content marketing

Part two of Angela Everitt's blog on her Digital Mission experience at Social Media Week New York. 

Buzzwords from Buzzfeed

Learnings from Jonah Peretti, CEO and founder of Buzzfeed

When Twitter conversations between brands ends up on Buzzfeed, does this represent the content marketer's highest honour or this year's trendiest marketing tactic has jumped the shark?

As the link inevitably made its way around the office there was enough chuckling to make me think it's very much the former. 

I will spare you a long introduction about how many companies use social these days, and how good it can be for them. We know all that.

Instead, I'd like to talk about how it's not enough to just be 'on' social media.

Want a visually appealing, well structured, content rich website? Tick.

Want to analyse its performance? Not so much.

Content Marketing is a powerful tool, and it’s set to soar. 

At Byte9 we’ve developed seven steps to optimise your strategy.

Can content shout? Ben Peacock from Outbrain knows that ‘amplifying’ a campaign can work, as proven by Do the Mobot.

The campaign

We partnered with Virgin Media and, via Fifty6 Media, the Mo Farah Foundation, to launch the campaign – raising profile and proceeds for the most vulnerable across East Africa.

The focus was a short video, narrated by DJ Tim Westwood, which provided step-by-step instructions on how to carry out Mo’s trademark move, encouraging users to upload their own videos. Each one earned a £2 donation courtesy of Virgin Media.

Content marketing is fast becoming an integral part of the marketing mix, providing a dynamic channel from which brands, publishers and agencies can drive awareness and customer engagement to create a deeper relationship with consumers.

In fact, research from Outbrain reveals that more than 90% of respondents predict that content marketing will increase in importance for them over the next 12 months. The research, based on a survey of more than 1,300 digital marketing professionals examined the strategies, objectives, and challenges that marketers are currently facing.

One of the themes that emerged from the recent Social Media Week London was the importance of content as a marketing tool. Whether it's being used to drive traffic, sell stuff, engage users, building brand equity the brand's hopeful quest to create a meme is a challenge for plenty of marketers.

A campaign doesn't have to be pretty to work. Throw in a little social, make it local and you have a winning formula, surely? Maybe this is the carefully planned strategy behind the marketing for comedian Howard Read's latest tour or he's a prodigious songwriter with a penchant for small town Britain.

For each town Howard and his cartoon side-kick, Little Howard, visit, they're creating a song, complete with local facts, history and irritatingly good ear-worms, "I'm a fool for Poole". Songs include: Hymn to Telford, The Daft Half of Bath, All Will Be Revealed in Sheffield and Song for Poole.