LONDON — Blending in with conversations on social media using "cocktail party etiquette" is the best way to develop content marketing, according to Patrick Albano, vice president of EMEA advertising solutions at Yahoo.
Speaking at a Yahoo event here Thursday called "Content Marketing: How Brands Are Reinventing the Way They Create and Distribute Digital Content," Albano used the analogy to explain that brands should listen to what consumers are talking about.
"In the old stages of advertising, you would walk into the room and say here's my name and message, now listen to me," Albano said. But today the dynamic is different. With content marketing, "people started walking into the room and listening to what people were saying.
"I think tone of voice, listening to topics and allowing people to participate is the classic cocktail party etiquette," he said.
Phil Taylor, head of Britain marketing at VisitBritain, said brands that are not embracing content marketing are taking a big risk.
"Absolutely there will still be a requirement for brand campaigns, there will still be broadcast," Taylor said, "but we need to find content forms that complement that story, and that's where the consumer comes in. That's where their power is."
VisitBritain has been using Tumblr to push its brand, and Taylor said the tourism agency has had to become more "succinct" and use "more powerful ways of grabbing people’s attention."
VisitBritain has used imagery, cinemagraphs (images with minor movement) and animated gifs on Tumblr.
"I think we’ve had to be more agile and less precious about trying to map out the years' worth of content," Taylor said, "because we have to be able to jump onto trends and we have to be able to take advantage of what people are telling us."
This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk.