At my day job, I am in charge of driving content marketing strategy for North America’s largest lighting trade show. It’s an exciting role, a hybrid mix of everything I love to do: copy direction, storytelling, content marketing, editorial strategy, customer acquisition, audience engagement and more. Except for one small problem. How do you do all that in the midst of a pandemic? When trade shows were basically no shows and every single one of them scheduled for any time after Februray 2020 had been canceled?
Well, if you know me, you know I love challenges, and I am yet to meet one that the right strategy and due diliigence can’t overcome. So, yes, we managed to keep our brand alive and relevant through 2020 even without an actual show taking place. I won’t go into the details here because that would need summarizing everything our incredible team did over the past 12+ months: from debuting a virtual conference to launching a blog. (You can learn more about it here.)
But my point is that there are always opportunities for optimism tucked away behind every corner, if you care to stop and look.
One of the bright spots (pun unintended) for us was that the industry’s slowdown gave us a chance to focus on our social media channels. We kept our eyes and ears open for interesting stories and angles related to the lighting industry. But sometimes, a great idea would pop up from a place in no way connected to lighting. Even 500+ million miles away.
The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn managed to do what every marketer dreams of: capturing and holding the attention of the entire world…without spending a dime. A good marketer knows that when circumstance has already done your job, you piggyback shamelessly…of course, while still staying responsible and relevantly on brand.
My team and I, by now Subject Matter Experts on silver linings, squeezed in the unplanned social media post around the rare planetary alignment into our calendar, and posted the image you see here with the caption, “Well, at least there’s one light show proceeding as scheduled.” A sprinkle of irony and self-deprication are hard to go wrong with.
The post garnered above average engagement (over 1500 impressions, 2.6% engagement rate, 56 reactions) we would have missed out on had we not seen and taken advantage of the timely connection between a cosmic alignment and a year of canceled trade shows.
Moral of the story:
Ideas are lurking everywhere. If you are a content marketer, train yourself to spot silver linings and connections everywhere and anywhere.
Timing is everything. Some ideas—you have to sit on and incubate. Others you have to act on before it’s too late. Knowing which is which separates you from the rest. This comes with experience and also being fearless about pitching and trying out many new ideas, failing and learning from them.
Trends like Bernie’s mittens are even rarer than cosmic events. It’s okay to come in second. What you consider the best ideas don’t always catch on. And you have to learn to be okay with it. The Great Conjunction was a fun and relevant social post, and in my view so much more relevant to our industry’s collective experience of canceled trade shows. Yet it could not hold a candle to Bernie’s mittens that trended with off-the-charts success just a few short days later.
Is there a trending event that inspired a story for your brand?