Day 3 of INBOUND16 saw Carrie Kerpen, CEO, Likeable Media take the stage for a breakout session on improving your content marketing ROI. With all the content being created today, it’s very difficult to attract and retain audience attention. Even great content could use a little help.
And when Carrie’s session title had the concept of 3D content, I was very intrigued. And turns out I wasn’t the only one.
@carriekerpen Looking forward to see what #content #ROI tricks you have in your hat! #INBOUND16 pic.twitter.com/3NWWXh20g1
— tim chambers (@THE_TIMCHAMBERS) November 10, 2016
She started off with a short checklist for evaluating your content. And you might think this is too simplistic. But often, it is the simplest thing that gets overlooked.
Content checklist.
Does it…
– Add value?
– Help v. Interrupt?
– Make their face move? @carriekerpen #INBOUND16 #ContentMarketing— Sarah Johnson (@SJohnsonRI) November 10, 2016
I think for me, the most important question on the list is “Does it make their face move?”
Are you just creating content that is palatable or is it eliciting some emotion from your audience? The connect with your brand happens not at the informational, but rather at the emotional level. And hence, it’s crucial that your content makes their face move.
And then she dropped her secret trick to improving your content marketing ROI:
Yes, that’s it. Just listen. Pay attention to what your audience is talking about. How are they talking about it, and where are they talking about it.
Well, that seems to have gone down well with the audience.
@carriekerpen Great presentation. I'm all ears from here on. 😉 #INBOUND16 pic.twitter.com/irh5Z7YQbP
— tim chambers (@THE_TIMCHAMBERS) November 10, 2016
But you can’t be selective about listening. You can’t just pay attention when they talk about you or your brand. Listening should be with the aim of understanding your audience as a whole.
“I don’t just want to hear what people are saying about the brand. I want to hear what they’re saying about LIFE.” @carriekerpen #INBOUND16
— Robyn Showers (@Robyn_says) November 10, 2016
Once we master listening, the next step is to put all that data in perspective. As a content creator, you need to gain insights into how all of this listening can get you closer to your audience. These insights determine the kind of content you should create, and the kind of conversations you need to participate in.
Also important is to determine how much you create. While content is great, a content overload is not desirable.
"There is a massive push to talk all day and most of the time we don’t need to post half as much as we do." @carriekerpen #INBOUND16
— Jennifer Collins (@GracefulMessME) November 10, 2016
So all in all, it was a great session filled with insights that we all seem to know but never get around to really applying. Carrie breaks it down into actionable steps that we can all incorporate into our content creation process. Enhancing content marketing ROI never looked easier.
Hope you can pick up a few tricks from Carrie. And this is just one of the many INBOUND16 sessions we are covering this year. Catch all the other marketing mantras shared in Boston with our session recaps from INBOUND16
