Remington Begg
If you weren’t at HubSpot’s inbound marketing conference in Boston last week, do yourself a favor and buy your tickets for next year right now. Inbound 2014 wasn’t just classes and speakers about inbound marketing, it was a hub of inspiration, networking, and creativity. It’s next to impossible not to leave there without the drive and desire to find your purpose in life. With that being said, I’ve outlined 3 key lessons from my favorite speakers at this year’s Inbound conference.
1. Guy Kawaski
If you don’t already know, Guy Kawaski is the co-founder of alltop.com and Chief Evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool. He was the first keynote speaker I saw at Inbound 2014 and his talk was all about the lessons he learned from Steve Jobs when they worked at Apple. He was also the host of one of the first sessions I attended, entitled The Perfect Post. The session was about creating and scheduling the perfect social media post. Although he didn’t tell us exactly what days and times are ideal, he gave several priceless tips on the topic of popular social media posts. My favorite piece of advice from Guy was this, “If you’re not pissing somebody off on social media, you’re doing it wrong.” First of all, I loved this because it’s so true. The more controversial and dramatic your social media posts, the more attention they get. Now, this doesn’t mean you should be offensive, but if your company has certain values or views they are proud of, show them off! You should be bold and point out views you may disagree with too. Healthy debates are always welcome and receive more engagement. I definitely laughed and felt motivated to post right away after learning from Guy Kawaski.
2. Ann Handley
Ann Handley, a motivated, upbeat author, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, and writer for several websites, gave an amazing talk at Inbound called The Future of Content is Writing, No Seriously. As a content writer, I not only appreciated all of Ann’s insight, I immediately felt I had to buy her new book Everybody Writes. This woman is down-to-earth, and boy, does she know her stuff. During her talk she touched on several points and I wish I could talk about them all, but we would be here all day. My favorite point from Ann was, “See content moments everywhere. We all have this natural storytelling trait within us. Make the customer the hero of your story.” Ann believes that for marketers, writing should be customer centric empathetic thinking. Essentially, she believes we have the power in us to make storytelling come to life, which is very profound. By becoming stronger storytellers, we become better writers and better human beings. Now, doesn’t that make you just want to get out there and write?
3. Shiza Shahid
Shiza Shahid is only 24 years old, a social activist, CEO, and co-founder of the Malala Fund. Her keynote speech was the most moving and inspirational talk at the entire Inbound 2014 conference. I’m not exaggerating when I say, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. In one simple line, “I believe we are the ones we have been waiting for. There are no superheroes,” Shiza struck a chord with everyone. Her message was a powerful one: if not us, who? If not now, when? To become better marketers and writers, we must be inspired and we must find our reason why we want to change our world. We might not always be ready, or have all the answers, but by taking a leap of faith we find out who we really are. In finding our purpose, we will become better able to inspire others and be our own agents of change.
What I learned at Inbound 2014 is that content is much more than just paragraphs on a website and writing is much more than just words thrown together. Writing is the way you think, the way you feel, the way you tell a story, and how you relay this story to others. It’s framing your vision of the world in a way that your readers can emotionally relate to it.
I’ll leave you with one more piece of wisdom from this year’s Inbound conference, “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing,” -Ann Handley. Keep these valuable lessons in mind when you’re creating content and I’m sure your empathy will astound your clients.