Content Catchup: Badass Brand Newsrooms, the Best Quiz Ever, and More Must-Reads

Here’s what you missed while worrying that you might get acquired at any moment…

3 Ways You Can Leap the Hurdles of Creating Content at a Finance Company

Janet Al-Saad has spent years working on content campaigns for financial institutions, and along the way, she’s learned a few things:

I’m afraid I need to point out the elephant in the room: Creating financial content that consumers actually read, share, and return to is exceedingly hard. The most successful financial industry giants struggle with blogs and microsites that often underperform or outright fail.At this point, expectations are so low that a “successful” article or video only needs to drive 1,000 views to stand out.To add insult to injury, the content creation process is often harder in finance because of SEC regulations and complex internal approval chains, which slow everything considerably. But building a content operation doesn’t have to be such a risky investment. As a financial journalist and editor, I’ve seen firsthand how content can thrive and how the content creation process can be managed effectively.While other companies are stumbling to build loyal audiences, here are a few key insights that can help your financial content succeed:

Read it.

‘This American Life’ Meets ‘Office Space’: How Slack Created the World’s Most Ambitous Branded Podcast

Eight months ago, Slack hired their first marketing employee. and already, they’re breaking new ground in the suddenly hot branded podcast space, writes Amanda Walgrove:

Once Bill Macaitis was brought on to be CMO, or, as he says, “Marketing Employee #1,” he jumped right in to the podcast space, sponsoring approximately 10 podcasts, including StartUp and 99% Invisible. Only a few months later, he started to think about what it would sound like if Slack created its own. The answer: It would sound like a bunch of stories about work and life, such as how the modern weekend came to be and that crazy time you saw your co-workers get into a fist fight.

“Slack is really transforming the workplace,” Macaitis said. “And we thought it would be really fun to think about a podcast that could tell those stories—tell them in a fun voice, and tell them in a way that would allow us to have a deeper connection with our customers.”

Read it.

#ModernMarketing Podcast, Episode 3: How Coca-Cola and LinkedIn Built Their Newsrooms

Why do some brands succeed at content marketing while others fail? As Kavi Guppta explores in our latest #modernmarketing podcast, it all starts with building the right kind of team. Listen along as Guppta goes inside LinkedIn and Coca-Cola’s newsrooms to discover their secrets to success. Listen to it.

The Best Branded Content of May

In my monthly roundup of the best branded content out there, I examine Net-a-Porter’s new social network, a 197-slide presentation that broke the Internet, and an accidental viral web app that thinks Drake is 37 years-old, and much more! Read it.

Quiz: What Brand Are You?

Warning: This quiz may give you an existential crisis that’ll haunt you the entire weekend.

Enjoy your days off. Get some sun, and we’ll see you Monday.