Welcome to another edition of PROse, where we explore the science behind building a brand.

In today’s email, we discuss:

• Why you should be promoting your blog content

• The tension between content and social marketers

• Winning tactics you can use to repurpose blog content

Yo! I’m Darien from Antidote 👋🏾. Every week I share what I learn about the science of building a brand. If someone forwarded this email to you or you’re reading this online, welcome to the fold! What you're about to read is an unconventional view on B2B marketing.

If you enjoy it, join 350+ other B2B marketers on the journey to build a standout brand.

Often I get asked by companies if they should be promoting their blog content. My answer more often than not is “yes”.

Blogs are a mechanism for building trust and affinity with your audience in a way you can’t do with most social content alone.

If you’re a content marketer/lead, don’t get happy just yet. Of course this comes with contingencies.

When you take your request to the social media team, they may be skeptical about posting blog content—especially on channels they really care about.

“Entertaining content works better on social”

“Our social calendar is already full this week/month/year/decade”

“We can’t link to blog content because platforms depress external links”

Let me translate what they’re really saying: “we don’t think this content is good enough for social.”

Ouch. That sounds harsh, but it’s a common tension point in marketing orgs.

The tension between content and social marketers

This may not be obvious, but the way social and content marketers judge “good” is often different.

Content marketers are often measured by downloads and views OR revenue. Social marketers are often measured by likes and shares.

One set of metrics is focused on attention, the other is focused on engagement, and there’s a third metric focused on sales. This inherently creates misalignment between the two functions.

Let me give you an example:

SEO-focused listicles might be good for the site. If done correctly, there’s a high chance you can get a top spot in Google search results—meaning more blog traffic.

The same is not true for social. Maybe tagging a bunch of people or brands in a listicle post/thread was a useful tactic for getting engagement two years ago. But now people know it’s just bait and are less likely to engage in the same way.

Not all listicles are bad, but it does help to understand the intent behind the piece before trying to distribute it on social.

Rules of thumb for creating content that can win on the blog and on social:

• Go deep on a single topic/idea. Answer it fully, without pitching your product (or at least showing an alternative to your own product)

• Communicate your ideas in more than one way—gifs, screenshots, and graphics make the content more extensible and engaging

If you need a reference, take a look at this post by Animalz, a B2B content marketing agency.

Tactics for promoting blog posts

Okay, let’s say you do have a blog piece that could work well on social. How can you promote it in a way that feels native?

Takeaway threads

Takeaway threads are the simplest way to repurpose blog content, because it’s mostly about re-structuring or formatting the blog content to be native to the platform.

Obviously threads are a Twitter-specific content format, but this can also apply to LinkedIn with long-form posts or carousels.

Graphics + key points or question

Again, I’m a big believer in adding graphics/visuals to content. I do it for most of my newsletters and try to include them in clients’ social media content too.

They’re the best way to “stop the scroll”. When you see an image in a sea of text posts, it jumps out at you.

There’s a secret to good graphics though: they need to communicate valuable information so they can stand alone. Most blogs use graphics as an art piece which makes them unusable outside the context of the post.

Remix a key idea

This may be the most difficult to do, but it’s a great way to prevent your content from getting stale.

Here’s how it works:

• Identify key themes in the blog post (usually each section of the post works as a key theme)

• Digest the company’s position on this theme—helpful for social media managers who also do community management work

• Lastly, riff off that theme. My favorite way to riff on themes is to create hypothetical examples or analogies that the audience can relate to

That's a wrap, folks! But before you go...

Let me know what you think about this newsletter. Your feedback goes a long way (seriously, I read & respond to every email—good or bad!)

See you next week,