There’s no argument that content marketing consumed much of the B2B community this year. The B2B Content Marketing Trends 2012 report was released earlier this week. In it was the answers of nearly 30,000 members of the LinkedIn B2B Technology Marketing Community.

There weren’t too many surprises but a lot of interesting talking points. Education, lead generation, and brand awareness are the top content marketing trends moving forward.

• Budget is always a crucial factor in each of these and the report showed that content marketing budgets grew by 50 percent over last year. As outbound B2B marketing becomes more prevalent, companies are looking at investing more time and energy into inbound lead generation. Outbound costs more than content marketing but is responsible for generating two times the leads. The irony is that content generation closed more deals and made more money. Hmm . . .  so I’m still curious why there isn’t more of a shift?
• Social media and its impact on marketing trends was slightly mind boggling. Facebook and Twitter apparently still win the popularity contest against Google+ and Slideshare.
• Trade and in-person events blew most of the content marketing budget. Yet, the effectiveness of such an expensive product is yet to be seen. There are plenty of other content marketing platforms to do the job and are much easier on the pocketbook.
• There are still many challenges with time and production but most marketing trends show that there is a serious jump in production. B2B ContentEngine might be an overlooked tool to overcome some of those obstacles to increase content.

Are you staying on top of the current trends in content marketing? If you are finding it all just a little overwhelming and are looking for some guidance, look no further. At Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions we take pride in our abilities to keep your content creative and engaging. Contact us to schedule a conversation.