I’ve been reflecting on the sessions and conversations from Day 1 at Digital Summit Atlanta and have a couple of observations.
1. Brand storytelling is becoming a focus.
I’m glad to see this shift. I think about when I first got into this industry and how much focus what on SEO, which back then was basically keyword stuffing. Then as Google caught on to our bad behavior and started changing the algorithm to encourage quality content the focus started to shift back to the the people who are searching. Then entered social media and the cycle started over. Brands started making content “optimized” for clicks and gaming the system for shares and interaction to game the feed algorithms. Again as time passed the powers-at-be started making changes to punish bad behavior and encourage good content.
The truth is the brands that have always been successful even in the early days were the ones that cared about their audience and made content that they wanted. Content that was helpful to answer the questions they are searching, content that informs and inspires in the newsfeed. That’s not to discount the strategies required to get discovered because those are real, but good content doesn’t stop at it being discovered. It has to be meaningful to people or it’s just click-bait.
2. The Martech Stack is Changing
This is also an exciting conversation. The impending doom around third-party cookies is forcing our hand to get smart about how we deal with data. I’ve been a big proponent of brands owning their data for a while, mostly up until now for unified reporting across the entire funnel and more powerful attribution. There are other benefits as well, including getting to know your audience better so you can make content that is meaningful to them… see point 1. As the platforms continue down the path of walling off their gardens, brands have a choice to make. Either give the platforms control or take over responsibility and control of their data. It’s time to stop giving thrid parties our data to sell back to us (and our competitors) in the form of enhanced targeting.
I’m glad that the conversation is heading in the direction of ownership. Brands seeing their data as an asset to be owned and protected is the next frontier, and the future is now.
A bonus #3: People don’t use conference hashtags anymore.
This is my first in-person conference in a while and it’s interesting to see how little the conference hastag is being used on social media. I guess the days of documenting every slide from every talk on Twitter are gone. The only posts so far are speakers and sponsors.
Looking forward to Day 2, more sessions and more conversations. I’m also talking this afternoon @ 2:45, would love to see you there. Here’s a quick synopsis of my talk.
More. Faster. Better. How to Empower Teams to Create Content at Scale
Traditional ways of doing creative work are failing marketing teams worldwide, dooming them to move slower and spend more just to get beat out by a kid with an iPhone. It’s time we take a new approach to content. One that allows for authentic and authoritative stories to go out in channel-native ways with massive scalability.
https://atlanta.digitalsummit.com/sessions/more-faster-better/
