Content marketing is more than just a trend on twitter

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This inaugural event played to a full house (the venue was the intimate and appropriate Fugard Theatre) and the online conversations trended on Twitter in the first day (#Content2013). The BrandsEye infographic details the 1316 online conversations that took place over the two days - resulting in over 2 million opportunities to see.

The tweet examples suggest that Content 2013 pulled off their mandate: Content Practitioner, Jacqueline Freer (@inrichmint) tweeted: 'Thank you to the #content2013 organisers and DMMA for giving me the opportunity to have shared the past 2 days with awesome people and minds'. Animator Jade Mathieson (@JadeMathieson) tweeted: 'Great to hear so many strong voices speaking up about the importance of good story-telling in media. Would definitely go again'.

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The conference attracted across-the-board industry players including high-level specialists like Lani Carstens, MD of John Brown. Lani had this to say about Content 2013: 'I felt the calibre of speakers was excellent. Alistair King was inspiring and thought-provoking and Relly Annet-Baker (a.k.a. blue content fairy) was quirky and enthralling. I think a conference of this nature is important to establish the power and importance of content marketing in South Africa. My hope is that going forward other key players can add strategic value to the conference line-up and even the formation of a regulatory industry body that we can all draw insights from.'

Says Uno de Waal, publisher of the website Between 10 and 5: 'I think it was important for the industry to meet the players and people currently doing great work. Often content marketers operate in silos without seeing the broader picture. Conferences like Content2013 help to bring everyone out of the woodwork and meet over common interests.'

Conference presentations comprised the views and work of some of our top local players like Thierry Cassuto of the film, television and digital content production company Both Worlds and executive producer and co-creator of the satirical puppet news programme ZANEWS; Mike Sharman of Retroviral Digital communications; Sam Wilson of Woolworths; Alistair King of the King James group; Glenn Gillis of Seamonster Entertainment and Zibusiso Mkhwanazi of Avatar.

The speakers from the UK (Julia Hutchison, Eve Williams and Relly Annett-Baker) gave a powerful international viewpoint and a wonderful depth to the discussions and debate.

'It was the opinions, conversation and debate between the speakers and delegates that made Content 2013 such a highly regarded and talked about event,' says head of the conference's organising committee Heléne Lindsay. 'We set out to get people from different spheres talking about the whole story of connecting brands with their markets and now this conversation has started, we hope that it will continue.'

For information on Content 2014 interested parties can email az.oc.4102tnetnoc@ofni.

Content 2013 was organised by New Media in partnership with Paarl Media and communicated in partnership with MANGO-OMC, Bizcommunity and Memeburn.

Issued by MANGO-OMC on behalf of Content 2013.

For more information please contact:

Genevieve Cutts on 082 546 4043 / moc.cmo-ognam@eveiveneg