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If you’ve been following LMC for any amount of time, I’m sure you know we love to learn and if you know anything about me, it’s that I love to socialize (as long as I can squeeze in some alone time on the couch with my pup and a book after!) Combine learning and meeting new people and you could say attending conferences might just be my favorite thing in the entire world… And you wouldn’t be wrong! I was able to attend Content Marketing World 2022 in Cleveland and let me tell you: It. Was. Awesome.
Content Marketing World is hosted by the Content Marketing Institute and brings in experts in content marketing from all around the world to share their knowledge firsthand. With over 100 sessions and keynotes to choose from throughout the week, here was a glimpse at just a few of my favorites.
Supercharge Your Content Marketing with Greater Creativity
Like many, the last few years have me feeling burnt out. I have felt my writing and content creation getting stale and really needed a good recharge. That’s exactly what our workshop on day one did. Carla Johnson hosted this interactive workshop and had us work through her five-step Perpetual Innovation Process during the workshop. 
Carla walked us through the steps: Observe, Distill, Relate, Generate and Pitch to get us to think of more creative ideas as she explained herself using this process in her real life as well. We were able to discuss what we were coming up with during each step with the entire group and get feedback from Carla and others in the session. It was a really great way to kick off the entire conference and to help with feeling more creative.
Voice is the New Brand
Let me first start out by saying, if you have not heard of Ann Handley – run, don’t walk, to go look up her content. She. Is. Amazing. Ann was one of the keynote speakers and I was completely blown away by her. It is really easy for me to forget how much of my job really is writing, and Ann’s presentation not only reminded me of that, but made me more motivated than ever to get back to writing copy.
Ann used pop culture references (Stranger Things!) to talk about how the voice of a business has evolved into a brand, and how we as content marketers can work to evolve our writing voices to keep up with all the chatter. She walked us through “another dimension” to tell us how we can evolve those voices. Some of the suggestions she gave us were to find our mentors, dig deeper into the content we like and why we like it, reflect on why things are resonating and ask ourselves what our recognizable language is.
At the end of her keynote, it was announced that Writer would be mailing out free copies of her new book to attendees and you already know I waited in line an embarrassingly long time to get my personally signed copy.
Rewrite like Taylor Swift: What B2B Marketers Can Learn from a Swiftie
You all already know I wasn’t going to miss this one. This session connected two of my favorite things: Taylor Swift and repurposing content. Ahava Leibtag, Founder and President of Aha Media Group, hosted this session, and yes, became another idol of mine. This session was completely full, and I even made a new bestie during it (Hi, Allie!!).
At LMC, repurposing content is a vital part of our social media strategy, and Ahava based her session around how Taylor Swift, the queen of content, has been able to re-record her discography and still make songs that came out more than ten years ago exciting for fans. She went over ways we can rewrite and repurpose like Taylor Swift, whether that’s by refreshing or by adding new perspectives with bonus materials, like how Taylor Swift re-recorded her songs and brought out tracks “from the vault.”
She talked a lot about how we can anticipate and connect with our audiences in the same way Taylor Swift connects with her fans. She challenged us to find ways to make our content something our audiences anticipated and got excited about, by way of teasers and “Easter Eggs,” in the same way Taylor Swift uses them.
And of course, Swifties know, no one calls back to old content quite like Taylor Swift. Ahava talked about the importance of referencing your old pieces of content where you think they are relevant in new pieces of content. Whether that’s by linking back to an old blog post or resharing an old reel you created at a time that’s relevant.
Cleveland Clinic Health Summit
However, the real star of the show was the Health Summit hosted by the Cleveland Clinic on the final day of the conference. You know that at LMC, we love healthcare marketing, so being able to hear from the content marketers that produce so much for this leader in research, education, and health information was something I couldn’t miss.
The day was hosted by Amanda Todorovich, Executive Director of Content Marketing at the Cleveland Clinic, and included speakers from the Cleveland Clinic, Everyday Health and Aha Media Group. We learned everything from using more inclusive language in healthcare communications, how to write for physicians, how to create content for an evolved patient journey, and finally all about how content marketing truly is a marathon. 
Each speaker brought their own unique points of view from various parts of both content marketing and healthcare. It was rewarding to learn from experts in healthcare content marketing. I walked away ready to take that knowledge back to LMC and help move our clients forward.
All in all, it was a conference for the books. Between learning and networking, I was able to take away so much great intel from this conference and bring that knowledge back to LMC to help us move our clients and agency forward!