Top 50 Takeaways from IABC World Conference 2022

Back in June 2022, I attended the IABC World Conference in New York 🗽 (IABC stands for International Association of Business Communicators). I was the only attendee from Microsoft and enjoyed meeting people outside of the tech bubble and learning more about storytelling, social media, and the multi-faceted communications discipline.

For those who didn’t get a chance to attend or attendees who want a refresh, I am recapping my top 50 takeaways from the jam-packed sessions.

Being more effective at reaching audiences

  1. 80% of our time should be spent pitching to the top 20% of journalists
  2. Understand both the business and consumer angle when developing key messaging
  3. Micro audiences are important:
    • Geographic > Demographic > Psychographic
  4. Try A/B testing on messaging and demographics
    • Example: City of Markham found that enforcement language was more effective with Asian demographic vs. educational language was more effective on other demographics
  5. Don’t underestimate power of the word-of-mouth
  6. Don’t just repeat a message when doing a campaign
    • Follow-up posts should add extra value on top of the original post/message
  7. Consider how comms drives customers/audiences down the funnel = retargeting strategy
  8. People are becoming more polarized
  9. People are losing trust in the authorities, companies are filling that gap in trust
  10. 3rd party influencers will continue to play a bigger role in validating news
  11. CXOs are increasingly focused on outcomes not output
  12. Tailor messaging to each group based on Value Spectrum Analysis
 Low ValueHigh Value
Low LoyaltyMove customers towards high value or high loyalty Drive customers to high loyalty  
High LoyaltyDrive customers to high value  **We want to move customers towards here**

Improve messaging

  1. Don’t start with WHY, but WHO
    • Start with what people find interesting
    • What people want to hear is often not what we want to say
  2. Ask what are the 3 words people will think about Microsoft after reading your content
  3. Trust >= Truth
  4. Human attention span is 8 seconds and the avg person gets 1/3 of decisions wrong b/c of info overload
  5. Identity drives purchase decisions
    • What identity are we getting decision makers to buy into?
    • What are their values?
  6. There is a difference between highlighting optimization vs. transformation
  7. Emphasize key findings
    • Speed/scalability
    • Flexibility/resiliency
    • Talent (skilling/resources)
  8. What is the value we created beyond the expected?
    • Expectation inflation = good is no longer good enough
    • Everyone wants more for less
    • Disappointment is when expectations are greater than reality
  9. Brands are in greater danger of being invisible than controversial
    • Look beyond the generic to cut through
    • Design for REAL not IDEAL
  10. Introducing new ideas can be dangerous
    • Anchor new ideas to something familiar
  11. Gladwell Method of Storytelling
    • Focus on a small moment/detail
    • Connect it to a larger trend, issue, etc
    • Return to that small detail

Ideas for creating engaging content

  1. Zoom In – look for tiny details that affect the most people (e.g. Suez Canal situation = storyteller focused on shortage of cutlery that affected the restaurant industry)
  2. Many to One – take generic info and apply it to 1 persona
  3. Polarization – Asking audience to vote/choose a side
  4. Connections – Relate topic to the weather, pop culture, books, shows, nationaldaycalendar.com
  5. Step by step guide
  6. Answers to FAQ
  7. Lessons learned/what not to do
  8. Myth busters
  9. Share unexpected insights that will surprise people
  10. Curating a list for topic X
  11. Ask the expert
  12. Immediate actions to take to accomplish X

Exploring social media

  1. Social media should SIMPLIFY the message and make it easier to understand
  2. More platforms = more confusion. Develop/follow social media principles.
  3. Look at search engine keyword analytics and integrate these keywords into content
  4. Leverage employees as advocates
  5. Questions to ask
    • What is the strategy for this platform?
    • Why are we doing it this way?
    • How can we measure if this strategy is effective?
    • Who is the audience? Which channels are they on?
    • How do we build community?
  6. 5 steps for an effective digital comms strategy
    • Identify business goal
    • Understand situation/landscape
    • Get insights to target audiences (segment and determine what they find valuable)
    • Figure out plaform/purpose for each target audience
    • Keep the business informed and engaged

Leveraging data & metrics

  1. 59% of people share content on social media w/o reading it
  2. If you don’t have data to back up a statement then it is an assumption
  3. Measure for effectiveness, evaluate on value
  4. Gain SEO insights on how to reach BDM/EBDMs
  5. Barcelona Principles #3 and #7 are good global PR metrics to follow
  6. Vanity metrics grow bigger and appear impressive but aren’t that useful
    • We should measure what we’re NOT good at
  7. Valuable metrics
    • Lead to actionable decisions
    • Are representative, relevant, fair/ethical
    • Consider context
    • Matter to customers
  8. Actionable metrics
    • Domain authority
    • Backlinks
    • Source rate
    • Click through rate
    • Conversion rate
  9. When hosting events, the critical content should be at the halfway point b/c of peak attendance

Conclusion

Overall, this was a great conference with a strong community of people who are very passionate about communications. I am excited to apply these learnings in the new fiscal year and stay connected with the communicators that I met from around the world.

Fun facts… the next World Conference 2023 will be hosted in Toronto 🇨🇦 and Canada has the largest membership! Also, if you’re a student in marketing or communications, you should check with your university to see if you can get a free membership.