Marketing Week Live: Exclusive Speaker Interview
Tomorrow marks an exciting day for Crowdbait. Our CEO, Lyndon Nicholson, will be speaking at Marketing Week Live in the Content Management & Marketing arena at 14:40. We caught up with him to bring you a sneak preview of some of the issues he’ll be covering.
Q: Let’s start things off nice and gently. What will you be talking about tomorrow at Marketing Week Live?
The official title of my talk is “Content as the Backbone for your SEO, PR and Social Media Strategy”, which is a bit of a mouthful. Basically I’ll be covering why traditional marketing has been challenged in the online world, and why it’s moving towards something different. When people first entered the online world, they tried to bring old-style marketing with them, and it simply doesn’t work. Customers now demand much more than in-their-face advertising. They want more from brands, and they want to find brands on their terms. Using engaging, relevant content that fits into a blog or a newsfeed format on websites gives customers a reason to seek out your business, as well as impacting upon search rankings and public image.
Q: You make it sound as though a blog does a lot. How can content possibly be so multifunctional?
A lot of people find it surprising. Let’s start with search engine optimisation, or SEO: In a nutshell, Google rewards high quality content that’s posted recently and regularly. It also looks at the social signals people give off relating to that website content – things like sharing it on Facebook or retweeting on Twitter. The only way you can make people do that is by making the content relevant and interesting enough for people to read it and say, “Wow! I have to tell people about this!” If people are sharing your brand messages and driving traffic back to your site, that’s obviously pretty powerful marketing. The best way to make them do this is by saying something original – that’s the key point. You have to be a thought leader in your field and really stand out on social networks. Blogs with that sort of feature content will obviously create a strong public image for brands.
Q: Can people create feature content themselves?
Absolutely! That’s a key part of what I’ll be talking about. Digital content marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools there is, and the best part about it is that it is absolutely free. But creating new content for a website is never one of the top priorities in a company, despite all of its benefits. This is often due to time pressures – people know it’s important, but it’s not something that calls them up in the middle of the day and demands that a deadline is met, and it simply ends up not being done when there are other pressing needs. People also don’t realise how many different aspects come into play when you set about creating content for your website. It’s hard to say something original, and it’s hard to say it well enough to make people share it, and it’s hard to tie that in with social promotion. Powerful feature content will also include calls-to-action and a consistent tone. So people can create it themselves, but they need to be aware that it’s harder than it might first seem.
Q: People are busy. What makes your talk worth attending rather than any of the others?
From the talks I’ve been to in the past, a lot of the speakers are actually subtly selling their products. We’re not doing that. I’ve a lot of experience in the marketing world, and it’s hugely frustrating to see so many websites failing to engage with their customers. I’ll be educating people about why creating feature content for websites should be a top priority, what it should look like and how to do it because I want to see better websites. It’ll be an educational seminar that will make all the difference to a business.
Q: Can you remind us of the details?
Content Management & Marketing arena, 2:40pm – you can register for free entry here. If you don’t make it to the talk, Crowdbait is on stand A731, and we’ll be uploading the presentation to the website afterwards. Marketing Week Live also has a live video stream, so be sure to take a look.
The slides from Lyndon’s presentation at Marketing Week Live can now be downloaded here.
