Recap: outREACH Conference 2018 in London

Hello Peak Ace? This is London calling. Our Content Marketing Managers responded to this call by attending this year’s outREACH conference in the British capital. We have summarised the key-findings for you.

By being personal, you’re not showing weakness, you show strength.” Jack Murray

Conferences are the ideal place to exchange the latest topics, experiences and information with like-minded people and provide first-hand insights into the everyday professional life of Online Marketing. On that day, our Content Marketing Managers took home a lot of interesting impressions shared by various speakers during the outREACH conference and summarised them in four key-learnings.

Storytelling – Each content has its very own story

At the beginning of the conference Jack Murray from All Good Tales explained the importance of storytelling, which he introduced with the following sentence: “Great Stories raise a question we want to answer”. He emphasises that content marketers often fail in creating content with a story that is truly gripping. With his examples, he made sure that some tears were shed by the audience at an early hour – thus setting a new standard, what constitutes good storytelling.

Another FABULOUS talk by @leximills who talked ducks, frogs and naked bottoms. In summary… #outREACHconf @OutREACHconf pic.twitter.com/O9K8W3290j

— VerveSearch (@VerveSearch) June 8, 2018

Journalist Psychology – The 1×1 of the Outreach Pitch

Richard Fisher, a journalist at the BBC, has given a little insight into the mindset of journalists. After he described the dos and don’ts of contacting a journalist, the participants were all ears for his wise words. It is particularly important for him to emphasise the shareability of the content in outreach, meaning that it is both emotionally appealing and gives the opportunity to identify with it. Of course you should also consider the right timing.

Cook the frog slowly – How to land the perfect PR stunt

Those of you who expected an excursion into the world of French cuisine are mistaken, but will get unique PR advice from Lexi Mills instead. The “Queen of PR”, as one of our Content Marketing Managers called her, explained the importance of customer sensitivity when it comes to pitching a tricky PR idea. You should try to convince them of your project by trying to integrate your PR coup into the client’s existing structure. Her lecture showed everyone that you have to be convinced yourself if you want to follow big ideas.

Don’t freak the client out by asking for a yes. Ask for this via @leximills #outREACHconf pic.twitter.com/UalZ53jf4P

— All Good Tales (@allgoodtales) June 8, 2018

Expert tips for outreach – Panel discussion

Next, three luminaries of outreach entered the stage and gave us an impression of different agency strategies. Shannon McGuirk from Aira.net, Bobbi Brand from Kaizen and Alex Cassidy from Verve Search answered the numerous questions from the audience concerning how to best optimise their outreach strategies. For example this really smart question came up: “How do I behave with exclusive content offers?”
All three experts agreed that you should treat it carefully and pitch it to top-tier media companies first, but after a day or two you should move on to other outlets. “There is an expiry date.”, says Alex from Verve.

In addition to this, Stephen Panico from BuzzStream has introduced the audience to components which are essential for the preparation of an outreach strategy: Personalisation, positioning and persuasiveness.

Absolutely loved being on this panel with the very talented @bobbibrant and @alexcass91 this afternoon. Anyone who says link building is easy isn’t telling you the truth, hopefully our tips helped you guys! https://t.co/VMv9otAaLk

— Shannon McGuirk (@ShannonMcGuirk_) June 8, 2018

These are the most important points of the day, so that you too can refine your outreach strategies in Performance Content Marketing as soon as possible!