But, how do you choose which content to create, and then how do you know if you are doing the right things with it?

Agencies fret over this question, publishers ask it every day, and it is integral to the brands themselves. It is the leaping off point for any successful campaign.

Panel 1v4 from Contently on Vimeo.

To find some answers, Contently brought together brand representatives and digital executives from leading brands last month at Contently’s Social Content Summit. This is the first in a series of video excerpts from the summit that The Content Strategist will be posting in the coming weeks.

Three expert panelists in this video were quick to answer, each with their own take. Take a peek inside for opinions from OPEN Forum’s Scott Roen, The Adrenalist’s Lauren Passero and Ebay’s Jeannie Reath.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

For upstart organization Empower Generation, where I serve as the co-communications director, the answer needs to be as dynamic as the approach we take to our work on the ground. Which is why we’ve bypassed traditional fundraising for a content-based approach.

Fundamental to our work is the idea that people take ownership of issues when there is a financial investment. In our programming this translates into fueling the renewable energy economy by investing in women-led solar businesses in Nepal. The businesses are run and operated by entrepreneurs who serve people currently living in energy poverty (a staggering 60% of Nepali people lack access to reliable electricity, a fact that inhibits earning and scholastic potential).

We’re creating a loop of giving a damn, with discrete, actionable steps.

Our work is modeled as a revolving loan where entrepreneurs start solar energy businesses — solar replaces dirty, unsafe and unreliable kerosene lamps — and are ultimately responsible for repaying the loan so that we can later invest in another woman. In other words, by putting money on the line, we encourage entrepreneurs to have a stake in not only their own futures, but in other women, in ending energy poverty in Nepal, and in the grand scheme, in the expansion of the renewable energy economy.

We’re creating a loop of giving a damn, with discrete, actionable steps for women in Nepal to make a material impact on a whole host of ills.

It’s my job to sort out how EG accomplishes the same loop with our fundraising base. That’s where content comes in.

We are not an organization that’s looking for “give and go” donations. While we understand the value “individual donor” strategies where organization court a few high dollar funders, EG is equally focused on reaching a more democratic group. This is because we believe that tackling big problems — the trafficking of women into slavery, about the millions of people who die from respiratory infections caused by kerosene smoke inhalation —  requires people to be personally invested.

And how to do you promote personal investment? Well, things like the 2012 election point to donations. The Obama campaign raised small amounts from lots of people, the Romney campaign large amounts from just a few. Who turned out at the ballot box? Taking a note from Obama, you can see why we’re focused on getting whole bunch of smaller financial commitments from a larger number of people — we want to increase ownership of the problems we’re tackling.

Historically getting lots of donors has meant dumping tons of dollars into traditional communications models — advertising, PR campaigns, and the like. It’s also meant adopting singular umbrella messages that you blast out to demographically targeted groups. That’s not an approach that was available to EG; it’s not only beyond our budgetary realities to run a costly media campaign, it’s also too limited in terms of the many groups we need to talk to.

We believe that tackling big problems requires people to be personally invested.

We’re looking to impact change among diverse groups, from those interested in developing world gender politics to small-scale renewable energy buffs. Can you imagine creating an umbrella message that hits all of those? It would end up watered down sludge that said nothing compelling.

So what does EG’s board — a group of ambitious under 35s who’ve decided to take on the traditional model of forging change for women in the developing world, not to mention combat climate change one solar lamp at a time — do? Well, obviously they come up with a communications plan that addresses the most unique opportunities available in today’s information-sharing world.

In EG’s case that means content-based storytelling that spreads organically through our target audiences’ peer groups. In researching getting our message out there, we took a note from other orgs who’ve done content marketing, pulling from the best practices out there. What we’ve landed on is things like our most recent “Give One, Get One” campaign that takes place entirely on Facebook, and is reliant on the organic spread of statistics that tell part of the EG story.

Each stat uses a piece of information already in our back pocket, packaged in a way to appeal to a micro-audience: a stat about the power of small-scale investments speaks to finance types, while another on the risks of kerosene appeals to those sympathetic to challenges facing the world’s poor. By putting an audience-specific lens on our communications, we overcome what we at EG call “over there” syndrome — the tendency to look at the Third World as being irrelevant to our Western lives.

Using content — in this case the combination of pressing statistics and poignant imagery — we’ve made a reality about life in Nepal and the potential that donating to EG can have on Nepali people a very real, relatable thing.

It’s just the beginning for us and content.

Sternoff leads the Creative Strategy team at Captains of Industry, a boutique content marketing studio in Boston where she mashes up consumer insights with brand perspectives. She sits on the Board of Directors for the NGO Empower Generation. She’s a mean letterpress printer, sometimes designer and always Golden Girls fan.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Dougherty, a political journalist who has appeared in The American Conservative, The Atlantic, and Slate, shifted to baseball in late March, claiming that the move “was irresistible as an alternative [to politics],” as it gave him the freedom to write daily about something less contentious than most political writing.

The Slurve, a comprehensive collection of the previous day’s baseball happenings, offers a different content package: part creation, part curation. He begins with the “Opening Pitch,” 4-5 paragraphs of original commentary on one of the top stories of the day, and finishes with more stories from around the web, box scores, game recaps, injury reports, and a couple of non-baseball related articles, providing his own intriguing headlines for each piece.

Dougherty believes that it’s his job to “separate the wheat from the chaff,” and he knows that most baseball fans “don’t have the time or inclination to sift through lots of junky or parochial content on the internet to find the best writing.” So, he does the hard work for them.

“A generalist fan may love just one thing a day. I make sure The Slurve always finds that one thing.”

But, the newsletter isn’t free. Dougherty launched The Slurve as a subscription model, $4 per month or $36 per year, similar to the way that Andrew Sullivan’s “Daily Dish” operates. So far, this hasn’t deterred baseball aficionados from signing up for the newsletter. Although he wouldn’t give exact numbers, Dougherty said the Slurve has garnered several hundred subscribers so far, and the newsletter is being used as a “cheat-sheet for baseball insiders.”

The format of The Slurve is highly conducive for members of the baseball media, as Dougherty says that he envisioned it like the “show-prep” notes that he has been given for appearances on cable news.

Although Dougherty has found early success with The Slurve, in part because of the prominent journalists who have signed up and offered testimonials like Will Leitch, founder of Deadspin and writer at Sports on Earth, and Ross Douthat, writer at the New York Times, Dougherty is still looking for more ways to market the newsletter.

Twitter has been a successful tool so far, as @TheSlurve has broken the 1,000 followers threshold, and highly followed Twitter user, @OldHossRadbourn, has publicly endorsed The Slurve, offering an appreciative message to his 57,000+ followers.

Yet Dougherty is more focused on the product than the marketing. He posits that “baseball is absorbing in a way no other American sport seems to be,” and that the content offered in The Slurve will mirror the consuming effect of the game of baseball.

His goal is to ensure that every subscriber will always find something interesting, no matter the team allegiance. “A generalist fan may love just one thing a day,” Dougherty said. “I make sure The Slurve always finds that one thing.”

While some sports fans and content consumers will argue that, with so much free content available all over the internet, it doesn’t make sense to pay for The Slurve, Dougherty feels otherwise. He spends hours scouring the web for only the best content, and puts it together cleanly for easy scanning and consumption.

As such, Dougherty has “appointed himself editor of the baseball blogosphere.” By creating original content and curating everyone else’s work into one place, Dougherty is part of a change in how we think about content.

Alan Jacobs of The American Conservative asks for a “Slurve”-type newsletter for every topic — such as one that covers soccer, or the world of academia — and even suggests that this could have been the answer all along: “It may well be that we came closer to getting the problem of digital news delivery right fifteen years ago.”

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

First, it released a video by rapper Tyler, The Creator that was described as “arguably the most racist commercial in history,” and then this week the company found itself in yet another storm of controversy, prompting it to cancel a multi-million dollar endorsement deal with rapper Lil Wayne over his profane and controversial lyrics.

Tyler, The Creator (Tyler Okonma), the rapper, producer, and de facto figurehead of the west coast collective known as Odd Future, perhaps chose his stage name to avoid any misunderstandings — he does not care if he’s seen as blasphemous. In fact, he prefers that you think so.

And it’s just this kind of attitude that attracts extreme sports/lifestyle brands such as Mountain Dew, who probably had some idea what was awaiting them upon linking up with Tyler. The result was a distaster.

Members of Odd Future have used their microphone skills, a LOLCAT-esque DIY aesthetic, and an expertise in angering parents to pack concert halls, sell a modest number of records, and more recently launch “Loiter Squad,” a show on Cartoon Network’s AdultSwim. All along, they have managed to hold onto the ears of the target demographics that brands love to court, from whom they continue to inspire raucous crowds and truancy.

What brand wouldn’t dream of a fraction of this kind of loyalty from their audience?

When Mountain Dew signed a deal with Tyler to create multiple TV spots for the company, it seemed like natural bedfellows. A harmonious affair, though, that may have ended with Tyler’s third ad spot, which featured a hobbled white woman on crutches trying to finger a culprit out of a lineup comprised entirely of young black men (and the recurring character of Tyler’s Mountain Dew campaign, a talking goat named Felicia).

Mountain Dew’s brand is extreme sports, not extremely clumsy symbolism, and as Felicia the goat warns the battered woman, “Snitches get stitches, fool,” following that gem up with threats to “Dew her up,” one wonders what parent company PepsiCo expected to happen.

They probably did not expect for the pull quote, “arguably the most racist commercial in history,” from social commentator Dr. Boyce Watkins’ personal blog. This reaction was only one of many that prompted the ad to be pulled both off airwaves and social media platforms, with PepsiCo stating, “We apologize for this video and take full responsibility. We have removed it from all Mountain Dew channels and Tyler is removing it from his channels as well.”

The company even earned some good press for buying a promoted tweet to publicize its mea culpa. And the top of its website leads with a giant “We Apologize” note.

Following these comments, PepsiCo hasn’t put an executive on a public chopping block, and Tyler has declared they loved the idea when it pitched it. Which begs the question of how sincere this apology is. Audiences will probably trust artists more than brands, so PepsiCo cutting their losses must also include a loss of credibility with Tyler’s base.

One wonders what parent company PepsiCo expected to happen.

This incident came at especially bad time for PepsiCo./Mountain Dew, following the soda company ending a multi-million dollar endorsement deal with rapper Lil Wayne over profane lyrics referencing Emmett Till. Till was the African-American teenager tortured and murdered in 1955 for supposedly whistling at a white woman. While PepsiCo was not involved with the release of that song, the controversy of their association with Wayne put the company in a position where they need to keep a long distance between their brand and racial insensitivity.

From this controversy, Tyler’s brand can probably only grow stronger, continuing the trend-line he is used to. As reported by Billboard magazine: ”Early at a sold-out show in Brooklyn in late March … a line of Tyler super-fans …. wrapped around the block. Supreme caps, Vans sneakers and official, Odd Future-branded socks, hoodies and beanies collectively distinguished the kids in the crowd.”

Mountain Dew might have thought twice about the risk and reward from a deal with someone just as focused on branding as it is.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

And yet companies have access to deeper levels of stories than the distracted media will often make time for.

Even President Obama has extolled his preference for self-publishing — in a light-hearted way — at his 2013 White House Correspondents’ Dinner Speech. “Recently, though, I found a new favorite source for political news — these guys are great,” he enthused. “I think everybody here should check it out, they tell it like it is. It’s called whitehouse.gov. (Laughter.) I cannot get enough of it.”

Microsoft has a different problem than the president. The press has, by turns, compared them unfavorably to Apple and to their own former glory, but also, in large measure, ignored them. So what is Steve Clayton, creative director and Microsoft storyteller, to do? Tell stories, of course.

Clayton just launched a website, microsoft.com/stories, for long-form story telling. Its first offering is an in-depth exploration of the company’s approach to building technology, titled “88 Acres.” The title refers to Microsoft’s original building plan, which stands in contrast to its current 500-acre headquarters, comprising 125 buildings. It turns out that over the past five years, Darrell Smith, director of facilities and energy at Microsoft has been on a mission to make those buildings smarter.

“Every great story has a hero and as soon as I met Darrell Smith, I knew he had to be the focal point.”

Like energy conservation itself, the patience and long-term thinking required to make smart buildings a success also mitigates against it feeling particularly newsworthy in a traditional sense. Clayton has overseen the Microsoft News Center and used his own blog, Next at Microsoft, to “curate stories from across the company and share an insider’s view of our people, products and places in a more conversational way.”

But he realized that, “There is a whole other set of really interesting stories across the company that aren’t necessarily news, but we think are just good stories that our customers will be interested in.”

The inspiration, quite literally, for the new initiative was John Branch’s “Snowfall,” about an avalanche in Washington State’s Cascade Mountains, published online last year as a special project for The New York Times. Clayton was struck by “both the incredible narrative … and the stunning visual presentation of that story.” He liked the bold use of full-screen photographs that slide away as you scroll the text and the inventive ways that videos and slideshows were embedded in the presentation.

Clayton thought, “there are some great stories here at Microsoft that we could put together in a similar way,” that would go beyond the press releases and blog posts they have been producing.

Being the company’s “resident storyteller” give him license to roam the halls of those 125 buildings looking for interesting people with compelling stories. When someone tipped him off that building engineers in the Redmond Operations Center — “The ROC” — were up to some interesting stuff, he sensed that, “This is just the first story of many more to come.”

“Give me a lot of data and I’ll save the world.”

“Every great story has a hero and as soon as I met Darrell Smith, I knew he had to be the focal point,” of this story, Clayton said. Smith is as passionate an engineer as you will ever meet and his enthusiasm has created a very cohesive team.

“Give me a little data and I’ll tell you a little,” Smith says. “Give me a lot of data and I’ll save the world.” He has not only helped the company save a lot of money and conserve a lot of energy — he is turning smart building technology into a product for Microsoft to sell. From a business perspective, that alone makes it a good story.

Microsoft has told this story before, in a 2011 white paper in collaboration with Accenture and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory research scientist Jessica Granderson. But that presentation was really focused on building owners, operators and IT decision makers, which Clayton found limiting. “Our audience for this story was much broader and it was really intended to be interesting content for all of our customers — from consumers to tech enthusiasts to CIOs and IT professionals.”

This is complicated subject matter, so finding the correct technical level for this content was a challenge.

“Big Data and the Internet of Things can be pretty technical. We focused on avoiding highly technical language and incorporated a lot of visuals,” he said. ”For example, we created an infographic that helped get across the technical details of the smart buildings solution in a simple, visual way.”

Telling your own stories has some perils too. Journalists have the benefit of distance and tend to have an intuitive sense of their audience. In the case of this kind of technology story, the potential audiences have a wide range of knowledge and expectations of specificity.

A quick glance at the comments on the “88 Acres” story from Y Combinator’s Hacker News indicates the pitfalls of underwhelming the geeks.

In the end, Microsoft has the right idea — Darrell Smith and his legion of efficiency engineers are a hopeful sign for the future of the company and the planet, but it may not have found the right form. Neither the prose nor the photography of “88 Acres” is as compelling as “Snowfall,” but they don’t need to be to be as successful either.

Clayton has a good story to tell, but not one as immersive as the tale of a female backcountry skier saved in an avalanche by her recently purchased airbag. The deliberateness of the format — appropriate to the snow drift — feels cumbersome in the context of engineering.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

And now, for the next five weeks, Red Bull is launching a takeover of New York’s music scene.

Through the Red Bull Music Academy, the company is putting its brand in the same breath as the likes of Brian Eno, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Afrika Bambaataa, James Murphy, Kim Gordon, and Erykah Badu. All known and revered for their producer and artist credits on classic recordings, they are only a sampling of the mass of talent that Red Bull has put together to keep the city up and dancing all night.

This targets a specific core of the music loving community — those who are proud to know as much as possible about how the hits are actually made.

Eno, who played the synthesizer in Roxy Music, and has worked in the studio with the likes of David Bowie, The Talking Heads, U2, and Devo, is giving an illustrated talk at Cooper Union, but for those who can’t attend, his self-generating audio/visual installation “77 Million Paintings” will be on display from May to June 2. Dance rock aficionados will file into at NYU’s Skirball Center to drink in the knowledge from LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, who will also be performing on the turntables at the RBMA hosted 12th Anniversary Party for his DFA record label.

“A long-term music initiative, committed to fostering creative exchange amongst those who have made and continue to make a difference in the world of sound.”

Legendary producer Giorgio Moroder, whose resume includes Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby,” and has just been announced as a featured collaborator on Daft Punk’s upcoming album, will be performing his first DJ gig on US soil. These are just a few of the names that Red Bull will be declaring it’s association with — every event the Academy is putting on speaks to a different facet of an amazingly diverse community.

By hitting the highest marks of quality and possibility, Red Bull is working to place itself in the ranks of the elite brands of the country. The drink may not have the association with Americana that a Coca-Cola has, or the athleticism of a Gatorade, but it can build a different platform, one more focused specifically on the cutting edges of culture, targeting both the valued youth and high income demographics.

“Part of being a great brand is conveying what you stand for in an authentic manner so consumers find it believable,” says Nirmalya Kumar, a professor of marketing at the London Business School who has studied the company, in a New York Times interview. “The music academy and the air show have given Red Bull a lot of that.”

The RBMA bills itself as ”not a sponsored event, but a long-term music initiative, committed to fostering creative exchange amongst those who have made and continue to make a difference in the world of sound,” placing its goal on a more long-term, macro, scale (not surprising for a company planning a whole month of events).

“The Red Bull Music Academy is probably the most progressive entity of music education.”

The other half of the Academy consists of collaborative lessons, taking place behind doors between established artists and those who have applied to get into this session. The results of those sessions belong entirely to the artists, with no footprint from the company (unlike when Smirnoff or Mountain Dew sponsor musicians, and their logo winds up all over the album art).

Treating the artist in such a way produces tight bonds within the community. Questlove of The Roots, the soon-to-be bandleader for Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show run, says, ”The Red Bull Music Academy is probably the most progressive entity of music education.”

The focus is constantly on the content, letting the brand — which is bringing the audience once-in-a-lifetime events — give the audience space to enjoy the music, and be seen as respectful of the community.

The Red Bull Music Academy events run from April 30 through June 2.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

In keeping with the spirit of its Real Beauty campaign, Dove commissioned a FBI-trained sketch artist to draw women based on how they see themselves; he then drew the same women again based on the description of others.

The big reveal takes place when the side-by-side sketches are shown to the subjects. Women are clearly their own harshest critics, hence the tagline, “you’re more beautiful than you think.”

The heart string-tugging video, created by Ogilvy & Mathers Brazil, has social and mainstream media buzzing. Here’s why brand content creators should be paying attention:

Dove is selling a consistent message

Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign began nearly a decade ago, and it’s been selling that powerful message over and over again in various ways, said Dan Hilbert, senior vice president of client engagement at TBA Global, a creative events marketing agency.

“There’s nothing more powerful than a brand really owning an emotional benefit.”

He worked on the original Dove Real Beauty campaign in his former role as director of integrated marketing for Unilever, Dove’s parent company. “If you can represent a powerful idea that is relevant to the consumer, you will win and always get the sales volume,” he said.

As such, he’s not surprised to see that Dove has capitalized on this idea once again. “There’s nothing more powerful than a brand really owning an emotional benefit,” he says. “Unilever’s support and consistency is amazing. That’s a unique concept in today’s world of changing brand leadership and marketing schizophrenia.”

Dove knows its consumers

While it may seem an easy formula – create something inspiring and align it with your brand – finding something that resonates so strongly and comes across as genuine is like capturing lightening in a bottle.

“It serves as evidence for truly understanding the perspectives and mentalities of consumers, as well as the benefit in taking a courageous stance to better peoples lives beyond the direct product or service,” said Chad Kaszer, communications strategist at experience design and innovation practice, Sub Rosa.

More important, Dove has latched on to an important facet of the female consumer in particular.

“Women often select brands that they ‘believe’ in,” said Nora Miller, co-founder of Anderson Miller PR. “Advertising a clear brand mission shows customers that the brand believes in its customers’ well-being, and builds trust.”

Dove is not simply selling a bar of soap, she notes — they are selling the notion of how to feel beautiful and comfortable in your own skin.

Dove is leveraging a well thought out media mix.

The campaign goes beyond the YouTube clip. It’s been shared on Facebook thousands of times, and users — including major women’s media brands — are tweeting about it or using the #wearebeautiful hashtag on Twitter. Not to mention all of those in-person conversations that can’t be captured online or quantified.

“Women are sharing, liking, commenting, writing blog posts, and response videos with their personal experience with the video’s message, and how they learned from the campaign,” Miller said. “They are watching it with their daughters, and even playing the video in class It’s viral affect shows that it’s a win.”

Backlash happens, and that’s OK

As with any national conversation that people care about, there is bound to be criticism, such as this Tumblr post that’s generated a lot of attention for its critique of the ad, saying the campaign equates beauty with happiness and defines ideal beauty as thin, pale, blonde-haired and blue-eyed.

Even if Dove missed an opportunity to reach a multicultural audience, the majority of the engagement has been positive. “I think if you try to predict or anticipate criticism, you might never move forward with anything,” said Paul Donaher, president and COO of New York-based creative agency Laird + Partners. “That is not to say that sensitivity to certain issues isn’t important, but trying to avoid criticism is just an impossibility in today’s world.”

Either way, despite criticism, people are talking about it, said Miller. “The larger the discussion, the more people see it.”

What will Dove do next?

It’s now up to Dove to leverage all the buzz and brand goodwill that they’ve generated to drive sales of their products.

“As a result of this effort, I would expect that consumers would be more likely to listen to what Dove has to say next,” said Kaszer, ” to give the brand a few more seconds of their time, and to entertain what we in marketing all hope for. a real relationship between consumer and brand.”

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Platforms like Udacity, Udemy, and Coursera are connecting university-level learners with widely available, free, and low-cost classes and learning materials in technical, business, and quantitative topics.

Adults aren’t the only learners who serve to benefit. Digital publishing, multimedia, and online content are creating worlds of intellectual opportunities for one invaluable demographic – kids.

Empowerment Is Crucial

Today’s multimedia trends do more than put content in front of kids – these platforms empower impressionable young learners to grow into big thinkers.

“Kids aren’t afraid to learn something new, and they really absorb science like a sponge,” said Tyler Ortman, editor at No Starch Press – a San Francisco based book and e-book publisher. “Where adults might be afraid to learn, kids are fearless. They don’t yet know the difference between big, scary ‘science’ words and ‘regular words.”

Specializing in fun, geeky topics, No Starch Press works with authors at the intersection of the digital and physical publishing worlds. Common to both mediums is the topic of technology – No Starch Press has published resources like ‘Super Scratch Programming Adventure’ to help make computers more accessible to kids.

“Programming is part of any white collar worker’s day in this modern age, even if it’s just ‘programming’ the cells in a spreadsheet,” Ortman said. “Apart from strictly economic benefits (‘getting a job,’ etc.), learning how to program is a valuable and brain-expanding skill.”

Content empowers kids with what they need to know – in a fun and accessible way that transcends classrooms and socioeconomic boundaries.

Bridge a Gap

Even the most nurturing childhood environments can fall short in providing a comprehensive ecosystem for learning. Parents may not have the skills that their kids need to know, and education systems may not have the resources to teach sophisticated topics. That’s where multimedia comes in.

“Many parents don’t have the programming skills to really teach their kids programming – that’s why resources are so very important,” Ortman said. “In fact, many high schools don’t even have teachers with this kind of background. Parents and teachers really want books that help them understand. They’re very appreciative.”

The most powerful teaching materials can cross generational boundaries, according to Ortman.

“We’ve had many adults read our programming for kids books, only to respond with comments like ‘oh, this actually isn’t that hard,’ or ‘so THAT’s what programming is,’” said Ortman. “It’s a great activity for parents and kids to explore together, too.”

Get Personal

The next step in content for kids is to create personalized learning opportunities, as there is no one-size-fits-all model for learning.

Consider TenMarks, an online platform that provides personalized math enrichment choices that align with classroom curricula. Kaplan Kids is another option for customized lesson plans that target specific skills. Foundational this experience is integration with data – the option to integrate learnings with real-time reporting.

Content is powerful beyond text. Through data and personalized learning experiences, multimedia has the profound ability to deliver tangible and actionable results.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Yet, in an age of journalism where writers are often rewarded for the speed, not the depth, of their reporting, great sourcing is quickly becoming a lost art.

Bob Van Voris talks with Contently’s John Hazard at the meetup.

That art isn’t lost on Bob Van Voris, former attorney and longtime legal reporter — first at The National Law Journal, and now at Bloomberg. Van Voris stopped by Contently and Profnet’s Freelance Writer’s Meetup last week to reveal key lessons for casting a great source.

1. Sources want to talk to you

“If you ask people questions, they’ll answer you most of the time,” Van Voris explained. “When people know a little part of the planet, and you come to them with interest, they’ll definitely help you out.”

“It was hard for me when I started as a journalist,” he continued. “I was shy and would feel nervous when I called people. I quickly found out that most of the time you’re successful, as long as you come at them with an attitude of, ‘You know something I don’t, and I want you to share it with me.’”

2. Let experts see their quotes         

Quote approval is becoming an increasingly common request by sources. You should never grant quote approval if you want to maintain your journalistic credibility, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t let experts see their quotes.

“Especially with an expert, I’ll always let them see a quote,” said Van Voris. “I won’t say that they can take it back or change it — my reporting belongs to me — but especially for an expert, where it’s not an adversarial point of view, you want to make them look smart.”

“I’ll run the quotes and I won’t give you approval,” Van Voris continued, “but I’ll shoot you the quotes, but if I missed the quote or ran it out of context, shoot me a line and we’ll talk about it.”

3. Your sourcing won’t always be pretty

Though journalists always strive to find the perfect, original source for your story, sometimes you don’t have that luxury when facing a time crunch. When the DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) case reached the Second Circuit court and suddenly became a big story, Van Voris had to act fast to get a story up, even though Bloomberg hadn’t been covering the story thus far.

“You see people saying the same thing in every publication, and you try to avoid being that person.”

“Sometimes when I’m [rushing to find a source], it’s not pretty,” Van Voris admitted. “Sometimes I’m just looking at who was quoted in the Times.”

Still that doesn’t mean that you have to accept the same generic quotes the source is giving every publication.

“You try to get them off their talking points,” Van Voris explained. “You see people saying the same thing in every publication, and you try to avoid being that person.”

4) Tools will help you find sources

Though you’re sometimes forced to copy your sources from other publications, it’s always best to find an original source. Tools like Profnet that connect journalists with subject-matter experts do just that.

“I like Profnet because the people are motivated and will talk to you,” Van Voris said.

He’s developed a system to make the platform work well for him.

“If I’m on a tight deadline, [finding someone to talk to] is pretty ruthless.” Van Voris said. “I don’t let people pitch me on the phone. I tell them to email me if they have an expert pitch or a story pitch, and I [usually] get about 20 emails.”

From there, it’s a matter of separating the true experts from the pretenders. “It’s like best buy when you’re looking for a TV,” Van Voris explained. “It’s the same kind of instinct that weeds out the guy that’s trying to sell you the most expensive TV.”

5) The mohel of your story

“When you’re writing about something that’s a little bit complicated and you need to explain it to your readers, you don’t want to drag them through a seminar in something boring,” Van Voris explained. “You need to give readers something to a little fun, a little compelling, while they’re taking their medicine.”

Sometimes, that little bit of sugar to sweeten your story comes in an unexpected form. Van Voris recalled how he was once writing a story about a doctor in California who developed a practice fixing penile augmentation gone wrong.

“You need to give readers something to a little fun, a little compelling, while they’re taking their medicine.”

“I wrote up the story, and my editor said, the thing we need for this story is a mohel,” said Van Voris. “So I’m calling up Mohels. I was an alter boy, I was Catholic, so I grew up Catholic so this wasn’t a natural stretch for me. I ask [the mohel] what happens when there’s a mistake. He didn’t want to talk about what happens when there’s a mistake.”

“I came back to my editor and we decided that we didn’t need a mohel.”

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

But what about the brand that puts all others to shame? The brand that has used social content to rally the support of millions, and demonstrated that Twitter and Facebook have more marketing power than anyone thought possible? The brand that’s rewriting 200-year-old media rules as we speak?

We don’t often think about the Obama administration as a brand. But we should.

The Puppet Master?

Recently, Politico made headlines with “Obama, the Puppet Master,” a story that cast President Obama as a “master at limiting, shaping and manipulating media coverage of himself and his White House.” According to Politico, the Obama administration does this by eschewing press corps stalwarts like The Washington Post, Politico, and The New York Times in favor of friendly, “softball” interviews and social media interactions.

The complaints sound like sour grapes from a political news organization that has seen Obama’s following and reach greatly exceed its own, shifting the balance of media power in the president’s favor. Past presidents needed the journalism big boys to get their messages out, but if President Obama wants to reach millions of Americans, he doesn’t need The Post — all he needs is his Twitter login.

The Obama administration, of course, isn’t the only brand that’s figured out that it can be its own media company. Major brands used to need media outlets to reach consumers; now, all they need is new media skills and something interesting to say.

A Journey to Social

If every brand could amass 32 million Facebook fans and 28 million Twitter followers like Obama, the marketing world would be a much different place. But the presidentdidn’t amass his media empire overnight; it took six years of dedicated social engagement to build.

In February of 2007, shortly before announcing his candidacy for president, then-Senator Obama spoke with his friend Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape and a Facebook board member. They met late at night at a San Francisco airport. According to The New York Times, Obama asked Andreessen if social networking could help him defeat the powerful Clinton political machine.

“It was like a guy in a garage who was thinking of taking on the biggest names in the business,” Andreessen told The Times. “What he was doing shouldn’t have been possible … He was clearly supersmart and very entrepreneurial, a person who saw the world and the status quo as malleable.”

To attract support through Facebook and Twitter, Obama needed to create content that would deliver value to people’s lives and inspire them to spread the word. Luckily, Obama already had a “Patient Zero” for that kind of viral content: Obama’s 2004 DNC speech, which captivated Americans with its message of hope, and became one of the first political speeches to go viral on YouTube. Obama would go on to win the presidency by delivering non-stop doses of hope through social media.

Content: The Ultimate Political Weapon

By the time Obama was sworn in, he had amassed millions of followers on Facebook and Twitter and had the email addresses of millions of supporters. In other words, he had a direct line to the American people. President Obama used that direct line to rally support during his bloody battles with Republicans over health care, the deficit, and everything in between.

President Obama also turned this policy talk into a two-way conversation, launching the We The People petition platform in September 2011 and promising a response to any petition that garnered 25,000 electronic signatures.

As the Obama presidency matures, the administration is getting better and better at using social content as a weapon in battles with Republicans. Politico’s “Puppet Master” story focuses on one instance in January, when the White House released a photo of President Obama shooting skeet at Camp David, in order to end speculation that the President had lied when he told The New Republic that he shot skeet “all the time.” Instead of handing the photo to the press, members of Obama’s senior staff tweeted the photo out to the masses. David Plouffe’s tweet was particularly entertaining and masterfully crafted: “Attn skeet birthers. Make our day — let the photoshop conspiracies begin!”

This move clearly irked Politico, and it’s a sign of how the times have changed. The political junkie who religiously read The Times 15 years ago is now the political junkie who follows Plouffe on Twitter. He won’t need to read Plouffe’s words in The Times, where they would most likely be juxtaposed to critical quotes from the other side.

The skeet tweet was part of President Obama’s multi-pronged content attack to sway American opinion on gun control. Since the shooting, President Obama and Vice President Biden have both talked gun control policy with Americans via Google Hangouts. After user David G. launched a gun control petition on the We The People platform that became the most popular cause ever on the platform, the White House released a comprehensive response, including a personal response video from the president, which was viewed almost 400,000 times. The White House also quickly launched a stunning and informative micro-site on preventing gun violence. It’s the kind of work that ad agencies gush over at SXSW and Cannes.

While the White House Press Corps may be getting less access to President Obama, the average American is getting much more access than ever before. The White House’s digital briefing room lets you track everything from the President’s daily schedule, to his pending legislation, to each White House press briefing. President Obama also films a weekly Saturday morning address to the nation, and Vice President Biden is launching an photo-podcast series, dubbed “Being Biden,” that gives Americans a behind-the-scenes peak at the VP’s life off the public schedule. All of this content, in addition to various other images and infographics that support Obama’s positions or put him in a flattering light, is distributed through the White House’s various social channels.

The Obama administration is on a never-ending mission to execute the golden rule of content marketing: Figure out what your fans are talking about, and own that conversation. Whether the conversation is about gun control, taxes, Michelle’s bangs, or the day-to-day happenings of The White House, the Obama administration owns the talking points masterfully. It’s time for brands to take note and learn a few lessons from the greatest brand publisher on the planet.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently