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As many of us have discovered through direct experience, plenty of self-proclaimed ‘experts’ just are not. The world of content marketing is no different.
While attending the Content Marketing World (#CMWorld) in Cleveland, Ohio (tweeting as @carden) BlueChipCommunication (tweeting as @BlueChipComm) has been playing a stealthy side-game: sorting the pretenders from the proven performers among the speaker line-up (which, in the interests of full disclosure, includes myself).
If you're a thought leader, want to be one, or are charged with a thought leadership strategy in financial services, it's a safe bet your time is in short supply.
The aim here is to save you endless hours by giving you the brutal shortcut to our top three thought leaders of the week.
Yes, there were plenty of great speakers, and some people who have achieved great results. But what makes someone deserve the thought leader moniker?
How did we come up with the list?
It seemed to us the only content marketing experts you'd want to follow are those who:
- Have a commercial track record
- Influence the influencers
- Are generous with their learning
We (hey we're Australian) like people whose profile isn't bigger than the person. Among the speakers here most are authors, speakers, bloggers. Plenty are also media personalities in some way.
So we particularly looked for people with experience and track record over strong opinions and self-promotion. That is, people who have transcended their original professional background to use a multi-disciplinary suite of marketing tools.
They also have to publish enough to make them ‘followable’. Which makes sense but (sadly) also rules out a number of great people leading in-house marketing functions.
Three thought leaders to the thought leaders
1) Ann Handley @marketingprofs
Forbes listed Ann as the second most influential person in social media in 2011. Her book, “Content Rules" is one of the leading content marketing books, and she's an influencer on LinkedIn – which is where I recommend you follow her. She blogs for MarketingProfs and (we love this) has a personal blog. Her presentation at #CMWorld was part-practical tips, part-impassioned plea for innovation, and wholly inspirational. Ann's day job is as Chief Content Officer for MarketingProfs, and she writes for a range of media outlets. She's also exceedingly generous with her knowledge, and judging by her social media and content marketing success, that's working out.
2) Todd Wheatland @toddwheatland
Expat Todd Wheatland is on his way back to Australia. Lucky, because he knows his Slideshare (and pretty much everything else) stuff. This walking encyclopaedia of ‘everything useful in content marketing’ literally wrote the book on SlideShare (one of the most important and under-used B2B social media tools for financial services). Yesterday, he spoke about Visual Storytelling. Beautifully rendered slides told a story far beyond most thinking in financial services, from B2C to B2B to cartoons and infographics. There's a summary here. For the full book (‘The Marketer's Guide to Visual Storytelling’) register on his blog. In his spare time he's Global Head of Marketing for Kelly OCG, and VP Marketing and Thought leadership for Kelly.
3) Joe Chernov @jchernov
2012 Content Marketer of the Year Joe Chernov moved from Eloqua, where he was pivotal in turning it into a content marketing force, to the start-up Kinvey last year. His presentation at #CMWorld was well-researched, practical and caused a twitter vacuum. Audience tweets fell off a virtual cliff while Joe shared "12 Must-Know Tools to Scale Your Content Marketing". Avoiding the big names many of us know Joe took a thorough look at some of the less known, but potentially game-changing, emerging technology tools for advanced content marketers. He also has a well-kept LinkedIn page where you can follow what he's up to.
How to follow them?
All three on my very short list are prolific content producers. The good news is you can sip from the firehose by just following them on LinkedIn. We've include their Twitter handles … but really, how much content can you handle from the content makers?
And one other thing about each? Their #CMWorld slides were stunning. Each told their story well in pictures, not just words. And that's a story for another day.
You can register to find out for more about Content Marketing World by emailing content@bluechipcommunication.com.au. And we'll send you our summary of the event once it's done.
