I’m inspired. I’m tired. And I’m full of ideas. It was a fabulous two days at Content Marketing World in Cleveland.

I had planned to write more about what I took away overall from #CMWorld in this intro, but right now my head is swimming in thoughts so the detailed recap will have to wait until next week.

Here are my highlights from today as they played out on Twitter:

My absolute favorite part of #CMWorld was Michael Jr’s Keynote. It is very rare that someone can make you laugh hysterically, wipe tears from your eyes, and re-evaluate your entire life’s philosophy in 3o minutes. But Michael managed to do it and got a standing ovation in the process. I couldn’t find just one tweet that I loved from his keynote so I am cheating and including three.

TrackMaven captured the first one: “When you understand your WHY, your WHAT has more impact.”

Angela Hursh relayed the next gem: “Your past handicaps could be your present and future strengths.”

Alex Kayash snagged my third favorite quote from Michael Jr: “Your gift makes room for you.”

I loved everything about Ann Handley’s session on “How to Level Up Your Writing and Make it Ludicrously Spectacular.” But I wanted to stand up and cheer when Ann showed the pie chart of her writing process and said that often times her writing looks like not writing. My prep time looks like sitting in school carpool, playing on Facebook, and sweeping the floor. I often can write an entire draft in my head by not writing a word on paper. This tweet made me feel a bit less like a loser for what looks like wasting time. (Thanks to Mandy Schnirel for posting this shot!)

This next one comes from Marcus Sheridan aka TheSalesLion: “No matter your industry, we’re all in the business of trust.” It’s easy to think content marketing is about sales, but honestly, I think you can’t have high sales without trust. It just isn’t possible. (Kudos to Sandra Pacitti for the tweet!)

Jason Stewart cut right through some of the noise with this one: “Content marketers continue to confuse a full editorial calendar with a well-defined content strategy.” I loved this tweet because I think even today it’s easy to get caught up in the “more is better” mentality. Just because you put out a lot of content doesn’t mean that you are creating great content.  More stuff is just that, more stuff. It just means are you are creating more stuff. (Michael Lyons grabbed this one.)

Over the past few years, I have seen the content marketing community increasingly embrace the idea of using freelancers. But it was incredibly awesome to hear Stephanie Losee advocate during a KEYNOTE session to use freelancers to help translate SME speak to customer language. She nailed it with this quote, tweeted by Kate Attilio: “Subject matter experts aren’t necessarily writers and that’s ok! Work with a freelancer to create the content.”

Jay Acunzo really got me with this quote: “Are you willing to do the unthinkable? Are you willing to use your intuition to create your best work?” Jay illustrated through several great examples that good marketers follow best practices and great marketers craft their own. It’s often through totally throwing out the tried and true playbook out the proverbial window and creating a totally new path that you find your greatest success. (I can’t believe nobody else tweeted this great quote!)

It’s really easy to just create another 7 Boring Ways to Do the Same Thing Everyone Else is Doing. But as I left the conference this afternoon, I made a vow to follow Jay’s advice. I’m not quite sure what the unthinkable is yet, but hopefully next time I come to that fork, I will have the courage to forge my own path.

Don’t forget to check out the sound bites from Tuesday and Wednesday at #CMWorld.

 

Did you see any other tweets from #CMWorld that really resonated with you? Have any great new tips to share from today’s workshops or sessions? Did anyone notice that I couldn’t limit myself to just five tweets in today’s roundup?