I first came across the term content marketing back in the late 00s, and I remember thinking, finally, there’s a name for what I saw my parents doing in their advertising agency as a kid, and what I’ve loved doing in my career.
So it’s great to hear content marketing being talked about more and more in employer branding. But it does make me ask a question. When we talk about content in our world, is it marketing content, or is it content marketing? Because they’re not the same thing.
I found myself saying exactly that to someone over lunch at The Content Marketing Association’s Content Marketing Summit in London on 29th September.
Marketing content is there to sell. Content marketing is about creating something of real value for your audience first, and trusting that the results will follow.
I’ve been a judge for the International Content Marketing Awards, which the CMA also runs, for four years now, so it was great to get an invite to the summit too. I went along to see what employer branding and talent acquisition could learn from looking outside our own bubble, and I came back with plenty.
I haven’t tried to cover every session here, just the moments that stood out for me. At the end you’ll find a few practical things you can do next.
Start janky, play the long game, see big results
I’ve been following the ZOE Podcast for a while, and I heard Rich Willan, ZOE’s Head of Content, talk about it last year. So I was really looking forward to meeting him in person, and we managed a good chat before his fireside chat with Harry Morton of Lower Street.
ZOE is a health and nutrition company that’s taken a content-first approach. The podcast launched in 2022 with the CEO as host, and four years on it’s one of the most-listened-to branded shows in the world and one of ZOE’s biggest sales channels, worth tens of millions in revenue.
This is why it’s worth looking outside employer branding and TA. Most of us aren’t selling tens of millions of pounds of product, but the content we make can have just as big an impact on a business, through the people it attracts, hires and keeps.
The key thing for me is that ZOE didn’t start out as a best-in-class podcast making tens of millions. Rich talked about the show being janky in the early days, and that’s great to heare, because expecting to be brilliant straight away is what so often stops people from starting at all.
It’s well documented that most podcasts don’t make it past 20 or so episodes, usually because you need stamina to turn up and do the steps. That’s something I believe in, and I’ve built it into my own podcast and the work I do for clients. Being janky means being prepared to have rough edges, working through them, and bit by bit turning what you make into something really valuable.
For employer brand and TA: Rich also said the podcast has become a great source of quality candidates for ZOE. People listen, get value from it, understand what the organisation is about, and want to join a team like that. That’s content marketing doing its job. There’s a lot more in his talk for our world, so I may come back to it in a future article.
Stay true to the story
Amy Nicholson, Director of Content Design at Meta, opened the day, and I found it fascinating to hear from someone in a content role at Meta who started out in print publishing. Her talk was a reminder to stay true to what makes content good, despite all the technology we have access to, all the data, and all the platforms competing for our attention. New tech has a way of making everyone feel like a beginner again, which I quite like, because it keeps us sharp.
She also told us about one of the posters on the walls of Meta’s offices: a rocking horse, with the line “Don’t mistake motion for progress.” I love that. Things are moving so quickly right now, and when you’re busy, especially as a solo operator or a small team, it’s easy to feel like constant activity means you’re getting somewhere. It’s a good reminder to step back, ask what you’re actually trying to achieve, and focus on the progress you can make.
Jonathan Jones, Creative Director at Ember Films, picked up the same thread later in the day. When everything around technology keeps changing, the one thing that stays true is the story.
“Every technological revolution eventually becomes invisible. Great storytelling never does.”
If you’re doing content marketing in employer branding, those are the things worth reminding ourselves about.
Use your people’s knowledge to get found | About AI
Over morning coffee before the sessions got under way, I got chatting with Tom Rudnai of Demand-Genius, and we ended up mentally high-fiving over one idea: information gain. He talked about it again later on the AI panel, alongside Sharon Flaherty (The Folk Group), Anu Ramani (Isoline), and Tom Probert (Group SJR).
So what does it mean? It’s about consistently saying things that AI doesn’t already have in its training data, which gives it a reason to find and cite you. For employer branding, that’s a big opportunity. Your organisation is full of people who know their stuff, and putting their knowledge out there raises their profile, raises the organisation’s profile, and makes you more findable. Everyone wins.
Tom also made a point, both in our chat and on stage, that I couldn’t agree with more. A voice note from the CEO goes a long way. If leaders - or any employee for that matter - don’t have time to create content themselves, give them the chance to talk and capture what they say. It’s really important right now, it can be done simply, and it’s something I do myself. Documenting > creating [more on this in later articles].
What great content marketing looks like
As a judge of the International Content Marketing Awards, it was great to see one of the awards’ serial winners on stage talking about their work. Ole Henrik Stubberud and Trygve Andreas Tønnessen from Geelmuyden Kiese have won more than 20 golds, and their session was called “We’ve Never Made Content!” It’s an edgy title, but there’s a lot of truth in it, because they start with the business goal and let the format follow.
They shared two campaigns for the Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority, and both are well worth a look. The Truck Driver’s Mother reached foreign truck drivers through the one person they’d always listen to. And their campaign for teachers took on the threats and abuse teachers face, and answered it with humour.
What connects them is that “the content” really tapped into the world, emotions and motivations of the people they wanted to reach, whether that was truck drivers or teachers. It all comes down to trust, but also because they stayed true to what those people value, and that’s a great takeaway to bring back from the day.
Keep your eye on the goal
Ross Berridge of Thunder & Flash gave a talk called “The Truth Behind the Dashboard”, and he opened with “the best report ever”, a shiny dashboard where every number was up. The catch is that a good-looking dashboard doesn’t always tell you what’s true, or what you actually need to know.
“Strong ROAS doesn’t always mean profitable marketing.”
Marketing metrics still matter. They’re the foundations, the indicators we need to keep an eye on to make sure we’re heading towards the goal. But what is the goal? For Ross, it’s likely to be a profitable business. In employer branding it’s ultimately the same: commercial success for the business and its people. So the real question is how close you can get to that when you analyse the performance of your activity and look for buy-in from the people who run the business.
A shout-out to the graveyard shift | Procurement & Creativity!
Good on the procurement panel for taking the last slot of the day with “Does procurement really kill creativity?” Russell Parsons of Marketing Week chaired, with Olly Foot (7C3) and Carolyn McQueston (Dun & Bradstreet), and I carried on the conversation with Carolyn in the pub afterwards.
My main takeaway from Carolyn, both on stage and in the pub, was her focus on being strategic. She’s looking for the partner who brings the most value to the business, not the cheapest, and she wants agencies brought in early enough to understand what the business is trying to achieve. Olly’s view was that what really kills creativity is being priced by the hour, as if you’re delivering widgets. Having a grasp of the commercials matters, and it links nicely back to the data point: thinking strategically about partnerships is part of building a successful business.
Things you can do next
In the spirit of Amy’s rocking horse - progress over motion, here are a few things I think you can take into your tomorrow or next week:
Start janky, and commit for the long term, build something that matters. Don’t wait for perfect, and don’t expect overnight success, because trust builds over time.The things that really matter always have this.
Lead with value and story, not vacancies. Give people something worth their time before you ask them for anything like being interested in your organisation.
Make your people your information gain. Capture what only your employees know, even if it starts as a voice note from a leader. Your findability score on AI will thank you.
Know what the goal really is. Talk to your business leaders about what moves the bottom line, and measure your activity against that.
Be brave. As Geelmuyden Kiese put it, boring is very expensive.
Because ultimately, if you don’t create something of value, no one will value it, and no one will see it.
I’ll be doing more of these, sharing what I find at events, alongside podcast episodes with practitioners. And if you’re interested, my book, The Lean Employer Content Guide, still feels fresh out of the box after we published it this summer.
Thanks
Chris
Host, Employer Content Marketing
Founder, Content Marketing Pod Ltd