Content is a Business Asset

Confab
2:00 am, May 9

Valeria Maltoni, @conversationage

Notes by @brianjameskirk, @technicallym
All notes for the conference available here: http://simp.ly/publish/5GMHGD

"I use content as an excuse to be social," Maltoni says.

You can use content to attract buyers, connections, business channels. Or internally to your boss.

What are the costs associated with outbound and inbound content? Maltoni says content lowers cost of lead generation.

Cost effiences of using content to attract business: 67%

You can use content to interact & influence; Media diet is heavy; we are social beings.

Using content provides the right information at the right time - end cap displays sell at the register, and you can use content to provide that "right time."

When working with clients on social strategy, what kind of value could they push through social networks - own a topic or platform, creating a space where you become a thought leader and curate that experience

Experimenting is crucial for online conversation development.

How do we construct this product, how do we produce it? Your website is your clearinghouse; How do you develop content that helps you sell. You shift from cost center to profit center.

To prove or push that message, show you are meeting business objectives.

There are 3 models for companies hoping to develop business asset content strategy: Relationships, innovation, infrastructure

Relationships: talking to people who own and use your products; what do they want?
Product Innovation: Create stakeholder ecosystems where all employees are involved with content production
Infrastructure: Traffic messages to customers

"In God we trust. All others bring data."

Focus on returns
1. Build revenue model on the onset
2. IRR: how profitable is a customer (recurring revenue / number of customers). IRR is between 8 and 14%. B2B sales cycles

Function / Metrics || Awareness / Nurture / Consideration

Eloqua needed to increase awareness, and needed to increase engagement. By creating custom campaign, influenced $2.5 million in annual sales.

Social Media is sharecropping: you are building and cultivating the spaces of others. You need to find a way to bridge back to your own property, and that's where you convert leads.

Create constance, create editorial standards/calendar, focus (don't be all things to all people) - 37 signals developed 100,000 readers.

Don't hire the same person over and over again;

Instituting a vigorous program of education and self-improvement

To trick a Fortune 500 company into content strategy, Maloni created a dashboard report of producing and customer conversions. Then she started created a "calendar of missed opportunities."

To convince an organization that it needs content strategy, consider a "calendar of missed opportunities."


Notes by @brianjameskirk, @technicallym
All notes for the conference available here: http://simp.ly/publish/5GMHGD