Notes on Content Marketing Best Practices | Marketing Mag Conference
I love going to conferences, talks, and seminars or even doing online courses and webinars. I guess I’m a bit of a knowledge junkie like that. Heck, I even volunteer for the AMA and dedicate myself to trying to create educational events or ninja meetings with people in my network.
This post is long overdue, but one of the things that I love to do is share any of the notes or learnings that I extract from making the physical effort to witness these knowledge transfers. Although it was hosted in September 2014, the Content Marketing Conference put on by Marketing Mag provided me with a lot of nuggets that I still think about today. Here is a quick run down of the difference sessions and what I gleaned from each one with some content marketing best practices and examples:
1. Starting with Content Strategy Won’t Cut it
[Tom Webster – VP Strategy, Edison Research]- Audience strategy is more important than personas. It’s about people – not customers. Use content strategy in service of audience strategy.
- This is the intersection of what people think of your brand with what you think of your brand.
- What makes you tick? Communicating is not about scissors [the function] – it’s about the scrapbooking or knitting [the action, the feeling].
- Example of a drug to treat restless leg syndrome. People don’t necessarily know what they’re looking to help them, so you have to adapt to talk to people in the pre-contemplative phase.
2. 2014 The Year of Content Marketing Performance Measurement
[Jen Evans – Co-founder, SqueezeCMM]In this session, Jen tried to take the audience through an explanation of the taxonomy of metadata:
- Persona [stage of buyer/funnel]
- Channel [source]
- Format [CTAs]
She shared that the top actions by channel for B2B occurred on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn (and that G+ is better for a technical audience).
She also mentioned that content consumption differs by duration of visit – less TOS could = more action.
Best Pathways to Reach:
- Marketers: 11pm-1am, Twitter is the best platform.
- New Moms: LinkedIn (in US – no mat leave), FB and Pinterest.
- Enterprise IT Buyers: 5am-7am, Twitter and G+.
- Financial Services Execs: Saturday mornings 🙁
3. Exploding Cows: Branded Entertainment
[Mike Kirkland and Daniel Rosenberg – Piro]Canola oil. Olive oil. Animoil.
This was an exploratory in to Piro’s work with Chipotle’s branded entertainment on YouTube (the hilarious and now infamous Farmed and Dangerous). Kicking ass on Hulu, the Dallas-like series became a hit in terms of entertainment and also its content spin-offs that raised awareness (i.e. its Food For Thought social impact section on the Huffington Post). From lips of series star character Buck Marshall, “Those people died from eating, not starving. That’s progress.”
This project was a winner because:
- It created an entertainment-focused marketing process.
- It was shot as new media and qualified for those rates (for “entertainment” – not “commercial”).
- The characters in branded entertainment can reflect brand attributes and values.
- It opened up different conversations in the US (i.e. farmers).
- Here’s the Cannes Lions Case Study: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-3piFPYrI8
4. Partnering and Producing Branded Programs (For Moms)
[Erica Ehm – YummyMummyClub.ca]Erica’s talk about partnerships is one that stuck with me in particular, as I now deal more and more with clients who potentially align themselves with sponsors or provide sponsorship. If you are an “influencer” considering taking on sponsored work, here are some tips:
- The influencer should care about their audience first and foremost – don’t fit the square peg in the round hole.
- Influencers and publishers are not your marketing department. You need an amplification strategy.
- Don’t sell. Engage.
And really, can’t “Don’t sell. Engage” really be a motto to live by for all?
