In the February issue of Chief Content Officer magazine, we asked the top experts in content marketing:
Content 2015: Where are we headed in the next three years? Tech 2015: What technologies will change the field? Company 2015: Which companies ‘get it’? Personal 2015: How will each of us change as marketers?We were surprised by how many marketers mentioned the need for more and better tools that help companies build scale across their content marketing programs.
You can find the CCO magazine article here , but we wanted to share our full-length interview with Bill Flitter. Enjoy!
Content 2015
What’s next? Filtering the noise. Remember: noise is relative. Noise is just a lack of relevance. How do we connect consumers to relevant content and answer their questions?
This issue hardly gets talked about. Right now the push is all about creating content, but we are going to get in trouble. Is all that content being created really addressing your customers? Are your customers discovering what they need, when they need it?
Tech 2015
I look to Google for the future of content technologies. Google signaled a transformation from search to discovery with Google+. Social over the next few years is going to be about the transition from searching to discovery—specifically, discovery through friends.
Now that we are ‘always on’ and ‘always connected,’ we’re moving from the idea of a pond (do it once and pray that Google picks it up and indexes it) to a stream (always on, always moving). Consumers are stepping into the stream at different points in day. How does it change the way marketers think about content?
Content is the currency in the stream. For marketers, it means you have to be more agile. Understand what’s happening now and adjust your marketing program to that. It’s not anymore about “I have a couple of months to plan out my strategy.” You have days. Hours. We will need tools and tracking to facilitate that rapid change and fluidity.
Company 2015
AJ Bombers (a restaurant chain based in Wisconsin) is a great example of a small company that uses content marketing with incredible sophistication. Their problem: “How do we get customers in the door in a Sunday afternoon?” Answer: Use a ‘swarm badge’ on FourSquare. AJ Bombers don’t have time to create beautiful blog posts, so their digital center is FourSquare. Many marketers think of a content marketing strategy as blogging or video, but it can be as simple as Twitter and FourSquare.
Self 2015
It goes back to being agile. Print. Radio. Television. All are based on campaigns executed on long timelines. With mobile, marketers have to be more agile. It means processes and tools have to change. And the mindset needs to change. It’s going to take a new crop of young professionals who get it and have grown up with the real-time concept to make it happen. Younger marketers tell me their biggest challenge is changing internal thinking, the way the boss thinks.
Also, today we are used to “publish” then “post.” But my customers may not be ready for that post. What if I could monitor the social graph, understand what they need now, have those posts qeued up and, “boom.” Customers don’t know you didn’t just write that content. We need to anticipate issues that customers may have down the road, and be ready to meet the need in real time.
