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Redesigning Your Blog to Drive Reader Behavior

Posted on 10. Apr, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, content marketing, Convince & Convert News, Convince and Convert, corporate blogging, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Soon, you’ll be seeing an all-new version of Convince & Convert.

It’s undergoing a full makeover, led by the amazing Rafal Tomal from Copyblogger Media. We’re of course staying with the Genesis Framework that provides enormous customization capabilities with unmatched ease-of-use. Here’s an almost-ready preview:

The design is based on the new Streamline child theme that is successfully being used by Danny Brown of Jugnoo – who has forgotten more about blog optimization than I’ll ever know.

The Case for Redesign

Even though WordPress (especially with Genesis) is exceptionally easy to work with compared to old skool Web design days, it’s still a major undertaking. Lots of blogs out there rarely if ever change their look and layout. Why bother?

In addition to the power of self-expression and the organization of your thinking it mandates, blogging for business has one primary outcome: it triggers desirable behaviors among readers. Identifying, measuring, and optimizing those behavior patterns are key elements of your blog strategy.

Very few bloggers (especially in the business category) are blogging strictly for eyeballs, as advertising revenue is typically a minor benefit, at best. Instead, the blog is an emcee, not just a vessel for your musings. It’s a public manifestation of your knowledge, and encourages readers to act in ways that help build your business over the long haul. It’s symbiosis. You trade what you know in exchange for readers’ time, attention, and advocacy.

Convince & Convert is growing and changing constantly, and the current design isn’t set up to emphasize the behaviors we are focused upon in 2012. The redesign is intended to address these informational and behavioral objectives:

Emphasize that Convince & Convert is a company, not a guy. There are 5 of us on the team, with a half dozen other collaborators.

Desired Behavior: Increase ratio of visitors viewing About Us.

Better explain our social media and content marketing services.

Desired Behavior: Increase ratio of visitors viewing services pages.

Showcase our new Social Pros Podcast.

Desired Behavior: Increase ratio of visitors viewing Podcast page and conversion rate for Podcast subscriptions via RSS and/or iTunes.

Increase Email Sign-ups. Considering many of us at C&C have a background in email marketing, our subscription rate is embarrassing. Time to fix.

Desired Behavior: Conversion rate for email subscriptions.

Spotlight speaking capabilities. My jaybaer.com site is dedicated to social media speaking, and was also built by Rafal Tomal. It’s terrific, but we need to drive more referrals from C&C over there.

Desired Behavior: Increase referred traffic to jaybaer.com

Increase depth of visits. High bounce rates are common on blogs, especially those that have a high ratio of new visits and visits from search. However, I want to see our bounce rate drop by making it easier to browse and by implementing a more compelling related posts feature. For the record, our bounce rate is 69%, our new visitors ratio is 70%, and our traffic from search is 29%.

Desired Behavior: Reduce bounce rate among new visitors (71% currently)

Once the new site rolls out and we have some data, I’ll write another post with some before and after statistics.

A New Target Audience and Approach

The presumed audience for this blog since its founding in June, 2008 was corporate and agency marketing professionals, with a side order of small business owners – especially on tactical posts. This year, however, we have tweaked the audience focus for Convince & Convert, and our objective is to write for social media and content marketing professionals. We don’t want to be Social Media Examiner, Social Fresh, or Content Marketing Institute and try to answer every conceivable question. Nor do we want to be a blog like TwistImage, BrianSolis.com, or SideraWorks that’s anchored in thought leadership and what comes next.  There is a content chasm between those two types of blogs, and we want to fill it (along with Social Media Explorer, {Grow} and SpinSucks).

With the blog and podcast, we talk about what all of this means in practice, and how you can leverage the constant upheaval in social media and content marketing to the advantage of your organization. We’re innovative, interesting, hype-free, and approachable. Our objective is to give you advice and opinion you can’t get elsewhere.

A New Editorial Calendar – and How I Blog

Last week, Mitch Joel wrote a fascinating post about his blogging process (read it) that stemmed from an equally interesting post from Chris Brogan (read that one, too). I discovered that I write almost precisely the opposite of Mitch. He writes every day, and publishes whatever and whenever the mood strikes him – which is pretty much always! I am far more structured. For years, I have written three posts per week here, and typically have topics (or at least ideas for topics, which I keep on the notes section of my iphone) set up weeks in advance.

I write on a schedule, not when I feel the need to write. I have come to the conclusion that this is somewhat unusual for bloggers. For at least two years, every post I’ve written has been done on a weekend or on a plane. When I have the luxury of not being interrupted by phone or email or DMs or SMS, I write. Sometimes, I’ll write five posts in a row. Other times, just one. Incidentally, I did The NOW Revolution the same way. I wrote 1,500 words per day for 21 straight days. Amber Naslund is more like Mitch, and is a “flow” writer. During the book process, she’d have nothing, nothing, nothing then bust out 8,000 brilliant words. Interesting (at least to me) how different these processes can be.

I mostly write in WordPress, unless I’m on a plane with no Wi-Fi, in which case I write in TextEdit and then move to the blog. I always write on my MacBook Pro. I once tried to write a post on my iPad, but it felt too foreign. A post usually takes me an hour or so.

I wish I could write every day like Mitch and Chris, but I can’t. Scott Stratten consistently pays me a very nice compliment in his speeches, saying that he stops what he’s doing whenever I publish something new, because every post is rock solid. He’s a liar. I came to the conclusion late last year that I was worrying too much about quantity, and quality was starting to suffer. The growth of the consulting side of the business was impinging on my ability to create truly first-rate content. So with encouragement from Ann Handley I made some changes and we have implemented a new editorial calendar over the past 60 days, which has the dual benefit of freeing up some of my time, and providing more and better content to our shifted target audience.

Here’s how it works now:

Sunday/Monday – Long post from me where I can dig deep and hopefully make you laugh, cry, think. It’s like Cats.: you’ll read it again and again.

Tuesday – Guest post from someone awesome. This piece from Anthony Juliano last week on 5 Reasons Linkedin is Boring – in a Good Way was delicious. Sometimes I write a second post (like this one) instead of a guest post.

Wednesday – Innovative post on tools and tactics from one of the members of the C&C team. Chris Sietsema’s post on content marketing Bricks vs. Feathers was rock solid, and clients are already starting to use the “bricks” and “feathers” descriptors.

Saturday – (coming soon) One Social Thing digest. We’ve rolled out an all-new email product that brings you the single best thing in social media and content marketing every day (more on that next week). Soon, we’ll have a post every Saturday that recaps our picks of the
week – just in time for your weekend catch-up reading.Because we have more authors on the blog now, we’re also going to be changing the layout of individual posts. This is primarily to increase readability and to have more consistent real estate to describe and promote the authors, similar to how Social Freshdoes it.Traffic is up 20% since we moved to the new calendar, even though I’m writing less personally. That’s good news for business, and bad news for the ego.  

So there you have it. That’s where we’re headed with Convince & Convert. In the immortal words of Spinal Tap, “We hope you enjoy our new direction.”

 

 

Moneyball Principles for Content Marketing

Posted on 21. Mar, 2012 by Chris Sietsema in Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, chris sietsema, content creation, content marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Chris Sietsema is Social & Digital Operations Lead at Convince & Convert. He also runs a digital agency called Teach to Fish Digital where he provides insights on search, social media, email marketing, and analytics.

By now you have likely seen, read or heard about the story of the Oakland A’s baseball teams of the early 2000s. Led by General Manager, Billy Beane, the club had limited resources with which to build a winning team, especially when compared to big budget competitors like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, etc. As opposed to relying on old school player evaluation tactics, they hired analysts who used statistical models to identify batters who could score more runs and find pitchers who could get more outs. While the Moneyball story is framed within the game of baseball, it’s really about math. It showed that we can depend on numbers to help predict success. And while it was not perfect, this particular “numbers first” approach proved better than an expert’s best guess.

Marketers can use a similar method to hand pick content marketing programs that stand a chance to win. If you have previously relied on intuition, gut feel or a hunch when filling up your editorial calendar, but here is a method to find hidden content marketing gems that will actually perform and not just look good in shorts.

In the book, Moneyball author Michael Lewis showed that there were a few statistics that answered key questions about an offensive player’s potential:

• On-base percentage: Can the batter get on base?
• Slugging percentage: Can the batter hit for power?

In our game, there are three primary numbers we care about. Below I’ll refer to “content elements” which can translate to concepts, ideas, keywords or a simple premise for your content marketing endeavors. This will help you focus and improve your content efforts, because every piece of content you create has an opportunity cost associated with it.

• Revenue: Does the content element speak to a service or product line that produces revenue?
• Search Volume: Is the audience actively searching for the content element?
• Social Chatter: Is the audience actively talking about the content element?

1. Revenue Potential

The first step is to determine what concepts actually relate to products and services that make your organization money. Take note of the common questions potential customers and influencers have about your offering(s). Establish a healthy number of questions as you will likely make some eliminations later in your analysis. Essentially, you are creating a list of inquiry prospects to run numbers against.

2. Search Potential

Once you have some concepts in mind based on the service/product lines that drive revenue and the common questions people have about each, you can begin to explore the search database. Tools like the Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery can help vet and validate content elements. Additionally, these tools may shed light on terms and concepts with a wealth of search activity that you had not previously considered. The metric to be considered here is search volume (daily, weekly or monthly).

3. Social Potential

The final step is to determine the level of social chatter about each concept. Social monitoring and listening tools will unveil what content elements are prevalent in consumer dialogue and those that are largely invisible in social media. As for metrics, you may choose to collect number of mentions within blog posts, tweets, video hits and forum postings that include your content element or keyword. Using those specific measurements for a client, we combined totals for each source (blogs, twitter, video, forums) and created a “Social Sum” for each content element on our prospect list.

After you have collected your data, you can begin your analysis. Consider adding a scale to the varying degrees of revenue/profitability, search volume and social amplification (e.g. 1=low, 5=high). Carefully uncover those topics that meet the following requirements:

• This concept speaks to a service/product that makes us money
• This concept is highly searched
• This concept is discussed often

As your analysis highlights those content elements that are ready for the big show, work with your team to discuss what content channels (i.e. video, ebook, infographic, podcast, event, game, mobile app, etc, etc) are most appropriate for your selections.

Have you tried this or a similar approach? How do you decide what to create content about in your company?

6 Must-Have Social Plugins for Your WordPress Blog

Posted on 14. Mar, 2012 by Jess Ostroff in Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, Hello Bar, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media tools, WordPress

Jess Ostroff is Managing Editor at Convince & Convert, and also runs the virtual social media assistant agency Don’t Panic Management. You can find her tweeting about social media, martinis, and music as @jessostroff.

If you have a conversation with any WordPress developer, they’ll likely tell you that less is more when it comes to plugins. And with the thousands of plugins out there in the WordPress repository, finding the right ones for your site can be a ridiculously time-consuming (and headache-inducing) feat. Social plugins and optimization are more important than ever though, and can really make a difference in your site’s traffic and engagement.

These 6 social plugins are all compatible with the latest version of WordPress, and are easy to install and customize. We use most of these here at Convince & Convert and can attest to their awesomeness.

1. Digg Digg

This popular plugin lets you incorporate all of your social sharing buttons into a customizable bar that sits on the top or side of each blog post for easy sharing. Digg Digg lets you choose which buttons you want to display, and whether you want a floating sidebar (all the rage lately) or a top bar. Digg Digg was acquired by Buffer a couple years ago, and includes all popular sharing buttons and their share count for each post.

Digg Digg with a floating left implementation

2. All in One SEO Pack

Some WordPress frameworks have search functionality already built in, but if you want to really pack an SEO punch into your posts, the All in One SEO Pack is the best of its kind (in my estimation). All in One SEO Pack sits in your WordPress dashboard at the bottom of each post and allows you to enter your own custom title, description, and keywords for search engines to index. It works with most advanced WordPress customizations and e-commerce sites, and works straight out of the box for beginners as well.

All in One SEO Pack interface

3. Facebook Social Plugins

Facebook is the social giant that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and whether you love it or hate it, you can’t argue that 500 million international users is a heck of a lot. You can find some unofficial “like” buttons and other Facebook plugins in the WordPress repository, but with the amount of changes Facebook makes on a regular basis, your best bet is to use the official Facebook Social Plugins from Facebook.com. These tend to be a little more tricky to configure than some of the other plugins we’ve listed here because they require some HTML knowledge, but Facebook provides detailed documentation on how to install their Facebook social plugins so you don’t get lost.

Facebook Social Plugins Instructions Page

4. Photo Dropper

Creating visually appealing content for your blog has become increasingly important, especially now with the advent of Pinterest. But finding royalty-free images that don’t look like ’90s clip art can be a pain. Photo Dropper is a free plugin that aggregates creative commons images and makes them available to you from directly within your WordPress dashboard. No Google or Flickr search necessary. It’s not laziness, it’s efficiency! Plus, Photo Dropper ensures that you use (and credit) photographs appropriately.

Photo Dropper Image Finder

5. Hello Bar

The Hello Bar is so simple, yet so effective. Type your promotional message, your link text, and your link URL into the Hello Bar dashboard, choose your colors and font, and voila! You now have a slick little bar sitting at the top of your site with your latest event, newsletter, or whatever else you want people to see. (you might even see it at the top of this page). Because of its location and customizable color scheme, you’re likely to get more eyeballs and clicks on your message. And that’s not all – Hello Bar allows you to measure visits, clicks, and even perform A/B testing, all for the low price of $0 (The Pro version of Hello Bar is fee-based).

Hello Bar message creation interface

6. InboundWriter

Jay has written about the impact of InboundWriter here on Convince & Convert before, and we continue to see its increasing value as Google’s newest algorithm demands excellent content. InboundWriter is a social writing application that analyzes sample copy against websites you’ve chosen, and recommends relevant keywords for you to focus on. As you continue to write, InboundWriter analyzes in real-time, providing you with suggestions and an SEO score of between 1 and 100 so you can measure your progress. You might also  go back to your most popular posts and re-work them using InboundWriter. You may be pleasantly surprised with the SEO results.

InboundWriter for WordPress Interface

While plugins can provide an easy way to customize your site, it’s important to be careful about which ones you install as too many social plugins can slow down your site and make you more vulnerable to hackers. Keeping your plugin library lean and always keeping your plugins updated will take some of this anxiety away, especially if you’re not a developer.

What are we missing out on? What social plugins can you not live without?

(Video) 4 Mistakes You Make When Posting Video on Your Blog

Posted on 21. Feb, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media optimization, video, Video Marketing

Guest post written by Rocky Walls, who has more than 10 years’ experience in digital content creation. As CEO of 12 Stars Media Productions, Rocky works with businesses to create video that’s so real and simple it changes audiences into relationships.

It’s no secret that embedding videos on your blog post is a great way to attract readership and conversion. However, using video to its fullest potential involves more work than slapping an embed code on an otherwise empty post. Here are four common mistakes we’ve seen along with some tips to help ensure that you make the most out of a video on your blog post.

1) No Indication That There is a Video in the Post

You should let your readers know right away that your blog post contains a video. You can accomplish this in two ways.

First, specify it in the title of the post. A good way to do this is to star the title out with “(VIDEO)” – this will let folks know right away that the blog post contains a video. Following “(VIDEO)” write your title as your normally would. For example, a good video blog post title would look something like: “(VIDEO) A Private Tour of Our Offices.”

Secondly, be sure your embedded video appears relatively close to the top of the post. If possible, you want to avoid the video appearing below the fold. Even if readers ignore the title of your post, they will see right away that there is a video on the post if it appears towards the top.

2) No Text Content

Too often we see blog posts that are comprised solely of an embedded video. It’s a good idea to give your readers some context before asking them to watch an entire video. Introduce your video with a few sentences, and then summarize the video in a paragraph below. If you’ve transcribed the A-Roll in your video, you can use some of that content to form the summary paragraph.

(Editor’s note: Here at Convince & Convert, we use Speechpad.com to transcribe our video interviews and the http://socialpros.com podcast)

3) No Customization 

Another common mistake is not optimizing the size of the video to the width of your blog. Whether you use the old embed code or an iframe from YouTube, the first line of the embed code will always start with <object width=”560″ height=”315″> – make sure that the width of the video doesn’t exceed the width of your blog’s content column. It’s best to find the width of the column and set your video width to just slightly less. Don’t be afraid to employ a little trial and error – set a resolution, check to see how it looks, and then make a tweak if its necessary. The height will always conform to the width by automatically adding black bars to the top and bottom of the video in order to maintain the aspect ratio.

You can also customize the code for other aesthetic value and advanced functionality, such as allowing/not allowing related videos and setting a specific start time. Check out this post from the 12 Stars Media blog that talks about ways to customize your embed code to optimize overall viewer experience.

Planning Your Content Marketing: Bricks vs. Feathers

Posted on 15. Feb, 2012 by Chris Sietsema in Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, content marketing, infographic, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media strategy

Chris Sietsema is Social & Digital Operations Lead at Convince & Convert. He also runs a digital agency called Teach to Fish Digital where he provides insights on search, social media, email marketing, and analytics.

Do you remember this trick question from grade school: Which weighs more – 5 lbs of bricks or 5 lbs of feathers? Some of us (self included) were initially fooled by this obvious test of common sense, but as it relates to your content marketing, should you be focused more on building substantial content productions or presenting your audience with a steady array of minute snippets that define your brand and message?

Defining Bricks & Feathers

Bricks are larger content productions such as research reports, events, white papers, video series, mobile apps, etc. They typically require decent budget and time to produce but have the potential to make a larger splash when executed and promoted correctly.

Feathers are comprised of simple text and photo content published via popular social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, etc. Less intensive than bricks from a production budget standpoint, feathers are created consistently to maintain an ongoing stream of communication between a brand and its audience.

Deciding Between Bricks & Feathers

The graphic below illustrates the key differences between bricks and feathers for content planning and production. Here’s an more detailed explanation of the attributes you should consider.

Position / Identity

While there are varying degrees of thought leadership, larger productions allow you to position your brand as a reliable resource for superb ideas. By continuously sharing small bites of information, you would likely be considered a news maker by the audience. Both positions are attractive in their own right, but businesses which have the capacity to create and share short, informative posts on a daily basis are more inclined to go the feathers route. Those brands that simply cannot provide entertaining, enlightening and/or educational content on a daily basis (e.g. law firms, insurance companies, some medical facilities, etc.) should focus more on building bricks for the purpose of conveying their value to prospects and influencers.

Content Life Span

Video series, graphic illustrations and even research reports have a greater chance of becoming evergreen compared to your everyday tweets and Facebook posts.

SEO Potential

One key reason to consider incorporating more bricks into your content mix is their propensity to attract high quality and relevant links, a “must have” for any organization focused on improving activity from natural search. To a lesser degree feathers can be utilized more as a social signal or as a link to key content on your website/blog. If shared by key influencers, shorter posts can have a noticeable impact.

Required Resources

Simple posts merely demand the attention of a dedicated community manager to create and measure impact. Bricks, on the other hand, are typically more involved. Due to the various skills required to produce an event, a podcast, a high quality infographic or a mobile application, you could potentially include creative, technical and other marketing resources in your development process.

Opportunity Cost

One potential issue with bricks is that there is really no way to predict what will resonate. Your organization may have research to support that there is a demand for a specific piece of content within a particular medium. However, there are no guarantees that your bricks will generate interest, links, traffic, leads, sales, etc. Thanks to the time and resources needed to create bricks, there is a much higher opportunity cost when compared to feathers.

Primary Metrics

Success for feathers is often gauged by how many audience members saw a posts and, more importantly, how many of those people actually took some action (i.e. clicked or shared). In addition to those important metrics, you may find other crucial means for reporting the impact of bricks such as downloads of content, number of event attendees, leads collected in exchange for access to content and so on.

Best of Both Worlds?

Does your organization (or do your clients) produce both bricks and feathers? How do you determine what kinds of content to produce? What methods do you utilize to manage production and promotion of all that you create?

Will The Rise of the Photo Apps Kill the Written Word?

Posted on 14. Feb, 2012 by Ekaterina Walter in Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Ekaterina Walter is a social media strategist at Intel. She is a part of Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence and is responsible for company-wide social media enablement and corporate social networking strategy. She was recently elected to serve on the board of directors of WOMMA.

Overall, the statistics point in just one direction: blogging is dying. A 2011 study by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth researching social media usage by Inc 500 companies (who have a strong usage of social media generally) found that the use of blogging had dropped to 37% from 50% the year before. 74% and 73% of the Inc 500 use Facebook and LinkedIn respectively, and the study concluded:

“Fewer [companies] are using blogging, message/bulletin boards, online video, podcasting and MySpace.  More companies are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, downloadable mobile apps, texting and Foursquare.”

The rise of image driven apps such as Pinterest, Tumblr, or Instagram is another trend that various commentators have jumped on to hail the death of the written word in generating sales.

Word Killer Number One: Pinterest

Pinterest, the virtual social pin board for themed images and interests, is currently ranked 5^th for driving traffic referrals, behind Facebook, You Tube, Twitter and Yahoo. Google+ ranks at number 9. (Source: Experian Hitwise US) But before brands can start getting too excited about the commercial potential of Pinterest, it’s worth looking at the type of traffic it is generating. Of the top 10 brands on Pinterest, 9 are lifestyle/retail. Pinterest is a visual medium that works best for lifestyle and retail industries, where customer decisions are particularly based on visual appeal.

But Blogging Actually Works

Another 2011 study, this time by Hubspot, focused solely on companies concerned with inbound marketing and painted a different picture. They found that:

• 57% of companies using blogs reported that they acquired customers from leads generated directly from their blog.
• Businesses are now in the minority if they do not blog. From 2009 to 2011 the percentage of businesses with a blog grew from 48% to 65%.
• 85% of businesses rated their company blogs as “useful”, “important” or “critical”; 27% rated their company blog as “critical” to their business.

What this actually suggests is that blogging is becoming more ‘niche’; rather than an all-purpose tool it is being used with more specific goals in mind. Companies who may have not been all that dedicated to maintaining a blog are finding other communications channels, such as image applications, work better for them. Brands that get value from their blogs are just as committed to that form as ever, but may have also added other platforms to their communications toolbox to interact more flexibly with a wider variety of audiences. Socially savvy brands like Dell, for example, report significant cost-saving benefits from having a support blog in place which helps reduce the volume of the call center calls. But it doesn’t mean that Dell doesn’t have other touch points with its customers on various networks.

The way I see it, social networks cannot truly replace the role blogging plays in company’s content strategy and credibility-building. Your blog is where you share your best content; social networks are channels which support the distribution of that content. Helpful, genuine and targeted blogs bring a number of benefits to a brand:

• Thought leadership: being viewed as a trusted source
• Improved customer service
• A way to humanize the brand
• Contextual relevance
• Better connections with customers which leads to increased loyalty and advocacy
• Differentiation from competition
• Improved search engine optimization

Having a network of blogs where each blog focuses on a particular topic or audience is a great strategy employed by a number of successful companies. It allows you to connect with relevant customers in a meaningful way.

It’s Not Blog OR Social Network, it’s Blog AND Social Network

Companies are asking themselves, what media is best for interacting with customers? This might be image-driven, video, or another visual medium. If short messages are the best way of reaching customers, tweeting, texting or using Tumblr might be preferable. A company with a local customer base might be more suited to Foursquare.

But these platforms are not mutually exclusive, and in fact are highly compatible. Brands can use their Facebook page, their Pinterest account, and their blog to drive traffic, often using cross-promotion. How they use them will depend on the message.

What we are seeing is the fragmentation of information on one hand, but its conglomeration on the other. As content strategy becomes more ‘niche’, the potential for sharing that information across a multitude of platforms brings a kind of umbrella to the process, tying it all loosely together. So a successful blog will be joined up to a whole range of social media channels: it might come up in a Google Plus search, or a good blog infographic might be taken and shared across Pinterest.

We’re moving away from one-size-fits all social media approach and towards niche usage. So no, blogging is not dead: where the written word is the most appropriate form of communication it is stronger than ever. Blogs are generating leads, showcasing thought leadership and supporting customers in an ever more relevant way. Where blog usage has fallen, it is because the written word was not the most suitable method of communication, and other media forms have proved a better fit. Brands are thinking harder about the ever-expanding range of communication channels available to them, and where they are blogging it is because they have made a conscious choice to.

A good blog will focus on long-term audience engagement, and that’s something that is still often best achieved through the written word.

The 6 Lifelong Laws of Content Marketing for Agencies

Posted on 12. Feb, 2012 by Jay Baer in blisspr, Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, content marketing, online community, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Last week I wrote about the 4 (and only 4) possible rationales for agencies to get deep into content marketing. Clearly understanding these rationales is important because content marketing isn’t free. The opportunity costs are significant, which is what we’ll explore in this post.

Can agencies truly benefit from a commitment to content (which often carries with it the bonus of getting sharper about their positioning)? Absolutely. Agencies like BlissPR (NYC, and a client), Bailey Gardiner (San Diego, and a former client), MLT Creative (Atlanta), White Horse (Portland), and even big guys like Edelman (everywhere) have transformed their business development process partially through a serious commitment to sharp content and online engagement.

But it didn’t come easy, and it didn’t come cheap.

The Six Lifelong Laws of Successful Content Marketing for Agencies

Among the excellent content marketers listed above, there is a difference in strategy, tactics, and execution. Each of those agencies has a slightly different recipe for how they handle themselves in content marketing. BlissPR is all B2B, and heavily blog-focused. Bailey Gardiner is mostly blog-oriented too. White Horse does more chunky content like white papers and Webinars. Same with MLT Creative. Ultimately, you can twist the knobs to suit your desires and market conditions, but these are the core principles of successful agency content marketing:

1. More = More

Five blogs posts per week are better than three. Three is better than two. If you can’t do two, kill the blog.

2. Decentralized Content

Sure, you want people to visit your blog, as it’s a natural gateway to your website and other digital puffery. But there are a lot more people on Slideshare, Facebook, and other blogs than there will EVER be on your own. Smart agencies decentralize their content in addition to publishing regularly on their own content home base.

3. Smart About Search

The best way for people who don’t know you at all to find you the first time is via search. Experienced content marketers don’t “do” search engine optimization. Rather, sound principles of optimization are built in to everything they do, from blog subheads to video titling and beyond.

4. Be a Part of Something

The best way to encourage industry professionals to consume your content is to be a part of other, existing communities where they congregate. Smart agencies put as much priority on blog commenting, conference attendance, Linkedin group participation and other bridge-building as they do their own blog writing.

5. It Starts at the Top

The senior people at agencies are always busy. That’s how they got to be senior people, because clients and other team members disproportionately gravitate toward their personality and/or expertise. Deal with it. The reality is that your agency is neither serious about nor prepared for content marketing unless the senior team is doing just as much content creation and community building as the junior team (if not more). Delegation equals death in social media.

6. A Priority, Even if it’s Costly

This is the most important commandment. If an agency is going to succeed at content marketing, it must find a way to continue executing even if something crops up (and it will).

Hundreds of agencies have started down the path of content marketing with enthusiasm and panache, only to see their efforts become staccato and ineffective. Why? Often, it’s a lack of an internal champion to continue rallying support for the effort (and a champion with enough juice in the agency to get people to pay attention). Or, it’s because the agency had to tackle a big RFP, or client renewal project, an office space move, or some other circumstance that caused senior staff to knowingly and willingly take their eye off the content ball in favor of spending those hours in some other way – and that’s the kiss of death. Once you justify not doing content marketing once, you’ll start to find lots of reasons to de-prioritize it.

Content marketing (for agencies and for corporations) is a process, not a project. You are never “done”. 

What Does it Take to Do Agency Content Marketing?

Speaking from two decades of personal experience, and currently advising 10 agencies, I can state unequivocally that the agency life is not a 9-5 gig. Hours spent working at an agency can ebb and flow like Oprah’s dress size, and work weeks of 50-60 hours or more are not uncommon. But, even within the “whatever it takes” atmosphere that is forever attached to the agency business like a barnacle, you can only push people for so hard, for so long. So for purposes of this exercise, let’s assume that the standard agency work week is 50 hours, and that from each agency employee you have 2,500 hours available per year (50 weeks @ 50 hours).

Blogging

Ideally, you should publish every day. When Bailey Gardiner moved from three posts a week to five, their traffic and leads jumped geometrically. But, since I don’t even publish every day here at Convince & Convert, I can hardly insist upon it. So, let’s conservatively assume three solid blog posts per week from your agency – ideally from senior staff.

• Average of three hours per post to research, write, edit.
• Average annual salary of blog contributors = $75,000
• Hourly pay expense of blog contributors = $30 ($75,000/2.500 hours)
• Hourly fully loaded pay expense of blog contributors = $45 ($30 x 50% overhead factor for benefits, GA, etc.)

True monthly blog cost (not including design and hosting fees) = $1,620 (36 hours @ $45/hour)

Note that is true cost, NOT opportunity cost. If the average bill rate for your blog contributors is $175, and their average billable utilization is 75%, the opportunity cost for your blog is $4,725 (36 x $175 x .75%). This of course only makes sense if you are billing hourly – which I don’t recommend, but is a post for another day.

Chunky, Decentralized Content

This is where the content that lives beyond the blog comes into play. White papers. Slideshare presentations. Webinars. Podcasts. Conservatively, let’s assume 4 of these projects each year (quarterly).

• Average of 50 hours per piece to research, write, design, edit, publish, and market.
• Average annual salary of chunky content contributors = $60,000
• Hourly pay expense of chunky content contributors = $24 ($60,000/2.500 hours)
• Hourly fully loaded pay expense of chunky content contributors = $36 ($24 x 50% overhead factor for benefits, GA, etc.)

True monthly chunky content cost (not including software or other production fees) = $600 (50 hours @ $36/hour amortized monthly)

Note that chunky content can often generate more attention and results than regular, ongoing blogging and in fact is actually less expensive than blogging on a fully loaded basis. Yet, when agencies get busy they often abandon chunky content programs so that they can keep the blog active. That may not be the best approach in every case.

Social Media and Community Building

This includes all the indirect content creation and personal branding work that draws attention to the thought leadership of the agency. Blog commenting. Group participation. Twitter. This is also more difficult to assign a formula because the number of social media active employees will vary considerably based on agency size and social appetite. What I’ve found over time, however, is that on average roughly 10% of the agency team can/will put meaningful effort into social media and community to the degree that it actually generates attention for the agency. So, if your agency has 50 employees, assume 5 participants in this effort.

Because they are far less likely to leave the agency, and have more credibility in tying their own knowledge to the agency’s expertise, this work should always include senior staff. If your CEO doesn’t understand Twitter, teach her. The “I’m too old to learn this” routine is code for “I don’t want to look stupid” so be sensitive and smart when training non-natives on the ways of the social Web. 

Your mileage of course may vary, but as a general guide I use 30 minutes per day as a estimate for time necessary to do this well. That includes scanning a few blog posts, adding a couple of comments, paying attention to Twitter, and so forth. 45 minutes would be better, but that’s a tough daily ask in an agency environment. Note also that in this scenario I’m talking about personal accounts, not official agency Twitter and Facebook accounts (see below).

• Average of 30 minutes per workday, per participating employee, to stay involved in social media and community building
• Average annual salary of social media participants = $75,000
• Hourly pay expense of social media participants = $30 ($75,000/2.500 hours)
• Hourly fully loaded pay expense of social media participants = $45 ($30 x 50% overhead factor for benefits, GA, etc.)

True monthly social media cost  = $450/employee (10 hour/month @ $45/hour) 

This would be $2,250/month for a 50 person agency with 10% participation rate.

Official Agency Social Outposts and Measurement

This includes all agency-branded social media destinations that you have to support, even though very, very few agencies make any hay with them. Twitter is perhaps the best option, as agencies can do some valuable content curation there if they resist the temptation to make all posts inwardly focused. Agencies should have a Facebook page, Linkedin page (for recruiting, if nothing else), and probably a G+ page too. In my experience, it’s rare that any of these social media outposts are major attention drivers for the agency from a new business perspective, but have other benefits (Facebook for current clients, for instance). 

As a general rule, I assume 30 minutes per workday to man/manage the Twitter account, 20 minutes per workday to handle Facebook, and five minutes per day for Linkedin and G+. You may want to reallocate that time based on your channel preference.

I also include here one hour per week for basic metrics and reporting (which includes blogging, chunky content, social media, and official social outposts). This time will increase as the agency gets more serious about content marketing.

• Average of  6 hours per week to manage all official agency social outposts, and handle metrics and measurement
• Average annual salary of social outpost overseers and metrics junkies = $50,000
• Hourly pay expense of social outpost overseers and metrics junkies = $20 ($50,000/2.500 hours)
• Hourly fully loaded pay expense of social outpost overseers and metrics junkies = $30 ($20 x 50% overhead factor for benefits, GA, etc.)

True monthly agency outposts and metrics cost  = $720 (24 hours/month @ $30/hour)

Is Content Marketing for Agencies Worth It?

Social media and content marketing isn’t inexpensive, it’s just different expensive. Based on my estimates of true costs (not opportunity costs), a 50-person agency should expect to expend this much per month in content marketing:

• Blog = $1,620
• Chunky Content = $600
• Social Media = $2,250
• Agency Outposts & Metrics = $720

Total Cost (labor only) = $5,190/month or $62,280/year

Essentially then, a 50-person agency will be dedicating the same resources as are invested in a $42,000/year employee (with a 50% overhead factor). It’s not insignificant. However, one even semi-decent client that can be attributed to content marketing, or one good client that renews, or a couple of cross-sold services, and the agency is in the black with regard to content marketing investment.

I’m thinking about putting together a downloadable spreadsheet so agencies (and anyone with a content marketing program) could input salaries, hours, etc. and calculate their true costs. Would you be interested in that?

What Do You Know? Examining the Big 4 Online Answer Sites

Posted on 07. Feb, 2012 by Arnie Kuenn in Arnie Kuenn, Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, content marketing, linkedIn, Quora, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Arnie Kuenn is the president of Vertical Measures, a search, social & content marketing company . He is author of Accelerate! Moving Your Business Forward Through the Convergence of Search, Social & Content Marketing.

An ideal connection between social media and search might just be “Answer” sites. The essential concept behind an answer site is that visitors can post a question eager to get it answered by someone considered an expert, who is knowledgeable in the subject matter. The response could also be powered by public knowledge with consensus determining the “best” answer. Answer sites offer users the capability to be both the inquisitor and the expert.  More often than not, in basic human interaction, we can answer each others’ questions based on our own personal familiarity. We can achieve this on a massive scale using these Answer Sites.

Create Content That Answers Your Customers’ Questions

People can ask questions of all kinds on nearly every subject imaginable, and as you analyze what visitors are asking, you can more easily spot trends. From a market research perspective, this means that you’ll focus on the people that have been asking questions concerning your industry and your niche market. This way, you can obtain constructive market data about the people who are looking for solutions to their problems.

If you find a widespread theme, you can create content that answers those questions and touches closely to the specific subject matter.  You might even phrase your content’s title in the form of the same question people are asking. This gives your content the greatest chance to be discovered when someone types that inquiry directly into a Google search. We have found that a rising number of people use that type of search method (question format).

On top of observing the current trends, you can get real time feedback about your industry from the consumers that are engaging with it using these answer sites. Ask a question on an answer site that relates to your product, and see what type of response you get from the community. These raw answers can give you very useful, and informative marketing data.

Let’s take a look at the “Big 4″ Answer Sites, and how to conquer them.

Yahoo! Answers

Yahoo! Answers

Yahoo! Answers is one of the most popular answer sites, and has accrued millions of questions and answers. The site gets a huge (and sometimes bizarre) assortment of questions, ranging from homework to dating to home and garden. Because of its popularity, during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, and John McCain submitted questions to the site, leveraging their campaigns on the Internet and generating a huge response from the public.

The way Yahoo! Answers works is pretty straightforward: participants will submit questions to be answered by the community; when asking a question, the participant categorizes it by topic, making it easier to search and easier to answer. As an incentive to ensure that answers are accurate and free of spam, Yahoo! developed a point system. Answers are ranked by other users, and the “best answers” are given the most points. Users that accumulate points have proven to be highly regarded, and are granted certain privileges, such as the ability to ask, answer, vote, and rate on a more frequent basis.

Yahoo! Answers allows you to browse by category and see what types of questions are most popular, newest, or have received the fastest responses. You can get very specific, too; every user has to categorize a question by topic before submitting it. So, it’s much easier for you to research inquiries that are relevant to your market. You can search keyword phrases to browse questions that are being asked, either within subcategories or among all categories.

Answers.com

Answers.com

Answers.com marries the best of community-driven questions and answers with hundreds of respected and trusted editorial reference books. The site knows the best answer to give you, whether it summons the extensive collection of community answers from WikiAnswers, or it taps into its ReferenceAnswers database – a comprehensive set of editorial, licensed reference topics.

If you have a specific, unique, complex or more social question, and you are seeking a to-the-point answer, WikiAnswers is the best place to ask your question. Anyone can ask, answer, edit or collaborate on answers in thousands of categories and subject matters. It’s another great place to see what your customers are asking about.

Simply enter your keyword phrase and look to the right for various questions people are asking. Or browse through categories related to your specific market.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn Answers

LinkedIn is primarily a social networking site aimed at business professionals. With more than 100 million networked individuals, the site boasts the capability for linked professionals to collaborate on projects and develop their ability to communicate across their industry through LinkedIn Groups. LinkedIn offers an Answers channel as one of its tools for collaboration. The Q&A feature offers the ability for industry experts to show off their expertise to a network up to three degrees deep (your contacts, your contact’s contacts, and your second-level-contact’s contacts). Depending on how wide each level is, this could amount to a very extensive network.

The driving force in Q&A is similar to Yahoo! Answers, as the motivation for answering is driven by a user rating system for credibility. Here the recognition is professional, where the best answers demonstrate a working knowledge of the industry. LinkedIn further rewards members by recognizing the top answerer in a weekly ranking. The motivation for making this list is industry-wide exposure as top expert in the field.

LinkedIn Answers has predominantly good data for Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing. You can find questions your potential customers are asking about as they try to solve their toughest questions. By spending time in LinkedIn, you’ll get an insider’s view into the problems that your business can solve for your customers.

Quora

Quora

Quora connects you to everything you want to know about. Quora aims to be the easiest place to write new questions and share content from the web. They organize people and their interests so you can find, collect and share the information most valuable to you.

When you want to know more about something, Quora delivers you answers and content from people who share your interests and people who have first-hand knowledge — like real doctors, economists, screenwriters, police officers, and military veterans. On Quora, it’s easy to create a personalized homepage of everything you want to know about by following topics, questions, people and boards.

Like the others, Quora is meant to be a useful knowledge-indexing tool, a database of information provided by users. However, Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers, reviewed by users, edited by users, flagged as useful or not by users, and organized by everyone who uses it. The creators’ goal is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question.

Question Yourself

By using Answer sites for research, you can quickly develop a list of content development ideas helping you through one of the biggest challenges of content marketing.

To learn more about boosting your content marketing efforts, check out Vertical Measures’ 8 Steps to Successful Content Marketing, a free guide that features actionable ways to create an implement a content marketing plan using popular (and often free) industry tools.

What Do You Know? Examining the Big 4 Online Answer Sites

Posted on 07. Feb, 2012 by Arnie Kuenn in Arnie Kuenn, Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, content marketing, linkedIn, Quora, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Arnie Kuenn is the president of Vertical Measures, a search, social & content marketing company . He is author of Accelerate! Moving Your Business Forward Through the Convergence of Search, Social & Content Marketing.

An ideal connection between social media and search might just be “Answer” sites. The essential concept behind an answer site is that visitors can post a question eager to get it answered by someone considered an expert, who is knowledgeable in the subject matter. The response could also be powered by public knowledge with consensus determining the “best” answer. Answer sites offer users the capability to be both the inquisitor and the expert.  More often than not, in basic human interaction, we can answer each others’ questions based on our own personal familiarity. We can achieve this on a massive scale using these Answer Sites.

Create Content That Answers Your Customers’ Questions

People can ask questions of all kinds on nearly every subject imaginable, and as you analyze what visitors are asking, you can more easily spot trends. From a market research perspective, this means that you’ll focus on the people that have been asking questions concerning your industry and your niche market. This way, you can obtain constructive market data about the people who are looking for solutions to their problems.

If you find a widespread theme, you can create content that answers those questions and touches closely to the specific subject matter.  You might even phrase your content’s title in the form of the same question people are asking. This gives your content the greatest chance to be discovered when someone types that inquiry directly into a Google search. We have found that a rising number of people use that type of search method (question format).

On top of observing the current trends, you can get real time feedback about your industry from the consumers that are engaging with it using these answer sites. Ask a question on an answer site that relates to your product, and see what type of response you get from the community. These raw answers can give you very useful, and informative marketing data.

Let’s take a look at the “Big 4″ Answer Sites, and how to conquer them.

Yahoo! Answers

Yahoo! Answers

Yahoo! Answers is one of the most popular answer sites, and has accrued millions of questions and answers. The site gets a huge (and sometimes bizarre) assortment of questions, ranging from homework to dating to home and garden. Because of its popularity, during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, and John McCain submitted questions to the site, leveraging their campaigns on the Internet and generating a huge response from the public.

The way Yahoo! Answers works is pretty straightforward: participants will submit questions to be answered by the community; when asking a question, the participant categorizes it by topic, making it easier to search and easier to answer. As an incentive to ensure that answers are accurate and free of spam, Yahoo! developed a point system. Answers are ranked by other users, and the “best answers” are given the most points. Users that accumulate points have proven to be highly regarded, and are granted certain privileges, such as the ability to ask, answer, vote, and rate on a more frequent basis.

Yahoo! Answers allows you to browse by category and see what types of questions are most popular, newest, or have received the fastest responses. You can get very specific, too; every user has to categorize a question by topic before submitting it. So, it’s much easier for you to research inquiries that are relevant to your market. You can search keyword phrases to browse questions that are being asked, either within subcategories or among all categories.

Answers.com

Answers.com

Answers.com marries the best of community-driven questions and answers with hundreds of respected and trusted editorial reference books. The site knows the best answer to give you, whether it summons the extensive collection of community answers from WikiAnswers, or it taps into its ReferenceAnswers database – a comprehensive set of editorial, licensed reference topics.

If you have a specific, unique, complex or more social question, and you are seeking a to-the-point answer, WikiAnswers is the best place to ask your question. Anyone can ask, answer, edit or collaborate on answers in thousands of categories and subject matters. It’s another great place to see what your customers are asking about.

Simply enter your keyword phrase and look to the right for various questions people are asking. Or browse through categories related to your specific market.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn Answers

LinkedIn is primarily a social networking site aimed at business professionals. With more than 100 million networked individuals, the site boasts the capability for linked professionals to collaborate on projects and develop their ability to communicate across their industry through LinkedIn Groups. LinkedIn offers an Answers channel as one of its tools for collaboration. The Q&A feature offers the ability for industry experts to show off their expertise to a network up to three degrees deep (your contacts, your contact’s contacts, and your second-level-contact’s contacts). Depending on how wide each level is, this could amount to a very extensive network.

The driving force in Q&A is similar to Yahoo! Answers, as the motivation for answering is driven by a user rating system for credibility. Here the recognition is professional, where the best answers demonstrate a working knowledge of the industry. LinkedIn further rewards members by recognizing the top answerer in a weekly ranking. The motivation for making this list is industry-wide exposure as top expert in the field.

LinkedIn Answers has predominantly good data for Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing. You can find questions your potential customers are asking about as they try to solve their toughest questions. By spending time in LinkedIn, you’ll get an insider’s view into the problems that your business can solve for your customers.

Quora

Quora

Quora connects you to everything you want to know about. Quora aims to be the easiest place to write new questions and share content from the web. They organize people and their interests so you can find, collect and share the information most valuable to you.

When you want to know more about something, Quora delivers you answers and content from people who share your interests and people who have first-hand knowledge — like real doctors, economists, screenwriters, police officers, and military veterans. On Quora, it’s easy to create a personalized homepage of everything you want to know about by following topics, questions, people and boards.

Like the others, Quora is meant to be a useful knowledge-indexing tool, a database of information provided by users. However, Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers, reviewed by users, edited by users, flagged as useful or not by users, and organized by everyone who uses it. The creators’ goal is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question.

Question Yourself

By using Answer sites for research, you can quickly develop a list of content development ideas helping you through one of the biggest challenges of content marketing.

To learn more about boosting your content marketing efforts, check out Vertical Measures’ 8 Steps to Successful Content Marketing, a free guide that features actionable ways to create an implement a content marketing plan using popular (and often free) industry tools.

Don’t Tell Me I’m Wasting My Time

Posted on 31. Oct, 2011 by Margie Clayman in Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, blogs, content creation, Guest Posts, margie clayman, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, thought leadership

Guest post by Marjorie Clayman, resident blogger at www.margieclayman.com. She works at Clayman Advertising, Inc., her family-owned full-service marketing firm.

I know that it is impossible to please everyone in any scenario, but most especially in the online world. Because of that, I most of the time let snide remarks roll off me like water off a duck’s back. However, there is one remark I’ve gotten a few times over the last few months that really frustrates me, not because I take it as a personal affront but rather because it shows a mark of selfishness that exists in the online world.

See, a lot of people have chided me for covering “the same ole stuff.” For covering the basics. For reviewing, again, some Twitter or blogging best practices. “We already know this!” they mutter. “You’re just creating an echo chamber of what has already been said,” others say.

With all due respect, these criticisms miss the mark entirely.

Not everyone is on your timetable

If you’ve been on Twitter since 2008, you are probably pretty proficient in the ups and downs of that world. If you’ve been blogging since 2007, you know how to do things like find your voice because you already have it. You’ve already been through that process.

However, not everyone is sharing your exact experience. Not everyone is on your timeline. I encounter people almost every day who are new to blogging, new to Facebook, new to Twitter, or new to the whole concept of social media in general. Do they not deserve the same kind of help you got when you were new? I think they deserve it more because there are so many obstacles in the way of their breaking through. Obstacles like people saying, “We don’t need this ‘how-to’ information anymore.”

You’re missing a chance to meet new people

I’m going to let you in on a little secret here. Something you may not have considered. If you write posts offering help in the online world, you are more likely to meet people who are brand new to the online space. It’s like reaching a hand out through the depths of the ocean to a person who is floating along.

Sure, you can keep writing about new and more complex things for your existing community, but how will that grow your community? If you approach content on occasion from the perspective of someone who is brand spanking new to this space, you will get to meet people and help people whom you may not have met in any other way.

What can be more valuable than that?

Not all of my posts will resonate with you

I appreciate all of the people who take the time to read my posts, but I certainly do not expect that every single one will resonate with every single person. Far from it. If you find the how-to information beneath you or boring, hey, don’t read it! But if you comment about how any idiot knows that stuff, or how I’m wasting my time writing up this information, you’re not really offending me. Instead, you’re blockading the people who may have wanted to ask questions but now feel dumb.

Also, this notion that blog visitors have “all read this stuff before” doesn’t hold mathematical water. Jay says that here on Convince & Convert, approximately 65% of the visitors fall into the “new” category per Google Analytics, and that’s after 500 blogs posts across more than 3 years.

Everybody is a teacher in social media. And everybody is a student. We were all brand-new once, so don’t make yourself an obstacle to those that are just starting to embrace it.