Content that ‘works’ — lessons from Redshift, the online publication from Autodesk
Everything that is to be learned from an award-winning campaign. What’s in it for the brands that get content and thought leadership right and manage to ‘start the conversation’?
What ‘works’ when it comes to content? As a strategist, it’s a question I get asked a lot. My answer is always nuanced by the differing needs of each client: who is the audience, what are the objectives, what does success look like? However, our research shows us there are some universal truths that it’s worth bearing in mind.
According to our recent study Thought Leadership Disrupted, produced in association with Hill & Knowlton Strategies, an executive B2B audience wants to be intellectually stimulated by content, with 96% wanting to encounter thoughts and ideas that go beyond current thinking. They want ‘big picture’, ‘innovative’ and ‘credible’ content, and trust is earned through quality research.
If brands get it ‘right’ the rewards are there to be had: after consuming a piece of compelling thought leadership 70% of executives will consume more from the same source; 76% are influenced in their purchasing decisions and 83% would be influenced in their choice of potential business partner.
Clients want ‘big picture’, ‘innovative’ and ‘credible’ content, and trust is earned through quality research.
Those figures make for good reading. However, stats are one thing, making it work in practice is another. Part of our research involved a subjective look at the award-winning content campaigns we believed embodied best practice. For the last few years, an online publication from US software firm Autodesk, called Line//Shape//Space, caught the industry’s attention and garnered a number of awards, most recently at the Content Marketing Awards where it picked up Best Digital Publication. When you dig into the strategy and the content itself, it’s clear that the recognition is well deserved.
In the last month, Line//Shape//Space has rebranded and now goes by the name Redshift. The new name reflects the evolution of the publication, both in terms of its audience and its subject matter. In astronomy, the term ‘redshift’ is used when measuring how far an object has travelled away from the Earth; light from most galaxies appears redshifted, highlighting that the universe is always expanding. As Autodesk’s offering has evolved to embrace the sea change in technology since it first started, so the Redshift editorial team wants to expand its audience’s knowledge around topics that align with what the company has to offer. The audience has also evolved from SMEs to larger businesses and anyone with an interest in where the digital world is headed.
Team work and optimisation: what does the audience really want?
Editorial has what the editor in chief Kylee Swenson describes as a ‘head, heart and hands’ approach. Head stories are about leadership, the big picture stuff. Heart content features the audience, their success stories, while hands is the tangible business advice, as Kylee says “the ’10 things you need to know about’ type stories.” This mix ensures there is the right balance of inspiration and information. Content is written by a mixture of internal and external subject matter experts ensuring its credibility.
As such, the stories resonate with the audience — the team knows this as they regularly get direct enquiries: “People email us after reading our articles,” says Kylee. “We know we’ve started a conversation.”
I think this happens because the team spends time thinking about what the audience actually wants. When the publication launched in 2013, the team did the work to identify a series of audience personas — the individual snapshots of each sector of the target audience — and tailored content accordingly to appeal to each one in turn.
“People email us after reading our articles,” says Kylee. “We know we’ve started a conversation.”
Amazingly, our study shows that only 21% of marketers use time spent with content as a measure of their ROI. Kylee and her team use analytics and keep on top of what gets engagement and what doesn’t. This has allowed for optimisation of article length on the site: between 800–1,000 words works best for the content to achieve a minimum 50% reader completion rate.
Kylee is hesitant to draw a direct link between Redshift content and an increase in Autodesk software sales. “But we did see growth in small-business-customer sales about a year after Line//Shape//Space launched,” she says. “At the time, the publication was dedicated to helping designers, engineers, and manufacturers succeed with their small businesses.”
In 2016, with Redshift’s expanded charter, the big wins are greater awareness of the brand and visibility; an average of 60% of the site’s traffic now comes from organic search, and a loyal and growing audience thanks to a ‘mind share before market share’ approach. And with plans to include different content formats, including video and possibly VR in the coming year or two, it seems that Redshift will continue to feed its audience’s mind.
Angela Everitt is Associate Director of Creative Strategy at The Economist Group.
