Andrew Davis is a bestselling author and acclaimed speaker, and he showed why with his opening keynote. He looked at how we currently experience information overload, with 17 new web pages being published every second, and he demonstrated how people search for information haphazardly by detailing an amusing process in which a mention of meat loaf led him to search for recipes, shop for cooking pans on Amazon, and take detours to investigate the career of the musician Meat Loaf.
So how do marketers cut through all this noise and reach their audience? Davis offered some great advice, boiling it down to memorable quotes like "Get rich, target a niche," and "Build a relationship with your audience before they need you."
Make an appointment with your content audience, and keep it @DrewDavisHere #contentjam pic.twitter.com/anHnv3ZsEd
— Chuck Kent (@creativeoncall) August 4, 2016
The examples that Davis provided were especially fascinating, and they showed how creating content that your audience trusts and building those relationships is the best way to find success with your content marketing. These inspiring success stories included:
These examples showed the importance of creating content on a regular basis, building trust, and delivering value that your audience didn't know they needed. Davis really demonstrated how even though we may feel overloaded with content, if we find our audience and deliver the value that only we can provide, we're sure to find success.
Ian Lurie has been involved in online marketing almost since the beginning; in fact, he believes that his company created the first ever content marketing, in the form of a guide to HTML that was published in the mid 1990s. In his presentation, he looked at how people need to realize that everything is content, not just blogs, and while marketers often don't control the process by which content is created, we do control the tactics we use to provide a good experience for our audience.
Lurie offered a number of helpful tips for creating content, including:
"There. Now you know Markdown" @portentint #contentjam - geez, that was easy! pic.twitter.com/XjxlO4RPqK
— Kyle Olson (@BecauseSEO) August 4, 2016
Brian Fanzo is an expert in using tactics like live video to connect brands with their audience, and he delivered a great presentation on how to get the most out of influencer marketing. As he noted, today's digital customer has more power than ever before; people today decide who they want to listen to when determining what to purchase.
"Great content is determined by your audience not your brand." @iSocialFanz so inspiring! #contentjam @orbiteers pic.twitter.com/cr3e6s67lh
— Annie Bala (@anniehussey) August 4, 2016
Today's customer is more likely to listen to their friends and people they trust when deciding to make a purchase, so brands need to identify the people who are already having conversations about them and use those conversations to bridge the gap between them and their audience.
Fanzo also noted that you shouldn't necessarily associate a big reach with influence. Celebrities might have a lot of followers, but do those followers actually take action? It's better to find someone with a smaller audience that actually inspires trust. Identifying your audience's wants, needs, and desires will help you define what success looks like for your brand.
One thing that Fanzo emphasized is the increasing importance of social video through platforms like Snapchat, Facebook Live Video, and Periscope. This format is the great equalizer, since everybody can do it, and it encourages audience participation. Fanzo shared some striking statistics that really drive home the importance of video:
Fanzo's enthusiasm about the potential of video and the ways marketers can leverage influencers to connect with their ideal audience was infectious. I'll be sure to explore some of his ideas soon.
Angie Schottmuller is an expert in data-driven marketing strategies, and she demonstrated this in her presentation on social proof. She noted that we look to the behavior of others to decide what to do, and social proof, in the form of ratings, quotes, testimonials, etc. is a great way to reduce people's fear of uncertainty.
Schottmuller provided six formats for social proof:
She also provided a scorecard for grading the different social proof elements on each of the following criteria:
By detailing how different formats of social proof meet these criteria, marketers can examine how well they are answering their audience's questions and helping address their fears, doubts, and uncertainties.
"Social proof should reduce questions and uncertainty. It should never create them." - @aschottmuller #contentjam pic.twitter.com/jdqjmk4xi1
— Megan Espinal (@mlrohrer09) August 4, 2016
Jay Acunzo hosts the podcast Unthinkable, which looks at inspiring examples of marketers who invest everything in their creativity and forge new paths. He talked about how today's marketers are obsessed with best practices; since we can measure everything, we want to rely on what has been proven to work.
However, while you can be a good marketer by following best practices, you'll most likely end up stuck at "good" and never reach "great." While good marketers follow best practices, great marketers craft their own. They need to make the leap from what has worked in the past and what their intuition says will work in the future. This can definitely be scary, but taking risks is what will end up paying off, and it is what will set you apart from everyone else.
Acunzo shared several inspiring examples of people who turned their passion into a new, profitable enterprises, including the creator of Unsplash, who set up a site sharing free, quality stock photos and saw an immediate increase in business for his company. As Acunzo noted, when you tell stories that people can't resist, people will want to tell stories about you.
"Good marketers follow best practices. Great marketers craft their own." - @jayacunzo #contentjam pic.twitter.com/DWWlICSIoo
— Megan Espinal (@mlrohrer09) August 4, 2016
This is just a sampling of the great ideas and inspirations that were on hand at Content Jam, and I'm glad I was able to attend and learn so much from these experts. If you were there, or if you have any questions about how to use these own insights in your own marketing strategy, please feel free to leave a comment below. I hope I'll see you at Content Jam next year!