My friend Paul Dunay had a great post the other day on the importance of content in today’s marketing world. He says B2B companies need to create a content creation engine.

“Building a solid content creation engine is critical to B2B marketers today. Why?

Its the content that gives you the opportunity to have a discussion with the Media, its the content that gives you the opportunity to create conversations socially, its the content that gives you the opportunity to re-engage with leads in your system that you may be nurturing on that sames topic, and its the content that allows your sales team to start a conversation with their accounts about that topic.”

Paul is right with this. Content creates the engagement. It’s what connects us to our customers and prospects. Content creates the conversations.

To do this I think B2B marketers and companies need to go a step further. Context needs to be provided.

Content has never been a problem for B2B marketers. Chucking case studies, creating collateral, static websites, etc. have all been part of B2B marketing’s bag of tricks. What they haven’t done well is create context for the content.

Creating context is about providing information in a manner that people can use it. Providing information in a way that creates value. Call it “free” information.

A while back I posted how my favorite ski resort, Vail was missing a huge opportunity with it’s ski school. They provide information, but it has little context for visitors.

Some context to think about:

Teach
Educate
Inform
Contradict
Challenge
Inquire
Expand
Incorporate

Dunay is right. Create a content creation engine. But, don’t stop there. Make it valuable. Give it utility. Create content people and companies can actually use and benefit from. That’s creating a content engine with context.