Jeff Bullas, a content marketing thought leader, recently wrote a blog post about unleashing the power of great content marketing. Many of his tips are valuable for B2B businesses and organizations. The most important element to creating and sharing great content is, quite simply, to start creating and sharing content. “Just starting is vital, don’t wait for someone to push you,” writes Bullas, “Pick yourself [up] and just start.”

Some things to consider as you start creating content are:

• There’s no such thing as perfect – Don’t wait until you feel each piece is perfect before sharing it. “You will never be perfect,” says Bullas, “Just start”.
• Passion and Purpose – As in real life, these things are contagious and will engage your readers.
• Build for an audience – Create a structure that allows for skimming. Avoid self-indulgent writing; give real value in the messages you create.
• Make sharing easy – If you’re looking to build an audience, make it easy for them to share your work. Include social media sharing buttons on every piece of content you produce.
• Reuse content – Turn your next PowerPoint presentation into a blog post, shared slideshow, how to guide, audio podcast and email marketing piece simply by repackaging it in different formats.
• Persistence – Building a following takes time, but it will pay off. If you’re producing high-quality content that you’re passionate about, an audience will follow. Like baseball in a cornfield, if you build it, they will come.

But maybe you’re stuck for good ideas on how to create content that people want to share? Bullas has a huge list of some of the most sharable content types including these favorites of ours:

• Lists – One of the greatest ways to increase your clicks is by creating list posts, like, Top 5 Ways…, 3 Secrets You Didn’t Know About…, etc.
• Infographics – These have really taken off in recent years. Bullas writes, “Infographics are a type of content that has a propensity to get shared on Pinterest and passed around on Twitter.”
• Curate Content – Find something of interest to your audience that has already been created, credit the appropriate author, and add your own commentary about it.
• “How To’s” – People search the Internet when they need to know how to do something. If you provide the content offering that solution, and optimize it for people and search you should get eyeballs on your content.
• Research, Stats and Facts – People want information. Whether you collect the research or conduct it, people will search for it and share it if it is presented in an interesting way.

If you’re looking to start producing content, just do it. You’re probably already sitting on a treasure chest full of information.

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