Content Marketing: What Music Can Say About a Company

Educate or entertain. These are the two most basic rules for content marketing: how to get people to pay attention to you, to listen, to learn, to reply, to like you or whatever it is you’re selling – whether it’s an idea, a service or a widget.

Most often, we think of words as the medium. Increasingly, we use video. Pictures also have taken on new significance through tagging on Facebook (which helps optimize your news feed and put the content in front of more friends).

But thanks to new streaming and sharing platforms such as Spotify -- music is another opportunity to educate and entertain. For example, I love what @Time magazine did earlier this month as part of its Person of the Year issue, offering a playlist on protest songs as part of its coverage, giving another dimension to a story in the same way an infographic might.

Spotify has more than 10 million users (about 20 percent of whom are paying customers), with 15 million tracks available as free streams. They also now have artist and song radio stations, powered by The Echo Nest of Somerville.

You can engage by asking people to join your list. Or you can simply share your list, a gift to people you like -- or those you want to educate or entertain. Our very own Vice President @GregPC has even used Spotify to connect with reporters, or, as the case maybe, discuss who has better taste in music: my former colleague, Boston Globe tech reporter Hiawatha Bray, or Greg
himself? Click on their names to be the judge.

Since we listen to music all day in the office, we pulled together a link to InkHouse’s curated list of songs that we believe reflects our work.  Contributions come from:

• Jill Newberry, whose picks are “Some Days You Gotta Dance” and “She Works Hard for the Money.” (I’ve never seen her dance but she does work hard and is often the first employee into the office and the last to leave.)
• Our tenacious media strategist Elizabeth Yekhtikian, who was quick to offer up “Call Me,” “I Won’t Back Down,” and “One Way or Another.” If she’s having a bad day (rarely), the tracks go like
  this: “No Reply at All,” “Don’t Call Me Up,” and “Mean.”
• Me. I couldn’t pick a single track. I love music and have been known to play the drums. I created two additional eclectic playlists for you to check out; one for work and one for the holidays.
• Michelle Cormier. She takes a different approach in dealing with the media…“Try A Little Tenderness.”
• Jim Crook. He may be at his desk alot but he’s got “Moves Like Jagger.”
• Francy Wade, whom we tease about the fact that she uses jazz hands when she talks. Not surprisingly, she leans toward show tunes with "Don't Rain on My Parade."
• Whitney Clifford. She gives us “Maggie’s Farm,” which she swears has nothing to do with how she feels about work, just what she likes to listen to at her desk.
• Steve Vittorioso, who thinks “Wild Ride” sums up his fast-paced career at InkHouse.
• Laura Paine. She says the lyrics to “Big Casino” -- “Turn on ignition, fire up the system, play my little part in something big” – describe her day.
• Beth Monaghan. She gets the last word, er song, with “I'm Not Settling.” That’s why she’s the boss.