A co-worker of mine (with whom I’m friends on Facebook) lamented last night that she’s struggling for a gift for her five-year-old son. Specifically, he wants Santa to make something in his workshop. As a parent, that can be a tall order!
Another co-worker of mine (also a Facebook friend) saw our mutual friend’s post and said, “I’ve got an idea.”
I work in marketing at PTC, a company that creates, among other things, 3-D design software. So, what did my second co-worker do? She wrote up a short, light-hearted blog post for our PTC-run customer community, PlanetPTC.
In the story, she even comments that she saw the Facebook post from our first friend, and it inspired her to write a blog post, appealing to the super-creative community members of our 3-D design software (“Creo”). She appealed to them and essentially said, “What would Santa design if he used Creo for a day?” She even created a photo album where users can submit their ideas/designs for others to see.
In the past when we’ve solicited our customers for some cool/fun feedback (like our “show us a scary jack o’lantern designed in Creo” contest), people sent us in all kinds of designs. It was a lot of fun! People got to show off their design chops while getting into the holiday spirit.
Note that the blog post is now live. That is, within 12 hours of the Facebook post going up from one co-worker, another co-worker saw this as a light-hearted content marketing opportunity and drafted a post about it (with permission to do so!).
Is it working? I think so. In less than two hours of being posted, it’s been viewed more than 200 times. Also, according to some link statistics we have, it’s getting broadly re-tweeted and shared—indicating that we have an interested (or at least click-y!) readership. No designs have been submitted yet, but creating a nice, rendered 3-D image of a toy takes more than a few minutes with PTC’s Creo, so I expect to see some submissions later.
To me, this is an example of clever, relatively easy, light-hearted, real-time content marketing. Who doesn’t want to make a 5-year-old smile on Christmas Day?
What about you? Do you have any examples of content ideas right under your nose?
Tags: Content, Content Marketing, Facebok, user-generated content
Alan, I think the key thing you point out is the speed at which the idea was developed and turned into published content. So many of us — myself, as a professional, included — let good ideas languish and miss content opportunities. The bigger challenge that I see, though, is getting people to recognize that idea as an opportunity for content in the first place. As a content marketer, I struggle to get clients (and even folks within our agency) to learn to “see” a story for the making.
Example: We have a client that runs a 1500-acre adventure vacation resort, offering whitewater rafting, zip lines, camping and cabins, you name it. They started a tomato garden to supplement their food service operation, with help from a state grant aimed at boosting local agriculture. It never occurred to them their customers, prospects and community might find this fascinating — and brand-building.
So many stories are out there; I’d love to know how to open people’s eyes to them!
Reid,
Thanks for commenting, and you’re spot-on. There’s one challenge in knowing if there’s even a story from seemingly a ‘nothing moment’. There’s an even larger challenge to turn that around quickly. It isn’t easy. But I can say – from personal experience – that once you’ve done it, it becomes easier to spot… kind of like seeing the new car you just bought on the road everywhere. For the longest time, it alluded you – now, it’s everywhere.
Great point about the turn around time for content and people learning to see the content. Great learning lesson from me as I am the “mom” and I saw it as a great story for my family but, did not see relevancy to my job until I saw the great blog post. Content marketing can be inspired from a five year old.