Week 3: A Conversation with Serena Ehrlich by Desiree Reamer

By UCLA X469.21 Student Desiree Reamer

During our Week 3 class discussion, Serena Ehrlich spoke with us about the current state of content marketing and how we got here. She explained how brands and individuals can now, more than ever, impact their industry and the world by what they post online.

Serena mentioned recent events that affect how brands use social media. They include the US presidential election and the murder of George Floyd. The video of George Floyd set off a global revolution that shifted the world of content marketing. For brands, the focus is no longer on products and spec sheets; it is on social impact and inspiring action. It’s a different type of story that is more about the customer and how their problem can be solved. It’s about the “why” first, then the “what.” Brands should no longer pitch based on their product timeline, but instead on the news cycle and the cultural movement of the moment.

Now more than ever, brands are being held accountable for the content they create. They must stay aware of current trends – both within their industry and globally. Listening drives relevance. Listening to the world around you can help find relevant trends and then create relevant content.

A lot of work is required to make this shift, and Serena shared some of her favorite tools for creating content and increasing its reach.

Content Ideation:

• HubSpot Ideas – A blog topic generator. Simply give it a keyword, and it will provide a week’s worth of topic ideas.
• Google Trends – Analyzes search engine queries to check for relevancy.

Text Creation:

• Grammarly – A text editing tool that flags potential issues and makes context-specific suggestions to help with grammar, spelling and usage, wordiness, style, punctuation, and even plagiarism.
• Not Just Sorry – An excellent tool for finding less passive text, mainly when word counts limit you.

Image Creation:

• Canva – A graphic design platform that provides customized dimensions for each social media platform.
• Remove.bg – A tool that removes the background from any image.

Video and Motion Creation:

• Vidyard – Video creation tool that allows you to add subtitles to videos.

Reaching Influencers:

• Upfluence – Software that enables brands to identify target influencers and launch campaigns.