Key SEO Questions For Better Content Marketing
Posted on 04. Nov, 2011 by Lee Odden in Blog, content marketing, content marketing strategy, content optimization, SEO strategy, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Amazing sunset outside of the TopRank office.
The agency (TopRank Online Marketing) that I started with Susan Misukanis celebrated it’s 10th Birthday this year and in all my time as an Internet Marketer, no other combination of marketing tactics has yielded results like Search Engine Optimization and Content. Over the past 5 years Social Media has entered the mix as an even more powerful amplifier to the effect of optimized content.
But there’s a key problem with how content marketing is implemented by many SEO-focused agencies and practitioners. Creation of “content” has escalated to amazing levels but there is a lot of that content fails to achieve the desired objective. In the midst of keywords, links, rankings and search algorithms there are several important pieces missing.
SEO tends to be viewed as very tactical when it’s actually not only an important piece of a business internet marketing strategy, but it’s a compelling way to view online marketing overall. I’m talking about an “Optimized” state of mind that focuses on customers more than keywords and outcomes more than the trendiest online platforms.
Part of solving this problem is for those who employ SEO and Content Creation, Optimization and Promotion to think of optimization as a strategy. What can be searched can be optimized for better performance. That’s a holistic approach beyond keywords in title tags, Page Rank and inbound links. Not only is there benefit to view any electronic file that an be published online as a potential marketing asset, but understanding how they can work together is something that can elevate and scale a company’s content marketing effectiveness.
So, what does this mean at the individual content tactic creation and optimization level? I recommend Internet Marketers ask a few key questions for every content object they create. Whether it’s an email, blog post, press release or article for a publication, it’s essential to think about the answers to these questions:
- What is this article’s key message and how does it relate to the brand?
- Where does this content fit within the mix of brand content created on the same/similar topic?
- What target search keywords is this content focused on?
- What are the compelling social sharing motivations for this content?
- What media can support this content (video, audio, images, interactive)?
- What is the first level, second level audience?
- What need or pain point does this content solve?
- What’s the hook? (creative angle, metaphor,
- What’s the punchline (revelation and call to action)?
- How will this content inspire the reader to the next step, to action?
- How can this content be repurposed and/or reposted in the future?
- What promotion channels will be used to automate distribution?
- How will the content be promoted, pitched, shared at large and with relevant influencers?
- What are the target key performance indicators for this individual content object and for it’s category?
Answer those questions and think about the flow of the content. Does it identify a need or opportunity? Does it empathize with an audience or a problem? Does it suggest a solution or conclusion? Is there a compelling call to action? Does it inspire the reader to do what you want them to do? (act, share, feel, experience). Does it have a purpose relevant to customers and the brand that stands alone outside of SEO and Social Media?
Regardless of the type, format or length of content, these are important questions to answer in order to produce relevant and compelling content that drives business as key components of a Search Engine and Social Media Optimization strategy. In the context of content marketing, an “optimized” approach is holistic and adaptable at making content easy to discover by the right audience, meaningful to consume and motivating to engage and act on.
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Like It or Not, Your Content Marketing Is Channel Agnostic
Posted on 04. Aug, 2011 by Joe Pulizzi in Blog, content marketing, content marketing strategy, content strategy, jay baer, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media
What does agnostic marketing mean?
Alan Maites uses this definition:
“We make marketing decisions impartially, without inherent bias for or against any one kind of communications channel – TV, print, online, direct mail, etc.”
Okay, makes sense right? Well, how about content marketing agnostic?
I would say the definition runs something like this:
“We make content marketing channel decisions impartially, focusing on the needs of the customer and our marketing goals, not focusing on the channels we are comfortable with or have traditionally used. In addition, instead of focusing on the channel, we focus first on the story, and how that story should be told differently and most effectively through any and all channels available to maximize impact, engagement and results.”
Recently, I’ve stumbled across three examples of this in corporate and traditional journalism that might be helpful.
The Practice of Content Marketing Cannot Be Siloed
I gave this presentation at the Email Marketing Insider conference a few months back.
My biggest takeaway was this: the majority of email marketers at this conference did NOT have processes set up to integrate between departments when it comes to content marketing. The email folks had a content person. The social media folks had a content person. PR had their own sets of content people. Unfortunately, these folks relatively talked, and email focused on email, social on social and PR on PR.
What’s happened is we’ve built in components of content creation within the silos that have been constructed over (in some cases) decades within an organization. How can we tell our story when it’s clearly fragmented to the end user and no one is responsible for the strategic vision when it comes to content marketing (see Chief Content Officer)?
The Video Journalist Is Dead
All you video journalists out there may take offense, but this is a true statement. Calling someone a video journalist is like calling someone a blogging journalist or an email journalist. A journalist is a journalist, regardless of channel.
This hit home in a tour of the NewsNet5 Studios today in Cleveland. What hit home on the tour was the fact that anyone working on a story could be working on any channel and any time…blogging, email, video shoots, behind the camera, in-person presentations, etc. Their journalists are trained in the art of storytelling regardless of channel. First is understanding what the story is, and then we decide how we can properly tell that story to get the proper outcomes.
The New Editorial Process in Born
The above image comes courtesy of Dan McCarthy.
The idea is this. Corporate or traditional publishers must change their content generation process. Instead of just a content output of a print story, content creators deliver content throughout the process – tweets, photos, podcasts, content packages, etc. Instead of one output, there may be 10, 20, or even 30 pieces of content. Readers are interested in being more involved in your brand. This opens up the hood, and lets your readers in.
In the past, we focused on the output (i.e., a story in the Wall Street Journal perhaps). Today, we still focus on the story, but the outputs are many, and the content is generated and engaged in throughout the storytelling process.
What Does this All Mean?
- Someone in the organization has to be responsible to move beyond the marketing department silos.
- Jay Baer recently made the comparison between social media and the age of typing rooms (ala Mad Men). Remember the days when big organizations needed armies of typing specialists? Do you see those anymore? Nope.Jay states that we are at that point with social media. Right now we need social media specialists. In the future, we’ll all know how to do this, like we all know how to type today. This idea of being content marketing agnostic is the same way. As we become more comfortable with this concept, we’ll start to tell our stories more easily and effectively through all these channels. Until then, we need TRAINING.
- Those that get this, and actively engage in storytelling techniques in this fashion, will have a significant competitive advantage over another organization not storytelling in this way.
It’s interesting what one tour conjures up. What say you?
Gamification: 4 Examples to Gamify Your Content Marketing
Posted on 28. Jul, 2011 by Joe Pulizzi in Blog, case studies, content marketing, content marketing strategy, content strategy, gamification, linkedIn, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Listened to an excellent presentation by Chris Sullivan from Bunchball yesterday at Custom Media Day 2011 in New York.
If you are not familiar with gamification (adding game components to your content to increase engagement and retention), check out this post from Rick Liebling as well as the Wikipedia definition for gamification. Online gaming such as Farmville and Angry Birds have brought gamification to the forefront as an important part of the overall content marketing strategy.
Simply put, gamification influences behavior. According to Bunchball, there are 120 million people are enrolled in travel rewards programs and over 200 million people play online games that are reward based (hard to believe).
We see this as so important that we’ve added a session on gamification at Content Marketing World 2011.
Here are four examples that Chris discussed in his presentation that we can learn from in our own content marketing.
Microsoft Office PowerPoint Ribbon Hero
How do you get people to use all the features in a software package like MS PowerPoint? Well, Microsoft added something called PowerPoint Ribbon Hero as a gaming component in PowerPoint. The idea is that the more functionality you use, the more rewards you earn. For example, if you progress beyond a certain level in PowerPoint, you unlock PowerPoint animations not available to the regular user (see image).
“Games for learning is an increasingly popular field that’s quickly gaining ground. When we started this project, we wondered if there was a place for games in Office. We set out to understand whether elements of game play (things like scoring points, competing with friends, and earning achievements) could motivate people to explore more of the app, learn new features, and ultimately become more productive” - from a Microsoft Executive
What Microsoft learned is that the more they can get PowerPoint users to leverage additional portions of the platform, the more it leads to retention and customer satisfaction.
LinkedIn Progression
Chris discussed one of the simplest ways to add game components to your online content is to add a simple progression bar, ala LinkedIn. Chris went into some detail about how human behavior drives us to get to 100% completion. As you see in the image below, LinkedIn uses a progression bar to compel users to take full advantage of all LinkedIn features.
Mint.com Financial Fitness
Does anyone want to be financially unfit? Of course not.
By using Mint.com, you can track how financially fit you are over a set of criteria that Mint provides, including savings, budget and a number of other indicators through a fit score (more on this from Mashable).
Nike Plus
We originally discussed the impact of Nike+ back in 2008 as part of Get Content Get Customers. Today, it continues to be a shining example of both content marketing and gamification. Using Nike+, you’re not only able to track your running, but compare yourself against your friends on an ongoing basis.
We Have Two Choices
With our content marketing today, we have two choices:
- Create content that educates and informs our audience, making them more successful in some way, or
- Entertain them
The best content marketing does both. Gamification can help.
Do you have any gamification examples that work for you?
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