14.28 Wrapping up! Thank you for joining us today here or on twitter (#TAGtribe)! We’re leaving in style on ukulele music 🙂
14.25 Asked where would they put their money in therms of 2013 content, whether webinars or anything else, Sue suggests making partnership with media owners as they already know their audience, as well as how to tell a story. Ann takes her point of step forward: “Hire journalists!”
14.22 A new point made by Neville on which all our speakers agree: Content isn’t new.
14.20 Sue suggests thinking about “What makes your particular brand special? Why should anyone bother? and it could be that you play ukulele like nobody else.”
14.19 “It could be a weekly podcast or a series of instagrams, as long as you start somewhere,” says Ann to small businesses thinking ‘Oh, we have to write a blog!’.
14.17 Ann suggests thinking about your customers from a customer point of you, as a way to differentiate between good content and noise. Sue advices reflection on what makes content shareable, as well as being authentic because your audience can tell otherwise.
14.14 Our ukulele player says: “As a content provider and a brand(er), it’s not about me, it’s about creating a story.” Word.
14.11 To underline the importance of social to both taking advertising further and marketing purposes Ann gives the example of the girl who kissed her burger. Check it out, our speakers say it’s a great way to embrace social.
14.09 Advertising is not redundant says Sue, it’s changing. The point of a 5-sec as is to get the person seeing it to talk about it, to share it, and the way it could evolve (at the heart of content) is a very interesting new model, adds Neville.
14.05 “It’s about people talking to people,” underlines Neville. But tells us we don’t see this in practice, sharing his disappointment at being yet to find a brand that gets this in practice.
14.03 “If you’re a service brand and talk about that but when your customer calls you you put them on hold, you are not a service brand,” explains Sue.
14.02 Can brands really be authentic? (second on-site question)
14.01 “We’re at this magical moment in history where we have the ability to speak directly to the people that we want to speak to,” says Ann in reply to a Bernie case study of heading to present social to four tech guys who dismissed the idea. “Why wouldn’t you want to do that? What a tremendous opportunity!” she says.
13.57 Talking about the risk of social user generated content (our first on-site audience question), Neville points out the difference between a desire to be social and the commitment behind being social.
13.53 Going to Minter Dial’s question first. Ann makes a distinction between serving your customer and selling to your customer. Sue takes her reply forward saying “letting consumers understand your business” is key by creating their own content, telling their own stories and that it definitely helps if your CEO buys in to that. With regards to content creation, Neville says “the CEO has to be actively involved. You can’t delegate content.” Commitment, Credibility and involvement is key, he stresses. But ultimately it’s your audience that needs pleasing says Ann. “If your audience is please then your CEO will be pleased too, the reverse not necessarily true.”
13.40 “I think there’s content, and there’s content and [then] there’s truth,” says Sue Unerman.
13.37 Getting ready to go live now! We’ve got about 45 minutes so gather your questions! Talking content here and what it is, what’s content for you?
13.35 There’s also a ukulele so you know things are going to get interesting.
13.15 We’re warming up for the Google Hangout live blog. Send us your questions on content, tech, video, leads, spam, sales, blogs, on-line, off line, corporate, micro, tribes, tools, convergence, real time and anything else you can think of. Speakers Ann Handley, Sue Unerman and Neville Hobson are already here.
