Con­tent mar­ket­ing allows brands to not only tell their own sto­ries, but to actu­al­ly own the con­ver­sa­tion. And pro­vid­ed the con­tent they cre­ate is rel­e­vant, it can eas­i­ly be repur­posed much like a Thanks­giv­ing turkey. That’s accord­ing to a slew of experts who spoke at Dig­i­tal Sum­mit Phoenix last week. In addi­tion, they say brands should not be afraid to show a lit­tle per­son­al­i­ty in their social and dig­i­tal con­tent and to look to search queries for guid­ance about what con­sumers want. These tips and more fol­low.

Tip 1: Become The Media

Jason Miller, senior man­ag­er of con­tent mar­ket­ing at LinkedIn, took a page from music his­to­ry and point­ed to punk rock­ers from New York and Eng­land that couldn’t get the press to pay atten­tion to them in the Dis­co era.

“They became so out­landish and made peo­ple pay atten­tion,” he said, quot­ing anoth­er musi­cian, Jel­lo Biafra, who said, “Don’t hate the media, become the media.”

“This is what we can do right now,” Miller added. “You don’t have to hate the media or have a huge PR push. You can tell your own sto­ry and own your own inten­tion. You have time to tell your own sto­ry. You can start this morn­ing and make an impact this after­noon.”

Tip 2: Get Relevant Content Out There

If 90 per­cent of the buy­ing cycle is done before a con­sumer is ready to talk to a sales per­son, brand­ed con­tent should be out there – and opti­mized – for said con­sumer to find.

“We don’t need more con­tent, we need more rel­e­vant con­tent,” Miller said, not­ing search engines have killed con­tent farms, but they weren’t help­ing any­one any­way.

“A search engine’s job is to serve rel­e­vant con­tent and a con­tent marketer’s job is to [cre­ate] rel­e­vant con­tent,” Miller added.

Tip 3: Create A Big Rock Piece Of Content

Accord­ing to Miller, a Big Rock Piece of Con­tent is “a sub­stan­tial piece of con­tent, like a video, ebook or what­ev­er. But if you want to own the con­ver­sa­tion, you have to have a stake in the ground.”

In LinkedIn’s case, the Big Rock Piece of Con­tent that put its stake in the ground is the 65-page Sophis­ti­cat­ed Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn. It includes third-par­ty inter­views and the like to add val­i­da­tion because “we want [read­ers] to con­sume this and [if they are read­ing] on a mobile device, [we want them to] come back when they’re ready.”

Tip 4: Repurpose Content Like Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey

That means once the stake is in the ground with the Big Rock Piece of Con­tent, it can be sliced up just like a turkey into oth­er types of con­tent such as slide pre­sen­ta­tions, blogs, info­graph­ics, webi­na­rs, and videos.

“Use turkey slices to fuel your con­tent hubs,” Miller said. “One big raw piece of con­tent can be sliced and diced. Repur­pose, repur­pose, and repur­pose some more.”

Tip 5: The Blog Is The Social Media Rug That Ties The Room Together

Acknowl­edg­ing “the blog is not the sex­i­est piece of social media,” Miller said it allows brands to divvy up con­tent into “blog­ging food groups” and serve con­sumers “a steady diet of qual­i­ty con­tent.”

Much like the same food diet every day bores the taste buds, so, too, does the same con­tent diet bore con­sumers. That’s why Miller divides con­tent into the fol­low­ing food groups:

• Raisin Bran Con­tent, which is easy to dish out and helps ease con­sumers into your con­tent, is good for Mon­days.
• Spinach Con­tent, which pro­vides a bit more to chew on and includes more thought lead­er­ship pieces, is best served Tues­days.
• Roast Con­tent fol­lows on Wednes­days. “That’s a sub­stan­tial piece of con­tent,” Miller said. “You want to own the con­ver­sa­tion with the Roast.”
• Tabas­co Con­tent comes on Thurs­days. That’s the kind of con­tent that lights a fire, takes an opin­ion and gets peo­ple talk­ing, Miller said.
• Choco­late Cake Con­tent is for Fri­days. That’s fun con­tent that “sends [con­sumers] into the week­end with a smile to start the process all over again [on Mon­day].”

Tip 6: Inject Your Personality Into Your Content

Cit­ing his own blog posts like, 10 Hys­ter­i­cal­ly Fun­ny Reviews of Led Zep­pelin IV By 10 Peo­ple Who Hate It and 5 Con­tent Mar­ket­ing Lessons from Guns ‘N’ Ros­es, Miller said, “We inject­ed per­son­al­i­ty into the con­tent and [con­sumers] want­ed to come back.”

The lat­ter even inspired a tweet from the band itself.

Tip 7: Emulate Kiss

The four mem­bers of the band Kiss work togeth­er to deliv­er an amaz­ing prod­uct, as should any brand, Miller said.

Like each band mem­ber, SEO lays the ground­work, social fuels the con­tent, con­tent fuels demand gen­er­a­tion, and demand gen­er­a­tion ties every­thing togeth­er, he added.

“[Kiss] con­sis­tent­ly [deliv­ers] con­tent that their fans want to con­sume and share,” Miller not­ed.

In addi­tion, they built a thriv­ing com­mu­ni­ty in the Kiss Army, Miller said.

“[The Kiss Army] could be called the best com­mu­ni­ty in the world,” Miller said. “They con­sume con­tent and feel like they won’t be let down by the content…if you don’t have com­mu­ni­ty, you don’t real­ly have any­thing.”

Tip 8: Use LinkedIn

One out of three pro­fes­sion­als on the plan­et is on LinkedIn and with 332 mil­lion mem­bers world­wide, Miller said, “This is this place to be if you’re a con­tent mar­keter.”

What’s more, LinkedIn con­tent pages receive sev­en times the page views its job pages do, which, he not­ed, makes for “a prime oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate con­tent and do it well.”

Tip 9: Optimize Your Content

“You might be pro­duc­ing con­tent, but you’re still shoot­ing your­self in the foot if you’re not opti­miz­ing prop­er­ly,” says Arnie Kuenn, CEO of con­tent mar­ket­ing agency Ver­ti­cal Mea­sures. “If you con­fuse Google, you will lose.”

Tip 10: Add Fresh Content

Accord­ing to Kuenn, Google knows that most blogs and web­sites “start off with a bang” and fail a few months lat­er.

“It is smart enough to watch and make sure [the site is] adding fresh con­tent,” he added.

Tip 11: Use Google Autocomplete And Suggested Related Queries For New Content Ideas

Social is great shar­ing tool, but when con­sumers want to buy some­thing, they go online and do research. And 86 per­cent of con­sumers con­duct non-brand­ed queries, Kuenn said.

What’s more, every year, the search query gets a lit­tle longer. Plus, con­sumers are now speak­ing into their phones to ask ques­tions. This means brands need to pro­vide con­tent that cus­tomers are search­ing for. And brands are get­ting addi­tion­al clues in these increas­ing­ly longer queries.

So, Kuenn sug­gest­ed, go to Google and start a search and see what comes up in Auto­com­plete for what con­sumers are already look­ing for and cre­ate con­tent that answers those ques­tions. Plus, there are even more sug­ges­tions at the bot­tom of page, which, again, gives even more oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands to cre­ate con­tent con­sumers are actu­al­ly search­ing for.

Tip 12: Know Your Audience

Using the exam­ple of Malaysia Air­lines, which had recent­ly had mul­ti­ple acci­dents, Andy Beal, CEO of social media mon­i­tor­ing tool Track­ur, point­ed to the brand’s My Ulti­mate Buck­et List pro­mo­tion as a good exam­ple of a brand that cre­at­ed con­tent with­out think­ing about its audi­ence.

“You have to under­stand: Will this res­onate with our audi­ence? Will they rebel against it? What will they think?” Beal asked. “And the audi­ence is beyond just your cus­tomer base. What will oth­ers think?”

He also point­ed to GoDad­dy’s 2015 Super Bowl ad, which inad­ver­tent­ly pro­mot­ed pup­py mills, say­ing, “They didn’t con­sid­er the wider audi­ence.”

Tip 13: The Consumer Is The Center Of The Universe

“As mar­keters, we have to make sure we’re talk­ing to [con­sumers] where and when they are and in the right, rel­e­vant way that offers a val­ue exchange,” said Kate Watts, man­ag­ing direc­tor of dig­i­tal agency Huge.

That means con­stant­ly think­ing about how con­sumers engage online and how a brand can engage with its audi­ence in ways that make sense, she added.

Tip 14: Show, Don’t Tell

Devices like iPhones and GoPros make is easy for brands to shoot high-qual­i­ty video that shows con­sumers what­ev­er a brand wants to get across, said Rob Humphrey, glob­al senior mar­ket­ing man­ag­er at LinkedIn. That means brands need sim­ply to find the right sto­ries and tell them.