Content Marketing World 2013 Wrap-Up – TopRank Style

Joe Pulizzi Rocking the Stage at Content Marketing World

Wow. Again!

The great thing about Content Marketing World was having been there for the first and second years’ events only to have an even better experience the third time around. Hats off to Joe Pulizzi, Pam Kozelka, Robert Rose, Joe Kalinowski, Cathy McPhillips, Michelle Linn and the entire CMI team on a fantastic conference. I’ve seen and heard nothing but glowing reviews about it.

There were so many moving parts to the success of the event from great keynotes by Jay Baer, Jonathan Lister of LinkedIn, Jonathan Mildenhall of Coca-Cola and the big one, William Shatner, who surprised everyone by having relevant marketing stories to tell.  The networking was great (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and House of Blues) and it was a pleasure to connect with friends, clients and make many new acquaintances.

With attendees from all over the world and both pre-conference and post-conference workshops, there was a lot of content marketing education happening for a lot of eager marketers. It’s very satisfying to be involved with an industry that is moving so quickly and reaching so many.

TopRank Online Marketing was well represented at the event including my business partner and President of TopRank, Susan Misukanis, Account Manager Alexis Hall and Account Coordinator/Social Media Katie Bresnahan.

Audience for my “Future of Content on the Search & Social Web” presentation.

Our objectives for Content Marketing World included:  creating greater awareness and thought leadership for TopRank, meeting new potential clients, meeting existing clients, meeting potential employees, gaining social and media coverage, creating content, a tiny bit of competitive intelligence, researching new tools and vendors and of course, gaining new insights and education.

If companies only viewed events in this way, they would go so much more value from their investment. All I can say is that we did pretty well on all of them. If I could have brought more of our team, I would have.

Here is TopRank’s Liveblog Coverage of Content Marketing World by Alexis Hall and Katie Bresnahan:

• Jonathan Lister Keynote on Why LinkedIn is going “All-In” with Content Marketing – Katie Bresnahan
• How to Dominate Search Results With Your Brand – Copyblogger Tells All – Alexis Hall
• Andrew Davis on 5 Secrets to Bigger, Better Marketing Results with Less Content – Alexis Hall
• Online Discovery Tips That Will Get Your Content Promoted – Tips from Sarah Skerik of PR Newswire – Katie Bresnahan
• Content 20/20 – Jonathan Mildenhall on Coca Cola’s Content Strategy – Katie Bresnahan
• Lee Odden on The Future of Content Marketing on the Search and Social Web – Katie Bresnahan
• Jay Baer’s Youtility – Content So Useful People Will Pay for It – Alexis Hall

I gave a presentation on the “Future of Content on the Search and Social Web” which was attended by about 400 people. Below is a quick Vine taken by Susan Misukanis during the presentation:

We are very thankful to all the sites that covered and quoted TopRank during the CMWorld conference. Some of them are listed below: 

Cision Blog: Content Marketing World 2013 A Dat Driven Analysis – The top Twitter handles mentioned during the conference included: @JayBaer, @Mildenhall, @CMIContent, @CocaCola, @WilliamShatner, @JListerCA, @LeeOdden, @JoePulizzi, @LinkedInMktg, @LinkedIn – Wow!

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Blog: 30 Excellent Quotes from Content Marketing Experts “Content isn’t King, it’s the Kingdom”, “Be the best answer”, “Content should ask people to do something and reward them for it”

King Content Blog: Key Insights from Content Marketing World 2013 “The future of content is visual, real-time, mobile, human and cross-platform. It lies in the intersection of technology, information and human experience.”

Eloqua Blog: 10 Takeaways from Content Marketing World “The future of content is visual, real-time, mobile, human and cross-platform. Find out what contributes to a moment of inquiry becoming a lead”

PR Newswire Blog: The Future of Content in Search and on the Social Web “Content is more than information – it’s storytelling that provides meaningful experiences and inspires action.”

Content Marketing Experience: Lee Odden – The Future of Content and Content Marketing

Here’s a video of me talking about the phases of content marketing maturity during my “Future of Content” presentation. It was taken by Matt Gentile, Global Director of Social Media at Century 21 Real Estate.

Salesforce Pardot Blog: The Top 16 Content Marketing Quotes from CMWorld 2013 “Content isn’t king. It’s the kingdom.”

Exact Target Blog: 19 Biggest Content Marketing Trends and Tips from CMWorld 2013 “Content is not just objects; it’s storytelling. Content marketing isn’t only videos, blogs, or whitepapers. It’s your whole approach to storytelling. Define that, and you’ve got a content strategy.”

Wolfgang Digital Blog: 18 Things That Will Form the Future of Content Marketing (Liveblog of my presentation)

Uberflip Blog: Rolling Content: #CMWorld Hall of Fame Speakers – A very clever app for rich media content that made “Rolling Stone” style magazine covers out of some of the speakers.

Streetwise Media Blog: Words of Wisdom from Content Marketing World 2013 “Whether it’s through gamification or other tactics, a rewards system is an effective way to attract readers and convert them to loyal followers.”

Trinity P3 Blog: Content Marketing World 2013: Insights from Lee Odden (Liveblog of my presentation by Craig Hodges, founder and CEO of King Content.

Pre Event Posts Including the famous Content Marketing Rocks eBook:

Of course we promoted the Content Marketing World event with a few posts on everything from how to get more out of a conference as a speaker or attendee to a preview of my presentation.

• Content Marketing As A Useful, Meaningful Experience. Anything Else Is Just Noise.
• The Future of Content on the Search and Social Web
• Content Marketing That Rocks – Are You Amplified?
• How to Rock Content Marketing World 6 Ways

Content Marketing Rocks!

But the big pre-event announcement of course was the launch of the 36 Content Marketers Who Rock eBook featuring some of the top content marketing experts and speakers. The eBook included tips on how to “rock your content marketing” performance from some real content smarties that ranged from Jonathan Mildenhall of Coca-Cola to Pam Didner from Intel to the Godfather of Content Marketing himself, Joe Pulizzi.

There have been over 42,000 views of the ebook on Slideshare and many of the people I ran into at the conference had seen it. A number of speakers asked why they weren’t included and at least two speakers mentioned it during their presentations.  We also created a Pinterest board, List.ly and Paper.li to support the eBook.   Will we do another one next year? We’ll see!

Overall, it was a very well run, organized and promoted event. There were plenty of networking opportunities and it was awesome to see quite a few of our clients in attendance and even speaking.  Thank you to our friends at Kapost for hosting a very nice dinner on the last night of the conference which included our clients LinkedIn (Jason & Deanna) and Concur (Amy).

And speaking of “speaking”, the speakers I saw at Content Marketing World were all invested in creating a lot of value for attendees, which was refreshing. I look forward to being involved with the event again next year.

If you attended Content Marketing World in Cleveland this year, what were some of your favorite experiences?