Keynote Speaker and Best-Selling Author Ann Handley

Hi everyone! Hi! Thanks for being here today. So I was a journalist and a writer first and a marketer second and that's really where I get, you know, that inspiration for content. That's where I feel like I've learned the biggest lessons about marketing is from my content past, you know, from my journalism past. One of my favorite stories to tell is a tiny company in Glasgow, Scotland, right? They're called McKay Flooring. And they're a flooring company, right? I mean, they compete with people like Armstrong, you know, huge, huge flooring companies who have much bigger budgets, who have a much bigger footprint online already. But what they did is they figured out what their niche was, right? So they figured out what their story was. So they started a blog, just a very simple WordPress blog on their site about two years ago, talking about, you know, cool and unique flooring options. So things like installing a floor with reclaimed whiskey barrels, for example. or with pennies, you know, that kind of thing. So they did that because they knew they couldn't compete for flooring in Google, right? They knew they couldn't possibly touch that. So what they decided to do was go after something that was very niche, that was far less competitive, and that, you know, Google would love them for. So I love what the Chicago law firm did. This is Levenfield-Curlstein. And what their one problem was is that they wanted to show the human side of their attorneys. and they found through looking at their analytics that the attorney profile pages were the most visited on their website which makes sense right if you're going to hire an attorney you sort of want to know who this person is but rather than just listing their law degrees and their areas areas of specialty and so on what they did instead was they hired a video crew to come in and through the course of several days filmed these very very short video vignettes with people and the attorneys here are talking about not you know their specialty, again, not the kind of law they practice, but they're talking about if you could time travel, where would you go? What did you want to be when you were a little girl? What's your most prized possession? This kind of stuff. And I love the way that they really showed their human side, right? They should have showed who these people were at a very deep, fundamental level. We see a lot of marketers producing content that's still product-focused and not customer-focused. Create the kind of content that your customers will thank you for. If you can get to there, if your customers are thanking you for marketing to them, then you're doing it right. One of my favorite quotes I shared yesterday was from my friend Tom Fishburne, and he says that the best marketing doesn't feel like marketing. And I think that's absolutely true. We need to share resources with our customers. We need to solve problems for them and not just talk about ourselves.

Ann Handley wants to help you grow your business by rethinking the way you market—because in recent years, marketing has been entirely transformed.

In an engaging, accessible style, Ann speaks (AnnHandley.com/speaking) about how you can (and should) market your business with content, social media, and other digital tools. As a presenter, she delivers inspiration and practical advice, in equal measure, to audiences worldwide.

Ann is the co-author of Content Rules, the best-selling book on content marketing; she is also the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs and a monthly columnist for Entrepreneur magazine.

This video offers a brief look at the stories and inspiration she delivers. For more information, or to book Ann to speak to your organization, head over to AnnHandley.com/speaking.