Quality content is at the heart of any post-Panda SEO strategy. To develop quality content, you need a steady stream of ideas and executions that engage your audience and build search equity. But how can you create this when budgets and resources are being squeezed? This jam-packed session covered multiple case studies and statistics to help.
Moderator:
Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board; CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
Lee Odden started by introducing the panelists and session. There is so much more content that’s being created on a monthly basis and it’s also very effective on its own but even more so within the SEO sphere.
Speakers:
Simon Penson, Managing Director, Zazzle Media
Simon started by saying that no one wants to be the small guy, everyone aspires to be bigger and better. He defines content marketing as “create targeted audience of value with content”. We are used to a world that is paid media led so we need to change our mindset.
The beauty though is that anyone can create new and fantastic ideas. We just need to collaborate more between the creative and the people that understand challenge. The way to achieve this is process driven and some of the important considerations are below:
Client brief
Ensure that the content brief is tight and you have clarity on those objectives.
Personas
Personas are really important to understand and define the personas. Different personas need different content and make sure you bring those into your ideas.
Content types
Identify the types of content that works within the client brief and will achieve their goals.
Magazines have been following this process for years and we really don’t need to re-invent the wheel. Be inspired by their content. Create a campaign that is consistent and engaging.
Make sure its fit for purpose to make sure the content is indexable if search is the outcome or social elements are integrated if social is the desired outcome.
Find the influencers
His right brain techies were far better than the creatives at finding the influencers. Its critical to success so you need to make sure you do it properly.
The above defines the content creation process but its as important to spread the word.
How to spread the word
Keyhole – allows you to search for a particular phrase or person and uncovers
Scrapebox – allows you to scrape Google data
The problem is lots of people are doing outreach now so you need a few tricks.
1) Use competitive link data
2) Audience wise gives you the data on the most shared post
3) Use long term personas to build up relationships
Content amplification works well too specifically through Facebook.
How to measure the value
- Agree KPIs
- Map the Journey
- Set up goals
- Review ROI
- Grow Budget
Also measure on page value through analytics.
Catherine Toole, CEO, Sticky Content
Catherine started for saying the appetite for content is growing. Trying to create edible content on an on-going basis is challenging and everyone is a publisher now! It’s really easy to create awesome content for engaging brands with a huge amount of collateral but its far more difficult to generate ideas for really boring clients.
Where do good ideas come from?
We need to go fishing. Stop making your content based on the internal priorities and change your content to focus more on your prospective customers needs and likes. If that’s at the core of your campaign then you can’t help but succeed.
Go to everyone in your organization that have contact from customers. Call centers are often gold in identifying content ideas that you currently aren’t delivering well. Social media is another great area for great ideas. Customer reviews are often a great source.
Where people come unstuck is when they go outside their editorial remit. She shared a life insurance website that created content around common sayings origins. This is too far away from their editorial brief.
You are looking to have content that has legs. Mr & Mrs Smith ran a competition that ran a competition where they had to choose Paris with your partner or Ibiza with your friends. There was no follow up PR activity found which resulted in a massive lost opportunity.
Mailchimp do lovely user guides that are branded in line with their audiences’ needs.Being a proper publisher means re-spinning ideas in different ways.
