Many professional trainers, consultants and coaches have built their careers on personal relationships, word of mouth and reputation. For those who have always depended on offline methods for reaching new clients, the new rules of marketing and business development may at first seem overwhelming. There are simply too many tools available, and no real roadmap for how to use them effectively.

Without a solid plan, it's too easy to become preoccupied with technology like social media, video and webinars without first having a strategy for what type of content your market will value most. Facebook pages, Youtube channels and SlideShare accounts do little good if all they push out is generic, self-serving company “news” and sales pitches disguised as articles.

By starting with the following basic model and rolling it out in manageable steps, you?ll have a strong infrastructure in place from which to share content that makes an impact with your audience and leads to new business.

Step 1: Your Content Strategy

At the beginning, it's best to keep all the moving parts as simple as possible. Focus on what B2B marketer Eric Wittlake (b2bdigital.net) calls Stage Zero Content.

“Stage zero content is intended to establish your brand, your expertise or your perspective in the mind of your target market, when they are not researching or considering solutions. This content is valuable to a far broader audience than even early stage buying cycle content.”

Stage Zero Content deals with the same problems as your area of expertise, targeting the very companies and people who are most likely to also be your best prospects. A solid core strategy is made up of answers to the following five questions:

• What are all of the problems our expertise solves? Think high level problems, low level problems and everything in between.
• Who do we solve them for? How sophisticated and experienced is our target market with the solutions available? Content that?s valuable to one may be useless for another.
• What?s our content?s style and personality? The fatal flaw of most B2B marketing is the incorrect assumption that all business purchasing decisions are made purely by logic. This often leads to some pretty boring, bloated stuff. The best B2B content is written for human consumption and connects with us both emotionally and logically.
• Who will create our content? Everyone in your firm is a potential contributor of ideas and articles. Your sales, customer service and account management teams have the most day-to-day contact with your customers as well as intimate knowledge of the challenges they face. Your executive team understands big picture trends, opportunities and insights. By incorporating a broad range of perspectives, you?ll have a deeper understanding of the problems your readers face and the type of content they?ll find most useful.
• What topics should we write about? Close your eyes and pretend that you?re a fly on the wall, inside the offices of your ideal customer. What do you see and hear? How do they define the problems you solve? What type of information are they looking for?

Step 2: Your Blog

Your blog is the primary hub through which to share your content and begin attracting readers. Start by committing to at least one post every week, increasing that output as your editorial process evolves. The more quality content you publish, the sooner you?ll build an audience.

Your blog should be easy to find from every page on your site, preferably with a dedicated link on the main menu. Don?t make visitors search for your content. Most won?t.

Step 3: Your First Level Follow-Up Offer

Picture a B2B content marketing campaign as an ultra high-end retail store. If the internet is the sidewalk traffic, your blog is the window display that gets people to stop and look, and your first level follow-up offer entices them to walk into your store.
End each blog post with a soft offer for more detailed content like a white paper, guide or e-book. There are two basic strategies for this step, and both have the same goal of creating opportunities for further engagement. You can offer additional resources in exchange for joining your email list or as an instant download with no sign up requirement, instead ending each piece with another strong call-to-action (Step 4).

Step 4: Your Second Level Follow-Up Offer

Now that you?ve engaged readers and earned some trust, your next call-to-action (through emails or at the end of your first offer) delivers even more value but in a more personalized, interactive way. By moving from highly convenient but static information to interactive, real-time content like webinars and seminars, you?ll begin conversations that help you learn more about each potential client?s needs and how to best serve them.

Step 5: Add More Channels

Once you?ve set up your foundation of blog content and follow-up offers, you can begin to expand your reach by linking posts and offers to your company?s LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter pages.

Different readers have their own preferences for how they consume content. Some may like blogs, others Tweet or stick with Facebook. Many like a little of each.  Each type of social media has its own quirks, processes and best practices and require consistent daily attention. While blog post comments make it possible to begin interacting with your audience, other social media platforms take it a step further and are best used as a conversational medium, not just a one-way syndication portal.

Marcus Schaller is the author of The Lead Ladder-Turn Strangers into Clients, One Step at a Time (McGraw-Hill, 2006). He?s a contributor to various B2B publications including CMI, Brainshark.com and B2Bbloggers.com. Marcus can be reached at B2BforHumans.com or on Twitter @b2bforhumans.