Content that fuels B2B demand generation. How Hootsuite transformed its flagship annual campaign

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One of the challenges facing companies looking to improve their user experiences is figuring out where to start.

Hootsuite’s flagship annual campaign is the perfect example of how the improvement process can and should work.

Over the past seven years, many of its staff and stakeholders have devoted a significant portion of their time working to create Social Media Trends , a massive report describing the current state of online interactions and social media activity.

Each year's efforts require about eight months of research, from the how does cash app work? first "let's do this" meeting to the final "look what we did" celebration. Researchers interview technology leaders and include feedback and data from thousands of users around the world.

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The result is a comprehensive ebook that is recognized by the social media community as being state-of-the-art . It is generally considered to be easy to read and visually striking. It is meant to be downloaded, an action that Hootsuite marketers use to track who is interested and perhaps invite them to interact with other company content.

So how can this work, which is done with love but still needs to be improved, be improved? Rock Content helped Hootsuite find a way.

This Wednesday, I co-presented at the Content Marketing Institute's Demand Generation Summit session, alongside Lisa Vecchio, Global Campaign Director at Hootsuite. We shared with the event audience the new approach taken for the annual Social Media Trends 2022 .

We discuss how Rock Content’s Ion platform provided a completely new experience for readers of this year’s report. Leveraging the new interactive format, the user could navigate through highlighted trends such as ROI, social commerce and customer experience, with videos, case studies and quizzes inviting them to interact with the content.


The experience included an open ebook that users could download, but Hootsuite also invested in creating more in-depth gated content — like webinars, whitepapers, and playbooks — with advice on how marketers can succeed with each of the trends featured in Social Trends . That interaction was where Hootsuite got its downloads (and qualified leads!). The experience was a balanced mix of unlocked and locked content.

You might think: “If I explain every trend and make content available without restrictions, I won’t generate any sales opportunities .” Hootsuite’s experience has shown that this is a clear marketing myth.

The shift to an interactive experience ultimately led to greater engagement, as consumers had easier access to information, including much of the information available online, rather than through mass file downloads.

Speaking of general numbers: unique traffic visiting these pages increased by 34%, as well as the time spent on said page (up 119%), while the number of downloads grew by more than 30% .

I'll go into further detail to explain the strategy behind this.

Unlock your content
Hootsuite began its efforts with the Social Media Trends report seven years ago, when marketing technology and customer behavior were slightly different than they are today.

Consumer preferences are always changing, and so are the tools that measure how well marketers can reach customers and encourage them to take action.

When the Social Media Trends report was first released, the average Hootsuite user may have had more time to consume content and, more importantly, more patience.

But with the proliferation of online content, customers have evolved and expect more. Any unexpected obstacles or difficulties in the user experience, such as poor user interfaces or content that lacks quality or relevance, can lead people to consider other content or product options.

Much of online advertising in the past worked by interrupting consumers and grabbing their attention with something charming and shiny. Today, that kind of experience is no longer accepted and being interrupted by a brand can cause a negative experience and feeling. The point is not that we should stop digital advertising; but we need to change the approach, convey emotions and add personalization.

According to Millward Brown, 82% of people skip ads as much as possible , and 27% use ad blockers to avoid seeing ads on desktop and mobile devices , an eMarketer study shows.

Dealing with unwanted content experiences can go beyond abandoning a shopping cart or closing a survey halfway through. It can trigger extreme behaviors, such as canceling a subscription or posting a negative comment on social media.

As customers expect great content experiences, businesses need to adapt to changing consumer behavior. It means marketers need to focus on designing better experiences and making sure that every piece of content is a meaningful part of the entire experience.

Content experiences are comprised of multiple pieces of content that span all stages of the buyer’s journey, with the goal of driving customers toward activation. Each piece of content can be consumed individually or as a single element of a more complex journey. For this reason, the complete content experience is greater than its individual components.

As marketers, we can unlock content and make it as easy as possible for the public to access it. This goes against what is considered common practice in digital marketing: asking for consumer information on every page or requiring registration before allowing people to access certain content, even free content.

But as Hootsuite demonstrates, when you unlock them and use content experiences throughout the journey, people will engage more and provide the first-hand information you need to achieve your marketing goals.

From Lead Generation to Demand Generation
Lisa shared five lessons learned from the campaign:

1. Recognize that there is a problem with the formula
Old ways of consuming content are outdated. Importantly, inserting a form at every opportunity creates friction and hurts the user experience. Over the years, as information became more accessible online, Hootsuite also recognized that all competitors began producing a similar report.

It’s no surprise that content that used to attract B2B leads is slowly losing its magnetism; the Hootsuite team started to wonder why make something so hard to get when people can get the answers for free , without having to give up their soul to access them. So the team started to consider how they could truly differentiate themselves.

2. Embrace the shift from lead generation to demand generation
The industry is making a big shift right now from what is traditionally known as lead generation (basically lead capture or MQLs) to demand generation (driving awareness and interest throughout the entire buyer and customer lifecycle to close/completion).

This means that to drive demand, we need to think holistically about the end-to-end user experience.

3. Invest in the exchange of value
If Hootsuite really wanted to differentiate itself, it needed to provide value beyond simply sharing what’s trending. So, to do this, its strategy included the “How,” not just the “What” in the value exchange.

The “What” is at the heart of an engagement strategy. Each year, Hootsuite identifies the top 5 trends that marketers can expect in the coming year. And there are many ways they can turn each trend into a content driver, for example, blogs, videos, and case studies for each trend. As I said in the webinar, these pieces of content can be consumed individually or collectively to complement the inclusive experience.

And so, when it came to the “How” of value exchange, this was where Hootsuite knew they could capture people’s true interest. In other words, they asked the question: how can Hootsuite help? So, they made more in-depth, actionable content available for download, such as fact sheets, playbooks, webinars, and the full report with the data set as an input to share internally.

This is where lead capture really happens: after the reader has already consumed the report, not before they have had a chance to digest some of it .

4. Make your content work
The principle of Integrated Marketing lies at the heart of the Social Media Trends 2022 campaign . You can have great content that tells a story and an amazing on-site experience, but if they are not combined into a holistic ecosystem, the overall impact is diluted.

By analyzing content and breaking it down into compelling stories across all channels (owned, organically earned, and paid), Hootsuite was able to reach more people with less and sing the same tune as the Marketing team, to tell a coherent story.

5.Involve your employees
Hootsuite used its own tool, Hootsuite Amplify, to make it available to its employees as well as users of its employee advocacy strategy.

By creating an entire category within Amplify for Hootsuite employees to share Social Trends content across their social networks, they were able to break down the key takeaways from each trend over a number of months. Additionally, they were able to keep their strategy active and employees engaged with the content. Within 90 days, employees had over 1,100 shares.

Focus on user experience
In short, marketers and brands need to balance brand building (long-term) with activation (short-term), and that’s something Hootsuite accomplished by creating a full journey, unlocking its core content, and providing additional deeper, actionable insights via a download.

But no matter what your goal is with the content you create, you need to provide a great user experience. Make it engaging and, above all, useful for your audience.

I invite you to watch the full session that Lisa and I presented at the CMI event . You'll get more of the Hootsuite experience and learn how to adopt this approach for your brand.