We’re officially open for speaker applications for our seventh annual Content Marketing Conference. Last year we debuted the CMC virtual experience, attracting 15,000 registered attendees, making us the largest gathering of content marketers on the planet.

We gleaned a lot about what attendees expect from online sessions, and how they traverse the sessions, keynotes and resources. It turns out the traditional “40-minute session” covering random (but interesting) topics may not be the way to go.

We’ll be featuring 10 keynotes and 10 workshops once again this year, so do apply if you’re ready.

But our session curriculum will be more tactical this year, covering five pillars of content marketing. And each session will require more clarity on what attendees will be learning, replacing guesswork and friction with specificity.

The traditional ”40 minute session” will be replaced by what we call JAM sessions that are less fluffy, laser focused, tactically driven, and time-restriction free.

JAMS Sessions will:

• Showcase a specific tactic, technique, workflow and/or process you’ve mastered
• Definitively make students smarter, faster, better and/or wiser
• Vary from 10 to 30 minutes depending on the complexity of the topic
• Support ONE of the FIVE content marketing pillars we’re covering this year

JAM speakers will be:

• Journalistic: Tell a great story about the problem your JAM solves
• Altruistic: Show devotion to listeners by not selling you or your company
• Masterful: Showcase tactics/technique with live demos AND slides

All the keynotes will be streamed online at specific times throughout the day. But JAMs and workshops will be pre-recorded and delivered by April 1.

You can record your JAM on your own, or by appointment with CMC founder Byron White filling in as your host, audience and coach for each of the JAMs you’ll be presenting. Either way, you want to create a JAM that it makes it to the top of the popularity list, like strawberry JAM!

Can I get access to the CMC 365 portal to view the content?
All CMC 2021 attendees, speakers, keynotes and trainers get instant access to the CMC 365 portal featuring past recordings from 200 sessions, 40 workshops, 20 keynotes and dozens of downloadable resources.

How would you compare traditional sessions vs JAM sessions?
The new JAM sessions will be more aligned with the online learning goals we’ve discovered with our experience last year.

For example, a six-minute JAM session on “How Quora Helps Pinpoint Killer Topics for Content Marketing” offers clarity on the value proposition and benefits. But a 40-minute traditional session on “How to Find Great Topics for Content Marketing” offers guesswork on what will be covered, and potential friction if the presented tactics are nothing new or already in use.

What are this year’s five pillars of content marketing, and sub-categories?
You’ll select one of these five pillars we’re covering with your pitch: content planning, creation, optimization, distribution, performance or management.

You’ll submit a subcategory as well. For example, Content Distribution might have sub-categories for LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.