10 Tips to Create Humanized and Engaging B2B Content that Connects

In a competitive B2B landscape overflowing with information, making your content marketing stand out can seem like an uphill battle. The secret sauce to successful content is not just relevance or quality, but a personal touch that connects with your audience on a deeper level.

So let's put on our humanizing hats and infuse your content with empathy, authenticity, and warmth! In this comprehensive (and dare we say, fun) guide, we'll explore the key elements of humanizing your B2B content and provide practical tips to help you create a strong emotional connection with your audience.

1. Unleash your unique voice

Let your brand's unique voice take center stage in your content. By infusing your writing, videos, and social media posts with a distinct personality, you'll have your audience relate to your brand on a more personal level. 

Here's the recipe: mix professionalism with authenticity, and voilà! You're being yourself while maintaining a tone that suits your brand's identity. A consistent voice across all platforms creates a memorable brand experience and encourages your audience to engage with and share your content.

Helpful Tip: To maintain a consistent voice, create a brand style guide that outlines your brand's tone, voice, and writing guidelines. This will help your team stay on the same page and ensure a cohesive brand identity. Take a look at this guide for examples on how to develop a brand style guide.

2. Engage, respond, and connect with your audience

Humanizing your content isn't just about creation; it's about connection. Put on your engagement gloves and dive into conversations with your audience by responding to their comments, reviews, and messages thoughtfully and promptly. This interaction shows that you genuinely care about their opinions and feedback, building trust and loyalty over time. 

Plus, engaging with your audience gives you valuable insights into their preferences and needs, helping you create more targeted, personalized content in the future.

Helpful Tip: Set aside dedicated time each day to engage with your audience on different platforms. Consistency is key in building and maintaining relationships with your audience.

3. Show empathy and understanding

Flex your empathy muscles by addressing your audience's needs, challenges, and concerns in your content. Put yourself in their shoes and consider the questions they might have or the problems they're trying to solve. 

Create content that offers solutions, advice, or support, and you'll become their go-to trusted source of information. By focusing on your audience's pain points and aspirations, your content will resonate more deeply and drive engagement.

Helpful Tip: Conduct surveys, polls, or interviews with your target audience to better understand their needs and challenges. This will help you create content that truly speaks to them. Use this guide to find out how to identify and reach your target market with surveys.

4. Tell stories and share experiences

Storytelling is a powerful tool for humanizing your B2B content marketing. Share personal anecdotes, success stories, or even the challenges you've faced to create content that is both relatable and compelling. 

Storytelling helps forge emotional connections with your audience, increases their investment in your brand, and encourages them to engage with and share your content.

Helpful Tip: Use the classic storytelling structure of a beginning, middle, and end, incorporating conflict and resolution to make your stories more engaging and memorable.

5. Master the art of conversational language

Infuse your content with conversational language to make it approachable and easy to digest. Steer clear of jargon and technical terms that might scare off your audience. 

Instead, opt for clear and concise language that effectively communicates your message. Conversational language creates a delightful reading experience and makes your content feel more accessible and human.

Helpful Tip: Read your content out loud to ensure it sounds natural and conversational. If it doesn't flow well or feels awkward, tweak it until it sounds like something you'd genuinely say in a real conversation.

6. Champion user-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) is invaluable for humanizing your B2B brand. By showcasing your audience's experiences, opinions, and creativity, you demonstrate that you value their input and nurture a sense of community around your brand. 

UGC can come in various forms, such as testimonials, reviews, social media posts, or guest blog contributions. Featuring UGC not only bolsters your brand's credibility but also increases the likelihood of your audience engaging with and sharing your content.

Helpful Tip: Motivate your audience to create and share UGC by hosting contests, spotlighting their content on your website, or giving shoutouts on social media. As UGC is not very common for B2B marketing yet, here is a guide to learn more about it and why it's important.

7. Celebrate your team

Illuminate the people behind your brand to help humanize your content marketing. Share stories about your team members, their roles, and their contributions to the company. 

This transparency fosters a connection between your audience and your brand, making it feel more relatable and personable. Encourage your team members to contribute to your content, adding diverse perspectives and a personal touch.

Helpful Tip: Launch a "Meet the Team" blog series or produce short video interviews with team members to offer your audience an inside look at your company culture. Here are some examples of company culture videos to get your creative ideas flowing.

8. Use visuals to boost connection

Visual content is a potent way to humanize your B2B brand and forge an emotional connection with your audience. Images, videos, and infographics can convey complex ideas more effectively and make your content more engaging.

Incorporate visuals that feature real people, such as team members or clients, to help make your brand feel more relatable and authentic. Additionally, using a consistent visual style across all your content strengthens your brand identity and makes your content more memorable.

Helpful Tip: Invest in a high-quality camera or hire a professional photographer to capture striking images that showcase your brand's personality and values. Here are some cameras that work well to take pictures or film videos. Pro tip: If you have the iPhone 14 Pro, you can use it in place of these cameras as it has great filmmaking capabilities.

9. Leverage social media to showcase your human side

Social media platforms offer an excellent opportunity to humanize your B2B brand and connect with your audience on a more personal level. Share behind-the-scenes content, celebrate team achievements, or participate in trending conversations to showcase your brand's personality and values.

Engaging with your audience on social media also allows you to gather valuable feedback and gain insights into their preferences, which can inform your content strategy moving forward.

Helpful Tip: Create a social media content calendar to plan and schedule your posts in advance. This will help you maintain a consistent presence and ensure you're covering a variety of content types. Here is a free template to create your social media content calendar.

10. Be transparent and honest

Transparency and honesty are key to humanizing your B2B content marketing. When discussing your products, services, or industry, be open about any potential drawbacks or challenges. 

This honesty shows your audience that you respect their intelligence and value their trust. Admitting when you've made a mistake or encountered a challenge can also help humanize your brand, as it demonstrates that you're continually learning and improving.

Helpful Tip: Share lessons learned from past mistakes or challenges in a blog post or video, providing insights and advice for others in similar situations.

The humanizing takeaway

Humanizing your B2B brand is essential for creating engaging, relatable content that resonates with your audience. By embracing your unique voice, engaging with your audience, showing empathy, telling stories, using conversational language, featuring user-generated content, highlighting your team, leveraging visuals, making the most of social media, and being transparent, you'll create content that drives engagement and fosters lasting connections. 

Remember, businesses want to partner with companies that understand them and show a human side – so make humanizing your content a top priority.

With this guide at your side, you'll be well-equipped to humanize your B2B content and create meaningful connections with your audience. By implementing these helpful tips, you'll not only strengthen your brand identity but also foster a sense of community and trust that will lead to long-lasting business relationships. 

Don't wait any longer – it's time to breathe life into your content and unlock the full potential of your B2B content marketing strategy! If you're looking for guidance or assistance, we're here for you. We're passionate about helping businesses like yours forge genuine, human connections with their audiences. Reach out to us today, and let's get started!

Check out this blog to learn how to unlock content marketing success with The Writing & Visuals Co.