TechCrunch Disrupt has just hit New York City, and as always it has some big names and ideas in stow. While content marketing is not an explicit theme of this year’s event, I’ve found a lot of the speakers to have real insights that avid content aficionados can learn from.
The biggest highlights of the first day came from the opening speakers. While New York Mayor de Blasio and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler touched on a number of topics, one common theme will mean a lot to the content ecosystem in the years to come: expanding digital opportunities to more people in more places. From the FCC’s own broadband ambitions, to NYC’s municipal wifi network, both de Blasio and Wheeler are helping make it so that more people will have easy access to the Internet.
To the content world, this means two great things. The first is more potential consumers of your content. A consumer that was once locked in a world of just outdoor advertising and TV commercials is now able to engage with your content and learn about your brands in much more immersive ways.
Even more exciting, though, is the expanded breadth of authors for your content ecosystem. More people on the web equals more smart writing angles, which equals great new ways to cover your brands with stories and perspectives you might have otherwise missed.
Looking ahead to Tuesday and Wednesday’s agenda, there’s even more for smart marketers to learn from, with the founders or key players of Tinder, Man Repeller, Vine, Yik Yak, Periscope, Meerkat, and Reddit set to speak.
Man Repeller is the most obviously interesting case, as Leandra Medine has built a top fashion blog from scratch in just a few short years. Their savvy mix of smart writing and genius social promotion on a shoestring budget is a case study that any brand launching a new content site should learn from.
Those other sites and services, while not explicitly focused on content, are all great venues for either traditional content promotion (Reddit) or have started to serve as interesting laboratories for new forms of native advertising. Brands big and small have been making fun Tinder profiles for users to match with, some of the best Vines come from otherwise staid companies like GE and newly launched Meerkat and Periscope offer interesting opportunities for content creators to embrace streaming video.
We’ll be at the rest of TC Disrupt all day and night Tuesday and Wednesday. If you’re here too and want to chat about anything content marketing or promotion related, hear about ContentIntent, or just say hey, give me a shout on Twitter.
