On this page Chris Marr, the Founder of The Content Marketing Academy, will share with you the why behind TCMA to give you a feel for his vision and the story behind TCMA.
Chris: I have received a lot of questions about why I decided to start The Content Marketing Academy, what it’s really all about and what to expect from this full day content marketing conference and workshop. What I have prepared for you below is an honest insight into my vision for TCMA and how it all came about.
The Content Marketing Academy (TCMA) has come about as a combination of a few different things. Ever since starting Learning Everyday, workshops, education and showcasing resources has been a big part of the plan to help business owners to become better marketers of what they do. The best way to do that is to showcase resources and give people examples and case studies, but also help them to understand how marketing fits within their business and understand what their role within their business is as a marketer.
I firmly believe that the entrepreneurial person in the business (the business owner) should be a marketer, because at the end of the day, that’s how we all get customers, promote our services, and build a strong relationship with our customers.
TCMA has been a combination of facilitating workshops and speaking at different events over the last few years, and it’s now come together as one big idea. What I aim to do with TCMA is build year on year on what’s achieved. TCMA started off in 2014 as a relatively small event (60 delegates), but as the years go on, it’ll grow and we’ll be able to get different types of speakers at each of these events with varying types of experience. The aim is to have a big enough platform to invite well known global experts to Scotland.
TCMA is all about content marketing. It’s about showcasing content marketing and, in some respects, ‘selling’ the concept of content marketing to business owners to give them a better understanding of what it is, how it works, the business benefits and how they can make it work in the context of their own business.
One thing I want to do is make sure I bring in speakers from other businesses. Typically when you go to conferences and events and you’ll hear from marketing gurus and experts, but I want you to hear from other business owners just like you, who are doing the things that you know you know should be doing. For example, at TCMA 2014 we had business owners speaking who are successfully using podcasts and blogging as part of a content marketing strategy to build a relationship with their customers and engage their audience. I want to be able to showcase a business owner that’s not in a marketing business, but they’ve done maybe 60 or 70 podcasts or 300+ blog articles. Click here to find out more about the speakers we’ve had at TCMA.
The reason for that is because I want you to be inspired and motivated by the business owners’ stories around why they’re doing what they’re doing, but also to see that over the long term it actually does pay off and you will see those results. It’s one thing giving you the information about what content marketing is, but actually hearing the story and being able to provide the context of your own business around that story will, I hope, inspire you to take that action. I very much want the conference to not be about me, but about showcasing the success of other business owners, that will in turn give you the motivation and inspiration to take content marketing forward in your business.
In reality, content marketing is not just the future, it’s now. A lot of people know about it and talk about it, but don’t actually do a lot with it, and that’s another reason why TCMA has been created.
Take a look at the trend in content marketing in the image below. You can see that content marketing is becoming extremely popular.
Content Marketing – Google Trends
What I’ve done with TCMA, and how I see it going forward is to have the best elements of a conference and the best elements of a workshop. I want you to not only get the motivation and the inspiration that you need from the speakers, but to also be able to take those crucial first steps towards implementation in a workshop environment. When you leave the conference you’ll have the motivation and inspiration, and you’ll also have the plan or the strategy so you’re ready to hit the ground running when you get back to work.
I want to make sure the excitement and motivation transcends the boundaries of the conference and into the workplace.
The real clincher behind TCMA is helping you to take the action, and I think the biggest benefit from coming to the marketing academy is the fact that you’re going to hear from business owners, people who’ve actually done it who aren’t marketing gurus. They’re people just like you, but they’re just that one or two steps ahead or two or three years into their content marketing strategy, and you will be able to see that it’s working for them.
You will see how successful business owners are using content marketing to promote themselves as an expert in their industry.
More information for 2015 coming soon. In the mean time, please check out our blog articles.
Who should attend TCMA:
Who shouldn’t attend TCMA:
Are you ready to embrace content marketing and get ahead of your competition? If so, book your place today.