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5 Key Takewaways from Content Marketing Retreat (#CMRetreat)
A couple weeks ago, I attended the 2nd annual Content Marketing Retreat (#CMRetreat) hosted by Fusionspark Media along with our Content Director at Weber Shandwick (@mydeadlyballoon). Having missed the first annual retreat, I was excited to finally head across the sound to beautiful Langley, WA for a day of big learning.
The Retreat exceeded my expectations on all accounts. Great location, stellar organization throughout the day, knockout food (holy homemade pumpkin bread) and of course most importantly, an all-star lineup made for an excellent trip.
Throughout the course of day one, attendees hear from Rod Brooks, Russell Sparkman, Tim Frick, Jayme Thomason, Chris Baggott, Pawan Deshpande, Mark Jacobs, Jeff Erramouspe, Simon Kelly and Robert Rose.
The crowd was a diverse group from all over with a slant towards those working in smaller organizations. Topics covered a wide range, from top level content marketing strategy to maximizing use of Google Analytics data to improve content optimization. While many conferences can drag at certain points, the short presentation structure followed by panel discussions made for a great format to maintain audience attention throughout.
Below are five key takeaways that stemmed from the Retreat.
1. Content Marketing is Not Rocket Science
Sorry, it’s just not. Does content marketing require smart analysis, technical insight, natural instinct for audience demands and the ability to piece everything together into a solid strategy? You bet, but it takes practice and requires that you are constantly thinking about how best to stay a step ahead of your audience and the competition.
2. Brands That Succeed at Content Marketing Fail…a Lot.
During his presentation on developing a step-by-step content marketing plan, Robert Rose emphasized the importance of establishing an office culture that embraces innovation. You, along with your coworkers or employees, need to feel that it’s okay to fail. In fact, you need to be realistic about the fact that success often stems from a series of smart failures where you’ve progressively learned more and more about how best to achieve your goals. The iPhone and iPad weren’t created overnight and neither will your strategy for how to sell X products or engage with Y number of people. Try and keep trying.
3. Data Is the Hidden Gem Behind All Good Content Marketing
It’s scary to me these days when a company or organization gives you a blank stare when you ask about website or engagement analytics. Data drives strategy. If you don’t have a benchmark and ongoing consistent measurement to track what content is resonating with which audience, you don’t have the fuel necessary to revamp your content marketing plan.
4. Curation is An Art Form
Successful curators have amazing taste. They know their audience’s taste like the back of their hand. They know the value of attribution, the importance of framing and how to deliver content to their target audience in the right format in a consistent fashion.
5. Content Marketers Understand the Difference Between Audience “Needs” and “Wants”
Rod Brooks did a great job putting this point on display. Rod is the CMO for Pemco Insurance. We all need insurance. We know that. Do we all like to talk about insurance on a daily basis? Nope.
What we do love to talk about is our family, friends and community. We love to discuss topics of shared interest that resonate across the board relevant to our safety and well being.
The same applies for your company. Stop trying to shove your audience’s needs down their throat and take a broader look at the shared values and interests of your target community. What type of content does this audience want? What do they care most about? THAT is your point of entry. That is your bridge to building trust and creating robust dialogue.
Thanks again to Russell Sparkman and all of the presenters. Looking forward to another fantastic gathering next year.
People You Should Know: Russell Sparkman
This edition of People You Should Know features content marketing guru Russell Sparkman. I first came across Russell’s work when I was heavily involved in the world of organ donation for a past client. While doing some research, I discovered an excellent interactive educational site called The Gift of a Lifetime and learned that Russell, with his business partner/brother Kevin Sparkman, was behind the work. I’ve followed Russell closely since as we share a mutual passion for storytelling and content marketing. Russell always manages to have his hands in a number of great projects. Be sure to check out his portfolio and some excellent insights below.
Russell Sparkman - in action.
1. The phrase ” content marketing” often gets thrown around with different meanings but it often boils down to building brand loyalty. Distill down your brief definition of the phrase.
Individuals who I admire for their success often are people who strengthen their relationship bonds by freely sharing their knowledge and showing compassion for those in their (often extensive) networks.
Content marketing is how this same behavior is scaled to the enterprise, non-profit and even governmental agency size. By this, I mean investing in and sharing content as the basis of relationship building and engagement.
But content marketing isn’t just about building human relationships.
In addition to strengthening bonds – i.e. building brand loyalty – with prospects, customers and stakeholders through relevant, compelling, fun and educational content, skillfully produced content marketing fulfills strategic imperatives related to social media and SEO tactics.
2. One could argue that not having a thorough grasp of effective content marketing puts a business or organization of any size at a severe disadvantage when it comes to online engagement. What are three key learning resources you point others to that are just starting to wrap their heads around content marketing?
The most important red flag I raise regarding not thoroughly grasping content marketing is the competitive imperative, the point being that if you’re not leading engagement with prospects and clients through content marketing, more than likely, your competitor is.
Three of the most important resources that I regularly point people to are:
Love is the Killer App, by Tim Sanders
This may sound like an odd choice, but my earlier premise of giving of your knowledge and showing compassion as a recipe for success stems from this book. It’s a philosophy. A mindset. And it matters. Read this book!
Content is King … NOT! Why Content is Gold
It might seem silly to point to just one blog post out there, but I think it’s one of the most important because it makes the crucial case for why budgets need to be allocated to content creation (disclaimer: it is one of my blog posts).
Fundamentally, content is king is a poor analogy that doesn’t truly convey the value proposition of content as a marketing imperative. Off with the head of the analogy, and let’s get more people talking in terms of “content is gold.”
Content Marketing Institute
My preference for content marketing is grounded in a belief that it’s a “bigger tent” than focusing only on social media, or only on inbound marketing, and so on. The Content Marketing Institute provides a vast amount of useful content about content marketing, and is connected to Content Marketing World.
3. Which companies or organizations stand out in your mind that ” get” content marketing and why?
Ironically, a great case study for content marketing success is actually the Content Marketing World event, which premiered in September.
Throughout the event, in the hallways and at the cocktail parties, I overhead many discussions and comments about how amazing it was to get such a turnout of speakers and attendees at a premier event. In Cleveland, no less.
But if you break down the content strategy and output of Joe Pulizzi and his crew, it really provides great insight into what it takes.
In a nutshell: Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett published a book called in Get Content, Get Customers in 2007. This was the starting gun.
Joe began consistently writing blog posts. Since 2007, he’s written over 500 blog posts. How many times has he missed his weekly deadline? Zero.
Since 2007, Joe presented at 200 conferences, and participated in 100 webinars.
Joe supplemented his content creation with content curation when he created the Content Marketing Institute in 2009.
There’s over 90 expert bloggers contributing to the institute’s blog, and there are more than 400 blog posts, to date.
Joe and team has produced six ebooks, four case studies and published more than 100 presentations to Slideshare. Creativity has mattered, and from great design, to “branding” content marketing the color orange, they’ve created a unified experience with their brand.
All of this was done as a “ground game” lead up to the Content Marketing World event. The following they’d built as a result became eager attendees, once promotions for the event began.
4. What’s one big change or paradigm shift that you anticipate happening in the world of content marketing in 2012?
First, there is a shift happening where brands are no longer looking at people as “customers” but truly as “audiences,” much like broadcasters, movie studios and publishers view people as audiences. And audiences want content in the form of resources, and stories, and games, etc.
Therefore, we’re on the cusp of a shift from the kind of “we have to do social media” mentality of the past several years to a “we have to have a content strategy” mindset.
I think that this means more communications strategies will become “social media agnostic,” and content strategy will take on a more central role. Through content strategy work, brands will develop their story first, and then map their content assets to specific channels — social media, mobile, print — in the ways the best serve to tell the brand story.
As this happens, Content Marketing will continue to gain recognition and traction as the approach that best aligns with thinking of people first as “audiences” before, and after, they become customers.
5. You’re the Founder/Executive Director for the Langley Center for New Media which serves as the educational and training arm of your main company, Fusionspark Media Inc. What are you looking forward to most about the Center’s Upcoming 2nd Annual Content Marketing Retreat on Jan. 26-27?
I’m really proud of the Day 1 Speaker Narrative for the 2nd Content Marketing Retreat.
We’ve developed a formula for our Retreats in which Day 1 is treated like a book on the Retreat’s subject matter, in this case the “how to” of content marketing.
From the opening keynote to the last speaker, each speaker represents a “chapter” on the subject in short (15 min.) presentations that are dynamic and to the point. When combined with the wine tasting event that evening in which, due to the fairly small and intimate size of our gatherings, everybody gets to meet everybody, it’s going to be an unprecedented day of learning and networking.
So, I’m personally looking forward to the collective wisdom that’s going to be shared by the smart and talented presenters who come to this having solved or addressed many of content marketing’s challenges.
Three Common Social Media Scenarios Addressed
Photo By: Dept. of Energy and Climate Change
This past week, I had the distinct pleasure of presenting on a panel with Sarah Evans and Jeff Bodzewski for the Publicity Club of Chicago’s Education Series.
The initial discussion focused on using social media to maximize media relations efforts. Like any good panel, the conversation eventually took a new set of paths as audience questions popped up. With a mixed group of agency folks, nonprofit and corporate communicators alike, a few common social media questions surfaced that I thought would be good to address here.
1. I’m the sole person in my nonprofit’s communications department. Our executive director wants us to ramp up our online communications and social media efforts. Where am I supposed to find the time to manage this stuff?!
First off, you’re only human and you’re not alone. If you’re Executive Director is 100% behind social media, that’s a great start. That individual now also needs to recognize that an online communications strategy is not a single whimsical tactic but rather a key component of an organization’s overall communications strategy. As such, there needs to be realistic expectations established from the beginning as to what one person can reasonably manage.
Don’t be afraid to delegate. Though you don’t want your intern(s) running your online outreach, they can certainly be a huge asset for assisting with your daily listening and monitoring process, content planning and creation, etc.
Beth Kanter also posted a PowerPoint from Steve Heye last year that addresses some excellent tips:
Finding Time:
- Start small and find what works for you
- Set priorities on tools
- Spend 15-30 minutes each morning reading or answering requests
- Pick one day a week to spend one hour doing one of the following:
-Writing a blog post
-Expanding your network
-Replying to other people’s questions
Using Time Wisely:
- DON’T READ EVERYTHING
- Take time everyday, don’t let it build up
- Limit where you start
- Learn to use filters
- Take time to alter notification settings
- Don’t join everything or friend everyone, it’s OK to say no
- If you fall behind just do a dump
- DON’T READ EVERYTHING
2. Social media, great. How in the world do I demonstrate that our social media efforts result in revenue?
Ahh, the great debate. Sure, we’d all like to be able to churn up tangible Dell-like results from our online efforts. Unfortunately, it’s rarely that clear-cut. The beauty of social media is that it is in fact very measurable from both a quantitative and qualitative standpoint.
The key to any good measurement program is benchmarks. Where are you starting from? X months later, where are you at? Have you impacted the bottom line and is your current strategy helping work toward your goals? If not, can you tweak and change your strategy and tactics to improve efforts?
Your focus may also not just be about $. Think about the amount of money you’re currently spending on advertising or to land that big story in the local paper. Is there a better integrated approach where X click-thrus to an actionable landing page will be more effective than X impressions in helping you reach your goals? Is there a long-term focus you can envision whereby an extensive advocate or brand ambassador base will help propel word-of-mouth for future outreach initiatives?
There is plenty to consider when framing measurement around your online communications plan.
3. My organization is facing a social media firestorm. We’ve got a presence across the board.
First step? Assess and document. Build a database of every location you find a presence and try to track down the individual or department responsible for the creation of that content piece.
Next, get everyone in the same room. In any case, it’s crucial to get all parties (PR/communications, marketing, sales, customer service, HR, etc.) together to open up discussion about different department goals. I’ll also add that you should invite representatives from departments that you think should be involved even if they may not realize it. It’s typically best to have a foundation that encompasses everyone so that needs can be addressed and properly incorporated into your strategy from the beginning.
This approach will typically help provide immediate structure and hierarchy, especially when a social media policy is put into place. Aside from internal structure, don’t react with immediate backlash to content pieces created by those outside of your company (e.g. a Facebook group or fan page created by fans of the brand). Assess the level of activity and type of communication taking place but also think about ways to embrace these folks. There is a good chance they will end up being your most important communications channel.
-Scott
