Confab Session Wrap: Content Rules
Frank Marquardt
Director of Content Strategy : San Francisco
topics:
filed under: Content Strategy
http://tbg.cm/juA4Lr
“Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003.”
– Eric Schmidt
– Eric Schmidt
Ann Handley’s keynote addressed how to market your content more effectively. This starts, of course, by answering the question why: Why are you on Facebook? Why are you on Twitter? Why are you on LinkedIn? Think through why you are there and what you want to accomplish.
Key takeaway for brands: Embrace that you are a publisher. Yes, it’s imperative you produce content online as a way to connect with your audiences, because that’s where your clients are looking for you.
Rules for Your Content- Share or solve, don’t shill. Ex: Roberts & Durkee Law Firm, and its site Chinese Drywall Problem, which makes it a top 10 site for organic search and earned media in Time, ABC, the Associated Press, and the Wall Street Journal)—and helps bring in new clients every month.
- Show, don’t just tell. Ex: The Grilled Cheese Academy, which shows how its products live in the world through beautiful, hunger-induced imagery. (Seriously. Who doesn’t want a cheese sandwich after a tour through those sandwiches?)
- Speak human. Make things people can relate to. Ex: Daxko’s Embedded@Daxko – blogs by its employees on topics you might expect from software executives (strategy, leadership) intermingling with those you’d expect from fun people (travel, food, and drink).
- Build momentum. Ex: Hubspot, which offers a path on each page to bring people along in the relationship.
- Do something unexpected. Ex: Agilent’s Puppet Chemistry, targeting medical researchers with fun, engaging content (earning them a fourfold increase in traffic)
- Stoke the fire. Ex: Procter & Gamble’s Man of the House, with articles about what its audiences care about (like the excellently titled “4 Reasons Men Should Not Tuck in a Shirt and its 5,700 Facebook likes + 354 comments).
- Create wings and roots. Ex: Exact Target offers a “social object” others can embed on their blog.
- Reimagine, don’t recycle. Ex: Google Goes Gaga. Watch it. Now.
(Based on a session at Confab 2011: The Content Strategy Conference, held in Minneapolis, MN May 9 – 11.)
