1 CONTENT MARKETING Having a finger on the pulse of what people are talking about and engaging with on review sites can help develop a content strategy, according to Lauren Goldstein, Chief Revenue Officer at demand generation strategy firm Annuitas. “It is a huge driver for content strategy because it often speaks directly to the issues that [customers] are facing,” she said. No matter how expertly your marketing content is crafted, it’s still created by your company to promote the company’s perspective. “Content developed by the marketing team is content developed from the inside out,” says Rebecca Lieb, a strategic advisor, research analyst and author specializing in digital marketing and media. “To be effective with their content, companies need to develop it from the customer perspective.” Conducting customer surveys or soliciting feedback from your sales team to develop marketing content is time- consuming and costly. Reviews, Lieb notes, provide a continually refreshed stream of customer perspectives at your fingertips. Read reviews to learn what customers see as your product’s biggest selling points, and highlight those points in your content marketing. Don’t just use reviews to shape your marketing content — use them in the content itself. User-generated content has power, especially when it comes from validated user reviews hosted by a third party. Here are some ways to repurpose reviews in marketing content: • Use snippets from reviews on social media. If applicable, acknowledge and tag the reviewer — this exposes the review to his or her social circle. • Post a few of your best reviews on your website as testimonials. Link to third-party reviews from your website so users can peruse more reviews at their leisure. • Repurpose customer reviews in your sales and marketing collateral as social proof. • Link to review sites in your email signatures and on company and business social media pages. 3