We hear a lot about what B2B content marketers are doing. But what do readers want?

They want trustworthy, readable content that does minimal selling, according to a survey by DemandGen Report. While they’re finding more content on the Web, they have less time to read it.

So what should you do?

First, scrap the hard sell, if you’re using it. Of 120 B2B content readers polled, 75% want fewer sales pitches. Focus less on product specifications and more on value.

Next, shorten the text. But don’t eliminate prose: readers value text and narrative above all. White papers are the most popular content format, and readers are mostly likely to share white papers and case studies.

Third, structure your content by business role. Of those polled, 46% like to see it that way. In addition, 42% want to see it by industry and 33% by vertical area.

Fourth, get more involved with LinkedIn. Email is the top vehicle for sharing, but LinkedIn is the second.

It may also pay to build a Mobile web site. While laptops are the top device used for accessing content, mobile is No. 2.

And look for other ways to brand your content. Readers prefer peer reviews and content authored by a third-party publication or analyst and sponsored by a vendor. Their last choice? Branded content directly from a vendor. What’s more, their first step when researching a topic or challenge is to do a search. Going directly on a vendor Web site is a distant second.

The conclusion?

“Research shows that 9 in 10 buyers now connect with a solution provider via some form of content, regardless of company size or industry, and navigating this trend is an evolving process,” says Amanda Batista, author of the report and managing editor of DemandGen Report. Solutions providers need to “cultivate a greater role in content sharing by providing trustworthy content that establishes relationships with prospects,” she adds.

Some supporting statistics:

Content Providers Should:

Curb the sales messages—74%
Focus less on product specifications and more on value—55%
Condense content to be shorter—48%
Don’t overload the content with copy/type—45%

Content Used for Research in the Last year

White paper—88%
Webinar—73%
Case study—67%
Blog posts—63%
EBook—51%

Valuable Online Content Formats

White paper—48%
Webinar—45%
Video—45%
Blog posts—43%
eBook—40%
Interactive presentation—40%

Content Preferences

Text/narrative—47%
Prefer more visual—33%
Prefer data—16%
Prefer more interactive—3%
Other-2%

Content Most Likely to Be Shared

White paper—70%
Case study—56%
Blog posts—485
Webinar—40%
Video-39%

Content-Sharing Mechanisms

Email – 80%
LinkedIn—54%
Twitter—39%
Facebook—18%
Text/SMS/MMS—12%

Devices Used for Accessing B2B Content

Laptop computer—95%
Mobile phone—70%
Tablet—49%
Desktop computer—36%

Art Spiegelman had just published Breakdowns, a collection of his early work, when I visited him in 1978. And I confess I didn’t get some of it. On the one hand, it had narrative strips like Maus and Prisoner on the Hell Planet. Then there were pieces like Ace Hole Midget Detective, a purported detective comic, in which the story line was far from clear.

To recap, Ace Hole is hired by the art dealer Laurence Potato-Head to find Al Floogleman, “a bird who’d passed him some bum Picassos!” It seems to be a comment on the genre, but Picasso makes an appearance to say: “We artists are indestructible. Even in a prison or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art…even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.”

What did it all mean? Having interviewed Spiegelman about Maus, the full-length work he had just started (see last Sunday’s post), I asked him what he was trying to do in the other strips in Breakdowns. Here’s what he said about narrative and perception on that warm spring day:

RS: Except for Maus and Prisoner on the Hell Planet, most of the strips in Breakdowns seem to veer from straight narrative. What were you trying to do in Ace Hole Midget Detective?

Spiegelman: Here I was interested in narrative and the function that it performs in society. When people go to the movies and watch television, which is what most people do with their free time, what they’re really getting is a dream. You’re just going into this state where you’re passively pulling in this story, which is only a mild permutation of things you’ve heard or seen before. When you watch a TV series, one week’s episode is not very different from another week’s episode. You’re just going into this comfortable warm bath each time, essentially lulling yourself—it’s sort of a way of putting a thumb in your mouth and suckling. That’s the appeal of detective stories and all other popular fiction. What happens in a detective story is the detective ends up being like a father figure in the story—he’s the one who knows all the answers. He gets beaten up, but he’s tough. On one level, you think you’re reading this to see if you can outguess the detective and solve the murder. And you never can if it’s a well-written story because it’s this crazy roller coaster ride you’re going on. You’re trusting that the detective will solve it for you. Since these books are written in the first person, you end up getting right into the main character’s head—you feel like you’re the detective.

RS: And you experience all the great scenes and backdrops.

Spiegelman: All that’s really being changed is the character’s specific situations—the essential situation is always the same, story to story. I was more interested in dealing with the things that relate to detective stories rather than telling another detective story. On the other hand, I wanted it to work on a level of a detective story—if you read it, it would be a little haywire in a few places. At the same time, I ended up getting involved with the nature of the first-person narrative, what that does to you, and the nature of comic-strip panels and what that does to you. There are several things happening. On the first page, each character is drawn with a different tool. I never want people to forget that these are drawings, that these are lines on paper. So on the first page, you usually have the characters’ faces in these boxes. This would be Ace Hole, this would be Gretta, this would be Mr. Potato Head. Instead, I’m showing you the brush stroke. This is the brush I use to draw Ace Hole with, this is the curvical pen I use to draw the Picasso lady with, this is the rapidiograph that I use to draw Mr. Potato Head with. You’re being forced, I would hope, into looking at the fact that these are drawings rather than creatures that you can live with.

RS: What do these techniques have to with something more socially relevant like Maus?

Spiegelman: They’re not techniques. I’m dealing with something really fundamental, which is perception. And perception is fundamental to understanding Maus, to understanding Hell Planet, to understanding social change. It’s the way you take information in.

RS: You’re working this out for yourself?

Spiegelman: I’m not working it out for myself or anybody else any more than Hell Planet was for somebody else. I didn’t draw Hell Planet to amuse people or tell them an interesting anecdote from my life. Nor did I do it to warn people about suicide. Hell Planet was as much involved with my own interests and needs as these other strips are. It’s just that my needs are complex. I’m a complex person. Most people are, I would hope. And I don’t see them as that different or separate. I understand what makes some of my strips more difficult for people to understand than other strips, but for me these are all part of the same thing. The same needs of expression are at work in these strips as in Prisoner on the Hell Planet. Since one focuses more directly on content, it becomes easier to take in. That’s why I’m doing this Maus strip with the means of perception that are employed in reading Maus. I’m aware that what I have to do is very directly tell the story, and not get in the story’s way. Most of the time, I’m dealing with stories that are trivial. Most people are dealing with stories that are trivial. Therefore, I’m more interested in the way of telling the story, making people understand what they’re looking at when they’re looking at a story, rather than just telling them a story and lulling them to sleep one more time. I think it’s more important that people, myself included, be more aware (in a sensory way) of what they’re going through. When you’re looking at a movie, it’s important to know that it’s a movie. You can’t think you’re looking through a window at something that’s happening. You’re affected too greatly by what you see. Most people’s information comes to them from newspapers and from TV. That information is highly distorted by the medium that it’s coming across to them in. And unless you’re aware of those distortions, unless you’re aware of how they work, they have much greater effect on you. You’re much more capable of being controlled. You’re much more capable of being at the mercy of the people who have the power of the medium. And as a result, that may be the most important thing about the media is how they work. It’s important that when you’re watching the Holocaust, a Lysol ad comes on between segments.

RS: Lysol?

Spiegelman: Yeah, it really is, and it’s very significant, that you’re being shown something that broken up. Most of the people watching Holocaust on TV are not even aware of whether it’s a story or not. From what I understand, for television it was powerful. In terms of what actually happened in terms of life, it wasn’t powerful at all. And I’m told that for people who watch television, this was a significant event. That was close as they’ll come to understanding the Holocaust. I guess that’s good, but it’s also too bad that’s as far as it went.

Old-time TV advertising still gets a large share of the marketing spend. But online content is gaining on it. That’s one takeaway from Rebecca Lieb’s keynote at the Content Marketing Strategies conference this week.

“Content marketing is a pull strategy,” said Lieb, an industry analyst for Altimeter. “It’s the marketing of attraction.” And this shift from push to pull is imperative for brand survival, she warned.

What role does content play in a pull marketing program? It drives customer engagement, word-of-mouth, purchase intent and trust. And it works. For example:

K-SWISS generated millions of views and a 250% increase in online sales with its Kenny Powers videos.
Indium Corp. increased its customers contacts by 600% within a single quarter with blogs and keyword research.
Blendtec boosted sales by 700% with its Will It Blend videos.
Eloqua directly attributed $2.5M in revenue to four free guides in 2010. The company tracks content by requiring users and provide contact information, and promotes it in its blogs.
Salesforce draws over 11,000 views per day with its 2,600 YouTube videos.

Content marketing also leads to lower acquisition costs, Lieb noted.

That said, the switch from pushing to pulling puts new demands on marketing departments. Companies have to rebalance, Lieb continued. And they have to know where they stand in the content marketing maturity curve.

For example, does your firm have a chief content officer in place (and all the people it takes to pursue a content strategy?) Are they getting cross-departmental support? “Content may live in marketing, but stories and opportunities flow in from other departments,” Lieb explained.

And does your content do one of these three things?

Entertain
Inform and educate
Provide utility

Here are some examples of firms that all or some of the above:

Old Spice uses humor to entertain and reach younger audiences.
Mediative educates customers with white papers, webinars, videos and blogs
GE Transformers’ iPad App is useful to GE’s Engineer Community group

Videos Rated Most Effective

Meanwhile, Altimeter asked 56 marketers what types of content have been most effective, and which they intend to phase out. The winners were online videos, eBooks and mobile marketing, followed by blogging/podcasting and product placement/sponsorship. The losers? Traditional television and print advertising.

Lieb also cited these top-level findings:

Content initiatives are a significant investment.
Content and advertising should be interrelated.
Marketers are distracted by new channels and technologies.
Over the next five years, content marketing will permeate the organization.

Want to jump-start your content marketing? Here are tactical tips from Lieb:

Conduct a content audit to determine current assets.
Generate a keyword list, using free SEO services.
Create an editorial calendar.
Reuse and repurpose content for greater impact

Firms that rebalance now “will enhance and improve their marketing initiatives, spend more effectively, and align to meet changing consumer expectations,” Lieb concluded.