Content Marketing World 2018 is just around the corner! Get ready for the content marketing event of the season with our ultimate guide of sessions to attend. Please note that, just like last year, some of these session overlap, so find a buddy, divide, conquer and share notes!
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2018
12 PRINCIPLES OF CONTAGIOUS CONTENT
Time: 10:15 – 11:00 am
Speaker: Nadya Khoja, Venngage Infographics
Details:
Content marketers understand the power that great content has to pull in an audience and grow a business. But when you're faced with a blank page and a big goal for the reach of your next content campaign, it can be hard to know where to start. We've all read coverage of campaigns that go viral, and many of us have even participated by sharing content that ends up making a huge splash online. But what makes content worth sharing? Are there stable attributes that you can apply to your next campaign?
In this session, Nadya Khoja discusses 12 principles and guidelines for creating contagious content that grabs attention, grows your brand, and expands the top of your marketing funnel.
You'll learn:
- What "Contagious" or "Viral" means and why you're struggling to get your content noticed and shared organically.
- How to craft content that not only showcases your product, but that also EXCITES your audience.
- How this framework helped Nadya and her team grow Venngage's traffic and revenue by over 800% in less than a year.
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Becoming a Renaissance Marketer with the Help of Agile Marketing
Time: 10:15 – 11:00
Speaker: Jeff Julian, CEO, Squared Digital
Details:
In this session, Jeff will cover several types of marketing approaches and content types that are growing in popularity and will disrupt the traditional assembly line driven, text-heavy approaches most of us have used since the advent of the Internet. Then, using Agile methodologies, he will show us a path of change that will allow us to become more well-rounded content creators.
Key Takeaways:
- Understanding on how your team can use Agile Marketing
- Series of progressive content types and a timeline of change based on trends to understand the landscape of digital marketing
- Tools for how your team can adapt for the changes in digital marketing
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Content Strategy and SEO for B2B Lead Generation
Time: 10:15 – 11:00
Speaker: Andy Crestodina, Principal, Strategic Director, Orbit Media
Details:
From the first keyphrase to the final conversion, this session connects every dot. Your content and your website are a bridge between a Google search results page and your website’s thank you page. Here is the complete approach to making that bridge a fast-flowing highway of continuous demand.
In this session, Andy will walk through each step in the process for driving B2B leads with content marketing, from first action to final outcome.
- Who are we talking to? Why do they care?
- What are we ranking for? What are the two types of keyphrases?
- How does PR and research build links, authority and ranking potential?
- What do we publish? And how will it be promoted?
- What topics, formats and collaborators support lead generation?
Learn to be a “dual threat marketer” by combining search and psychology, SEO with conversion optimization, cheese and mousetraps. There’s more than one way to generate demand for services. This is one of the best.
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From Taste to Trend: How Human-Powered Curation Informs the Trends of Tomorrow
Time: 10:15 – 11:00
Speaker: Brad Spychalski, Creative Strategy Lead, Pinterest
Details:
It used to be that magazine editors dictated and set lifestyle trends for the world. With the democratization of content creation and new forms of distribution, people with great taste can now shape what's trending today, and what will be trending tomorrow. In this session, Pinterest Creative Strategy Lead Brad Spychalski will share how Pinterest is using human-powered curation, AI and machine learning to uncover trends that brands are leveraging to inform their content and merchandising strategies.
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Sales Content That Sells: A Proven Approach To Sales Enablement Success
Time: 10:15 – 11:00
Speaker: Matt Heinz, President, Heinz Marketing Inc.
Details:
Optimize your content marketing to increase sales conversion and results. This session will fast-track through numerous best practices, proven sales content samples and more. Support your sales team at every stage of the buying journey!
Key Takeaways:
- A proven framework for mapping content to your sales team's needs
- Specific examples of content approaches & formats that convert
- How to identify new sales content needs on an ongoing basis
- Content that helps your sales team close in the final days of the months and quarter
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"Think Like A Filmmaker" Learn how documentary films and their storytelling techniques can be a powerful and captivating way to tell your brand story
Time: 11:20 am – 12:05 pm
Speaker: Denise Roberts McKee, COO, About Face Media Inc.
Details:
Documentary films offer a genuine, compelling way to express your company's values and tell memorable stories. Are you ready to learn how to transform your video content into must-share content?
Find out what goes into creating authentic, engaging documentary films, including: How to identify worthwhile stories that align with your brand's values, understanding story archetypes, "storyboarding" ideas, developing characters, choosing collaborators, and developing serial content.
Key Takeaways:
- How documentary films provide authentic and effective storytelling content that drives engagement and fuels business initiatives.
- Techniques professional filmmakers use to transform raw materials into powerful stories.
- Examples of transformative storytelling, including brand documentaries.
- Advice on getting started and what to expect from the process—including finding your story, defining a strategy and developing a story line.
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Breaking Down Content Silos: How to Create a Unified Customer Experience and Efficiencies in Content Creation
Time: 11:20 am – 12:05 pm
Speaker: Dave Charest, Director, Content Marketing, Constant Contact
Details:
Do you find a lack of consistency and alignment in the content your organization produces? Don't you wish you could break down those content silos to provide a unified experience for the customer while reducing redundancies in content creation? Find out how one vision can align groups toward a singular story that most benefits the customer while improving business metrics and efficiency across the board.
Key Takeaways:
- How to build trust within the organization
- How to create a content framework that aligns teams across the organization
- How to get buy-in and enact change
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Building a "Media Company" inside a Marketing Department
Time: 11:20 am – 12:05 pm
Speaker: Amanda Todorovich, Content Marketing Director, Cleveland Clinic
Details:
Hear from our 2016 Content Marketer of the Year how Cleveland Clinic evolved its Health Essentials blog (the #1 most-visited hospital blog in the country) into a revenue-driving media site and expanded the business model to other parts of the health system's digital footprint. Learn about the logistics and organizational change needed to make this possible as well as how the content marketing department has worked tirelessly over the past few years to scale audience and engagement.
Key Takeaways:
- How to create content that builds an audience into a monetizable asset
- Legal and financial considerations to monetizing your content marketing
- The logistics of building an infrastructure to support this approach
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Email Marketing Automation at Every Level
Time: 1:45 – 2:30 pm
Speaker: Jessica Best, Director of Data-Driven Marketing, Barkley
Details:
From welcome emails to a 36-point segmented email "journey" based on whether you're progressing through the sales process, automated emails earn 2 times the open rate and nearly 3 times the click-through rate of batch-and-blast emails... And yet 51% of marketers still aren't using marketing automation. Time to bring some return on investment to your great content strategy by building automated or "triggered" emails. Jessica Best will share ideas from nailing the basics to adding more complex campaigns that pay off.
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How to Leverage Calls-to-Action to Simultaneously Improve User Experience and Conversions
Time: 1:45 – 2:30 pm
Speaker: Mariah Obiedzinski, Director, Content Marketing, MedTouch
Details:
Marketers often have high expectations for site or blog content, then fret when the content "fails" to convert. In this session, learn how to view content as having page-specific/different goals, how to create relevant/navigable user experience pathways, and how to properly measure the right conversions to prove ROI.
Key Takeaways:
- How to create "buckets" of audiences: branding and conversion
- How to properly assign goals at a page/service line level
- How to herd the cats when it comes to creating CTAs
- How to set up and report appropriate measures to show how branding and conversion content actually perform
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THE FUTURE OF STORY: The Coming Revolution Called Immersive Storytelling
Time: 1:45 – 2:30 pm
Speaker: John Bucher, Renowned Strategist & Communicator, Author of Storytelling for Virtual Reality
Details:
The signs are everywhere. Escape rooms, micro-theme parks, and VR/AR are merely the first shots in the new war for the attention of viewers, offering brands innovative ways to engage their audiences in immersive narratives. People no longer want to just be told a story. They want to experience it. In the coming months, brands that understand immersive storytelling will dominate the marketplace. Attend this session to learn how you can join the movement.
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The Confluence Equation: How Content and Influencers Drive B2B Marketing Success
Time: 1:45 – 2:30 pm
Speaker: Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Marketing
Details:
What’s the secret formula to scalable, quality content? Find out how B2B brands, big and small like SAP, Dell, Cherwell and DivvyHQ are able to create more awareness, engagement and pipeline with the confluence equation. Join influencer marketing pro Lee Odden as he shares a framework, formula and tools for content marketing success working with influencers.
Key Takeaways:
- Learn the Influencer Marketing Maturity Model and where your brand fits
- Explore how a modular approach to influencer content can fuel cross-channel campaigns
- Learn how to get the best of both worlds: campaigns and always on programs
- Understand which technologies are available to facilitate influencer identification, engagement and performance reporting
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5 Creative Ways Marketers Can Enable Their Sales Teams
Time: 2:50 – 3:35 pm
Speaker: Pam Didner, Author, Global Content Marketing
Details:
When you ask salespersons what marketers can do for them, ten out of ten will tell you that they need high-quality leads. Lead generation is important, that is a given. There are other ways to help your sales teams. Pam Didner, author of Global Content Marketing and B2B marketing doer, will help you look at your inbound and outbound marketing communications holistically and identify other ways to support your sales teams.
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Content Strategy at Massive Scale: Adobe.com's Journey from $50m in revenue to over $2B in just a few years
Time: 2:50 – 3:35 pm
Speaker: Peter Krmpotic, Group Product Manager, Adobe
Details:
Adobe.com is one of the top 100 digital properties in the world and has become Adobe's biggest revenue channel in just a few years.Relive our journey from the very beginning and learn how Adobe.com's content strategy has evolved over the years to keep up with the increased scale.
Key Takeaways:
- Tips on how to set up your content strategy teams for success throughout different phases of growth
- Ideas how to approach content strategy differently for B2B and B2C
- Ways to bring together content strategists and content analysts at scale
- Recommendations for establishing the right technology stack early on
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From Instincts to Intel: How data insights can power smarter content
Time: 2:50 – 3:35 pm
Speaker: Heather Whaling, Founder/CEO, Geben Communication
Details:
Communication metrics, data and insights should inform content strategies. In this presentation, Geben Communication Founder and CEO, Heather Whaling will provide attendees with key learnings from real case studies, honing in on how actionable insights driven by data can not only improve content strategies, but overall business performance.
Key Takeaways:
- Data in content. Understand how brands leverage compelling data and build content around the findings.
- Data informing content. Learn how to apply analytics to get a pulse on your target markets and ensure your content is relevant to your audience.
- Content becoming data. Identify new ways to determine what content is performing best and how to use that performance data to shape business strategies.
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Predictive Video Creation - The hottest trend in video marketing
Time: 2:50 – 3:35 pm
Speaker: Jay Chicoy SVP Americas, Wochit
Details:
In today’s digital world, technology is completely shaking up every industry, but this doesn’t have to be an intimidating concept. There is an easy way to ensure a brand identity doesn’t get lost in an increasingly digital environment. Businesses need to leverage sophisticated, predictive technology capabilities to ensure they retain speed to market, but also maintain an emotional and personal message that stands-out in a saturated marketplace and adds value to their business.
By powering their content marketing strategy with intuitive video creation, businesses will bring their brand to life and build a more engaged audience. A brand's voice and key messages cannot be automated, therefore Wochit will also discuss why production of high-impact branded videos need to happen in-house, led by the same staff who already control the brand’s message and voice.
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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2018
"The Top 7 Writing Secrets of Hit-Making Songwriters"
Time: 10:00 – 10:45 am
Speaker: Ahava Leibtag, President, www.ahamediagroup.com
Details:
Learn how the hit makers of songwriting use ideation, images, cadence and concrete nouns to bring alive imagery. We will walk through popular songs and discuss how ideas came to songwriters, how they work through their creative process and how they collaborate with producers to create hits. All of these tips will help content marketers to create stronger more engaging content.
Key Takeaways:
- Learn how to get inspired by your ideas
- Sharpen your ability to craft strong images
- Tighten your collaboration techniques
- Learn techniques for breaking through blocks
- Expand your understanding of "writing”
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5 Keys to Create a High Performing Marketing Organization
Time: 10:00 – 10:45 am
Speaker: Mathew Sweezey, Principal of Marketing Insights, Salesforce
Details:
The need to be a better marketer is apparent, but what makes you better? Brand new research from 7,000 marketers from around the world answers this very question. For the first time, we now know the difference between a high performer and an underperformer. To find out, listen to Mathew Sweezey as he shares the 5 key traits of high-performing marketing organizations such as what is a best in class budget, how many and what tools are high performers using, and even what are their winning tactics. Plus, you'll discover how to implement them in your organization.
Key Takeaways:
- Why stage of Growth is the largest indicator of your marketing budget, and what it should actually be
- The importance of a "new idea of Marketing" and what it looks like through case studies
- How to leverage agile in the role of content marketing
- The power of collaboration and the rise of the CXO and the fall of the CRO
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Secrets of the Most Shareable Content
Time: 10:00 – 10:45 am
Speaker: Bethany Chambers, Director of Audience Engagement, North Coast Media
Details:
Social media's "secret sauce" isn't just luck; it's also having an audience-centric content creation strategy to put you in the right place at the right time — with the right tweet, post or snap. Learn how to enhance your content with multimedia, discover trending topics for your audiences and pair the two to maximize engagement.
Key Takeaways:
- Formulas of successful posts, including cross-platform writing
- Tools you can use to create multimedia and find trends
- Implementing benchmarking and content calendars for long-term success
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You'll Want to Write This Down: Stop Writing Like a Marketer And Start Storytelling like a Journalist
Time: 10:00 – 10:45 am
Speaker: Michelle Park Lazette, Writer, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
Details:
Everyone's telling marketers that storytelling is where it's at. Here's how to find stories, make "sources" of your experts, and tell stories like a journalist in even the most conservative of industries.
- First thing's first: It's hard, maybe even impossible, to write a powerfully interesting non-story. So you must find the stories worthy of being told (the timely, the relevant, and the ones with a "so-what?").
- Your organization's experts and customers are THE voices for your storytelling. You must earn their trust.
- As with many things, storytelling takes practice. Doesn't mean you can't accelerate what you know and expand what you try by learning from others' mistakes and successes. If you come for nothing else, come for these techniques.
- Inclined to think that no matter how much you build your storytelling skills, your organization won't buy in? Sit in for examples of long-form multimedia storytelling from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and learn how a team secured buy-in to try them.
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Behind the Scenes: How LinkedIn Marketers Master B2B
Time: 11:05 – 11:50 am
Speaker: Megan Golden, Head of Global Content Marketing , LinkedIn
Details:
Marketers are LinkedIn have become experts on how to build a full funnel, B2B content strategy on our very own platform. We've spent years getting early access to new products, testing and refining our strategies, and learning from both success and failure. Now it's time to share what we've learned so that marketers outside of LinkedIn have the tactics to be experts on their own teams!
Key Takeaways:
- Future proof their B2B content planning
- Activate a spectacular content strategy with both organic and paid tools
- Take the lessons learned from LinkedIn’s very own A/B tests and apply them to their digital campaigns
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Real Talk: It's Time to Be the Content Leader Your Organization Needs
Time: 11:05 – 11:50 am
Speaker: Joe Crosby Content Marketing Manager, REI
Details:
In most sessions at CMW, audiences will ask or wonder, "How do I get executive or leadership buy-off for what I'm hearing or what I'm inspired to do?" It's time to stop short at asking for leadership support and start acting like a leader. From formalizing a content discipline and establishing consistent, executive visibility to looking at career growth and development, we'll talk about how to develop yourself and your team as the leaders your organizations deserve.
Key Takeaways:
- How to think about building a content discipline with clout to appeal to the C-suite and leadership in an organization
- How to think about the role of content in an organization and creating personal and team growth that adds organizational value
- A little personal motivation to really dig into content as a career path with potential, not just a specialization
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The Agency Edge 2018: When, What — and Why — Clients Outsource to Agencies
Time: 11:05 – 11:50 am
Speakers: Drew McLellan, Ad Agency Owner & Agency Consultant, Agency Management Institute; Susan Baier, President, Audience Audit, Inc.
Details:
Based on new 2018 research with 500 agency clients, this session will reveal new findings about what clients ask their agencies to do — and why. We’ll dig into attitudes about outsourcing work vs. keeping it in-house, what capabilities clients see as agency strengths, and how they view their agency resources — as an extra pair of hands, as skilled generalists, as subject-matter experts or strategic advisors. Specifically designed to help agencies understand the topics and resources that agencies can use to reach prospective clients, we’ll also explore the messaging about agency capabilities that respondents find the most compelling.
Don’t miss this session if you want to understand how to build a content program that will highlight your agency as a critical resource!
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How Content Marketing and Marketing Automation Work Together to Fuel Your Sales Pipeline
Time: 1:30 – 2:15 pm
Speaker: Andrew Stark, EVP Marketing Tech, PulsePoint
Details:
Distributing great content is the best way to bring new qualified users into your opportunity funnel. In combination with the right tools and nurturing strategy, you can create a strong connection with your users and convert them into MQL’s. Learn how brands are properly fusing content marketing distribution with marketing automation to solidify a meaningful sales pipeline.
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Nightmare Marketing: How to Create Content for the Boring, Complex and Undifferentiated Stuff that Scares the S@#t Out of Everybody Else
Time: 1:30 – 2:15 pm
Speaker: Jonathan Kranz, Principal, Kranz Communications
Details:
We all dream of marketing sexy brands like Apple or Starbucks. But the truth is, we’re more likely to build our careers working on “nightmares”: products and services that seem too boring to attract interest, too complex to communicate simply, or too undifferentiated from their competitors to assert distinction. In Nightmare Marketing, you’ll discover three practical, tactical content solutions for addressing each challenge (for a total of nine great ideas), all supported with real-life examples of success in action.
Key Takeaways:
- Learn 3 practical, successful strategies for effectively marketing each of the three uglies
- How to uncover what's genuinely interesting in "boring" products
- Find ways to simplify the complex
- Discover opportunities to attract urgent interest to commodity products/services
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Stories for the Win: The Hidden Neuroscience of Content Marketing, and Why Great Stories Make Our Brains Want to Buy
Time: 1:30 – 2:15 pm
Speaker: Joe Lazauskas, Director of Content Strategy, Contently
Details:
Content marketers have long assumed that great stories help build relationships with consumers, but until recently, we haven’t known why or how. That’s quickly changing. In this high-energy session, Joe Lazauskas will reveal the cutting edge neuroscience of storytelling, featuring new research that’ll make you rethink the way you create and measure the success of your content.
Learn about the storytelling techniques that spike empathy, attention, and purchase consideration in our brains, case studies from the most innovative brands on earth, and get the opportunity to participate in a live neuroscience experiment. It’s like no content marketing session you’ve ever seen before.
Key Takeaways:
- The neuroscience of storytelling and how stories impact our brains, building connections and driving purchase consideration
- The 4 elements of stories that make our brains light up
- Techniques for measuring and optimizing the effectiveness of your content
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How to Become Tomorrow's Marketing Leader: The Showrunner
Time: 2:35 – 3:20 pm
Speaker: Tom Gerace, Founder & CEO, Skyword
Details:
Marketing has changed and so must you. As brands shift their focus from ad-centric to story-centric, the marketing leader of tomorrow must also transform — possessing the skills of a Hollywood Showrunner, an executive producer responsible for the management and creative direction of original programming. You’ll leave this session knowing what it takes to drive a story forward and, in doing so, create exceptional customer experiences.
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Transforming Teams: How to Transition Traditional Marketers into Content Marketers
Time: 2:35 – 3:20 pm
Speaker: Kelly Hungerford, Digital Strategy & Marketing Operations Consultant, KellyHungerford.com
Details:
A complete communication refresh for a flagship brand's website can be a task and half for even the most experienced digital marketing team. So, what happens when you and your team of traditional marketers are tasked with the consolidation project of more than 26 websites across a region? Oh, and not to mention the content marketing!
In this session, you'll learn how one of Europe's leading oral health brands is taking digital transformation as an opportunity to dive headfirst into content marketing, and how they're going about it.
Key Takeaways:
- Learn approaches for building buy-in and trust from your team to move your content project forward
- Understand what type of support digital and content marketing beginners need and how to build a learning plan
- Get tips, tactics, advice on how to structure your copywriting projects using Agile methodology
- Gain insights on the tools, technology, and process that are necessary for multi region success
- Hear first-hand from a traditional-product-marketing-team-turned-content-marketers who just went through the process
- Sleep better at night knowing that you and your team are not alone. (You can do this!)
No matter what sessions you attend, you're sure to learn a ton! And be on the lookout for Hileman Group throughout the event as we:
- Sponsor the Future Trends track on Wednesday
- Partner up with Kentico at a booth in the Expo Hall
Looking forward to seeing you there! Game On!