I promised a report on the Content Marketing World conference when it was done and here it is: I have a lot to learn! The conference was the largest I’ve ever attended and it was first-rate. They had celebrity keynote speakers, stage sets, music playing, gameshows, informative and energized sessions, and the vendors had awesome giveaways. It was the Disneyland of conferences. Well worth the money and time. You can view some of my observations during the conference on my Twitter feed (@jessiner #CMWorld).
I was overwhelmed with how little I actually knew about content marketing. I looked at it as just another type of writing, but if you have ever written a new product sell sheet for a company you quickly realized that what information the marketing team finds important can be very different than what you are accustom to. On top of that, I discovered that content marketing is much more complex than simply writing a few sell sheets and social media posts. There is a science and art behind it that is completely different from instructional design and technical writing.
However, there is a grey area where content marketing, instructional design, and technical writing overlap. The common factor for all three is that they all transfer information to an audience, and the key to being successful is knowing and delivering what the audience needs and wants. No matter how well-written, visually appealing, or skillfully taught, if it doesn’t meet the audience’s needs, then it is not valuable.