Jodi Harris is the director of editorial content and strategy at Content Marketing Institute and serves as editor-in-chief of its digital magazine, Chief Content Officer. Follow her on Twitter at @Joderama.
COVID-19 turned handshakes into health hazards. But that doesn’t mean you need to keep your audience relationships at a distance. Take a look at how businesses are using webinars, virtual conferences, and other digital experiences to foster community in a touch-free world.
It seems like every company under the sun is creating email content about measures they’ve taken to protect the safety and well-being of their customers, employees, and communities.
As we all sift through dozens of COVID-19 emails flooding our inboxes, it’s easy to ask, “Why are so many doing this?”
Editor’s note: We’ve updated this post with some fresh examples because compelling visuals remain a critical, yet often underused resource.
Visuals are essential to creating content that will help your business stand out and draw in an audience. Not only does imagery help make text-centric content more readable, digestible, and memorable, but it can be used to craft compelling messages that speak volumes without using a single word – just ask anyone who has posted a photo on Instagram, tweeted a meme to express their feelings, or created an Instagram video to share a memorable moment with friends.
Engagement. Our brands crave it, our audiences seem eager to participate in it, and our campaigns are designed to drive it.
On the surface, engagement often seems like an ideal goal for content marketers; but when you take a deeper look at how difficult it is to determine its value, you may want to rethink the role it plays in your strategy.
Expanding your content horizons with AI, VR, or other tech enhancements can feel like an exciting journey of creativity or a frustrating exercise in futility – depending on how you approach the process. Prepare to add new dimensions to your brand’s storytelling efforts with an experimentation method that won’t blow up in your face.
Editor’s note: Given the vital role technology plays in achieving content marketing success, we’re taking a closer look at how today’s thought leaders are bringing unique perspectives and personal experiences to the work they do in this space.
We often think of business growth in terms of “more” – reaching more people, delivering more content, selling more products, and so on. It’s one of the reasons content marketers heavily rely on tech solutions to speed up their processes and scale their campaigns.
Editor’s note: Given the ongoing need for brands to handle their social media plan more strategically, we updated this previously published article.
Concerned that the death of the Instagram “like” count might kill your brand’s traction on the platform? Questioning where your Facebook ads might appear across its network of sites, including Messenger? Curious as to whether user trust has deteriorated to where social media is no longer a safe space for your brand to play? You’re not alone.
We could all use more empathy in our lives. The ability to think about the world from someone else’s point of view isn’t a nice-to-have or even an aspirational quality for content marketers. It’s absolutely critical. Our jobs revolve around our ability to understand consumers’ mindsets and reflect them in the content we create.
True brand empathy is different from merely identifying needs, serving up useful information, or even understanding the personal motivations that drive consumption.
“We’ve got so much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it.”
This (slightly revised) quote from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory nicely captures my state of mind – about content marketing and, to be honest, all the other frenzied activities happening this time of year. It just feels like there’s never enough time to get everything done.
At a time when the colder, darker days of winter are urging us to slow down, curl up somewhere warm, and enjoy our well-deserved holiday breaks, the weight of looming tasks when we return makes it even harder to justify taking time to fully relax and recharge.
2019 was a year of big changes for the Chief Content Officer publication team – as, I’m sure, it has been for all content marketers. The biggest of these changes has been the transformation to an all-digital publication.
CCO’s fans and followers also may have noticed that our content has gotten richer – more audio and video content features reflect the industry’s evolution toward more portable, more accessible, and more immersive storytelling.
