Expose Content that Will R-U-N-L-A-P-S
Create content that reaches your audience’s audience.
—Ann Handley, MarketingProfs
Now that our content is aimed at educating audiences around their pain points while making an emotional connection for a more trustworthy relationship, we are ready to expose it. Think of this next stage as running laps with your inflamed content in hand. A powerful storyline, comic surprise, or passionate plea may make the content standout. But unless it’s widely circulated, any intended emotional connection will be lost.
Key to this exposure is the suitability of the content for SEO, syndicating, social sharing, posting, social-media promotion, and link building. To be searchable, the content has to incorporate a unified keyword strategy that merits exposure on the search engine results page (SERP). But for maximum gains, the content should exploit every avenue for syndication much like that employed in news casting. This means that the content often has to be rescaled and repurposed to suit the requirements of its destination platforms.
And if necessary to promote the content for exposure, marketers have many avenues for sponsoring content that mimic the posts of news feeds in which they appear. Otherwise known as native advertising, this branded content allows for promotional messaging to seamlessly blend into a social or news platform but without annoying audiences with the interrupting nature of traditional advertising.
Finally, the content itself has to resonate with viewers to the point where audiences become advocates willing to share and link to the content. This not only extends the reach of your published content, but it boosts its SERPs as well. Together the organic, syndicated, and social reach of your content work hand in hand, distributing your content while landing new subscribers. In essence, you want to R-U-N-L-A-P-S to expose your content.
RSS and Other Syndication for Publishing Platform Exposure
Syndication, or the publishing of content on another’s website, is a great way to earn visibility for your content while boosting your credibility in the process. Provided that you are given credit for your author contributions, small businesses in particular can gain considerable visibility in having their content hosted on popular news sites often while earning backlinks in the process.
Of the many ways to syndicate your content, the most popular forms used by entrepreneurs are described and evaluated in Figure 8.1. In general, these content discovery and syndication sites include platforms for hosting:
1. really simple syndication (RSS) feeds;
2. community-voted social news;
3. social bookmarking;
4. social journalism;
5. blog and link directories;
Figure 8.1 Content Discovery and Syndication Alternatives
6. reputable content aggregators;
7. PR distribution services;
8. news aggregator apps;
9. article directories;
10. paid content syndication networks; and
11. self-publishing.
Really Simple Syndication
With RSS, you can publish frequently updated information from your blogs, podcasts, or video channels. These feed readers enable audience subscription to your content as it is released. In essence, subscribers take content directly from a feed you provide them. They can then share this with their audiences.
The process for syndicating via RSS is very straightforward. Having readers subscribe to the RSS feed merely involves the installation of a chicklet that noticeably places the RSS feed icon alongside a blog post or podcast episode. Figure 8.2 demonstrates how readers of your post merely click on the RSS feed icon (step one) to have it added to their aggregation of abbreviated posts or drop-down menu of bookmarked sites (step two). Your syndicated content then gets displayed as read or unread links for anyone subscribing to your feed. Clicking on a blog post or podcast episode link (step three) then takes your RSS subscriber directly to the content.
Content readers in essence benefit from timely updates without having to manually check your site for new content. Moreover, they can aggregate data from many sites in one convenient location. In turn, content providers benefit from displaying content to anyone willing to subscribe. This bypasses the contributor-vetting process or active community engagement required of many social bookmarking and social news sites, respectively, as a condition for prominently displaying your content.
Figure 8.2 Syndicating Content Through RSS
What Content Discovery and Syndication Platforms Do to Boost Your Exposure
As described in Figure 8.1, content discovery and syndication platforms aggregate news mainly for avid readers of business topics and entertainment. In the case of social news and social-bookmarking sites, exposure of your content is based on its popularity within the social community housing or sharing your content.
Some social news websites like Buzzfeed, Upworthy, and the Huffington Post are dominating the online news aggregation landscape. These sites lend themselves well to viral content reach through social sharing. Recent surveys, in fact, show that they rank among the highest in Facebook likes and Twitter shares per article posted. In deciding what, when, and where content gets published, these outlets typically use an editorial staff to vet article acceptance as well as their placement prominence.
Other social news syndicators include community-voting sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Newsvine. These aggregators encourage content providers to share their blog posts, videos, and other media with a community of subscribers. But unlike the case of major online news aggregators (e.g., Huffington Post), community subscribers themselves determine which content gets more prominently displayed. This is often determined by the number of up and down votes it receives.
In some cases, content providers benefit from the added authority perception of the syndicated site especially when the topic area is the one where the provider has limited credibility. Overall visibility is then based on direct readership, views from socially shared actions, and downstream boosts in SERPs due to higher overall readership. This assumes, however, that procedures are in place (e.g., canonical tags) to ensure that the same amount of SEO link juice is passed on to your original content. Without these steps, your content runs the risk of being seen as duplicate content where the SEO credit is at least partially passed on to the syndicated source.
How Content Discovery and Syndication Platforms Work
As described earlier in Figure 8.1, content discovery and syndication platforms vary based on their requirements for sourcing, accepting, and displaying content. Depending on the platform, some syndicated sites include community-authored articles and blog posts as well as community-selected content from other members. More reputable aggregators, however, use contributors vetted from a pool of high-quality journalists.
Acceptance of your content is handled in a number of ways. Some platforms conduct a onetime vetting of viable contributors, where acceptance allows future articles to be streamlined through an RSS feed and with minimal oversight. In other cases, every contributed post must be vetted by an editorial team much like the acceptance of journal publications. Still others vet the article based on its trending in social networks. Once accepted, the criterion for display dominance ranges from community member votes and reader preferences to smart algorithms that learn individual reader’s interests much like that of Netflix.
When received, the content may be displayed as an excerpt, a thumbnail and link, or as the full article. And like self-publishing (e.g., LinkedIn, Medium, and Examiner) or newswire services, the content may be a retake on a previously published post.
Why Content Syndication Outweighs Your Own Posting
Unless your blog site is amassing traffic that qualifies it for an Alexa rank under 100K, it may be worthwhile to capitalize on the far higher exposure given to social news sites. Many are becoming widely popular apps for news aggregation, suggesting that the rapid migration to mobile news will continue to favor syndication over blog sites not optimized for mobile.
Many of the larger news aggregators listed in Figure 8.1 have loyal readers accustomed to sharing content on a regular basis. And as the Google algorithms are expected to consider social signaling, this bodes well for your rankings as well. At minimum, these more established social-bookmarking and social news sites are known to be more quickly indexed since they are crawled by search engines on a more regular basis.
When and Where Content Syndication Should Be Considered
The choice to use syndication is often based on a trade-off between distribution and search engine ranking. Where search could be particularly jeopardized is when automated and large syndications are used without oversight. Experienced bloggers often recommend using only a few reputable players when syndicating content. And they typically advise against a reliance on automated syndications that seem to raise the most issues over SEO rankings.
But even reputable syndications could easily siphon off the search engine credit due your original content to the point where the syndication scores higher on SERPs. For many, this trade-off is reasonable if the main goal is to extend the distribution of particular content pieces as far as possible. Where the choice becomes questionable is when syndication is used primarily to build author credibility for new audience capture. In this case, it is advised to eventually withdraw the supporting RSS feed after the content has received sufficient exposure through the syndicated site.
In general, the choice of when and where to consider syndication should be based on the following:
1. Industry fit: The authority of the syndicator in an area of interest to your readers should weigh heavily on your decision to syndicate as well as who to consider.
2. SEO impact: Although the main purpose for syndicating should not be to bump up search rankings, the choice of syndicator should consider the procedures in place to avoid their ranking higher than you in SERPs. This will have much to do with their willingness to support backlinks, your prescribed anchor texting, and permission for you to withdraw your content after a certain period of time. The latter is often done to recapture excess SERP losses to the syndicator.
3. Credibility: Some sites like Business 2 Community and Social Media Today have reputations for stringent vetting and high-quality contributors. Coupled with higher social proof from their widespread audiences, readers may credit your content as being more newsworthy and credible.
4. Attracting unique and more qualified visitors: To reach a new audience, the syndicator should be scrutinized for its readership potential. Much like reviewing media kits, insights could be gained from readership that helps position the content along new audience interests. Some of the niched directories and bookmarking sites may be closer to what you need as a qualified prospect. Especially in the beginning stages of growth, your ability to target specific audiences may be limited to how well you capitalize on keywords. Syndicators, on the other hand, may have well-defined topic indices or tag categories that better hypertarget your audience of interest. Moreover, sites like StumbleUpon offer paid advertising options that could jumpstart your content reach to well-target audiences.
5. Overall exposure: Weight should also be given to the amount of overall traffic (i.e., check Alexa rank) and social-media viewership garnered by the syndicated site.
In addition, the choice should consider the stage of content maturity. Note in Figure 8.1, for example, that some platforms are more suitable to first-stage content growth. The syndicated blog, in this case, will offset the slow SEO gestation period with a broad audience reach. As readers become aware of your site mainly through author profiles, they may subscribe to your own RSS feed. Later in your blogging maturity, you may find the more reputable syndication networks as an excellent resource to boost your influence as well as to kick start a new readership following.
From Chapter 1, we have focused on content that addresses our target audience’s pain points. In effect, we have outlined topics that could help our audiences solve problems in a manner that is relevant and timely to their situation. But having topics that are essentially user friendly does not mean they are search friendly. Consequently, content marketers often miss the mark on content terms that are not synchronized with the keywords used by our target audiences. Moreover, the selection of keyword phrases may not be unified across your
1. domain name;
2. authority signaled across other indexed pages; and
3. linking strategies.
Selecting Content Topics that Match Search Behaviors
To synchronize pain points and keyword phrases, your content has to address a narrow enough audience to appreciate the pain point subtleties of individual personas. An effective mapping of pain points and search terms should include the following:
1. a long-tailed niche approach to persona identification, i.e., get specific;
2. an examination of persona passions or pain points from business challenges; and
3. a candidate word search that matches pain points (e.g., using negative terms like broken teeth vs cosmetic dentistry).
Consider the three case examples shown in Figure 8.3: a residential realtor, a wholesaler of quail eggs, and an accounting firm. From specific personas, pain points and passions were identified and used as a baseline for discovering tips and solutions. This leads to a list of keyword phrases as candidates for search engine optimization (SEO).
From this list of candidate subjects, blogging expert, Stan Smith, suggests you brainstorm nine search phrases depending on where your audience is in their buying cycle. Using Figure 8.4 as an example, consider three phrases your readers use to
Figure 8.3 Identifying Keyword Candidates from Persona Pain Points and Passions
Figure 8.4 Examples of Search Phrases Across Buying Cycle
1. find information about your subject (3 terms);
2. research key topics in your area (3 terms); and
3. decide if they should do business with you (3 terms).
Selecting Topic Titles for Blogging
Continuing with the accounting firm example, shown in Figure 8.3, we could begin structuring newsworthy blog topics from these candidate terms. Each topic should be trending upward if it is to attract the attention of audiences and the search engines. To discover what topics are current, checkout what is trending on:
1. Twitter (e.g., viewing tweet popularity on Topsy or viewing hashtag trails on HootSuite or TweetDeck);
2. syndicated blog directories and news aggregators listed in Figure 8.1;
3. personalized content discovery platforms and social analytics tool like Swayy, BuzzSumo, and Klout; and
4. Google (e.g., Google Trends or Google’s auto-keyword suggestion tool when typing in the search box).
In addition, key audience topics can be discovered from a review of your blog comment trails or discussion boards in LinkedIn Groups. The latter, in particular, raises a lot of questions from members seeking serious professional solutions to their business challenges.
Once a trended topic has been discovered, keyword phrases should be filtered based on their
1. degree of competition for the term;
2. reach in monthly inquiries (using Google’s AdWords Keyword Planner);
3. relevance to your business expertise, URL domain name, and persona pain points; and
4. specificity and context precision (e.g., a cosmetic dentist counting on “dental” for search may find the term too broad as it includes dental schools, dental plans, and dental research audiences as well).
Note from Figure 8.5 how this process for screening keywords from candidate topics led to nine blog titles. A good starting point in crafting titles from these screened terms is to use one of the free blog topic generators. Hubspot, for example, generates some effective titles after you insert three keywords as nouns (http://bit.ly/1A4KeVN). From the initial draft of titles, terms could then be added or modified to better reflect the expertise, keywords, and context.
Optimizing Blog Posts around Keyword Strategy
Once an examination of candidate topics and content titles is complete, your blog content is ready to be optimized. On the basis of Google’s Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird algorithms, care should be taken to avoid blatant keyword stuffing. Your goal is to apply the targeted keywords and phrases in a natural way so as not to signal the algorithms that you are gaming the system. This starts with creating quality content that is measured by its reading popularity. The more your content resonates with popular conversations and invites legitimate links to your post, the more the search engines will credit you as an authority on the subject.
Figure 8.5 Real-Estate Accountant Example Process for Rationalizing Content Title Search Terms
Consider the case shown in Figure 8.6 of a blog post written to attract social-media marketing educators. Starting with a pain point analysis like the one displayed in Figure 8.5, the analysis discovered a number of keyword phrases that scored high on search-ability. Included in the screening of suitable terms was the volume, trend, competitiveness, and relevance of each term.
Popularity and Competitiveness of Terms
Although the search volume is fairly low, these long-tailed terms ensure a more precise fit with a target audience of social-media educators. The fact that many of the keyword phrase inquiries are either rapidly rising or tapering in growth (e.g., abrupt rise in 2010 and steady through 2014) suggests that a number of keyword candidates qualify for popularity. A concession made at this point, however, is the choice of candidate terms having a history of high competition in paid search. This would imply stiff competition at the organic SEO level as well.
Relevance of Terms
Relevance starts with the targeted audience. A question asked at this point is whether the intended keyword phrase truly reflects a pain point relevant to your target audience. Note from Figure 8.6 that those phrases marked moderate have too broad a context. Searches for the phrase “Social Media Marketing Class,” for example, may include inquires for the local availability of course offerings or seminar approaches to training. Neither would benefit from a blog post on how social media is taught at the MBA level.
Two other aspects of relevance relate to the content provider. One deals with domain names and the other with authority claimed on other indexed pages. Notice from the domain name “blog.socialcontentmarketing.com” that more weight is given to phrases including the terms social and marketing. The same applies to the authority signaled on other indexed pages. Terms such as social media, for example, include the technology aspects of the field that extend beyond the content providers area of expertise.
Figure 8.6 Selecting Keywords for Blog Post on Teaching Social Media to MBAs
Selecting Primary and Latent Semantic Content
A common mistake made by many bloggers is to optimize their page around too many terms. As a rule of thumb, no more than two primary terms should be selected. Too many terms tends to confuse the algorithms. Once decided, however, a number of root derivatives should be selected in line with what the search engines expect to see when claiming authority for a phrase.
This latent semantic content can boost rankings if the terms consistently show up in Google Adword analyses when sorted by relevance. For example, Figure 3.6 suggests that the term “teaching social media” is related enough to “social media education” to be credited as a root derivative of the latter. Much like the outline of a good paper, the use of semantic latent content could signal to the search engines that your authority is backed by a comprehensive list of terms often used by others claiming authority on these terms.
Optimizing the Page
Once the terms are established, a goal of around 2–4 percent keyword density should be established for the primary and latent semantic terms. A lower density may not justify authority, but a higher density could trigger black hat tactics that ultimately jeopardize your standing with the search engines (e.g., penalize your search results). When applying these terms, emphasis should be placed on the following to ensure a unified keyword strategy:
1. domain URL
2. titles
3. headers
4. tags
5. top paragraphs of visible text
6. anchor text.
Shown in Figure 8.7 is a display of how this was done for my blog post on teaching MBA social-media marketing courses. Notice the emphasis on primary terms in the domain URL, page title, and post title. The domain URL is believed by most SEO experts to far outweigh any other tactic. Next in line for SEO priority are the titles for the page and post. The former merely requires an edit of the gobbledygook default names otherwise assumed in your hosting software.
Figure 8.7 Using Strategic Keywords in a Blog Post
Like titles, headers and tags are also given weight to the authority claimed for SERPs. Tags include labeling for any embedded graphics or photos. As shown in the far left of Figure 8.7, image tagging allows a significant amount of search-rich descriptions to cover photo titles, alternative text, captions, and detailed descriptions. Similarly, popular blogging software programs like WordPress permit page tagging and a complete SEO package to streamline the entire SEO process across all posts.
Finally, terms should be applied throughout the body of the text but without butchering the conversational tone and readership of the post. Although Google in particular keeps their ever-evolving algorithms a secret, SEO experts seem to agree that far more weight is given to headers and the first paragraphs than the remaining body of text.
Native Advertising to Seamlessly Promote Content
A common prediction for 2015 was the mainstream arrival of native advertising or the purchasing of sponsored content on social networks and online news sites. Pushing this trend is banner ad blindness; the viral brand lift gained from native ads; and a user migration to mobile platforms that do not accommodate traditional display ads. Add to that the pressure publishers are feeling to fill the gap of declining display ad revenue, and it is no wonder that native advertising continues to grow in popularity.
A clear grasp of native ad trending first requires an adequate definition of what constitutes native advertising especially since a universally accepted definition is still in the making. But for now, let’s define it as “the use of content-based ads that match and live within the stream of editorial-type content, while contextually following the experience of the publisher’s platform.” Common to most definitions is the dual objective of native ads to (1) “stand out” for reader awareness and (2) “fit in” with nondisruptive, opt-in content, i.e., finding the sweet spot between advertising and publishing content.
But finding a sweet spot in this convergent media (placement paid, content owned, and sharing earned) has been quite a challenge for brands and publishers confronted with issues like transparency and disclosure described further. The mere fact that the ads are created to blend in with content often confuses the reader with what is being promoted and what is editorial.
Where this becomes especially problematic is when the native ad is featured in mainstream news sites (e.g., Forbes.com, BuzzFeed, Mashable, and The Atlantic), advertorials, promoted social-media content (e.g., sponsored stories), and content recommendations.
Another issue to resolve before fully embracing native advertising is the uniform standards to adopt for the various media formats they represent. In their Native Advertising Playbook, the IAB identifies and provides examples of six types of ad units most often described as native:
• in-feed units;
• paid search units;
• recommendation widgets (e.g., “From Around the Web”);
• promoted listings;
• in-ad with native element units (e.g., banner with text or preceding a post); and
• custom campaigns.
The wide variance in formats has much to do with the ad’s fit to form (e.g., in-stream vs out of stream); its match to function (e.g., video on a video or story among stories); its match to surrounding content (e.g., mirrors page content behavior); its target specificity and guarantee of location placement (e.g., narrowly vs broadly targeted placement); and its metric objectives (e.g., views, likes, and share for top-of-funnel brand engagement vs sale, download, register for bottom-of-funnel direct response).
What Constitutes Native Advertising?
In its most limited form, these ads could include social-sponsored posts much like those shown in Figure 8.8. At the other extreme are long-form narratives (Figure 8.9) including featured news article or videos hosted in major publications. Although the publications were once the domain of social news aggregators such as Buzzfeed, Gawker, Mashable, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Business Insider, and The Huffington Post, an estimated 90 percent of publishers are now offering native ad offerings.
Why All the Hype Behind Native Advertising
No doubt the content-marketing craze has reshaped a marketing landscape once riddled with digital display ads. According to Patrick Albano, cochair of IAB Native Advertising Task Force, “this renaissance in digital advertising is driving brands, publishers and consumers to communicate with each other in more personal and natural ways.”
What has likely delayed a more widespread adoption of native ads are the mechanisms to scale and integrate them into editorial content acceptable to publishers. The pace of adoption is likely to increase, however, due to revenue pressures. Many publishers are feeling the pinch of ever shrinking display ad margins as a greater number of blogging sites, social news sites, and social platforms are staking claim to available ad space. This oversupply of inventory, coupled with consumers being clobbered with overwhelming ad noise, is forcing publishers to adopt some form of native advertising.
Figure 8.8 Examples of Short-Form Narratives
Figure 8.9 Examples of Long-Form Narratives
Brands see these content-based ads as a far superior approach to brand affinity lift and consumer engagement than can ever be realized under traditional display advertising. Banner ads, in particular, are not conducive to social sharing or to mobile usage. And it is this lack of mobile adaptation that is most concerning to traditional display advertisers since mobile is expected to overtake desktop web viewing in the not too distant future.
In a detailed evaluation of the native ad landscape, Altimeter Group’s Rebecca Lieb highlights the many reasons why brands, publishers, social networks, and advertising agencies stand to gain from a widespread adoption native ad formats. Common to all parties is a drive for
1. new revenue streams;
2. a potential for deeper behavioral/contextual data; and
3. target audience opt-in to content.
How Far Native Advertising Will Advance
Among the holdups barring parties from embracing native ads more extensively is the potential of native ads to deceive its readers. In particular, the Altimeter Group study cites transparency and disclosure as major concerns especially in light of the ethical sensitivity toward ad content that is mistaken as editorial content (i.e., separation of Church and State analogy). This issue came to a head in the infamous publication by The Atlantic of David Miscavige’s salute to Scientology. The Atlantic posted an advertorial package for the Church of Scientology, which was subsequently inferred by many as an editorial piece endorsed by the publication. Perhaps no one sheds light on this concern better than the hilarious John Oliver in his HBO Native Advertising feature that went viral (http://bit.ly/1owOWTw).
Another issue suggesting a more limited rollout of native ads is its scalability to so many diverse publication standards. Compared to banner and other display ads, native ads are not portable across platform formats. To scale them optimally across publications, a great deal more is required to make them contextual relevant while also having them fit seamlessly into a publication’s form, fit, and function. Banners, on the other hand, merely require compliance with universally accepted placement standards, something yet to evolve for native ads.
Much progress has been made in this area, however, as technology companies jump into the fray. Sharethrough, Outbrain, Taboola, and Disqus are among the 40 technology firms listed in the Altimeter Group’s review. To date, these predominately software companies have been able to sort and configure the many content, creative, and social metric elements associated with native ads to where they are becoming increasingly programmatic across multiple publishing platforms.
How the Landscape Will Ultimately Shift toward Native Ads
According to Figure 8.10 forecasts from BIA/Kelsey and eMarketer, U.S. native social advertising revenues are forecast to grow from $1.6 billion in 2012 to $4.6 billion in 2017. The near 23 percent/year compounded growth reflects the higher engagement results seen from native ads. It also attests to the rapid adoption of native ads by publishers, many of which are finding engagement rates of native ads to approach those of their editorials.
Even the more minimal in-feed native ad placements and promoted listings we see on social networks are demonstrating the efficacy of native ads. According to a study by Interpublic Group’s IPG Media Lab and Sharethrough, consumers looked at sponsored content 52 percent more often than banner ads. The same study showed native ads generated 9 percent higher brand affinity lift and 18 percent higher purchase intent response than banners. Finally, the study found that 32 percent of respondents said the native ad “is an ad I would share with a friend or family member” versus just 19 percent for display ads.
Figure 8.10 Forecast of Native Ad Revenue (BIA/Kelsey)
This bodes well for what seems to be a welcomed attraction to the marketing landscape. Consumers can now view marketing messages as part of an overall brand story told in the context of something relevant to what they are reading. Brands benefit when the consumer shares the content-ad. The more the engagement, the greater the brand affinity lift especially when the ad is seen as relevant and useful. Finally, publishers benefit from a new source of revenue to offset a dismal decline in display advertisements.
When Small Businesses Will Embrace Native Advertising
So far the momentum behind native advertising has mainly benefited large brands that have the resources and relationship with news publishers. The scalability issues have been reasonably addressed to date with tighter brand/publisher collaboration. Publishers, in some cases, have even hired dedicated staffs to manage native ad content.
Minimums to play in this arena, however, are quite high given the growing demand for premium placement of native ads. Add to that the time-consuming collaboration required of this convergent media to represent both brand and publisher interests, and you can see why smaller businesses may not be so quick in their adoption of native ads.
But with the growing adoption of big data into contextually relevant platforms, expect to see a rollout of limited in-feed native ads for small businesses. Although not as customized as the multiplatform narratives used by big brands, these more affordable alternatives are being aggressively promoted by native ad integrators (e.g., ShareThrough.com) and news sites. BuzzFeed, in particular, has had recent success in building a native advertising ad network on other publisher homepages. Should they and others elect to broker their native ad placement capacity, small businesses may have an answer. This assumes, however, that these native ad integrators or publishers can autoconfigure content-ads to suit the standards of multiple platforms.
But the adoption by small businesses of native ads may be hindered more by a mindset than technical solutions to scalability. Small businesses may be slow to embrace the true essence of native advertising. For example, it’s one thing for Coca Cola, Chipotle, and Dell to piecemeal powerful brand stories over numerous branded content placements. They have the vision and appreciation for content strategies that justifies a long-term investment. But it’s another thing for small businesses to embrace this type of narrative especially where results in brand buzz and brand affinity lift may not be so readily measurable.
Small businesses will have to be courted, in part, by publishers and agencies willing to train them on native ad scaling as well as in making content contextually relevant. In essence, these small businesses will have to understand that native advertising has as much to do with complementing editorial content as it does with catching the eye of a waiting prospect. This perceptual shift from fitting in over standing out will undoubtedly require a new leap of faith. As best said by Patrick Albano of Yahoo!, “The challenge with native is finding that sweet spot between fitting in and standing out.”
Developing Link Building Strategies for Traffic and SEO
Besides syndicating, optimizing, and seamlessly promoting content, marketers can spread their reach by distributing their content through link building strategies that invite new traffic sources while bumping up SERPs. In fact, one of the most critical components to any unified keyword strategy involve the tactics used to essentially garner votes via links on your keyword authority.
One way to validate this vote is through links to your content where the linking source (e.g., a syndicated site or guest blog host), your landing page (e.g., blog post), and the anchor text describing this link uniformly support your claimed authority around certain keywords. Add to that a high page rank from the linking site and you stand a good chance that the search engines will boost your SERPS. But here again, gaming the system with black hat techniques (e.g., link baiting) will only lead to penalties and potentially site banning.
To legitimately garner links that earn SEO credit, content marketers often focus on the following:
1. earning links from reputable sources backed by high page ranks and site content related to the landing page content;
2. applying anchor text terms consistent with page source and landing page content; and
3. rewarding back-linkers.
Care should especially be given to the consistency or terms used throughout. For example, search engine algorithms will consider the consistency of terms applied from the source page, the link defining anchor text, and the content destination. Key to achieving this objective is to have content worthy of a link. This invariably favors blog content over static website landing pages as the former is typically more relevant to your audience’s pain points.
And more than just incentivizing your readers to share your content, attracting links requires you to provide something of value to the one linking to your site.
This value could include a source of validation for some of their expert claims or positions taken on a subject. This is why the display of study results in your blog post from new empirical research can attract links. The same applies to product/service ratings, awards, top rankings, and reviews that validate someone’s credentials.
Guest blogging also offer an opportunity to attract links to your content. Guest authors posting on your site often link to these posts as a way to validate their own expertise or popularity. The same could apply in reverse. Much like that discussed in syndication, your original content posted on someone else’s site could invite backlinks. But different from syndicating your content, however, you are giving away your content to another site when you guest blog. Unless you retain rights to repost the content on your site at a later date, you are essentially donating your SEO value to the site hosting your content. This is why it is imperative to at least get permission to embed links in the body of the guest post or through author profiles.
Atomizing for R-E-I-M-A-G-I-N-E-D Content
The mass audience has atomized; that means you have to ‘atomize’ your content—customize it to different media, in different places, at different times to make it meaningful to the greatest number of individuals.
—Andrew Susman, CEO, Studio One Networks
Up to this point, an assumption made for exposing content is that it is adequately atomized to handle different media types. In their Content Rules, leading content strategists Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman refer to this as having to reimagine your content for various platforms and formats.1 To be effective, a content strategy should be developed that anticipates where and how the content collectively addresses your target audience’s pain points. Without this perspective, your content is merely addressing the challenge of platform compatibility. Ideally, the reimagined content will build a trail of expertise and customer orientation in the process.
A great place to start the process of crafting content is to ask why folks buy your product or service in the first place. From these spending motivations, a further examination of the subtleties in personas should reveal new insights into their pain points as well as the questions raised in response to these problems. It is at this point that content marketers should consider how the question could be diced into individual blog posts that are subsequently consolidated into deeper content that addresses the problem more completely. This allows you to build a trail of trustworthiness posts for your audience to examine before digesting a more complete and time-consuming solution to their problems.
But more than just recycling your content, R-E-I-M-A-G-I-N-E-D implies content that is:
1. Repurposed to Macrocontent: The reuse of blog posts and other top-of-funnel content recast for downstream webinars, e-Books, and other mid-of-funnel content allows readers to examine a trail of trustworthiness. As an example, Figure 3.11 shows how a nine-blog series of tutorials was subsequently recast into an e-Book addressing property cash flow issues. By maintaining a consistent focus on their condo and HOA cash flow issues throughout the blog series, the accounting firm demonstrates an appreciation of the property manager’s pain points. This allows a reader to judge the firm’s customer orientation before digesting the more time consuming e-Book.
2. Expertise driven: Repurposing content from blogs to more in-depth elements like webinars and e-Books also permits target audiences to examine your subject matter expertise as a qualifier for deserving 30 minutes to an hour or more of their attention. Note in Figure 8.11 how the sequencing of light blog posts allowed the accounting firm to demonstrate their financial expertise before releasing a more comprehensive e-Book on maximizing property cash flow. This middle-of-the-funnel content further opened an opportunity for the firm to request an e-mail opt-in, an option not available for the less valuable blog posts.
Figure 8.11 Relevant Content Evaluation for a Real-Estate Accountant
3. Integrated into content platforms: As discussed in Chapter 1 under embracing omni-channels, considerable traction can be given to content that readily blends into the form, fit, and function of fast-growing social content networks like SlideShare and LinkedIn’s own publishing platform.
4. Miniaturized for microcontent: A similar opportunity applies in the other direction. Recasting long-form posts into shorter-form microblogging platforms like Twitter and Tumblr, as well as native advertising space, can significantly expand your target audience reach from an already crafted blog post.
5. Adapted to media formats: In light of the growing trend toward audio and visual formats, experience content marketers take every opportunity to convert text-based content into scripting for podcast episodes and storylines for videos.
6. Google search friendly: A common practice to follow in any content strategy is to map out the use of keyword phrases across all channeled content outlets. Whether it’s for video metatags, photo gallery descriptions, or microcontent, the repurposing of content around these phrases will substantiate your keyword authority in a consistent manner.
7. Integrated in mobile platforms: As discussed further in Chapter 12, a challenge faced by content marketers is repurposing content for smart device viewing. But this takes more than abbreviated content. It requires a format that allows the content to be more responsive to a mobile customer experience. For example, mobile users often favor photo-based and app-oriented content aimed at bottom-of-funnel decision making.
8. News feed friendly: A similar challenge is faced when blending content into the news feeds of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ as well as that of major news aggregators like Forbes, Buzzfeed, and the Gawker. Oftentimes, an existing piece of content can be readily adapted as native advertising that blends in well with the news feed objectives of these online publications.
9. Engaged with others’ content: Another practice followed by experienced content marketers when finishing a blog post or more in-depth content piece is to relate the information as comments on the blogs of influencers.
10. Discussion framed: Similarly, comments could be posted as answers to questions posted on popular question-and-answer websites or a social-network group. Rather than reinventing content, existing blog posts can be adapted to craft an answer to a popular question on Quora or a LinkedIn Group. Regularly applying this practice assures the right choice of group or discussion forum in which to be engaged.
Next to SEO, the role of pinning and posting content on social networks often represents the greatest opportunity to expose content. In its most basic form, the posting of abbreviated links via URL shorteners (e.g., bit.ly) offers a straightforward method for broadcasting your latest content releases.
Posting links through Twitter still remains among the most common practices followed by marketers in promoting new content. The key to tweeting links for your new content releases is the assignment of hashtags that build new followers in the process. Especially for those Twitter followers that filter their content interests through hashtags (e.g., via TweetDeck or Hootsuite), finding the right hashtag category to park your content becomes critical to attracting new followers. Tools like hashtag.org can help identify which hashtag terms resonate the most with your target audience as well as your area of expertise.
But developing a visually intensive post can also lend itself to pinning your content on platforms like Pinterest. Note in Figure 8.12 how a link to a blog post on social-media marketing courses was tweeted, updated in a LinkedIn feed, and pinned for Pinterest viewers. The latter often leads to the highest amount of referred traffic to a site, making it essential for blog posts to accommodate pinnable images. Moreover, extensive descriptions supporting the pin contribute to its discovery and potential engagement with Pinterest followers.
Figure 8.12 Pinning and Posting Links
Besides pinning and posting content to your existing followers, all content should incorporate sharing buttons that allow readers to share it with their own friends, fans, connections, and followers as well. Although the practice has been widely adopted for blog posting, many content marketers neglect to incorporate these widgets into e-mails and mid-of-funnel content.
For example, once e-Books are created and hosted, they can be easily shared across your audience’s social-media channels. Shown in Figure 8.13 is an example of how an embedded Twitter widget allows a PDF-based e-Book to be shared once it’s let loose as a downloaded document. For instructions on how to incorporate retweet buttons into PDFs, checkout Social Media Examiner’s blog post at http://bit.ly/1nMye2k.
Figure 8.13 Sharing Downloaded e-Books and Other PDFs
Figure 8.14 Summary of Methods Used to Boost Content Visibility
R-U-N-L-A-P-S to Expose Content
Shown in Figure 8.14 is a model of the ways your content can be made visible when you R-U-N-L-A-P-S through RSS and other syndication, Unified keyword strategies, Native advertising, Link building strategies, Atomizing your content, Pinning and posting, and Social sharing.
Note
1. Ann Handley, Ann, and C.C Chapman. Content Rules. New Jersey: Wiley. 2011. p. 15.