CPU No. 5: Wherefore social media, NYC workshop, the metaCurse & a brand voice case study
Introducing our new events series + everything else from August
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Events
Introducing our brand new event series, with in-person and virtual skill-building workshops and our talk show-style salon.
Ghost subscribers to either the weekly or monthly newsletters get $50 off each event – and it's free to sign up.
In-person events
Beyond the campaign: A workshop about developing branded formats
Co-presented with Matt Locke of Storythings
September 26, 2023 | 1:00-4:00pm
The Farm Soho, NYC
Best for: Brands looking to find an improved framework for launching and developing content formats or series
About this event: Go in-depth on the research, strategy, and methodology behind developing branded formats that build audiences and create connection.
Virtual events
Relationship status update: A salon about... whatever social media is today
September 8, 2023 | 12:00-1:30PM Eastern
Online only: $10 for members, $60 for general public
Best for: Anyone looking for a smart, quirky break on the first Friday after summer ends
About this event: Is social media over? Or is it better than it's ever been? We'll talk with our experts about how social networks are functioning in the 2020s, how you should navigate your professional and brand social media strategies, and what social networks will look like in ten years.
How to scope and sell content projects
September 22, 2023 | 12:00-2:00PM Eastern
Online only: $250 for members, $300 for general public
Best for: Independent contractors and agencies looking to sell more content strategy and creation projects
About this event: Looking to sell more complex, comprehensive and lucrative content strategy projects next year? This workshop on content project scope and administration will help you level up your proposal and pitch game.
Mark your calendars
Salon: Practical AI for content professionals
October 6, 2023 | 12:00-1:30PM Eastern
More details soon!
Skill workshop: How to get the most out of Ghost
October 19, 2023 | 6:00-8:00PM Eastern
More details soon!
Want your ad to appear in this newsletter? Interested in sponsoring upcoming events? To be one of The Content Technologist’s inaugural sponsors, reply to this email or fill out this form, and we’ll be in touch shortly.
The power of brand voice at Bookshop.org
by Lindsay Li
With literary community at its core, Bookshop helps indie booksellers thrive in a world where small businesses’ odds of success are bleak. It supports authors and reviewers who want to grow their audience, and small press publishers who want their books distributed across the world. Most importantly, it provides consumers with a means to purchase a wide array of books in varying formats (paperback, hardcover, digital disk, etc.) from local bookstores — not in spite of them.
Translating these values into a voice that conveys their authenticity isn’t simple, especially because approachability is crucial to Bookshop’s brand. In addition to being a marketplace with plural functions and audiences, it’s also a community hub where everyone from the extremely bookish to one-time gift shoppers must feel welcome. But Bookshop pulls it off, and the brand approach the company uses to win over its patrons are worth our consideration.
How we're approaching social media in an age of fragmentation
by Deborah Carver and Wyatt Coday
From our view, the resulting resistance toward social isn’t going anywhere. Even for content professionals who have developed social media savvy, major adjustments are on the horizon. That challenge may seem daunting on the surface, but it also means fresh data about user preferences will become available. With that new data, content teams can sunset social strategies that suck up resources without producing results and free themselves of pointless work.
Whether we like it or not, social platforms hold an integral role in the who, what, when, where, why, and how of content development and distribution. Oddly, it’s this damned-if-I-do, damned-if-I-don’t dilemma that has us at The Content Technologist excited for the opportunity to test ideas, mess up, fail, and maybe even accrue some loyal fans along the way. We're slowly rolling out to more social channels, and we wanted to let you in on our planning.
Intellectual property as performance content: Why the MetaCurse has imprisoned Spider-Man
by Wyatt Coday
Sometimes IP-related gains aren't obvious. IP-driven films do fail financially, but the massive audiences they reach give entertainment studios data they transform into serviceable market research. That market research ensures future rounds of blockbusters and that studios are activating the right stories for the current social climate.
In other words, these films are what marketers call "performance content." With audiences as their guinea pigs, failure is preemptively integrated into their distribution strategy, so even flops produce meaningful data.
More than sales, what makes movie franchises cash cows are their in-built audiences — and the value of fan loyalty cannot be underestimated. For many viewers, these modified movies, television shows, comics, and books retell the stories from their childhood and offer a conversation piece between parents and their children. For others, they are easter egg–packed stories with familiar plot points that fans already enjoy, but with a different focal point, angle, timeline, or outcome. For those outside the primary fan-base, they are fodder for small talk because everyone else is obsessing about them.
Media products ultimately sell feelings — think "look and feel." To a fan, knowing that a piece of media will inspire feelings makes it even more irresistible. With retellings, even when they adapt stories that have dark or challenging arcs, warm, fuzzy, and sentimental feelings are nearly guaranteed.
More from our archives
The Content Technologist: Content Pros Update is compiled by Deborah Carver, founder and publisher of The Content Technologist.
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