The event that started in a room above a pub has come a hell of a long way. Thousands were queueing up well before the doors opened. Our day kicked off in Auditorium One with three sessions on Content Marketing.
Ross Tavendale from Pitchbox began with an insightful recount of its first large retainer of $50K generating zero links. The reason? The ideation sessions were too subjective. This led to them re-looking at the ideation framework and focus on data-led campaigns. The advice being that you need to ask the question: ‘Why are we doing this?’ Because the data said so. A simple and yet highly accurate statement.
Millennial attention through social media
Sarah Bradley was up next and gave insight into how brands can gain millennials attention through social media. These included being more personal, authentic and creating social responsibility infused content. Her view is that millennials are crying out for brands to ‘get to know them’. They respond to a ‘just ask us’ approach so focus on community management and give them the opportunity to influence the content. If you want to take it a step further, Bradley suggested handing over the reins to your social media or search for a week to the very people who you are selling to as a viable experiment.
Test. Analyze. Repeat.
Heading to Auditorium Two, I found a packed room with every chair and every centimeter of space taken by an audience truly engaged with the content on offer. JP Sherman from Redhat made the claim that ‘knowledge graphs are fun’. While this might be a stretch too far, the data does show that they perform. He gave the sage advice to measure the end results and then track it