Last week PRmoment held a Contagious Content seminar. The audience was made up of in-house communicators and we discussed the role of content in business today. The event was hosted by the lovely people at TVC group.

Here is a brief summary of the speakers’ thoughts on the evening;

Sarah Firth, director of strategy and planning at TVC group, outlined a number of techniques they use to make content more intelligent. These include:

# have a heart: if your content is kind and creates an emotional response it's far more likely to fly.

# mobile is vital to any content strategy

# don't let people swipe left. Tinder has revolutionised the online dating market.  One of the ways it did this was by designing an addictive and convenient format. An important lesson in not copying your competitiors but re-inventing a channel.

# be like a girl: Always’ Like a girl campaign created a powerful emotion for people who watched the video. For content to trigger an action, it must first create an emotion.

Serena Mariani, global digital manager at Unilever Oral Care, outlined five secrets for shareable content:

1. Appeal to people’s emotion  - whether that is fear, amusement or laughter
2. Make your content timely – serve it in a context where people care
3. But on the flipside make it timeless. So make it universal and transending so that everyone (in your target audience) can enjoy it
4. Make it rewarding for people to share your content; consumers are submerged by so much noise, you must give them a clear reason to share your content
5. Think about how the sharing will work – what are your ignition points?
6. Work with influencers and super consumers
7. Experiment - work outside you comfort zone and push your boundaries.

Finally James Turner, Head of Communications, Greenpeace International outlined their approach to content, including Greenpeace’s content strategy cycle.

And if you havent seen it, here is Greenpeace’s Everything is Not Awesome video which formed part of their campaign against the Shell and Lego partnership. Needless to say this content ticks all the boxes as far as emotional, sharable and timely content is concerned!