Source: http://www.seo.com/blog/google-seo-authorship-aj-kohn-mozcon/
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Source: http://www.seo.com/blog/google-seo-authorship-aj-kohn-mozcon/
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As of July 2012 I no longer recommend using this tactic, as it creates too many low quality links to your website I’ve long stated that I prefer full feeds over partial feeds. Now that I’ve spent the past few weeks using an iPad, I feel even more strongly that full feeds are the way [...]
This post originally came from A Look at Full and Partial Feeds in an Increasingly Mobile World
Source: http://www.wolf-howl.com/blogging/partial-feeds-mobile-world/
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Source: http://www.onlinemarketingseo.com/blog/online-marketing-seo-cost.html
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The best part about a growing and very quickly changing industry is the diversity of viewpoints; the worst part is the exact same thing because sometimes 1 always equals 1 and doesn't need bullshit in lieu of evidence. I try my best to stay out of the limelight and just focus on making things happen. However, occasionally a topic will bother me so much that I have to chime in. The last time was over 5 years ago so I figure I'm due to speak up again. Today's topic? Negative SEO. My issue with the topic? Deniers.
There've been several posts on how negative SEO doesn't exist (those are the worst) or that maybe it exists but only weak sites can get hit (in other words, people with opinions that didn't do any testing). I'd like to put those topics to rest as best as a guy that keeps to himself can. I really should be able to do this in one sentence, but in the event what I write as the second half of this sentence doesn't do it for you, I have a couple stories; if crappy SEO of over-optimized anchors and junky links are to blame for ranking drops, how can it be said one cannot do this to someone else, and even if you were to deny this, then why the sudden rush to denounce certain links? On to some anecdotes!
While leading a training session overseas I mentioned a site I watched get hit by some negative SEO activities. I know that it was negative SEO and not a slip up on the SEOs' part by virtue of knowing the history/team behind the site and watching it as part of my normal data routine; the site was managed by the kind of guys that get asked to speak at SEOktoberfest...the kind of people I'd go work for if my bag of tricks ever ran out. Ok, so you're asking how I know it was negative SEO. The easiest explanation is that I watched the site spike heavily with on-theme anchors from junk sites over a one week period and was filtered shortly thereafter. It stayed filtered for just under few months, but 2 days after discussing the site and explaining how I knew the site was hit it magically reappeared (yes, there were googlers in the audience).
If you are skeptical then your first response better be that I'm only loosely describing one example so let me say that in the same industry where I've shared my knowledge of the subject on some more sophisticated methods (first released in the SEObook community), I feel almost like an information arms dealer since even the larger brands have themselves or through affiliated relationships been clubbing each other over the head. You read that right; I explained how I thought negative SEO could be employed and then watched a bunch of people actually do it, repeatedly. Unfortunately, I was hit too, but that's a different issue. In this particular industry, the only people left standing now are some poorly matched local results with fake reviews, a bunch of hacked domains, and the flotsam of macroparasites that gained popularity post Penguin. The only one that came back? The one I publically shared at a conference, explaining exactly how they were a victim based on the link patterns that didn't fit with the site's history over a several year period.
I'll wrap this up with a bit of humor. As a joke a friend of mine asked me to negative SEO him for his name. Let's say his name is John Doe and his domain is johndoe.com. The negative effect was temporary, but I was able to get him filtered for a little while on his name for maybe 120 seconds of my time and less than $50. The site did come back after a few days, but our mutual feeling on the matter is that for an extra $50 double-dose I could probably get the site filtered again. Neither of us wants negative SEO to get any more prevalent than it already is, so I'll skip the details on exactly how it was performed. There are multiple forms of negative SEO significantly scarier than someone with a copy of xrumer and in some cases there is very little you can do to prevent it; if a jerk wants to take you down, it can happen. If your niches begin to look like the wasteland I described above where I shared my thoughts a little too freely, then heaven help you because it doesn't look like Google is going to.
Cygnus has been involved in search since 1997 and loves tackling new and interesting (and of course lucrative) projects. Follow @Cygnus on Twitter for his rants.
Source: http://www.seobook.com/stop-questioning-negative-seo
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Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog
The Complete Content Guide: What It Is, How To Get It, and What To Avoid [Post-Panda]
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Written by Kyle Kam,
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SearchEnginePeople/~3/MUN9jYs5Nuo/content-guide.html
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Google recently launched their webspam Penguin update. While they claim it only impacted about 3.1% of search queries, the 3.1% it impacted were largely in the "commercial transactional keywords worth a lot of money" category.
Based on the number of complaints online about it (there is even a petition!) this is likely every bit as large as Panda or the Florida update. A friend also mentioned that shortly after the update WickedFire & TrafficPlanet both had sluggish servers, yet another indication of the impact of the update.
Originally leading up to the update, the update was sold as being about over-optimization. However when it was launched it was given no pet name, but rather given the name of the webspam update. Thus anyone who complained about the update was by definition a spammer.
A day after declaring that the name didn't have any name Google changed positions and called the update the Penguin update.
Why the quick turn around on the naming?
If you smoke a bunch of webmasters & then label them all as spammers, of course they are going to express outrage and look for the edge cases that make you look bad & promote those. One of the first ones out of the gate on that front was a literally blank blogspot blog that was ranking #1 for make money online.
As I joked with Eli, if it is blank then they couldn't have done anything wrong, right? :D
Another site that got nailed by the update was Viagra.com. It has since been fixed, but it is pretty hard for Google to state that the sites that got hit are spam, blend the search ads into the results so much that users can't tell them apart & force Pfizer to buy their own brand to rank. If that condition didn't get fixed quickly I am pretty certain it would lead to lawsuits.
Google also put out a form to collect feedback about the update. They only ever do that if they know they went too far and need to refine it. Or, put another way, if this was the Penguin update then this is GoogleBot:
When I was a kid I used to collect baseball cards. As the price of pictures from sites like iStockphoto have gone up I recently bought a few cards on eBay (in part for nostalgia & in part to have pictures for some of our blog posts). Yesterday I searched for baseball card holders for mini-cards & in the first page of search results was:
That blank Yahoo! Shopping page is also what showed up in Google's cache too. So I am not claiming that they were spamming Google in any way, rather that Google just has bad algorithms when they rank literally blank pages simply because they are on an authoritative domain name.
The SERPs lacked expert blogs, forum discussions, & niche retailers. In short, too much emphasis on domain authority yet again.
Part of the idea of the web was that it could connect supply and demand directly, but an excessive focus on domain authority leads users to have to go through another set of arbitragers. Efforts to squeeze out micro-parasites has led to the creation of macro-parasites (and micro-parasites that ride on the macro-parasite platforms).
Now more than ever SEO requires threading the needle: being sufficiently aggressive to see results, but not so aggressive that you get clipped for it (and hopefully building enough protection that makes it harder for others to clip you). That requires a tighter integration of the end to end process (tying efforts into analytics & analytics back into efforts) & a willing to view SEO through a broader marketing lens & throwing up a number of hail marry passes that likely won't on their own back out but will give you a lower risk profile when combined with your other stuff.
And your business model is probably far more important than your SEO skill level is. Imagine running a consulting company for a lot of small business customers for a few hundred Dollars a month each, based on stable rankings & then dealing with a tumultuous update that hits a number of them at the same time. And then they see an older (abandoned even) competing site of lower quality with fewer links ranking and they think you are selling them a bag of smoke. These sorts of updates harm the ability to do SEO consulting for anyone who isn't consulting the big brands. Yes many people made it through this update unscathed, but how many of these sorts of updates can one manage to slide through before eventually getting clipped?
As search evolves, invariably anyone who is doing well in the ecosystem will at some point face setbacks. Those may happen due to an algorithm update or an interface change where Google inserts itself in your market. If you never get hit, it means you were only operating at a fraction of your potential. If you consistently get hit, you might be aiming too low. Many trends can be predicted, but the future is unknowable, so set up a safety cushion when things are going well.
This year Google has moved faster than any year in their history (massive link warnings, massive link penalties, tighter integration of Panda & now Penguin) & the rate of change is only accelerating. Go back about 125 years and a candle wick adjuster was cutting edge technology marketed as brand spanking new:
Blekko has a decently competitive search service which they manage to run for only a few million a year. As computers get cheaper & Google collects more data think of all the different data points they will be able to layer into their relevancy algorithms. In some markets Chrome has more marketshare than Internet Explorer does & Android is another deep data source. And they can know what user data to trust most by tracking things like if they have a credit card or phone verified on file & how often they use various services like Gmail or YouTube. Google+ is just icing on the cake.
At the same time, they need to improve. As the search algorithms get better, so do the business models that exploit them:
I asked Kristian Hammond what percentage of news would be written by computers in 15 years. ?More than 90 percent.?
There will be many more casualties in that war.
Source: http://www.seobook.com/penguin-update
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Posted by gfiorelli1
This post wraps up the three-part post series that includes the "The State of SEO" and "The State of Social Media" multi-author interviews. Today, the MozCon speakers share their thoughts, beliefs, and suggestions about an old friend of any marketer that regained its fame over the past few months: Content Marketing.
Out of all the disciplines that make up Web Marketing, Content Marketing is surely the oldest. It was an established discipline before the web as we know it was even invented.
However, thanks to updates like Panda, it seems that SEOs have finally understood the importance of Content Marketing. As with any new idea, they can't stop talking about content of all kinds, from blogging, to video, to data visualization, to gamification, and more...
While this renewed interest in Content Marketing is something I'm absolutely thrilled about, I fear that this craze might open the door for a superficial and not-critical approach to possibly the most difficult web marketing discipline of all: Content Marketing.
Question: The first thing I am going to ask is more of a request than a question: may we all try to avoid using the “Content is King” phrase in this interview?
Peter Meyers: I’m honestly not a big fan of arguments over semantics. For every person that uses “content is king” too much, there’s a person wasting too much time complaining about the first person. Let’s just say that no smart SEO strategy in 2012 can fit on a bumper sticker.
Paddy Moogan: I’d probably agree and it is something that sometimes gets forgotten. You can have the best content in the world but if no one sees it, then it is a bit pointless. This is where the argument of “build great content and you’ll attract links” fails. Sure this can happen, but for most of us that content needs promotion in order to get traction and succeed. So when people say content is important, yes it is, but for most sites promotion of this content is just as important.
Richard Baxter: Content is just content. How it’s promoted is the strategy. I’ve seen bad content do well and great content do badly – because of strategy. That’s where “Content Marketing” comes in to play.
Cyrus Shepard: How about "Content First?" The worst job in the world is doing SEO for a site with crappy content or an inferior product. Conversely, when you have a great product, the marketing process becomes a joy. Too often, businesses want to market the hell out of something without making that something great. That’s why I say content first, then marketing.
AJ Kohn: Content is hugely important, but it must be marketed. Too many think that they’re Kevin Costner. They believe that if they build it, people will come. Sadly, you’ll be waiting a very long time for traffic to line up if you take this approach. This is real life, not the movies.
This is where SEO fits in perfectly. It’s our job to ensure that content gets in front of the right people. Great content makes that job a lot easier.
Rhea Drysdale: There’s a word missing from your question — marketing. As in “content marketing” has had a surge of popularity in the past year. Skimming the next questions, it looks we’ll get to this, but my point is: yes I agree, we can’t separate good content from good marketing. When content takes off without marketing, it is an anomaly, not the standard by which all content should be measured.
Mike King: First, Michael is King and there can only be one! Ok, now, that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I believe the reality of it is that most brands are not there yet for a variety of reasons. This is largely because remarkable content creation at scale needs to penetrate the general culture of a brand the same way that enterprise SEO only works if the whole team is onboard. Also, there is this issue of compliancy and way too many stakeholders needing to review things before content can go live. It’s a very challenging problem as content is obviously the glue to every channel.
I certainly agree that content is not this “if you build it, they will come” situation. Don’t believe me? Look at the graveyard of failed infographics out there.
Ian Lurie: If you use the phrase "content is king" in the post, I may start crying. The statement cheapens content into a crappy parlor trick, when it’s communication. Marketing, messaging, etc. don’t exist without content. King? Meh. Let’s just talk content :-).
Question: Over the last 12 months, Content Marketing has been portrayed as a recent invention. I have never read so many posts written about content in one year, especially in the SEO blogs. I find this occurrence quite funny as Content Marketing has always existed, even before web marketing itself.
Paddy Moogan: I think the focus on content marketing has come about partly through necessity. Older SEO techniques that were quick and easy have slowly started to die off and not work as well as before. SEOs have started to realize that to win in the long term, you need to deserve to get links, and you can only deserve to get links by making something cool. Whether it is your product, service, a tool, or a piece of content.
Richard Baxter: It’s easier to build links with good content. I think the industry, for the most part, has matured enough to recognize this. Better webpages (usually with a richer, more valuable content experience) tend to rank better now more than ever, with obvious credit given to the search engines for (finally) making this the case. The SEO industry is highly motivated to drive traffic and links and therefore, SEO’s are highly motivated towards learning and mastering the techniques that work.
Cyrus Shepard: Not to be cynical, but the answer is simply many SEO ‘tricks’ like link networks and blog commenting have lost much of their effectiveness, and folks don’t know where else to turn. “Oh yeah, maybe we should actually create some content people want to share.”
AJ Kohn: I’m not sure why content marketing has become the hot new buzzword. It’s certainly not new. Perhaps the animal rollercoaster ride (Panda and Penguin) has created an opportunity to bring content marketing to a wider audience.
Publishing platforms like WordPress and Tumblr, among others, allow more people to produce content. The explosion of content is astounding. So it makes some sense that people would become more interested in content as a strategy.
Finally, the Google tax continues to rise. All those small businesses that ignored the Internet for years, and then stubbornly used it while holding their collective noses, are now realizing what it can do for them. But they need alternatives to the rank-high-quick schemes.
Rhea Drysdale: I give Google more credit for the growth of content marketing than anything intentional from the industry itself. When Google’s Panda update devalued cheap, spun content farms, everyone took note. If you do a search with Google Insights for “content marketing” you’ll see a massive surge from 2011-present. The industry will mature at the same speed of the major search engines.
Jessica Bowman: I believe a lot of it has to do with many things:
Mike King: Unfortunately, it's another sad reality. Content marketing is trendy right now and that’s why I decided to speak about how to get buy-in for content marketing at MozCon. There are so many ideas floating around about how everyone should be investing in content and how there are so many cool, agile brands creating remarkable content in this ideal world. However, content creation is a process that no one owns and everyone owns, and it’s incredibly hard to push through.
At iAcquire, we’ve bet the farm on content marketing and it’s such a challenge to get a brand to let us place even high quality content on their sites. Brands typically think of their sites as a way to advertise and pull from users rather than a way to answer questions and entertain. Obviously a lot more are coming around and you have brands like Coca Cola, Red Bull, and Old Spice leading the change, but they are not the norm.
The other issue is that a lot of times we are championing content as an overnight success done on a shoestring budget (for example, the Dollar Shave Club video), but then we find out that there was some large agency (in this case BBH) with the appropriate budget that pushed the content via a service like Sharethrough and it’s not the organic and viral success that we make it out to be. I don’t think we’re maturing in practice because much like link building a lot of that conversation just isn’t pragmatic at this point.
Ian Lurie: I think a lot of really crappy marketers and SEOs suddenly have nowhere else to turn, actually. Sorry, does that sound bitter? For folks like me, who’ve been pushing strong content, strong messaging and smart outreach since, I dunno, 1998 or so, the ‘sudden rise’ of content as a marketing tactic is a little sad. If you’re suddenly talking content now, when you never did before, it means you probably did your clients a pretty serious disservice. Look at the leaders across all marketing disciplines and you’ll see folks who’ve been talking marketing for years or decades.
Question: Before starting my career as a web marketer, I spent many years working in the television industry as Head of Programming. My main duty was to decide what movies, series, etc. we would broadcast and at what times. One of the classic disputes was – and still is – what content we needed to buy and produce. Should we follow what Nielsen was telling us was working, or should we emphasize our own opinions to be consistent with our vision and run the content that we wanted people watching. My team finally chose the latter to avoid a leveling in the quality of our programming.
Richard Baxter: Every good search marketer needs to understand this and be able to innovate. Anyone who is marketing ever-so-slightly ahead of the game will be able to capitalize on the “seen it all before” fatigue you’ve just described.
I wouldn’t call myself a content strategy expert, but since you asked, I’d tell any business to skip the clickbait lists and create something that is genuine and unique.
AJ Kohn: Cookie cutter solutions and bandwagon strategies can be seen in almost any industry. I think it’s more obvious with content because it’s what’s in front of you everyday.
There are always those who are willing to simply follow the advice of others blindly without thinking about whether it makes sense or if it’s right for them. So, yes, I’m rather tired of stitched together infographics. I find many of the headlines and formats for blog posts to be rather stale.
I believe content should be authentic and tailored to your specific industry and vertical. A highly technical industry may not want infographics but instead want white papers. Videos might be a great match for one industry but lousy for another.
Giving users what they’re asking for can be smart, but switching things up can keep users engaged. In the end, it’s the businesses that take risks on new topics or content types that wind up winning.
Rhea Drysdale: It’s natural to want to write for your audience. Where I find the greatest issue is in the definition of that audience and our responsibility to them. Just because a certain audience likes kittens, it doesn’t mean your SEO blog should feature a daily kitten. We still have to write timely, relevant content that our community responds to. When it comes to the content strategy of a business, the business should start by identifying who they are (e.g. company values, brand, voice, etc). Then identify their audience (both customers and industry). Identify what your competitors are doing well and not so well. From there I feel like content will naturally fall into place.
Jessica Bowman: This is definitely happening. When we define content strategies, we focus on understanding what everyone else is doing and how to differentiate and one-up the competing content, instead of keeping up with the Jones’. Instead of following the trends, focus on the target personas and what they would like to see, in the format they would like to see it. Instead of focusing on the content type that’s hot/trendy, focus on diversification – having infographics and 3 blog posts a week could be right for your business, but that is not likely the only thing you should be doing.
Mike King: Well as an artist myself, I’m constantly conflicted with the same issue, but the thing you have to consider is businesses are generally very risk averse and if they do those risks have to be very calculated. Even those brands like Axe that take big risks in creating a video like this have to put those through a series of market tests to ensure it connects with its demographic. By the same token, we are generally locked into doing things that are proven to work. In fact, advertising generally tends to leverage the 7 story archetypes that are known to resonate with consumers when telling those stories.
And that’s exactly it. Ultimately, brands need to be committed to telling a story and to that point SEOs need to learn how to sell a big idea and then weaving that thread throughout all of the strategic content that is created. Content should never be an isolated incident, it needs to be a part of a bigger story.
Ian Lurie: I think online content strategies suffer from this a little less, because content is so much cheaper on the web. I don’t mean $50/article garbage – I mean really great stuff for $1000-2000. Compare that to the cost of a TV show or ad. It’s mind-boggling.
Folks will always jump on the bandwagon – infographics are hot right now. Elf Yourself spawned all sorts of copies and derivatives. Something else will show up later. But that’s how a lot of this stuff evolves. So believe it or not, I think it’s OK, because online these trends happen much faster, and you don’t see folks getting mired in one kind of content (reality TV, anyone?).
Question: One of the biggest misunderstandings I see is when people consider “content” a synonym for “written content,” while – in my opinion – everything on a website must be considered content. This includes:
Even though there is no obligation to include the above factors in a Content Marketing strategy, small business this side of web marketing are sure to assume a central role, which means more investments and bigger budgets. As a consequence, many small businesses say they cannot fight against big brands.
Paddy Moogan: I’d argue that you can film a good quality video and take good photos on an iPhone. Sure it won’t be as good as a high quality camera, but some of the most popular videos on the web have been filmed on bad quality devices. It is the creativity that is harder to nail but fortunately, everyone has the ability to be creative, even if you don’t think of yourself as a creative person.
Richard Baxter: For those people, I explain how SEOgadget was started – on a blog. It’s pure content that opened the opportunities for our growth over the past 2.5 years.
But seriously, I think the best strategy for a SMB is to focus on what makes them unique, target an audience, build something for that audience, make sure that audience knows about it, rinse, and repeat.
Cyrus Shepard: In my opinion, content marketing delivers the highest, long-term ROI of any form of online marketing. I also reject the notion that you need a big budget to compete. You simply need something useful or entertaining to offer the world, and a unique presentation style – which may be as simple as your point of view.
Every small business has someone on staff that’s an expert at something, even if it’s just in their local area. Finding ways to harness this expertise and get it into the world presents a long term, low-cost content marketing solution.
AJ Kohn: What are the costs of not doing it? The fact of the matter is many small businesses fail because they suck at marketing. That’s true offline and online.
Creating compelling and authentic content is an investment in your business that can pay long-term dividends. Those are assets.
Why go to the trouble to invest in PPC and drive them to a brochure-ware site? Why start to have a social media presence if you’ve got nothing of your own to share?
Rhea Drysdale: Any form of marketing should always be driven by both curiosity and business case. If something has a positive ROI, it’s easy to invest in it regardless of the budget. It’s much less easy to invest in intangible assets like brand and reputation, but these can often account for a massive percent of company’s value. With that in mind, do what you can. Determine the resources, timeframe, and budget you have and put together a strategy that fits within that. Putting together a few great pieces of content will matter more than quantity.
Jessica Bowman: It’s the cost of doing business online in 2012 and beyond. If you cannot compete with the sites creating compelling, useful, authoritative content, then the business model needs to be assessed because it will not thrive online. I would also challenge a small business to assess where they are spending their marketing time/budget vs. where they are getting the leads. I would talk to them about creative means of getting great content on a shoestring budget – most companies just haven’t brainstormed enough low-cost content generation tactics.
Mike King: I would simply say “I don’t want to work with you.” I sincerely would like to see more inbound marketers turning away business when the client does not want to build content. In fact, if your brand is not committed to telling a story and creating content that helps people, then you’re essentially obsolete. Stop complaining about brands. Be a brand. Content Marketing in 2012 is not optional, it’s a reality.
Ian Lurie: Business owners complain about the cost of everything. I should know :-).
I’ll steer clear of this question otherwise, because the best online content is a tiny fraction of the cost of traditional stuff, and saying it’s too expensive is a little ridiculous.
Question: On the contrary, how would you tell big brands that web marketing (and Content Marketing as a part of it) is something that needs velocity and alertness, and that their bureaucracy may kill their web marketer’s (in house and agencies) efforts?
AJ Kohn: This can be tough. You point to case upon case of a bigger brand getting beat by the agile upstart. The response is often, "but we’re different." There’s a sense that it won’t happen to them. And, often, when they do realize that it is happening to them, well … it’s too late.
Marketing innovation is accelerating and if you’re not keeping up you’re being left behind.
Rhea Drysdale: I’d tell them that they need to develop a streamlined, enterprise-level content marketing strategy. That may sound ridiculously corporate, but roadblocks stem from fear — fear that a big brand will lose control because of a poorly timed or inflammatory piece of content. To combat this, establish clear expectations, brand guidelines, content policies, social media policies, approval flow chats for certain topics, response strategies, etc. With these in place it will be much easier to publish content even if it washes some of the originality from the process. Think in baby steps. Once content is being consistently added and promoted, it will be easier to demonstrate results. As trust is gained it will then be easier to push the boundaries.
Jessica Bowman: They need to assess their marketing operations for 2012 online marketing needs. In sales “time kills all deals," when it comes to online marketing “time kills opportunities.” I would also challenge the in-house web marketers to learn how to work in the reality of the operational limitations. If it takes 3 months to get content approved and out the door, then keep pushing content through and the only lag you have is the first three months. Many in-house marketers are not consistent enough to keep a steady stream of content. When I was an in-house SEO at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, it took us 3 months to launch content changes. It was frustrating, but I was diligent about content planning and kept a steady stream of updates and over time we made efficiencies to address the SEO need for speed.
Mike King: I’d tell those brands to look at Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Red Bull, Old Spice, and Coca-Cola. It’s very feasible for big brands to be agile and create content that tells that compelling story. Think about it huge brands invented that. If you recall, big brands are responsible for soap operas.
Ian Lurie: You guys are in big trouble. Big brands have had a lot of chances to get moving – they’ve seen Amazon, Woot, Zappos, and others all start eating their lunch in a matter of years.
I don’t see many big, traditional companies making smart moves, content-wise. Turf wars between marketing teams, branding teams and others seem to block progress at every turn.
Question: I consider a good content strategy one that is able to “recycle” its content production in every possible online channel. It is in that “recyclable” content strategy that I see the secret of inbound marketing. Is this theory correct? If so, what is the process you follow?
Cyrus Shepard: Recycling is key, from large agencies to small businesses. you express your ideas and information through an infographic, you can also express it in an eBook, blog post, video, animated cartoon, song, and social media campaign. Every time you produce something on the web, ask yourself if you can release this same information through another channel. That’s high ROI marketing.
AJ Kohn: Content that can be used in multiple ways is valuable.
Give a presentation at a conference and you’ve also got yourself a handy SlideShare deck. Write an awesome how-to guide blog post and you can turn it into an eBook. Hold a Google+ Hangout On Air and then you’ve got a YouTube video as a result.
Not everything has to fit into this multi-channel model but when you’re mapping out your content strategy you want to take an inventory and think creatively about how to get the most out of your assets.
Jessica Bowman: We work with clients to create a content creation worksheet that forces them to think about all of the different ways a piece of content can be used, promoted, repurposed in their world. It contains the email to customers, tweets, Facebook likes, YouTube videos, blog posts, articles, presentations, and more. I know it works because when the SEOinhouse.com team uses it, we maximize potential, when we don’t use it, we leave opportunities on the table, every time.
Mike King: Absolutely, always start from a content audit and see what can be repurposed and think of how to build any new content as a maximum viable product to make it hard to copy.
Ian Lurie: Definitely! First, you have to define "content" as ideas, not writing or video or something else. Then you present those ideas as many ways as possible. Say I do a webinar. I’ll certainly record that and offer it as a screencast. And, if I used slides, I’ll annotate those and turn them into a Slideshare presentation. And, I’ll probably write a blog post to narrate the whole thing.
Question: Let’s talk about specific Content Marketing tactics. What do you like and dislike? What are your best tips about:
I also think it’s important not to get carried away and try to fit every round peg into a square hole. The obvious example right now is infographics – people try to turn everything into an infographic, even when it’s not visual, just because they think that’s what’s hot. So, we end up with some real crap, because they’re picking the tool before they understand the job. Every channel has its place.
Mike Pantoliano: Related to Data Visualization, my suggestion would be: interactivity. Let people play and experiment. Any good data viz should come accompanied with a writeup and/or press release detailing some of the industry stories the data tells. But some has to be left for the user to uncover themselves.
AJ Kohn: My suggestions are these:
Rhea Drysdale: I’ll keep this short—I like all of those. It depends on the business, but each could/does work wonderfully when implemented in an intelligent and timely fashion. The biggest tip I have is to simply keep things relevant. I hate seeing content placed on a site purely for social appeal even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the brand nor does it even attract their audience. You know who also hates it? Google. They want to see content that is relevant to a domain. Whatever tactic you choose, make sure it makes sense. If we don’t do this, I have a hard time believing that our industry has matured much, because we’re still looking for a shortcut.
Jessica Bowman: Blogging is a good marketing tactic, but it’s often un-optimal. Make sure that you are saying something innovative and thought provoking, something that showcases your expertise. Far too often I visit a blog only to find run-of-the-mill content that does not make the company or blogger shine in the best light. It was content created for the sake of creating content (or content created fast). Think of every blog post as your stage at a conference – say something that would make someone say, “I need to work with that person!”
Video marketing is very under-utilized. It’s tough to get buy-in for it and companies shy away from things that do not look professionally shot. The reality is that video is the future, and now is the time to test the waters, get experience, and make mistakes. You do not want to get started with video marketing in a few years – your early videos will look very amateur then!
Mike King: Here are my suggestions:
Ian Lurie: This one’s a bit big for me to tackle in one post. Most of what you’re describing above are channels, like games, video, e-mail etc. I think any channel, used wisely, can generate great results. The only tactic I do not like is “get content on the cheap.” That’s a mindset that eventually gets you buried in Panda update, penalized by a Penguin update, or drives away customers because you sound like a moron.
Question: This last question is about mobile. We have discussed the importance of mobile for SEO and Social Media in the previous two interviews, but it is also important for Content Marketing.
AJ Kohn: I think a lot is currently going on in terms of how content is presented versus the actual content. Mobile applications like Instagram, Foursquare, and even Google+ show the power of feeds and the priority on good visuals.
Of course, the current challenge is simply ensuring that your content is optimized for multiple screens: desktop, phone, and tablet. I think at some point we’ll move beyond that to thinking about what kind of content might make sense for those in the mobile context.
If they’re on the go do they have less time to devote to content? Are they interrupted more often? As such, should our content be shorter? Should it be even more scannable?
It’ll certainly be interesting to find out.
Rhea Drysdale: The greatest issue with mobile is finding the balance. How do we make content that is accessible, but not overwhelming? I love seeing apps like News.me or even Twitter’s new summary email that detail the stories that are relevant to me from my networks. LinkedIn is starting to do the same with their email campaigns tailored to my network. It’s much more engaging and will bring users into their sites. Personalization. That’s a big hurdle for content marketing, but one that’s being solved in interesting new ways.
Mike King: Mobile and tablet devices are obviously the future. Essentially your portable device is the best way to eliminate the distance between what is happening on and offline. The future is to create content and interfaces that facilitate that. Mobile and tablet are going to revolutionize so many experiences. Think about how we all converse via hashtags during tv shows; now think about how TV networks could leverage that to build collective TV watching experiences and have brands build games relevant to the commercials being aired to keep people further engaged with the ad as it’s being broadcast. Whoever gets the jump on that will the next instant billionaire. In fact…I gotta go.
Ian Lurie: I consider mobile a huge opportunity. Folks who are getting good at responsive design are going to rule this category. Folks who rely on apps will do OK. And people who continue to ignore it are going to see opportunities pass them by.
I don’t, however, see it as a revolution. Mobile is another channel. The devices are revolutionary, insofar as they can deliver video, audio, photos, etc. from anywhere, and read them anywhere. But the channel is an incremental expansion of the internet. That doesn’t reduce the importance. It just means you don’t have to revamp your whole strategy to capitalize on mobile. Adjust a little, tweak your site to perform well on mobile devices, and you’re set.
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