Optimize and the Confluence of Search and Social Media
Posted on 26. Apr, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Book Reviews, content marketing, lee odden, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Excerpt of my interview with Lee Odden. Video production by my friends at Candidio. Fast, inexpensive, quality video production. Transcription services from Speechpad. For full conversation, watch the video!
Jay: Hey, everybody. It’s Jay Baer from Convince & Convert joined today
by a very special guest, my friend Lee Odden, live from somewhere. . .
Lee: Somewhere.
Jay: In the United Kingdom. A secret location in the United Kingdom. Lee
is the author of the brand new book, so brand new that the official release
date was yesterday, called Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing
Lee: Great to be here. Doing great. Having a good time at a search
conference here in Leeds and really happy to talk about Optimize
get tired of it.
Jay: You do a lot of conferences. I tell you what, you guys in the
search business, you like to confer. There are conferences, there are confabs, there are a lot of that kind of thing
in your business.
Lee: You know, it changes so much. And there’s a lot of black box, so to
speak, in terms of how things work and that’s the search engines’ fault, I
suppose, and so, you know, to keep people guessing and that sort of thing.
So folks get together and try and figure it out, you know. And even people
like myself, I’ve been in the business for 15 years, you know, there’s
still new things, you know, you learn at these events. Because there’s so
many ways to answer the question.
Jay: Very nice. Very nice. As you said, your background
is in search. And, of course, now you do a lot of social and the
confluence of social and search, which is what the book is about. Do you
think being from a search background is the best possible historical
precedent to be good at social, or is it the worst possible background to
be good at social?
Lee: If you’re asking a search person, then clearly there’s a very obvious
answer to that. I came in as an online marketer search guy to a PR agency, as a contractor that
became an employee that became a partner and then I’m doing what I do now.
But, so I had the influence of public relations and the content
there. The importance of messaging and influence hit me on one side and
then search and data and all that propeller hat kind of SEO stuff that was
going on. And that’s kind of where I come from, I think. And I found,
interestingly, that the media relations efforts, the outbound calling of
journalists, emails of journalists to get media placement for our clients,
is something that I really recognize as a powerful
tactic, you know?
I think there are some search people,
who, by their nature, are adaptable. The long time search folks
that are successful are extremely adaptable. And I said this morning those
SEOs were making money in ’97 by optimizing for Altavista, Hotbot, and
Lycos. And they’re going to be making money-and I mean for their clients or
for themselves next year or ten years from now from whatever the future
Google Facebook Pinterest conglomeration is.
Jay: Yep.
Lee: Now, that’s a small percentage. And so those folks, you know,
they’ll be great as social. They’ll be great at content. They’ll be great
at search or a conglomeration of all of the above. But there are plenty of
people who are tactically practicing SEO and they’re going to suck at
social.
Jay: Just because they take sort of the relationship side out of it and
it’s too formulaic?
Lee: Yes. It’s mechanical, not meaningful.
Google Handles 11 Billion Inquiries Per Month. Twitter Handles 350 Billion Tweets Per Day.
Jay: One of the stats
that you had in the book which blew me away, I actually had to read it two
or three times, and I know it’s not a misprint because I’m sure you’ve
checked it. But I think you said in the book at Google has 11 billion
queries a month.
Lee: Yeah, that’s from Comscore.
Jay: And Twitter has 350 billion tweets a day?
Lee: 350 billion tweets a day.
Jay: But the reality is, the reality is that we think about Google as this like all-knowing, all-seeing cyborg. But yet, in terms of actual level of inquiry, level of chatter, Twitter and Facebook and those guys are right there.
Infographic by- Shanghai Web Designers
Lee: Yeah, you know, there’s an info-graphic that documents 60 seconds on
the web, right? And, you know, it’s kind of an information
overload kind of thing. And someone coming into the content marketing
space is not only competing against other companies that are creating
content, but they’re also, you know, competing against the consumers that
are empowered to publish.
Jay: Yeah. Yeah, I talk about that all the time. Your brand is competing
against my mom and my wife and my best friend for my attention. And brands
have never had to really experience that in the past. That’s really a
first. You know, my mom doesn’t buy magazine ads, right? And my friends
don’t buy radio time, right? But all the sudden, now we’re in the same
sandbox, which is crazy. So it seems like a lot of companies are like,
great, well we’ll just make more content, right? But your belief, i.e.
this book, is don’t necessarily make more content. Optimize that content.
And how does that yield better outcomes?
Personas, Content Marketing Segmentation and the Buy Cycle
Lee: Well obviously, it’s being thoughtful about a particular audience and
a particular outcome or a category of outcome. A lot of interesting,
interestingly, I’ve seen a lot of the SEO folks that are jumping on the
content marketing bandwagon. What I was getting at with the SEOs is that they’re
responding to the content issues by saying you should make more content.
So their perception is leaving out the customer. They’re leaving out
empathy. They’re leaving out who actually buys the stuff. And they’re also
not talking so much, although I think they will be, so much about buy cycle
optimization. So it’s one thing to segment customers and kind of think
about what their paying points and their goals are and then create a
content plan around that and that’s a qualitative effort, I think, right?
And so therefore, not only by understanding actual customers and what
they’re interested in, but also taking a look at a segment and documenting
the buying cycle, buying behaviors are, right?
Awareness, call it whatever you want, awareness, interest, consideration and purchase. And then
actually develop, craft the editorial plans, you know, specific to that buy
cycle. And of course, anytime there’s content, there’s an opportunity for,
you know, search and social media optimization.
Jay: Yep, yep. One of the things that was really interesting in the book,
you talk about buy cycle optimization is, you know, you talk about using
personas. I’m a big fan of that and used to do a lot that in my web
strategy consulting practice in the last company that I was in. But you
really talk about creating personas from a place of data inputs, right?
Where it’s not just like, let’s sit down and come up with an interesting
caricature of our customers, but using a lot of data and analysis to then
take that information and create personas based on that.
Lee: Right. Yeah, doing research into, you know, not only surveying
customers and doing some primary research, I guess and getting a sense of
what their preferences are. And I like to split it up into their
preferences for discovery of information, consumption of information, and
sharing or action. But understanding through web analytics, through other
data sources like social monitoring. I mean, there’s site-specific
information that have demographic information associated with it. Going to
social platforms that offer advertising, they usually have demographic
information about who visits that site. And by comparing that demographic
data or behavioral cycle, whatever, with information you have on your own
customers, you can make some good decisions in terms of persona
development. And the thing that folks need to understand is that there’s
not a start/stop with persona development, right? It’s you’re always
refining it. The other thing is the notion of creating a negative persona
and that is, you know, people that you don’t want to be your customer
anymore or that you don’t want to attract so that you make sure that you’re
not optimizing for them.
Editorial Calendars and Content Planning
Jay: You know, we talked about editorial plans in the book-and you
mentioned it a moment ago-how does that work with your blog? The Top Rank
Blog, of course, is one of the finest blogs out there on the interwebs and
I read it. In fact, I just read an article a minute ago about some cool new
Pinterest stuff. It’s a great, great blog. Super useful. How do you
apply editorial calendaring, editorial planning to the blog? What does
that process look like for you?
Lee: Well first, over the last six month I’ve had some help from Ashley
Zeckman, who wrote the Pinterest post. And we follow long term guidelines,
and some adaptive guidelines. So I like to plan things out a couple of
months in advance. And so we use sort of a
matrix. There are, let’s say, vertical markets or topics on one axis and
on the other axis are things like applications or industries and things
like that. So, for example, I might have well, Pinterest and optimization,
Pinterest and B2B, Pinterest and consumer, Pinterest and this, and so
forth. Or I might have, you know, retail and Facebook, retail and Twitter,
retail and SEO, retail and social media.
And when we follow sort of a
matrix like that is one input for inspiration on our editorial plan for the
blog. The other thing we look at is we have sort of a weekly calendar. So
on Monday, I’ll do a certain type of post, usually try to be thought
leadership. And on Fridays, it’s a news roundup. On Tuesdays, it’s
something else.
Jay: Brilliant. We do the second one with the weekly sort of editorial
calendar. But the X Y topical axes is really fascinating. Because what I
do is say, I think that’s interesting. I’m going to write about that.
Which is not terribly focused, which is why your blog has a lot more
traffic than mine does. Because you’re actually like, OK, we know what
people want and let’s give them that.
Lee: I’m not trying to be a platform for self expression as much as content that
supports our agency’s objective. We don’t run advertising. We don’t
monetize the blog in any way. It’s been free for all, for eight years now.
The only way we monetize the blog are the inquiries that occur directly or
that use the blog as part of inspiration, so offline, online, you know how
it goes, for consulting gigs. So to inspire those kinds of inquiries, you
know, we follow that kind of guideline.
Instagram, Pinterest and the Image Economy
Jay: Yeah, love it. So you are a photographer. I always see you around
conferences with a camera and you’re on Instagram all the time. You do a
great job there. Because you have this crazy, insane travel schedule,
you’re in Europe, you’re in Hong Kong, you’re on the moon. What’s your
take on the whole Instagram Facebook scenario? Are you running for the
hills? Are you freaked out? Are you going to stop using it?
Is THIS Lee Odden's best-looking audience?
Lee: Well, Instagram is my favorite app to use, personally. I don’t do
anything marketing oriented there. I do take photos of conference
attendees. Like when I’m on stage I do this little fun thing where I say,
to break the ice, I’m looking for the best looking audience in the world so
if you could all get good looking . Then I take a picture and then I pop
it up. So, yeah, because there’s a personal connection to me and I love
the content that the images that other people are putting up on Instagram,
that’s something I enjoy. It’s quick. It’s mobile. It’s obviously not on
the web. But I actually try and use a lot of my photos for blog posts, like
I did for a blog post today.
However, compared with Pinterest, when there was buzz about Pinterest
doing, you know, selling your personal photos, I deleted all the photos,
all my personal photos that I had uploaded. But that’s a little bit of a
different topic. Because the behavior on Pinterest isn’t something I’m
personally interesting. Curating other’s photos. I tried it. It’s not
for me. I like taking photos and, you know, refining and reacting to other
people’s photos that they’ve taken.
Jay: Yeah. Well the thing is, I mean, nobody freaks out about Google
buying YouTube at this point. You know, that’s worked out OK for all
involved. So just because Facebook owns Instagram I don’t think means that
they are necessarily going to kill it or screw it up or roll it in. Now
they may do all those things. But I don’t think it necessarily means that.
Lee: Yeah. I don’t know, I don’t know. I mean, you know, you’ve got-
that’s a lot of money. And they’ve got to monetize, right? So something’s
going to happen.
Optimize Spills the Beans
Jay: This book is really fascinating to me because, you know as we said, coming from the digital side of it,
like, you kind of, I mean, you told the whole tale in here. I mean, if you
really want to get good at optimizing search and social and content, I
mean, you can read this book and keep it around and you’ve got a really
good blueprint for doing so. It was amazing to me in comparison to other
books out there in our category who are a little bit more pontificating and
here’s the way the world works. I mean, this is very down the line, you do
this and then you do this and then you do this, which is admirable. But
did you ever have anybody on your team say, “hey, boss, maybe we shouldn’t
write a book that tells people exactly what we do for a living?” Was there
ever any concern there?
Lee: Well, you know, everything’s not in there.
Jay: ”All the good stuff is not in Optimize
Lee: Yeah. I mean, you know, it’s like anything, I suppose. If people
don’t think a certain way every day, and you give a taste of that, it does
seem like, “Holy crap, they’re giving all this stuff away.” And the
reality is it’s an iceberg. The other thing is there’s a lot of value in
execution. I mean, this is a creative business more so than people
realize. And it’s not just creative on the, you know, storytelling aspect
which is obviously important, and will continue to grow in importance. But
the creative content planning, the creativity, and the political issues you
have to deal with, as you know as a consultant with organizations, with
execution. And then also the insight that comes from data. That, you know
I can give even more detailed instructions about what one should do in all
those areas. But when it comes down to a human being actually turning that
into value, that’s requires experience and knowledge, not just information.
Jay: Yeah. Just because you give somebody a list of ingredients doesn’t
make them a chef.
Lee: Exactly. And my goal in the book was to give something to people
that would be valuable, right? I mean, I’m not looking to sign every
company up in the world to be a client.
Jay: Yeah, it was really, really good. I loved it. It’s singing the song
that I like to sing. You’ve done a great job
and I think a real service to a lot of people. And I hope folks will take
the time to really read it carefully. Because you can learn an awful lot in
that book and from the man, the myth, the legend, Lee Odden. Thanks so
much for being here. Congrats.
Optimized Is the New Integrated
Posted on 24. Apr, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, lee odden, Podcast, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Marketing podcast with Lee Odden (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)
Some years ago smart marketers latched onto the idea of something they referred to as integrated marketing. The idea behind this concept was to make all aspects of marketing such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing work together as a single force, rather than allowing each to work as a stand alone.
The concept made complete sense, but then something really big happened.
The relationship that our prospects have with our marketing communications has changed dramatically. Marketers are no longer in control of how a message is consumed, who consumes it, when they consume it or even who produced it in the first place.
Social media, search, TiVo, and little things like the “do not mail” list altered the practices of lead generations through broadcast marketing forever.
As marketers started to discover the new reality of the need to be found, a new word started to creep into the marketing lexicon – optimize. The term itself has been with us since the dawn of search and has been mostly applied to the practice of search engine optimization or SEO.
But now it must be applied more broadly than the notion of keyword rich content and high quality backlinks.
Today, every element of our marketing must be optimized to take advantage of the fact that it may indeed need to work in isolation.
This doesn’t throw off the notion of integration; every element of your marketing working in tandem is still a good thing. It adds, however, the reality that much of your marketing may be encountered in ways that you no longer control and every element must be able to do the job of moving a prospect forward on its own.
- Today’s marketer must rely on outposts, such as social media networks, to open up new paths of entry for a prospect.
- They must rely on educational content to draw the attention of those researching online.
- They must participate in communities that exist for the sole purpose of building trust and providing proof.
- They must optimize every brand asset and put them in places where prospects might stumble upon them.
Few marketers online have shared my longstanding belief about the optimization mindset so thoroughly as Lee Odden, publisher of the Top Rank Blog. Lee has been urging SEO types to embrace the marriage between search, social and content for as long as anyone I can remember.
This month Odden released what I think is an absolute must read for anyone that wonders about the practical realities of the new world of marketing. The book is simply titled – Optimize.
Optimize introduces the concept of the optimized mindset and in opinion says just as much about how you need to think about your business as being a guide for how to turn practical social media and content marketing advice into action.
Odden stopped by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast to talk about Optimize and the future of marketing online.
Here are just a few things that you need to consider in the optimized mindset:
- Your listening, especially to your customers, must be optimized
- Your brand assets, such as images and videos, must be optimized
- Your content, tailored to serve specific purposes, must be optimized
- Your customer experience, beginning with the end in mind, must be optimized
- Your social media participation
- Your product and service delivery
- Your customer service
- Your store or office
- Your advertising
- Your referral generation
- Your public relations
- Your sales system
- Your partnerships
- Your analytics
You see, integration isn’t enough anymore – Today’s marketing requires the optimization of every element and it’s a mindset as much as it is a tactic.
Optimized Is the New Integrated is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Optimizing Social, Search and Content: A Q&A with Lee Odden
Posted on 18. Apr, 2012 by Joe Pulizzi in Blog, content marketing, content strategy, Fun Stuff, lee odden, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media
I’ve had the distinct pleasure of knowing Lee Odden for more than four years now. I first started following his blog back in 2007/2008 when we launched the Junta42 Top Content Marketing blogs. During the 11 times we released the top content marketing blogs from around the world, Lee’s blog ranked #1 three times. Quite an accomplishment and a testament to Lee’s expertise around content marketing.
Better yet, I’ve had the opportunity to run into Lee at dozens of events around the country (Lee will also be speaking at Content Marketing World). He is truly one of the stand-up guys in our industry. When I found out he was writing a book, and on content marketing no less, I knew this book would be a keeper.
Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing is must reading for any marketer (joining these content marketing must reads).
Lee was kind enough to engage in a Q&A on content marketing, social media, search and the future of online marketing. Here we go…
In the first part of your book, you discuss how SEO strategies have significantly evolved with the addition of content marketing and social media. Is the SEO-only agency dead?
Traditional SEO consultants that focus solely on keyword rankings and links that do not adapt to the changing nature of the social web will become less and less effective. In fact, I’ve seen a number of agencies remove SEO from their name. Some conferences too.
But adapting to change within the SEO world is no different than what’s been true in the 14 years I’ve been optimizing websites. The only constant with search engines is that they will change. Professional SEOs adapt because that is the spirit of optimization: continual improvement. SEO wannabes will die out pretty quickly because they’re only parroting the current tactics du jour. They’re chasing loopholes and manipulations without focusing on overall trends or consumer behaviors.
As long as search engines are imperfect at crawling and indexing content, there will always be a need for technical SEO. At the same time, the role of SEO is an evolving one. The premise of Optimize is in part a recognition of the adaptability of SEO or an “optimized state of mind” to be useful as a marketing resource regardless of changes in the industry.
SEO was responsible for increasing relevant visibility, traffic and sales in 1997 with search engines like Alta Vista, Lycos and HotBot when I started and it will be effective at facilitating connections between people looking and brand content in the future – whatever form search takes.
SEO agencies and brand marketers that do not adapt are at risk of becoming impotent. But that’s true with or without the growth in importance of content and social media.
You make a great point that silos need to come down to effectively drive a content marketing program. What are you seeing as the biggest barrier for this happening on the brand side?
Politics 
Actually, lack of alignment towards common goals and the role each group can play in reaching those business objectives is something that can be a barrier. But when leadership in the organization supports alignment with clear individual, departmental and organizational goals, many of those barriers come down. It’s also important to support those common goals with resources, process, training and reporting so people know that the changes and (real or perceived) sacrifices in control they’ve made are having an impact.
Sometimes an outside perspective or insight can facilitate this kind of change. That’s why brands are hiring content marketing consultants: to discover opportunities and develop a plan or in many cases, reinforce what they know needs to be done.
You identify six steps for a better content marketing strategy in the book. For brands, which one is their biggest pain point and why?
I wish it were that easy! Each company brings it’s own situation and circumstances into the mix so the pain point can vary. One of the most common issues I see involves companies deciding to implement content marketing tactics as if more content is the solution vs. meaningful content.
A lack of thinking things through is pretty common too. Planning helps define goals or at least hypothesize what’s possible so marketers can dig into what kind of content would be most impactful at driving desired outcomes.
Another major issue I see is that companies create content to exclusively promote their agenda without considering what kind of information their target audience wants. To go a bit further is to map appropriate content across the buying cycle. Even further is to distinguish appropriate content between customer segments and to identify the difference in information needs between potential customers and those that influence them. Optimize addresses many of these issues, I’m happy to say.
I love how you talk about the idea that content marketing, SEO and social media all need to work together. But as we know, most organizations aren’t set up that way. If a senior marketer is reading this, and that is the current issue, what is step one?
I think Optimize does a great job of guiding executives through this important step. Understanding where an integrated approach fits within the organization and planning are key. Optimize outlines what kind of research, audits and goal setting steps to take as part of strategy development.
When marketing leaders see the synergistic opportunities from an integrated approach, the resource allocation, planning, training and implementation will follow. For some companies it might mean different groups will work together that haven’t before, like marketing and customer service or recruiting and public relations. But guided by a thoughtful approach, goals and plan – things come together.
After reading the section on SEO technical audits, I felt we needed one as well. Why are these so important?
Search engines are far from perfect at finding and copying content to show in search results. Search engines also continue to change the signals that affect how pages and media are ranked. SEO audits (Technical, Keywords, On-Page, Links, Social) provide a benchmark for performance improvement and when repeated quarterly or semi-annually, can be extremely beneficial as a proactive tool to identify major impacts of changes in search engine methodologies.
At the same time, SEO Audits identify the impact of changes made internally on web and social content such as code changes that can overwrite SEO implementations. Nothing is more frustrating than to see a company pay five figures for an audit and to then overwrite a substantial portion of the most effective SEO edits because IT updated how the site is managed or made a template change.
SEO Audits also give companies a blueprint they can use to guide their own ongoing SEO-friendly content and social media best practices. I use them for our own sites and for all clients sites. The most important elements of these audits you need to look for are outlined in Optimize.
I’ve been reading a lot about the intersection between keyword research and looking for upcoming keyword trends that brands can take advantage of if they are listening. Do you agree that is an opportunity, and if so, how can a brand look at a keyword trend and jump on a “hidden” opportunity for content marketing?
Yes, I definitely agree that an opportunistic approach to keyword optimization can be effective. Keyword Glossaries are fairly fixed lists of target keyword phrases relevant to customers and to the products or services being promoted and optimized. Dynamic keyword lists can be fueled by social media monitoring software, buzz tracking sites and news sites. When a meme emerges on the social web or a viral video, infographic or blog post explodes, people will search for it. They’ll search for more information or additional examples of the viral object. That’s an optimization opportunity.
Monitoring for search demand opportunities and then creating and promoting optimized content in response, can result in capturing a significant amount of relevant traffic from something started by another company – even a direct competitor. Public Relations professionals have been doing this for years and David Meerman Scott wrote an ebook about it called Newsjacking.
If in the future everyone’s search results are customized, how can you scale a content marketing program so that search works for the brand?
The first thing to consider is that the content needs to get into the search engine and indexed before it can be ranked and then personalized. Without those steps, personalization means nothing to a brand because their content isn’t eligible to appear in the first place. Or if it is included, the lack of optimization means it’s at a disadvantage to other content that is optimized.
The questions to ask are: How is the content included? How is it personalized? The answers to those questions are content creation, promotion and optimization opportunities. In other words, make sure content is created and included in a way that’s meaningful to search engines and users. Also make sure social sharing and content promotion follow optimization best practices to influence personalization. Make that part of the content creation process in the organization along with reporting and feedback – and it can scale.
Trick question: As an online marketing guy, do you believe in the integration of print and in-person content marketing strategies with online marketing?
Whatever influences consumer behavior is fair game in my book. If that means a brand creates online and offline content to guide prospects through a sales funnel, then so be it. I’m not as concerned about online or offline as much as understanding what will it take to attract and engage prospects to inspire them to share, buy and refer. If that means online to offline integration of content, then let’s roll.
What is the biggest online or social media channel opportunity that most marketers are ignoring?
Of course you’re talking about industrial engineering and Pinterest! Actually, image and video are probably under utilized according to the growth of their popularity. Mobile social media is even more neglected by marketers proportionate to growth in use by consumers.
If a brand wants to truly optimize their social, search and content marketing, how do you see the marketing group set up organizationally to scale this efficiently? Is their an in-source/out-source combination that you’d recommend?
I would start by reading a really good book called, Managing Content Marketing by these two smart guys, what are their names again?
I do think there needs to be content marketing leadership in place or at least buy-in to content strategy by marketing leadership. Marketing plans that incorporate customer segment and buying cycle information with editorial plans is a start. Adding social and SEO into the processes followed to plan, create, promote, manage and measure content enables scale.
As I mentioned above, bringing in outside expertise can help asses and recommend a plan that best uses a company’s resources. Then the company can evolve it’s own processes and internal collaboration accordingly with or without continued outside assistance.
Is their a content marketing measurement/ROI silver bullet? How hard is it to measure this stuff?
Business goals. It’s important to ask: Are business performance trend lines moving in the right direction in concert with content marketing initiatives or not? Revenue, retention, share of voice, and so on are all key business outcomes that can be affected by content marketing. The silver bullet is to set goals, create a plan and figure out the performance indicators that will allow you to adjust tactics to continually improve reaching business goals.
That’s optimization and a key principle in Optimize: continuously improve approach and tactics based on KPIs to reach objectives.
What is the most important question that I didn’t ask you?
What’s my favorite social app? Instagram. Let’s hope Facebook doesn’t do evil things to or with it.
Actually, a better question might be: Where can you buy Optimize? Check it out on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or visit the book site: http://optimizebook.com.
Thanks to Lee for a great interview. In closing, below is a fun video featuring Lee Odden from TopRank Online Marketing, Joe Pulizzi from the Content Marketing Institute, Rick Burnes from Hubspot and Aaron Kahlow from the Online Marketing Institute in a phone booth at the Online Marketing Summit Minneapolis event. It’s almost two years old now, so don’t get mad if the answers are wrong.
The original post is titled Optimizing Social, Search and Content: A Q&A with Lee Odden , and it came from The Content Marketing Revolution .
Customer Centric Content Optimization (Say That 3 Times Fast) – Presented by Lee Odden
Posted on 27. Mar, 2012 by Ashley Zeckman in Blog, customer centric marketing, lee odden, Search Engine Strategies, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
The final day of SES New York wrapped up with a series of the top rated sessions from other SES conferences. One of those sessions was a presentation on “Content & Customer Optimization” by my boss TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden (@leeodden).
I for one was impressed that on the final day of the conference and the last session of the day the room was packed and people were ready to learn.
Lee began by polling the audience to see what mix online marketing expertise was present in the room. There were a smattering of SEO practitioners, copywriters, agency marketers (like myself), and those working client side. Below I’ve included what I considered to be some of the highlights from Lee’s presentation.
What Would You Do if Google Disappeared Tomorrow?
If Google were to cease existing tomorrow do you know how it would affect your marketing and your business? Now many of you may say that’s ridiculous, Google is going to be around forever. However, should you allow Google dominate your marketing?
Lee recommends that Google should be used to empower marketers do what they really want which is to: attract, engage, and motive customers to purchase products or services. So instead of focusing strictly on optimizing for Google what should you focus on?
Optimize for Customers, Experiences, & Outcomes
Taking a thoughtful approach to the wants and needs of a target audience will go a long way. Customer-centric content planning will inspire customers throughout the sale cycle and give you a leg up over the competition.
Key Questions All Marketers Should Ask:
How do my customers discover information?
- What are their interests?
- What needs and pain points are specific to my customers?
- What search engine(s) are they using to find my company?
What means are used to consume information?
- What are my customers content preferences?
- What media sites do they read or follow?
- Which social sites do they frequent?
- What sort of device is being used to consume this information?
What are the sharing preferences of my customers?
- How do they share information?
- What is their referral process?
- What steps do they take after purchase?
After determining more information about your customers it’s important that you focus on optimizing all of your content to meet their needs. Examples of content that can be optimized include:
- Products & Services
- Corporate Info
- News, PR
- Help, FAQ
- Knowledgebase
- Job Listings
- Landing Pages
- Fulfillment Pieces
- Curated/Aggregated
- Media: Video, Audio, Images
- Blogs
- Tweets
- Status Updates
- Comments
- Tags
- MS Office Docs
- PDF Files
Building an Optimized and Socialized Framework
Throughout the different stages of the buying cycle it is imperative that your strategy is aligned with your customers needs. By creating an optimized and socialized framework optimizing for where your customers are at you can better pinpoint what they are “feeling or thinking” at that given stage. What are the stages to consider?
Stage #1 – Building Awareness: research, customer segments
Stage #2 – Peeking Interest: keywords, topics, messaging
Stage #3 – Consideration to Purchase: content, promotion plan
Stage #4 – Purchase: optimize, socialize, promote
Remember, not everyone is ready to purchase your product or service. However, they may be willing or happy to refer you to someone else who is in the purchasing stage of the sales cycle. Every audience member that you interact with opens up an opportunity to network with additional audience members.
For those of you who are interested in learning more about creating an Optimized and Socialized online marketing strategy be sure to check out Lee’s new book “Optimize” which will be released on April 17, 2012.
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Customer Centric Content Optimization (Say That 3 Times Fast) – Presented by Lee Odden | http://www.toprankblog.com
The Value of Small Business Blogging: 3 Key Questions & Answers
Posted on 15. Mar, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, business blogging, interview, lee odden, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Video Interviews
Earlier this week Frank J. Kenny did a Skype interview with me about small business blogging and why or why not it makes sense. Frank’s audience is the network of Chambers of Commerce across the U.S.. I think it’s a timely question considering the ongoing “blogging is dead“, “no it’s not“ debate that’s been going on for the past 5 years or so.
As a small business owner myself, I’ve been blogging here at Online Marketing Blog for over 8 years and can testify as to the pros and cons like few others can. In our case, we’ve had great success with our blog as a way to achieve industry awareness and credibility, attract new business, employees, media coverage, speaking opportunities and many other benefits.
In the interview with Frank, he asked 3 key questions about blogging and social media that I wanted to share here since it’s had such a huge impact for both our clients large and small, as well as on our own small business.
Why should small businesses blog?
Blogging is a method of creating and publishing conversational content. Blogs are an easy to use content management system. The value is in the content and ability for companies to leverage the inherent promotion and engagement capabilities of the blog publishing platform. Blogging offers a few key advantages:
- Easy to use platform to create sharable, linkable content that addresses specific prospect and customer interests
- Serves as a hub to a hub and spoke model of content marketing and promotion
- Creates a promotable SEO and Social Media asset – every post is a potential destination for a link and an entry point through search engines.
Through multiple channels of discovery, blog content can reach:
- Prospects
- Existing customers
- Potential employees
- Marketing partners, investors
- The media: journalists, bloggers
What is the impact of Google+ on search and how does it affect business blog marketing?
Google+ personalization and it’s impact on search is the hot topic and any company that wants an advantage in Google search results needs to consider Google+ and other social media participation. The behaviors of content creation, sharing and engagement are incredibly rich signals that search engines can use to improve search results quality and search user experience.
The more people that have included your Google+ profile or page in their circles, the more likely content that you’ve created, shared and engaged with will appear in their Google search results while they’re logged in. Google+ optimization should be an essential part of any business blog effort.
At the same time, social media content, whether it’s text, images or video is content that can be crawled and ranked in search results. Social media optimization can improve search visibility of that social content for people that are actively looking for solutions.
When we make optimization recommendations, we go beyond search keywords and have our clients consider social topics as well. Understanding what keywords consumers are searching on as well as the topics they’re discussing on blogs, twitter, and other social networks can inform an editorial plan that does a much better job of attracting new customers because it’s focused on their language and the things they care about. Incidentally, I go deep, deep into this within Optimize.
How much emphasis should small business bloggers place on SEO vs social media?
The consumer journey through the sales funnel is increasingly weaving through a social and search experience. Our model of optimization focuses on how consumers Discover, Consume and Share content so the notion that people will come across a small business solution because of a social connection to a friend that then leads to a search on Google or Bing to get more information is entirely likely and common.
When people use specific words in a search they are segmenting or qualifying themselves to a certain degree because the words they use indicate intent to a particular purpose or outcome. Creating, optimizing and socializing blog content according to those purposes or pain points can be very powerful for any sized business that wants to be found or talked about where relevant customers are looking.
There’s so much more I can say about this (and I will – see my upcoming speaking schedule)
Here’s the video version of the interview:
Despite the success we’ve had with our own business blogging efforts at TopRank Online Marketing, we’re probably only realizing a fraction of the potential benefits from business blogging. If that’s the case, why do so many other companies with significantly greater resources fail at blogging for their business? They quit, lack vision, underestimate resources and timeframe, and fail to understand where blogging can be integrated with achieving multiple business goals.
Hopefully you’ll find the advice above useful to help your business blogging effort. If you have specific biz blogging questions, please ask them in the comments.
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
The Value of Small Business Blogging: 3 Key Questions & Answers | http://www.toprankblog.com
The Value of Small Business Blogging: 3 Key Questions & Answers
Posted on 15. Mar, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, business blogging, interview, lee odden, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Video Interviews
Earlier this week Frank J. Kenny did a Skype interview with me about small business blogging and why or why not it makes sense. Frank’s audience is the network of Chambers of Commerce across the U.S.. I think it’s a timely question considering the ongoing “blogging is dead“, “no it’s not“ debate that’s been going on for the past 5 years or so.
As a small business owner myself, I’ve been blogging here at Online Marketing Blog for over 8 years and can testify as to the pros and cons like few others can. In our case, we’ve had great success with our blog as a way to achieve industry awareness and credibility, attract new business, employees, media coverage, speaking opportunities and many other benefits.
In the interview with Frank, he asked 3 key questions about blogging and social media that I wanted to share here since it’s had such a huge impact for both our clients large and small, as well as on our own small business.
Why should small businesses blog?
Blogging is a method of creating and publishing conversational content. Blogs are an easy to use content management system. The value is in the content and ability for companies to leverage the inherent promotion and engagement capabilities of the blog publishing platform. Blogging offers a few key advantages:
- Easy to use platform to create sharable, linkable content that addresses specific prospect and customer interests
- Serves as a hub to a hub and spoke model of content marketing and promotion
- Creates a promotable SEO and Social Media asset – every post is a potential destination for a link and an entry point through search engines.
Through multiple channels of discovery, blog content can reach:
- Prospects
- Existing customers
- Potential employees
- Marketing partners, investors
- The media: journalists, bloggers
What is the impact of Google+ on search and how does it affect business blog marketing?
Google+ personalization and it’s impact on search is the hot topic and any company that wants an advantage in Google search results needs to consider Google+ and other social media participation. The behaviors of content creation, sharing and engagement are incredibly rich signals that search engines can use to improve search results quality and search user experience.
The more people that have included your Google+ profile or page in their circles, the more likely content that you’ve created, shared and engaged with will appear in their Google search results while they’re logged in. Google+ optimization should be an essential part of any business blog effort.
At the same time, social media content, whether it’s text, images or video is content that can be crawled and ranked in search results. Social media optimization can improve search visibility of that social content for people that are actively looking for solutions.
When we make optimization recommendations, we go beyond search keywords and have our clients consider social topics as well. Understanding what keywords consumers are searching on as well as the topics they’re discussing on blogs, twitter, and other social networks can inform an editorial plan that does a much better job of attracting new customers because it’s focused on their language and the things they care about. Incidentally, I go deep, deep into this within Optimize.
How much emphasis should small business bloggers place on SEO vs social media?
The consumer journey through the sales funnel is increasingly weaving through a social and search experience. Our model of optimization focuses on how consumers Discover, Consume and Share content so the notion that people will come across a small business solution because of a social connection to a friend that then leads to a search on Google or Bing to get more information is entirely likely and common.
When people use specific words in a search they are segmenting or qualifying themselves to a certain degree because the words they use indicate intent to a particular purpose or outcome. Creating, optimizing and socializing blog content according to those purposes or pain points can be very powerful for any sized business that wants to be found or talked about where relevant customers are looking.
There’s so much more I can say about this (and I will – see my upcoming speaking schedule)
Here’s the video version of the interview:
Despite the success we’ve had with our own business blogging efforts at TopRank Online Marketing, we’re probably only realizing a fraction of the potential benefits from business blogging. If that’s the case, why do so many other companies with significantly greater resources fail at blogging for their business? They quit, lack vision, underestimate resources and timeframe, and fail to understand where blogging can be integrated with achieving multiple business goals.
Hopefully you’ll find the advice above useful to help your business blogging effort. If you have specific biz blogging questions, please ask them in the comments.
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
The Value of Small Business Blogging: 3 Key Questions & Answers | http://www.toprankblog.com
Search, Social, & Content Work Together at SES Chicago 2011
Posted on 16. Nov, 2011 by Ashely Zeckman in Arnie Kuenn, Blog, content marketing, content marketing optimization, lee odden, Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing, ses chicago, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, social media marketing
Wednesday morning’s panel discussion on search, social, and content was flush with information that was easy to digest and provided helpful tips for implementation. The session was moderated by Anne Kennedy from the SES Advisory board and featured speakers:
• Aaron Kahlow, Chairman & Founder, Online Marketing Summit & SES Advisory Board (@omconnect)
• Arnie Kuenn, President, Vertical Measures (@arniek)
• Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank Online Marketing & SES Advisory Board (@leeodden)
Kahlow Presents the What, Why, How, and Who of Search, Social, and Content
Aaron Kahlow focused on some very basic but essential areas that all marketers should focus on when creating a campaign either online or offline. In regards to search, social, and content he had this to share:
What is Convergence?
According to Kahlow what convergence really means is that it’ is important to understand how these disciplines work together and how they impact each other.
Why is it Important?
If marketers are able to figure out how to leverage search, social, and content efforts the return on investment can be so much greater.
How Does Convergence Make A Difference?
By incorporating search, social, and content in multiple locations you are able to set next steps for prospects. An example would be leading users to a landing page that also allows them to like your Facebook page, follow you on twitter, get a link to a free white paper or fulfillment piece.
Who Should Be Participating?
Each and every one of us as marketers has an opportunity to participate and should take the next steps necessary to get involved.
Research & Idea Generation for Content with Arnie Kuen
One of the biggest stumbling blocks for clients is trying to come up with ideas for content that will engage customers. If a prospect is searching online one of two things will happen. They will find you, or they will find your competitors.
Why Should You Focus On Content?
A study conducted by GroupM Search found the following:
- 93% of all buyers online or in stores use search prior to making a purchase
- 86% of searchers conduct non-branded queries.
- 94% of buyers click on organic links versus 6% on paid links for branded queries.
What is the Path to Success?
Kuen provided a series of steps that will not only build foundational success but allow for killer implementation. Included were:
- Start with keyword research
- Do online research
- Determine types of content to create
- List the possibilities
- Put together a calendar
If Peanut Butter & Jelly Could Talk with Lee Odden
Marketers often get in the habit of optimizing strictly for keywords. What marketers should focus on is optimizing for customers and optimizing for outcomes. Odden went on to compare search, social, and content to a PB&J sandwich. It simply wouldn’t be the same without all of the ingredients. According to Odden Peanut Butter is the SEO, Jelly is the social media, and Bread is the content.
Optimized State of Mind
The evolution of SEO will continue to keep marketers on their toes. It is important that marketers understand that anything that can be displayed in search results can be optimized. By making sure that your content is optimized for keywords related to the audience you are trying to reach will put you on the path towards success.
Optimize For Consumer Behavior & Engagement
Knowing what it is that influences your customers is key in determining an content marketing strategy. Some examples of optimizing for consumer consumption would include determining the following:
- What devices do your consumers use?
- What format of information do they prefer?
- What different types of media can be used?
- What types of information would be useful?
- What time of day and frequency would they prefer?
- What topics and keywords are important to them?
Search, Social, and Content Takeaways
• Always know what, why, how, and who of creating a search, social, and content strategy.
• Research is essential in creating an educated marketing plan.
• Build the foundation for success.
• Take a customer centric approach
• Practice proactive optimization
Trying to find the forest through the trees can prove very difficult as it relates to marketing search, social, and content planning. However, what we learned from the speakers today was that doing your homework and building your plan the right way can produce enormous return on investment. I’m curious to know what process you as marketers have found works for creating an integrated online marketing strategy?
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
Search, Social, & Content Work Together at SES Chicago 2011 | http://www.toprankblog.com
How to Choose the Right Content To Drive Online Sales
Posted on 19. Sep, 2011 by Lee Odden in Blog, content marketing, interview, lee odden, Marketing PR Conferences, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Interview Screen Grab from the 2011 Vocus Users Conference
When I was at a client’s User Conference earlier this year, Steve Farnsworth caught up with me and asked a question about using analytics to refine content for increased sales. I’m a big fan of repurposing content and I’ve paraphrased the transcription and shared below.
When people look at analytics from their website while developing content plans, what kinds of things should they look for to help improve online sales?
To start with, a company can do some research to start developing personas that reflect the kinds of customer segments they’re after. That information can get things going in terms of an Editorial Plan and keywords used to optimize content and attract links, resulting in content that ranks well on search engines and drives traffic to product and services pages. As you attract that traffic from search engines, there’s some data to work with – to analyze and refine.
Through web analytics you can see which search terms are driving outcomes that you want, like conversions. You might see really broad phrases, if you’re fortunate enough to rank highly for really broad phrases, driving traffic that results in behaviors that are more indicative of “tire kicking” during the initial phase of a buying cycle.
More specific phrases may be more characteristic of buyers that are further along in the search process. You can see that by looking at referring search queries for instances of pricing, specific nomenclature or model numbers. That kind of search can be more representative of someone who is ready to buy.
So in terms of your editorial planning for content, you can take a look at this sort of cycle and anticipate what people want, optimize and promote. Observe how they visit and behave on the site. Then identify and refine subsequent content creation, optimization and promotion to make the content even more relevant and valuable. The result is a shortening sales cycle, more revenue per sale and a better experience for customers.
Paid search marketers can refine their ads on the fly and see the effect on sales. What do you look for you in your web analytics to refined web site content to become more “findable” and more likely to convert visitors to buyers? Do you incorporate social CRM tools with web analytics? Any other tools?
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
How to Choose the Right Content To Drive Online Sales | http://www.toprankblog.com
Wednesday Guest Stars
Posted on 18. May, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Jason Falls, lee odden, Lisa Barone, Rae Hoffman-Dolan, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Small Business Week
Wednesday Guest Stars
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Here are your guest contributors for Wednesday’s edition of the Duct Tape Marketing Small Business Week iPad Giveaway.
Read each of the five posts that follow and click our entry form link to match the guest star with their post.
Jason Falls
Jason Falls is a social media strategist, thinker, speaker and educator. SocialMediaExplorer.com is owned, co-authored and edited by Jason. He also offers a question-and-answer and learning community at ExploringSocialMedia.com. Social Media Explorer is also the name of Falls’s consulting company which focuses on strategic counsel for medium and large companies in the realm of social media marketing, digital marketing, online communications and public relations.
Lee Odden
Lee Odden is the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, a digital marketing agency specializing in strategic internet marketing consulting, training and implementation services including: Content, Search, Email and Social Media Marketing. As an active thought leader in the search marketing industry, he’s contributed to top industry publications such as Mashable, iMedia Connection and Yahoo Search Marketing Blog along with publishing TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog.
Shama Kabanni
Web and TV personality. Bestselling author. International Speaker. Award winning CEO of The Marketing Zen Group – a global digital marketing firm. Shama is a bestselling author with her book -The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue. When not working directly with her clients or shooting her show, Shama travels the world speaking on business, entrepreneurship, and technology.
Lisa Barone
Lisa Barone is Co-Founder and Chief Branding Officer of Outspoken Media, Inc and writes for the Outspoken Media Blog. She has been involved in the SEO community since 2006 and is widely known for her honest industry observations, her inability to not say exactly what she’s thinking, and her excessive on-the-clock twittering at @lisabarone.
Rae Hoffman-Dolan
Rae is the Principal of Sugarrae SEO Consulting and does various types of Internet marketing; search engine optimization, viral marketing, affiliate marketing, site auditing, link development road maps and tons of other little nooks and crannies of this business. She is also the co-founder, co-owner and CEO of MFE Interactive in addition to being the co-owner and SVP of Marketing for Speedy Incorporation.
Wednesday Guest Stars
Posted on 18. May, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Jason Falls, lee odden, Lisa Barone, NSWednesday, Rae Hoffman-Dolan, Shama Kabani, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Small Business Week
Wednesday Guest Stars
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Here are your guest contributors for Wednesday’s edition of the Duct Tape Marketing Small Business Week iPad Giveaway.
Read each of the five posts that follow and click our entry form link to match the guest star with their post.
Jason Falls
Jason Falls is a social media strategist, thinker, speaker and educator. SocialMediaExplorer.com is owned, co-authored and edited by Jason. He also offers a question-and-answer and learning community at ExploringSocialMedia.com. Social Media Explorer is also the name of Falls’s consulting company which focuses on strategic counsel for medium and large companies in the realm of social media marketing, digital marketing, online communications and public relations.
Lee Odden
Lee Odden is the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, a digital marketing agency specializing in strategic internet marketing consulting, training and implementation services including: Content, Search, Email and Social Media Marketing. As an active thought leader in the search marketing industry, he’s contributed to top industry publications such as Mashable, iMedia Connection and Yahoo Search Marketing Blog along with publishing TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog.
Shama Kabani
Web and TV personality. Bestselling author. International Speaker. Award winning CEO of The Marketing Zen Group – a global digital marketing firm. Shama is a bestselling author with her book -The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue. When not working directly with her clients or shooting her show, Shama travels the world speaking on business, entrepreneurship, and technology.
Lisa Barone
Lisa Barone is Co-Founder and Chief Branding Officer of Outspoken Media, Inc and writes for the Outspoken Media Blog. She has been involved in the SEO community since 2006 and is widely known for her honest industry observations, her inability to not say exactly what she’s thinking, and her excessive on-the-clock twittering at @lisabarone.
Rae Hoffman-Dolan
Rae is the Principal of Sugarrae SEO Consulting and does various types of Internet marketing; search engine optimization, viral marketing, affiliate marketing, site auditing, link development road maps and tons of other little nooks and crannies of this business. She is also the co-founder, co-owner and CEO of MFE Interactive in addition to being the co-owner and SVP of Marketing for Speedy Incorporation.
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