Afternoon Session Write-up of the #Contentmarketingshow

After a fantastic start to the Content Marketing Show, everyone went for lunch, networked, and chatted content, content and more content. Then we were treated to the afternoon session. If this was half as good as the morning session, then we were all truly in for a treat.

Evergreen Content: The Art of Recycling Resources – Chelsea Blacker (@ChelseaBlacker)

The challenges

• Working on a boring client that no one wants to hear about
• No one cares

How to take content that you do have access to and make it more exciting

• Audit your content – both online and offline content
• Don’t send out a blanket email asking for ideas
• Speak to individual people and get their experiences

Chelsea then ran through her key points to recycle resources:

• Your Employees – Employees need to be the public faces of online brands – especially with Google Authorship becoming more prominent. It’s not about the quality and quantity of links, but rather who is sharing, reading and interacting with your content. Those in your business need to be writing and creating content.
• History – Find nuggets in your history, or your client’s history to create content around; timelines, trends, unique products, fan clubs, niche markets – all of this can be hidden in theirs or your history.
• Proposals – It’s a huge loss to pull together lots of research for a proposal, for it to not work out as planned – this is mainly aimed at agency-side content marketers. Instead of throwing away all that research, turn it into a blog post, whitepaper, infographic etc.
• Case Studies – If you have enough case studies put them all together in an ebook. If you have clients happy enough, why not create a video? Stretch your content even further.
• Calendars – Everyone has tradeshows and events – why not review the different events, get opinions and thoughts. Chelsea explained that you can even export your calendar so that it is downloadable for people to see which events you are attending.
• Presentations – When practising presentations, record each practice – this could be used as a podcast. Afterwards, be sure to host it on slideshare. If your presentation is being recorded at a conference, ask for a version to host on your site. Have a follow up presentation via Google Hangout – this keeps people involved and allows them to share ideas.
• Facts- Big data and facts are really useful (this became a huge theme of the day)
• Events – Use these events as a resource of content. Lots of great minds are all under one roof. Get their ideas, interview them – write posts, write-ups, create videos etc.

Chelsea left us with a final tip. When working on a campaign, always think about adding value, rather than throwing lots of money at the situation.

How To Sell Cups Of Coffee Online – Stephen Leighton (@hasbean)

Stephen (Head Roaster) spent his time telling us about his coffee business – it’s a rags to riches story, but it all makes sense – it’s applicable to Content Marketing.

After telling us where he came from, Stephen’s story picked up when he spoke of a spotty sixteen year old building him his first website. He had little money, no branding. He went abroad to get suppliers and change the coffee world. His mantra was quality, quality, quality.

He had an idea of using video of him drinking coffee, podcasts, create brewing guides, as well as sell all the mod cons, he went and got himself an app, signed up to Twitter – but above anything else, he was going to be nice.

So how does this apply to Content Marketing? Well whilst Stephen confessed to not being clever (his words, not mine), he certainly is driven – every piece of content they create is honest, open and has a clear message. That’s why his business is now flourishing. Some good lessons learned.

Successful Briefs – the key to getting good content – Jochen Mebus (@mebusj)

Getting content is not that easy. How do you get it? Scaling content production, make vs buying, content in different language, blogs, etc.

Textbroker are a leading SEO content creation service, and they have dealt with thousands of briefings – some good, some not so.

So how to get it right? Hints for good briefing:

• Inform or entertain?
• Is it to optimise a website?
• Is it to get people to buy your product?
• Name your target audience
• Describe the preferred style of writing
• Mention what kind of text you are looking for
• List specific questions that the text is supposed to answer
• Inform the author about the desired structure of the text
• Specify your SEO requirements
• Always get the author to contact you if they have any questions
• Write a concise briefing – not too long, and not too short
• Be friendly
• Ask your content provider for support

So how do you get the content that you need? Freelancers, bidding sites, writing sites.

SMM not S&M – Taking The Pain Out Of Social Media Monitoring – Andy Keetch (@andykeetch)

Size isn’t the only thing that matters! We need to understand conversations.

So track these conversations by time and by day. Andy gave us an example with the London Underground. When you see spikes in mentions, you can track these over time, so you can see when is the best time to release content, as well as the right type of content to release at that time.

You can even look at conversions by time and day. This will help to release content at a time that will give it greater potential to convert. Also track your competition.

Ensure that you plan and track before you create or do anything. Plan your reporting:

• Define clear objectives
• Review your traditional reporting
• What do the execs want to see?
• Focus on results and what drives them
• Get your hands on data
• Be flexible and responsive

Set something up, see how it works, and refine it. Then you can make sense of the noise – a lot of it won’t be relevant, so you need to refine; gather, clean, analyse and present.

“Reality is easily accessible data, But you have to frame the right questions.” Scott Thompson, HyperNaked

The Great Content Robery – Simon Penson (@Simonpenson)

Simon started by asking the audience how many people would consider themselves as good at stealing. Effectively, behind every good heist, you need a good team, Ocean’s 11 style. As a former publisher, there’s plenty that we can steal from the offline content world – Simon took us through the following three heists.

Heist One:

• Front cover – structure of text, images etc
• Editorial Pillars – define pillars, brainstorm ideas, capture the plan
• Theming – power, sex, gadgets etc.
• Theme the year – work this into your plan and calendars
• Align to audience – the fine details of your audience
• Know your persona – know the language they use and what drives them

Heist Two – How to steal conversions?

• Incentivised purchase
• Make more of competitions – be braver with on-page content (shout it from the roof tops)
• Typography and Hotspots – helps to create a brand feel
• Font as design – think about where you put this font

Heist Three – Content flow and types? Understanding how your content has delivered over time

• Regular templates – lists, images, Q&A Product Focusses, News, Opinions
• Match idea with template type – makes it much more structured
• Opinion – this sells – a lot more needs to be done online
• Find an opinionated persona
• Reverse engineer the plan

Writing Content That Resonates With Influencers – Matt Roberts (@Linkdex_Matt)

Matt’s two favourite words are ‘resonate’ and ‘influence’. These two words that he loves go hand-in-hand.

What does success look like? Likes, shares, views, plus a whole host of other metrics.

“Influence the few, reach the many” – Matt questions whether this is true. The key to success is being human, about influencing the people closest to us.

No matter how good your circles are, they won’t resonate or influence unless the content is quality. Martin Lewis from Money Supermarket was a journalist prior to Money Supermarket, he was very knowledgeable about his topic and created quality.

• You need to maintain deep relationships, be human. But you can’t maintain lots of relationships, just a few. So, resonate in the right place – identify the people you want to get to know.
• Take responsibility for other people’s success. Give content to people to spread and let them take the credit – it works in your favour.
• Monitor the news agenda – and have opinions on that content. This allows you to supplement the news agenda – find a new angle for a secondary wave.

Does it work? Well Linkdex eat their own work – they created content based on Geo Rankings and Authorship – they used their relationships with industry insiders to resonate and influence, so as far as Matt is concerned it does work.

So a big thank you to Kelvin for organising what was a fantastic event, absolutely for free may I add. Lots was learned, new people were met – I just can’t wait for the next one in 2013!

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