Great Content Matters Linkdex Think Tank 2013: Evolving Attitude to Content

Editor's Notes

• #2: Linkdex Think Tank – Great Content MattersOther speakers:Simon Penson - Zazzle MediaAndrew Smith - CIPR/EschermannMarcos Guerrero - Thomas CookMat Morrison - StarComMediaVestDanny Denhard - VoucherCodes/EuropeJonathan Alderson – TwentySixDigitalme##STARTGood afternoon everyone, my name is Phil MacKechnie; I’m a digital Marketeer, with a particular love for SEO and content marketing. It’s a privilege,and a pleasure,to be here to speak to you today about the topic of content. I work for a fantastic company, moneysupermarket.com where I’m privileged to be Head of Organic Campaigns & Money. It’s a company I feel passionate about and feel it makes a difference. For anyone who is not familiar with me or MoneySupermarket, PAUSE…We help consumers make the most off their money and providers make the most of their marketing by displaying comparison tables to consumers, encouraging them to switch, whether its car insurance, or Home & contents, or energy providers. In these Austeer times its everyday families who need us most, and we work hard for you, to make it easy for you to switchwe fight The Institutions, the Energy providers, PCW’s, and the Rip off merchant in Great Britain on your behalf.Last year, we helped 1 in 5 households in Britain save over £1,000,000,000 in 2012.By 2015, we want to save Britons £2bn. I’m responsible for a new multi-skilled and discipline team of marketeers (not just SEOs) covering Video Production, Creative design, Development, and Social Media. All underpinned by SEO best practice, agility and integration…PAUSE but more about that later…Firstly, I wanted to especially thank Matt Roberts & Clarissa at Linkdex for inviting me to speak today. It’s again a privilege, and for me a personal appreciation to be asked by Matt to talk to you. My time at MoneySupermarket has been a personal journey for me. Much as today is also. Thanks to Matt I’m able to strike off a significant personal goal I’ve had on my bucket list. I’m reliably informed that today’s audience in attendance is well over 150 people. For me I’ve often avoided large speaking events. So today, assuming I can complete my 30mins on stage without be heckled, with your help, I’m able to hopefully strike this personal goal off. So thanks in advance. PAUSETo start off today, I wanted to share my perspective on a fact, on how the World around us is changing rapidly.Having recently read some fantastic books on the subject the following statement reinforces to me where in time we find ourselves.“With the invention and rise of the web we are seeing the largest increase in the amount of information accessible to us since the printing press was invented over 550 years ago.”This is truly a revolutionary time and it will test much of what we accepted as fact for hundreds of years.
• #3: There are 4 massive shifts that are shaping this new worldThe first shift is the rise in accessible information.The accessibility of information is increasing exponentially and is not going to stop within our life time. A single query into a search engine produces millions of results. People are adding information to Wikipedia faster than we can read it. Every single day hundreds of millions of people post billions of distinct pieces of content online. All of this information is digital and can be analysed for patterns. 2. The second shift is a major change in the structure of the web.It’s moving away from being built around content and is being re-built around people. E.g.Facebook, Linkdex social circles can monitor thisThis is correlated with a major change to how people spend their time online. They are spending less time interacting with content and more time communicating with other people.3. The third shift is that for the first time we can accurately map and measure social interaction. Many of our theories can be quantitatively tested. This is very exciting for researchers but it will also transform how we think about marketing and advertising. Many things that were previously hard to measure for example; word of mouth marketing, can now be analysed and understood. We can now start to measure how people really influence other people and it will change how we do business. 4. The fourth shift is the dramatic increase in our understanding of how we make decisions. In the past decade we have learned more about the workings of the brain than in all the time before that. Many of our theories about rational thought have turned out to be false and we have greatly under estimated the power of our non-conscious brain. If we want to be successful in this new age of exponentially increasing information and a web built around people we will need to understand social behaviour. We will need to understand how people are connected, how they interact, and how they are influenced by different people in their lives.  We will also need to understand how people make decisions and how the different parts of their brain drive their behaviour. PAUSE This presentation is about how these changes have influenced MoneySupermarket’s evolving attitude to content.
• #6: Which is roughly 16% of the UK population or every single person living in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland MoneySupermarket group represents a trio of savings brands. We’re the biggest voice in saving money, made up of 3 important partsMoneySupermarket TravelSupermarket MoneySavingExpert
• #7: - Always OnFor the new consumer,search is always on, whether on the go or at home and work. 77% of mobile searches are in a location (work or home) likely to have a PC available to them- NetworkedTime spent on social networks- Multi deviceMobile, tablet, TV, desktop
• #8: To satisfy the new consumer we must be…
• #17: Renamed ourselves OP rather SEO, removed SEO from role titles. Need to professionalise and mature SEO to be generalist marketeers – appreciative of other channelsWe created a new multi-skilled campaigns team within OP; focused on agility, integration and best practice SEO
• #18: INTEGRATED COMMUNICATIONS PLANNING = Advertising and communication
• #20: Testament to how effective the process can work…SuperKid Savers campaign has been the best performing campaign to-date for earning links – over 700 links and it still has a great deal of life in it.  We have also recently been nominated for the Best Use of Search at the European Search Awards.What’s makes this humbling and even more special is that this campaign was led by one of the Associates in the Organic Performance Money team, Lucy Mather – her first year in SEO and marketing – making this an even more impressive result.The Campaign objective was to show the importance of teaching children about saving money…Bloggers were asked to share their tips on how they teach their own children about saving money10 of the best entries were chosen by the judging panel. These bloggers and their families were then invited to attend an event dayThe tips plus other educational material were then made available as a downloadable pack and a video interview with the kids was shared
• #21: Results were fantastic!To date a total of 716 backlinks were earnedOrganic Press coverage To name a few, Sun Newspaper and the National Geographic featured the campaign in their online and offline publicationsSocial coverage Via Twitter, Facebook and Youtube – with specialist video content shared
• #23: Step 1: INSIGHTS“First of all the plan needs to start with the consumer and their needs, thinking about how can the brand add value with useful insight and information instead of a focus on the product and its features. Step 2: IDEAWhat is the message or idea which will consistently address the consumer need or opportunity in the market, ensuring that what ever activity we plan in response it is aligned to company message, objectives and strategyStep 3: PRODUCTIONWho are the production stakeholders, the lead times to enable ideas to reach the consumers in a timely manner? Management of stakeholders expectations within the business and briefs are key here, ensuring that planned activity is communicated at all times.Step 4: PROMOTIONThink about ALL the content you have, both paid, owned and earned media. A great strategy takes advantage of the right one at the right time.” Step 5: REPORTINGConsistent measurement of performance is one of the most important areas where we can improve as a business. Establishing consistent and relevant KPIs to the metrics of success are crucial. This will allow an ability to test and learn.
• #27: Unless you have worked in a media agency, few traditionalSEOs todayunderstand the35 year old POE model.Main points: depending on your objectives e.g. Brand reach, recall, market penetration, rankings growth you will use a different pulley or lever to achieve the desired affect.SEOs and marketing teams in general typically take an approach of pulling all the lever, all the time. This can be inefficient use of budget and harm incremental value which could be learned from test and learn