Once a recreational commodity, technology is now prevalent in the everyday lives of most global citizens. At the start of 2023, 64.4% of the world’s population used the internet in some form. From smartphones to smart homes, the internet has revolutionized the way we communicate, learn, work and manage our lives. So it would make sense that when people seek out content — whether for information or for entertainment — technology content is a big draw.
What Is Technology Content?
Technology content includes articles, photos, videos or illustrations to help people stay on top of the advances and changes in technology. It is focused on topics that include consumer devices and apps, programming languages, consumer privacy and other developments that are radically transforming areas like business, finance, healthcare, education, cybersecurity and robotics.
Some trending technology content topics are:
● Social media
● Artificial intelligence
● Augmented and virtual reality
● mRNA technology
● 5G networks
● Big data
● Cryptocurrency
What Is Technology Content Marketing?
Technology content marketing is the production and distribution of information that is relevant and valuable to an audience of technology consumers. This content can be in the form of articles, blogs, email newsletters, social media posts, videos, webinars or whitepapers. The goal of technology content marketing is to help a brand attract and engage a particular audience to benefit their business in some way.
When done effectively, the benefits of technology content marketing can be:
● Increased online visibility
● More leads
● Deeper relationships with customers
● Authority or thought leadership
According to research from the Content Marketing Institute, both business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) brands use technology content marketing at all stages of the customer journey but they have found the most success with using technology content marketing to meet their early funnel goals like creating brand awareness, educating audiences and generating leads. And while B2C and B2B brands have this in common, their technology content marketing strategies differ in the messaging, formats and channels used.
With B2C purchases, tech content marketers typically focus their content marketing on topics that show a single consumer how the product meets their needs or fits their ideal lifestyle. B2B purchases are a lot more challenging for tech content marketers since the buying cycle tends to be longer and it involves multiple decision makers. Approximately 68% of tech content marketers overall say they struggle to create content that appeals to multiple roles. As a result, B2B marketers tend to focus on how the organization can save time or money through the use of their product.
In addition to awareness, education and lead generation, B2B technology brands will also use content marketing to establish thought leadership and build trust between themselves and their audience. Thought leadership content marketing pieces are insightful and bring new ideas that convey expertise.
8 Tips for Tech Content Marketing
Below are some tips and best practices for improving your content marketing strategy.
1. Curate the News
Each generation of technology improves over the last, which means that the rate of progress from version to version speeds up over time. With all of the various technological innovations and advancements, keeping up with the pace of change can be difficult for the average consumer — and even business executives. Luckily, there are some really great technology news sources that have an entire team of journalists tasked with covering the latest technology events and their impact.
News curation is the technique of going through many different sources, choosing the best pieces and then sharing these sources in an easy-to-read format, such as an email newsletter, social media post or a website feed. By curating and sharing only the most relevant technology news from trusted sources, you can become a highly valuable resource for your target audience.
2. Leverage Thought Leadership
Thought leadership can be a great way to connect with decision makers and earn credibility. Thought leaders are subject matter experts that consistently provide clear analyses and insights on current events and speculate on what the impact these events will have on the future. Thought leadership content is generally perceived as knowledgeable and helpful. It is leveraged by any brand who wants to establish themselves as an authoritative source for the information their audience finds valuable.
Finding thought leaders dedicated to certain niche industries, like certain areas of technology, can be difficult. Approximately 42% of technology content marketers noted that they were challenged with accessing subject matter experts to produce specialized thought leadership content relevant to their brand. Editorial content from world-renowned publications can help fill this gap. Many of the world’s most popular publications make their content available for licensing.
With a license, this content can be republished to keep your audiences informed through your print publications, websites, content hubs, newsletters, intranets and more.
3. Use Visuals to Your Advantage
As the old saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” This is especially true when it comes to humanizing complicated topics like technology. Most of the population (65%) are visual learners, so whether it be through videos, photography or graphics, leveraging visual storytelling can help consumers further connect with the content and make it more memorable.
With technology content marketing, videos are one of the most effective ways to reach and engage with customers. Tactics like animations and explainer videos on a brand or product can easily break down what your company does, what it offers or how your product works in terms that are simple enough for anyone to understand. They can be posted to your website or customized to fit any video or social media platform. This ensures that the videos are easily found by your customers.
4. Create a Content Calendar and Document Your Strategy
Creating a content strategy and an editorial calendar is important in ensuring your team is always aligned on objectives and expectations. Approximately 66% of top performers in tech content marketing have a documented content strategy in place.
Once you have figured out the important elements of your content marketing strategy — your audiences, goals for each audience, what content pieces you plan to create or outsource, how you plan to distribute your content and how you plan to measure success — it is time to document your strategy.
A content marketing editorial calendar is a visual workflow that helps you document your content strategy on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. It allows you to strategically plan out your content throughout the year, while keeping track of each content type and its channels, authors, publish dates and performance metrics. There are a number of tools you can use to build your editorial calendar, whether that be via a simple Google sheet or an online tool such as Monday or Airtable.
5. Outsource Content Development
Creating enough high quality content to fill your content calendar can be challenging, especially as a B2B marketer who may be looking to create content to appeal to all of the decision makers that have an impact on their buying process. But you are not alone. As noted above, 68% of B2B technology content marketers struggle to create content for multiple roles. Lack of internal resources or clearly defined personas can make it even more difficult to create a strong B2B content strategy.
Since technology purchases are expensive, many people may be involved in the buying cycle, including users, department heads and procurement. Not only do marketing materials need to address each stage of the customer journey, but a tech company’s content calendar should also have assets targeting each persona.
Outsourcing your content development can be a fantastic way to reap the benefits that come with content marketing while saving valuable company resources and maximize spending. Approximately 58% of technology content marketers plan on increasing their content creation budget over the next year. By leveraging trustworthy outsourced content, your team can more quickly target a range of personas with high quality content written by industry experts. This will not only help to fill up your content calendar, by outsourcing niche content you will also free up your team to create more original content at a faster rate.
6. Focus on Retention
The customer experience with your brand does not end once a purchase is made. After the initial sale, it is important to make the customer experience unique and engaging to keep your customers up to date and invested in your business. If not, they will be one and done. Since it’s more expensive to get a new customer than retain an existing one, it’s important that the retention stage of the funnel doesn’t get overlooked.
How can you keep customers coming back? Leverage content marketing to consistently provide support and value at every stage of the customer journey. Approximately 58% of content marketers noted that they successfully used content marketing to drive customer loyalty. You can use content marketing across channels to offer customers the opportunity to engage with your brand and share feedback. You can then use marketing automation to design a personalized customer experience that offers blog posts, news articles, email newsletters and other educational content that matches their needs and interests.
7. Use Storytelling
Storytelling content marketing techniques can help your brand stand out from the crowd. It has been proven that this kind of content marketing can help grow your business while creating brand awareness and improving content marketing ROI; however, only 47% of technology marketers are currently using this in their strategy.
Storytelling forms an emotional and personalized connection between the brand and a consumer. When done authentically, it can give a face to a brand or help convey brand values. It can also showcase the value your product or service brings. Examples of storytelling content include staff profiles, case studies, personal customer testimonials, trend pieces, or features on thought leaders that follow a narrative structure.
8. Establish Authority
Authority content marketing can differentiate your brand from others in an oversaturated marketplace. Leverage a combination of product brochures with clear messaging, third-party content, and educational pieces to build credibility with your audience.
Final Thoughts
Technology content marketing is a powerful tool to help your brand increase visibility, foster deeper relationships with customers, assert authority and generate more leads. You can maximize your efforts by following best practices and by including high quality news and thought leadership articles in your content strategy.
NYTLicensing is a great resource for licensed news articles and thought leadership pieces from the world’s most reputable technology journalists:
Circuits by The New York Times offers a curated selection of features and news analysis that explains technological trends and puts scientific advances in perspective.
The New York Times News Service offers regular columns from thought leaders with deep expertise in a range of subjects. Farhad Manjoo is a columnist that has covered technology, global affairs and culture since 2018. Before that, they wrote The Times’s State of the Art column, covering the technology industry’s efforts to swallow up the world.
Scientific American distills complex, science-based narratives on topics like technology’s rapid evolution, medical breakthroughs, climate science and more. The articles are designed to contextualize the major discoveries driving scientific advancement and explain their impacts on society.
Frequently Asked Questions:
What are examples of technology marketing?
Technology marketing can include a variety of tactics, such as content marketing, webinars, TV commercials, and social media. It can also cover a wide variety of products, including edtech and smart devices. The tactics that marketers will leverage often depends if they are part of a B2B or B2C company.
What are the benefits of technology content marketing?
Tech content marketing can benefit companies in the following ways:
● Lead generation
● Brand awareness
● Customer retention
● Brand recall
● Loyalty & better customer relationships
