Yesterday I attended a session that was part of this year’s Social Media Week – Toronto. I was a little underwhelmed at the presentation. It was 60% promotional and 40% thought leadership and knowledge.
One of the points I heavily disagreed with was the speaker’s claim (and by extension the agency he works for) that there are only 5 “secrets” to successful content marketing:
- engaging
- rich media
- mobile
- shareable
- call to action
One could argue (and I would be in that camp) that these 5 are incorrect. And they are not even secrets. However, one things is missing: DATA. How can a professional or company claim to create successful content when they are not including the metrics and data to create content?
One of the most important things when creating content is to understand the brand and the consumer. And one of the ways we do this is understanding how people talk about a brand online (social and web) and how they behave on that brand’s website.
Without this knowledge, content that is created is only based on assumptions. We have access to barrels of data. We must use it for ourselves and for our clients if we really want to create engaging content that delivers any sort of measurable ROI.
Your thoughts?