2014

11 REASONS TO BE EXCITED

ABOUT WHAT YOU’LL LEARN AT

CONTENT JAM

Lightspan Digital Mana Ionescu @manamica

Thanks to Andy Crestodina @crestodina

Barry Feldman @feldmancreative

Russ Henneberry @RussHenneberryRuss Henneberry is a content marketing and analytics professional.

Russ has worked in a content marketing and analytics capacity for companies like CrazyEgg, Salesforce.com and Network Solutions. He is currently Director of Editorial at Digital Marketer.

A Lead Magnet is an irresistible bribe that gives a specific chunk of

value to a prospect in exchange for their contact information – usually an email address.

The key to making the offer irresistible is SPECIFICITY.

The Lead Magnet must be a specific solution to a specific problem for a specific segment of your market.

DR. Pete Meyers @dr_pete“Dr. Pete” Meyers is Marketing Scientist for Moz, where he works with the marketing and data science teams on product research and data-driven content. He has spent the past year building research tools to monitor Google, including the MozCast Project, and he curates the Google Algorithm History, a chronicle of Google updates back to 2003.

From traffic to social, to engagement, content marketing is obsessed with "lag" analytics - numbers that tell us how we did after the fact, when it's too late to do

anything about it. What if we focused on lead analytics - metrics that measure what we can do to create success?

Brian Burkhart @squareplanetBrian believes nothing in business is more powerful than communications. It’s the backbone of every industry and operation. Based on principles found in science and psychology, Brian and his team at SquarePlanet Presentations & Strategy help individuals and organizations connect with audiences at a deeper level, with real authenticity, to drive growth.

What do you believe?

What is it that you or your company stands for?

Once you know, be sure EVERYONE knows.

Jeff Korhan @jeffkorhanJeff Korhan, MBA, is a sales and marketing expert, and the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business. Korhan was a Fortune 50 Sales and Marketing Executive for the first decade of his career. He then founded a landscape services company that was twice named Small Business of the Year during its two decades of operation, with predigital content marketing contributing to that success.

Content marketing is relationship selling in that it

develops relationships with buyers even before the business is aware of them. It ideally helps buyers understand your business process for giving them something better than they had imagined. Great content doesn’t sell products or

services, it sells the process that sells the products.

Chris Mickens @chrismickensChris Mickens is the Creative Technical Director and Co-founder of EDUCO Web Design, a Chicago-based web design firm that focuses on client-empowerment and education. She’s super excited that EDUCO was named one of Sourcing Line’s Top 10 Drupal Web Design Agencies in the nation as well as one of their Top 10 Web Design Companies in Chicago in 2014.

Establishing content governance is a lot like setting up a household budget – sure you can save yourself the headache in the up-front and make up the rules as you go, but those rules will probably seem subjective, your resources will be all over the map, and your dreams will never convert into long-term goals. Of course creating and implementing your content governance plan

takes effort, but the increase in efficiency, consistency, and quality that you'll undoubtedly experience will prove that the juice is worth the squeeze.

Barry Feldman @feldmancreativeBarry Feldman of Feldman Creative is a content marketing consultant, creative director, and copywriter. Barry contributes to many of the leading online marketing publications and has been recognized as a top digital strategist and named to LinkedIn’s “25 Social Media Marketing Experts You Need to Know.”

There are a ridiculous number of ways to join the groups your influencers are in or invite them into yours.

To name a few: Twitter chats, LinkedIn Groups, Tribber, Facebook, Google+ communities.

How does community building contribute to creating passionate relationships between buyers and brands?

James Ellis @saltlabThese are some of the James Ellises on Google: Fitness model, Irish stage actor, Four-star US Navy Admiral, British cryptographer, Dean of USC Business School, British stationary store, Mayor of Ottowa, Australian politician, and Co-Inventor of the Usenet. This James Ellis is not them. He is taller and knows Google Analytics.

Here's the problem with analytics: It wants to tell you what happened. Except what you want to know is what worked, so you can do it again.

The goal of learning analytics isn't to know every button and tag, but to know how to find "what worked" so you can do it again. And again…

Susan Silver @argentumstratSusan Silver is President of Argentum Strategy Group, a Chicago marketing strategy consulting firm. After spending 10 years in Brand Management at Kraft Foods and additional time running marketing for Equal Sweetener, Susan started Argentum seven years ago. Argentum specializes in working with small to mid-sized businesses and provides clients with team members who act like a Timeshare VP of Marketing®.

A positioning statement is a strategic exercise, not a creative one! It's all about how your offering competes in your chosen category, and it is

written in a painfully straightforward style. It is not about how your brand makes people *feel,* metaphors, or hyperbole.

Save the creative, emotive language for your Brand Essence and, ultimately, for your content.

Lauren Freedman @etailinggroupLauren is a seasoned 20–year e-commerce veteran, author of It’s Just Shopping as well as a recognized and respected figure in omni-channel retail, She has a passion for merchandising that she has parlayed as president of the e-tailing group, evangelists for merchandising and customer service best practices.

There’s no magic conversion number, but instead, many tactics to trend conversion up. Learn a few conversion tricks and traps you don’t want to fall into, and ensure your conversion rate is headed in the right direction.

Andy Crestodina @crestodinaAndy Crestodina is a co-founder and the Strategic Director of Orbit Media, an award-winning 35-person web design company in Chicago. Andy loves this stuff. It’s fun to translate complex content marketing tactics into simple, practical content marketing advice that anyone can understand. He's also the author of Content Chemistry a handbook for content marketing and he’s written hundreds articles for many of the top sites in the industry.

How can a marketer use brain science to get better results?

The trick is to take advantage of cognitive biases. We all

have certain predispositions. For example, we don't want to miss out on

something good. So if the marketer does a few simple things that show the cost of NOT using a product or service, you can trigger a tiny voice that makes the website visitor see the offer in a new way.

Jill Sazlman @foundingmom & Brad Farris @blfarrisJill Salzman is currently growing her third entrepreneurial venture, The Founding Moms, the world’s first and only kid-friendly collective of offline meetups and online resources for mom entrepreneurs.

As principal advisor at Anchor Advisors, Ltd, Brad Farris guides business owners through the pitfalls and joys of growing their business. Brad is a speaker and author, and with Jill he co-host the Breaking Down Your Business podcast.

Why would you want to podcast? Podcasting puts you in your audience’s head.

It puts your content on the device they carry with them ALL THE TIME. It creates a conversation with your audience, no it really does! But it’s a lot of work…

Mana Ionescu @manamicaMana is the founder of Lightspan Digital where her team focuses on driving traffic to clients’ websites and building profitable connections through social media and content marketing. From Techweek to CES, from Social Media Week to MPI TechCon, from 312Digital to DePaul University, Mana took the stage over 100 times in the past 2 years, busting social media myths and showing measurable results are possible.

So you’re looking for that social media benchmark. In building terms,

you are looking for how high to build above sea-level. Good news is, YOU get to set the height. And YOU get to

choose where to build. Building on top of a hill will get you closer to

your benchmark. So tomorrow’s digital marketing results start with today’s data decisions. Set benchmarks and you’ll never struggle with social media ROI again!

2014CONTENTJAM, OCT 2

#contentjam with us!

Lightspan Digital Mana Ionescu @manamica

Thanks to Andy Crestodina @crestodina

Barry Feldman @feldmancreative