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How to Develop the Ultimate Content Planning System

Documenting your content strategy is THE key factor for content marketing success. Only after you build a plan can you “walk in the shoes” of your customers and create content that engages them, evolving contacts from believers to buyers. In this session, you’ll learn proven methods to transform your team into a strategy-led, performance-driven content marketing machine:

-- Uncover hidden content gaps in your buyer\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s journey
-- Define content SLAs that create predictable results
-- Avoid to-do list driven metrics that distract true engagement
-- Get bonus templates for content strategy that will save you lots of time

Who should attend this session…

-- Growing companies looking to develop a content strategy and content strategists struggling to go beyond early content marketing success

Samantha Stone is a revenue catalyst who helps unleash the possible in organizations that have complex selling processes. She's a fast-growth, B2B marketing junkie, author, speaker, consultant and persona coach who has also managed to find time to raise four boys with her husband, David. Throughout her career she has launched go-to-market initiatives and led marketing strategies for award-winning, high-growth companies including Netezza, SAP, Ascential Software and Powersoft. In 2012 she founded The Marketing Advisory Network to help savvy business leaders unleash the possible within their enterprises.

Being Needed, Not Needy: How to Create Truly Valuable Content

Using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a framework, this talk walks through the various ways in which a brand can create content that provides real value to consumers, providing them with solutions for everyday problems.

The session is sprinkled with industry data and published examples, and allows audience suggestion to drive live ideation to prove that the format works for any company, so bring your challenges and your thinking caps.
- Learn how your consumers needs CAN and SHOULD inspire your content creation
- Gain a framework for identifying how your brand can ideate around consumer needs
- Understand how to focus on consumer needs within your area of authority as a content creator
- See best-in­-class examples and live ideation that demonstrate this process can work for you

How to Be Bond. Competitive Intelligence Tactics for Search Marketing Success

Getting your content to be ranked, read, and ravely reviewed takes effort, skill, and knowledge of what’s hot and what’s not. Your competitors are likely doing all the hard work, so why not learn from wins and losses. From ideation to optimization to creation, it’s now easier than ever to use competitive intelligence with all your content marketing efforts. Beware, your competitors might be attending this 007 session, learning the tips, tactics, and advice necessary to get ahead of you, the competition

Mike Roberts is the Founder and CEO of SpyFu, a service that lets you learn from and download your competitors' AdWords and SEO campaign history. Mike is an industry recognized expert in SEO, PPC, and competitive intelligence. Having founded SpyFu in 2006, he led the charge in transforming the way search marketers craft their strategies in PPC and SEO. Like many creators, Mike obsesses over what makes something work. He applies that thinking to search marketing, pulling apart the data to learn why some advertisers are more successful so that everyone can learn from the wisdom of the market.

How to Manufacture Delight: The Neuromarketing Blueprint to Unlock the Moments that Matter and Wow Your Customers

Think back to the last time you were truly delighted by a product, service, or experience. That long ago, eh? The goal of our content marketing efforts is pretty simple: engage customers to keep them coming back for more. Delight seems like a sure bet to achieve this goal. So why aren't we creating more delightful content, at scale?  Turns out, it's because up until now, we didn't know what delight actually meant. Most content marketers assume that delight is pleasure or happiness. Yet new neuromarketing research indicates something else entirely. These new insights prove that delight follows a precise, predictable pattern.

Attend this session for your new blueprint on delight. You'll walk away with the ability to identify moments where delight can be created, and the know-how to magnify these flashes of opportunity. In a nutshell, this session will teach you tactics to manufacture delight through:

 - Never-before presented data points on delight. This research was recently conducted. It's hot off the press, and has never been presented before.
 - New blueprint for delight that will turn your office into a delight-manufacturing warehouse.
 - Innovative case study on how we are applying this research to one of the most anxiety-gripping organizations in the country: the IRS.

Learn the secrets to crafting delight, again and again, to boost your bottom-line.

Sarah Weise is the CEO of award-winning market research studio Bixa (bixaresearch.com) and the bestselling author of "InstaBrain: The New Rules for Marketing to Generation Z." For 15 years, Sarah has been a guide to hundreds of leading brands including Google, IBM, Capital One, Mikimoto, PBS, and Real Warriors, to name a few. Sarah helps brands achieve a laser-focus on their customers and build experiences that are downright addictive. She lectures at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business on market research and user experience, and speaks at conferences and corporate events worldwide. For a free chapter of InstaBrain, visit sarahweise.com.

12 Principles for Really Great Content

There are literally millions of blog posts published a day. Getting people to see your content—let alone read it—can feel downright impossible sometimes. Moreover, people tend to spend more time consuming content on the sites they trust, so how can you ensure that your writing gets picked up and published by major publications? Stop trying to publish dozens of articles a week in the hopes that one will bring in the traffic you want. Instead, learn the 12 principles for creating really great content that editors simply can’t resist, and get your writing featured on big name sites like Forbes, Wired, The Next Web, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, FastCompany, and more. 

In this session you’ll learn:

- How to identify and “highjack" trending topics
- Why challenging the status quo will make your content more “shareable"
- How to create highly engaging content that appeals to multiple audiences
- Setting up a process for envisioning what content your audience actually wants

Nadya is the Marketing Director for the infographic maker Venngage. When she's not writing sassy marketing content, she cooks food for strangers in her underground apartment restaurant called Chez Lisgar. She has a B.A. in Devised Theatre and a Master's in Digital Media. Nadya has a passion for creating content that her audience will enjoy engaging with. She has contributed to over 30 different marketing and business blogs and publications, including The Huffington Post, The Next Web, SumoMe and more.

Optimizing Your Content - Overcome These 7 Deadly Sins to Boost Performance

Speaker: Arnie Kuenn

Get this: 93% of all buyers, online or in stores, use search engines prior to making a purchase, but 86% of searchers don’t know your company or product name before the search process begins. Despite surge of investment in search engine optimization, most companies still don’t get it right. That’s where Arnie comes in, revealing the 7 Deadly SEO sins and faux pas that are costing businesses a lot of traffic, a lot of conversions, and a lot revenue loss, all the time. What’s even worse is that fixing these sins can be fairly easy, once you learn how to use the latest SEO magnifying glass.

During this session, you’ll learn...
-- The 7 most common optimization mistakes
-- How to create and optimize the content readers are looking for
-- Best types of content to create for search engines
-- How to protect yourself against changes in the future
-- How to put more money on your bottom line

Arnie Kuenn is the CEO of Vertical Measures, a full-service Internet marketing agency dedicated to helping clients drive profitable growth through SEO & content marketing. Arnie has held executive positions in the world of new technologies and marketing for more than 25 years. Mr. Kuenn is a founder of the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association (AZIMA). Arnie speaks at events around the world and has personally trained more than 3,000 students on content marketing. He recently published his second book, "Content Marketing Works", with his son Brad.

Building the Brand Newsroom from Scratch: Low Budget Strategy for High ROI

Speaker: Margaret Magnarelli

For the first time ever, brands are competing with journalists for scoops, storytelling, and eyeballs. Developing a brand newsroom can help you connect with customers, expand your reach, solidify thought leadership, and keep your finger on the pulse of information.  Good news: You don’t need to secure seven-figure budgets and build out a big staff. In this session, Margaret will talk about how to build a newsroom on the cheap through the 5 W’s of journalism she’s perfected over the years, and how to transform your business into a publishing machine that attracts customers in droves.

Learn these fundamentals backed with data:

— Start with the “what”: your audience, your message, your voice, your style guidelines, and your distribution method.
— Assemble the right “who”: the basic and/or advanced team, blending full time staff and freelance resources and how to hire A+ storytellers.
— Master the “how”: putting it all into practice, from editorial calendar to meetings that don’t suck, and aligning your PR, comms, and social teams for maximum efficiency.

Margaret Magnarelli is executive director of audience acquisition and growth marketing at Morgan Stanley. In her role, she oversees social media, SEO, and conversion acquisition for the content-driven firmwide corporate marketing team. She was formerly VP of marketing at job site Monster.com, where she was a finalist for CMI's Content Marketer of the Year award and won awards for Best Blog and Best Content Strategy. She writes on marketing strategy for Forbes CMO Network, and has presented at Content Marketing World, SXSW, Content Marketing Conference, as well as events for ANA, PR News and Ragan. Prior to becoming a marketer, she worked as a magazine journalist--most recently executive editor at Money magazine.

How to Create Brain-Craving Content in 5 Easy Steps

Between the increase in competition and the decrease in human attention spans, creating content that attracts readers and motivates action gets harder every day. That’s where science comes in with a splash of art. In this session, you’ll learn the mental shortcuts we use when “deciding” what to read as well as the tips, tricks, and shortcuts that are proven to get readers' attention and captivation. This exampleâ€Âpacked session, supported by the latest stats and scientific studies, reveals exactly what to do, how to do it, and what to avoid when it comes to creating content. Get all the secret tactics you demand in 5 easy steps.

In this session you’ll learn:

-- Headlines that increase engagement by 140%
-- Words that snag the human eye
-- The magical word that gets people nodding
-- The surprising move that slashes unsubscribes by 22%
-- Cognitive fluency and the power of persuasion
-- Loss aversion, social proof and scarcity drivers

Nancy Harhut is passionate about the impact behavioral science can have on marketing. A BostInno "50 on Fire" winner, Online Marketing Institute Top 40 Digital Strategist, and Social Top 50 email marketing leader, she has spearheaded integrated campaigns for clients large and small. She and her teams have won over 175 awards for digital and direct marketing effectiveness. Harhut is known for her interesting and actionable insights that focus on the impact of behavioral science on marketing. A top-ranked speaker, she's wowed audiences from the US Department of Defense to Moscow marketers to SXSW attendees. Companies seeking an added advantage tap her for consulting, creative direction and content development. Follow her on twitter at @nharhut or reach her at nharhut@me.com.

The 10 Hacks for SEO to Drive Content Success

Let’s face it, any invest in content marketing demands a boost in organic search traffic. But SEO continues to be the dirty work that nobody wants to do. This session will teach you how to change all that, and instantly remove the SUCK out of SEO that bogs us all down, with a few hacks that make-it-easy and transform your content into a traffic driving machine. You’ll learn 10 things about SEO that get you on the fast track for success. And yes, SEO can be fun if you master the art and science with these new hacks that accomplish in minutes what used to take days or weeks.

An award winning digital marketing consultant specialising in developing growth strategies for businesses of all sizes. Previously worked with Blue Chip companies through to local businesses across a range of industries. Industry speaker and lecturer, as well as a regular columnist for a number of marketing publications, including Marketing Land, Moz and Search Engine Journal. Has been featured on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes, The Guardian, Social Media Today, TechRadar and many more.

Case Study: Securing Budgets with Dubious Bosses

Content marketing success depends on securing budgets, that’s for sure. But with short term victories difficult to achieve, you need to secure budget for the long haul, and make the case for it in creative ways. In this session, you’ll learn a 7 step process practiced by two case studies in the legal and insurance industry. You’ll see how people skills and psychology play an important role. And learn why both businesses doubled their content marketing budget in 2017, convinced it’s the right investment that will deliver top performance in comparison with other channels.

Spencer Smith is the founder of Spencer X. Smith Consulting and an instructor at the University of Wisconsin, where he teaches classes on Social Media Strategy. He's had the privilege of working with the world's largest firm (DLA Piper) and seven Fortune 500 companies -- IBM, Kohl's Corp, Kimberly-Clark, Oshkosh Truck, The Hartford, Nationwide, and American Family Insurance. He speaks at an average of 60 conferences and other events per year, and only teaches what he first has proven to work himself with his own business. Spencer has been featured and quoted in Forbes, The Huffington Post, Money Magazine, Entrepreneur, Inc. magazine, Yahoo Small Business Advisor, MSN Money, Costco Connection and dozens of other publications. Spencer also writes the column #SocialBiz for InBusiness Magazine, and contributes to the Huffington Post.

7 Steps to Developing a Resonating Brand Voice

Memorable companies make language their own. But crafting a brand voice your audience will love and remember is challenging ­until now. Learn how to create branded language that tells your story without the sales pitch and gets remembered long after readers pass you by. Discover how to create a fresh voice for your brand that connects with readers and advances your brand in strange and mysterious ways. Learn it all in case studies from Moz, Stitch Fix, Basecamp, SuperHeroStuff, theSkimm, and more to get the insights and data you need.

Erica McGillivray is community manager, marketing consultant, and author. At Moz, she wrangled an online marketing and SEO-focused community of 600,000. She's also a founder of GeekGirlCon, an all-volunteer nonprofit. Erica has a comic book collection that's an earthquake hazard. Follow her at @emcgillivray.

Content Planning Tool Talk

Let’s face it: Content planning is tedious and can suck the joy out of content marketing, especially if you’re using the old-school methods that are mostly guesswork. But we all know that if we fail to plan, we’ll plan to fail, as the apothegm goes.  This session will put the FUN back into content planning, with inspiration from the latest wordsmith tools. You’ll see how to develop digital personas in minutes and harvest competitive intelligence to get the edge, and pinpoint the most popular topics, keywords, and customer questions to power-up your plan.  Best of all, you’ll learn how to roll-it-all together so it becomes your GPS for content marketing.

In this session, you'll review....
• Top editorial calendars
• New-age digital personas development tools
• Content repurposing tools
• Competitive intelligence tools
• Topic intelligent tools

Rachel Meyer has worked in digital marketing since 2009. She recently joined Transdev On Demand, the parent company of SuperShuttle and ExecuCar and heads up all of the digital marketing for the two brands. When not working, she focuses on traveling to the Caribbean and discovering the best tiki cocktails across America with her husband.

7 Tips to Never Have a Bad Landing Page Again/Boost Conversions by Learning Exactly What Your Customer Wants - Without Asking Them!

Landing pages are essential, but if you try to wing it, you’re likely going to end up with the dreaded Frankenpage. In this session, Justin will share his 7 best tips to ensure that your landing pages actually convert! 

There are two kinds of user tests: Active Tests & Passive Tests. Justin shares the difference between the two and why you need to invest in passive user tests to improve your user experience and boost conversions for companies of all types and sizes. 

Justin Rondeau is the Director of Optimization at DigitalMarketer and runs all of the optimization efforts at DM, has developed a rigorous analytics and optimization course, and has certified hundreds of optimization and analytics professionals. Named one of the top 25 most influential CRO professionals, Rondeau has spent his entire career working on optimization campaigns and has helped train some of the leading optimization teams at Fortune 500 companies. Rondeau has run hundreds of tests for both B2B and eCommerce brands and has has analyzed 3,000+ split tests tests across virtually every industry.

Creating and Optimizing Content for Chatbots

Chatter about chatbots reached a fever pitch in 2016, with brands including Sephora, Taco Bell, and KLM jumping on the botwagon. Chatbots Magazine website boasts 200,000 monthly page views and a community of botmakers, journalists and fans.  But let’s face it, we’re all struggling to understand how to create content for this new channel, without botching it up. 

Mobilize Your Content to Ring in the Revenue in 2017

Mobile isn't an age--it's the new way marketing gets done. The way in which people read your content has changed, and their perception of your brand is shaped and aligned with their mobile experience throughout their journey. In this session, Christina will show you how to create and optimize mobile content to best connect with readers orbiting at high speeds. You’ll learn to harness the power the mobile-first generation to drive more leads, sales, and revenue.

In this highly interactive session, Christina will show you how to:

1. Design content for both mobile AND desktop
2. Develop location-based marketing campaigns that engage
3. Format content wisely to maximize readership and reward
4. Repurpose and re-shape content for mobile
5. Develop contests, video, and graphics that grab the B2C crowd

You'll learn hands-on techniques and walk away with a worksheet containing your customized mobile content strategy to crush mobile in 2017 and beyond.

Christina Inge has two decades of experience leading content strategy, digital strategy, and managing complex marketing technology projects. She specializes in articulating effective, efficient digital strategies for organizations using the latest channels to drive results. These strategies help organizations to transition from traditional to innovative marketing that can excel on mobile platforms. She is the founder of Sleek Marketing, which offers hands-on education on digital marketing in the Boston area. Christina served on the board of the American Marketing Association as vice president of social media throughout much of the 2000s. She is a frequent and sought-after speaker on web analytics, content strategy and SEO. She has worked with well established brands such as Nissan, Smithsonian, 222 Fifth, as well as a range of startups and nonprofits. Christina has won numerous awards for her work, including the Social Media Society Social Media Stars award, as well as the FutureM Future of Marketing award. She has been a Masschallenge mentor and has served on board of IEEE Entrepreneur's Network. Christina holds a BA in English from University of Maryland University College and a MS in Instructional Technology from University of Wyoming.

The $2M Blog Post. How to create content that brings in book deals, speaking engagements, and millions of dollars

Visitors, social shares, time on page, bounce rate--are these the metrics you're using to track the success of your content? All of that may have its place, but Josh Steimle, who has written over 200 articles for publications like Time, Fast Company, Mashable, TechCrunch, Forbes, and Entrepreneur, will show you how he created a single blog post that can be directly tracked to over $2M in revenue for his digital marketing agency. How do you like them metrics?

In this session, you will learn how to:
-- Create content that will target exactly the right customers at exactly the right moment
-- Leverage one content success to another to quickly grow your personal brand
-- Establish an influencer marketing program for your brand, using internal talent

Those sitting in the first 50 seats near the front during Josh's presentation will receive a free copy of his book, Chief Marketing Officers at Work, which includes 29 interviews with CMOs from companies like GE, Target, Spotify, The Home Depot, and PayPal! 

Josh Steimle is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He has written over 200 articles for publications like Forbes, Mashable, TechCrunch, and Time, and is the author of "Chief Marketing Officers at Work: How Top Marketers Build Customer Loyalty". Steimle is a TEDx speaker and has presented at conferences like ClickZ Live, Adtech, Social Media Week. He is also the founder and CEO of MWI, a digital marketing firm he founded in 1999 with offices in Hong Kong and the U.S. Steimle was recently recognized by Entrepreneur magazine as one of 50 Online Marketing Influencers To Watch in 2016.

Social Media Performance Tool Talk: Listen Up!

Looking to measure your social media performance but not sure if you have the right tools in place? Or maybe you need a jolt of performance wisdom with the latest social tools? Join us as social media pro Neal Schaffer, co-founder of Social Tools Summit, introduces us to his favorite tools to help measure and optimize for social media success, and help deliver the performance you demand. Come prepared with your questions and let Neal guide you to the latest beams of social light.

Neal Schaffer is a leading authority on helping businesses through their digital transformation through consulting, training, and helping enterprises large and small execute on social media marketing strategy, influencer marketing, and social selling initiatives. President of the social media agency PDCA Social, Neal also teaches digital media to executives at Rutgers University, the Irish Management Institute (Ireland), and the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland). Fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, Neal is a popular keynote speaker and has been invited to speak about digital media on four continents in a dozen countries. He is also the author of 3 books on social media, including Maximize Your Social (Wiley), and in 2018 will publish his 4th book, The Business of Influence, on educating the market on how any business can leverage the potential of influencer marketing. Neal resides in Irvine, California but also frequently travels to Japan.

Part 1, Content Personalization: Getting It Write!

We know that personalization is the next frontier with content marketing, that’s for sure. Documenting your content strategy is the starting point to compete and win the war on the web. But with all this new technology and methodology at our fingertips, isn’t there a better, faster, and wiser way to forge “personalized” content strategy that delivers MAX performance?

In this session, the first of a two part series, you’ll learn about three new “CONTENT PRODUCTS” that will supercharge your marketing and help you quickly "walk in shoes" of your customers and and prospects to create engaging content that can be “personalized on the fly” with the latest platforms and techniques.

In this session, you'll learn how to develop the Big Three Products that are the core content strategy and personalization at scale:

-- Customer Journey Map.  Empower your team and business to co-develop the wants and needs of customers throughout their journey
-- Customer Personas. Use big data to develop personas that become the GPS for content creation, personalization and distribution
-- Keyword Maps.  Learn what your customers are searching for so your content can get found and drive traffic

Special Bonus: All attendees will get a signed copy of Byron's new book Content Strategy Blueprint with access to all the templates, samples, and tactics you need to transform your business into a customer-driven, content-personalized, performance-driven content marketing machine.

Byron is the founder and chair of Content Marketing Conference, and popular speaker, podcast and webinar host, and published author of a few books. Best described as a serial entrepreneur and one of the original content marketing revolutionaries, Byron currently focuses on growing WriterAccess, a Platform-as-a-Service he founded in 2010, now connecting 25,000+ customers with 15,000 freelance writers, editors, content strategists, and translators. When he's not working, rare indeed, you can find him traveling around the globe, experimenting with his Kalamazoo outdoor grill (you should see this thing), or golfing extremely early on Saturdays in New England, even with extreme weather conditions.

Snapchat: B2B Strategies to Conquer This New World

Let's face it, most social networks are less organic these days and more like paid toll highways for content marketers. Facebook leads the pay-to-play charge, with most on-page business posts sitting idle in the breakdown lane, sadly unread. But there are a few organic gold mines left for content marketers, and Snapchat is one of them, boasting 1.55 billion active monthly users at the last count. This session will mitigate your skepticism towards this millennial selfie hub, with 70% of users under the age of 35. Get fired up with real-life case studies you can put to work in a snap, learning from B2B brands who use Snapchat to connect with prospects and customers in wildly successful ways.

In this session, you’ll learn how to:
-- Develop compelling B2B snaps that connect and convert
-- Build your Snapchat audience organically, with no to low budgets
-- Measure the ROI of Snapchat with new tools and techniques

Sweta Patel - sweta@globalmarketingtactics.com I have a career in which I can strengthen and utilize my creative abilities. I love creativity and anything that involves people and ideas. I have a passion for marketing and advertising.I'm passionate about turning strangers into interested customers. About turning the uninspired into the ambitious. About making passive people totally engaged through interaction. This can be possible by engaging people with a strategic plan that will help build a foundation for your business. By building a community around principles that will enhance the business. And by empowering customers to share and remix elements of your message until they become supporters and proponents for your brand instead of watching your advertising. When a new product is launched, I feel I must be as ready to perform as a professional athlete. So much must be accomplished at once. The brand, the product positioning, mindshare, press reaction, word of mouth; every factor that will determine whether the product or service is successful or not depends on the marketing efforts of the initial phase of that launch. My experiences have taught me how to prepare, like that professional athlete I mentioned before, to the point where all the elements of a successful product launch are ready before the item or service is ready to ship. I would like to explain how I intend to bring this same level of preparation and professionalism to your organization. Specialties: Creative marketing, advertising, event planning, auditing, budgeting, communication skills, customer relations, customer satisfaction, market positioning, marketing, organizational skills, presentation skills, strategic planning. Proficient with A/B and Multivariate Testing; Optimizely; MOZ; Aweber; Exact Target; Eloqua; BaseCRM; Salesforce; HubSpot; Marketo; CrazyEgg; Microsoft Office; Go-To-Webinar; Active Campaign; LeadPages; Wordpress; AdWords; Google Analytics; and Facebook Ad Manager.

How to Build Your Community to Boost Your Brand

Are you collecting followers like conference attendees collect water bottles? Or are you developing meaningful relationships that lead to better business opportunities? Community is a buzzword tossed around often, with little meaning on what it takes to be successful or mindfulness for the wants and needs of members. Heather to the rescue, sharing superpowers on how you can become a master architect of a community with members who are passionate, responsive, and aligned with your business and brand. You’ll learn about her role as the Community Builder at GoDaddy, and KPIs that drive success that are WAY beyond the number of social fans or followers. 

In this session, you’ll learn…

— The foundations from which to build a profitable community
— Secrets to pinpoint your audience and inspire them to participate
— Methods to deepen your connections and build true relationships
— All the killer tools and platforms you need to make it all work and grow

Heather is an advocate for authenticity. She's a catalyst for conversations worth having, and an enabler for ideas worth exploring. On the list of her qualifications cited for her annual most interesting woman of the year nomination, her nickname "The Human API", and role as Community Builder at Godaddy, rank second and third behind the collective testimony of thousands who Heather has selflessly connected, elevated, or otherwise served. She's fueled by tracking digital trends, innovation in technology, and taco trucks. She has a profound understanding of social networks, consumers and branding; and a pronounced intolerance for bullshit. Social media, like any tool, is only as powerful as the craftsman who wields it; and Heather is an artisan. Teaching businesses how to grow by harnessing its power is Heather's native genius.

Part 2, Content Personalization: Automating the Performance!

So, you’ve got your customer journey map, buyer personas, and keyword map all bundled up and ready to go, either from the previous session or on your own. Now it's time to put it all to work and let technology do the heavy lifting to get the right content in front of the right people at the right time—automatically, on-the-fly! In this session, Colin will walk you through the latest CMS platforms and testing solutions that are frankly kind of scary—machine learning kicks-in so content personalization and big data collide. Attending this session offers a glimpse at what’s next with content marketing, and what’s NOW.

Fasten your seat belts, to review all this:
 
• Recent technology advancements that make personalizing your own website simpler than ever, from comprehensive “experience management platforms” to more modestly priced targeting plugins.
• An overview of the ever-growing pool of data sources on your users, from IP lookups to on-site behavior, including third party and first-party data.
• How to translate your buyer personas into data-driven “segments” that you can identify and act on in real-time.
• How to use your customer journey and keyword maps to create a dynamic content model, which can inform a segmented editorial calendar and component-level “zoning.”
• All kinds of ways to measure performance and get the return you demand for your investment.

Best of all, you’ll see a few case studies from “everyday” organizations that were able to improve on-site conversions by as much as 200% by implementing smart personalized content strategies at scale.

LinkedIn: The Most Up-to-Date Hacks for Targeted Audience Distribution

The King of B2B community will likely continue to crank up the costs for marketers to reach their freakishly targeted audience. But fear not: AJ Wilcox to the rescue, with the latest and greatest LinkedIn updates, hacks, and tactics to keep us out of the high-cost advertising jail. He’ll show us how to generate the highest quality leads with massively converting campaigns with any-size budget— all learned from managing some of the largest LinkedIn Ad budgets in the world. AJ received RAVE reviews a few years ago at CMC, so we’re bringing him back to supercharge our LinkedIn return on investment.

In this session, you’ll learn all of this that you can put to work pronto:
— What’s new and what’s next with LinkedIn Ads
— Tips to ace your strategy before you pay to play
— Hacks to save money and pinpoint qualified leads
— When to opt out of Ad campaigns that don’t convert

AJ Wilcox is a LinkedIn Ads pro who founded B2Linked.com, a LinkedIn Ads-specific agency, in 2014. As official LinkedIn partners, they manage among the world's most sophisticated advertising accounts worldwide. He's a ginger & triathlete. He & his wife live in Utah, with their 4 kids, and his company car is a wicked-fast gokart.

Data-Driven Content Strategy to Deliver Performance Goals

Some alarming facts: More than 50% of B2B marketing executives find it difficult to attribute marketing activity directly to revenue. And 93% of CMOs say that they are under more pressure to deliver measurable ROI. Doctor Data to the rescue! This session covers how to develop data-driven content strategy to drive any and all of your content performance goals. You’ll see examples of how other companies put big data to work in magical ways, and how to choose the right model based on your budgets, data-sources, and goals. Best of all, you’ll learn the fast track to remove the guesswork with the latest data-driven strategy and approach to content marketing.

Actionable takeaways including:

-- Clever methods to measure content marketing success

-- Next-gen tools to track content marketing performance

-- Expert hacks to gather strategy-driving data and put it to work

-- Tactics to architect and deploy data-driven content strategy

Pawan Deshpande is the founder and CEO of Curata. Pawan is a regular speaker at technology, entrepreneurship, and marketing events such as American Marketing Assocation (AMA), SXSW, TiE-Con, Gilbane, and Content Marketing World. He also has taught courses on content marketing through the University of Western Ontario, MarketingProfs, Ohio University, and the Online Marketing Institute, and blogs for Content Marketing Institute, Huffington Post, Boston.com, CMO.com, and Forbes among others. Prior to Curata, Pawan held research and engineering positions at Microsoft and Google. Pawan earned his S.B. and M. Eng. in Computer Science from MIT.

Mobile Marketing Innovation: Two Thumbs Up!

What’s new and what’s next with Mobile Marketing? You’ll learn the key insights you need to get the competitive edge from Greg. It all starts with clarity on mobile’s role and opportunity in your marketing mix, with insights from hundreds of ground breaking case studies from major brands and mini-brands. You’ll then discover the biggest opportunity for mobile marketing for B2B and B2C, and how to quickly jump on the mobile jetway. And quickly learn the core tactics for mobile success ranging from typeface to video to design (thumbs up!) and distribution best practices, helping you aim your mobile marketing in the right direction—UPWARD!

Attend this session, and you’ll get...

— Samples of campaigns from the best mobile case studies
— Tactics and tips to get started and get results fast
— Insights on how to track mobile marketing performance
— The Official Mobile Marketing Checklist of do’s and do not’s

It’s two thumbs up for this tactical session, pun intended!

Panel: Open Mic Live Content Strategy and Ideation

Does your content strategy need help? Are you stuck trying to develop the right content to engage your audience, and keep them coming back for more? Join this session to get LIVE advice from a panel of content strategy superheroes. Enjoy a fast-paced, unpredictable, and fun ride reviewing sites submitted by the audience. Panelists will pinpoint the problems, and propose ideas for betterment. Submit your site for consideration if you dare, or watch while your colleagues experience content strategy in action.

The Future of Content Marketing is Now

The landscape is changing with content marketing, almost daily. We’re seeing unprecedented improvements in social connection, marketing efficiency and neuromarketing insights that are reshaping our marketing strategy. How can we tap into what’s next, right now?  Jon’s figured that out with his new book Future Marketing: Winning in the Prosumer Age, the navigational chart that enlightens us on what the worlds foremost futurists are predicting for the marketing practice. In this session, Jon will pinpoint the changes we need to make with our investments and energy to tap the future of content marketing: Write now!

 
Session attendees will learn:
•      The new marketing construct (EP2 = Engagement, Experiences, Personalization and Passion)
•      Cultural and technological shifts headed our way
•      How to tap virtual reality and augmented reality now
•      How to make the Internet of Things your thing
•      Tools to tap now that will likely morph into what’s next
•      How to transition from brand messages to multi-sensory “experiences”
•      Why “platforms” will supplant brands for building an audience
•      How to tap “mega trends” for mega connection with your audience
 
Jon will sign books for a few of the lucky attendees, so don’t miss this session.

Jon Wuebben is the Founder & CEO of Content Launch, the first complete content marketing platform built for digital marketing agencies & SMBs. Content Launch has produced content for over 700 companies since 2003. Jon has provided content strategy consultation for Konica Minolta, Intuit, Kimberly Clark, MicroAge and dozens of marketing agencies since 2005. Jon is the author of the 2017 book, "Future Marketing: Winning in the Prosumer Age". Jon's 2012 book, "Content is Currency: Developing Powerful Content for Web & Mobile", has been published in six countries worldwide. Jon has spoken at dozens of industry marketing conferences around the world and has been listed as a thought leader in the marketing industry by countless publications since 2008.

Keynote: Chair Opening Remarks: Byron White

Byron is the founder and chair of Content Marketing Conference, and popular speaker, podcast and webinar host, and published author of a few books. Best described as a serial entrepreneur and one of the original content marketing revolutionaries, Byron currently focuses on growing WriterAccess, a Platform-as-a-Service he founded in 2010, now connecting 25,000+ customers with 15,000 freelance writers, editors, content strategists, and translators. When he's not working, rare indeed, you can find him traveling around the globe, experimenting with his Kalamazoo outdoor grill (you should see this thing), or golfing extremely early on Saturdays in New England, even with extreme weather conditions.

Keynote: Ann Handley: The Superhero's Guide to Bigger, Bolder, Braver Marketing

Content marketing and storytelling offer a vast opportunity for all businesses. Even yours. But too many of us aren’t embracing the opportunity. Our own marketing seems puny and underdeveloped, when it should be Superhero-level strong and ripped.

So the question is: How do we become superheroes within our companies or for our clients? How do we inspire our teams to create more robust, effective marketing? How do we up the quality of what we are producing? (And how do you define “quality,” anyway?) 

Come to this fun, inspiring session to hear the Queen of Content Ann Handley counsel you on how your organization can create marketing that’s engaging—because your audience demands it and your organization deserves it. You’ll leave Ann’s keynote equipped and inspired to:   

·      Tell bolder (and braver!) stories, using stronger, more ripped writing and a unique point of view

·      Create “best of breed” content to attract the people you want (and repel the ones you don’t)

·      Understand when to be a little outrageous (and when to dial it back)

·      Learn secrets to inspiring writers and content creators so they can give you their best work

The biggest missed opportunity in content marketing is playing it too safe. So let’s do this!

Ann Handley is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author who speaks worldwide about how businesses can escape marketing mediocrity to ignite tangible results. IBM named her one of the 7 people shaping modern marketing. She is the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs; a LinkedIn Influencer; a keynote speaker, mom, dog person, and writer.

Keynote: Sarah Hill, Virtual Reality: What's Next with Content Marketing

When it comes to visual storytelling, the world is no longer flat. Virtual Reality is quickly becoming the “what’s next” with content marketing, including mixed reality and more. Brands large and small are tapping into this new art and science, creating experiences that touch the heart, invigorate the soul and stay with the audience long after they pass the technology by. Sarah will display and explain some fantastic VR campaigns, and teach us the new language of photogrammetry, videogrammetry, haptics, navatars, social VR, and more. We’ll learn the VR storytelling methodology in a nutshell, and review new technology that won’t break the bank. Best of all, we’ll all surface with a roadmap on how VR can build our brands, in strange and mysterious ways.

National Edward R. Murrow, NAB Service to America and 12 time Mid-America Emmy award-winning Storyteller. Sarah is the CEO & Chief Storyteller for StoryUP VR, an immersive media company that creates stories to try to shift pro-social emotional states. She holds a provisional patent on immersive story for VR therapy. Sarah is a former interactive news anchor for the NBC & CBS affiliates in mid-Missouri. Her team at KOMU-TV pioneered the use of multi-way video chat during a newscast. An alum of the Missouri School of Journalism and former adjunct faculty, Sarah's reporting has taken her team around the globe capturing VR stories about the human spirit in the Amazon, UAE, Congo, Haiti and Zambia. Sarah is fascinated with what she calls "Human Media", or the evolution of communication to a three-dimensional world. Virtual and Augmented Realities are two mediums in which Sarah likes to create. StoryUP's roots are in virtual travel for Veterans. In 2015, Sarah built a program called "Honor Everywhere", that uses Virtual Reality to allow aging World War II Veterans the opportunity to see their WWII memorial. As Chief Storyteller at Veterans United Foundation, she told stories about Veterans and military families and used Human Media to give a voice to military charities. She's covered the aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami in Sri Lanka and Indonesia and produced documentaries in Vietnam and Guatemala on the world's mobility problem. Most recently, her team produced VR documentaries from the Amazon and eastern Congo about energy poverty. StoryUP creates content at the intersection of Journalism and Neuroscience. You can read StoryUP's case studies about immersive media and its impact on brain wave patterns for empathy, motivation and mindfulness here: http://www.story-up.com/ Let's StoryUP!

Keynote: Larry Kim, Co-Founder, WordStream

There are a lot of faces out there in Facebook land, and some of them are Facebook shareholders looking for increased advertising revenue. That’s where Larry Kim comes in, the King of PPC.  He’ll show us why he’s bullish on Facebook ads in 2017 to amplify the best organic content. You'll see his top proven tactics to exponentially drive more traffic and convert 100x more clicks into leads and sales, with small budgets that offer big time ROI. As it turns out, there are a few things that you are probably NOT doing at all, or not doing wisely when it comes to using Facebook for lead generation. All attendees will learn these secrets and gain the critical insights into making Facebook your best book for business. 

Larry Kim is the founder of WordStream, a PPC management software and services company whose free PPC and keyword research tools have been used by more than a million internet marketers worldwide. Larry has been named the most influential PPC marketer in the world for the last two years by PPC Hero and 3QDigital, and his internet marketing blog is read by nearly a million visitors every month. Larry is a columnist for Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, Hubspot, Moz, Inc Magazine, Marketing Profs, and dozens of other publications.

Keynote: Lee Odden, The Influence Imperative

Content without credibility is a worthless investment, that’s for sure. The challenge is how to create the credibility. It seems that creating more content is what most companies are doing these days, hoping to find the unicorns organically which they then amplify with marketing spend.  But that really just adds more content to the mix, further clogging the spokes. What marketers need to do is break down the barriers with content discovery, engagement, and effectiveness by integrating internal and external influencers. In this presentation you’ll learn how to find the content gold mines that come from collaboration with influencers who attract and engage readers in droves and keep them coming back for more.

Lee is a marketing strategist, author, speaker and CEO of TopRank Marketing, a digital marketing agency serving some of the top brands in the world with content, search, social media and influencer marketing consulting. Cited by the The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Forbes for his marketing expertise, Lee has evangelized an integrated approach to marketing and PR at nearly 200 speaking events in 16 different countries and through an award winning blog at toprankblog.com.

Keynote: Andy Crestodina, How to Make Friends, Leverage Social & Become Famous Online

Relationships. Networking. Collaboration. Those are the core principles we’ve used for decades to grow our businesses and advance our career. As it turns out, those same principals are the drivers for content marketing success these days. But there are a few twists that make it difficult to stand out from the noise. Listening well and playing nicely is the new art.  Optimizing smartly with data insights for multiple channels is the new science. Andy will show us the new way and inspire us to make our content better to make it all work, with the help of the people who surround you at Content Marketing Conference.

Andy Crestodina is a co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Orbit Media, an award-winning 40-person digital agency in Chicago. Over the past 20 years, Andy has provided digital marketing advice to 1000+ businesses. He speaks at national marketing conferences and writes for big marketing blogs. He's also the author of Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing. Andy has written 400+ of articles on content strategy, search engine optimization, influencer marketing, conversion and Analytics. Top 10 Online Marketing Experts to Watch, Forbes Top 50 Marketing Influencer, Entrepreneur Magazine Top 20 Content Marketing Thought Leaders, Alexa Top 25 Content Marketers, Buzzsumo Top 100 Digital Marketers, Brand 24 Top 10 Social Media Influencers to Watch, Social Media Explorer Top 50 Content Marketing Influencers to Follow, Outbrain Top 15 Growth Marketing Speakers, Read Write 3x Inc 5000 Winner

KEYNOTE: Aparna Nancherla, Comedian

"Up-and-coming comedian Aparna Nancherla is having a great year, riding high on a TV comedy special, tour and a new album, Just Putting It Out There — all this while wrestling with some pretty tough personal issues, like depression, on stage."  NPR.ORG

Specialties: Comedy (Performance) - Stand Up/Improv/Writing/Sketch/Acting, Journalism, Writing, Editing, Copy Editing, Fact Checking, Office Administration, Retail, Customer Service.

Keynote: Fireside Chat with Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot, and CMC Chair Byron White

Keynote: Adam Grossman CMO Redsox: Storytelling with the Sox: Engaging Fans through Compelling Content

The Boston Red Sox are known for their passionate fan base and strong ties to the New England community,  but the rapid technological advancement of recent decades brings unique challenges and opportunities for engaging fans, particularly those of the next generation. In this lunchtime keynote, Boston Red Sox CMO Adam Grossman will discuss the ways in which the team is focusing on creating compelling content and exploring digital innovations across a variety of platforms to enhance its connections with fans.

Keynote: Bonin Bough

Bonin Bough is one of the foremost-awarded marketing executives on the planet, and author of TXT Me (646) 759-1837. Throughout his illustrious career as one of the youngest C-suite executives in a Fortune 50 company, Bonin has spearheaded some of the industry’s largest global marketing campaigns across digital, mobile, television, print, and experiential, including the premier of the first ever 3D printed food product, the customizable, real-time 3D printed Oreo at SXSW.
 
As the Chief Media & eCommerce Officer at Mondelēz International (formerly Kraft Foods), he created some of the first marketing programs across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Paramount Films, ABC, NBC, Fox, to name a few, and took precedence in fostering partnerships with startups including Instagram, Foursquare, and BuzzFeed. Prior to Mondelēz International, Bonin led digital marketing globally for PepsiCo, Weber Shandwick and Ruder Finn Interactive.
 
He is seen as one of the top mobile marketers in the world, having been named “Mobile Marketer of the Year” by the MMA. In 2013, he was inducted into the American Advertising Federation’s Advertising Hall of Achievement and has been listed in Fortune Magazine’s “40 under 40”, Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business”, The Adweek 50 and PRWeek Power List.
 
Bonin’s prominence as a transformative activator has helped reinvigorate traditional marketing by combining innovative tech via breakthrough brand campaigns including Oreo, Honey Maid, Pepsi, Gatorade, and countless other billion dollar brands.

Bonin Bough is vice president of global media and consumer engagement at Mondelez International. In this role, Bough is responsible for all forms of media, including leading and developing partnerships, internal capabilities and strategies across all forms of consumer connections, such as digital, TV, print and outdoors. Before joining Mondelez, Bonin spent three-and-a-half years at PepsiCo, where he oversaw company-wide digital strategy and the implementation of social media tools across PepsiCo's portfolio of food and beverage brands. Bough has been recognized as one of business' hottest rising stars in lists that include Fortune's 2011 "40 under 40," Fast Company's 2011 "100 Most Creative People in Business," Ebony's "Power 100" and The Internationalist's 2012 "Internationalists of the Year." He is co-author of the 2010 book "Perspectives on Social Media Marketing." Bough holds degrees in physics and political science from Hartwick College.

Keynote: Tim Ash, Ending the War Between Branding & Direct Response

There is a war going on in marketing departments that's wasting our time, missing big opportunity, and costing us revenue. On the one side, the guardians that stand firm on brand brand purity.  On the other side, the mavericks willing to test anything to boost conversion and sales. Their views collide with a cosmic force, making it difficult to team up and find a way to betterment, and tune out the differences that clog the spokes.

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) expert Tim Ash is here to change all that, laying out a mediation plan and comprehensive framework for uniting these seemingly intractable positions, harnessing their combined superpowers to achieve spectacular results. Again. And again. And again.

In this keynote, you will learn...

-- Key concepts for understanding the power and limitations of brands
-- How brands subconsciously frame the direct-response offer
-- How to create a framework for powerful brand and direct-response synergies

Tim is a highly-regarded presenter and keynote speaker at SES, eMetrics, PPC Summit, Affiliate Summit, PubCon, SMX, OMS, AffCon, LeadsCon, Internet Retailer, and eComXpo. He is the founder and chairperson of ConversionConference.com, the first international conference series focused on improving online conversions. Tim is a contributing columnist to several publications including ClickZ, Website Magazine, DM News, Visibility Magazine, Search Marketing Standard, Search Engine Marketing Journal, and Electronic Retailer Online Strategies magazine. He is the host of the weekly Landing Page Optimization show and podcast on WebmasterRadio.fm. Over the past 15 years, Tim has helped a number of major US and international brands to develop successful web-based initiatives. Companies like Google, Expedia, Kodak, eHarmony, Facebook, American Express, Canon, Nestle, Symantec, Intuit, AutoDesk and many others have benefitted from Tim's deep understanding and innovative perspective. Since 1995, he has authored more than 100 published articles. In addition, Tim is the online voice of conversion optimization as the host of the Landing Page Optimization podcast on WebmasterRadio.fm.

Keynote: Josh Bernoff, End Toxic Content

Among professionals who write, 81% say that poorly written material wastes a lot of their time. This inefficiency is choking your productivity and ruining your day. Embrace the Iron Imperative: treat the reader’s time as more valuable than your own. Embrace the culture of clean writing.

Josh Bernoff is the author of Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean (HarperBusiness, 2016). The Globe and Mail called it "a Strunk and White for the modern knowledge worker." He blogs every weekday at withoutbullshit.com, publishing commentary on writing, politics, health care, technology, and business strategy. His blog has attracted more than two million views in its first two years. His three previous business books include the BusinessWeek bestseller Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (Harvard Business Press, 2008). He will publish two other books on technology and strategy in 2018. His book Truth and Influence is due out in 2019. In his spare time, Josh is the volunteer CEO of wellnesscampaign.org, a non-profit organization transforming the health habits of hundreds of people. He was previously senior vice president, idea development at Forrester Research.

Keynote: Ron Tite, Everyone's a Comedian (or at Least They Should Be) Using Humour to Win the Battle for Time

In boardrooms all across America, senior marketers have gathered staff around flip charts to deliver one bold statement: “We need content.” 

Yes, you do. Welcome to the party.

Sadly, content marketing has been diluted to the point that everything from Q4 spreadsheets to an internet cat hairball is considered content these days. You write it, you shoot it, you design it. But does anyone consume it? Consumers used to vote with their wallets. Now, they vote with their time. And winning that battle has never been more difficult.

Need inspiration? Just look to the ultimate content creators: Comedians. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be Chris Rock or Jerry Seinfeld or Bo Burnham (millennial reference!). You just have to be as committed to the process as they are. Deep down, we’re all comedians and in this humorous and insightful session, Ron Tite will help you find the funny in your brand, your products, and your content. 

Trained at the legendary Second City, Ron Tite has always blurred the lines between art and commerce. He has been an award-winning advertising writer and Creative Director for some of the world's most respected brands including Air France, Evian, Fidelity, Hershey, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, Intel, Microsoft, Volvo and many others. Currently, Ron is Founder and CEO of Church+State, an agency that helps global brands unify content and advertising, and Editor-in-Chief of The Business Casual. Ron has written for television. Penned a children's book. Wrote, produced, and performed a hit play. Created a branded art gallery. And was Executive Producer and Host of the award-winning comedy show, Monkey Toast. In demand as a speaker on disruption, innovation, creativity and content marketing, Ron speaks to leading organizations all over the world about "Think. Do. Say", his own take on modern business. Ron's own book, Everyone's An Artist: Or At Least They Should Be (Co-written by Scott Kavanagh and Christopher Novais), was published by HarperCollins in 2016.

Keynote: Travis Wright: What I Learned Unfollowing 250,000 Twitter Fans

New words and phrases are required to describe Travis Wright and his contribution to the content marketing revolution: Venture catalyst, marketing provocateur, brand awesomeizer, and more. His authority on marketing technology, content advertising, and social business combines with his stand-up comedic style to deliver slam-dunk keynotes that educate and entertain. For his CMC keynote, Travis will enlighten us on what he learned from unfollowing all his 250,000+ Twitter followers that will surprise and delight you.

Travis Wright is a successful author, consultant, keynote speaker, entrepreneur, data & analytics geek, tech journalist, growth hacker, podcast host, and mediocre stand-up comic. He was the former global digital and social strategist at Symantec for the Norton brand, he was a Russian linguist in the US Army, he is the CMO of CCP.Digital, a Kansas City & SF-based digital ad & content agency, and the cofounder of DeepSee.io, an AI-powered startup that grades content, content creators, journalists, and politicians to help eliminate "fake news." Over the past 20 years, Wright has helped hundreds of B2B & B2C companies, from well-funded start-ups and SMBs to the Fortune 100. He is also a columnist at Inc. Magazine, podcast host of VentureBeat's VB Engage, and author of his first book with Wiley & Sons, Digital Sense, which published in January 2017.

The Latest Facebook Updates

Want to avoid getting crushed by Facebook's latest updates? Learn the latest must-know tips and strategies, and the NEW way to get 10-100x more value from Facebook. You'll learn it all from Dennis Yu that's managed more than ONE BILLION dollars in online ads. He'll dive into a step-by-step strategy that drove 29X return for the Golden State Warriors, generating 80 million reviews for only $500. And show you how to trick the new FaceBook algorithm to maximize your results.

Attend this session, and surface with the FaceBook game plan that wins:

-- What's up with Facebook? In A Nutshell
-- 3X3 Video Grid Funnel
-- How to use Facebook for a dollar a day
-- Standards of excellence for Facebook

Dennis Yu is CEO of BlitzMetrics. He is an internationally recognized lecturer in Facebook marketing, having been featured on National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Fox News, AllFacebook, CBS Evening News, and KTLA-TV. He has spoken at Search Marketing Expo, Search Engine Strategies, Web 2.0, The American Marketing Association, PubCon, Conversational Commerce Conference, Pacific Conferences, HostingCon, Affiliate Summit, Affiliate Convention, UltraLight Startups, and other venues. Yu has also counselled the Federal Trade Commission on privacy issues for social networks. Dennis has held leadership positions at Yahoo! and American Airlines. His educational background is Finance and Economics from Southern Methodist University and London School of Economics.

Marketing Ugly: How to Create Content for Boring, Complex or Undifferentiated Products

In "Marketing Ugly," participants will discover NINE practical, proven ways (3 each for the 3 topic areas) to create engaging, successful content for our most difficult marketing challenges: boring, complex and undifferentiated (commodity) products/services. Each tactic is backed with real-life examples/success stories.

Jonathan Kranz is the author of Writing Copy for Dummies and a copywriting veteran now in his 22nd year of independent practice. His clients include AT&T, Dow Jones, Elsevier, Fidelity Ventures, Harvard Business School, HP, Liberty Mutual, Nuance, Symantec and many others too numerous to list. A popular and provocative speaker, Jonathan offers in-house marketing writing training sessions that help organizations create content that establishes authority, attracts leads, and builds market presence. Jonathan has conducted workshops for companies such as Hattaway Communications, Kaplan, Schlumberger, Symantec and Xerox, and for professional development events led by groups such as the Content Marketing Institute (Content Marketing World) and MarketingProfs.

Combine Paid & SEO Strategies to Increase Your Bottom Line

The customer journey has totally changed - forever. According to CMI, it takes between 7-13 touches to deliver a qualified sales lead. Customers now use mobile devices to research potential business partners before buying a product or service. They check your business’s website, read reviews, conduct several searches and check social media posts. You must implement both paid and SEO strategies to make your brand visible at the right moment of the journey.

Are you focusing equally on paid and organic search in your marketing efforts? You should be. If not, you are missing out on serious revenue potential by not allowing paid and organic to work together. 

In this session you will learn:

-- How the search results are changing
-- How paid media is changing
-- Why it's not SEO vs. Paid
-- How to grow your own audience
-- Real world case studies

There is no war – there is only search. Discover how to leverage both paid and organic to grow exponentially.

Arnie Kuenn is the CEO of Vertical Measures, a full-service Internet marketing agency dedicated to helping clients drive profitable growth through SEO & content marketing. Arnie has held executive positions in the world of new technologies and marketing for more than 25 years. Mr. Kuenn is a founder of the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association (AZIMA). Arnie speaks at events around the world and has personally trained more than 3,000 students on content marketing. He recently published his second book, "Content Marketing Works", with his son Brad.

The Next Chapter of Content Experience: Interactive, Visual, Code-Free.

Creating custom websites and interactive content is a big challenge for all marketing teams, that are typically bottlenecked with high development costs and limited resources which cause slow turnaround times. All that is changing, fast. The new content marketing revolutionaries craft 'code-free' design and digital experiences in minutes vs the days or weeks in the past. Learn about all the new creative tools that instantly remove the bottleneck, enabling you to create more interactive content experiences that create more engagement and performance, with way less resources and less budget to boot.

Attend this session, and learn...


- How to turn static PDF's and ebooks into interactive content 
- Hacks to publish custom content experiences quickly
- The new toolkit to manage large portfolios of digital content

Chris leads all Marketing for Brandcast and has worked in high growth technology companies for over 12 years in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Chris previously worked for Google, where he worked on marketing and communications for the consumer apps suite, and also ran Marketing for Sharethrough, where helped transform the company into a leader in native advertising technology.

How to Move Your Brand From Your Audience's Short-Term to Long-Term Memory By Building Trust and Dominating Your Industry

The content marketing world is a noisy one, and in order to succeed, it’s vital to differentiate your brand as a trusted leader within your space. John Hall, well-known speaker and author of “Top of Mind,” will discuss the role of consistent content in building trust with your audience, as well as the steps you need to take to ensure you’re moving from your audience’s short term to long-term memory.

John is the CEO and Co-Founder of Influence & Co., a company that assists individuals and brands in growing their influence through products and services such as creating and publishing bylined articles, facilitating thought leadership programs for brands and much more. John has a weekly column at Forbes and has also contributed to The Huffington Post, Business Insider, Portfolio, The Washington Post, and many other reputable publications. He's also a member of the Young Entrepreneur Council, where he helps mentor young entrepreneurs to help them reach their life goals.

The Content Contributor Pipeline: Build It And They Will Come

To go big with content marketing these days, you need a small army of content contributors to engage your audience with information they want and need. In this session, you'll learn lots of tricks collected over 4 years wrangling the DigitalMarketer Blog, working with 50+ content contributors and creators. Get the step-by-step process to build a content pipeline that produces click-worthy, shareable content on a consistent basis - whether you're a one-man band or a team of 50. The secret is setting up the content guidelines, and retaining key contributors, creating a win-win opportunity that transforms your business into a content marketing machine.

Dive into this session, and you'll surface with the fundamentals like ....

— Sourcing content contributors 
— Creating editorial guidelines 
— Outreach templates for influencers
— The 5-phase editorial process guaranteed to produce stellar content... every. single. time.
— Distribution strategies that get the words out and leads in

Get ready to eliminate blog stress and tap into the contributors gold mine.

Lindsay Marder is DigitalMarketer's Managing Editor. Lindsay manages DigitalMarketer's content strategy, blog, editorial team, and Faculty program. In the past 12 months, Lindsay has generated over seven million unique sessions for the DigitalMarketer blog. She also has a publishing background, and has assisted in the ghostwriting, editing, and publishing of over 75 books in 50 different markets.

How to Become a Contributor to Top Business Publications

Could writing for Forbes, Inc., or Entrepreneur generate $5M in revenue for your small business? Land you a book deal? Send you to hang out with Richard Branson on his tropical island for a week? Lead to phone calls with Beyonce's dad and invitations to the White House? These are just a few of the real-life perks that have come to contributors to top business publications. 

Josh has written for over 20 publications and has interviewed more than 60 contributors to find out how they they got in. From his experiences and those interviews Josh created The Contributor Roadmap which will show you how to get from wherever you are to landing a contributor spot at a top publication. Josh will then teach you how to keep your editor happy and leverage your contributor position (100% ethically) to your benefit.

Josh Steimle is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He has written over 200 articles for publications like Forbes, Mashable, TechCrunch, and Time, and is the author of "Chief Marketing Officers at Work: How Top Marketers Build Customer Loyalty". Steimle is a TEDx speaker and has presented at conferences like ClickZ Live, Adtech, Social Media Week. He is also the founder and CEO of MWI, a digital marketing firm he founded in 1999 with offices in Hong Kong and the U.S. Steimle was recently recognized by Entrepreneur magazine as one of 50 Online Marketing Influencers To Watch in 2016.

7 Tips to Never Have a Bad Landing Page Again/Boost Conversions by Learning Exactly What Your Customer Wants - Without Asking Them!

Landing pages are essential, but if you try to wing it, you’re likely going to end up with the dreaded Frankenpage. In this session, Justin will share his 7 best tips to ensure that your landing pages actually convert! 

There are two kinds of user tests: Active Tests & Passive Tests. Justin shares the difference between the two and why you need to invest in passive user tests to improve your user experience and boost conversions for companies of all types and sizes.

Justin Rondeau is the Director of Optimization at DigitalMarketer and runs all of the optimization efforts at DM, has developed a rigorous analytics and optimization course, and has certified hundreds of optimization and analytics professionals. Named one of the top 25 most influential CRO professionals, Rondeau has spent his entire career working on optimization campaigns and has helped train some of the leading optimization teams at Fortune 500 companies. Rondeau has run hundreds of tests for both B2B and eCommerce brands and has has analyzed 3,000+ split tests tests across virtually every industry.

Email Marketing: The Good, the Bad, and the WOW!

In this overview of email marketing best practices, you'll learn the essential do’s and don’ts for creating killer email marketing campaigns and strategy that won’t kill you (like breaking the law). And you’ll see live examples of email marketing strategies that nurture customer relationships and help drive more sales.

-- Even those familiar with email marketing will learn something new in this high energy presentation including the following…
5 things you should always do in email marketing
-- 5 things you should never do in email marketing
The right way to grow and nurture your email marketing list
-- The anatomy of email marketing design and layout in 2018
-- How to avoid the common pitfalls and mistakes many email marketers make

Jessica is a self-admitted numbers nerd. She's worked to lift ROI in customer- and data-driven marketing for a broad range of brands like Dairy Queen, Spirit Airlines, Wingstop, Beauty Brands, Hostess, Water.org, Farmland Foods, Hallmark Baby, Banfield Pet Hospitals, SelectQuote, and Boulevard Brewing Company, and more. Jessica also spreads the good word of great email marketing from the stage. Over the last 4 years, she's lead trainings and spoken in front of audiences from dozens to over 1200 from Las Vegas to New York City to Vancouver to SXSW Interactive in Austin. In 2016, she joined the Barkley team as Director of Data-Driven Marketing, implementing the best practices she preaches for Barkley clients. For three years as Marketing Manager, Jessica managed partnerships and opportunities for emfluence with other Kansas City marketing communities and businesses as well as a comprehensive and cohesive digital and email marketing campaign, promoting the emfluence Marketing Platform, and our strategic services. In 2013, Jessica finally got to put the truth on her business card: Digital Marketing Evangelist! In 2016, Jessica accepted the exciting role of Director of Data-Driven Marketing at Barkley, working as lead CRM strategist for fortune 1000 companies like Dairy Queen and Spirit Airlines, soaking up all the smarts of my fellow partners and helping integrate data.

How to Embrace Pace with Content Strategy for Deep Experiences

Fast and efficient may rule the web, but efficient experiences aren’t always effective, for many reasons. Instead, try slowing down your customers to improve learning and advance their journey. Fast-to-publish and quick-to-sell can lead to low lifetime value, shopping cart abandonment, returned merchandise—and understandably unhappy reviews. Attend this session, and learn how to craft appropriately-paced customer experiences that allow the time and space for discovery, customer confidence, and insights that last long after the conversion. The secrets live in how you craft copy and prioritize content types to move customers forward wisely, to enjoy the journey mile after mile.

Margot Bloomstein is the author of "Content Strategy at Work: Real-World Stories to Strengthen Every Interactive Engagement" and principal of Appropriate, Inc., a brand and content strategy consultancy based in Boston. Over nearly two decades, Margot has helped clarify content strategy for organizations as diverse as Al Jazeera America, Harvard University, Fidelity Investments, Lindt and Sprüngli, Lovehoney, Sallie Mae, ECCO Shoes, Timberland, and the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority. A participant in the inaugural Content Strategy Consortium and a featured speaker at SXSW, Margot frequently keynotes events and conducts workshops around the world. She also teaches brand-driven content strategy in the graduate program at the Austrian University of Applied Sciences in Graz. Margot produces the popular brand communication tool BrandSort and tweets at @mbloomstein.

Truth and Influence: How to Build and Spread Powerful Ideas

The landscape is now littered with “influencers” whose only credential is the ability to chatter on social media. You can stand out from this crowd through the power of your ideas. I’ll explain how to tap into unique sources of insight, think analytically, build frameworks that connect quickly with the audiences you want to influence, and then spread those ideas and become a leader. The insights in this talk are based on interviews and surveys of hundreds of successful thought leaders.

Josh Bernoff is the author of Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean (HarperBusiness, 2016). The Globe and Mail called it "a Strunk and White for the modern knowledge worker." He blogs every weekday at withoutbullshit.com, publishing commentary on writing, politics, health care, technology, and business strategy. His blog has attracted more than two million views in its first two years. His three previous business books include the BusinessWeek bestseller Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (Harvard Business Press, 2008). He will publish two other books on technology and strategy in 2018. His book Truth and Influence is due out in 2019. In his spare time, Josh is the volunteer CEO of wellnesscampaign.org, a non-profit organization transforming the health habits of hundreds of people. He was previously senior vice president, idea development at Forrester Research.

Horrible SEO Mistakes You're Definitely Making

Real-world stories of the biggest problems that plague SEO managers -- and the VERY overlooked fixes that anyone can do.

Mike Roberts is the Founder and CEO of SpyFu, a service that lets you learn from and download your competitors' AdWords and SEO campaign history. Mike is an industry recognized expert in SEO, PPC, and competitive intelligence. Having founded SpyFu in 2006, he led the charge in transforming the way search marketers craft their strategies in PPC and SEO. Like many creators, Mike obsesses over what makes something work. He applies that thinking to search marketing, pulling apart the data to learn why some advertisers are more successful so that everyone can learn from the wisdom of the market.

Gamification: Where Art and Science Align to Create Results

In a hyper-competitive and data-driven digital landscape, it’s easy for artful communication to get overpowered by bigger-than-big data. But as content marketing continues to evolve, engagement is no longer enough. You have to forge measurable results, all the time. That's where gamification comes in: The perfect blend of art and science required for content marketing success. Attend this session to learn how to create 'gamified content' that will fuel engagement and motivate action, backed by case studies from major brands.

Learn all this, and more....

- How disruptive B2C e-commerce brands use gamification to supercharge customer acquisition

- The simple content format that has helped B2B marketers turn cold prospects into leads and sales.

- Actionable hacks to find hidden gamification opportunities in the content that you create every day.

- Easy-to-use tools and tips to get gamification started pronto.

Inbar Yagur is the VP of Marketing at TrenDemon, helping empower content marketers with clear and actionable insights. Before TrenDemon, she helped write the rulebook for marketing on content discovery channels as the head of Creative Strategy for Taboola, working with brands and Fortune 500 companies. Her passion is speaking to content marketers: Educating them about best practices and strategies, and helping them troubleshoot and optimize efforts. Most importantly, she's a mother of 2, a rabid consumer of pop culture and politics, and a reciter of 90's SNL skits.

Using Customer Data to Craft Email Personalization at Scale

Using Customer Data to Craft Email Personalization at Scale

Marketing is all about the data these days. But gathering, analyzing, interpreting, and using data to create relevance and timeliness in email campaigns can be easier said than done. This session will explore the 6 steps to take to turn data into a useful tool for creating marketing, including the latest methodology and technology you need to gather customers insights and transform that data into personalized emails at scale. 

Buckle up and learn how to:
-- Acquire data so that it's ready to use in marketing and sales
-- Use data to determine the content of your email marketing
-- Use data to determine the timing of your email marketing
-- Use data to determine the impact of your email marketing

Jessica is a self-admitted numbers nerd. She's worked to lift ROI in customer- and data-driven marketing for a broad range of brands like Dairy Queen, Spirit Airlines, Wingstop, Beauty Brands, Hostess, Water.org, Farmland Foods, Hallmark Baby, Banfield Pet Hospitals, SelectQuote, and Boulevard Brewing Company, and more. Jessica also spreads the good word of great email marketing from the stage. Over the last 4 years, she's lead trainings and spoken in front of audiences from dozens to over 1200 from Las Vegas to New York City to Vancouver to SXSW Interactive in Austin. In 2016, she joined the Barkley team as Director of Data-Driven Marketing, implementing the best practices she preaches for Barkley clients. For three years as Marketing Manager, Jessica managed partnerships and opportunities for emfluence with other Kansas City marketing communities and businesses as well as a comprehensive and cohesive digital and email marketing campaign, promoting the emfluence Marketing Platform, and our strategic services. In 2013, Jessica finally got to put the truth on her business card: Digital Marketing Evangelist! In 2016, Jessica accepted the exciting role of Director of Data-Driven Marketing at Barkley, working as lead CRM strategist for fortune 1000 companies like Dairy Queen and Spirit Airlines, soaking up all the smarts of my fellow partners and helping integrate data.

InstaBrain: Snap into the Minds of Gen Y and Z Customers

How do you connect and communicate with future customers? If you don’t know this about Millennials (Gen Y) and Pivotals (Gen Z), you’ll be out of business before you can say “Insta.”

A huge shift is happening today. Even between Gen Y and Gen Z, there’s a massive difference in how customers want to find information, transact, and connect and communicate with businesses like yours.

Customer research firm Brilliant Experience has conducted millennial studies for some of the largest and most advanced companies in Silicon Valley. Ever wonder what they know?

Today, we reveal the most impactful trends to attract and engage these customers, including:

· How do they select where to go for different types of content?
· How do they learn about news?
· How many ‘selves’ do they have online?
· Where do they click?
· What draws them in?
· What keeps them coming back?

If your business wants to not just survive but thrive with the next generation of customers, this is a must-attend talk!

Sarah Weise is the CEO of award-winning market research studio Bixa (bixaresearch.com) and the bestselling author of "InstaBrain: The New Rules for Marketing to Generation Z." For 15 years, Sarah has been a guide to hundreds of leading brands including Google, IBM, Capital One, Mikimoto, PBS, and Real Warriors, to name a few. Sarah helps brands achieve a laser-focus on their customers and build experiences that are downright addictive. She lectures at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business on market research and user experience, and speaks at conferences and corporate events worldwide. For a free chapter of InstaBrain, visit sarahweise.com.

The Foolproof Formula to Create Killer Emails That Amplify Opens, Clicks and Conversions

Way too often, we craft email content in record speed based solely on our assumptions about our audience. The subject lines we create are guesswork. Our calls to action don't resonate with readers, or drive conversions. And our product positioning? That's another stab in the dark. It's time to change all of that with the latest email marketing tactics that can turn your "just OK" email marketing strategy into something magnificent. Attend this session if you want to create emails that people can't wait to open.

In this session, you'll learn how to transform your email strategy with:

-- The #1 email marketing mistake that most brands make
-- Why some companies have a massive and freakishly engaged email list-and how you can, too
-- The formula for email content that gets subscribers to open, click, and take action every single time
-- A tactic to turn your worn-out newsletter into an engagement machine

Liz Willits is a marketing expert, business owner, and consultant who guides the email marketing and content strategies of some of the fastest-growing companies in the world. Before starting her own business, she led content strategy at one of the world's largest email marketing companies and sent and tested millions of emails. Through her highly-rated webinars, online courses, speaking gigs, and email campaigns, Liz has taught hundreds of thousands of small business owners and entrepreneurs how to successfully grow their businesses online.

3 Rs of Website Optimization

High-performing websites are like living, breathing creatures that require oxygen(optimization) for survival and growth. And if you're not using the latest methodology and technology to optimize your website and forge forward with a clearly defined, powerful process (not product), you'll tumble from the high sky into the land of the unknown. Attend this session to learn the marketing 3R's and flawless process for accelerated growth; Ruthless Prioritization, Rapid Creation and Relentless Support that will greatly boost your multiplier for growth.

Attend this session and learn how to….

-- Forge a modern website optimization process that follows the 3R's
-- Adhere to the process without flaw to maximizes ROI
-- Deliver on the high-performing goals you 
-- Pinpoint the small and large victories as the unfold

Taylor is the VP of E-Commerce at Progrexion. His role in organizations is to form a cohesion between customer acquisition strategies and the technologies on which they're dependent. He has built and managed web properties responsible for attracting millions of monthly visitors and nearly 1 billion dollars in lifetime revenue.

The Top 10 Facebook Messenger Marketing Hacks of All Time

With Facebook organic reach in the toilet, email spam filters getting increasingly aggressive, SEO harder than ever, and PPC costs through the roof - what's the greatest distribution channel for content marketers in 2018?

That's where Facebook Messenger comes in, with chat blasts get 85% open rates, +85x better than Facebook organic post and 5 times better than email campaigns.

Yet, less than 0.1% of businesses currently do any Facebook Messenger marketing (which is craaazy!)

This session will cover the top 10 Facebook Messenger marketing hacks of all time, including how to:

-- Chat-blast your entire contact list
-- Get your website visitors to opt-into receiving your Facebook Messenger blasts
-- Create super engaging, interactive Facebook Messenger content
-- Attach auto-responders to your Facebook posts – like this one
-- Build advanced chatbots in 10 minutes without any coding
-- Use the “Send to Messenger” Ad Format in Facebook Ads
-- More of the craziest Facebook Messenger marketing hacks that content marketers need to know and implement today!

Larry Kim is the founder of WordStream, a PPC management software and services company whose free PPC and keyword research tools have been used by more than a million internet marketers worldwide. Larry has been named the most influential PPC marketer in the world for the last two years by PPC Hero and 3QDigital, and his internet marketing blog is read by nearly a million visitors every month. Larry is a columnist for Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, Hubspot, Moz, Inc Magazine, Marketing Profs, and dozens of other publications.

The Keys to Successful B2B Content and Influence Programs

While only 11% of B2B companies are implementing ongoing influencer marketing programs, 55% of marketers plan to spend more on influencer marketing in the coming year. Even with growing budget commitments, many B2B brands are not entirely sure about how to execute influencer marketing. Fortunately, brands with mature influencer marketing programs like SAP are elevating the practice. 

Join Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing and Amisha Gandhi, Head of Influencer Marketing at SAP, who will share strategies and best practices that can unlock success for an Enterprise B2B content and influencer marketing program. 

Attend this session to learn...
- The opportunities to scale quality content with B2B influencers
- How SAP has been able to scale influence to impact results
- What to avoid and what to plan for to scale influencer content 

Lee is a marketing strategist, author, speaker and CEO of TopRank Marketing, a digital marketing agency serving some of the top brands in the world with content, search, social media and influencer marketing consulting. Cited by the The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Forbes for his marketing expertise, Lee has evangelized an integrated approach to marketing and PR at nearly 200 speaking events in 16 different countries and through an award winning blog at toprankblog.com.

12 Principles for Viral Content

There are literally millions of blog posts published a day. Getting people to see your content—let alone read it—can feel downright impossible sometimes. Moreover, people tend to spend more time consuming content on the sites they trust, so how can you ensure that your writing gets picked up and published by major publications? Stop trying to publish dozens of articles a week in the hopes that one will bring in the traffic you want. Instead, learn the 12 principles for creating really great content that editors simply can’t resist, and get your writing featured on big name sites like Forbes, Wired, The Next Web, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, FastCompany, and more. 

In this session you’ll learn:

- How to identify and “highjack" trending topics
- Why challenging the status quo will make your content more “shareable"
- How to create highly engaging content that appeals to multiple audiences
- Setting up a process for envisioning what content your audience actually wants

Nadya is the Marketing Director for the infographic maker Venngage. When she's not writing sassy marketing content, she cooks food for strangers in her underground apartment restaurant called Chez Lisgar. She has a B.A. in Devised Theatre and a Master's in Digital Media. Nadya has a passion for creating content that her audience will enjoy engaging with. She has contributed to over 30 different marketing and business blogs and publications, including The Huffington Post, The Next Web, SumoMe and more.

"How to Create ""Intentional"" Content that Connects"

Before you crank out that next blog post, headline story or white paper, ask yourself a critical question: What is the purpose of the asset your creating, and what impact will it have on the business. The answers can be complex, but not asking those questions are the big mistake most of us make as we scramble to publish more for the sake more.

Attend this session to learn the art and science of creating intentional content that’s helped Digital Marketer zoom from zero to zillions of readers and fans, including the actual mechanics of sample winning content that serves a specific purpose that performs again and again.

Here’s a snapshot of the fundamentals we'll cover:
· The six steps content creation process ranging from topic to format to ascension and more.
· The five types of offers that convert best when crafted with clear intention
· The key to conversion success using the Customer Journey Canvas
You’ll leave this session with a sure-fire process to grow your fan base of loyal readers and transform more browsers into believers, and believers into buyers.

Lindsay Marder is DigitalMarketer's Managing Editor. Lindsay manages DigitalMarketer's content strategy, blog, editorial team, and Faculty program. In the past 12 months, Lindsay has generated over seven million unique sessions for the DigitalMarketer blog. She also has a publishing background, and has assisted in the ghostwriting, editing, and publishing of over 75 books in 50 different markets.

Conversion Rate Optimization: How to Unlock Your Website's Potential

With 95% of conversion decisions happening in the subconscious brain, motivating action and improving conversion rates is challenging, to say the least. The key is to learn what you’re audience wants and needs using big data and advanced analytics, that helps to surface the right content and shape user experience in a better way.

In this session, you’ll learn a secret 6 step process to identify the major boosters and blocker that are likely helping or hurting your messaging and user experience, surfaced from dozens of experiments in different industries and niches. Most importantly, you’ll learn how to remove the guesswork for conversion rate optimization with proven tactics that deliver results for your hard work and marketing investment.

Chris is a long-time digital marketer with a passionate for helping businesses learn what their users want on their website through psychology based testing and analytics. He started his full-service Conversion Optimization agency Dayley Conversion in 2014, which he later merged with Disruptive Advertising, where he currently works as VP of site testing and optimization.

Preparing for Google's Mobile-First Index: A Checklist for Success

New for 2018, Google’s rolling out ‘Mobile First Index’ for search listings and rankings that will once again put the search optimization industry in a frenzy. Google’s already testing the new index in the wild, so now’s the time get ahead of the pack if you want to win the war of words on the web.

In this session, we'll review the latest discoveries and technology to optimize content for mobile, as well as your website, including a special Google Insight Tools that help you pinpoint problems and resolve mobile issues with ease. Most importantly, you’ll meet Molly Mobile—a new persona takeaway all attendees will get that offers a checklist for success with Google First Index, helping you jump up in the ranking for search marketing success.

Veronica is a 10-year branding and marketing veteran. Even more than that, she is a wife, a mother, an agency owner, and a brand consultant. Veronica has always combined both vision and execution when working with some of the world's most respected brands including Sprint, Marriott, IMAX, Dr. Weil Vitamin Advisor, and more. She is the Founder and President of LoSoMo Inc, a branding and digital marketing agency based in Boca Raton, FL that helps both company brands and personal brands stand out in a busy digital world. When she isn't busy wrangling a business and two kids, she is an in-demand international speaker with topics ranging from disruptive digital marketing strategies and trends to why having a personal brand is necessary to succeed in business today regardless of industry.

Empathic Content Marketing: How to Use the Psychology of Caring to Amplify Results

As marketing departments across the country have become obsessed with building colossal tech stacks, it seems we’ve lost sight a bit of our real target. On the other side of this machine-driven interaction is not another machine, but a human. And humans, we know from our own experiences, don’t just make buying decisions based on facts (e.g. X and Y demographic characteristics make us want Z product). We also make purchases on feelings (e.g. “I feel like Z really gets me”). This doesn’t mean forsaking technology—quite the opposite. Empathic marketing is all about super-powering your data and automation strategy with messaging that speaks to your customer’s pain points. Tech tells you which customers might be predisposed to your product; empathy helps you figure out what they need to hear from you. In this session, you will:

•get a crash course in the psychology of empathy—and how it applies to content
•learn about the three stages of empathy (understanding pain, validating pain, proposing solutions to the pain)
• gain practical tips for becoming a more empathic marketer

Margaret Magnarelli is executive director of audience acquisition and growth marketing at Morgan Stanley. In her role, she oversees social media, SEO, and conversion acquisition for the content-driven firmwide corporate marketing team. She was formerly VP of marketing at job site Monster.com, where she was a finalist for CMI's Content Marketer of the Year award and won awards for Best Blog and Best Content Strategy. She writes on marketing strategy for Forbes CMO Network, and has presented at Content Marketing World, SXSW, Content Marketing Conference, as well as events for ANA, PR News and Ragan. Prior to becoming a marketer, she worked as a magazine journalist--most recently executive editor at Money magazine.

Opening Remarks: Byron White

Byron is the founder and chair of Content Marketing Conference, and popular speaker, podcast and webinar host, and published author of a few books. Best described as a serial entrepreneur and one of the original content marketing revolutionaries, Byron currently focuses on growing WriterAccess, a Platform-as-a-Service he founded in 2010, now connecting 25,000+ customers with 15,000 freelance writers, editors, content strategists, and translators. When he's not working, rare indeed, you can find him traveling around the globe, experimenting with his Kalamazoo outdoor grill (you should see this thing), or golfing extremely early on Saturdays in New England, even with extreme weather conditions.

Keynote: Andrew Davis

Andrew Davis is a bestselling author and internationally acclaimed keynote speaker. Before building and selling a thriving digital marketing agency, Andrew produced for NBC’s Today Show, worked for The Muppets in New York and wrote for Charles Kuralt. He's appeared in the New York Times, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and on NBC and the BBC. Davis has crafted documentary films and award-winning content for tiny start-ups and Fortune 500 brands.

Recognized as one of the industry's "Jaw-Dropping Marketing Speakers," Andrew is a mainstay on global marketing influencer lists. Wherever he goes, Andrew Davis puts his infectious enthusiasm and magnetic speaking style to good use teaching business leaders how to grow their businesses, transform their cities, and leave their legacy.

Andrew Davis is a bestselling author and keynote speaker. Before building and selling a thriving digital marketing agency, Andrew produced for NBC and worked for The Muppets. He's appeared in the New York Times and on the Today Show. He's crafted documentary films and award-winning content for tiny start-ups and Fortune 500 brands. Today, Andrew Davis teaches business leaders how to grow their businesses, transform their cities, and leave their legacy.

Keynote: Peter McGraw

Dr. Peter McGraw is an associate professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business. As a behavioral scientist, his research examines the interrelationship of judgment, emotion, and choice—with a focus on the production and consumption of entertainment. McGraw directs The Humor Research Lab (HuRL) and is the co-author of The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny. His research has been covered by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TIME NPR, BBC, and CNN. His work appears in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. He is currently trying to kick a sweater vest habit – even if it does get him kicked off the Stylist Scientist List.

An integral part of The Content Advisory Cathy helps organizations transform the way technology can enable business strategy and performance. In her current role, Cathy has helped dozens of companies realize their content and marketing/communication objectives. With 20 years of global experience and expertise in content strategy, content management, intranets, marketing technologies and customer experience, Cathy has both led both strategic business transformation initiatives, as well as the detailed execution of enterprise technology implementations. Cathy served at Aon Hewitt as the Innovation Lead and a Senior Associate for the Communications Consulting Team, building an innovative Web solutions practice for the company. As Director, Client Services at Prescient Digital Media, Cathy led a team of consultants delivering enterprise intranet strategies, and technology selection projects for a vast array of global clients. And, as Senior Communications Advisor for IBM's Global Services division, Cathy led budget planning, intranet management, and the overall strategy and messaging of IBM's values and Mission to internal enterprise audiences. She continues to lead strategic consulting and analyst engagements with Digital Clarity Group. With her background crossing technology, emergent business trends, and both internal and external communications, Cathy focuses on working with clients to bridge leadership, business process and technology acquisition and adoption. Cathy is a frequent speaker at events such as ContentTECH, ICC, CMO Summit Europe, the J Boye Intranet conference and North American CMS Experts group, and the Gilbane conference on Content, Technology, and the Customer Experience.

Keynote: Marilyn Cox

Learn how The Second City is using content and customer engagement technology - like online reviews, a take on the traditional playbill, community and marketing platforms, and data analytics tools - to put the customer at the center of the customer experience, resulting in increased opportunity and revenue. Marilyn is the Vice President of Marketing and CRM at The Second City. 

Marilyn is responsible for developing and executing a clearly defined, integrated marketing communications strategy. She plans, organizes, staffs, trains, and manages all marketing functions to achieve objectives of growth, awareness, customer success and making work better. Marilyn exists to empower sales and support the customer. Like The Second City, her career has been one big improvisational act with over 15 years in the technology space and specialized focus in the Manufacturing, Life and Health Sciences, and Financial Services industries. When not geeking out over marketing analytics, she can be found daydreaming about her unrealized dream as a professional wrestler with the WWE.

When customers visit Second City theaters and see shows they love exploring the history and they want to be a part of what's happening now. When students take classes in the Training Center they evolve personally and develop bonds and relationships with their classmates, the instructors, and staff. When clients engage Second City Works they become Yes, Andbassadors by learning and creating with their colleagues. The Second City customer experience creates an opportunity for customers to become part of the Second Citizens ensemble, discover the value improvisation can have on their personal and professional life, and extends the in-person Second City brand experience online. Marilyn strives to facilitate that experience across all channels at The Second City. Marilyn exists to empower sales and support the customer. When not geeking out over industry marketing analytics, Marilyn can be found daydreaming about her unrealized dream as a professional wrestler with the WWE.

Keynote: David Nihill

Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, David is the author of the best-selling book Do You Talk Funny? and the Founder of FunnyBizz Conference. His work has been featured in Inc., Lifehacker, The Huffington Post, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The Irish Times, and Forbes.
His program with over 24,000 students has been featured by Prezi as one of the best training courses for presenters, his book remains one of the highest rated in the world on the (usually not so wildly exciting) topic of public speaking and his content has been read by over one million people.
A sought after international business speaker, David has also performed standup comedy at leading clubs including Cobbs, the Comedy Store, the Improv, the Punchline and the Upright Citizens Brigade, even though he strongly denies being a comedian and is well aware most people don’t understand his accent. As a storyteller he finished runner up in NPR’s the Moth’s largest US story telling competition and has won multiple Moth Storyslam competitions.
A graduate of the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School he calls San Francisco home when immigration officials permit, and was named on the 2017 Irish America 100 List, which recognizes the accomplishments of the best and the brightest Irish-American and Irish-born leaders.
A big fan of travel and languages David has lived and worked in 12 countries and visited 68 and counting.

David Nihill is a bestselling author of Do You Talk Funny, listed by Book Authority as the best book of all time on public speaking and storytelling. “One of the best coaches out there” according to Forbes.com his work has been featured in Inc, Lifehacker, The Huffington Post, Forbes, The Irish Times, TED, and NPR. His videos have been viewed more than 50 million times and his content has gone viral multiple times, across platforms including Facebook, Youtube, Tiktok and Slideshare. A sought after international business speaker and conference producer, David also performs standup comedy and was the winner of the prestigious San Francisco International Comedy Competition (previous finalists include Robin Williams, Dana Carvey and Ellen DeGeneres) and the first ever Irishman to have a special on Dry Bar Comedy. As a storyteller he finished runner up in NPR’s the Moth’s largest US story telling competition. As a lecturer he has taught at Stanford Graduate Business School, UC Berkeley, and University of Oxford. Originally from Dublin, Ireland and a graduate of the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School he calls San Francisco home these days (when immigration officials permit) and was named on the Irish America 100 List, which recognizes the accomplishments of the best and the brightest Irish-American and Irish-born leaders, and the 2021 GlobalGuru Top 30 List, which recognises the world's best communications professionals. For more information see: davidnihill.com

Keynote: Vesselin Popov

Psychometrics is the science of psychological and behavioral measurement, but what does it have to do with content marketing? Vesselin Popov (University of Cambridge) is applying the latest academic research to online campaigns, and using Big Data and psychometrics to transform the creative process. His work on predicting psychological traits from social media and optimizing messages to individuals has helped brands to significantly improve campaign performance and to build greater trust with their customers. These techniques have since been imitated by others, but with critical failings in the ethical aspects of implementation. Vess will show you how to implement these technologies responsibly and blow traditional segmentation out of the water without creeping out your customers.

Vesselin Popov is the Business Development Director for the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, a multidisciplinary research institute specialising in online behaviour and psychological assessment. He puts cutting-edge academic research into practice and combines Big Data methods with psychological theory to create impact in business, education, health and society. Vess also coordinates Apply MagicSauce, a battery of predictive algorithms based on over 6 million users' psychological and social media data. Apply Magic Sauce API translates digital footprints of human behaviour into accurate psycho-demographic profiles. This tool has had a tremendous impact on public awareness around predictive technologies (serving up to 150,000 users a day) as well as revolutionising data-driven communications campaigns. Vess works with agencies and brands to personalise content around the psychological traits of their customers and is an expert in the ethical implementation of these techniques.

Panel: Behind the Scene: Making Humor Work

Creating, developing, and producing humorous content is challenging, even if it’s your full-time job. But getting buy-in and securing budgets is much more challenging, especially in the red(tape) zone. Learn from this panel of polished pros on how they make humor work for businesses, TV networks, brands, and their own careers— securing budgets, producing great work, dealing with brand hardliners, forging buy-in, and staying focused on connecting deeply with fans. Best of all, get a behind-the-scenes view of each panelist who will be performing Stand Up at Comedy Marketing Club later in the evening.

Byron is the founder and chair of Content Marketing Conference, and popular speaker, podcast and webinar host, and published author of a few books. Best described as a serial entrepreneur and one of the original content marketing revolutionaries, Byron currently focuses on growing WriterAccess, a Platform-as-a-Service he founded in 2010, now connecting 25,000+ customers with 15,000 freelance writers, editors, content strategists, and translators. When he's not working, rare indeed, you can find him traveling around the globe, experimenting with his Kalamazoo outdoor grill (you should see this thing), or golfing extremely early on Saturdays in New England, even with extreme weather conditions.

Keynote: Bonin Bough

Bonin Bough is one of the foremost-awarded marketing executives in his field, the producer and host of The Cleveland Hustles, and the author of TXT Me (646) 759-1837. Throughout his illustrious career as one of the youngest C-suite executives in a Fortune 50 company, Bonin has spearheaded some of the industry’s largest global marketing campaigns across digital, mobile, television, print, and experiential, including the premier of the first ever 3D printed food product, the customizable, real-time 3D printed Oreo at SXSW.

Bonin’s prominence as a transformative activator has helped reinvigorate traditional marketing by combining innovative tech via breakthrough brand campaigns including Oreo, Honey Maid, Pepsi, Gatorade, and countless other billion dollar brands. He is seen as one of the top mobile marketers in the world, having been named “Mobile Marketer of the Year” by the MMA. In 2013, he was inducted into the American Advertising Federation’s Advertising Hall of Achievement and has been listed in Fortune Magazine’s “40 under 40”, Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business”, The Adweek 50 and PRWeek Power List.

Bonin Bough is vice president of global media and consumer engagement at Mondelez International. In this role, Bough is responsible for all forms of media, including leading and developing partnerships, internal capabilities and strategies across all forms of consumer connections, such as digital, TV, print and outdoors. Before joining Mondelez, Bonin spent three-and-a-half years at PepsiCo, where he oversaw company-wide digital strategy and the implementation of social media tools across PepsiCo's portfolio of food and beverage brands. Bough has been recognized as one of business' hottest rising stars in lists that include Fortune's 2011 "40 under 40," Fast Company's 2011 "100 Most Creative People in Business," Ebony's "Power 100" and The Internationalist's 2012 "Internationalists of the Year." He is co-author of the 2010 book "Perspectives on Social Media Marketing." Bough holds degrees in physics and political science from Hartwick College.

Comedy Keynote: Peter McGraw

Dr. Peter McGraw is an associate professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business. As a behavioral scientist, his research examines the interrelationship of judgment, emotion, and choice—with a focus on the production and consumption of entertainment. McGraw directs The Humor Research Lab (HuRL) and is the co-author of The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny. His research has been covered by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TIME NPR, BBC, and CNN. His work appears in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. He is currently trying to kick a sweater vest habit – even if it does get him kicked off the Stylist Scientist List.

An integral part of The Content Advisory Cathy helps organizations transform the way technology can enable business strategy and performance. In her current role, Cathy has helped dozens of companies realize their content and marketing/communication objectives. With 20 years of global experience and expertise in content strategy, content management, intranets, marketing technologies and customer experience, Cathy has both led both strategic business transformation initiatives, as well as the detailed execution of enterprise technology implementations. Cathy served at Aon Hewitt as the Innovation Lead and a Senior Associate for the Communications Consulting Team, building an innovative Web solutions practice for the company. As Director, Client Services at Prescient Digital Media, Cathy led a team of consultants delivering enterprise intranet strategies, and technology selection projects for a vast array of global clients. And, as Senior Communications Advisor for IBM's Global Services division, Cathy led budget planning, intranet management, and the overall strategy and messaging of IBM's values and Mission to internal enterprise audiences. She continues to lead strategic consulting and analyst engagements with Digital Clarity Group. With her background crossing technology, emergent business trends, and both internal and external communications, Cathy focuses on working with clients to bridge leadership, business process and technology acquisition and adoption. Cathy is a frequent speaker at events such as ContentTECH, ICC, CMO Summit Europe, the J Boye Intranet conference and North American CMS Experts group, and the Gilbane conference on Content, Technology, and the Customer Experience.

Comedy Keynote: Andrew Tarvin

Andrew Tarvin is the world’s leading Humor Engineer teaching people how to get better results while having more fun. He has worked with thousands of people at 250+ organizations, including P&G, Microsoft, and the International Association for Canine Professionals. He is a best-selling author, has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and TEDx, and has delivered programs in 50 states, 18 countries, and 3 continents. He loves the color orange and is obsessed with chocolate.

Andrew Tarvin is the CEO of Humor That Works, a leadership development company that teaches professionals how to use humor to achieve better business results. He has partnered with top organizations--including IBM, the UN, and the FBI--to solve human challenges with humor solutions. A best-selling author, Andrew has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Inc, and FastCompany, and was named a "Visionary Under 40" by the P&G Alumni Network. His TEDx talk on the skill of humor has been viewed more than six million times, only half of which were his mother. He loves chocolate and tweeting puns.

Comedy Keynote: Sarah Cooper

Sarah Cooper is a writer, comedian and creator of the satirical blog TheCooperReview.com, which attracts 100K+ readers per month. She has been performing and producing comedy for almost 10 years, in between working for global tech corporations that stole her soul while also providing free lunches and lots of material. In 2016, Sarah’s first book, 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings, landed at #1 in the Books > Humor > Business humor > Paperback books > Books with pages > Handheld books category.

Sarah Cooper is a writer, comedian and creator of satirical blog TheCooperReview.com, which attracts 500K+ pageviews per month. Her work has appeared on The Washington Post, Fast Company, Business Insider, and Huffington Post. Previously at Google, Sarah has over 15 years experience in the corporate world, leading to her first viral article, "10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings" and the subject of her first book, 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings, to be published in October 4, 2016. Sarah also speaks about adding humor to your writing, as well as performs standup comedy around San Francisco.

Comedy Keynote: Nadya Khoja

Nadya Khoja is a Visual Content and Digital Marketing Specialist. She is the Head of Marketing for Venngage, an online infographic and poster maker. She's been featured in Forbes, Mashable, The Next Web, CBC News, Huffington Post and Entrepreneur. She runs Drunk Entrepreneurs [https://drinkwithnadya.com], a web-series where she shares marketing and growth strategies after a few drinks. She is also very loud despite being very small.

In this keynote, attendees will learn 5 proven, unconventional and risky strategies to build up your followers, achieve press mentions, snag lots of free stuff and gain industry recognition, with some small risk of getting sued. Life is short, so why not go for it and join the influencer community!

Nadya is the Marketing Director for the infographic maker Venngage. When she's not writing sassy marketing content, she cooks food for strangers in her underground apartment restaurant called Chez Lisgar. She has a B.A. in Devised Theatre and a Master's in Digital Media. Nadya has a passion for creating content that her audience will enjoy engaging with. She has contributed to over 30 different marketing and business blogs and publications, including The Huffington Post, The Next Web, SumoMe and more.

Comedy Keynote: Jon Burkhart

Jon Burkhart is an award-winning keynote speaker, content strategist, and co-author of Newsjacking: The Urgent Genius of Real-time Advertising. You'll find him at the helm of the marketing consultancy TBC Global, offering fresh marketing to clients centered on interactive games that enhance and amplify content marketing efforts. He coined the phrase 'game-inar' for example-- the intersection of a webinar and gameshow that boosts engagement, better converting listeners to buyers. Jon's based in London, but consulting, speaking and program development around the globe for South By Southwest Interactive (SXSW), Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and SEAT (Sports and Entertainment Alliance in Technology). You’ll find his work publish at Rolling Stone, Fast Company The Guardian, and many more.

Jon Burkhart is an award-winning keynote speaker, content strategist, and co-author of Newsjacking: The Urgent Genius of Real-time Advertising. You'll find him at the helm of the marketing consultancy TBC Global, offering fresh marketing to clients centered on interactive games that enhance and amplify content marketing efforts. He coined the phrase 'game-inar' for example-- the intersection of a webinar and gameshow that boosts engagement, better converting listeners to buyers. Jon's based in London, but consulting, speaking and program development around the globe for South By Southwest Interactive (SXSW), Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and SEAT (Sports and Entertainment Alliance in Technology). You'll find his work publish at Rolling Stone, Fast Company The Guardian, and many more.

Comedy Keynote: Kat Koppett

Kat is the eponymous founder of Koppett , a consultancy that specializes in applying improvisational theatre and storytelling techniques to enhancing individual and organizational performance. Her book "Training to Imagine: Practical Improvisational Theatre Techniques to Enhance Creativity, Teamwork, Leadership, and Learning", is considered a seminal work in the field.

When not on the road, Kat co-directs and performs with her improv company, The Mop & Bucket Co. (www.mopco.org) in it’s theatre - a converted 100-year-old firehouse by way of strip club featured on Jerry Springer.

The author of "Training to Imagine: Practical Improvisational Theatre Techniques to Enhance Creativity, Teamwork, Leadership, and Learning", published by Stylus Publishing Inc. Kat holds a B.F.A. in Drama from New York University and an M.A. in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University.She specializes in applying improvisational theatre techniques to the organizational stage to improve individual and group performance. Her clients include JPMorganChase, Apple, GE, Havas Health, Kaiser-Permanente, NYSID and Eli Lilly. A member of the National Speakers' Association and the Consulting Alliance, Kat has presented for the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), the North American Simulation and Gaming Association (NASAGA), Influent, International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), the Rotary Club and the Young Presidents' Organization. TheaterWeek Magazine named Kat one of the year's "Unsung Heroes" for her creation of the improvisational theater format, Spontaneous Broadway, which is now performed regularly around the world. She has been seen in television ads for Pillsbury, Quaker Oats, and Dr Pepper (she was a Pepper!). Her short play, Don't Get Around Much Anymore, was a winner in Playground's Emerging Playwrights Festival. She is currently the Training Director of and a performer with the Albany, NY based improv company, The Mop & Bucket Company.

Comedy Keynote: Norm Laviolette

As co-founder of the acclaimed Improv Asylum in Boston's North End, Norm grew the fledgling theater from an unknown improv troupe to a multi-million dollar business that entertains and trains people the world over.

In 2013, Norm helped create Laugh Boston - a beautiful state-of-the-art comedy club & special events venue located in the booming Seaport District of Boston.

During his 20 years in the entertainment business, Norm has excelled as a performer, director, producer and entreprenuer (with a few hard lessons along the way). As co-founder of the acclaimed Improv Asylum in Boston's North End, Norm grew the fledgling theater from an unknown improv troupe to a multi-million dollar business that entertains and trains people the world over. In 2013, Norm helped create Laugh Boston - a beautiful state-of-the-art comedy club & special events venue located in the booming Seaport District of Boston. Most recently, Norm co-founded and became the CEO of Asylum Gaming and Esports, New England's premiere full service gaming and Esports organization.

Comedy Keynote: Roo Ciambriello

Roo Ciambriello has spent years as a copywriter, creating brand voices and fun stories on the backs of potato chip bags on shelves in Whole Foods, Kroger, and Target. She's also been knee deep in writing ad copy and ghostwriting for people of note. Currently, she's the Creative Director for Bark, a service that helps keep kids safe online (related: she's fluent in emoji). You can also find her providing commentary on advertising on Adweek, making elaborate Spotify playlists, and eating fajitas on deadline days.

Roo Ciambriello has spent years as a copywriter, creating brand voices and fun stories on the backs of potato chip bags on shelves in Whole Foods, Kroger, and Target. She's also been knee deep in writing ad copy and ghostwriting for people of note. Currently, she's the Creative Director for Bark, a service that helps keep kids safe online (related: she's fluent in emoji). You can also find her providing commentary on advertising on Adweek, making elaborate Spotify playlists, and eating fajitas on deadline days.

Comedy Keynote: Luna Malbroux

Named one of KQED's Women to Watch, Luna Malbroux is a comic, writer, and creator of the award-winning play, "How to Be A White Man". Winner of the Comedy Hackday Grand Prize at SF Sketchfest, Luna has made international headlines as the creator of EquiTable, an app that satirically solves the wage gap by creating 'reparations, one meal at a time.' A regular contributor to national publications, Luna has been featured on Fusion TV, AJ+ and Refinery 29. Tastefully crude, Luna is also the host and creator of the live and recording ongoing comedy talk-show, Live Sex. Originally from Louisiana, Luna has dazzled audiences all across the United States with her Southern charm mixed with her bold humor a feature at festivals and clubs alike.

Comedian, playwright and consultant Luna Malbroux wears many hats. Noted as a Woman to Watch by KQED, Luna Malbroux is the creator of EquiTable, a downloadable app that made international headlines for satirically solving the wage gap and providing 'reparations, one meal at a time'. She's a regular contributor to Gawker Media and has been featured in comedic sketches with AJ+, and Refinery 29. Her satirical play, "How to Be A White Man" is critically acclaimed as a conversation starter on identity. With her masters in social work from Columbia University, Luna works with Soul Bird Consulting to help organizations shift their culture.

Comedy Keynote: Tim Washer

Tim Washer studied improv under Amy Poehler, comedy writing with The Colbert Report executive producer Tom Purcell, and has appeared on SNL, Conan O’Brien, Onion Sports Network, and HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. He’s emceed events featuring Pixar CEO John Lasseter, Emmy-Winner Tony Hale (VEEP, Arrested Development) and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu. Tim has performed at corporate events for IBM, Cisco, Deloitte, CDC, Google and The White House. His award-winning corporate work has been featured in The New York Times, WSJ, Ad Age, ADWEEK, and Fast Company. He has presented at Content Marketing World Sydney, SXSW and Forrester’s CMO Council. He holds an MBA from McCombs at UT Austin, where he majored in PowerPoint.

Tim studied improv under Amy Poehler, comedy writing with The Colbert Report executive producer Tom Purcell, and has appeared on SNL, Conan O'Brien, Onion Sports Network, and HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. He's emceed events featuring Pixar CEO John Lasseter, Emmy-Winner Tony Hale (VEEP, Arrested Development) and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu. Tim has performed at corporate events for IBM, Cisco, Deloitte, CDC, Google and The White House. His award-winning corporate work has been featured in The New York Times, WSJ, Ad Age, ADWEEK, and Fast Company. He has presented at Content Marketing World Sydney, SXSW, Harvard Business School and Forrester's CMO Council. He holds an MBA from McCombs at UT Austin, where he majored in PowerPoint.

The Four Pillars of Building Trust and Driving Performance Online

Websites and landing pages have very real trust issues – they create anxiety and uncertainty for many visitors. Before people will act or transact, these concerns must be alleviated and overcome. But how can you do this online when you only have seconds to establish trust? In this provocative session, SiteTuners CEO and bestselling author of Landing Page Optimization Tim Ash, will show you how to effectively use the Four Pillars of Trust and smooth the way to your online conversion goals. Learn via vivid examples how appearance, authority, social proof, and transactional assurances can skyrocket your landing page effectiveness.

Tim is a highly-regarded presenter and keynote speaker at SES, eMetrics, PPC Summit, Affiliate Summit, PubCon, SMX, OMS, AffCon, LeadsCon, Internet Retailer, and eComXpo. He is the founder and chairperson of ConversionConference.com, the first international conference series focused on improving online conversions. Tim is a contributing columnist to several publications including ClickZ, Website Magazine, DM News, Visibility Magazine, Search Marketing Standard, Search Engine Marketing Journal, and Electronic Retailer Online Strategies magazine. He is the host of the weekly Landing Page Optimization show and podcast on WebmasterRadio.fm. Over the past 15 years, Tim has helped a number of major US and international brands to develop successful web-based initiatives. Companies like Google, Expedia, Kodak, eHarmony, Facebook, American Express, Canon, Nestle, Symantec, Intuit, AutoDesk and many others have benefitted from Tim's deep understanding and innovative perspective. Since 1995, he has authored more than 100 published articles. In addition, Tim is the online voice of conversion optimization as the host of the Landing Page Optimization podcast on WebmasterRadio.fm.

4 Secrets to Activate Your Content with Employee Advocacy

The facts are out: Content published by employees is shared 24X more than brands. Yet in the average company, only 3% of employees share company-related content. It's time to change all that, surfacing data from the 2017 Employee Advocacy Study surveying hundreds of employees from a wide range of organizations revealing what holds employees back, and more importantly how to break through the barriers. In this session, you’ll learn how to activate your content with an effective employee advocacy program that is consistent and garners widespread participation, walking away with an action plan focused on the four essentials of employee advocacy.

Samantha Stone is a revenue catalyst who helps unleash the possible in organizations that have complex selling processes. She's a fast-growth, B2B marketing junkie, author, speaker, consultant and persona coach who has also managed to find time to raise four boys with her husband, David. Throughout her career she has launched go-to-market initiatives and led marketing strategies for award-winning, high-growth companies including Netezza, SAP, Ascential Software and Powersoft. In 2012 she founded The Marketing Advisory Network to help savvy business leaders unleash the possible within their enterprises.