Archive for the ‘Top Rank Blog’ Category
Real Time Storytelling – SES SF
For mainstream media to survive, if not thrive, it must integrate with the social web and create engagement surrounding content. For social media to remain relevant and compelling, it must work in tandem with news organizations to create a symbiotic storytelling relationship.
The future may be a stream with the authenticity of the social web and the reach of mainstream media.
Lead by moderator Khris Loux, CEO & Co-Founder, Echo this panel took a bleeding edge look on real-time story telling through an open discussion and Q&A.
Panel participants:
- Dan Schmidt, Senior Product Manager, CBS Interactive
- Andrew Lyons, Commercial Director, UltraKnowledge
- Dermot Waters, Senior Director of Product Development, CNN.com
- Louis Gray, Managing Director of New Media, Paladin Advisors Group
Moderator: what is a brief definition of real-time storytelling?
Waters: Weaving a coherent narrative between disparate conversations.
Lyons: Real-time story telling is disrupting the idea of an editorial filter.
Waters: Real-time storytelling isn’t any different than it was 30 years ago; it has just become a participatory conversation as opposed to being broadcast.
Gray: Real-time storytelling gets to find the most accurate, relevant content and floating that to the top.
Moderator: how do you as a publisher ride the wave of citizen journalism?
Waters: At CNN, we encourage everyone to be a part of the news and citizen journalism. Join iReport and you can be a part of the wave. What we have discovered is that we were dropping 97% of citizen content sent to us without publishing. That was the inspiration to create iReport, take that content and reuse it in a number of different ways. We’ve spread that philosophy throughout our site and to the rest of our properties. Over time, we’ve built a tremendous network around the web of users reporting the news.
Lyons: On the citizen journalism thing, you see the debate of “journalist” vs. “citizen journalist.” Have you seen the “dark side” of things, where people try to fake news for profit?
Waters: Overwhelming we haven’t seen this, we’ve seen it be mostly real stories, real conversations. It is a testament to the community. Further, the iReport community is tightly knit and will react to fake content.
Moderator: how do you moderate/manage real-time conversation without squashing it?
Waters: I think the community is who will manage that – you can’t stifle conversations or even allow real-time if you’re manually filtering it.
Moderator: in a world with untold number of news resources, replies/comments/ReTweets, how can curation help?
Dan Schmidt: People are using their friends as curators. This is becoming more and more powerful as sites recognize users identities. An opportunity for a news organization is to help people build their own network. Users can bring that filter with them wherever they go.
Gray: You talk about curation – I think CNN and CBS have grown their brand due to authority as a brand. The act of aggregation and curation today is the act of finding relevant info from a third party source and sharing it with readers.
Dan Schmidt: We thought about piping in feeds of content into our site – but we decided to introduce an editor to provide context. In theory, being clear about the relevance of content is important.
Gray. We’ve seen a battle between traditional media and new media aggregators. What is the feeling from a CNN or CNet on other aggregators who are taking readers away or using your content to build your brand.
Waters: Aggregators are a way to get those eyeballs. We want to work with them not against them to ensure we are relevant and reach users.
Moderator: there is no longer an opportunity to research stories and be “accurate,” now there is a push for publishers to be first.
Lyons: The luxury of the deadline is gone. You now have to be prepared to embrace the real-time world we’re in or be prepared to fight it. For example, the journalists out there focusing on a specific be used to be thought of as the expert. Now everyone has a voice – not just the journalists. Subject matter experts such as scientists or other vertical-specific experts can be even more authoritative. There has become a “return on integrity” – where you can build relationships with influencers in order to utilize them for information.
Gray: You’ll find that some users actually have a fatigue about “breaking news.” What you’ll find is not all of it is breaking. You also will find a “half life” of a story – that if a newspaper is dead by the time it gets to someone (24 hours) – at what point does a news items actually become old?
Waters: When does a story become old? It depends on the consumer, because it might be new to them (it’s interesting/relevant to them, they just haven’t seen it yet).
Moderator: The daily newspaper used to be the arbiter of truth, because they were the decision maker. Now that’s no longer the case. Who is the arbiter of truth in a real-time news cycle?
Gray: What’s happening is you now have the ability of citizen journalists to create content. With this, specific individuals have influence within different sub-sets of technology. There are many citizen-fed blogs in the tech space, as one example. And a lot of the smaller blogs cover the same story. For example, Twitter announces a feature, they put it on their blog and then 500+ other bloggers will write their own spin. Many reasons people do this is to keep users on their page and position themselves as the arbiter of truth. Why are you choosing to read Gizmodo over Engadget? Usually the answer is because they have access to something or a certain editorial perspective compelling to you. So, based on personal preferences users will read items that reinforce their choices. Now we have this issue, the truth used to be arbited by big names who had the access to real, verifiable facts.
Moderator: it seems like the truth is being stressed to infinity and a race to break what is news. It’s de-valuating investigative news that takes time to create. What do you think?
Gray: In terms of truth, the way that we solve that is figure out a way to reward the truth discovering machine. You need to rely on the bigger organizations who can put reporters out in the field. Are these individuals rewarded for what they’ve done or not? What we’re finding is that people will break news ahead of embargos and push the limit on real-time to get on top of aggregators and attain pageviews.
Moderator: with real-time storytelling, how will content publishers monetizing it?
Waters: There are many ways you can make revenue from it. By fostering the conversation and encouraging users to come to the site for real-time comments, you’re encouraging more people to your site and raising your brand awareness. When talking about conversations offsite, we can re-aggregate it and monetize it in our own spaces.
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Real Time Storytelling – SES SF | http://www.toprankblog.com
Is It The SEO Metrics Or The Connections Between?
Ultimately, to measure Search Engine Optimization (SEO) success, you aren’t necessarily looking at individual metrics – you are looking for a connection between the metrics – and the resulting affect on revenue.
If my lead seems to negate the name validity of the SES San Francisco session, ‘Meaningful SEO Metrics,’ it is completely unintentional.
Moderated by John Marshall, CTO of Market Motive and SES Advisory Board Member, this excellent session featured on its panel:
- Richard Zwicky, Founder & CEO, Enquisite
- Ray “Catfish” Comstock, Director of SEO, BusinessOnLine
- Jon Glick, VP of SEO and GM European Web Properties, Become.com
“Infinitely measureable means adjustable,” opens Zwicky. “And online marketing is completely measureable.”
A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Zwicky recommends companies and marketers look at is Share of Voice, or in other words, how much traffic are you receiving for a keyword or phrase when compared to the balance of the marketplace?
Online tools, from Google Trends to Tweetscan, can measure the amount of traffic or conversation generated by competing websites or in social platforms to give you an idea of just how much voice is out there. It’s not perfect, but it’s measureable.
Another KPI from Zwicky is attribution across channels. For example, plot out the sales your company achieves on a local or nationwide map. Next map out visits from social media, local media buys – or any other metric you would like to compare against. You now have a quick and dirty map that can be used to compare your metrics and help measure the effectiveness of your tactics.
Zwicky’s map segues nicely into Comstock’s keyword metrics, specifically branded vs. non-branded traffic, long-tail keyword traffic and personalized vs. local rankings.
Branded keywords, traffic coming to your site via queries containing your brand name, are oftentimes more an effect of outreach programs while non-branded are an effect of SEO. Long-tail keyword traffic, the iceberg below the water, measures all the variations of popular keyword phrases driving traffic to your site. Finally, personalized vs. localized rankings are everything that will appear above traditional search results – at times wreaking havoc for those used to a certain ranking position.
Combine the insight of Zwicky and Comstock – for instance – analyze branded traffic in markets where media buys are heavier, and you have an indication of the effectiveness of your ad campaigns in driving traffic. Analyze corresponding revenue and you have an indicator of the effectiveness of your ad campaigns towards sales.
Glick closes the session by continuing to urge audience members to see how data fits together, and to implement the types of tests that will show these connections.
‘Pseudo A/B testing,’ the process of adding new features to subsets of pages, can help illustrate the connections between minor and major website updates and corresponding changes to the bottom-line. Pseudo A/B testing offers infinite possibilities for analyzing the types of changes that can be made to compel bottom-line results when implemented sitewide.
The path towards online success is driven by data of a different stripe daily.
What metrics, or connections, have you found beneficial to look at?
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Is It The SEO Metrics Or The Connections Between? | http://www.toprankblog.com
Website Analytics vs. The Myth of 100% Accuracy
Let’s get this out of the way. 100% accuracy does not exist in website analytics. Repeat. 100% accuracy does not exist in analytics.
What does exist in analytics is data – lots of it – and with this comes fear.
Fear of looking at the wrong data. Fear of where to start. Fear of analytics failure.
This fear will only dissipate with knowledge. Knowing that analytics will never be perfect is a critical first step and a cornerstone shared during the session ‘Deep Dive Into Analytics’ at SES San Francisco.
Bryan Eisenberg, SES Advisory Board and NY Times bestselling author, moderated this session which included on its panel:
- Tami Dalley, Director, User Experience Optimization, ROI Labs
- Marty Weintraub, President, aimClear
- Matthew Bailey, SES Advisory Board & President, Site Logic Marketing
The beauty of an analytics session at SES is that those on the panel may sometimes be analysts or they may sometimes be statisticians, but they are always marketers. And a good marketing analyst knows that it’s the facts that tell and the stories that sell.
As such, Bailey shaped his presentation around four key points that make up the bulk head of the website analytics story:
- Intent
Every visitor that lands on your website is there for a reason. Bailey offers the example of a jewelry store pulling traffic for ‘watch’ based keywords. Within this segment, some will be looking to ‘buy a rolex’ while some will be looking to ‘fix a watch + san francisco.’ Based on the keywords this segment used to find your site, did content match intent? - Expectancy
Similar to intent, but expanded to include referring sites ranging from forums to blogs. Did the source that referred the segment, say a forum about watch repair stores in San Francisco, shape user segment expectations accurately in regards to what they found on your site? - Reaction
What ultimately happened when the segment of users arrived on your site? Did they bounce immediately? Convert? Did they do what you intended them to do? - Behavior
Whether the user bounced, exited or converted, what behavioral clues did they drop along the way? Did they bounce after a mere ten seconds? Exit after visiting multiple pages? Convert directly from where they landed or within just one step?
Remove these items from a numbered list, and add context, and this becomes an actionable story:
Users arriving at my site using San Francisco watch repair related keywords, or coming from local websites geared towards watch repair services, are bouncing at a rate of 85% and converting at a rate of 4%. However, those that land on my Rolex repair services page from this same segment bounce at a rate of 60% and convert at a rate of 10%. If I optimize my Rolex repair page for ‘rolex repair + san francisco’, I may capture more conversions.
Of course, the answer is never quite so simple. Dalley and Weintraub illustrate this as they share detailed real world case studies and conversion reports, respectively.
Dalley’s case studies detail how the slightest change, from a page’s design to a customer’s location, can drastically shape results. The key to making an actionable change is to start with an educated hypothesis before backing it up with the right data for proof points.
And this means overcoming a fear of data and digging in, as repeated by Bailey.
Since Weintraub is sorely misrepresented in this post, primarily because nearly any written word would be a severe injustice to the energy level he brings to his presentation, below find potential conversion reports or data ‘dig-in points.’ These are reports that you can pull from your analytics to make a decision from today. The list below was both leveraged from and inspired by a list of deeply ‘unsexy’ (Weintraub’s words, not mine) possible conversion reports shared during this session:
- Conversion by time of day
- Conversions by rural Pennsylvania city
- Conversions by mobile device
- Conversions by web browser
- Conversions by keywords containing the keyword ‘green dress’
Please add your own unsexy, or even sexy, conversion reports or analytics stories via a comment below.
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Website Analytics vs. The Myth of 100% Accuracy | http://www.toprankblog.com
Mobile SEO: It’s About The Value, Not The Viral
Take a deep breath if you feel one step behind in terms of mobile Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If the crowd size for the session Getting Mobilized! Mobile Marketing Strategies at SES San Francisco is any indication, you are in quite good company.
The session, moderated by Paul Cushman, Senior Director, Mobile Sales Strategy, Yahoo!, featured on its panel:
- Cindy Krum, Chief Executive Officer, Rank-Mobile, LLC
- Sandeep Aggarwal, Managing Director, Internet & Software, Caris & Company
- Michael Martin, Owner, Mobile Martin
“Mobile is a channel, not a strategy,” states Kushman. “Channels may change, but marketing strategy is marketing strategy.”
Creation of a mobile app (whether for iPhone or Android) for no other reason than to launch something ‘really cool’ carries roughly the same weight as creating something viral just to create something viral. Both are fun, both are consumed, and both are easily forgotten.
True value is invisible. Think of a neighborhood restaurant website that appears at the top of mobile rankings whenever you search for it. The entire website and menu display in your mobile device just as they would on your PC. Even better, this same website takes reservations directly from its mobile version. Flashy and viral? Not really. Valuable and profitable? Absolutely.
In a sense, mobile search is local search. This statement isn’t to suggest that mobile SEO is of value only for local search, rather, its to drive home the point the point of personalization. Mobile search results should match what the user is searching for, their location, and their mobile device.
A few mobile SEO tips from the panel:
- Understand the popularity of mobile. In a statistic cited by Aggarrwal, 15 million plus Android phones are shipped each year. Find out how many of your website visitors are arriving via these devices, and whether you have to move on mobile tomorrow or yesterday, by reviewing your analytics.
- Realize that different mobile users will see your content in different ways. Feature phones (ie not Smart Phones) will oftentimes stack content from your site in a mobile browser while Smart Phones may display content either in zoom or postage stamp mode. Implementing mobile style sheets or building unique mobile content can ensure your content displays properly for any user. And because different mobile and traditional search listings can appear in the same search results, user agents and redirects can be implemented to ensure the user is served the right content.
- Duplicate content concerns? Don’t worry. According to Krum, mobile content is not counted as duplicate – even if it is the exact same minus the platform. This is straight from Google Webmaster.
- Create a separate mobile XML site map and ensure it is convertible to mobile.
- Implement microformats. More and more, these will appear in mobile search results as rich snippets which can help compel the click.
Full disclosure?
In my role at TopRank, I will not be tasked with creating a mobile app, developing a mobile site or working with any style sheets. We leave that to our genius-level SEO design professionals, like Thomas McMahon.
If any of the advice communicated in this post went a bit over your head technically, that’s OK. What is important to realize is what’s possible and what your users expect. Use this to shape the strategic direction of your campaign and tactical direction you give to your design team.
You can bet this session will shape one of the first conversations I have with my team post-event.
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Mobile SEO: It’s About The Value, Not The Viral | http://www.toprankblog.com
Blog Marketing & SEO: A Recipe For Success At SES SF
It’s been several years since I have seen TopRank CEO Lee Odden contribute to the panel ‘SEO Through Blogs & Feeds,’ so I was eager to sit in on this session to close out my first day at this year’s SES San Francisco.
Joining Odden on his panel, moderated by Craig Macdonald, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Covario, was PRESSfeed President Sally Falkow.
As Odden states, creation and promotion of a successful business blog is just as simple and just as complex as planning a friendly dinner party. How, exactly? More on that shortly.
While Odden opened the session, let’s begin with insight from Falkow as her remarks help expand the notion of traditional blogging.
“According to Google,” Falkow states, “a blog is simply a webpage with a feed.”
While someone reading a blog would certainly not see a repurposed, subjective news release with the same viewpoint as an objective, personal blog post – the point is succinct. Content marketing is bigger than blogs.
Content, especially content that carries SEO value, does not have to be a blog. SEO-focused content can be made up of everything from articles to product info. From alerts to recipes.
By expanding our definition beyond blogs, the dinner party analogy Odden offers can be applied across multiple types of content, just as the rules for a perfect dinner party across multiple types of gatherings:
- Who’s coming to dinner?
Your dinner guests are your audience. They are the sole reason for your content to even exist. Respect their wishes by creating the content they hope to see. - What does your audience like to eat?
In other words, what keywords is your audience consuming? Delight your audience by speaking about topics they want to learn about and speaking in their language. And because nothing is more boring than a dinner party that serves nothing but mesquite short ribs, look for new derivative recipes. Make hickory short ribs your reminder to blog about something new enough to be exciting, but relatable enough to cater to your audience. - What do you have in the kitchen?
Would you ever serve fried fish without Shore Lunch in the pantry? (If the reference is too Minnesotan, the answer is no. No, you wouldn’t.) Just as what you have in the kitchen will shape what you serve, the knowledge you possess can help shape the content you create. Target your content creation focus by leveraging what you know about yourself and what you know about your audience. And don’t forget to ask your audience what they think about your content. As a blogger, this means looking into your analytics. - Should we use the good china?
The answer here, is yes. And for a blogger, the good China is a good blog CMS. And the best blog CMS? WordPress. Seriously. Have you ever used Drupal? Have you ever been to gala event that served on paper plates? - Who can guests invite?
You want your parties to be the most popular, right? Then you have to spend time creating a party that is second to none while making it easier for guests to invite their friends and boast about the time they had. For a blog, this equates to links and social sharing – two key success metrics of a blog. Note that neither of these is likely to be easy. It takes time, practice and a taste of failure to finally throw that one legendary dinner party. It will take time to create the one post, piece of content, or even domain that will skyrocket in popularity. But you can expedite the process by helping readers share your content with parting gifts like social sharing buttons and thank you notes (ie RSS feeds containing your newest posts.)
Because blogging, cooking and entertaining are best when they are collaborative, we welcome you to add to this recipe for success via a comment below.
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Blog Marketing & SEO: A Recipe For Success At SES SF | http://www.toprankblog.com
Blog Marketing & SEO: A Recipe For SEO Success At SES SF
It’s been several years since I have seen TopRank CEO Lee Odden contribute to the panel ‘SEO Through Blogs & Feeds,’ so I was eager to sit in on this session to close out my first day at this year’s SES San Francisco.
Joining Odden on his panel, moderated by Craig Macdonald, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Covario, was PRESSfeed President Sally Falkow.
As Odden states, creation and promotion of a successful business blog is just as simple and just as complex as planning a friendly dinner party. How, exactly? More on that shortly.
While Odden opened the session, let’s begin with insight from Falkow as her remarks help expand the notion of traditional blogging.
“According to Google,” Falkow states, “a blog is simply a webpage with a feed.”
While someone reading a blog would certainly not see a repurposed, subjective news release with the same viewpoint as an objective, personal blog post – the point is succinct. Content marketing is bigger than blogs.
Content, especially content that carries SEO value, does not have to be a blog. SEO-focused content can be made up of everything from articles to product info. From alerts to recipes.
By expanding our definition beyond blogs, the dinner party analogy Odden offers can be applied across multiple types of content, just as the rules for a perfect dinner party across multiple types of gatherings:
- Who’s coming to dinner?
Your dinner guests are your audience. They are the sole reason for your content to even exist. Respect their wishes by creating the content they hope to see. - What does your audience like to eat?
In other words, what keywords is your audience consuming? Delight your audience by speaking about topics they want to learn about and speaking in their language. And because nothing is more boring than a dinner party that serves nothing but mesquite short ribs, look for new derivative recipes. Make hickory short ribs your reminder to blog about something new enough to be exciting, but relatable enough to cater to your audience. - What do you have in the kitchen?
Would you ever serve fried fish without Shore Lunch in the pantry? (If the reference is too Minnesotan, the answer is no. No, you wouldn’t.) Just as what you have in the kitchen will shape what you serve, the knowledge you possess can help shape the content you create. Target your content creation focus by leveraging what you know about yourself and what you know about your audience. And don’t forget to ask your audience what they think about your content. As a blogger, this means looking into your analytics. - Should we use the good china?
The answer here, is yes. And for a blogger, the good China is a good blog CMS. And the best blog CMS? WordPress. Seriously. Have you ever used Drupal? Have you ever been to gala event that served on paper plates? - Who can guests invite?
You want your parties to be the most popular, right? Then you have to spend time creating a party that is second to none while making it easier for guests to invite their friends and boast about the time they had. For a blog, this equates to links and social sharing – two key success metrics of a blog. Note that neither of these is likely to be easy. It takes time, practice and a taste of failure to finally throw that one legendary dinner party. It will take time to create the one post, piece of content, or even domain that will skyrocket in popularity. But you can expedite the process by helping readers share your content with parting gifts like social sharing buttons and thank you notes (ie RSS feeds containing your newest posts.)
Because blogging, cooking and entertaining are best when they are collaborative, we welcome you to add to this recipe for success via a comment below.
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Blog Marketing & SEO: A Recipe For SEO Success At SES SF | http://www.toprankblog.com
SES San Francisco Keynote: BJ Fogg On The Power to Change Behavior
BJ Fogg, Director, Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University gave the opening keynote on day 2 of Search Engine Strategies San Francisco. BJ is perhaps best known for promoting the concept of “captology,” a word he coined to describe the overlap between persuasion and computers.
In his book, “Mobile Persuasion,” BJ proposes the theory that the mobile phone will soon become the most powerful channel for persuasion, more influential than TV, radio, print, or the Internet.
A visual explanation of captology:
Following is a summary of BJ’s key takeaways from his keynote – Hot Triggers: The Power to Change Behavior:
The other day, BJ was in his office at home checking email and an email came across with a message that he had been tagged in a photo on Facebook. He thought “awesome Facebook, I’ve been tagged in a photo.” He went in and checked it out – but got lost in Facebook and spent a lot of time there, more than he planned. How did this happen? He was “triggered.”
BJ thought, well, let’s look on the bright side of this. Facebook is doing something right – the way they are triggering our behaviors is through the following formula: put “hot triggers” in the path of motivated people. This has become his design mantra and is one of the most powerful formulas for marketers. However, it’s actually not new. Putting hot triggers in the path of motivated people is how it’s always been.
More and more, technology can deliver these triggers at the right time in a way that can be measured. If you look at Facebook, for example, as a platform that triggers behaviors you’ll notice they have evolved the platform in a way that does this. Facebook is (love it or hate it) the #1 persuasive technology of all time.
BJ taught a class on Facebook a few years ago and it was all about getting students involved. In 10 weeks and with no budget, they were able to create student project applications which attracted 16 million organic users. Their success was due to putting hot triggers in the path of motivated people.
What triggers via Twitter? Short links being shared of the best information. If people are following you, they are interested in some level in your content. Email is the grandfather of hot triggers.
Today’s tech dramas are all about control over the hot triggers – all companies want to be the ones who have that power. The cycle is as follows:
People who control the platform can offer triggers to users, those triggers can control behavior, and when you control the behavior you are in a position of power. Once you control the behavior you can create new platforms and control new platforms.
- Twitter evolved from texting.
- Facebook evolved from email.
Older platforms offer opportunities for new. Will new platforms like Foursquare become successful? We’re not sure yet, but you know you’ve got a platform when people pay you to put hot triggers in the path of users. It’s true for Google – look at AdWords for a simple example.
Considering the social sciences…
The landscape of behavior change is messy, convoluted and confusing. In the social sciences, things are messy and this is a reality.
The question is: what actually motivates people? The good news is that most humans are (fairly) predictable. It is the context surrounding us which makes us seem complicated. A lot of psychologists might think I’m wrong, but it’s my theory.
The 3 dimensions that motivate people:
1. Pleasure/pain
2. Hope/fear
3. Social acceptance/rejection
If you try to motivate too much, it gets ugly and can backfire. Use the lightest touch that works for success. Example companies using this well are eBay feedback numbers or LinkedIn connections.
MAT is the model: motivation, ability and trigger. All three must be present at the same moment for behavior to occur. If one is missing, behavior will not happen.
Also a key point: increase ability by simplifying, not by training. Making behavior super simple is how you’ll achieve success. Make it so easy people can’t move forward without doing what you’re trying to do.
Simplicity has the following elements:
- Time
- Money
- Physical effort
- Brain cycles
- Social deviance
- Non-routine
The user needs to be motivated and able to do what you asked them to do, but that’s not enough. You need to have a trigger as part of the path. Live with this concept, look at behaviors in your life and try to understand behaviors in terms of the MAT model. It’s not just accurate, it’s a practical way of looking at the world.
Technology always changes, but human psychology stays the same. Study human psychology in tandem with technology so you’re able to recognize how to achieve results. Consider what’s working in successful platforms from a sociological standpoint and how can you integrate them into your projects.
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
SES San Francisco Keynote: BJ Fogg On The Power to Change Behavior | http://www.toprankblog.com
Content Marketing Optimization – SES SF 2010
TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden gave a solo presentation at Search Engine Strategies 2010 on content marketing optimization. Following is a summary of Lee’s comprehensive presentation including 10 essential steps for your organization to achieve success.
The core of any search or social media marketing program focuses on content. But what exactly is content marketing? It’s creating and distributing relevant content to attract, acquire and engage customers which you know detailed information about.
It’s different than search – where you’re seeking in-demand phrases and creating content. In content marketing, which grew out of the B2B marketing space, you’re developing personas. In addition to this you should activate the intersection of search and content marketing.
Customers are expecting more. It’s not enough anymore just to publish features/benefits and expect someone to buy something. First they search, then they ask their friends, then they purchase. Sales cycles are getting longer and consumers are getting smarter.
Content is why search exists – to organize the world’s information. Content is also an outcome of social interactions. And, search engines are indexing much of that social content.
Content is essential for social SEO and sits at the intersection of search and social. What many traditional marketers are doing to leverage content and give customers what they want is delivering content in many avenues (press releases, blogs, videos, Ebooks, webinars, etc.). What if you leveraged search in tandem with these items to expand their reach.
To do this, let’s consider what has changed recently in the world of search.
SEO’s effectiveness has not changed, it still equals increased conversions. SEO is in fact the most effective online marketing tactic as ranked in a recent TopRank poll on digital marketing tactics.
Search itself however has changed – the major engines are constantly changing the landscape of search results. A best practice of SEO is staying agile and following how engines are serving results, shifting what you are doing based on that.
If it can be searched on, it can be optimized – and that’s what guides a holistic online marketing strategy.
For an optimized content strategy – start with goals. What are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to chase just sales every month or are you actually trying to build engagement and a community which can help scale all results?
Fundamentally, what search is about is increasing revenue – but don’t just think about it like this, consider that it can also reduce costs. People don’t just search to buy things; they also search for many other reasons (i.e. – what if you can reduce call center costs by answering common questions on an optimized page).
Where do search and social media collide? It’s at the point where you create content.
10 Things to consider to get the most out of content and SEO:
1. Goals
Increasing revenue is key, but there is more to establishing goals. Think of building engagement (and permission) with an audience.
2. Buyer personas
Buyer persons leverage demographic and psychographic information on customers in order to provide content that actually resonates.
3. Keywords
You’re doing keyword research already for SEO, but what about social? Think about this: in the way you conduct keyword research to discover demand for search terms you can also conduct social keyword research. And, social conversations drive search. If you attain insight into what it is people are talking about, you can use that to fulfill future search demands ahead of competitors.
4. Content & digital assets
The first thing is to make sure you are actually publishing new content. If you understand your customers, you understand what it is they need and should be answering this through content. But where to get content? There are many avenues, including tapping social channels and taking inventory of existing digital assets (for example, you may find you have offline media you can put online. No matter where you decide to take inspiration for content, you will need to create it consistently.
5. Editorial plan
After understanding of an audience, you’ll need a plan (informed by keywords). Further, understanding all elements of where people are in the buying process will help create content for prospects in all stages.
6. Operationalize SEO
Many folks in the content optimization process within a company might not care about SEO. But if you can share keyword lists with team members to inculcate their messages with, these team members can help. It’s important to make everyone a part of the process.
7. Develop off-site assets
You can search-optimize your website, but you need to socially optimize your website too. This includes building off-site assets. This is important and comes into play when repurposing content. Creating unique versions of content on social destinations and linking back to the original can help get your content up and off your site. When designing your strategy, plan in advance to repurpose content in a compelling way across platforms.
8. Socialize
You’ve got to build social networks. If you are repurposing content to various destinations that have social networking components – you need to take advantage of building a community there. For example, if you aren’t creating connections within StumbleUpon or other social sites, you will never truly tap them. You need to build an audience anticipating your next story.
9. Promote
Build it and they will come is a fallacy. Bad content with a great title will win against great content with a boring title. Part of your editorial plan must be promotion. If you engage with audiences in the course of developing networks, you start to understand how to share it. Also, and a key tenant of social media optimization, you need to be promoting content in a way that demonstrates value.
10. Measure
Not just web analytics or KPIs, but also take a look at social media monitoring and engagement metrics. You can monitor what people are talking about and how they are reacting to your content. The takeaway is to ensure you’re leveraging both web analytics and social monitoring offsite.
Key takeaways:
- Develop & optimized content with persons in mind – go beyond just the keyword you are optimizing for
- Create and promote content regularly
- Develop channels of distribution & social links
- Leverage both web & social media analytics
Q&A
At what point are you ever concerned about duplicate content?
If you have great developers and can mix/match content, you can avoid duplicate content while mashing up and repurposing. The link footprint also makes a big difference. Make a certain percentage of change to the content in order to make it unique and useful for search engines and users.
How much new content and on what frequency do you need it to satisfy users and search engines?
Search engines would love it if you published consistent unique articles every day. But it has to do with the audience you’re trying to reach. As a takeaway, you need to start somewhere – so let’s say you’re thinking about videos. Consider creating a video every month (or even 2 weeks) – choose an interval and keep at it. Be patient and stick with it, the right strategies will pay off. There is no “magic interval,” but consistency is crucial.
When you try to teach 20-30 web editors how to re-purpose an article, how can you ask them to re-write it without frustrating them?
This shouldn’t be done after the fact, plan it out for someone to create and repurpose that content originally. It can create debate when done after the fact because it doesn’t set expectation. Also, be sure to share the results with that person from the extra piece of content they created. Reinforce success by sharing metrics and you can motivate your team.
How do you determine that you have created buzz or reached a “tipping point” for clients?
A social media monitoring tool or your web analytics tool will allow you to see results of your efforts and see spikes in activity. What you’re monitoring lets you use the results.
We’d like to start syndicating our content for backlinks – how should we start?
Make it easy technically for content to be syndicated (via RSS, for example). You could create another topic-specific site and syndicate there (along with other useful, niche-relevant content). If you could do some clever queries to blogs that are open to guest posts, that could be a good avenue to find other sites who would be interested in your content.
We want to engage in social content, but we’re afraid of negative comments about our brand. What should we do?
If users are already saying these things about your brand, why not have those discussions in your own backyard. This provides an area to respond to them. What if because you do have a blog, someone decides to comment there as opposed to doing something like submitting to Rip Off Report where you can’t respond? At least here, you have the ability to counter the negativity and share your side of the story.
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Content Marketing Optimization – SES SF 2010 | http://www.toprankblog.com
10 Actionable Clues & Predictions As To Where Search Marketing & Social Media Are Going Next
Where do forward looking industries look when asked to look further?
This was the core question behind the SES San Francisco panel session, ‘Search – Where To Next,’ moderated by Graham Mudd, Vice President, Search & Media, comScore, Inc.
Joining Mudd were the following search marketing professionals / soothsayers:
- Brian Kaminski, Chief Operating Officer, iProspect
- Marc Poirier, Co-Founder and CMO, Acquisio
- Shashi Seth, Senior Vice President, Search Products, Yahoo!
So where are search marketing and social media definitively heading? Would you believe that no one quite knows for sure?
That said, below find 10 actionable clues and predictions that can help guide our direction as search marketers:
- Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop to look around once in a while, you may miss something – Ferris Bueller. Shared by Kaminski at the open of his presentation, this quote was used to illustrate the death of the Sony Walkman, slayed by the iPod and a lack of evolution. Key philosophical insight for us to keep in mind whenever we feel as though we are on top and can stop evolving our offerings.
- Data is the new creative: seen on the final slide of the presentation offered by Poirier. As search transforms from the channel, to one of several, the amount of data needing analysis will multiply exponentially. The workforce to invest in today is the workforce that will be able to transform mounds of data into creative content, solutions and insight tomorrow.
- Data will move from advantage to basic necessity – In a prediction by Kaminski, data will transform from something leveraged by the smartest marketers to something that will spell the death of any marketer who ignores it. As Adam Singer notes in another post covering this event, one of the secrets of current top converting websites are their ability to make data-driven decisions.
- Those who hit 3 out of 10, will end up in the hall of fame - Baseball – is there anything it can’t teach us? What data can you point to that says social media will help you boost your sales or increase your online exposure? Better yet, what data can you point to that states it will not be an undue risk for your company? While you try to find out, your competitor will be developing the next great social campaign, learning from three big wins and seven big mistakes they make in the field. Because data is everything, it can also be handcuffs. Never underestimate the power of trying something.
- Personalized = Profitable – Insight offered by Seth, but repeated by all, is the idea that the more personal search results can become, the more the potential for profit. As such, common human benefits – from the best restaurant two blocks from our current location to your best friend’s opinion – will seep their way into all search results. The importance of optimizing for local, mobile and social all tie into this.
- Mobile search will greatly outpace PC Searches in the next 5 years - A prediction offered by Kaminski, supported by the dual growth in the popularity of mobile applications and prevalence of local search results. Are you optimized for mobile?
- One website does not dominate in search - It’s simply terrific that your website specializes in both Yamaha and Pioneer speakers. But in an effort to create competition, variety and a better user experience, search engines will do what they can to ensure your site does not dominate the speaker category. Focus on your core offering and expand your channels.
- Media will be used to drive search. Search will no longer be the net – Per Kaminski, the current online marketing cycle ends with pulling the user in the net of search. More and more, marketers will benefit by driving search queries, planting targeted keywords in campaigns to drive targeted inquiries.
- Searchers will continue to gravitate towards content they find useful – What marks the difference between insight and obviousness? The amount of people actually following through. If every company were dedicated to sharing value through search or social channels, rather than simply promotional materials, this would fall more towards the latter.
- Search will be less about keywords - Sketch and search, a new Yahoo! mobile application will allow searchers to find local businesses with no more than the scroll of a finger on a mobile application. At no time will a keyword be entered in this search. Are you mobile and local ready?
Agree, disagree? What do you think the future holds for search and social media marketing?
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
10 Actionable Clues & Predictions As To Where Search Marketing & Social Media Are Going Next | http://www.toprankblog.com
Conversion Optimization Secrets – 21 Must-Follow Tips – SES SF
The average conversion rate for a website is around 3 percent, but many websites convert at 10 percent or higher. What are they doing right that you’re missing?
Bryan Eisenberg, NY Times Bestselling Author gave a solo presentation on the secrets of top converting websites and how you too can achieve high conversion results. Following is a summary of his presentation.
What exactly is conversion rate? In essence, conversion rate is a measure of your ability to persuade visitors to take the action you want them to take. It’s a reflection of your marketing effectiveness and customer satisfaction. For you to achieve your marketing goals, visitors must achieve their goals first.
No one should settle for a conversion rate of less than 10%. Looking at top retailers, many have conversion rates greater than 15% monthly. What are they doing that you’re not?
Well, the reason is everybody’s website sucks. There just aren’t enough resources to make it perfect.
Increasing conversion rates is both simple and difficult. The process is not really that mysterious. An analogy would be considering how to become the best basketball player – to do this, it’s a fairly obvious path: practice and dedication plus patience. Michael Jordon didn’t become great without practice. It has to be part of your corporate metabolism to make website changes.
The three basic items that impact conversion:
- Relevancy
- Credibility
- Navigation
With that in mind, following are the 21 secrets of top converting websites.
1. They communicate their unique value propositions and unique campaign propositions. There is no product, no brand that is universally known. If users don’t find a reason to buy, they’ll leave.
2. Their offers are persuasive and relevant. Understand what offers actually motivate your customers and provide them.
3. They reinforce the offer site-wide. Every page should seed the offer (and make sure the offer is persuasive).
4. Maintain scent – in other words, similarity between pages to ensure you don’t lose visitors. Effective online marketing maintains consistency and meets expectation. Elements need to be connected as part of a process. So if you have a certain type of creative on one page or ad, it should also be present during the next step of the conversion process.
5. They understand the customer buying process. Consider the issues your customers face when purchasing a product and promote them clearly.
6. You must appeal to different personas. Different people make decisions differently – some people are more left brained, some right – some logical, some emotional. Personas build predictive models.
7. They don’t do slice & dice optimization. This is what tool vendors promise about multi-variate testing, but it’s in many cases the wrong approach. Consider the 4 personas: spontaneous (seek top sellers), humanstics (care about reviews), methodicals (find by genre) and competitiveness (search). When you understand your customers, you can test more effectively. Test for impact, not variation.
8. Leverage social commerce: use the voice of the customer. Amazon is a great example; they get customers to help promote the product.
9. They use reviews for navigation – i.e. show ratings and reviews (top products, sort by rating, etc.). This can directly increase conversion rate significantly.
10. They use social commerce for conversions.
11. They use social commerce for credibility: adds a layer of social proofing to products (other people thought something was great, so you will too).
12. They use social commerce for user testing. User testing used to be cost-prohibitive, but it is now within everyone’s reach.
13. Use persuasion principles such as scarcity, reciprocation, authority, consistency, consensus, liking and urgency. Consider using your thank you page to upsell in a compelling, relevant way.
14. They even make forms more engaging. Anything you can do to make a form not look like a “DMV form” helps increase conversions. Don’t make people register to buy from you – use a thank you page for that.
15. They provide point of action assurances. Leads lose effectiveness the longer you wait to respond to them. Set expectation for when a response will be sent.
16. They keep you in the process. Make it clear to users what they’re getting at every step of the way. Use it to keep people seduced and going through the process.
17. They consider email preview.
18. They budget for experience. Most people don’t have a traffic problem, they have a conversion problem. Take the time to build better customer experiences. That’s Amazon’s secret, at any given time they have around 200 tests running on their website.
19. They utilize a system for prioritization. If you have a list of 75 items to fix on a website, start simple, not necessarily what you think is highest priority.
20. They make data-driven decisions. The secret to making analytics work is to create a to-do list. Figure out what marketing efforts or parts of your site have challenges.
21. They know how to execute rapidly. The one thing about the web is how fast things change. Execution is not an event, it’s a way of life.
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Conversion Optimization Secrets – 21 Must-Follow Tips – SES SF | http://www.toprankblog.com