Content marketing, especially B2B content marketing, is one of our passions and core competencies. Here is one of our latest pieces of client work – How To Use Instagram – for Palo Alto-based social technology, Bumebox. The guide (embedded via SlideShare) provides tactical advice on how to use Instagram for user-generated content, make sense of hashtags, track metrics, generate engagement, and maintain brand standards in a way that is conducive to Instagram’s users and their behavior patterns.

Founded in 1987, South By Southwest (SXSW) began as a festival focused on music. In 1994, it added film and multimedia components. In 2011, it added fashion with the adoption of Style X (pronounced “style by”), a fashion trade show and event, to the conference’s calendar. For the city of Austin, Texas, SXSW is the highest revenue-producing special event for the local economy, with an estimated economic impact of $167 million in 2011. This year, the conference featured digital trends and technology that directly focused on retailers utilizing social media and commerce as part of their online marketing strategy.

The rise of interest networks

The most talked-about trend this year at SXSW was interest networks. During the conference, it was clear that interest networks are the next big thing that Silicon Valley is watching to change online user behavior. With interest networks, online users can tailor their experiences and interactions around things that interest them by choosing the people, brands and products they’re connected to. The concept is already found in Google Circles, where you can assign people, brands and products you follow to a certain “circle” or group set.

Now the concept is being translated into entirely new social networks like Chime.In (founded by Uber Media’s Bill Gross) and Hibe, a network that assigns its users “facets” that enable them to create one of four online profiles–family, professional, friends and public. Each profile contains a certain amount of information that the user then designates for different people to see.

Both fashion and marketing are inherently creative industries. How many professions boast positions such as “chief creative officer” and “creative director?” Fashion leaders are expected to create new, compelling and unexpected looks every six months; while digital marketers create marketing programs that must capture the capricious attention of the digital consumer 24-7-365.

We all make it look so easy, don’t we? Well, as you most certainly know if you are reading our site, being creative on a daily basis is hard work. It’s the best work, a true labor of love, but unfortunately it’s not a mindset that many people can achieve.

People want to be more creative

Eighty percent of people surveyed in the Adobe State of Create study felt that unlocking creativity is critical to economic growth and two-thirds stated that they believe creativity is valuable to society; yet only one in four believe that they are living up to their creative potential. The study surveyed 5,000 adults across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan to discover people’s attitudes and beliefs about creativity.