MasterClass

Morning Studio MasterClass is a quarterly programme offering in-depth training from Morning Studio and SCMP gurus on a range of creative, content, and marketing topics. We hope to share our findings with you from each of the MasterClasses, which aim to develop the content marketing industry along with other leaders and professionals.

Contact Morning Studio to learn how your brand can develop a set of content and marketing tactics to better engage this tribal audience, or to discuss your next content marketing campaign.

SCMP’s MasterClass reveals best ways to use SEO and content to build brands
10 Jun 20

Instructor:

Johnny Ng

Marketing Solutions Director, South China Morning Post

Vienna Lee

Digital Marketing Director, South China Morning Post

Introduction:

The webinar on June 10, titled “The Zero Moment of Truth: How to Leverage Content and SEO to Build Your Brand”, was aimed at brand owners and growth and audience engagement managers. The informative session saw SCMP experts highlight the different ways that marketers can integrate SEO and innovative content to educate and guide clients through the cycle of online decision-making and buying.

Johnny Ng, SCMP’s marketing solutions director, outlined the typical customer journey in the digital age and provided brands with insights and tips to help them increase SEO success.

Vienna Lee, the digital marketing director, revealed how SCMP approaches SEO and shared the methods and tools that can be used to design and execute an effective strategy.

Key takeaways

“Content and SEO are not linear processes,” Ng said, adding that marketing development has to be continuously tested, monitored, and adapted.

To help build up brand recognition, Ng and Lee offered a number of recommendations during the webinar:

Fix technical issues

Make sure your website is accessible, easy to navigate and mobile-friendly

Optimise site structure and links between pages

Identify images and multimedia elements that could affect site loading time

Remove broken links and solve indexing problems

Make your content work

Produce content for every segment of the consumer journey. Offer evergreen and less time-sensitive content at the start of it, product features driven at the evaluation stage and, finally, call-to-action items focused on converting traffic into sales or subscriptions

Ensure content is relevant, trustworthy and up-to-date

Research and employ short- and long-tail keywords in the copy

Apply multimedia and interactive elements, using tags, captions, and alternative and title text

Write meta titles and meta descriptions for every page, to help search engines understand the content

Format content to improve its readability and use appropriate font sizes, colours, headlines and bullet points

ACCESS recording now

Click here to access the webinar recording and slides.

Understanding Gen Z and how SCMP reaches this audience
25 Sep 19

Instructor:

Victoria HoExecutive Producer,

Goldthread

Host:

Michala Sabnani

Branded Content Director,

South China Morning Post

Introduction: What makes Generation Z tick? Morning Studio’s MasterClass reveals the answers – and implications for brands.

Numerous participants from a wide range of industry sectors and brand representatives from Visa, Manulife, Swire, Rolex, and Burberry attended the event at The Arcade, one of the five social hubs at the South China Morning Post’s offices in Times Square, Causeway Bay.

Featuring video game consoles, pool and tabletop football, the venue’s vibe, fuelled by light refreshments, perfectly matched the MasterClass’ topic: understanding Generation Z and how SCMP reaches this audience.

This first fully digital generation – born from about 1996 onwards – lives in a world of high-speed, wireless internet, video chat, instant messaging and handheld devices.

Members of Gen Z, which has an impact on everything from technology to brands to social media, are characterised as having an eight-second attention span – four seconds less than that of millennials – and consuming an average of 3.4 hours of video content each day.

By 2020, Gen Z will become the largest generation of consumers, accounting for US$29 billion in direct spending. Research shows that 89 per cent of this age group would rather buy from a company that supports social and environmental issues than one that does not.

Victoria Ho, the executive producer of Goldthread – one of the Post’s innovative online platforms covering stories on Chinese culture, food, history, art and travel – ⁠shared insights into how to best reach Gen Z.

She used Qingdao International Beer Festival, Facekini and Influencer Li Ziqi as case studies to show what type of content successfully engages the interest of this generation.

Morning Studio’s Michala Sabnani, branded content director explained how brand advertisers can also reach this generation and used the 48 Hours in Hong Kong campaign, created for the Hong Kong Tourism Board, as a case study.

She and Ho also revealed key drivers, influencing factors and gave advice on how to avoid communication pitfalls with this fastest-growing demographic.

The critical takeaway for attendees of this MasterClass was understanding that Gen Z’s intensely mobile-first behaviour is vital to appreciate the generation’s perceptions and actions as consumers from this demographic become increasingly essential for brands.

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Debunking video myths and How to optimise a partnership with a publisher’s content studio
30 May 19

Instructors:

Michala Sabnani

Branded Content Director,

South China Morning Post

Johnny NgMarketing Solutions Director,

South China Morning Post

Mat Booth

Head of Video,

South China Morning Post

Lorraine Cushnie
Board Member,
The Asia Content Marketing Association

Introduction: How can you make the best use of videos for different platforms and what are the five key steps to a comprehensive content strategy?

Morning Studio's first MasterClass was held on May 30, 2019, at SCMP’s offices in Times Square, Causeway Bay.

The training, developed and delivered by Morning Studio experts, addressed two key media areas attracting great interest among today’s marketers – video production and content marketing – and covered a range of important topics.

Karrie Lam, head of sales and Morning Studio, welcomed more than 60 participants to the MasterClass and said the training has been developed using Morning Studio’s expertise gained from “co-creating a number of branded content campaigns with marketers from the airlines, hotels, fashion, art and culture, technology and finance industries”.

The MasterClass programme distills best practices and key insights into compact formats, which can be shared with the broader content marketing community.

The “Debunking video myths” training, presented by Michala Sabnani, SCMP’s branded content director, and Mat Booth, SCMP’s head of video, focused on areas such as how to make the best use of videos for different platforms, the best metrics for judging video success and how even “dry” topics can still make great videos.

It also exposed the falseness of video production myths, such as the common belief that, because of the limited attention span of today’s audiences, the shorter the video, the better it is. Participants were shown how Facebook’s algorithm actually prioritised a nine-minute video, which attracted significantly more views than one lasting only 50 seconds.

The “Content Marketing” training, presented by Johnny Ng, SCMP’s marketing solutions director, and Lorraine Cushnie, board member for the Asia Content Marketing Association, explained how to optimise a partnership with a publisher’s content studio, such as the benefits and possible disadvantages, plus the five key steps to a comprehensive content strategy.

It also outlined a clear working model and package options when collaborating with publisher studios, details about content distribution and tips to ensure a successful partnership.

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