Toward the end of last year, we began thinking about content marketing webinars and how we could use them to engage with our members who are unable to attend physical events. The plan was to launch our CMA webinars toward the end of July 2020, due to Covid-19 we acted quickly and now as we approach the middle of July, we’ve delivered well over 100 webinars and seen over 3,000 unique registrants watch and engage through our platform. During this chaos and disruption, it’s been pretty great to see so many in our industry come together and share experiences whilst learning from others.
What’s coming up for the content marketing association?
As I’m sure you’re aware, the chances of us holding a physical event in 2020 are rather slim, so the team and I are working hard on some great virtual events which we aim to make just as good (if not better) than ‘real’ events. If you’ve run an event before, I’m sure you’ll know just how tricky it is to get the right people in the right room at the same time. One of the advantages of a virtual event is the ability to get great speakers from across the world with the ability to be on the same stage, so we plan to utilise this, which we believe will result in some superb CMA events.
Changes to the lockdown here in the UK mean many offices can reopen again. After speaking with a number of our members, it seems many have set October as the ‘back to work’ date. The way businesses have had to adapt over the last few months is a change that we’ll see long into the future of our industry. We’ll see flexible working 2.0, where even those that had flexible working before will see added flexibility, such as a change in hours worked and days in/out of the office.
Another big change will be virtual events and online meetings. From conversations with our members, it seems many of them have taken time over the last month to dramatically increase the technology in meeting spaces. Zoom, Google, FaceTime will play a much bigger role in our lives, even when we go back to the office.
There’s also been talk of ‘Zoom fatigue’, and although I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, I think to have five or more meetings a day can be rather exhausting, whether it’s ‘tubing’ it around London, or hitting ‘end-call-for-everyone’ only to frantically look for the link to the next one.
Last week with the CMA
We ran three great webinars last week. Emily and Brendan from Seenit joined us on Tuesday to talk about User-Generated Video (UGV), and showed some great examples of brands that are doing it well. This session also touched on points covered in our last Content Breakfast, with tips on how to direct and produce video in a different way. One of the examples that Brendan and Emily showed us was a unique way of capturing the story of a student during freshers week. This demonstrated how UGV is being used, but also how under-utilised it currently is.
We had great feedback from this session, and I’ve spoken with the Seenit team about running another webinar in August, so be sure to check back in a few weeks. You can also watch the full replay here …
Later that day we had an Award Masterclass with Storycoach, Ann Booth-Clibborn. This 30-minute session covered the dos and don’ts of award writing. Ann spoke in detail about how and why you treat an award entry as a story, and I provided tips handed to me from CMA judges as well as award winning case studies. If you’re looking to enter this year’s awards then I’d highly recommend checking this session out (watch the replay). Ann’s also written a short blog covering some of these areas which you can find here.
Our next webinar looked at content marketing for recovery and I welcomed VERB Interactive’s Stephanie McGrath to join us. Stephanie’s run a number of webinars for the CMA over the last few months, and the webinars are always a success. This session looked at how brands can use content marketing to bolster their recovery, and also how those who are yet to open can learn from those that have opened since lockdown. You can watch the full replay of Stephanie’s session here.
We’re constantly adding webinars and virtual events to our calendar so do let us know if there’s an area with content marketing that you’d like us to cover.
