Over 120 Tips From The Content Marketing Show 2013 (#Contentmarketingshow)

The Content Marketing Show took place today in Logan Hall near Russell Square, London. With 17 speakers included on the full line up, the one day conference provided some great insights concerning all things content, including social media, online PR, SEO and of course the all-important content marketing strategy.

Koozai’s very own Content Marketing Executives John Waghorn and Harry Gardiner were at the event and have provided our blog readers with some of the key pointers and takeaways from both the morning and afternoon sessions.

Session 1 – John Waghorn

The Sir Alex Ferguson’s Way Of Building The Best (Content) Team – Danny Denhard – @dannydenhard

• Choose the right team members to work on each content project – similar to a starting 11 in football
• Make sure your team of content writers are prepared for each project
• Key aspects to remember – attention to detail, can your writers cover and overlap on a number of themes?
• ‘The centre back’ – the leader and communicator throughout the project
• ‘The midfield work horse’ – find out your team’s personalities and fit them into the best projects accordingly, allowing them to successfully work together
• ‘The attacking midfielder’ – the creative and driven team member/s – good for assists and ensuring goals are achieved
• ‘The strikers’ – goal driven – have at least one striker per content project who will work independently to get results
• Know when to make a substitution – swap editorial people or swap members of the team to keep content fresh, similar to Sir Alex Ferguson’s tactics in football
• Make your team work to the final whistle, even if you have reached your goals
• Prepare for people to leave your team for other agencies. This way your content won’t suffer in the long run
• Most  importantly, always understand each members role within the team

How To Create Content People Have to Share – Laura Edwards – @LauraHelen

• How can we stand out with content?
• If your content is good you will naturally garner attention
• Provide an impulse for people to share your content – will they really want to share it once it’s complete?
• Comes down to investment and effort – budget that is relative to the content you are trying to deliver – ‘content production value’
• Always play to your strengths in relation to your ideas
• Work with the right people, those who have the ability to really transform your content
• Editorial team have to be capable of delivering results and expectations
• Planning content is hugely important and this will pay off – remember you are competing against other agencies, freelancers and brands
• Spend time researching, looking at demographics – tools include Trendsmap
  
• Find a unique idea and incorporate different perspectives for each piece of content you create
• Sharing content – make sure your share buttons are at the top of your articles

Developing An Editorial Mindset In A Non-editorial Business – Dan Fielder – @danfielder

• For B2B content marketing to be effective businesses should:Find a niche – between your expertise and what your users want to know (a comfortable middle ground)Think about the questions that your users ask and help to answer them – tips and guides to provide valuable contentWork out who can provide the insights to this ‘valuable information’ – not necessarily writers, could be analytics experts for example

• Ideas are the hard currency of content marketing – Have lots of ideas, but come to a conclusion on the best ones
• Ideas come from – keyword traffic, online forums, social media buzz, previous content as well
• Keep your blog updated and build momentum through this platform
• Think about the formats and platforms that people are using and target these for your B2B content marketing
• Remember that sometimes you are creating content for a secondary audience
• Use the same idea in different ways – blog post, PR, whitepaper, FAQs pages
• Trust your instinct with ideas and see how far they can take you

Robots, Gumballs And Marxism – Ben Redford – @Bredford2

• Ben and his team tried unique and different ways to start developing community interest – Steve Jobs image made of Apple Mac computer parts – got picked up by Wired and Sunday Times
• ‘Polly’ – turns your Tweets into sweets – featured on Sunday Brunch TV show and the  hashtag ‘Pollybrunch’ trended worldwide for four and a half hours
• The community they built along the way with these ‘unique projects’ and posting content about it allowed them to gain funding for further projects
• Recently launched the tiny Instagram projector
  
• Build a product and then be interested in how your users are connecting with that product – reciprocal interest will go a long way

How To Use LinkedIn For Content Marketing – Will Koch (Lightning talk) – @willkoch97

• Social networks are being used by decision makers before they are reaching out to a brand
• It’s easy and efficient to develop trust on LinkedIn
• Content areas are growing fast on the platform, which is beneficial to decision makers and those seeking suitable content opportunities
• Content can be distributed and delivered to the right individuals to targeted decision makers

Session 2 – John Waghorn

Great Content Marketing Is About Great Storytelling – Tony Samios

• Know your punch line and your ending, your content is like a story, you need to know where it’s going
• Stories allow readers to relate to their own experiences through content, making it an effective medium
• Social media – allows us to personalise our stories with our audience
• We are more concerned with what others have to say about a brand, as opposed to what a brand has to say about themselves
• A great story is a great story no matter which medium you share it through
• Make people care about your story through inspiring action and taking them on a journey
• Storytelling can increase revenue through creating an emotional connection between the brand and audience
• Good stories can cause people to change and take action, clarify your message and confirm why your actions are important to them

Content Strategy > Make Data your Friend! – Simon Penson – @simonpenson

• How can data help with your content strategy?
• Your ideas for content can be led by the data you uncover
• No longer solely about keyword data – although tools like Ubersuggest can help
• Semantic phrases – use semantic associations to expand your content process and creation of ideas
• Google Display Network ad planner – looks at interest groups and can give you more ideas for targeted content
• Use Google’s public data engine – provides data on particular subjects
• Zanran – small niche search engine relating to data and statistics to pull information from
• Google Real-Time Insights Finder – find out how people are searching for particular subjects
• Social data is also hugely important – Facebook power editor, download this to your profile and it allows you to view data and understand more about your audience
• Pinalytics – to show the most pined content on Pinterest
• Data tells you what to write about and what will result in engagement

What Is The Right Mix Of Content? – Sarah Howard – @SarahGHoward

• One size does not fit all – all businesses have different goals
• Step 1 – Get to know your audience – look on social media channels (what do your users like to share?), use forums too.
• Step 2 – Conduct a site audit – work out what’s already on your site? Identify gaps and the quality of existing content. Does it convey the right message?
• Step 3 – Get analytical – measure your content and engagement levels through Google Analytics
• Step 4 – Try it & refine it – Roll with your content ideas and refine what does and doesn’t work as you go
• Step 5 – Make you content a company-wide exercise – get your whole team involved with content ideas as well as the writing process

Why Multicultural Content Marketing Is Key To Grow Your Business – Eric Ingrand (Lightning talk) – @EricEVGEurope

• Multicultural content marketing is not simply about making your website relevant to your locality
• Many communities connect with content through mobile devices and this trend is growing – need to cater for these people who are in different locations
• Have passion in your writing and ensure that it’s translated properly. Poor translation will result in poor results
• Display the right content to the right people at the right time
• Listen to your data and understand what local cultures are interested in
• You need to be multi-device enabled in order to reach a multi-cultural audience

Session 3 – Harry Gardiner

Selling The Content Marketing Story – Pak Hou Cheung – @PakHouCheung

• Awesome SEO gets traffic. Updates make traffic go down. SEO helps them up again, and so on so forth. This becomes a cat and mouse game between Google and the SEOs
• Focus on your Content Strategy, SEO and social media. You need all three channels to work together. Understand what your goal is. Then identify how content and content marketing will help you achieve this
• The best marketing is the kind that you don’t realise is selling to you
• You should provide valuable content throughout every stage of the sales cycle:
• Awareness: Get your brand name out there. How does the content you create relate to your brand?
• Consideration: Know what problems your products solve. Understand what your brand does and what it means, and how it compares to others.
• Purchase: Inspire your audience to shop with you. Focus on why they should.
• Retain & Upsell: Work on your customer relationships. Don’t stop sharing; don’t stop offering value to your existing customers. Learn how to tailor your products to your existing customers. Keep in contact and offer personal incentives.

Making Video Work For Your Brand – Amanda Poole-Connor – @AJPooleco

• Broadcast your brand. Video is a powerful communication tool, it can portray messages far better than other mediums, so produce plenty of diverse content. Be consistent with your branding throughout
• People are watching more video on more platforms than ever before. Your brand is 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results with video
• Video puts a face to an organisation and helps build brand loyalty whilst also attracting new customers
• Compelling video content should engage, inform, inspire and educate. What do you want to say, who to, how will you say it and what should people do when they watch it?
• Video is affordable, even on a limited budget, if you understand how to do it creatively. You may already have the resources available. Your office can be turned into a creative shooting location, your employees are the stars. Social media acts as a sharing platform, it’s free and accessible, so use it.

Putting The Conversion Into Content – Justin Taylor – @JustinGraphitas

• Content is pushed out online, and the not measured properly. We mostly measure by vanity metrics (tweets, likes and shares). This doesn’t necessarily relate to revenue
• Commoditise your content. Look beyond the shares and focus on conversion rates
• Define your objectives. Know why you’re doing what you do. How will that content convert? Focus on where you want to be and not where you are
• Never stop testing, it’s the only way you’ll be understand what really works and what doesn’t. It encourages innovation and allows you to stay ahead of the game
• Understand your audience, really do your research and understand who these people are. Use their language; understand the jargon and the tone of voice
• A great headline is vital, as are the subheadings. The headline reflects, and sells, the content
• People buy with their eyes, so use seductive imagery or well-crafted graphics and make your content visually pleasing
• If someone is interested enough to read about something then you can almost guarantee that they’re interested enough to buy it. Anchor you products in your content. Proposition your users. Give them powerful triggers and present a clear call to action. Add value to your products with extra content and products

Raising The Quality Bar Using The Smarter Content Framework – Matt Roberts – @Linkdex_Matt

• What makes content brilliant? Knowing that ‘OK’ is not OK. Nobody shares average content
• Smarter content leads to socialization, which in turn leads to measurable value
• Learn how to measure you content properly. Prove your contents value, and then improve it
• Set SMARTER objectives. Identify what your content does and can do
• New place to upload quality content: Smartercontent.org. #smartercontent + #(category) and it will appear on the site. The site also allows you to vote the best content up and down.

7 Content Marketing Tips For Ecommerce – Ed Bussey – @edwardbussey (Lightning)

• Value your content. Content is your website’s lifeblood, it’s a core brand asset so treat it as such
• Define your objectives. Work out where you want to end up. Knowing this will help drive the entire process
• Customers first, SEO second. Worry about what the people want and not what Google want
• Be consistently on-brand. Bring your content together into a consistently branded strategy. Stick to your own brand guidelines and language
• Measure and optimise your content. Test, optimise and drive results
• Don’t translate… localise. Language and tone is lost through translation. Create bespoke content for each market
• Use solutions that scale. Demand for content is growing; develop a content strategy that’s scalable for the growing market

Advanced Content Promotion Strategies and Tactics – Paul May, CEO/Co-Founder at BuzzStream – @paulmay

• Most bloggers want to be on top but give up too early. Spend the time creating and promoting
• The old outreach process is broken. The game has changed. You have to do better. Reach out in a way that’s personalised, relevant and scaled
• Segment your content market. Identify target segments, break them down into primary, secondary etc. Know who’s going to care about your brand. Understand your assets and why they’re valuable. Expand your research using chunking
• Think big start small. Research, build relationships then outreach. Build relationships well before outreach. Give before you get
• Automate what can be automated, don’t waste valuable time. However anything that requires direct engagement should be done by you
• Great emails are personal, positioned, persuasive and have a clear call to action.

If I had a planner – content planning 101 – Jo Kerr, Digital Manager at vInspired – @gambollingsylph

• AKA. 5 lessons I wish I’d learned running a student paper
• Meet face-to-face. Take different cultures and events into consideration (national holidays, school schedules etc.). What is the current state of your audience?
• Align you content with business aims. It’s not just about likes. Develop a business plan and integrate it with your content marketing
• Trust your editor. Be strict with your content, but work collaboratively. Have an eye for detail but look at the bigger picture
• Plan ahead and be spontaneous. It is possible. Plan out your content, but make sure you’re aware with current events. Things happen all the time, make sure you stay on top of everything that relates to your brand
• Celebrate success… and keep learning. Reward yourselves when the process works, but keep improving on everything you do. Recognise where you can do better and embrace it
• Must read: Erin Kissane – The elements of Content Strategy (A Book Apart #3)

How to grow social media communities – Luke Lewis, UK Editor at BuzzFeed – @lukelewis

• Content can cause emotions. It’s aimed at people and can carry emotions. Emotions are a powerful trigger for social sharing
• Advertising doesn’t need to suck
• Choose your metric. What are you actually aiming for, revenue? Engagement? Viral?
• The more you put in to your content marketing process the more you’ll get out
• Be relentless on Twitter, if it works once, tweet it again, and again
• Share your timeless content all the time
• Exploit big events and respond in real time. It’s possible to plan spontaneity, plan for different events. Cut through current events with relevant content. Tap into people’s passions
• Feedback = editorial. Use those interactions in your content. Take inspiration from what your audience are talking about. Give ideas and topics to your audience and get better content back

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