I shared this presentation on Content Marketing World, Sydney, with the Brisbane Content Strategy group in April. Content Marketing World is an awesome event run by the Content Marketing Institute, a US-based organisation focused on content marketing for content officers and agencies, larger businesses and organisations. In this presentation I share the key takeaways from each of the talks I personally attended. The biggest overall takeaway for me was that content is not a cost but an investment. Invest in quality content that appeals to your target audience and that solves their problems, and you will gradually build your authority! Another key takeaway was that content should be geared towards share-ability. What makes a piece of content so compelling that your audience can't help but share it? That's the question every marketer should be asking! If you feel that content marketing seems a bit overwhelming, don't give up! You probably already have a tonne of content that you can repurpose! Content Marketing World was well worth attending and if you're a content junkie like me, I highly recommend attending the event in 2015. It's fantastic to be part of the content marketing revolution here in Australia!

1. Stories from #cmworld
Sydney March 31 to April 2
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2. When I showed up to the Content
Marketing World Conference in
Sydney, I didn’t know anyone.
So, what better way to break the ice
than to tweet with everyone at the
event…

3. What happens when you put
300 content marketers in a
room for 72 hours?

5. Yep, we even nearly bumped April
Fools Day!
I don’t think I’ve ever been to a
conference where there were that
many people tweeting! Usually it’s
just me, or me and one other person

Awesome!

6. Wine and Podcasts
After eating and drinking a fair amount (ehem) prior to the show, I
settled down on the floor, kicked my shoes off and watched Joe Pulizzi
and Robert Rose run their live Podcast with my new friend Sara (who I’d
met just minutes before).
(And we tweeted one another during the show… sad but true)

7. Wine and Podcasts

8. Mark Shaefer

9. Mark Shaefer
I had interviewed Mark on my Podcast show
just a few days prior to the event, so when I
met him for the first time, I gave him a great
big hug.
Podcast shows are awesome icebreakers!
Of course, his talk was as insightful as ever.
Here are the highlights…

10. Mark Shaefer

11. Robert Rose
It was Robert’s advice to frame our
services in terms of planning and not
strategy that lead to a pretty
fundamental change in the way I
promoted my consultancy after the
conference.

12. Robert Rose

13. Coleen Jones
Coleen brought home to me that personalisation needs
a great deal of attention to detail on the tech side of
things. This means conversations and communication
between tech heads and marketers--not always
easy, but sooooo essential.
Her talk gave me a new appreciation for marketing
automation and the need to get it right!

14. Coleen Jones

15. Bernadette Jiwa
My favourite presenter by far!
It’s so easy to forget how important
story telling is in marketing. Bernadette
not only wove a great story, but her
Black Milk pants were the talk of the
conference that afternoon…for all the
right reasons of course.

16. Bernadette Jiwa

17. Todd Wheatland
It had been a loooong while since
I’d studied the psychology of
communication at uni, so Todd’s
talk was a good refresher.

18. Todd Wheatland

19. Jesse Desjardins
The Tourism Australia presentation was
definitely a highlight of the conference.
Jesse showcased the amazing work his
team does on social media. I had used
their cool app just months before when I
travelled to the snow with my kids.

20. Jesse Desjardins

21. Tim Washer
Tim’s talk made me feel grateful to work with small
businesses.
It is so much easier to get good content out there
quickly when you don’t have to deal with a
bureaucracy. That said, it’s good to know how to
handle organisation politics when it comes to
creating content. It was good to be reminded of the
complexities larger organisations face.

22. Tim Washer

23. Bobbi Mahlab and
Chris Champion
Day 2 and my head was already spinning.
This case study had some useful tips about
investing in content and creating
membership communities.

24. Bobbi Mahlab and
Chris Champion

25. Joe Pulizzi & Jeff Bullas
Great session about small business content
marketing! Joe and Jeff were firing off one liners so
fast it was hard to keep up on Twitter!
This was definitely one of the more useful sessions for
me.

26. Joe Pulizzi & Jeff Bullas

27. Chris McWilliams
Triple M Sydney
This presentation caused a little controversy on
Twitter. Chris had a raw presentation style that didn’t
sit too well with everyone in the audience.
In any case, I did pick up some useful tips and ended
up writing a blog post about getting creative after the
conference.

28. Chris McWilliams
Triple M Sydney

29. Kevin Cain
Kevin’s content was great, if a bit dizzying. I
workshop building content systems with my
clients on a regular basis, so know only too well
how hard it is for people to get their heads
around building an effective content matrix.
Slooooooow Dowwwwn Kev! We want to take it
all in!

30. Kevin Cain

31. Tim Washer – Day 2
Yet another brilliant talk about creativity and
humour.
Yes, we do tend to take this marketing stuff a bit
too seriously sometimes! Thanks for the reminder
to look at the funny side!

32. Tim Washer – Day 2

33. Mark Shaefer – Day 2
The last session I attended was again by
Mark Shaefer.
Be more human! It doesn’t get more
simple does it?

34. Mark Shaefer – Day 2

35. So in the end I left feeling like I had made lots of new
friends.
I went home resolved to change a few things about the
way I run my content marketing consultancy, and with lots
of fresh ideas for my blog and my clients’ content.
There were people at this conference from many
industries, including higher education, banking, law and
health.
It is encouraging to see that content marketing is starting
to be taken seriously in Australia! I’m truly excited to be
part of the revolution that’s changing the face of marketing!
Bring on #CMWorld2015!

36. More about #cmworld
Sarah Mitchell: http://www.globalcopywriting.com/good-bad-
ugly-content-marketing-world-sydney/
King Content:
http://www.slideshare.net/King_Content/content-marketing-
world-sydney-top-tweets-day-one-2014
Mahlab Media:
http://www.slideshare.net/MahlabMedia/content-marketing-
world-sydney-top-125-tweeted-takeaways
John Cleese speech on creativity (this was referred to no less
than 5 times throughout the conference):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU5x1Ea7NjQ

37. The End
casmccullough.com