Two days packed full of 18 great speakers proved itself very useful as the Distilled team hosted another San Diego conference. From actionable video marketing tips from the experts at Wistia to the importance of brand storytelling to drive revenue, few marketing stones were left unturned.

Below, I touch upon three key takeaways from two noteworthy speakers. Sit back, relax and become a better marketer with these useful tips and tricks.

Adria Saracino: How to Best Leverage Content Distribution

Adria Saracino, the Head of Content Strategy at Distilled, spoke about the importance of developing not only a content strategy, but a strategy specifically designed for the outreach and distribution of a piece of content. By using various tools and methods of distribution, you will be able to get the most out of the content you have — and get it in front of your target audience.

One of the quotes that stuck with me that Adria mentioned was from Jonathan Perelman, Buzzfeed’s GM of Video and VP Agency Strategy:

“Content is king, but distribution is queen, and she wears the pants.”

So what are some of the tactics and tools that Adria mentioned? Here are some clever and creative strategies and solutions centered around earned, owned and paid media channels.

• Owned media
  • “Test social CTAs within content,” Adria said. Not only should you insert “Tweet this” throughout your content – you should do so in different ways. Will “Tweet this pick-up line” entice more visitors to share rather than just “Tweet this?” Test and find out.
• Paid media (including pay-per-click, social media, influencer partnerships and native advertising)
  • Use tools like Resonance (a content retargeting tool) and Unruly (social video advertising) to help target your audience.
• Earned media
  • “Identify writers with amplification potential,” Adria said. You can use Social Crawlitics, Gnip and Topsy to find writers who are already interested in your content. Start a lasting relationship, and your content will have a significantly higher rate of being seen and talked about through these channels.

We should all re-focus and start promoting our already compelling and targeted content in smarter ways. You can find all of Adria’s slides from her presentation on Slideshare.

Dana DiTomaso: Crushing Your Local Competitors

Strategy also came into play during Dana DiTomaso’s presentation. Dana is a local search expert who spoke on day two of the conference. Her presentation was titled “Taking Down Your Local Competition,” and it focused on turning a competitive analysis into an actionable plan.

How important are consistent citations? Does social activity carry significant weight in the Google equation? These and other important ranking questions were clearly answered with tips and tricks. Here are two factors that should never be overlooked: keywords and citations.

• Keywords: Not only should you know your keywords, but you should set them up in an organized fashion that lays out AdWords difficulty and organic difficulty. This organization will tell you exactly what is worth going after. Want keyword data on your competition? Use Places Scout to generate this and rank each of your competitors.
• Citations: Clean citations, which call for consistently listing your business across the web, were strongly reiterated. Whitespark, a site packed full of tools to help you optimize local rankings, was recognized as a resourceful place to help discover and organize all of your current and potential listings.

 “Resist the urge to gather every piece of data you can find,” Dana said. “Remember the basic question. What’s the keyword?  Should we be there? Who is there? How do we CRUSH them?”

You can review Dana’s slides for a more in-depth look into her local strategies.

Putting It Into Action

Our marketing team at Obu is excited to implement some of the strategies, advice and tools that Adria, Dana and other speakers at the conference offered.

With Google’s never-ending algorithm changes, there’s no time to be complacent. We look forward to applying many of the useful tools and strategies to our clients’ advantage.