3 Things I Learned about Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing at the 2017 Digital Summit
March 27–28, I attended the 2017 Digital Summit held in Seattle, a summit gathers many smart and visionary thought leaders and professionals in the digital marketing world. Please find the full agenda here.
Keep the 3 goals for social media marketing and content marketing in mind,
+Awareness
+Reputation and Trust
+Loyalty
here are some of the takeaways I’m more than willing to share with you.
1. Everything is about your audience.
To put yourself in your audience’s shoes, you need to ask yourself a simple question: Would you share the content you just posted?
But it’s not that easy to make it happen.
I always found the Founder and former CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz’s mission profoundly meaningful:
“We are not in the coffee business serving people, but in the people business serving coffee.”
Here are some ways you can get a “Yes” answer:
1) Speak to the audience where they are at that moment.
In a word, you should put your business in the context of why should people care about you.
Data is very helpful in analyzing customer journey and their behavior.
2) Consider your audience as your date. (Can you feel the excitement? 😉)
Lorraine Goldberg, the Social Media Manager for Allrecipes.com, believed we brands should always be dating our audience, and surprise them.
3) Provide highly relatable, relevant and useful content.
At work, I need to write copy on social media, for a new brand which is eager to increase awareness and win many more followers, I admitted that I sometimes push it too hard: I post content to promote our products pretty straightforwardly because I thought it’s useful for our audience(sure it is¯\_(ツ)_/¯), but it’s NOT the way how our audience perceive.
In fact, a description should be meaningful, don’t overuse promo-language. Moreover, paid social shouldn’t look or act like an ad. I’ve used and I’ve seen brands using phrases like “buy it now！” after stating the benefits of their products.
What brands really need to do is connecting your products to people’s needs.
Ann Handley, the head of Content at MarketingProfs shared her experience of how Blue Bottle Coffee turned her into a loyal customer: besides selling high-quality coffee, they offer step-by-step brewing guides, events and classes to teach their audience how to make coffee, which increases engagement and brand loyalty.
What we can learn from Blue Bottle Coffee is that they put themselves in a bigger context. Training is their marketing, they bring deep value to smarter customers by offering real class and real curriculum, and the result is really engaging.
2. In Storytelling, you are in the Theater Business with a Clear POV.
No need to stress the significance of visual communications and storytelling, we all get those two “buzzwords”.
In theater, people expect to watch a great story, btw, my recent favorite story is La La Land. While for marketing professionals, besides grabbing audience’s attention using the Rule of FIWTSBS — find interesting ways to say boring stuff, we have to ensure that the story we delivered has a clear POV (Point of View).
I borrowed Steve Clayton’s statement as my point 2, Steve is the Chief Storyteller at Microsoft, his work including the launch of a new CEO, the world’s most high-wire demo and the story behind microsoft.com/stories.
Steve mostly shared his experience in leading Microsoft’s corporate communication to drive culture change. According to him, Microsoft’s Storytelling have four approaches, and I briefly explain his ideas:
- People: who
- Places: where
- Process: how
- Products: what
Inspired by Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek, a harrowing story of skiers caught in an avalanche.，created by New York Times reporter John Branch, Steve told a story called “88 Acres” about how Microsoft quietly built the city of the future which achieved energy savings and other efficiency gains.
Another story I like is told by the Humane Society Silicon Valley, a non-profit organization which has been connecting people and pets in the Silicon Valley community for over 85 years.
Instead of stressing their mission and calls, they created a national initiative Mutual Rescue™ to change the conversation around animal welfare, and celebrate the love between people AND their pets.
“You’re not only saving animal lives when you donate to a local animal shelter, you are helping to transform the lives of people in your community for the better through life-changing human-animal relationships.”
——Mutual Rescue™
3. Let’s play Truth or Dare
The last point is the game that has been rolling around in my head after the summit. Now let’s play it together!
- If you choose “truth”, here’s the question for you: If you cover up your brand logo, will you recognize it?
- If you choose “dare”, here’s the task for you: How far can you test your brand’s limit?
Before you reply, here’s how GQ aces the game: they gave Donald Trump a makeover. 😮
“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”
― William G.T. Shedd
As Ann Handley declared in her talk, it’s imperative for brands to tell bolder and braver stories, using a stronger and unique point of view. Eventually, our brand voice can attract the like-minded, repel the timid.
Now it’s time to conquer the world, Simba! 🦁(Proudly to say, Simba is my childhood hero.)
