Content Marketing is Fundamentally About Competing for Attention With the Kardashians

Andrea EdwardsHead of Content Marketing & TrainingNovus Asia

@AndreaTEdwards

/CommunicatingAsiaPacific

/AndreaEdwardsAsia

www.andreatedwards.com

Avid Social User +

Top 100 Social Seller Singapore

on LinkedIn

Today’s reality. Your customers are 90% of the way through Your sales cycle before they even come to You?

And what about the rest?

Where are they?

But they’re alsobeing entertained

Really important stats15% of people trust recommendations from brands

84% trust recommendations from people they know

Reference: wersm

And the noise is REALLY ramping up

It took Twitter 3

years to get to 1 billion

TweetsNow there’s

a billion every 2 days

In 201280,000 posts on Facebook

Now 4+ million700k Google searchesNow close to 5 million

25 hours of video uploaded on YouTube

Now 150 hours

EVERY minute

So what’s the magic? How can you be where your customers are, influencing them?

To earn the right to your customer’s time, your content must be awesome, it must be all about the customer, and it must be at the heart of everything you do as a brand

Content must sit at the heart of business

CONTENT

Bringing the content heart to lifeA content organization is lead from the topIt’s a complete cultural change, from ‘this is what we sell’ to ‘how can we serve you?’Senior executives must have a strong social presence (+ blog) – sharing ideas, views, experiencesEmployees must be embraced into the fold, but it is senior leader buy-in that really brings content to the heart of business

Retention & recruitment is a top priorityStories appeal to potential recruits – it helps them understand the business and the people Employees want to work for a company that has strong values, they want to be part of something meaningful, they want to contribute to the storiesEmployees who are embraced into the story, stay

A content organization is customer obsessedTo write stories for customers, you have to understand themWho are they holistically? What do they care about? What’s top of mind?Integrate customer service & feedback into the content strategy, align to your business strategy

What is content? How should we think about it?

I believe it’s anything that starts a conversation

Content marketing IS NOT speaking about your brand, products or services – that’s marketing, still relevant, but differentIt’s about speaking to the whole customer Helping them succeedKeeping them informed on relevant issues to themImproving their livesAnswering their questions

“If you want to sell me a camera,tell me how to take great photos” CMI

The 6 levels of Content Marketing• Level 1 – Content Marketing? What is it?• Level 2 – We have a corporate blog & branded social accounts• Level 3 – We have a company-branded blog, with a good mix of

outside contributors• Level 4 – We leverage employees by using software to pass

targeted marketing content to their social networks• Level 5 – We help employees – nearly all of them – create content

in their own voice and then feature their insights on our site, demonstrating their expertise as a way to incorporate their personal brands with our corporate brand

• Level 6 – We have moved beyond our business and now incorporate the entire ecosystem of our company – customers, partners, influencers, associations, and so on

Inspiration: OP|EN for BUSINESS!

We must skip to level 5 & 6• It’s the time of the genuine Employee Brand

Ambassador• Everyone has a voice, a style, a view, supported by the

business. Senior or junior, you’re harnessing the talent you employ

• But it’s not enforced marketing• It’s about establishing employees personal brands

alongside the corporate brand• It’s trailblazing stuff, it’s innovation, it’s putting employees

- the ultimate reason customers do business with you - at the forefront of your story

Because today it’s not about you!It’s about your customer and the value you deliver to them

If you can consistently put yourself in your customers’ shoes, you can’t lose

This new world is all about giving – it’s where you can really shine

The 1/9/90 % rule applies

SupportersCreators Lurkers

You and your team must be in the top 10%

dominates as the“entry network”of choice amongCEO’sOf CEOs with only 1 network, 73% chose LinkedInNearly half of all social CEOs are only on LinkedIn−presumably because of the unmistakable business benefits

There’s a lot of talk about the Sharing Economy

But really, we must focus on a Giving Economy

All of this isculturally challengingCultural – America Vs rest

Our role in our communities

Still selling & telling

Limited understanding of benefits to us and our business

We need to transform our thinking and put content at the heart of business – content focused on the customer

Today, it’s time toBe brave & boldUse social dataBe customer obsessedMove content to heartInspire brand ambassadorsTrain and reward starsFeed amazing content to shineCreate a giving culture

@AndreaTEdwards

AndreaEdwardsAsia

andreatedwards.com

Communicating Asia Pacific

@NovusAsia

Novus Asia

Novus Asia

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