Five Key Takeaways From the 2011 Content Marketing World

Cleveland just got cooler last week, September 6-8, at Content Marketing World. Like-minded and savvy content marketers from 18 countries united in downtown Cleveland to share ideas, inspire, and infuse color to the marketing plans that will likely affect more than 1,000 companies.

I couldn’t type fast enough to document all of the learns I had over the week—but here, in my opinion, are some key takeaways that were tattooed in my mind:

1) Content is right at your fingertips. Ever feel like you are in a writer’s block for subject matter? Don’t. Content is really at your fingertips—whether its leveraging employees or even customer testimonials.

Small business owner and hilarious marketing genius, Marcus Sheraton, in a breakout session on small business and nonprofit business gave the following tips on finding content in a jiffy.

He suggested listing the top 50 questions your customers ask—then create a corresponding blog post for each question.

Other session speakers suggested putting a content management system right in your internal employee portal so employees have the option of submitting a blog post conveniently and efficiently.

For an outside perspective, another speaker suggested putting a blog submission form app right on your company’s Facebook™ page so customers have easy access to blogging and creating valuable testimonials for your company.

2) Content marketing is psychological. It’s not irony that many marketers have a Psychology degree. Marketing is the act of finding emotional persuasive triggers of a target audience through a variety of mediums.

It’s rooted by psychological principals—and in a competitive business landscape, the marketer with the most fascinating concept wins. Sally Hogshead, a best-selling author and marketing researcher shed light on some really groundbreaking information in the opening keynote speech.

She spent five years working to extrapolate quantitative research on the seven triggers of persuasion and captivation. Read them, and connect your marketing strategy to one of the following principals:

• Power: Command
• Passion: Attracting prospective customers with emotion
• Mystique: Appealing to curiosity
• Prestige: Elevating respect
• Alarm: Creating urgency
• Rebellion: Spontaneous and witty pulls that can turn the status quo upside down
• Trust: This trigger takes time to develop. It’s when an organization continually delivers a consistent experience.

3) Real-time is key. People want to be informed in the moment. This is a tricky thing to work through as a content marketer for regulated industries like financial services, healthcare, and higher education—but it really is crucial as a content marketer to have the publishing cycle of a traditional journalist.

Nobody wants to read a blog post about a news item or event that took place a month ago. People want information NOW.

Think of it this way—would a CNN journalist report on a car-side bombing in Iraq that took place earlier in the month? No. They are up at 3 a.m. pounding their keyboard to get an article out just hours or even minutes after the event happened. If your industry allows, replicate this.

4) Content marketing is NOT SEO. This point was actually one of the most riveting and surprising takeaways of the conference. Many speakers unanimously agreed that content marketing is NOT SEO.

SEO ninjas and content marketers should work together to optimize content—but don’t let them write your headline—otherwise you’ll sound like an unauthentic robot. Because content marketing is so deeply engrained in psychological triggers—it’s really important to make sure your copy speaks to the person reading the copy and not just the search engine.

5) Content Marketing is getting buy in. Three cheers for content marketing—studies show that 80% of companies are engaged in content marketing of some sort—whether it’s through video, whitepapers, product review, blogs, or podcasts.

Executives are starting to see that there are huge returns with the right content marketing strategy. In fact, one speaker cited that one of his blog posts rendered around $60,000 in sales. For those 20% who are not engaging in content marketing—is this reason enough to start?

About the Author:

Allie Gray Freeland is the Interactive Communication Specialist for Rasmussen College. In this role, she serves as the content manager for the Rasmussen College Blog. Allie received her Bachelor's in Journalism from the University of Minnesota. Read more about her credentials here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/alliegray.