Mozcon is the most respected inbound marketing conference in the world. Held annually in Seattle, the home of Moz.com, this conference features several of the top minds in the digital marketing space. As it has been since 2012, when Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive gave his moving speech on R.C.S, this year’s Mozcon focused heavily on content marketing. Content marketing as defined by its Wikipediapage is “any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers.” It is a powerful, effective, and most “clean” way to drive more links, social mentions, and traffic to a website. The following are the top five examples of content marketing from Mozcon 2015.
1. Bloomberg Business’ Krugman Battles the Austerians
In this amazing piece of content marketing, Bloomberg Business dynamically exhibits how a Nobel Prize Columnist has been battling “Austerians,” supporters of government budget cuts while in a recession.
The first thing that draws you in is the look and feel of this content. It’s not just an article with the Bloomberg post frame; it was thoroughly planned out to attract a target audience. It has been styled to imitate the pixelated style of the popular Street Fighter II video game that was released in 1991 — a perfect way to entice the 30-40 something age group.
Secondly, the images are animated. There’s movement, which is eye-grabbing, compared the static images found on most sites. The constant movement of every image makes you want to continue reading through the entire piece.
Finally, as you scroll up and down with your mouse, this page doesn’t simply scroll in that same direction. It scrolls left to right, adding another layer of individuality.
Bloomberg took an article that could have been incredibly dry, and turned it into a pulsing, targeted piece of well thought out content.
2. Bloomberg Business’ What Is Code
Right off of the bat, the text of this piece tells you who it’s meant for. It is for the older executive who didn’t grow up with internet, but who uses it, understands that it’s an essential part of business today, and knows that investors are dumping billions of dollars into its expansion, as well as that every “kid” he/she hires is a whiz at using the internet, and that he is really mystified by this technology.
This piece of content is just phenomenal, it’s quite genius and well thought out. There is moving images to keep your attention, great writing, and it’s interactive and broken down in a manner that “The Man in that Taupe Blazer” can understand.
Part 2.1 is the perfect example of why this piece of content marketing is so great.
You can actually click on all of the keys on this keyboard, and when you do, it flashes the code that the computer interprets to render that letter “a.”
This piece takes you through coding, algorithms, languages, Python, and much more! By the end of it you find that, yes, the older generation is the target, but also that anyone who wants to know the magic behind a website can learn from this piece. It can get you started on your path to learning more about programming. It’s one of the most evergreen pieces of content on the web, meaning that it will gain traffic, links, and social mentions for a long time, until someone makes something better or until there are no more computers.
3. Airbnb Uses Interesting Locations as Content Marketing
Airbnb proves that you don’t need to go out of your service scope to create really compelling content. Apparently, they made deals with Maracana Stadium in Brazil and the United Center in Chicago to offer fans a chance to win a night’s stay in some of the those sports arenas, which are among the most stunning in the world. Winners even get tours from stars of each sports franchise.
This is one of the most compelling contests you’ll see online. What Chicago Bulls fan who has his/her own site wouldn’t want to write about this promotion and link to this page? What soccer fan in Brazil wouldn’t want to share this page on Facebook or send a tweet to Renato Gaucho referencing this promotion? Airbnb probably targeted markets where they needed help with rankings and visibility, and this is a flat out genius way of doing so. Even the images they used are high quality and shareable, giving fans a look at parts of a stadium they might otherwise see.
4. Depop Capitalizes on Topical News
Who doesn’t remember “the dress,” a huge spike in pop culture caused by a gown that looked blue and black to some people and white and gold to others.? For a week, it was inescapable and was discussed at every marketing meeting and news reports.
The company behind it all, Depop, quickly capitalized on this red hot occasion. It went out and bought the dress, then proceeded to call reporters and offer them the chance to photograph the dress in person, so that they could have their own unique content.
This is just pure intelligent marketing. Depop took a piece of offline content that they knew could be turned into online, television, and print content that would be a guaranteed success. To recap, they took an idea from online content and created an offline version to turn into multimedia content that was all branded with their brand name. Simply incredible!
5. Virgin America Differentiates Itself By Adding Personality to a Requirement
Virgin America’s brand has always stood out in the airline industry. It’s an airline that is not afraid to be unique and reflect their owner, Richard Branson’s, personality. Ever since it’s rapping flight attendant debuted, all airlines have focused more on being more memorable and distinctive.
Every flight that I have been on has recently has featured a few jokes by a flight attendant or a custom video. But, Virgin America is not afraid to do it louder — and to connect everything they do to their brand. Their safety video has not strayed from their brand as it features an eye-opening, attention-grabbing, and humorous song-dance routine.
Would you rather see a video that entertains and is memorable, or something that is shown because it’s mandated by federal law? Virgin America never skips an opportunity to stand out with all of the content they put out, from safety videos, airplane lighting, the ambiance of the check-in counter, and their uniforms. All of this is content are pieces that somebody, somewhere can share and publish, thus attracting more customers to Virgin Airlines.
Conclusion
No longer can companies just rely on putting up a listicle or a how-to blog post and call it content marketing. This is a day and age of doing things better and one-upping everyone, not everyone in your space, but everyone online. The goal for a content marketer is to use every resource out there to create a piece that will be so incredible, that every one of your targets and even people outside of your demographic, has to check it out. Content marketing has to be compelling and memorable, and like these examples, has to push everyone to be better.Top image via: Moz.
