One hundred things I learned at Content Marketing World 2014

Because I want to share what I learned with those who couldn’t attend, and because the going theory is that all headlines should include a number, here are the 100 things I learned in Cleveland this year:

1.     Joe Pulizzi continues to attract the best and brightest to the North Coast.

2.     Even though Joe’s name doesn’t contain a single letter T, it’s still pronounced Pu-LITT-zee. Go figure.

3.     The Orange-clad CMI crew does a great job. Every year.

4.     Every speaker is writing or has just written a book.

5.     One sponsor took to giving away money (in the form of $2 bills) this year. Subtle.

6.     If you wanted to get into Robert Rose’s session on Tuesday, you needed to show up about 30 minutes earlier than I did. Bummer.

7.     Kristina Halvorson speaks the truth.

8.     The ‘brown bus’ is actually white (it’s the brown route, which they could have mentioned).

9.     By the time midday arrives, it turns out people will walk right in front of you for a sandwich and some pretzels in a colorful box. Hmmm.

10. Apparently, some folks were using one badge (it was two sided) to sneak two people into the event. Really?

11. That’s only ten things? Crap, I’d better pick this up.

12. Drew Davis didn’t disappoint as the keynote this year. Inspiring as usual.

13. Attendance at the show was more than 2,600 and has quadrupled in just four years.

14. That’s 400% growth for you ROI people.

15. The WiFi was mostly good. Charging stations were nice, too.

16. More orange, of course. Orange cupcakes, orange Jell-O, orange Rice Krispies Treats. You get the idea.

17. Ann Handley suggested having a writing plan that’s like a GPS. Smart.

18. She also has a new book.

19. If you write, you should probably get it.

20. And, as she contends, we all do, so…

21. Kirk Cheyfitz from Story Worldwide correctly noted that we can gather a bigger audience on Facebook than with the Super Bowl today. As he says, “Digital is everything.”

22. Can I say Super Bowl?

23. Those SEO guys are smart.

24. There are people actually called the linkerati.

25. If you get a bunch of publishers together for a chat about Native Advertising they will be disappointingly nice to each other.

26. Put a creative guy in there like Doug Kessler and he’ll tell you what he thinks.

27. “Publishers aren’t nearly concerned enough about this (native advertising). The line is blurring and it’s blurring intentionally,” Says Doug.

28. And this: On native advertising: "If the content is good and people love it, tell them what it is."

29. Right on, Doug.

30. Jason Miller may be the only person that talks (and thinks) as fast as Drew Davis. We should have a contest.

31. The ‘big rock’ concept Jason Miller talks about worked for him at Marketo. It’s clearly working at LinkedIn. It may not be as much about rock (and more about Jason).

32. He also talks about using content like Thanksgiving turkey. Also works.

33. Turns out, Mark Schaeffer knows a thing or two about Twitter.

34. He also knows about tools like Twellow that can show you what people are searching for on all the major search engines. Simultaneously. That means at the same time!

35. I think he also speaks Latin or something.

36. “Even great lead nurturing can’t fix crappy marketing,” according to Matthew Sweezey. He’s right, of course.

37. Turns out those little donuts are great right from the food truck.

38. And they’ll keep giving them to you as long as you have tickets.

39. You can have nothing but donuts for dinner.

40. Okay, sorry, back to work.

41. Twitter also has yellow pages, where businesses can search for customers by geography, category…it’s like the opposite of real yellow pages.

42. NewsCred says they made $5 million in the first 8 months of the year just from Content Marketing.

43. Also said that LinkedIn converts at a 40% rate for them. (forty percent!)

44. Sure, this is number 44, but did you see that last stat…4-0 percent.

45. That cute Friskies video was shown in more than one session. It has more than 16 million shares. It’s one cat talking to another cat. About cat food.

46. Beech-Nut remade their product after listening to their customers (moms), who said they don’t trust what’s in baby food.

47. Today’s ingredients in Beech-Nut carrot baby food: Carrots.

48. Not even water or anything. Just carrots.

49. Apparently, Content Marketing can help companies know what products to offer or how they need to change them. Writing that idea down.

50. “With Content Marketing, people don’t feel like they are in a sales process, but they are. They are being educated along the way,” said Brian Clark.

51. He also made about 80 references to CopyBlogger, but it’s awesome, so we’ll allow it.

52. Kristina Halvorson challenged us to be “More than marketers shouting at customers.”

53. Amen to that.

54. She also noticed that, while this Coke Journey website thing is awesome and all, if we wanted to find out how to apply for a job at Coke, it’s almost impossible to do.

55. Same for Ameriprise Financial. The University of Notre Dame. United.

56. Oh, airlines. Don’t get Scott Stratten started on Delta.

57. Or is it Detla?

58. Either way, he’s funny. And right.

59. Oh, and there was this from the Unmarketer: “Don’t’ try to be first, be right first.”

60. I wanted to support my fellow #CMWorld tweeter Erica Heald and attend her talk about curation, but I couldn’t get in.

61. Sold out. Awesome.

62. The BuzzFeed guy: “We are a platform-agnostic platform."

63. Huh?

64. When a big unexplained noise happened backstage during the panel discussion he was moderating, Mitch Joel didn’t skip a beat: "It's just my mom cleaning up."

65. Some phone company also had a big announcement during the show.

66. I must have missed it.

67. Think they’re into watches now.

68. Cathy McPhillips was nice enough to organize a meet-up for those of us who join the #CMWorld chat each week. The chat is Tuesdays at Noon ET.

69. The meet-up was at 7:15.

70. In the morning :)

71. Scott (the Content Wrangler) Abel rocked a lunch & learn about Content Engineering.

72. People stopped eating, it was that good.

73. Twitter advanced search can show you the conversations that are happening right now.

74. Mark Schaeffer called Twitter a “real-time global brainstorming session.”

75. Also called it the “Movie trailer to your movie.”

76. And “The most powerful networking tool ever created.”

77. So, he likes Twitter.

78. Proof: “Nothing says ‘I love you’ like a retweet now and then.”

79. Okaay.

80. Email tip: if you use shorter emails, limit the use of links. Spam filters will measure the proportion of links to copy and, as emails get shorter, you’ll have to use fewer links.

81. And, as Matthew Sweezey said, “No one clicks on the link in your email sig anyway.” Good point.

82. Shafqat Islam from NewsCred reminded us: “Behind every tweet, every share, every purchase is a person.”

83. Jason Miller appreciates his B2B brothers and sisters…

84. “B2B marketers like to have fun, they’ve just been locked up for a while.”

85. According to David Kirk, Google searches for Content Marketing were up 181% this past week.

86. Kevin Spacey also bent the ‘If a tree falls’ metaphor toward his audience: "Does it matter what's behind a link if no one clicks on it?"

87. No. It does not.

88. At one point, I was concerned for the Content Marketing space-time continuum when I saw Ann Handley and Kristina Halverson chatting between sessions.

89. Thankfully, security was called and they were moved to separate locations.

90. Can’t risk it.

91. Turns out that Kevin Spacey is familiar with the F-bomb

92. Very familiar.

93. He demonstrated his knowledge of Content Marketing terms throughout his talk.

94. When the audience seemed surprised/impressed, he quipped: “Yeah that’s right, I know your f---ing terms!”

95. Halverson on the infamous Oreo tweet:

96. Just 0.008% of active tweeters engaged with Oreo.

97. She did the math.

98. “That was advertising, not engagement.”

99. Content Marketing World is back in Cleveland September 8-11, 2015.

100. Registration opens December 1^st

See you all there?

Content Marketing: Can we just agree to agree?

The practice of Content Marketing could go away if we can’t agree on what it is

The term Content Marketing is absolutely everywhere today in the marketing world. Despite that, it continues to amaze me how many different meanings truly exist out there. When people say ‘Content Marketing,’ what do they really mean?

Some mean the groundbreaking work done by Chipotle, which is certainly sponsored by the brand, but definitely isn’t advertising. Others may be referring to so-called native advertising, where a publisher and brand work together to create a sponsored message (that looks more like an editorial one).

Others still may believe that it’s just hype or that Content Marketing is literally anything a brand creates and distributes digitally, regardless of the message itself.

I would argue that the Chipotle example above is Content Marketing and the other two are not, but you may disagree with me. That’s not the problem.

The problem is, until the majority of us marketing folks agree what Content Marketing is — and it seems we’re nowhere close to that yet — marketers will struggle to have confidence in this thing that seems to keep changing on them.

This is where you’ll think I’ve gone completely crazy

What could this lack of agreement mean? I believe if we don’t become more consistent around a specific meaning for Content Marketing, it may not last.

What? How is that possible?

Of course brands will continue to create more and more content, but that doesn’t mean they will continue to employ the practice of Content Marketing. And that could be bad for everyone.

I know, I know…lots of research has been done where brands say they will be increasing spending on Content Marketing. But here’s the thing: if they don’t understand what Content Marketing is, are they really spending money on it?

I believe those of us in the Content Marketing space have a responsibility to be more consistent with each other in order to help build that confidence in something we all know can work…and work well.

But, until we’re all talking about Content Marketing in the same way, it’s just another confusing term marketing executives can’t quite figure out.

And they won’t continue to invest in something they don’t understand.

Everyone can write, but not everyone is a writer

I take issue with the notion that everyone in this world is a writer. Sure, everyone can write; and technology today is an enabler of that for sure. But I would like to draw a distinction between someone who is able to write (e.g. has a keyboard) and someone who should be called a writer.

Full disclosure: I think of myself as a writer.

 

While many people can express themselves in writing, errors that may seem somewhat trivial (for example, incorrect grammar or misspellings) can cast a negative light on the author and his or her company/employer/brand. And please keep in mind that spell check isn't called grammar check for a reason.

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to get nasty or overly rant-ish. My goal here is simply to convince you that:

1. People who write well are more valued than those who don’t
2. People who don’t write well (but who try over and over again anyway) can harm their own reputation and that of the brand they represent
3. People in #2 can still write, they should simply look for help

Everyone does write, right?

In our 24/7/365 world, everyone will be asked to write. I get that. But that doesn’t mean you have to go it alone. As alluded to in #3 above, if you’re asked to write and know you’re not a writer, just be honest with yourself and seek the advice and counsel of someone who is.

One of the best parts of working with writer-types is they tend to be very helpful people. If you were to ask, it’s completely likely they will want to help you and not want anything in return. Not payment, not credit. Writers are just like that.

Two different types of writing

Everyone blogs or sends emails. I get that, too. But it’s a very different thing to write as part of your daily job. For simplicity, let's assume most writing will either be personal or professional.

Personal writing

Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, email or a blog, most of us are writing in our personal lives. I am not suggesting that you hire a professional writer to do this for you. (<--- Please re-read that last part again for emphasis, if you would). What I am suggesting is that it may be worth it to your personal brand — and we all have one of those — to understand some basic grammar rules so you don’t stub your toe. Here are a few resources I would suggest adding to your bookmarks:

            AP Stylebook

            The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation

            Purdue University online writing lab (Owl)

Professional writing

If you write as part of your job, that’s a different animal. Regardless of whether you write a report that only your boss will see or social media posts for a Fortune 100 company seen by thousands of followers, you want to put your best foot forward. (Did I just use two separate foot-related references? Wow, I guess I did. Sorry about that.)

Most organizations will have some sort of a style guide or other brand guidelines that will include writing standards. Get to know these standards. Know them well. Know them like the back of your…foot.

Even in the smallest organizations, many companies will also have at least one person who writes extremely well. There may be several people. You know who they are; these are the people others go to when they want to make sure everything looks and sounds good. Find one of these people and rely on them.

A word of caution about grammar: Be careful you don’t mistake a person who takes great pride in being a self-professed ‘Grammar Nazi’ for a great writer. In the Venn diagram of life, most writers know grammar well, but not all ‘Grammar Nazis’ know how to write well. Slippery slope, that one.

So, in the great debate of whether everyone is a writer or not, I hope you will consider the difference between those who may be able to write and those who put in the work to do it well.

If you’re in the first group, find someone in the second group…they will help you. If you’re in the second group, you have an obligation to help those in the first.

It’s just what we do.

What can peach ice cream teach us about marketing?

Every summer, United Dairy Farmers (UDF), a Cincinnati, Ohio-based convenient store chain, proudly rolls out its Homemade Brand peach ice cream and its happy customers (my mother-in-law included) lap up the stuff a half-gallon at a time.

It’s actually pretty good. But here’s the thing: there’s a marketing lesson to be learned here, specifically about supply and demand.

Don’t worry, this isn’t a UDF commercial or some kind of case study and I don’t own any UDF stock. UDF only offers its peach ice creamin the summer because that’s when peaches are in season. But…

What if brands could create this kind of demand without having to worry about whether peaches are in season or not? Or cherries, or pumpkin. You realize I’m not talking about ice cream anymore, right?

These aren’t your marketing professor’s examples

This is typically where people would trot out the age-old iPhone example, so I’m not going to do that. Instead, I would submit there are brands that could do this kind of supply-side marketing better (and Apple isn’t one of them).

There are a million examples of successful brands building anticipation by keeping supplies constrained. Hostess Twinkies, anyone? I don’t want to go there.

This is the opposite of a case study.

Who doesn’t do this well today, but could? As a group, laggard brands (that is, the opposite of innovative brands) may make up as much as 16% of all brands and, some would argue, are necessary in the marketplace. But laggard brands have to eventually evolve or die, right?

Here are some brands I believe have an opportunity to evolve and enhance demand by constraining supply:

·      JC Penney seems like an obvious choice here. They have the infrastructure and brand awareness, but seem to focus on the wrong things lately (like price). Could they disrupt by managing demand differently?

·      Couldn’t McDonald’s have some fun with something almost everyone loves — like their world famous french fries?

·      What about credit cards? AMEX has had success being a bit more exclusive, but no one seems willing to challenge them; opportunity for Capital One?

·      Best Buy is constantly being ‘showroomed’ by people who try products in the store, then buy online from someone else. Could they constrain access to the product in some way (perhaps charging a refundable trial fee)?

·      Denny’s grand slam breakfast is plentiful and relatively cheap. What if it were ever-so-slightly harder to get…say only certain days a week or a certain time of day?

·      Airlines. Ugh. Enough said.

·      H&R Block has struggled to keep up with user-friendly competitor TurboTax. Could Block somehow leverage its face-to-face advantage?

The point here is that there are many ways to promote a brand, but some of the less obvious ways — to zig when others are zagging — can be quite effective.

How can this help your brand?

What do you offer everyday that may be more attractive if you offered it a little less often? I mean, let’s not be jerks about it or anything, but a little demand creation, if you will, can be a good thing. Building some intrigue and mystique can be just what a brand needs, especially in low involvement or mature industries.

What can you do to differently to build anticipation for your brand?

Are you leveraging your content as an asset?

Acting — not just thinking — like a publisher is the way to go

For many years, there has been discussion around the idea that a brand has intrinsic value as an asset. According to Brandchannel, some companies, including L’Oreal, Gucci and Prada have captured the value of their brand directly on their balance sheets.

Actually, this is nothing new. In fact, here’s what the chairman of Quaker said about the value of brands at the turn of the century — not the turn of the last century, mind you, but in 1900:

"If this business were split up, I would give you the land and bricks and mortar, and I would take the brands and trade marks, and I would fare better than you."

So the valuation of a brand has been around for a while. But what about the value of your content as an asset?

Okay, back to reality. I don’t believe content will find its way on a company’s balance sheet anytime soon. But I do think brands should be looking for ways to leverage their content as an asset as opposed to thinking of it as just an expense.

Every brand will do this differently, of course, and that makes perfect sense. But we all need to think and act like publishers.

Sure, everyone says think like a publisher, but what does that mean?

When a publisher wakes up in the morning, they aren’t thinking about their product (the magazine they publish, for example), they’re thinking about what will interest their readers. What’s going on? What problems do my readers have today that I can help them solve? That’s how publishers have been thinking for hundreds of years.

But how does a publisher act?

Publishers break down their issues into sections, right? You should, too. But the sections that might work for one brand (think Popular Mechanics) won’t work in others (like Southern Weddings). This is where each brand will need to get specific — content that might appear in the Outdoors section of Popular Mechanics would be very different than the Outdoors section (if there were one) in SW.

Since I work in the exciting world of insurance and financial services, where all of our sections are typically the same, (you know, auto, home life…) we needed to create a program that includes three much more important sections: content marketing, content management and content distribution.

Wait, aren’t those all the same?

We don’t believe so. These three elements are interrelated, certainly, but they are also quite different. Here’s how we define them:

Content Marketing is the creation/curation of timely, useful, brand-guided stories that engage a targeted audience, earning their trust and enthusiasm and, ultimately, attracting or retaining customers (whew!). We like to call this ‘story manufacturing.’

Content Management is system-based governance/technology that helps handle, curate, tag and store content, enabling search and easy retrieval while remaining channel agnostic. This is ‘story warehousing.’

Content Distribution is the delivery of brand-guided stories in owned, earned and paid media that ensures the right people get the right message at the right time and in the manner they prefer. This, of course, is ‘story distribution.’

The main point here is not for others to use these definitions, but to encourage you to find your own.

In order to leverage your content as an asset, I believe you need to define the key components of your content program — you know, those sections of your publication — so everyone is on the same page in your organization, regardless of whether everyone is three people or 30,000.

For us, it helped to separate these key elements so we could discover what we’re doing well, where we need to get better and we’re able to work on them concurrently. For you, it may be better to have one element. Or 10. The idea is to find a way to talk about content in your organization that will inspire others, because you can’t do this thing by yourself. It’s big.

So, if you haven’t already, go figure out the sections of your content publication and start acting — not just thinking — like a publisher today!

I don't like events (and why that doesn't matter at all)

Events. Yuck.

I don’t like recommending them. I don’t like managing them. I don’t even like attending them (except Content Marketing World, of course). But none of that matters, because I don’t matter — I’m not the target audience.

I believe a lot of marketers, perhaps unintentionally, apply their own filters to the tactics they recommend for brands: ‘Hmm, let’s see, what would I like?’

Wrong.

It may seem unavoidable to add your own preferences, but it’s not. We all just need to remember that it’s not about us. It’s about the audience (and the audience is rarely us).

So, to pay some penance for lo these many years of event-hating, I’ve captured three reasons why you may want to include live events in your next marketing plan.

1. Live events continue to rank highly with consumers as one of the best ways to learn about you and your brand. Experiences, like events, are becoming more and more important as people continue to be bombarded with digital brand messages.

2. It’s a sensory experience. People can touch, smell, see and even use your product at an event. You can’t get that from an online demo or webinar. As efficient as technology allows us to be today, there’s just something about interacting with a brands product or service that can’t be replicated, especially for large/expensive purchases like cars and equipment.

3. Events let you be you. Perhaps like nothing else, events allow a brand’s personality shine through as your own people (and please, involve your own people at shows) can demonstrate your brand’s style, not just your products. It’s even a great way to recruit new people!

So, the next time you’re asked to recommend a marketing tactic for your brand or the brand of your client, consider a live event. Just don’t ask me to manage it (if you want it to be successful).

Oh, and don’t forget to use a #hashtag!

The content marketing elevator story (or how to tell your mom what you really do for a living)

If you’re like me, you spend your day explaining to others what you do. At home or at work, most people just don’t understand Content Marketing. Of course, this joining of two nebulous terms (content and marketing) doesn’t help much, either.

So I thought I would share some of the ways I’ve explained it in hopes that it might help you…or at least give you a laugh. And, to make it fun, let’s do it in David Letterman Top Ten style (with apologies to Dave, of course).

Here we go…

So, you work in Content Marketing…what do you do again?

10. I’m a Content Strategist. Look it up.

9. I help brands tell their story — one cat video at a time.

8. I write in 140-character increments all day, trying to attract followers to our brand. In fact, this is actually 140 characters. The problem is I can’t stop. Send help.

7. I can make anything into an acronym at a moment’s notice.

6. I’ve noticed I’m starting to wear more orange to work. Hmmm.

5. You know that video the sales group did for their annual meeting that vaguely resembled The Price Is Right? Yeah, that wasn’t me.

4. I’m part writer, part producer, part psychologist.

3. Yes, I can help you tell your story. No, I can’t help you get a book deal.

2. I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t ‘put in a good word for you with Google.’

1. While traditional marketing is about telling people how you can help them, my job as a content marketer is just to help them.