Notes from CMW2011 for UX People: Day 2
Carol Smith of Midwest Research attended the Executive Track for the majority of Day 2 of the Content Marketing World Conference and her notes are here. She also took notes from Day One of the Conference . The conference was held in Cleveland, Ohio September 6-8th, 2011.
Content Marketing Metrics: Justifying Content Marketing Spending
This session was presented by Jay Baer, Author, The New Revolution, Cam Brown, CEO, King Fish Media, Lynn Esparo, VP Marketing, Nuance Communications (makers of Dragon Naturally Speaking), and Shaku Selvakumar, Worldwide Strategist-Web and Social, IBM Software Group.
Cam Brown made some great points about the user’s perspective. We need to gain the trust of people before they are willing to give their data. That data is necessary for us to create leads. He encouraged the audience to do better because acquisition of new customers is expensive. He suggested looking at customer loss and retention more closely. I was reminded that trying to gain a new customer is known to be much more expensive than keeping existing ones and he pointed to that as an area that we are falling short on. Lynn Esparo added to his message by watching for decreasing returns as a measure of customer satisfaction. An increase in the amount of each cart is also a great measure of customer (and thereby content) success.
Jay Baer started with the basics of looking at what we can measure:
- What is consumed (read, eaten, etc.)
- What is shared- engagement, acquisition
- Lead generation metrics
- Sales and reiteration
Jay reminded us that Google is our most important customer – if Google cannot find and index your content, no human will. I remember being very excited about the idea of being a digital dandelion, but could not find a reference online and my notes aren’t clear on that point. Was it that we should be ubiquitous like a dandelion, that we should spread out ideas on the wind? Or something else?
He also reminded me of a great presentation I saw a few months ago at NEOUPA‘s, World Usability Day meeting. Jeff Rohrs of Exact Target described their research on Subscribers, Fans and Followers at that meeting.
Lynn Esparo encouraged us to nurture people along in their journey and Cam Brown added that with permission based marketing we can nurture the sale along. It’s knowing when to move in the ask, and building that trust.
“If have [your customer's] trust, then you can ask for the order.” – Cam Brown
Jay then spoke again about focusing on your “weapon” and planning who and when to share content. Figure out what the audience wants and share that; don’t just throw it all at them. This was a sentiment I was happy to hear throughout the conference. I saw it as an indirect nod to User Experience (UX). Over and over again I heard people saying things like:
“Think about the audience (user), and create content for them.” - Music to my ears
Regulated Content Issues in the Financial and Healthcare Industries
It was a pleasure seeing Scott Linabarger, Director of Digital Marketing at the Cleveland Clinic(#1 Hospital Web site) join Katie Herbst, eMarketing Director, Westfield Insurance; Brent Williams (a fellow Akron-ite), Director of Professional Services, Knotice, Ltd. in a panel moderated by Chris Seper, CEO, Med City Media.
Brent Williams talked about the logistics of content, such as the need to determine the ownership of the content on a Web site.
Who owns the content? What is the escalation process? – Brent Williams
Brent reminded the audience that honesty is the cardinal rule in social media. People can tell when you are not being clear or are not telling the truth and that will get around quickly.
Katie Herbst took an approach that is both aggressive and difficult, in order to help manage content in her organization. She became a coach and has made herself available so that if people have questions they have a resource (any time day or night!). She wants them to participate in making content, and as an insurance organization, they need to make sure the content is within their guidelines. She sees it as risk management and she puts herself out there as a resource.
Scott Linabarger reminded the audience that YouTube is the number two search engine in the world – making content for that channel is obviously helpful to your organization. This reminded me of the United Breaks Guitars debacle that David Meerman Scott mentioned in his opening talk, and how Taylor Guitar became the hero of that situation. Scott Linabarger’s advice regarding using YouTube is:
“Be not afraid [of social media]“
Cleveland Clinic’s policy for communicating with people is to respond in some fashion with on one business day. They may not answer thoroughly, but they at least acknowledge the communication.
Lunch: 42 Minute Shotgun
These sessions gave five thought leaders seven minutes to talk briefly about their chosen topic. Overall, I was dissapointed in the overall representation of women at the conference. The audience had a lot of women in it (perhaps a majority), but the speakers, particularly at the lunches were mostly men. In addition, both lunches were titled (Cage Match and Shotgun) in ways that would make them more attractive to more aggressive people (primarily men), making it less likely that women would event want to participate. I’d like to see more women speakers at the next CMW.
Jay Baer spoke again and I especially enjoyed his discussion about “Helping is the New Selling.” He said that we have to earn the right to promote to people. He pointed out that the difference between utility and you-titlity is just two letters, but the meaning is significant. You make a customer when you help them. If you make a friend then when they are in the market you are already there in their circle of trust. I don’t think he was encouraging us to make or fake friends just for sales, instead he was encouraging us to see what else we could do to make the relationship real, and that the sales would come when the person had a need because we would be at the top of their mind and they would have awareness of us.
Jim Kukral, Author, Attention! also spoke. His topic was “If You Want To Be Remarkable, You Have To DO Something Remarkable” and he, as always, brought his remarkable enthusiasm.
“Muppets & Marketing: What I Learned About Content Marketing While Working At The Jim Henson Company” was presented by Andrew Davis, Chief Strategy Officer, Tippingpoint Labs and he encouraged us to think about what they (our readers/consumers) see. As an example he told us that Muppets all are cross eyed because they look better on camera that way. So while they may look funny if you look closely, to the viewer it is exactly what they would expect. Again with the user’s perspective – love it!
Ahava Leibtag, Principal, AHA Media Group had an interesting talk about “Personalized Content Through Biometrics” where she got us thinking about all the different types of recognition that we may already use and which may be more common in our near future such as hand, thumb, and face recognition.
Helping Your Content Be Found
This was the last session I attended and another interactive and interesting one! There were two women on this panel: Lisa LaCour, Vice President of Marketing at Outbrain and Amy Laskin, Content Strategy Director at Ogilvy. They were joined by Michael Pranikoff, Global Director- Emerging Media at PR Newswire and the session was moderated by Michael Marzec, President at Smart Business Content Marketing.
Amy Laskin started out asking us “When are Mom’s online and what are they doing?” Understanding that in her business is very important for some customers. Lisa LaCour added that knowing the mindset of these customers and putting the content in their mindset is key to having your content be found.
Michael Pranikoff urged us to stay the course when search engines change and not make major changes to content. We need to speak the language that our customer’s use (yes!) and that includes providing good captions for video content.
Amy added that we need to have the right people – they need to be qualified. Focus on the long tail searches, not on the numbers. She reassured the audience that a few small groups are all we need.
Lisa then told us to engage the community and for that we could use another site or build one. Amy building on that said that the communication needs to be personal and that there needs to be a reason for the communication. Go to the communities where they already are. Sites like LinkedIn and Flickr are under-utilized.
Finally Michael reminded us that just because you can doesn’t mean you should with any of this. He recommended that we connect back to the original content and send our users back to where they want to go.
