Content Marketing Summit 2015, Asia was held recently in Gurgaon. Over the course of two days, experts from various fields presented their views on content and its importance. They discussed their experiences, challenges and achievements. Here are my takeaways from the event:
- What to outsource, crowd-source and keep in-house
The biggest challenge while creating content is to generate maximum content with optimal resources. Content should also communicate the right message, and portray the brand personality to the audience. It is important to be relevant when generating a lot of content.
Amrita Thapar, Content Leader for Marketing at Genpact, emphasized this. She said it is vital to decide on the criticality of the content with resources in hand. This is the time when you should decide how much quality content you can create. Outsourcing or crowd-sourcing is the solution when generating a lot of content, as an in-house team will always find it a challenge. Niche content, which only specialists can create, should be outsourced whereas general content can be easily crowd-sourced.
- Listen before creating content
We all know the golden rule of communication—listen before you speak. In content marketing too, listening is a key tool. Svati Bhatkal, the creator of the popular show Satyamev Jayate spoke about her team going to different parts of India and asking people about various issues they face. The research team listened to people’s daily struggles, taboos, clichés and other things that affect them.
The show highlighted those issues and it turned out to be a massive success. Apart from generating huge TRPs, the show also garnered positive response on social media.
Content generation is similar too. At Niswey, I have learnt this, on the job. I learned that while creating content, one should not rely on secondary research alone. A client’s experiences, challenges and success stories matter a lot while creating content. It is important to talk to the end customers and understand what they think about the product or service, for which we are going to write.
- No matter how small your audience, be true to them
One of the most convincing and influential speakers at CMS Asia was Tara Sharma, Bollywood actress and the host of The Tara Sharma Show. She spoke about struggles of running her own show which was not very popular in the beginning. Despite all the problems, she stuck to her belief and never deviated from the content of the show which discusses parenting and child care. She emphasized that one has to be true to the content, no matter how small the audience. Even though she received several offers from different brands to get associated with the show, she chose Johnson & Johnson as it was perfectly suited to the theme of the show.
