think about improving our content creation efforts, we usually focus on top-of-funnel assets—the “editorial” content that’s fun and sexy. This is the content we get excited about, the content we add to our CVs and LinkedIn profiles, the content we win awards for.

What we don’t get super excited about is sales enablement content. Yes, we create it, because our sales teams need something to support their efforts. But whenever a sales asset request crosses our desk, we groan a little inside. We think: “Another sell sheet? Really? Didn’t we just create one of those a couple of months ago? Ugh.”

Part of why we think sales content is “boring” is because we’re still using the same formats marketers were using back in the late ‘90s. PowerPoints and PDFs have been around for ages. They’re not very exciting. Yet we continue to create the same old sales assets the same old way, year after year. No wonder we’re bored!

Now think about your content marketing program. Aren’t you developing awesome, exciting stuff like videos, microblogs, infographics, GIFs, and interactive content? So why aren’t you using those formats for sales enablement? It’s time to rethink your content at every stage of the sales cycle - not just at the beginning.

Interactive content can be a really powerful tool to draw in prospects, educate them on your products or services, and help them make a purchase decision. Let’s explore how you can use interactivity to create more compelling, effective assets all the way down the funnel.

We’re already seeing a lot of interactive content development for lead gen content marketing pieces. A few common use cases include:

Digital publishers are really raising the bar on what constitutes an “article,” and marketers should be following suit. For example, Mashable has started to add interactive elements like infographics and quizzes to their editorial content.

Instead of gating static, boring PDFs for lead gen, businesses are investing in rich, interactive eBooks to entertain and educate their prospects. Content marketing leaders such as NewsCred are creating interactive guides and other long-form pieces for just this purpose.

Infographics are a great way to educate your market and drive lead generation; interactivity can really help to bring your data to life. For example, in this interactive infographic, Salesforce tells a compelling story about wearable technology and has clear CTAs to download the full report.

Some assets like lengthy research reports may not lend themselves to an interactive treatment. However, you can make your landing pages a lot more interesting by incorporating interactive elements like animations or clickable graphics that give a small preview of the full piece.

For lead nurture, you can use interactive content to address your prospects’ key pain points and propose solutions that tie into your business’s offerings. In addition to the content types mentioned above, a few other ideas include:

Educate your audience on a topic relevant to their industry and share your stance with an interactive whitepaper that really makes your message stand out.

Small, interactive microsites can help provide more in-depth coverage on a topic without requiring custom coding or testing to make sure it works across browsers. This jetpacks microsite from HP is a great example.

A fun quiz can be a great way to engage with leads. With a “personality” style quiz, you can also learn more about your audience’s traits or preferences based on their answers, further informing your sales process.

Interactive content can be an effective way to gauge whether a lead is interested in you and qualified to be a customer.

Sure, you have a company website that explains what you do, but a high-level interactive product overview can be a nice asset for leads to share with their teams before a demo.

If you have a complex lead qualification process, it can save your sales team time to pre-score leads with an interactive assessment that gets some of the standard questions out of the way ahead of time.

For highly technical or big-budget products or services, an interactive buyer’s guide can help leads dive into the details of what your company has to offer. This interactive brochure from MINI is one way to approach a buyer’s guide.

Explore your value propositions and solutions based on the prospect’s specific needs using interactive presentations and examples.

Instead of using a boring PowerPoint or Keynote deck in your initial demo call, create a dynamic interactive product demo that seamlessly pulls in rich media to help you show off your offerings.

Show how other customers are using your products or services in real life with an interactive roundup that provides dynamic examples your prospects can relate to.

The moment when your buyers are shopping around for alternatives—and trust me, everyone shops around—is the moment when you most need to prove that your solution is the best one. Interactive content can help you make your point in a dynamic, unique way.

A PDF really can’t capture the excitement of happy clients or bring their story to life. With an interactive case study, you can include sound clips, video footage, and interactive stats to really wow potential customers.

If budget is an issue, an interactive calculator can be a great way to prove the payoff of using your product or services by showing the expected ROI.

We’ve all created competitive grids before, whether for internal use or for distribution to prospects.

With a little interactivity, you could make something a lot more powerful that really drives home how your tool is better than your competitors’.

Clinch the deal by providing all information and terms needed to close a deal—without sending over the usual boring documents.

Your sales team probably has a list of common questions prospects ask during the final stages of the sales cycle. Instead of having a long, tedious web page, create an interactive FAQ that makes it easy for people to jump to the answers they care about. You can even include short how-to videos for really important or complex questions.

Help your budget approvers figure out exactly how much your products or services will cost based on the plan they’re interested in with a dynamic pricing calculator.

A sales proposal should be easy to read, review, and share so that all team members feel good about the investment. An interactive proposal can help secondary approvers get a quick overview of what it is the team wants to buy and why it’s worth the investment.

Interactive content can help you foster richer interactions with leads at all stages of the purchase funnel. Hopefully, these examples and ideas will help you get fired up about creating some new, not boring assets to help your sales team convert prospects into customers!

This article was written by Ashley Taylor Anderson from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

Interactive Content for Every Stage of the Sales Cycle

B2B marketers today certainly live in “interesting times” (in the sense of the not-actually-Chinese curse).

While search, social media, ecommerce and content marketing have dramatically altered the roles of buyers and sellers, a number of traditional channels (that is, pre-dating millennials) remain highly effective.

The collection of facts and staticts below shed light on this paradox, as well as other insights. Here are four key takeaways that we have included in this blog post from this research for Business-2-Business marketers:

Sales people won’t disappear, but their role is changing, and many are struggling to adapt. Statistics say that 82% of B2B decision makers think sales reps are unprepared; product demonstrations are among the least-valued types of information for buyers; and half of all B2B purchases may be made directly online by 2018. To succeed, B2B sales people need to focus on the three Rs—no, not reading, `riting and `rythmetic, but rather responsiveness, or the response rate (50% of sales go to the first salesperson to contact a prospect), relationships, and references.

Social media accounts are like seat belts; they’re only effective if you actually use them. 55% of B2B buyers say they search for product/vendor information on social media. Yet while 95% of B2B marketers have created corporate social media accounts, half are still not active on social media on a regular basis.

Don’t rely too much on advertising. Ads certainly have their place in a web presence optimization (WPO) framework, as the “paid” pillar in the paid-owned-shared-earned (POSE) media model. Search ads are effective for capturing immediate demand and display ads are useful for brand awareness. But 80% of B2B decision makers prefer to get information from articles rather than advertising, and 40% of millennials don’t trust ads—so strong organic tactics and strategies need to be part of the mix as well.

The classics still rock. Despite the tremendous growth in digital marketing, several basic old-school marketing channels remain highly effective. Trade shows remain the top source for B2B lead generation, with 77% of marketers saying they generate a significant quantity of leads and a better conversion rate. 59% of CMOs still say print marketing is an effective channel—and 64% of buyers cite print among their trusted sources of information—while 51% still see value in direct mail and email marketing.

Get more inspiration from these 20 B2B marketing and digital business statistical facts.

Death of the salesman? When purchasing online, B2B buyers rate pricing as the most useful information (though not, generally, special offers or discounts). Technical information and specifications are the next-most important topic. Product demonstrations are least valued. (V3B Blog)

55% of B2B buyers and internet users search for information on social media. (Biznology)

Today’s sales process takes 22% longer than 5 years ago. (Biznology)

91% of customer say they’d give referrals; only 11% of salespeople ask for referrals. And 82% of B2B decision makers think sales reps are unprepared. (Biznology)

80% of business decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of content marketing methods, like articles and blog posts, versus through advertising. (B2B PR Sense Blog)

B2B customers now expect the same range of omnichannel buying options they enjoy as consumers – which is why almost half of B2B buyers (49%) prefer to use consumer websites to make work-related purchases. (The Future of Commerce)

52% of B2B buyers say they expect half of their purchases to be made online by 2018. (The Future of Commerce)

78% of B2B customers (and 83% of consumers) say fulfillment options – such as next-day delivery – are important or very important. (The Future of Commerce)

Although 95% of B2B marketers have created corporate social media accounts, half still are not active on social media on a regular basis to showcase corporate content, like through blog posts–and just 10% feel they are able to articulate the business value of social media and marketing efforts. (MediaPost)

Good old-fashioned trade shows remain the top source for B2B lead generation and reaching new customers, with 77% of marketers saying they generate a significant quantity of leads, and 82% saying they generate high-quality leads. (MediaPost)

As a business statistic, the average cost of a B2B sales lead varies widely by industry. Healthcare leads are most expensive ($60) followed by business/finance ($43). At the low end are leads for marketing products/services ($32) and technology ($31). (B2B Marketing Insider)

Just 34% of B2B organizations say they touch leads with lead nurturing on a monthly basis as part of their marketing efforts (B2B Marketing Insider)

Six of the ten busiest websites are based in the U.S. – but 86% of their visitors come from outside America. (TechCrunch)

15 of the 25 largest U.S. tech companies were founded by first- or second-generation Americans. (TechCrunch)

Marketing is all about digital now, right? Not quite. 59% of CMOs still say print advertising is an effective marketing channel over digital marketing or even email marketing. 58% say the same for TV, 51% direct mail, and almost half radio and telemarketing. (AdWeek)

The larger the company, the higher the marketing expense budget as a percentage of revenue. Firms with revenue of $5 billion or more spend on average 11 percent, compared with 9.2 percent for those with revenue between $500 million and $1 billion. Digital Marketing budgets as a percentage of revenue varied widely, with nearly half of companies (46%) spending less than 9% of revenue; 24% spending 9-13% of revenue; and 30% spending more than 13% of revenue. (Gartner)

40% of millennials, many who are internet users, (aged 25-34) don’t trust advertising. Marketers trying to appeal to this group need to understand that, but also that this group is highly educated (33% have a college degree) but their struggles include finances: many have student loan debt, 52% don’t have enough money to cover basic living costs, and 35% are either unemployed or work part-time. (Heidi Cohen)

50% of sales are received by the first salesperson to contact a prospect. (Biznology)

So much for the “death” of old media. Though the heyday of print may be over, the two most trusted sources of information remain the online versions of traditional media outlets (68%) and print (64%). Blogs come in at 21% (ugh). (Cision)

14% of businesses fail due to a poor marketing strategy that includes a content marketing strategy, email marketing and methods of improving conversion rates. (B2B PR Sense Blog)

This article was written by Tom Pick from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

20 Brilliant B2B Marketing and Digital Business Stats and Facts

With over 1.44 billion monthly active users and over 900 million daily active users, it is fair to say that Facebook is the supreme social network in terms of user base. Facebook’s ever growing popularity and significance make it a crucial social network for your business to get on and optimize effectively. Facebook has made rules over the years that now make it more difficult for business pages to get their content in front of their audiences, but once you get a massive audience to see your Facebook content, they’ll come back to your Facebook Page numerous times. Remember that most of the 900 million people who log into Facebook every day also spend over an hour on the social media behemoth per day. Facebook is still important, and it’s importance grows as the days go by. If you don’t optimize Facebook for your business, then now is the time to start. If you already have a Facebook Page or want to get one, that Facebook Page needs more traffic. Here are eight ways to drive the traffic to your Facebook Page:

#1: Promote Your Facebook Page On Your Other Social Networks

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