Sadly, in the world of B2B marketing, as in most areas of human society, prejudice is rife.

What I mean is that people tend to judge quickly and once they have formed their opinion, it is pretty hard to shake it. As a result, many worthy ideas are quickly branded as either "good" or "bad" - and opportunities may go to waste because those ideas initially classified as "bad" are dismissed out of hand every time they come up, even though they may have merit in a different situation.

The power of words
One of the main reasons for this is the way we use language - especially in business. Words are wonderful things because we can wrap up a whole idea in a simple combination of letters. But while we gain a benefit of conciseness by giving complex things simple labels, we also constrain ourselves by attaching emotions to those labels at the same time. This means that every time the word comes up, we cannot help ourselves thinking of the emotions we had first time that we heard it.

As brand-savvy people, we know how this works. The emotional associations of brand words - like "Virgin" or "Ford" - often outweigh the original meaning of the word. In this way the very term we use becomes a hurdle we must overcome if we are to assess objectively the merits of a given course of action.

The example I am talking about is of course "social media". Look at the word: social media. Think about it. Social. Media. Now let me tell you what it means - rationally and emotionally.

So you're producing content for your brand. Great. But what's the best way to make sure people read it? There is an obvious answer, and an often neglected one, and we need to be aware of both.

The obvious answer is to focus on the content itself. Obvious, and absolutely right. The content needs to be relevant, which means extensive research to identify the issues that your target audience wants to know about, and it needs to be good, which means time and effort in creating something of quality.

But the often neglected reason that people read or watch content goes beyond the material itself. Sure, there is a rational part of every 'information seeker' that looks for the topics and keywords. But when presented with content, there are some rather more emotional considerations that come to mind - and these become even more important when you consider that you are probably one of many content marketers addressing the key industry issues. Why should they read your content and not someone else's?

Here are three reasons that are often overlooked, which can make a big difference to whether your target audience will bother to download/read your content:

What to do when your brand is under attack?

More and more companies are going social and have established a presence online as a means of engaging directly with their target audience and building communities around their products or services. As most social media departments will know, when starting a campaign it is always important to monitor the brand to find out why, what and where they are being talked about. This will give the campaign a structure when setting up profiles on various social media platforms and creating  engaging content, whether it's in the form of a blog post, tweets, video, etc. There is quite a lot of work involved when setting up and executing what a business might think is the perfect social media plan and strategies.

What happens when it all goes wrong & the consumers start to attack a brand? In the last couple of weeks I followed the John Lewis group on Facebook. The company had been subjected to a series of verbal attacks for advertising their Christmas video. The video was advertising their Christmas message, which caused somewhat of an uproar towards the end of the video when it showed a child coming out to hang a stocking on his dog's kennel, with the dog sitting outside in the snow. This prompted animal lovers to complain about animal cruelty in there droves. A series of very negative mentions continued to pour onto the Facebook page over the next few days.
 
To view the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpV-xagkTDU

When you are an established brand, how do you deal with such a series of negative mentions?
Firstly, you need to listen to the key points of contention to gain an idea of how to approach and placate the audience. The worst thing a brand can do is shy away and ignore comments being made as brand credibility will be lost immediately, which could potentially lead to a loss of sales/loyalty. The audience are giving their feedback and they will at some point want to be have their concerns and opinions addressed by the brand.
 
John Lewis monitored their Facebook page and with the initial comments, simply passed on the complaints email address. As momentum built however, this was not feasible and it became apparent that they would have to address the issue 'en masse.' After a day or two John Lewis released the message below:



This message was intended to reassure the audience with the tone that they adopted, and offering a willingness to make a shorter version of the advert. Since then there were still negative comments being made, however, the Facebook wall was updated the next day with a resumption of their normal social media activity.
 
This is a great example of how a brand or a large business tries to resurrect their brand's image. Above, I touched on 'the tone that John Lewis adopted,' and wanted to further explain this. A company's tone is extremely important in social media as a means of defining the brand's values and bringing recognition for the sort of company that they are. It is therefore really important to understand the brand so think about the tone every time a response is required. It's not the end of the world when your brand receives negative mentions, act on it sensibly and you will either sway those criticising or you will take the emotion out of the equation.
 
On a final note, I obviously had an opinion on John Lewis's Christmas advert and I was for keeping the old advert. This was simply because it was meant to depict a light-hearted scene, cleverly designed to evoke positive emotions related to the Christmas season.