Creating content costs a lot of money. Good content which attracts and engages your target audience takes a serious amount of time and investment.

Getting the most out of your content spend is essential in achieving a good ROI on content investment, which is why you should always upcycle content rather starting from afresh each time.

Why Upcycle?

1. Content is expensive, so get the most out of it
2. Not everyone has the time to consume long form content
3. A good piece of content can be upcycled multiple times with little effort
4. Ideas are easy, but good ideas are few and far between
5. Different types of media can be taken advantage of to reach different types of people
6. Upcycling is used to produce new content that is aimed at solving the problem of the user
7. It helps by making complex processes simple and more easily understood.
8. Upcycling helps explore aspects of the niche in greater detail
9. By upcycling you may reveal other aspects of issues that may require further content
10. Allows you to drill down and focus on specific aspects of the original content without the distraction of other topics

Most do not employ the tactic of content upcycling, so employing the tactic will give you an edge in the marketplace over your competitors and increase the ROI of your marketing budget.

Many times I have seen companies spend thousands of pounds on an infographic, just to waste that investment by leaving it on a virtual shelf after the initial promotion.

This is wastage.

Focus on getting the most out of your content, there is no need to re-invent content each time. Upcycling will save you time and money.

The Concept

What can you upcycle?

The best content to target for upcycling is long form content that address big, single issues such as “How to make content marketing work for my business?”

Using this as an example you can create numerous pieces of interesting content from it and will give you the fuel to power your social media to allow your tribe to come and warm their hands on the fire you build.

“How to make content marketing work for my business?” is a big question that any business that is considering investing on content marketing has to ask. It’s a common question I am asked when I am brought in to coach the content team of a business and so I know that there are many ways to drill down into the subject to create upcycled content.

Big questions like this are fundamental and can be answered many different ways. Which is important because not everyone would read a 2,000 word article, which is what I would first suggest for answering this question.

The reader needs to be presented with the medium that they are the most comfortable with at that time. The 2,000 word blog post is great for those who have the time to sit still and read, but other people are more distracted and need shorter, punchier, even more visual material.

A Real Life Example of the Benefits of Upcyling

Bob runs a business and commutes 40 mins every day in the car. Because he does not have time to surf the web reading blog posts he loads up on podcasts to listen and learn in the car. He can then learn enough to talk to his internal team about a subject or talk to an outside agency about it.

Whilst listening to the podcast there is little distraction, but there is no way to initiate a click through so the information has to be tailored to reside in Bob’s mind until he can get to an internet connection and perform the action required.

He listened to a podcast that was upcycled from an original blog post the creator wrote on his blog after it had also been upcycled to various other media and published on numerous other social media platforms. Bob remembers enough about the podcast and searches for the name of the author on Google and then clicks through, establishing stronger connection with the brand.

Let’s rewind.

The author wrote the blog post, turned it into a slide deck, created a presentation which was then recorded and published on Youtube, then turned into a podcast. The individual slides were tweeted out over a period of time creating increasing the occurrences of possible connections. The stronger visual images were shared on Pinterest and Tumblr.

Because Bob couldn’t remember exactly the title of the article, he had to Google around. But, because the author had created some many occurrences on the web, the author had increased the chances of being found.

Bob eventually found the original article which contained a strong call to action, which Bob then took. Bob was already primed for the call to action because of all the micro content which had been promoted. The result of which enabled the brand to establish a good connection which resulted in a successful call to action.

Benefits of Upcycling with Social Media

Upcycling is very useful in social media as a promotional component to the main content, because it is very easy to create bite sized pieces of content which can be easily digested. Taking elements of the original content, reformatting in new media and distributing the fresh content around social media accounts.

Places And Methods Where Upcycled Work Can Be Used

• Quora
• Slideshare
• Youtube
• Video intro/outro
• Soundcloud
• Webinar
• Google hangouts presentation
• Tumblr
• Medium
• Facebook group
• Facebook page
• Linkedin status update
• Linkedin page & group
• Tweet
• Twitter profile image
• Snapchat
• Forums
• White Paper
• Ebook for email list
• Kindle book
• Pinterest
• 500px
• Instagram
• Contests for user generated content
• Introduction over email for lead generation

Quick Guide to Upcycling to a Slide Deck

1. Identify the key points of the content, this should already be done when you roughed out the content
2. Put the key points of the content into a PowerPoint
3. Find a graphic of image to place as the background
4. If you have typographic skills make the text look amazing, if not the background image will carry the visual.
5. Give the slide deck a strong title page making sure you cite your name and the name of the website you are promoting.
6. Publish on slide share
7. Promote on all social media accounts

Some of the slides will be more powerful than others, take the more powerful ones and sprinkle them out via your Twitter account over a period of time. You can automate this part of the process using the Tweetdeck autotweet function.
However if you do this you must be prepared to turn it off if events change.

This is not a fix and forget tactic, you don’t want to be promoting content in the middle of a natural disaster and make you look like an idiot.

Be prepared to rearrange the auto tweets and even stop them.

Tumblr

If you have a tumblr account and you should really only have one if your tribal strategy justifies it. Post a humorous or shocking part of the slide deck. Out of 50 slides you would probably only get one slide that would justify.

This is not about numbers, it’s about quality and increasing the power of your brand.

Tumblr is mad for animated gifs, if you have any video in your content consider turning them into gifs. This requires a bit of technical and editorial knowledge. If you know how to do it, it’s easy, if you don’t it’s very hard. This kind of thing can be easily outsourced.

Youtube

Once made into a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation it is very easy to then turn it into a video. PowerPoint makes it very easy to do these days and there are many other software solutions such as Camtasia where you can record the screen with an audio track.

The slides will cover overviews, or chapter and sub-chapter headings. Your audio will cover the body content. If you are upcycling an article this is simply a case of reading out the article and matching it up with the slides.

We don’t need the video to win an Oscar, most of the visual design work has already gone into the slide images and text.

Another way to do this if the content is strong enough is to host a webinar on Google hangouts. If you have a following or are part of a tribe which is interested in the specific issue you are addressing and they should be else why create content around it, then you can live broadcast your slide deck and present it with people watching and record this.

Yes, this is scary and intimidating, but the content you have created should be strong enough to present to people interested in the subject and doing this will help if your quest is to become a leader in your niche.

Live presenting helps inject an energy into the presentation that may not be there if you are going solo, it also helps by forcing you to a deadline and giving you a big reason not to get distracted.

Google hangouts is great for this as you can record it on the Youtube system and then publish it after editing.

You may find that you also pick up business this way and strengthen any connections you have with your tribe.

Conclusion

Why we don’t Upcycle.

Because we get bored with the subject, we want to move on to the next interesting bit of content and try out a new thing. But you are not a content creator to interest yourself, you are creating content to build brand, to sell stuff. You create content to do stuff, not to be entertained.

It can be a grind going through the process of upcycling, so consider outsourcing it. Once you have done the fun part and create the original content you can quite easily and quickly pay others to do it for you. And if you chose people who are expert in their field, they will do it a lot better than you.

At the end of the day, to upcycle is to pick the low hanging fruit, mostly because everyone is not yet doing it.

The post How Upcycling Can Increase Your Content Marketing ROI appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

In many ways niche marketing is old school. The technique has been around for many a years and although some of it does still hold water it is getting a little ratty around the edges.

Previous to this I wrote an article about how to find influencers within a niche, but I want to show you how you can also use the concept of tribes to improve your ability to identify influencers and have more of a chance in persuading them to help you out. So instead of searching for the influencer within a niche, we need to find the tribes who are important, infiltrate them and identify the influencers within those tribes who have the influence to empower our published content and promote our brand.

Niche Marketing

Working in niches was great when the focus was on keywords, generating more web pages optimised with those keywords and then throwing a bunch of links at it. But things have changed a lot since that was all you needed to do.

Although not entirely gone, the focus now is more on people than on search engines. Which may be a good thing as it shakes things up a little. With Google increasing the heat on mechanised and programmed ways of boosting your rankings, it helps to take a more human based approach, rather than an algo busting approach.

In other words, we should be producing content for people, rather than the algorithm. But we don’t simply target everyone, we organise people into tribes, to enable our content to be presented to people who are most likely to respond to the message.

What is a Tribe?

A tribe is a group of people gathered around a common mindset, or a common set of goals. They are people travelling in the same direction at the same speed. Although they may be many, they act as a singular entity and can be described in the singular.

A tribe can have an outward appearance which draws initial attention, but it is the shared thinking that really sets them apart. They may have similar lifestyles, cultural experiences, net worth… etc. If we analyse a specific tribe it will give us a good example of how to recognise and how to communicate with tribes.

The rise of the MAMILS

The tribe of MAMILS (middle aged men in lycra) are quite easily spotted due to their expensive bikes, age, sex, and the fact that they are wearing lycra. These are men who in their mid-life crisis go for two wheels of the bicycle, rather than the traditional 4 wheels of the sports car. The tribe is defined by:

• Their expensive bikes which denotes disposable income
• Interest in health, slowing the aging and how they look physically
• They are not embarrassed by wearing skin tight, sometimes brightly coloured lycra
• They have the time to be able to ride their bikes
• Role models are provided in the form of Bradley Wiggins and Lance Armstrong (yes, he is still a role model to some)
• They are excited regarding discussion of bike tech, such as what material a bike is made out of and gearing systems
• Mapping out routes, creating lists of gear to take on long treks.
• Using social media to promote their MAMIL image and to make sure their followers know what they get up to

It is obvious if you are in the cycling niche you will already be aware of this tribe and possibly one yourself. It would make sense to market to this tribe with their disposable income active participation in social media.

Important to Segment

By segmenting the tribe, we are able to focus on aspects which may be a cross over, for example the MAMIL tribe would probably be interested in gadgets such as Fitbit and GoPro. If you are in the fitness or gadget space, this could be a useful cross over and you could create content specifically targeted at the MAMIL to ensure a more focused piece of content. The more a published piece of content is targeted at a specific group of people, such as those in the MAMIL tribe, the more likely that you will be rewarded by social mentions, links, and website. Further segmentation of this tribe would include:

• Fitness clothing
• Cycling holidays
• Sports injuries
• Cycle, travel and life insurance
• Credit, to purchase that new “Graphene” bike
• Male “issues”

Segmentation of a tribe is very useful as it gives us more focused content opportunities. Most segments will overlap with other tribes and it’s useful to pick out those who overlap with many tribes, thus increasing the potential of the content produced.

Overlap into your sector can also occur. If you sell sporting goods, sports fashion… etc. You would find it useful to create content that serves both your tribe and the tribe of the Mamil. Even so called boring industries such as insurance and credit can have an overlap. Each tribe has a potential to overlap with the subject you are working on.

When you segment a tribe, you are looking for opportunities for cross over content. By identifying tribes who have a natural overlap with your publishing goals, it gives you a ready make target market which you can publish to.

If you were niche marketing you would be focusing on the keywords which people would be searching for, rather than the people themselves. After you have found the keywords, you still have to find the people and most niche strategies have poor processes for identifying, communication and then influencing the tribe.

To be able to communicate and influence the tribe you must adopt a lot of the aspects which defines them as members. You must learn to talk their language and walk among them. You do this by reading what they read, listening to the same podcasts, watching the same Youtube clips. The old stalwart, web forums are a good jumping off place for a lot of this research as forums tend to be used by the hard core or the inner circle of the tribe.

With a web forum you can quickly tell which people have been around the most and represent experienced and influential voices.

There will be subjects that define the tribe, these may be contentious and are great debating points within the tribe. For example cyclists will have common strong views on safety on the public roads and opposing views, such as which type of gearing system is best. Choosing which tribes to target may be an art in itself, but if you collate a list of the most active tribes online, who have a good disposable income and who are fanatics. Then you can sift through them to spot overlapping areas.

For example, bathroom fittings and the middle aged cyclist. Not much overlap you would think. But bathroom fittings fall under the label of a ubiquitous product. Everyone uses a bathroom fitting at some point, plus they do specific things and it’s simply a way of working out the problems the middle aged cyclist can solve with bathroom fittings.

• How to find the best attachment to clean a muddy bike
• How much is a power shower that will massage my muscles after a long ride
• Can I get a heated towel rail that will dry my lycra shorts.

For such overlaps there are not going to be a massive amount of subjects to create content around, but there will always be some. Other ubiquitous areas that people find hard to create content around are:

• Insurance
• Accounting
• Plumbing
• Time management

And many others, the key to creating great content ideas in these subjects is not to simply think about the subject, but about the overlap with a tribe. Once you start focusing on a specific tribe the ideas will flow.

Let’s keep using the Mamil tribe, but any would work. It’s obvious what would interest the cycling tribe about insurance, but it also raises the aspect of road safety which is of huge interest to the cyclist. Also the issues around bike insurance and not getting your bike stolen in the first place. So an article about the “Ten best locks to use to stop your bike being stolen”, would be a perfect overlap for the subject of insurance and cycling. Of course you would make sure the insurance client would have a cycling insurance policy to sell on the back of such an article. On the subject of accounting, a large number of cyclists are either self employed or have some taxation need that requires an accountant, thus creating a useful overlap where content can be created. We look at the tribe and their needs and problems and create a number of content ideas.

• How I can write off my next bike purchase off against tax
• Should cyclists pay road tax
• If I cycle to work, can I claim expenses

Plumbing, we covered that with bathroom fittings and as plumbing is a wider subject it should be easier to find more overlapping subjects.

Time Management

A more interesting subject for a writer to create content around as we are always dealing with issues of time management, deadlines etc. But the cycling tribe, particularly the middle aged cycling tribe have some specific overlapping interests. As they are interested in pushing themselves to the limit and have a good interest in stats and timings, content can be created around:

• Top ten mobile apps to optimize bike routes
• How to stay motivated by using a set routine
• How to plan a two week mountain biking trip in the Andes

In conclusion

Use tribe marketing to find overlapping subjects with your own publishing or content marketing strategy. Run through a list of influential tribes finding overlapping areas. If your subject is ubiquitous you will find many. Becoming friends with a tribe also means that they have your back and will help with promotion issues.

The post Is Tribal Marketing the New Niche Marketing? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

It is important when you set about creating content that you know and understand the audience which the content should be for. Rather than producing broad content that tries to please as many people as possible, it is more effective to focus on a specific group of people. Even targeting just one person if that person is influential enough to promote your message or have the ability to give you a powerful link.

A journalist, or other media person is a good example of the type of singular people you could target. Other types are power bloggers which have huge followings and have a tribe which follows them. Individual tribes within a niche will have their leaders and they may represent opposing tribes within the nice. The SEO world is a good example of this as there are a variety of systems and strategies, which leads to great debates but can often confuse the person new to the world. This aspect is useful to the content creator and leads us to our first theme.

Influence the Influencers

The is no tool that measures influence, but there’s a way to spot the effective influencer for your brand.

There are key influencers in almost any industry, and the internet is where you will find the major players. The potential for links from stroking these egos is simply huge.

The most influential bloggers will have thousands of followers, and if you can get any one of them to notice you, then your egobait will not only put you on their radar, it will get you an initial boost via a link or social media mention.

It’s very easy to find people who are worth creating content which appeals to a specific group. If you know your niche, then you should have a very good idea of who is an influencer for your brand. Then you could start a blogger outreach campaign to create exposure and build relationships. Including these kinds of actionable ideas in your content marketing strategy with industry influencers can bring you only benefits. 

The important aspect would be to prepare very well each step, so you’ll get a list of contacts, create an engaging email, look through their blog/site to see if they are a great fit for your content, implement the idea, follow-up by sending an email after the article was published. Another thing that could bring added value is to mention them on the social platforms when you promote the blog post. More engagement means higher chances of connecting with influencers on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook. If you’re nurturing this relationship, you can meet with them at conferences or other events. 

However, some people have to do specific projects in areas that they are not familiar with. It’s quite easy these days to isolate those who are influential and in a way it’s self-evident who is influential because if you have not heard of them, then they cannot be that influential.

Spend any time in a niche, and you can soon see who the influencers are. Quick ways to identify influencers are:

• Is the person cited by multiple blog posts?
• Do they have a regular, popular podcast?
• Have they published a book that is cited on other bloggers lists?
• Do they speak at multiple conferences?
• Do they have a high number of followers to people they follow on Twitter?
• Do their blog posts garner comments?
• Do other people engage with them on Twitter and other social media?
• Do they head any industry bodies?

Is the Person Cited by Multiple Blog Posts?

As Oscar Wilde once said, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.”

To have influence, people first must know who you are and then must talk about you. This does not always have to be positive, many people take to social media to mention someone they dislike and then be influenced by them. It’s a fact that some people’s intent is to be talked about, underlines this method. Such controversial figures win when you talk about them, and will even link to them which of course is a win for the influencer.

Some people deliberately make statements specifically designed to get links and social signals, even though it may be that the majority of the people talking about them don’t even like them. This is because people find it irresistible not to talk about such characters.

Obviously positive people get mentioned too, particularly in smallish, business niches like SEO and social media. But don’t make the mistake that people only get cited because the author thinks they are cool or “nice”. They get a mention because the author deems it worthy that they have a mention.

Do They Have a Regular Podcast?

There are of course many influential people who do not have a podcast, but very few people who have a regular, long term podcast who are not influential. Therefore, this is a highly effective way to quickly identify the marketing influencers in a niche.

A podcast takes time, effort and confidence to produce. The bar to entry is incredibly high. I would also include regular video broadcasts in this too, let us not get too hung up on terminology and focus on the fact they are producing audio/video content.

Have They Published a Book That Is Cited on Other Bloggers Lists?

It is incredibly easy to publish a book these days, even I have been able to do it. But unless you can create a train of thought which lasts for more than 10k words it’s going to be tricky. Again, not everyone who has a book published is an influential content marketer, but if they have it’s another tick in the box, and Amazon makes it very easy to find out how many books the author is currently selling by looking at the “Amazon Bestsellers Rank”, which has its own algo. Any book over 500k is really not doing very well. Likewise if the book is at 10k, then lost of people are buying.

Another good place to track an authors influence is Goodreads.com, where you can easily find if the author has genuine followers.

Do They Speak at Multiple Conferences

It’s actually not that hard to speak at industry conferences. I have spoken at several, but you do have to have some recognition or following to be considered. Someone with no blog, no social media presence or no other perceivable fame is going to be considered. Therefore you can be confident that if they are speaking at a conference then they are at least worth checking out.

If they are speaking at multiple conferences throughout the year then this raises other signals worth investigating.

One thing worth doing when you know someone is speaking at that very moment is to track mentions of them on Twitter. Most people these days sit in a conference with a smartphone, tapping away on twitter, making comments about the speaker’s performance. If you look for influencers on Twitter you have a high change to find a lot of information. If there is a lot of chatter about them, then they have more influence than if there is nothing. Of course the chatter can be negative, but at least they deem the person of interest enough to be talked about. And if someone is live Periscoping a conference talk then this indicates even higher influence. Note, this does not count if the individual works for the speaker.

Do They Have a High Number of Followers to People They Follow on Twitter?

Most people look at someone who has 200k twitter followers and think, “Wowsers, this person is very influential”. But then if you note that they are following 200k people then doubts begin to creep in. Whilst someone who has 10k followers and is only following 500 people, could be deemed as being more influential, as the tried and tested technique of getting people to follow you by following them back has been much abused over the years.

This is not to say that a 200k/200k follower, followed ratio means that the person is not influential. But it does raise a flag that requires further investigation and raises the issue of potential sock puppet account created for the explicit reason to boost numbers. There are a number of agencies online which offer such a service, but as I do not agree with this practice I wont be linking to them here.

One good example of this is Kim Kardashian.

Note, that the reality queen only follows 129 people and yet has 33 million followers. You may not like it, but this woman has true influence.

Do Their Blog Posts Garner Comments

If people when they blog attract huge amount of comments, then they probably have a lot of influence. You may think that it is what the person is saying is attracting the comments, and this is sometimes the case if the content is exceptional, but most of the time the commenters are reacting to the power of the individuals brand. This is quite clear when you track lessor influential people who produce just as good content but do not tick all the other boxes.

Which is why “quality content” is all you need, is a fallacy.

For content to be influential it matters just as much who is producing the content than what it contains.

Which is why personal brand is so influential and why someone like Kim Kardashian can tweet a picture of a cat and it get thousands of retweets.

The counterpoint to this is that it is possible to be influential and get no comments, but that those who do have comments definitely have comments.

Therefore zero comments does not equal zero influence, but it could.

Do Other People Engage with Them on Twitter and Other Social Media?

This is a good way to figure out if those 200k followers a person has on Twitter are sock puppet accounts or that person is indeed a social media influencer.

If they have constant, regular discourse with their Twitter followers and you assume these people to be real people, then this is a great flag for being influential. You will often note that some quite important people who previous to social media would never speak to the masses, now involve themselves in lengthy chats. There are no gatekeepers now, so if you want to speak to Lord Sugar, Stephen Fry, Piers Morgan, Cailtin Moran, etc. you can.

Of course some people are Twitter addicts and by their very nature invite conversation. But does this increase or decrease their influence. Does their openness for dialogue make them more influential, I think it does. A lot of people were already influential before they took to Twitter, but it’s useful to note how they have used the platform to increase their influence.

If you are trying to increase your own influence in online marketing, take a look at how a lot of these Twitter celebrities act and the attitude they take to social media discourse. Most have other things going on other than twitter, and so have something real to Tweet about.

If someone gets little to no one engaging them on social media, then it is self-evident that their influence is little to non-existent.

KLOUT and Other Tools

I know people love to ask about which tools to use, but in my view there are no definitive tools and each tool has the possibility of being artificially manipulated, but if you take your evidence from a number of sources and filter it through your own knowledge you will find the results far more effective.

In Conclusion

Trust your own eyes. Bury yourself in the niche, read everything, the more you know the more acute your perception of the niche will be. Don’t trust one or even two sources, get as many as you can get your hands on.

The post How to Identify Influencers Within a Niche appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Exceptional content will get you to the number one spot. In this article we look at a piece of content from Canva.com, a design blog and yet they rank no.1 from “taking long walks”.

Content is not King, the focus should always be on the reader. Find out what excites the people you are publishing for and give them what excites them, which is a little different than giving them what they want, because they will always tell you they want something other than they actually chose to read.

The evidence of course is in the data, let us look at an example of exceptional content and try to figure out what is it about the content that makes it exceptional. And maybe ask some questions of our own that will help us increase our own potential to create exceptional content.

Exceptional is an interesting word, we bandy around superlatives and it’s important we agree on terms used to give valid descriptions. I say this because a lot of marketers use superlatives as punctuation rather than for analysis. Exceptional means it is uncommon, above the average, stands out from the rest.

Here I am going to pick out exceptional content I have found that are worth analysing and picking over.

This from Canva.com, which is a graphic design tool enabling you to produce quick and effective graphics and images for your web content.

Benefits of Walking: Why the Great Minds Take Long Walks

Imagine as the writer trying to sell this idea to the blog publisher, “Hey that Steve jobs, he liked to walk and he was creative, how about I do a piece on the psychology of walking”.
The publisher may possibly reply, “Why the hell do we want to encourage people to go walking? They can’t use our tool if they are out and about.”

However, the type of people who are reading the Canva blog, lapped this content up.

Getting 246 links and being the 9th most linked to page on the website.

We see from the Social Visibility tool that the sharing has been exceptional.

A massive amount of Facebook shares and a smaller, but highly significant 2k+ shares on Twitter.

But why such a high response for a design website for what is essentially a piece about physical exercise?

At this point we can only speculate and use our knowledge of the sector and the types of people of people who read the Canva blog and the type of people who respond to such content.

The data can only take us so and then experience and intuition kicks in. If experience didn’t matter and it only depended on the data the people performing this analysis would be the same people flipping burgers in McDonalds. Not that there is anything wrong with flipping burgers, but you simply have to learn a strict process to be able to do the work. No art or experience needed, you just follow the process.

Which is why it’s important you have people around who have spent decades in creating content if you wish to learn how to get it to go exceptional.

What are the elements of the story?

A number of famous, respected people also walk.

Steve Jobs is mentioned, not only that but Marc Andreessen nearly killed him.

A promise of creativity (always needed in this space).

It cites “scientific evidence”, reinforcing the authority of the blog post.

Tapping the desires of the design community, a statement that “this will make you more creative” is catnip to a designer. It’s a must read, even if just to verify that it’s not what it says.

The piece goes on to break down the process of increasing your creativity through walking and the benefits you will get from such actions. In other words it delivers.

Conclusion

We can learn a lot from other successful content. But we can learn a lot more from exceptional content. There is little point in simply copying the content, what is learned is about your state of mind. It’s about how to look at a piece of content, not for the way you like it, but for the way the reader is going to like it.

Ask the questions:

• Why are people liking this content?
• Where are the people from, as in what tribe?
• What are the people actually responding to, is it because it has the name “Steve Jobs”, in the article or is it more because the reader has an aching desire to become more creative and thus earn more money and get more respect from social peers?
• How is the content constructed, are special skills or insight needed, if you don’t have them what would you need to get them?
• Who is creating exceptional content?

But there are other questions you need to ask yourself when digging around for exceptional content which inspires:

• What is your definition of success? Is your target specific?
• What do you need to do next to create exceptional content and what gaps are missing in your skillset?
• Who is your tribe and do you have preaching rights to the tribe you are targeting?
• Why do you need to create this content and are you sure you are the right person to do it, if not go find someone better than you?

These are questions I constantly get people to ask of themselves when helping them create content. Once people get to ask the right questions and answer them honestly then it’s not that hard to increase your ability to create exceptional content.

The post An Example of Exceptional Content appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

And when I say actionable I mean:

• Under budget
• Content creator has the correct skill set
• It doesn’t harm the brand
• It can be produced in the time allotted

I like for you to understand that when I say “actionable” content, this is what I mean.

It also outlines part of the content strategy.

I suspect that a lot of people say “content strategy”, when they are talking Cow Daddy Doodoo.

I doubt they actually know what they are talking about. Mostly because you can see from their content they haven’t quite thought it through.

It’s a process.

Not too dissimilar to how you would construct a an App or what we called in the old days, a “programme”.

As a content marketer you will need to create a steady stream of attractive and interesting content. Not only do you need to keep the flow going but it has to be content that people not only want to read but want to share with others.

No longer are we looking to create content for search engines, unless the content is going to be appealing to real people the investment of cash and time into such content is wasted.

There are lots of ways to create content but what you need is a process that allows you to create content continuously which is also geared to attracting and engaging real people.

This strategy guide assumes that you already think creating content for people and not search engines is the way to go and the methodology of “content marketing” is the way to get the message out.

A content marketing strategy is crucial to an effective online marketing plan. A content marketing strategy will have actionable, tactical ideas that can be implemented efficiently.

What is This

Seth Godin talks about Josiah Wedgewood in his book, Meatball Sundae, who seems to have not only invented the factory, but content marketing too. The factory is all about having a specific process that is used to create something or add value to something else and then pass it along, to be added too by the next process.

Now a lot of the time it is only one person producing the content, but they are competing with teams of people who each focus on one part of the content production strategy.

One person each will do the:

• Headline
• Graphics
• Body text
• Copy proofing
• Content idea
• Brand protection
• Define the target audience

And even after that there is content marketing, the larger teams will have an individual sitting on each social media account, all being co-ordinated of course by the content marketing manager.

Now if you are a one man band, and there is nothing wrong with that. You will pretty much do all of this yourself, a little word of advice from someone who is a one man band. Make sure you change your state of mind as you go from one discipline to another. To do most of this is about state of mind, if you have the right attitude you are mostly there.

Because the state of mind that can come up with a killer headline is not the same state of mind who can do killer graphics, or great copy proofing.

Mine are both awful, it’s why I mostly stick to headlines and content ideas.

1. Establish the goals of the road map.

What is the goal of the Marketing plan?

How does the content marketing plan fulfil the goals of the Marketing plan?

What is the goal of the content marketing strategy?

Have a specific goal for your content production.

Knowing your objective enables you to plan an effective strategy, which avoids wasting time and resources. It will also help you to determine if the finished content has been successful or not.

What do you want to achieve?

How many links you want?

What type of links you want?

Do you want to increase your search engine ranking, improve awareness of your brand or increase membership to your website?

By having a specific goal you are able to maximize your time and plan an efficient production.

2. Identify Resources

Gather and assess:

• Digital assets
• Determine budget
• Skillset of each team member
• Tools and software
• Current content and success status
• Social media accounts
• Networking assets

Do you have a team available with the skills needed to complete the process, or is it necessary to outsource and hire experts.

What equipment is needed?

What research is needed?

Establish quality control.

3. Methodology

Project management is vital, and each element in the process must be planned in advance.

How do you create it?

Who is going to create it?

Define the type of media needed:

• Infographic
• Graphic
• Video
• Article text
• Plugin
• Widget
• Audio
• Slideshow

Decide what template it should be:

• List
• Article
• Competition
• Quizzes & tests
• Instruction & tutorials
• Statistical & analytical
• Editorial
• Curated
• Reblogging & blog comments
• Guest posting
• Surveys
• Calculators and apps

4. Identifying Targets

Who is the content targeted at?

Are you trying to reach a specific group of people?

Should it appeal to linkers or readers?

Different cultural “Tribes” have their own history, language, customs and icons. Identify your tribe and construct content to appeal to them.

BUILDING THE CONTENT

“Psychological Hooks + Narrative Story + Unique Content = Great Link Bait”

5. Theme

Decide which theme works best for you target audience; geek, news, celebrity, industry insider, brands, cute animals, etc.

6. Hooks

There are many different types of “Hooks” that will trigger an emotional response, and grab people’s attention. Use these psychological components to build your content.

Combining different hooks within the same content gives additional impact:

• News hooks
• Resources
• Humour
• Attack
• Sociality
• “Stats Porn”
• Unique content
• Controversy
• Debate
• Contrary
• Ego

7. Production Monitoring

Who is responsible for monitoring the process and identifying problems that may arise.

Always be prepared to adapt the original idea.

News research may uncover new opportunities that must be enacted on quickly. Who is going to do this and what power and authority do they have.

8. Do You Have a Headline?

If you do not already have the headline, get one as soon as the project allows, ideally you should start with one and adapt and hone as the project is worked on.

You may already have an idea for a headline, but allow for change.

Research headlines that already work.

Be observant…. advertising and tabloid newspapers can also be a source of inspiration.

Make sure you have a headline process in place and the headline is checked with peers before it goes out.

9. Publishing

Content should have primacy over other ecommerce communication.

Consider the web page your content will be published:

• Minimal branding & advertising
• Correct context
• Template design

Give primacy to the content, commercial signals intended to sell will get in the way of this. Over selling your product will turn off informational seekers and will have a negative effect on your brand.

10. Promotion and submissions

How will you let your people know your content exists?

What is your online network?

Use email lists, social media submissions, but also understand the limits of individual systems.

11. Measuring Results

How did it perform?

Which parts were successful?

Which parts were unsuccessful?

Analyse results against initial objectives.

What other opportunities have been presented?

Analyse technical results:

• SEO
• Online mentions
• Social platforms
• Links
• Offline media
• Industry specific conversation
• Direct sales
• Branding perception

12. Conclusion and Assessment

What has been learnt?

Have goals been achieved, if not why not.

If the content has been successful, when can it be reused?

Could the content be chopped up and reblogged or made into a slideshow, infographic… etc.

The building of a content strategy plan is straightforward and is simple in that your aim is to create content that people want. But because there are so many detailed steps in the process, it can be complex. Every part is important and needs to function at a high level, if the process is followed and every step is taken, you cannot help but create some interesting and exciting content.

The post How to Come up With a Content Strategy That Works appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

It’s useful not to mix up type of content with a theme of content. Type of content is more the mechanical aspects of the production, whilst theme is more about the tone or the narrative of the content, which will determine the feeling the end user is left with when the content has done its work.

This distinction is important as it determines the production requirement of the content.

Thus an infographic is not a “How to”, piece of content, but it can be. However, a “How to”, piece of content can be a video or a blog post… etc.. “How to”, content is something like, “How to decide where the Best Hotel in Cuba”, it is nothing to do with the type of content. Once you have your theme you can quickly tell what type of content it should be created as. In this case it would work as a blog post, Infographic, video… etc.

Theme and type should be both subservient to what type of person do you want to attract and consume the content and what do you want them to do after they have. Too many times I read about creating content for its own sake without little or any thought for the end result. Sometimes the excitement of content creators producing something in a new, cutting edge method, an HTML5 interactive infographic for example can obscure the reason why the project is being considered in the first place.

Types of content include:

• Blog posts
• Guest posts
• Surveys
• Contests
• Podcast
• Email
• Calculators
• Infographic

Blog Posts

Blog posts should be regular, timely and sometimes topical. Short and to the point works best, although there is a trend to create uber long blog posts to aid SEO. Brand perception is also increased by long, informative content.

Short and long form content types both work, but in different ways, it really depends on your audience and how you want your brand perceived. You could of course, always do both.

The bar for a blog post to be effective is extremely high due to competition and attentional dissipation, when considering it from a brand perspective. This means it must be worked on more than the average output of the competition and by people who are more skilled.

Guest Posts

Guest posting has had a bad rap in recent times as it has been abused by those simply wanting a link and nothing else. But they are a fantastic way to build your brand and tribe, the link of course still has an effect, but any perception by Google that you are merely after links or specific anchor text and you will be in hot water.

Guest posting is a natural extension of the blog post, but with the added skill of effective networking, and persuading other sites to host content.

When targeting specific tribes this technique can be extremely effective as relationships can be built where the competition are not building relationships.

Each positive connection should be seen as a brick in the foundation of the brand.

Surveys

Surveys, contests and reports are more complex and simply need more time to implement. By using people who are expert in this field, this content can be produced to a standard which will grab the attention of influencers in the wider media and influencers within a specific tribe. One big hit from this type of content can establish a foundation for years to come.

Surveys, and reports should be planned as one offs and fit in the cycle of the content production in a logical way to maximise the support that such content gets as these will require a higher investment. Subsequently that should be published as one survey every three months and one in-depth report every 6 weeks. The length of time between each large content investments allows the maximum ROI squeezed from each one.

Contests are best when they are topical and hook into the news. Once people start following a regular contest, it could be very powerful.

Podcasts

Podcasting and its more advanced cousin video blogging, is where the majority of the competition get left behind. Having a good, consistent podcast can set you apart in the sector. People love to consume content whilst away from the screen. People who are influential, love podcasts and will always consider a brand which produces one more highly than one that does not. For a podcast to produce an effective ROI it does not have to have BBC broadcast quality, it simply needs to give people what they want.

That lack of corporate polish actually increases the authority of the production.

Podcasting works if it is a continual and regular event as a successful one will build audience over time. A successful one is worth its weight in gold and is exceptional as a brand builder. The investment in one is high and so a fortnightly or monthly podcast should be considered. Although once set up the costs diminish and fold in to the other networking tasks which are being performed. For example to interview someone on a podcast does not take a great deal more work than interviewing someone over email. There is a great desire for podcasts, but because of perceived production costs of time and money they probably have not gone ahead with it.

Email

Building an email list is the mantra of many online marketer, and it still is a powerful form of communication and persuasion.

People request to be on an email list and they consider their inbox to be a special place and so tend to consume the contents of an email differently to other content. There is still good evidence to show that email is one of the most effective communications tool available for online marketers.

Calculators

For certain target sectors such as insurance or finance, calculators are essential content, by being able to solve complex issues regarding finances, travel and time it takes is something that people expect to be addressed.

If got right these mini apps can provide a huge boost to the brand.

Calculators are one off events and also need to be supported with other content to market them. These are essential for DQC and for its brand and I would suggest a new calculator which is focused on a specific issue every 6 weeks. This can be done in-house and fold into current development planning with the main quote tool.

Infographic

If done well, infographics can be very useful. However it does require a lot of investment and as there are so much competition from this type of content it has to work harder to provide an effective ROI. However, using data in a graphical form in a small way has shown to provide benefit, especially with the social media tribe who data centric and are always on the lookout for trends or techniques on how to be more effective.

Infographics are probably not the foremost best content to be produced from an ROI perspective, but could give a big win if a specific area is discovered for exploitation.

For example if a conversation for a mainstream journalists uncovers that they would help promote an infographic which is focused on a specific area, in return for helping the journalist with content and research, then it’s definitely worth looking at. Other than that, small, bite-sized data graphics which support a narrative could be published fortnightly.

In conclusion, there are a number of tried and tested content options available to the content producer. The simplest solution is usually the best and the danger is always that some creative type is going to want to do things which are a bit more exciting and experimental, but which doesn’t produce an effective ROI.

When it comes down to it, the best content is the content that works. Unless you are deliberately doing something experimental it’s best to stick to the tried and tested methods.

The post 8 Content Types Which Have a High ROI appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

What is a Content Audit?

A content audit creates a map which details all content assets of a website. It records the url, the page title, the type of content, tags, word count, how many links that page has both internally and externally and lists the number of social media signals it has generated and quite a bit of other data.

It allows you to assess the success and failure of content of both your site and competitors websites. It allows you to decide if there are any gaps that need filling or assets which need removing.

It should also detail the production history of the content, who created the content and if the content was outsourced and if so should then detail the cost and which outside agency was paid.

Why Is a Content Audit Important?

Knowing all the assets that exist on a website is both important for a website owner and also any outsourced agency who will be working on content, promotion or SEO. Having the documentation of the content audit handy so you can hand it to anyone new to the site who will be joining the team, is essential if you have a number of people working who come and go.

Also,being able to identify which type of content has worked in the past, which gets the most links, which gets the most social signals, allows you to plan a future strategy which is based on real data.

If you have a new hire, it is beneficial for them to get up to speed with the content you already have, as soon as possible. It helps with saving the time to answer questions regarding the content, as it is all there in the content audit. So if a new writer wants to know how the subjects of cats has fared in the past, particularly with Facebook, then it’s a simple task of searching through the content audit to get the data.

It helps to identify gaps in your content, this is particularly useful to the SEO who can match the content up against targeted keywords and find content gaps which will need filling if all targeted keywords are going to be fulfilled.
An audit allows for an effective content strategy to be built around it, or even to measure whether the current content strategy is working.

Content audits can of course be performed against competitor websites to identify weaknesses and strengths. If you find that one of your competitor is using a certain type of content extremely successfully, you can analyse if it fits in with your online marketing strategy and fold it into the content plan for a test run. Usually there will be enough competitors in your marketplace for you to analyse and develop a complete content audit of the whole niche. This is very useful if you wish to dominate the space, it enables you to allow others to test the market with differing types of content, spending money on both success and failure, to allow you to come in and only spend money on what has proven to work.

From the point of view of sales conversions, it can provide you with a clear view of what content is helping you in your revenue building process. It helps you to understand how a visitor navigates and interacts with the website.

The questions below need to be asked and answered before rolling up your sleeves and getting down to business:

When do you perform a content audit?
What tools do you need to perform a content audit?
How do you perform a content audit?
Who performs a content audit?

A content audit is needed when you want to have a complete idea of the content assets their usefulness and where gaps needed to be filled.
It is also useful in developing future content themes and types.

A type of content is the mechanical aspect for example, a blog post that is a listicle, an image that is an infographic, etc.

The theme is what story the content is telling, what tribe it is reaching out to, what culture the story fits in. I use the term “story” because it focuses on what is happening in the readers mind and not on the screen.

Our content is all about the reader’s mind and how what they are consuming is helping influence them to a specific action on behalf of the brand.

It is both a qualitative and a quantitative process.

We need to gauge both the quality and the quantity of content and their associated labels.

This will enable us to assess how to proceed in our content strategy.

1. Find every bit of content that exists on the website
2. Rate the content in terms of type
3. Rate the content in terms of social media and links
4. Sort the content into a success chart
5. Highlight content which supports the brand/content strategy and that which does not
6. Highlight gaps in the content strategy.

The content strategy is defined by the brand strategy which is defined by the marketing strategy.

The aim of the content should be specific, each piece should have its reason to exist.

Tools of the Content Audit

• Excel spreadsheet
• Xenu or Screaming Frog
• Social Visibility Tool (cognitiveSEO)
• Site Explorer (cognitiveSEO)

Xenu

This is the Grandaddy of the content audit. It’s been used by SEOs for years, and although it was not meant for SEOs and therefore is a little tricky to develop an efficient work flow for it, it did the job and did it very well. Not only that but it was and still is free. Click here to check it out.

It works incredibly fast and is of course multi-threaded. It is an excellent tool for quickly pulling out great headline and content ideas from competitor websites, as it lists the Title of the webpage.
You can easily export the results to an Excel spreadsheet for further curation.

Screaming Frog

The new kid on the block, although it’s been running for a few years now, is Screaming Frog. The first thing to say about this tool is that it has been specifically designed for the SEO and so has all the elements that was sorely missed from Xenu, the only small downside is that the Premium version is £99 per year, although there is a free version which can give you 500 results and has all the functionality apart from being able to save of export.

If you are a professional SEO this has to be part of your toolbox, although I am told there are still old timers who resist holstering their Xenu.

It reminds me I have never bothered with Meta tags? Do you?

It is able to report a number of extremely useful stuff such as page load time, word count, outlinks.. etc.

Next Step

You need to crank up the Excel Spreadsheet, which is essential for a content audit. This will be the where everything is gathered and organised into separate sheets, with the ability to import various columns whilst using the URL as the key.
You can if you want go advanced and introduce MACROS, however that is beyond the scope of this simple, step by step guide.

You may want to download an spreadsheet template so all the elements can be presented in a more logical way. The best one is from maadmob.co.au.

Social Signals

There are many tools available to index and collate the social signals of a website. This is now an essential part of the content audit as it reveals which content works well with the crowd. It is not a definitive indicator of whether or not the crowd does not like the content, as the content may not been have promoted properly. You can have the best content in the world, but if it is not promoted amongst social tribes, it is worthless.
But the audit can reveal what does work. This is crucial information and can shape your content strategy. Sometimes an audit can reveal hidden gems and give ideas of what future content to create, allowing you to increase the ROI of the marketing spend.
Which leads us to our next tool.

cognitiveSEO Social Visibility Tool

One of the tabs in your cognitiveSEO dashboard is the Social Visibility tool. This is an excellent way to see how the site is doing in the main social platforms of Twitter, Facebook and G+.
First thing it gives is a useful snapshot of the status of the social signal overall.

Here we can quickly see that the site has had an increase of +5% over the past 7 days. Where the Social Visibility Tool is really useful is the ability to track the social signals over time. This enables you to track the impact of specific content and promotions.

From the point of view of the content audit, the velocity of the social signals of a web page is probably one of the most important signals as it comes from the crowd.
Social signals for all pages are detailed in the “Most Shared Pages” section.

This gives even more data, all which can be downloaded and added to our Excel spreadsheet.

Obviously you can soon be drowning in data, and depending on what your focus of your content audit is will determine what importance you will place on each bit of data. But what is crucial is that you organise and sort in a way that enables you to see what the data is telling you and to be able to analyse quickly, and simply.

What About Links

Although we can get backlink data from the social visibility tool we really need to run a complete backlink analysis. This is the most powerful part of the tool and as you may already be well aware of what it can do I will skip over the detail of the analysis.

We need to know

• Which pages have links
• Where the links are coming from
• How powerful are the links in the eyes of Google

By correlating data we have gathered with the backlink data, it can indicate certain interesting aspects, such as:

• Do specific subjects get more links?
• Are certain promotion techniques better than others at getting links?
• Are social signals referring us to content which can get more links?
• Are certain content types more popular with social and link building?
• What content should we be concentrating in the future?

Conclusion

Everyone will have their own method of performing a content audit and you should develop the method which works for you. The work flow is just as important as the tools you use and having a methodology and a process is crucial to enable the results are reached in an efficient and speedily manner.

The conclusions of the analysis of the audit is shaped by what the purpose of the audit was in the first place, so make sure you have defined reasons for performing one.

If you are doing an audit for the first time, do not be intimidated but the data, there will be a lot gathered that will be useless to you. Concentrate of a few metrics and make sure these are gathered and presented in a logical clear format.

I would be interested to hear how you perform your own audits.

The post Step by Step Guide to Performing a Content Audit appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Forex is highly attractive with affiliate marketers due to the ease that people can sign up to the programs and the high pay out of commissions.

It also appeals because the currency markets trade 24 hours, Monday to Friday, so there is always a chance to make/lose money.

I look at three popular Forex blogs and analyse some of their top linked to content to see what makes them successful.

Earnforex.com

Earnforex.com has 2 content types which are getting good links as we can see from the top 20 linked to pages, which are calculators and e-books.

Calculators

198 links + 93 links from a position size calculator = a haul of 291 links

Earnforex.com calculator, a simple design which is clear and easy to use

Earnforex.com also have a position size calculator in the same simple, straight forward design. Straight forward design is very important as you don’t want people to be thinking about how to work the tool, you just want them to use it, get satisfaction and then link to it.

Calculator – 93 Links

E-Books – 77 Links + 44 = 121 links

E-books in the Forex market have been a staple for link builders for many years. Due to the way the fact that forex trading attracts those who try to get an edge by learning additional technique, any piece of information that is able to give the trader the slightest edge against the market is deemed of value.

Thus, e-books that are deemed as being tasty are highly linkable.

Mahifix.com 

Mahfix have a tasty John Paulson infographic from the clever people over at Evokeseo who have some tasty, interactivity going down.
Infographics still have the ability to suck up lot of natural links from authority websites.

251 links + 6 = 257 links. Not a bad haul.

Interviews – An interview with Paul Rotter. Who is apparently is a legend amongst scalping traders. It’s an exclusive interview and so has some currency. – Links = 26

Interactive Game – A nifty app which lets you play at guessing the value of your Facebook friends. – Links = 36

Top 50 Forex Blogs to Follow in 2014. What I like about this content is its attention to the strong design component of the MahiX brand.  –  Links = 27

Forexcrunch.com

Forexcrunch seem to have done it a little different, being around for quite a few years, it seems to have earned its links simply by blogging about the news and the power of the owners ability to write magnetic blog posts, which consistently attract links.

I will not list all the links that have been attained by each blog post, as it’s consistently high for the top 20 links. The date of some of the content is a few years and over all that time the content has been earning at compound rate.

Some people balk at paying three figures for a blog post, but this is what good quality costs. Obviously the SEO community has been used to paying $5 a pop for word filler created in some smoked filled ashram on the outskirts of Bangalore. But the content idea that consistently builds links, the brand and helps build the tribe is deemed as more of an authority than one who isn’t.

Egobait

Creating a list of the best blogs in a niche is a common piece of content which performs several tasks at once. It enables the website to announce it exists to the owner of the website it is linking to, or at least the person who notices the web traffic for those sites. It induces the act of reciprocity, which has been identified and described by Robert Cialdini, the Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University and author of the book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

 It is rather crude if not done well, but if done in an elegant manner and backed up by a website that is the best thing since sliced bread, it can be very powerful.

You can easily find content ideas such as these by searching for “best blogs in (keyword)”, of “top blogs in (keyword)” Note how the content that works gives extra information and has an easy on the eye design.

It is not simply about throwing up a bunch of links.

E-Books

It’s been known for some time that writing a book is a signifier of authority and knowledge, not only does it show you know what you are talking about, it allows you to go deeper into a subject and explore things in detail.

Although in some people’s minds the e-book has a bad reputation due to numerous people marketing low level, badly written e-books for the aim of generating quick cash. But with social media a potential reader can quickly check if the e-book is worth reading through social proof.

In sectors such as web design, programing or Forex, the e-book is a perfect medium for people to consume dense and detailed information. A Forex service can also use the e-book as training materials which help position the service in a helpful way.

Useful information is needed in sectors where there are specific issues with getting to grips with complex issues. The way the e-book is designed is of course very important as it needs to appear attractive to the reader.

News

Blogging about the news, or what is topical within the niche is often overlooked in articles about blogging. This is because it’s hard and if you are selling a course on blogging or your blog about blogging wishes to attract large amounts of people, then the crowd is attracted more if you claim it’s all easy peasy.

Writing, or blogging the news in an authoritative and interesting manner is hard if you don’t know your subject. Or expensive if you have to hire someone to do it for it in an accurate, expert, consistent way.

A forex blogger who can do this is sitting on a pile of gold, because people need accurate, up to date, verified information quickly and without having to worry about the efficacy of it.

Conclusion

We couldn’t cover all the content techniques that were used in this blog post as there is just too much and if you go deeper into these sites you will notice other content techniques being used.

This isn’t magic bean stuff, it’s not a dark art. It is there for all to see. You can easily analyse why a website or a blog works, add your own spin and then replicate it for your own site. You can’t do everything, but you could do one thing very well.

A great blog will do a few things very well, as demonstrated by the above analysis.

The post Getting Content Ideas for the Forex Niche by Analyzing the Backlinks appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Surveys are an excellent way to build links and increase social signals to your website.

There are lots of reasons why you should use surveys in your link building campaigns. Here are six of them:

1. You get a great understanding of your client’s customers
2. You get data that is truly unique
3. You get quotes and testimonials from real people
4. You get a ton of ideas for blog posts and articles
5. You can gather case studies volunteered by respondents
6. You see specific areas you need to promote (and stimulate sales)

Let’s look at a number of successful surveys and their results with the cognitiveSEO tool.

A Survey on Software Developers by Fusion.net

Survey says: 92 percent of software developers are men – Published April 8th, 2015

Received 31 links from 7 referring domains.

The Daily New Links page for that specific piece of content looked like this:

It had a very healthy dofollow/nofollow ratio:

Gender issues are an excellent theme for survey content as media love to use the data as a reference to articles, according to PR Survey expert, Ken McGaffin.

Wedding and Dating Surveys by Chillisauce.co.uk

The event based website, Chillisauce.co.uk commission an annual survey on dating and weddings. They survey 5,000 people and from this create numerous types of content, including:

• Video

• Animated Gif

• Tasty Charts

“Age trends: Have You Ever Hooked Up With A Fellow Wedding Guest?”

• Links and mentions for traditional media such as, weddingsideasmag.com

We see that 2 of the top linked pages for chillisauce.co.uk are surveys, attracting 23 and 18 links respectively. One survey concentrates on dating and another on weddings.

Although they are not the highest linked to pages, the benefits of a survey are not just for links, they can provide the basis of further content which can get more links

Surveys Used in Content Marketing

Surveys can work in any industry, in this survey the subject of “How to get publishers attention”, is raised. Which is an extremely important aspect of content marketing and according to these publishers, it’s not done very effectively.

Editors of authoritative publications get 100’s of editorial requests a day, from PR and marketing types, so it’s very important to listen to what they say when explaining what does and does not work.

At the same time, writers are desperate to be sent stories and information which can be turned into effective articles for their publication. They have the desire, but are in a position to pick and choose which pitch they respond to.
Kelsey Libert from fractl, drafted 20 survey questions and got responses from more than 500 leading digital publishers, and created an article regarding the survey on Marketingland.com.

500 top writers responded to the survey request.

The article on Marketingland.com achieved 121 links from 29 domains.

But fractl are clever when it comes to content and also made it into a slideshow presentation. This is why surveys can be extremely cost effective by serving as the basis for numerous content creations. Each can be promoted in their own right, increasing the number of occurrences.

[slideshare id=36803362&doc=buzzstreamwebinarfinaldeck-140709134251-phpapp02]

Surveys Can Create Evergreen Content

This piece of content was published on the 20th of August 2014 and yet it is still getting a good amount of link. Demonstrating that surveys are excellent for making evergreen content.

Conclusion

Surveys are an excellent Brand and PR tool, they are used successfully by a number of brands, picking up links and social signals and creating evergreen content along the way.

Creating a survey is a hefty investment in time and money.

The way a survey turns out is heavily based on the quality of the questions and the theme it is covering. You can gather important and useful information from it, so it’s sensible to devote a good chunk of time and do it right.
For a survey to be responded to it must strike the right tone and create a desire in the reader to spend time in filling out the survey. There are ways in which you can pay for participants to complete your survey, but it is always more powerful for people to volunteer to take part.
There are numerous pieces of content you can create from a survey, which can further pull in links and social signals and can position you as an authority in the eyes of the mainstream media. Especially if you’re competition is not bothering with this technique.
Even if your survey flops you could always submit it to the SF Weekly, Pointless Study feature.

The post Why You Should Be Building Content Marketing Using Surveys appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Content Audit + Content Strategy Analysis = Tasty Revelations

The great thing about doing this is that the website does not even have to be in the same industry, as the themes are usually able to transfer. It can be very useful to look at specific industries, pick out the websites which are obviously doing it right and drill down to find out exactly why.

Using this technique you can be sure that you will employ a highly efficient content strategy and one that your competitors will always be playing catch up with. Because you are being proactive and reaching outside of the industry bubble.

This is a partial content audit, performing a full content audit or even a content inventory on just one of these sites would take several days. What I am doing here is picking out the most interesting things I find and leaving alone the regular stuff or the stuff that is actually harming the sites.

This is in no way to be seen as a complete picture, but as a series of examples of what can be highlighted and found out during such an audit.
If you were to run a full and proper content audit you would have to report back the complete picture meaning the good, the bad and the ugly.

A content audit performs the following:

• Detail 100% of the content assets under the domain and sub-domains of the website.
• Gauge the power and effectiveness of each content asset
• Determine what category the content asset is, ie. Article, Infographic… etc.
• Asses the probability of re-using the asset to gain, links, social share, increased brand awareness… etc.
• Define the overall brand image that current content assets are communicating and if this is aligning itself to the marketing strategy.
• Sort the content into different audience categories, if an e-commerce site then some content is informational and for the purposes of content marketing, possibly to a specific tribe or sub-culture.
• Identify types of headlines which work for your market.
• Identify specific types and themes of content which works for your website.
• Reveals the content structure of the site and how this effects the SEO
• Uncovers duplicate content issues.
• Lists the keywords and how they relate to best performing content

Content Strategy

Also we are looking at the Content Strategy, to enable us to see where the content assets are benefitting the websites. We do not know the marketing strategy of the websites so we couldn’t say whether or not the content is following the marketing plan. If we were to do a full and proper audit and strategy we would be taking these factors into account and using them to measure the effectiveness of the website.

It is important to remember that the website has a specific task to perform and it is this task that the content must directly and indirectly support. The task for an e-commerce site is of course to sell more stuff.

Content marketing, SEO, inbound marketing, UX design, branding, blogging… etc. all indirectly support the primary aim of the website, which is to sell more stuff.
The aim of a content strategy is to support the overall marketing plan, and effectively deploy content assets that support the indirect tactics such as blogging… etc., to get more stuff sold.

For the purposes of this analysis we are focusing on the direct goal of these websites to sell more cameras. This means to rank higher in the SERPs and to get more social shares to people that are in the market for digital cameras or who will pass on the content to those that are in the market. We are not interested in making noise for its own sake, but for the content to attract those who are at present or who are in the future going to be interested in buying a camera.

However there is another group of people which we are interested in influencing. These are those who may never buy a camera but have great influence in getting people to buy cameras, even if it is indirect. This a journalist of a major news site may not be interested in a digital camera but may cite the website in an article about digital cameras, allowing those who are hot to buy to come to the website and enter sales funnel of the website.

The phrase I have chose to use as keyword phrase is

Panasonic Lumix G6 + 14-42mm Lens

Alternate phrases for this keyword are:

Panasonic Lumix G6 + 14-42mm Lens (G6KEB-K), Black + FREE 8GB CARD
Panasonic DMC-G6KEB-K

The brief:

Detail the content assets and strategy of the top 5 e-commerce sites for photographic equipment, and provide future opportunities.

I performed a deep search using the cogntiveSEO tool.

I was looking at and interested in:

• Links
• Social shares
• Interesting headlines
• Content ideas
• Content Promotion ideas
• Influencers
• Headlines that attract a lot of social shares

I am ignoring minor shenanigans for the purpose of this report, unless I find something crazy and worth reporting.

The search engine results page listed the following:

I wanted to focus on pure e-commerce sites, bricks and mortar stores taken out of the list, along with review sites or sites that make money through affiliate sames. Amazon and Ebay were also removed.
Interestingly, review sites were listed is roughly equal measure than the e-commerce sites but did not have the top rankings.

1. Amazon
2. Wexphotographic
3. Department store John Lewis
4. Techradar
5. Bhphotovideo
6. Photographyblog
7. Whatdigitalcamera
8. Ukdigital

Lets focus on the wexphotographic.com website and drill down

We see from this screenshot of the top 25 linked to pages that 5 of them are informational pieces of content rather than straight out sales pages.

Link 4 – Competitions and quiz’s can be very powerful for content marketing, they can attract a lot of attention both in links and social signals and allow the brand to develop emotional ties with participants and those interested in the contest.
It may be worth re-linking internally to this page and creating new content that talks about the photographs in the contest. This web page content is an asset to the site and should reused, it could easily be reformed and sent out as an email newsletter or posted on a Facebook webpage.

An asset that has been paid for in terms of time and money that just sits there and does nothing is a wasted asset and represents opportunity.

Link 5 is a direct link to a .jpg and it’s listing 26 links, whilst it may raise the profile of the domain and Google may look on this as a positive factor, you could direct this link equity elsewhere. I would suggest a 301 redirect to a page that still has the original image on (don’t be like Moneysupermarket.com and redirect to the front page, destroying the content that generated the link in the first place) the page and so the reason for the link still exists, but by having it on a template page the link equity can travel around the site. This is a benefit to the other pages.

A very useful camera review. Not only listing the features, which anyone can do and is not that useful. But actually taking pictures with the camera and showing, rather than telling you what the camera can do.
This may be a great case study of how best to present a camera review and as half the sites in the top 20 of Google are camera review websites. By e-commerce sites creating the same type of content that the review sites do, they may squeeze the review model out of the SERPs. Especially when you consider that the review sites get their income from the e-commerce sites by linking to them.

This model of content should be recreated for every popular camera.

The content from Link 10 was made 5 years ago. It seems that the piece of content has not been reused since. This means that the money which the content could have gone out to raise is left under the bed. Even if this content was trotted about once every year, would be a further 4 times it could be used.
Savvy sites like buzzfeed.com reuse content all the time, it helps reduce content costs, chopping this content up and putting it out on Facebook or even Tumblr would have a benefit.

When content has proven to attract links and be liked by people who will promote your brand, it is a no brainer to dust it off again.

Link 21 is an editorial piece on sponsoring the Norfolk and Norwich Open Studios celebrating its 20th year.

What this piece is really about is tribe building, or networking.

It’s talking about other people and non-competing businesses and also giving links, sharing the link equity. Reaching out in this way is very effective as the law of reciprocity comes into effect. Anyone given free publicity and ranking help is going to feel that they should pay it back at some point.
This could have been a jumping off point for further tribe or community building, but it seems that this is the only one. It would be very easy for the website to create a directory of independent photographers, thus building further good will.

Conclusion

We can see that even this shortened version of a content audit and content strategy has thrown up juicy stuff. As we only looked at the first 25 top linked pages, these are probably the strongest pieces. But a further digging down into the web pages could reveal further ideas for the site to reuse and even ideas that a competitor could use.

In our scan, the website, wexphotographic.com returned 741 pages in total and has 1,456 referring domains.

Let quickly look at the other sites that rank and the number of their backlinks.

Wilkinson.co.uk                                  has 143 pages with 400 referring domains
Camerabuster.co.uk                         has 160 pages with 532 referring domains
Bhphotovideo.com                            has 11,858 pages with 13,987 domains
Ukdigital.co.uk                                   has 139 pages with 283 domains

It’s interesting to note that the biggest winner was not the website with the most links, possibly they need to look at disavowing a few. I haven’t run that audit so I don’t know.

But it shows that whilst biggest is not always best, each website does have a substantial number of links and so they still are vital to rank.

No doubt we could find more content ideas and methods to build links from running the same audit in each of the sites. They would certainly reveal websites where links could be got.

The post Content Ideas from Performing a Content Audit on Digital Camera E-Commerce Websites appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.