Be Authentic, Build Momentum, and Embrace Creativity: Lessons from Content Marketing World
Last week, I attended Content Marketing World, organized by the fine folks at Content Marketing Institute led by Joe Pulizzi. It was a whirwind of interesting speakers, fascinating characters, and lots of people bringing their day-to-day experiences to the table. As always, I want to share a few highlights from this event.
Gut-Check Your Content Marketing
One of the most talked about keynote speeches was by my colleague and president of Convince & Convert (where I spend part of my week), Jay Baer, and I highly recommend that you click over to read the text of this speech that takes a gut-check approach to content marketing.
Share Stories You Believe In
Coming from a completely different sphere of experience, former journalist and author Rajiv Chandrasekaran talked about the impact that authentic storytelling can have within the corporate sphere. He recently joined the team at Starbucks to help them create social impact through embracing unexpected initiatives that they truly believe in.
To Build Momentum, You Have to Work on Your Timing
Andrew Davis gave a fantastic talk about how most companies try to deluge all channels with their content at once, whereas the smart ones focus on one channel and get the most benefit they can out of that channel before moving onto the next one.
One great takeaway was that “it’s not about the height of your peaks, but the depths of your valleys”. We as business-people and marketers are looking for “hits”, but it’s better to bring up your everyday levels so that on average you’re doing more consistently well.
Creativity Isn’t Innate; It Can Be a Process
One of my favorite talks was from the comedic actor John Cleese, whose closing keynote focused on how there are many different ways to incorporate opportunities for creativity in your personal and business life. He shared tips on how to instill creativity into business processes and teams, as well as into your own daily rituals. I loved the talk so much, I’m planning on picking up his book–So, Anyway…
As always, I’d love to hear your experiences if you were also at the event or to answer any questions you may have about CMWorld.