Pre-Conference Workshops

Pay a small additional fee to attend your choice of two in-depth and interactive workshops, all led by big name instructors providing the tactical advice you need to grow your business organically—the content marketing way.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Main Conference

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

TRACK SPONSORED BY

TRACK 1: CREATION

Room: Pavilion 1

TRACK 2: OPTIMIZATION

Room: Pavilion 5

TRACK 3: DISTRIBUTION

Room: Pavilion 3

TRACK SPONSORED BY

TRACK 1: CREATION

Room: Pavilion 1

TRACK 2: OPTIMIZATION

Room: Pavilion 5

TRACK 3: DISTRIBUTION

Room: Pavilion 3

Thursday, May 19, 2016

TRACK SPONSORED BY

TRACK 1: PLANNING

Room: Room Pavilion 1

TRACK 2: PERFORMANCE

Room: Room Pavilion 5

TRACK SPONSORED BY

TRACK 1: PLANNING

Room: Room Pavilion 1

TRACK 2: PERFORMANCE

Room: Room Pavilion 5

KEYNOTE
THE IRRESISTIBLE POWER OF STRATEGIC STORYTELLING

It’s no secret; the best marketing tells a story. The problem? “Storytelling” has surpassed buzzword status and lost its meaning in the process, which means you’re likely doing it wrong. In this engaging and immediately applicable presentation, strategic storytelling advisor Kindra Hall will not only reveal why great storytelling is essential to great content, she will give specific strategies for finding stories and a three-step process for crafting the perfect story. She’ll also reveal the biggest storytelling mistake content creators make. Kindra will transform the way you approach your marketing forever.

Track 1: Content Creation
HOW TO CREATE BRAIN‐CRAVING CONTENT IN 5 EASY STEPS

Between the increase in competition and the decrease in human attention spans,creating content that attracts readers and motivates action gets harder every day. That’s where science comes in with a splash of art. In this session you’ll learn the mental shortcuts we use when “deciding” what to read as well as the tips, tricks, and shortcuts that are proven to get readers attention and captivation. This example‐packed session, supported by the latest stats and scientific studies, reveals exactly what to do, how to do it, and what to avoid when it comes to creating content. Get all the secret tactics you demand in 5 easy steps.

In this session you’ll learn:

• Headlines that increase engagement 140%
• Words that snag the human eye
• The magical word that gets people nodding
• The surprising move that slashes unsubscribes by 22%
• Cognitive fluency and the power of persuasion
• Loss aversion, social proof and scarcity drivers

Track 2: Content Optimization
7 STEPS TO DEVELOPING A RESONATING BRAND VOICE

Memorable companies make language their own. But crafting a brand voice your audience will love and remember is challenging ­ until now. Learn how to create branded language that tells your story without the sales pitch, and gets remembered long after readers pass you by. Discover how to create a fresh voice for your brand that connects with readers and advances your brand in strange and mysterious ways. Learn it all in case studies from Moz, Stitch Fix, Basecamp, SuperHeroStuff, theSkimm and more to get the insights and data you need.

In this session you’ll learn how to:

• Define your brand lingo with team exercises and learn the psychology behind them
• Teach brand voice rooted in “language” feedback from your team
• Develop a brand voice guide from statements of purpose and audiences dictionaries
• Select words that humanize your brand and connect with readers
• Empower your staff and clients to be advocates of a shared language
• Use your voice to own your audience and culture across multiple channels
• Plus get real life examples that use language to bring the community using your language

Track 3: Content Distribution
THE TOP 11 FACEBOOK & TWITTER ADVERTISING HACKS FOR CONTENT MARKETERS

Learn unusual tips, strategies and process for getting 10­100x more value from paid advertising campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+. Get brand new strategies to drive exponentially more traffic to your content and convert 3­5x more of those clicks into leads and sales – all for less than $50 per campaign! Attendees will gain critical insights into how the algorithms of Paid Social Media advertising REALLY work, including Relevancy Score and Quality Adjusted Bids, which govern how often your ads show and what you pay for them. A must­attend session for Content, Social Media, and PPC Marketers alike.

Track 1: Content Creation
BEING NEEDED, NOT NEEDY: HOW TO CREATE TRULY VALUABLE CONTENT

Using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a framework, this talk walks through the various ways in which a brand can create content that provides real value to consumers, providing them with solutions for everyday problems. The session is sprinkled with industry data and published examples, and allows audience suggestion to drive live ideation to prove that the format works for any company, so bring your challenges and your thinking caps.

• Learn how your consumers needs CAN and SHOULD inspire your content creation
• Gain a framework for identifying how your brand can ideate around consumer needs
• Understand how to focus on consumer needs within your area of authority as a content creator
• See best-in­-class examples and live ideation that demonstrate this process can work for you

Track 2: Content Optimization
FORGET KEYWORDS – WHAT’S NEXT WITH CONTENT OPTIMIZATION

You totally buy in to the fact that content marketing IS the new marketing. But did you know that 93% of all buyers, online or in stores, use search engines prior to making a purchase? And 86% of those searches are non­branded queries? People want useful information and they want it fast. How are you going to get it to them?

During this session you will learn what it takes to produce the right content to consistently grow your business:

• How to consistently create content your customers will enjoy
• How to transform boring business content into content that connects
• The best types of content to create for readers AND search engines
• How to quickly optimize the content your readers want and need
• How to protect yourself against algo­changes in the future

Track 3: Content Distribution
INSIDER TIPS TO GET YOUR CONTENT INTO MASHABLE, TECHCRUNCH, FORBES, AND MORE

When it comes to marketing, you may have the money, but like everyone else you’re busy and need to get more done in less time. In this session, Josh Steimle, who has authored over 200 articles for publications like Mashable, TechCrunch, Forbes, Time, and Entrepreneur, shows how to quickly create content your customers will care about and get it in front of them through outreach to journalists like himself.

In this session you will learn how to:

• Create a blog post your customers will crave in 30 minutes
• Create graphics that increase the sharability of your content
• Contact journalists the right way so they’ll publish or reference your content
• Pitch Editors to publish your own articles

Track 1: Content Creation
HOW TO CONSISTENTLY GENERATE FRESH CONTENT MARKETING IDEAS WITH IMPROV COMEDY

Consistently generating fresh and fun ideas for your content can be an ongoing struggle for all of us. That’s where Improv comedy comes in. It’s not about trying to be funny – it’s about having fun and seeing things in new, creative ways! Improvisers create new and entertaining stories on the fly each time they are on stage. Using a few core techniques from improv, you, too, can uncover fresh ideas for content marketing and have fun doing it. Join this lively session to learn how to use improv comedy principles to create more engaging, fresh and fun marketing content!

In this high energy, interactive session, you will discover:

• Fun approaches you can use anytime to generate new ideas
• How to flex your creativity muscles and get unstuck
• Fresh content ideas that you can use right away

Track 2: Content Optimization
BE BOND. COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE TACTICS FOR SUCCESS

Getting your content to ranked, read and ravely reviewed takes effort, skill, and knowledge of what’s hot, and what’s not. Your competitors are likely doing all the hard work, so why not learn from wins and losses. From ideation to optimization to creation, it’s now easier than ever to use competitive intelligence with all your content marketing efforts. Beware, your competitors might be attending this 007 session, learning the tips, tactics and advice necessary to get ahead of you, the competition

Track 3: Content Distribution
TACTICS TO AMPLIFY CONTENT MARKETING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

Just as we wonder what sales professionals did before LinkedIn, the same can be said about content marketing before social media. Social media marketing, when done right, allows you to amplify your content to a highly targeted audience with content that connects. Very few businesses, however, understand how to dive into the social data and maximize Social with the right tactics. Until now. Learn the framework you need to leverage social media, and that tactics to get more bang for your content marketing buck.

In this session you’ll learn:

• The elements you need to prepare your content for effective social promotion
• How to find complementary content to get your own content more noticed in social
• How to use Paid Social to promote your content to the right targeted audience
• Ways to engage with social influencers to help promote your content
• Strategies to leverage the social reach of your employees

Track 1: Content Creation
PANEL: CONTENT CREATION AT SCALE

Let’s face it, in today’s Internet-connected, mobile-ready, digital culture we need to crank a high volume of content to win the war of words on the web. But securing budget, delivering both quantity and quality, cutting through the noise on social media, engaging your audience, and measuring performance – particularly at scale – is a challenge. Join a panel of content marketing gurus producing and publishing thousands of content pieces each month. CMC Chair Byron White will take your toughest questions and serve up a few of his own.

• How one business owner secured a $1,000,000 budget for content in 2016
• How to scale production and drive engagement without creating a studio and hiring an entire production staff
• How to achieve success with positivity and differentiate yourself from a traditional news publisher in an all-negative-all-the-time news environment
• And much, much more

Track 2: Content Optimization
UNIFYING BRANDING AND CONVERSION – WHY CAN’T WE ALL GET ALONG

Content Marketing is about achieving results through authentic communications. But what does that mean in practice? Are you caught in the crossfire between the demands of branding and the ROI requirements of direct­response? Join conversion rate optimization guru Tim Ash as he shares his perspective on how to unify both of these disparate activities in your content marketing. Learn how the brand “frame” will impact the effectiveness of your messaging, and what emotional triggers to use in your content creation.

In this session you’ll learn how to:

• Understand the 6 implicit psychological goals that all people crave
• Create a motivational map that your brand embodies
• Know why your brand frame supports or clashes with your marketing messages

Track 3: Content Distribution
THE INTERSECTION OF CONTENT MARKETING AND SOCIAL MEDIA: THE CORPORATE PERSPECTIVE

Join speaker Neal Schaffer as he welcomes Beverly Jackson (MGM), Heather Dopson (Axway), and Heather Green (Caesars) to discuss best practices and actionable takeaways for the audience regarding how content marketers can best leverage social media for their marketing objectives.

Track 1: Content Creation
EXPLORING THE NEW WORLD (MUNDUS NOVUS) OF DIGITAL VIDEO

YouTube altered the map of content marketing. We can now track 1.2+ billion videos across 30+ video platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Vine, Instagram and more. This presentation will map out the new world of digital video. It will show content marketers how to:

• Find and contact rising stars to create or promote your content
• Identify trending topics and videos
• Identify all fans and engage them efficiently
• Post at the best time
• Design data-driven content strategies and launch your brand’s video presence on YouTube, Facebook, Vine and more
• Provide ecosystem level analysis and content vertical breakdowns for any online video category
• Focus on what matters and tailor your goals for engagement, subscriptions, and earned metrics

Track 3: Content Distribution
HOW TO DEVELOP A COMPREHENSIVE CONTENT PROMOTION STRATEGY

Lets face it, you need to get the content out and revenue in. But the marketing maze for content promotion keeps growing wildly, adding complexity to the plan. Until now. Learn the advanced methods and tactics you need to connect with the audience. One deep dive into the latest innovation with audience planning, paid media amplification, and trend research, and you’ll quickly have what it takes to master the art and science of content promotion.

KEYNOTE: FIRESIDE CHAT WITH BYRON WHITE

What’s Next: Content Rock Stars

To engage customers orbiting at high speeds, you need content they love, and share. But who’s going to create all this lovable content? Brands are finally realizing that push advertising and automated marketing pipelines are stuck in mud. As it turns out, artists, musicians, performers and entertainers may offer the answer for marketing success. They connect with their fan base in strange and mysterious ways. And brands are now tapping into this new channel, in exciting ways. Don’t miss this keynote on what’s new, and what’s next with content marketing.

Keynote:
WRITING WITHOUT BULLSHIT

Bullshit surrounds us. It fills our inboxes and the sites we read on our smartphones and computers. To stand out from this noise, you must learn to express yourself briefly, boldly, and clearly. I will give you the courage to say what you mean. First, accept the Iron Imperative: You must treat the reader’s time as more valuable than your own. Learn to discipline your writing, rooting out jargon and weasel words and replacing them with bold, active statements. And change your process to channel creativity, harness flow, and manage critics. Write with impact. I’ll show you how.

Track 1: Content Planning
HOW TO ACCELERATE THE GROWTH OF YOUR BUSINESS BLOG

Screw the quality vs quantity debate and stop worrying about the number of slots on your publishing calendar. Launching and growing a business blog today is far more than filling a pipeline or perfecting your writing chops. It’s about visualizing information, optimizing conversions, and fueling the virality of unique ideas. In this session, you’ll learn how to grow a blog with growth hacking, user experience, and content design in mind. You’ll walk away knowing:

• How to conduct audience research
• Tips for optimizing your content
• Ways to grow your blog subscribers

Track 2: Content Performance
THE DIGITAL PATH TO PURCHASE: FROM CONTENT TO CONVERSION

76% of marketers believe that marketing has changed more in the past two years than in the past 50. It’s no wonder we feel overwhelmed by our choices in social, mobile and digital marketing and how best to leverage our content marketing efforts across the digital spectrum of the customer journey.

In this session, Bill Carmody, CEO of Trepoint, will examine the role of content marketing as it pertains to social, mobile and in­store beacons. Context plays a pivotal role in delivering the most relevant content at each stage of the customer journey – discovery, activation, transaction and advocacy. This is how compelling content delivered to the right person at the right place at the right time results in increased sales and measurable ROI.

You already understand the power of content marketing, and now it’s time to dig into the tactics that successfully drive sales. Your content, when deployed correctly, builds communities that drive sales. How do you track the performance of your content? How do you know what worked and what didn’t work inside your marketing funnel? And how do you prove attribution of the content that is driving sales? And who’s doing it right?

In this session, you will learn:

1. How the right content (with the right context) drives commerce
2. Why some content does nothing to deliver sales, but the right content does
3. How content plays a critical role in each phase of the customer journey
4. Tactics that you MUST do in order to ensure your content drives purchase

Track 1: Content Planning
BEYOND AGILE MARKETING THEORY: REAL-LIFE WAYS TO MAKE AGILE WORK ON YOUR TEAM

Agile marketing is one of the best ways to create a content marketing program that produces high quality work consistently over a long period of time Š but how do we get there from here?

This hands-on session will show you how.

Andrea Fryrear, a certified Scrum Master, Product Owner, and agile marketing practitioner, and Jeff Julian, a CMO who has been practicing agile for over a decade, will go beyond high-level theoretical discussions of agile principles to show you agile tactics for your content marketing team.

In this session you’ll learn:

• How to create low-risk pilot programs to prove that agile marketing can work in your organization
• The best way to build and run your first agile marketing sprint
• Simple tools to help your team succeed
• How to track your team effectively so you can accurately report on agile’s ROI

Track 1: Content Planning
HOW TO 10X YOUR CONTENT TEAM’S PRODUCTIVITY

We’ve all heard that content is king. And when content took its throne, marketers far and wide adopted a new mantra: Publish. All. The. Time. But if you’re like most marketers, your short on time to create, promote, and optimize your content so it performs. Attend this session to learn the latest tactics transform your team into a content marketing machine.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• How to structure your content team for maximum efficiency
• How to define processes, from content creation and distribution to measuring performance, that save hours of effort
• Which tools to adopt to boost your team’s productivity
• A framework for structuring your content team
• A step by step process from ideation to publishing to promotion to evaluation that has
  been optimized to leverage resources
• Tips and tricks to save time at every stage of that process
• A list of tools to use that will amp up productivity

Track 2: Content Performance
5 EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES THAT WILL REVOLUTIONIZE CONTENT MARKETING

Content has taken the marketing world by storm and it’s here to stay. With it comes endless array of emerging technologies aimed at helping marketers create content, distribute it and prove its value. But more does not really help mean better. Learn the 5 Next Gen technologies that have the potential to redefine the future of content marketing. Upgrade your technology stack to craft audience­relevant content at scale, and distribute content to the right people via right channel at the right time, with clear measurement and adjustment along the way.

In this session, we’ll cover technologies around key problem areas for content marketers like:

• Content Planning: Using intuitive listening tools to discover and focus on themes and topics that will resonate with your audiences.
• Content Organization: Get a handle on your publishing calendars by tagging, organizing and structuring your content. Simplify your approval and publishing workflows.
• Real­time Response: Ride the wave of trending content which may be relevant to your brand and business. These tools not only expose content trending now, but also what is forecasted to peak over the next several hours.
• Efficient content publishing: Stop manually publishing and use advanced CMS platforms that integrate multi­channel content delivery.

Track 1: Content Planning
WHAT’S NEXT: TACTICS FOR THE PEER-TO-PEER ECONOMY

Culture and commerce are changing right before our eyes. In just a few short years, the whole dynamic of “buying things” is undergoing serious upheaval with the arrival of the “sharing” or “peer-to-peer” economy. But when consumers are helping other consumers, where does this leave brands? In the B2C world, it’s easier to see how to take advantage of the trend, but what about for B2B’s? We’ll dive into the top 7 trends that are changing the landscape of modern marketing and where exactly content marketing fits in. And we’ll learn the top 5 tactics to catch the “sharing” and “peer-to-peer” wave.

In this session you’ll learn how to:

• Plan a live, in person marketing event that embraces the peer-to-peer, sharing dynamic
• Get customers to produce their own content for the benefit of your company through the sharing dynamic
• Operationalize your content marketing to include your customers in every campaign you do

Track 3: Content Distribution
CONTENT AMPLIFICATION: DO THE MATH AND MASTER THE ART

Sure, those two-cent clicks you get from social channels to promote your content might seem like a good deal. But before you turn the volume up, you’ll need to do math on the madness. Better yet, simply tune into this session and surface with the shortcut to sell socially well, fast. You’ll learn to create winning content and amplify it in the right channels to get the bang you demand for your buck. You’ll learn a new content creation method that will cut bounce rates by more than half. And you’ll learn more secrets about persona messaging, content planning and how to use content to build relationships and MAX your Content Promotion Investment (CPI).

Track 1: Content Planning
PANEL: HOW TO CRAFT A GLOBAL CONTENT STRATEGY

Whether you’ve got international clients or aspire to jump over the pond and beyond, content marketing is the gateway for success wherever your journey takes you, near and far. This session will provide the tactics and insights on which your business should formulate its international content marketing strategies. We’ll review the classic pitfalls that can cost you time, and money. From increased search engine visibility to direct and targeted lead generation, you’ll learn how to create high quality global content that can have the kind of impact that simply wasn’t available to organizations in the past.

Track 2: Content Performance
WHAT’S NEXT: ENTERPRISE CONTENT BARTERING

Building a list of qualified leads for marketing efforts is hard enough. Generating great content that performs in all the channels is even harder. But reaching new customers and driving bottom line sales­­ that’s close to impossible these days. Until now. By simply teaming up with the right partners to create content and share leads­­similarly­minded marketing teams can create far higher value offerings for their prospects, and grow their list of leads and customers much easier than ever before. Learn how to jump in this new high velocity train ride that is sure to deliver the high­quality pre­vetted leads you demand for all your marketing efforts

In this session you’ll learn:

• How to choose the right partner for your bartering efforts
• How to create an irresistible win­win for both parties
• Which distribution channels are best for bartered content
• How to both measure and maximize LTV and ROI

KEYNOTE
SHAREOLOGY: HOW SHARING POWERS THE HUMAN ECONOMY

Sharing has always been a fundamental human behavior that has been central to our survival as a human race. Sharing stories, processes, insights, philosophies,techniques, secrets; sharing is how we connect to each other and advance forward.

Now with technologies like the Internet, video, social media and mobile, sharing has increased its ease and scale to a global level. Information is no longer confined to geographical boundaries; proximity is no longer required to pass information from one human to another.

As humans, we need to rethink how, what, why and where we share ideas to influence and affect the direction we want for our global tribe.

Bryan will discuss The H2H Sharing Connection:

• Why learning how to speak “human” will make you a better sharer and communicator.
• The Shift to the Human Economy – What is the Human Economy and what factors are converging right now to cause it.
• The Human Business Movement – Why now more than ever are people awakened to humanizing their brands?
• The Shareability Quotient – Tools you can use to know if what you’re sharing will resonate with who you want it to.
• The Different Types of Sharers – Learn which type of sharer you are, and how it can connect you with others like you.
• Building Your Personal Brand – Why owning your “Social Body Language” and personal brand has never been more critical.