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	Building Your Blog Into A Survivable Source Of Income Blogging is easy. Write good content and people will read it. But how do you take the next step and make it profitable? What does it take to make it your full-time gig? In their New Media Expo 2014 session, The Honest Truth About Professional Blogging: How We Lost Readers and Money During Our First Year, Amanda Brooks, Carol Cain, and Paula Pant talked about how to monetize and become profitable as a blogger. Get Started There is no perfect pattern. Make it up as you go. That’s what they did. First they started writing. A lot. About what? Find a niche you’re passionate about and you should be able to write forever. Don’t just pick something you think will be profitable. If you don’t know the topic, that will come through in your writing. You have to LOVE your topic. You can’t be an expert in something you don’t know every detail about. Pick a topic and start writing. Promote through social and build a following. Until you have content, no one is going to pay you. You have to build it and show others what you're capable of and merit getting that payday down the line. Cash In On Freebies Once you’ve been blogging and your writing starts to attract the attention of those in your topic industry, you’ll likely get offered free stuff. That’s awesome! You’ve been recognized as someone of influence and a company wants to send you their product for free, in hopes that you’ll review it and promote it for your following. While free stuff is great, you need to be careful. Don’t accept just anything. If you’re posting about products that aren’t related to your blog’s topic, your readers will not go for it and you’ll likely lose them. Not only do the products need to be related to your core focus but you need to give them honest reviews. Don’t just give them 5-stars because you got the product for free. This will only destroy your reputation and trust with your readers when they follow your bad recommendation and buy a crappy product. You can’t be afraid to say no if the product doesn’t align with what you’re focused on. Get A Real Paycheck So now you’ve got free products coming in, which give you lots of stuff to write about and reviews are a great traffic source. But how do you pay the bills? You certainly can’t pay them with free beer koozies, healthy snacks, and other freebies. It’s time to ask for actual money. This is hard the first time but it has to be done. Don’t fool yourself by thinking that after time they’ll see the value in your writing and want to pay you – it won’t happen. Why would they pay you suddenly if you’ve been working for free all this time? When a company offers you a freebie, in your reply simply ask them, “What’s your advertising budget?” The worst they can say is no and you get a free product anyways. Counter-pitch. They're pitching you. Pitch right back. You’ve asked a company to advertise and they’re looking like they will. So how much do you ask for? Don’t give them a number to start. Many times people throw out a number only to find that the advertiser very happily accepts it because they were willing to pay much more. Don’t sell yourself short. You’re valuable. It may only take a few minutes to write a great post for them but that fee isn’t just for the time spent writing that post. The fee is for the months or years you took developing your blog, developing your following, and developing your skill. Sponsored Posts Sponsored posts are another form of income for bloggers. Brands are looking to pay bloggers to post on their blogs. But be careful with your sponsored posts. If they come to you with cookie cutter content, that's an advertisement. Know Your Value – Remember what your blog is worth to you. You spent a lot of time and energy building greatness. Don’t hurt that with low quality sponsored posts. Say No If It Doesn't Fit – Don’t feel that you have to say yes just because you want to get paid. Your readers will respect that you respected them and didn’t post something that isn’t right for them. Authenticity In Your Reviews Is Key – The content on your blog needs to be genuine. Put your voice in it. It's OK to go back to them with a different idea or ask to write the post in your own voice. What’s Next? You’ve built a great blog that advertisers are paying you to be on. Now what? Grow that existing relationship. It's much easier to work with an existing relationship than finding a new client. Come to them with ideas. Companies don’t always have a lot of time to think about new and interesting ways to promote their products – they’re too busy running their own business. Feel free to pitch them new ways you can work together to bring them (and yourself) more business. The goal of every blogger is to get something out of their efforts. Be it validation, recognition, notoriety, or a ways to earn a living. For those looking to turn their work into a source of income and work for themselves, these tips can serve as a great guide to get started and make it pay. Build your blog into a great revenue source and let us know how it goes along the way. Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter. © Online Marketing Blog, 2014. | Building Your Blog Into A Survivable Source Of Income | http://www.toprankblog.com Read More » How to Make the Most of Vine's 6 Seconds #NMX Does your business utilize Vine for micro-content creation? The nascent video social network may not seem like a business-friendly target for social marketing, but there are several opportunities for engagement and retention within it. We may be conditioned to use Instagram or YouTube to tell longer video stories, but Vine's six-second limit forces marketers to truly be creative with their time. What makes a good, business-centric Vine video? Spud Hilton, Martin Jones, Jon Skogmo, Josh Entman and Richard Spalding explained the key traits in an NMX panel session. Emphasizing mobile social marketing first Vine is inherently mobile – they may have recently added a Windows client, but its foundation stems from mobile devices. That itself presents a unique opportunity for brands. Spalding noted that content created on Vine is instantaneous, spontaneous, and quickly shareable. Add the connection with Twitter, and you have a large audience at the ready. Long-form vs. short-form strategy YouTube heralded the age of long-form video content, and brands have been adapting to create high-quality videos for the platform. Vine is bucking this trend, emphasizing short-form, quickly digestible content. Hilton noted that while you only have six seconds to make your point, Vine's automatic looping function allows for exposure beyond those first six seconds. Jones noted that Vine humanizes your brand, specifically because it isn't high-quality or glossy. Content appears more spontaneous and authentic, and less forced. Encouraging experimentation The panel was adamant on Vine's B2C capabilities, although they were less confident about the network's viability with B2B companies. Still, Jones encouraged businesses to experiment with Vine's publishing style, as it is still a good way to convey who you are as a brand in short-form. The medium defines the message regardless. Don't mind the quality Many long-form online videos are expansive productions, shot in high-definition and littered with brand mentions in the endframe. You'll get none of that with Vine – and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The short timing and low quality forces brands to be creative – and in this business, creative content always triumphs over slick production. However, there are still some best practices to follow with Vine videos – and they can help separate your Vines from the rest. Entman encouraged brands to use jump cuts during filming – taking one static six-second shot doesn't help tell a story effectively. Know the audience As with many new social networks, Vine's audience trends younger – these are the next generation of content creators. However, Jones noted that business owners can leverage Vine by targeting specific personas and building deeper relationships beyond a 140-character Tweet. Re-target from other social networks Vine isn't alone in the social universe. The whole panel encouraged attendees to utilize Vine for retargeting – helping to establish an ongoing relationship with an advocate of your brand. Retarget followers with Vines, rather than banners. A six-second video carries far more power as a retargeting tool than a static web banner. Unlike Twitter or Facebook, there aren't many pitfalls with Vine content. While you may deal with a rogue tweet or an inappropriately timed status update, the only risk with Vine content is that no one will see it. That should just motivate you to keep trying — and let those six seconds tell a compelling story. How do you think your business could utilize Vine? Do you view it as more of a B2C property, or is there some benefit for the B2B crowd? Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter. © Online Marketing Blog, 2014. | How to Make the Most of Vine's 6 Seconds #NMX | http://www.toprankblog.com Read More » How UFC Is Throwing Big Blows On Social Media Big sports are big business.  There are billions of dollars to be made and no sport is growing faster than the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).  Millions of viewers worldwide tune in to watch fighters pummel each other.  Jackie Poriadjian SVP/Strategic Marketing/PR & Distribution for UFC and Dave Taylor sat down and discussed How The UFC Rocks Social at NMX 2014. The Stats Lets take a look at some of the numbers that make the UFC a true heavyweight. Largest PPV Event In The World – Bigger than the WWE, professional boxing, or any other pay-per-view event out there.  The UFC is the real king of the ring when it comes to transactional viewing events. Broadcast In 28 languages – That’s just as many as the BBC, the world’s largest broadcaster.  That’s the big reach their fighters wish they had. 5 Billion Inpressions In A Single Night – You read that right.  That’s 5 BILLION in just one night on Twitter and Facebook before UFC 168 at the end of December 2013. Over 50 Billion Impressions Over The Course Of A Single Campaign – That’s just from the campaign run during the promotion of their most recent fight.  Most of us are lucky to have even 50 people talking about us.  Even compared to other big brands that number is huge.  Heck, many big brands don’t even have 50 billion impressions total, much less in a single campaign. Over 1.6 Million Twitter Followers – And that number is just for their main account.  The UFC encourages their fighters to have their own accounts and many of them have a million or more followers too.  Their Twitter following isn’t just huge either.  They’re very active and very passionate. Over 11.5 Million Facebook ‘Likes’ – And again that’s just their main account.  They have millions more on various other UFC accounts plus fighters with millions of their own.  They’re active, passionate, and love to talk about their favorite fighters.  And if you think that Facebook killed brand pages with their recent changes to their algorithm, think again.  A picture of Anderson Silva on crutches after breaking his leg  in the most recent fight reached 100% of their 11.5 million followers. If the timing and topic is on, you can reach everyone despite what “marketing experts” claim. 500k Instagram Followers – The same day Jackie and Dave sat down to talk at NMX 2014, the UFC Instagram account hit over half a million followers and it’s not even a spot they’ve focused much effort on at this point. Looking at those numbers, it’s easy to see that there’s a ton of social talk around the UFC and it’s fighters.  And for a brand with that much activity, they spend a relatively small $500k-1 million a year on paid social promotion.  While they do some paid social advertising, they don’t do it for their events.  Their fans do the promotion for them. Management Of Millions So how do they manage all of that social chatter?  An army of social media managers right?  Nope.  Just 2 people at their headquarters to deal with messaging and managing over 15 million followers.  How do they manage their fighters and their messaging?  They don’t.  While they do give their fighters some initial social training and coaching to keep them out of trouble, they let them manage it themselves and say what they want (they’re all independent contractors technically).  Should an issue come up there is the possibility they’ll send them to sensitivity training, make them do community service or impose a fine but that has been very rare.  Their biggest challenge hasn’t been the messages their fighters post but how they respond to criticisms and comments from their followers. I’m sure we’ve all had times where we’ve had to take a step back and take a couple deep breaths before responding to someone on social media.  Now try to teach that to someone who knocks people out for a living.  Fun job huh? The UFC’s fighters take a lot of pride in the sport and want to take it to the next level.  They love interacting with their faithful fans so most are very active on Twitter and Facebook.  It’s that high level of interaction directly with their fans that has allowed the UFC to build such a large following. Feeding The Following So how can just 2 people create all the great content that people follow the UFC for on social media?  It’s not a 2 person effort alone.  The entire organizations has access to a central dropbox in which they can upload any content they create.  Pictures, video, and more are all put into a central database that allows their social managers to pull and post the best from their photographers, videographers, fighters, reporters, and other employees.  It’s a great way to always have tons of great stuff for your followers to consume. A young demographic (UFC pretty much owns the male 18-34yr old demographic when it’s on) that loves social media has helped to fuel the explosive growth of the UFC and MMA.  As the brand continues to struggle to gain more mainstream acceptance (the New York Times and others for instance doesn’t generally care to cover UFC fights), the push from social media is helping to make the UFC a main event. Do you think they have what it takes to TKO other professional sports?   m Read More »

5 Ways To Create Great Content Without Writing A Lot

	5 Ways To Create Great Content Without Writing A Lot We want to create engaging content but we don't always feel like typing a lot. For some, it's a constant struggle to get our thoughts on to paper (or in this case on pixels). Typing isn't always required to create content your readers want. Marcie Hill showed us 5 Ways To Create Engaging, Sharable Blog Posts Without Writing… A Lot, in her New Media Expo 2014 presentation. Check out these quick and easy ways to create great stuff that your readers will want to see and share. Photos Over 1 billion people will buy a phone this year and most of them will have cameras. Most of us take pictures all the time. These can be great sources of content for your posts. With more than 350 million photos uploaded to Facebook each day and 55 million to Instagram (35 million are selfies), it's obvious that people love pictures. Get creative. Take a look at things from a different angle and show your readers something they don't see every day. Don't fancy yourself a good photographer? There are plenty of online resources to help you take awesome pictures, even using your smartphone camera. Infographics We all learn in different ways but most seem to learn better visually. That's one of the reasons that infographics are so popular. They take information (sometimes dry and boring stuff) and break it down into easier to understand and consume visual representations. Though they do take some research to get the info together, infographics can be a great way create engaging content without writing much. They're also highly sharable. Pinterest users love them and with the site driving more traffic than Reddit, LinkedIn, and Twitter combined, it has the potential for huge traffic. Audio In a spot you can't type? Some of us get our best ideas while we're driving or when we're away from our computers. Bloggers can audio record their thoughts and ideas to make easily sharable content for their audience in a hurry. Most smartphones have built-in audio recording apps and you can even use an audio transcription service to translate those recordings to text if you like. Not only is audio great for recording while on the go but it's also great for people to listen to when they don't have access to a computer. Lots of people listen to podcasts and other audio programs in the car on the way to and from work. You might find a new audience you didn't know was out there. Video People watch over 6 billion hours of video a month on YouTube. Video is huge. Be part of those 6 billion+ hours of viewing by recording video for your blog. Interviews, events, thoughts, and more can all be made into great video posts. With the built-in editing tools on YouTube, and the numerous other tools such as iMovie and more, anyone can make their video look great and draw tons of viewers. Animations Looking for a simple and super sharable way to attract attention? Animated GIFs are a form of content that everyone loves. People are highly amused by them and they love to share them. Tumblr is a great source to search and find them but you can also easily create them yourself. GIF Brewery for Mac and Giffing Tool for Windows both allow you to simply capture any on-screen video and turn it into a high quality animated GIF. Capture video from YouTube and overlay hilarious text in minutes with interfaces easy enough for anyone to use. We all consume content in different ways. Though text may be great for many, there are other ways people look to consume too. While we might not always be up for writing out every post, there are still tons of options for great sharable posts that will resonate with your readers. Try out these text alternatives on your own blog and let us know how your readers eat it up! How to Build Your Brand's Voice Through Blogging #NMX When you think of your brand's online voice, what comes to mind? Perhaps it is embodied by the people running your social media accounts, or by the marketing professionals that craft content for your website. In any case, your online brand goes far beyond the logo – and it needs to be nurtured with a robust content marketing strategy. Digital strategist Luvvie Ajayi used her NMX session to stress the importance of identifying and optimizing brand voice and reputation. Businesses that don't tend to their online identities risk appearing isolated and disconnected from their audiences. The process for building or repairing an organization's online identity begins with an analysis of the current situation: How are people talking about your brand now? Your logo is not your brand – nor is your website or slogan by themselves. Placing equity in these things alone makes little difference – because your brand is all of these things (and much more.). It's the whole idea that people have about your personal or professional identity. Ajayi made specific mention of the indirect foundation for branding: Your brand is how others see you, not how you see yourself. Everyone has a brand, and instantly recognizable brands are the most influential. Consistency helps build your brand How do you build a strong brand? Consistency. Leave some room for random thoughts or messages, but the bulk of your strategy should be consistent and cohesive. Audiences won't connect with you if your messaging is scattered. You want to be the voice in that space/niche that people think about. Ajayi built her voice over time, and people now think of her when they think of red velvet or red pumps (both related to her non-profit organization). Stand out with strong voices Strong connections are built with strong voices. Your voice is how you stand out – and you can't fake it. It should be different from everyone else, and authentic to you. Don't try to copy someone else's style – it becomes blatantly obvious. Make sure to consider the tone and intentions of your online messaging – sarcasm is far more difficult to identify on Twitter than in person. Ayaji called this the concept of "speaking in 2D" – flat conversations that are unambiguous for the audience. Ask your followers for ideas As you build your brand and define your voice, ask your followers for three words that best describe you. Make it a tweet, using the hashtag #3words. If you don't like what you hear, change the conversation accordingly. Your audience is defining your brand identify for you, so listen to them! Color matters in branding Color can make a large impression on your audience, so make sure the colors you use mesh well with your messaging. Looking to present a warm, inviting persona? Use red, orange, or yellow. Want to appear definitive and direct? Try black, dark blue, or brown. It's about instant recognition — figure out a signature color, and people will start tying that color to you and your brand. You can train people over time to make the right connection. Utilize pervasive branding to add another element URL shorteners offer another opportunity to promote your branding. Ayaji purchased the "luvvie" domain, and TopRank uses the “tprk.us” shortener. Create a united, consistent front across all platforms and resources. While your audience is the primary driver for brand identity and voice, you can help direct them toward a positive conclusion with these tips. If your brand messaging is conscious, cohesive and consistent, your audience will respond productively. How have you seen these things make a difference in your brand’s voice? How Your Brand Can Work With Bloggers #NMX Traditional advertising is expensive, and sometimes not effective for your brand. Some have found podcasts to be incredibly lucrative, while others have found that promoting their message through blog posts works best. The latter is becoming increasingly popular. Engaging bloggers has relatively low cost (compared to other forms of promotion), a high return on investment, and gives readers a sense of honesty and transparency that they wouldn't necessary feel from brand-generated content. But finding a blogger who can speak to your audience and appeal to the customers you want can be extremely difficult. Tara Salinas and Bill Downs have figured out how to make it much easier through their blogging program for Global Resort Homes. Their NMX session reviewed how they were able to find the right bloggers for their brand. Find a Loyal Audience For Salinas and Downs, finding bloggers to write about their experiences in their vacation homes was important. They wanted someone who would make decisions, drive conversations, have a loyal following, and be interested in the topic of travel. For them, that audience was women — and more often than not, moms. Takeaway: Find those who are talking about your topic and engage enough with their audiences that they have an emotional connection and a loyal following. Sometimes you might have to hunt for them, but the work will pay off. Develop a Blogger Criteria Let's face it, everyone wants free accommodations on their vacation. As a result, Salinas and Downs are flooded with pitches. So how do they decide who to include in their blogger program? They use a criteria. They evaluate things like: Are they a good fit? Do they talk about what you talk about? How is their interaction rate? Do they engage a lot, or only every once in a while? What are their numbers? Do they have 10 followers or 10,000? Do they post once a day, or 17 times a day? Takeaway: Evaluate how potential bloggers are performing before you invite them to write for you. Have standards and minimums set to ensure you're getting the highest quality and the most exposure. Communicate Expectations Salinas and Downs found it extremely important to communicate expectations in their blogger program. They identified not only what is expected of the bloggers, but what they can expect from Global Resort Homes. They found that this makes things go a lot smoother, and can help both parties feel invested and compelled to promote the content. Takeaway: Be clear about what you want the bloggers to do. Do you want them to post pictures on Instagram? Will they be participating in a video? Would you like them to comment on Google+? Don't forget to think of all the little things that can help promote your message. But don't be selfish—explain what you're doing for them. Whether it's promotions or exceptional service, make sure they know what they're getting! Have a Back-Up Plan Sometimes, even after all of the screening and expectation-setting and commitment, a blogger will fail you. They will back out, or fall short of your expectations. So what do you do? Salinas and Downs just roll with it. They (obviously) don't invite that person back. Takeaway: Know that there is a possibility of falling short on expectations. Have a backup plan for content just in case, and make sure you're committed to your screening process to minimize the amount of failures you encounter. Hold Blogger Events A big part of Salinas and Downs' blogger program is what they call blogger events. They invite bloggers to stay in their vacation homes and write about their experiences. It's a great way to get your name out there on social networks. Bloggers then tend to live tweet and live promote your company for days. However, these events are big time and commitment expenses. Salinas and Downs couldn't stress enough that the pre-planning stage is critical. Knowing what you want, having a schedule (that's flexible of course), and knowing if you can complete it in house is essential. If your end result is a video, do you have the equipment you need, the talent, and the ability to edit? If not, you might have to outsource. Even though they're lots of work, blogger events generate a lot of content — more than you'll need right off the bat. But it's great to re-purpose and consistently promote your message. Takeaway: Think of how you can invite bloggers to experience your product or service. How can you create an event around those experiences? Would a video, an infographic or an eBook the best way to wrap-up and/or promote the event? Make sure you're creative, and go above and beyond to create the best experience possible (which, by the way, you should be doing for all of your guests/customers). Deal with Negativity Not everything will be perfect, and you'll run into negative feedback. If a blogger has a less-than-perfect experience, Salinas and Downs encourage them to be honest and transparent. It's much more valid than if they lie and say everything's great. Plus, it gives the blogger an opportunity to say how you fixed their problem. It's another place for you to demonstrate your awesome customer service. Takeaway: Be a problem solver. Don't shy away from being honest. Admit that things aren't perfect, but they are fixable. It will make you appear open, honest, and realistic—not something that's too good to be true. Don't Stop After the Event End Salinas and Downs put on a video shoot with each of their bloggers. As a result, they generate a lot of content that they don't necessarily use right away. So, they then catalog it to use later. They also monitor links to their bloggers’ posts (which are hosted on a different site) to ensure they remain functional. They also encourage bloggers to support and promote new content via their Facebook Group. Whenever they have specials, many of their bloggers would promote those specials within the posts they wrote about the venue. It's a great way to leverage the bloggers even after they leave. Takeaway: Think about the "what's next". Have a plan for re-purposing content, continue to engage bloggers after they leave, and maintain current content. Once you have started to engage bloggers in your brand, you can then take it up a notch. Continually raise the bar on the caliber of bloggers you invite to try or experience your brand/product, and try experimenting with new things—like videos, or infographics, contests or more blogs. Engaging bloggers is a great way to promote your message and build trust with your audience. It gives customers a new way to interact with your products and services, helps you reach a broader audience, and can generate more content than you know what to do with. How could you engage bloggers with your brand?

Guide to Surviving the Zombie Content Apocalypse #NMX

	Guide to Surviving the Zombie Content Apocalypse #NMX Uh oh. The apocalypse is coming. It’s like impending doom, lurking closer and closer, threatening to take us down. What’s even worse is that we're bringing it upon ourselves. But there is still hope for survival. We can draw our proverbial swords, channel our inner hero and fight back. In her NMX session, Social Media Explorer's Tamsen Webster taught how with The Content Apocalypse Survival Guide: How to Keep Your Content Alive and Kicking in 2014. I thought this talk was about content. I never imagined what happened next. Crap content and hoax headlines are starting to take over. They're even being picked up by big media. You know the kind, headlines just to get the click. They’re zombies. We have to stop them before they kill us. Everyone is content marketing and so many are creating content just to get views without anything of value to the content. Readers are starting to get distrustful of what we're offering. The more zombie content we give them, the less and less our readers will bother with it. If we don't follow up with our headline in our content, customers will stop going for it. We're making it worse with every single piece of bad writing and content we put out there. Every time someone has that bad experience, they get more distrustful. How do you identify zombie content? It's content that serves the needs of the brand before and over the needs of the customer. Brand centric content is advertising. People already see over 5000 ads a day. Why do you think yours will get through to them when others don't? If you're creating brand centric content, you will unlimitedly kill you. Because the virus starts with you, you are in the best position to kill it. Our reason for content is a lie. We tell ourselves it's about the people. We try to pull them in to serve us. In reality we're really just trying to serve ourselves. Why should we serve ourselves if we’re trying to appeal to other people and motivate them to engage or convert? So how do we kill zombie content? The 2 ways you kill zombie content are the same ways you kill a zombie: Kill it on sight by removing it's head from it's body: Does my product or service make the occasion better? If it doesn't, kill it! Does this product or service make the customer better? No? Kill it. Would I say that if I didn't work here? Take the marketer hat off. Would I share it? If you didn't work there, is it something you'd care about? Will it compete with cats? If you're asking to be invited into people's personal streams, you're competing with their ex-high school boyfriend and cats on their feeds. Does it belong here? If it could be on Condescending Corporate Brand Page on Facebook, don't put it up. Kill it on sight! Starve it: This one is super easy. If you don't feed the beast it won't get bigger. Stop making content that only serves your goals. Self promotion, sales focused junk and fluff created to simply drive traffic. Stop it. If you don't feed the zombies they won't grow and they will die. The content apocalypse may be coming but we can fight back. We need to recognize the problem we're creating and fight back. Stop feeding the horde. If we cut the zombie's head off and starve it we still stand a chance. Be sure to follow the real-time updates from our TopRank team at NMX 2014 by following @BenBrausen, @ElizaLynnSteely, and @NickEhrenberg on Twitter! How to Build Your Blog Community with the Right People #NMX The internet has redefined communities. My grandparents, who are in their 80s and 90s, still consider a community the people they see pulling out of their driveway, or those they run into at the grocery store on a weekly basis. To them, a community is the physical people around them that share a similar lifestyle to their own. They also don't own a computer. For those of us that do, we know that a community doesn't have to be made up of those in close proximity to us, and often times aren't. Take the TopRank blog for instance. We have loyal readers from Minnesota, Texas and Illinois. Then we have international readers from India, Australia, the Netherlands and France. They're all joined by east and west coast readers from California and New York. Regardless of where they're from or how far away they are, they make up our community. Like the physical community my grandparents still hold dear to their hearts, online communities need to grow and change and adapt. Cora Harrington has built an incredibly successful community for her blog, The Lingerie Addict. In her NMX session Harrington told the story of creating a community and gave a few pieces of sage advice to help others do the same: What a Community Is and Why You Should Care Every blogger should want to have a community. That should be your ultimate goal. They're who will read your site, promote your site and be your calling card when people want to know where to go about a certain topic or for certain information. A community is a group of people who are really into you—they know what you're about, they care about what you care about, and they care about what you're doing. You want to care about the people who are going to keep coming to your site day after day and share with their friends. A community exists even when you're not directly around. Those people will still talk about you, your product and your message—they'll keep contributing to your blog, your comments, and your social media channels. How to Define Your Community Defining a community is where a lot of people fall short because people want to appeal to everyone. Well, you can’t be all things to all people. It’s just not possible. There are a few things you should do to define your community: Create a clear sentence of who your audience is: don’t just  say your community is women, or bloggers. Be more specific. ‘New moms who are interested in starting a blog and are looking for deals for their children’ is more targeted. The more specific you can be the better. Trying to talk to everyone will frustrate you and no one will know why they should come to you because they won’t know you're talking just to them. Think about who is welcome, and who isn't. Everybody doesn't have to be a part of your community. For example, Harrington’s blog doen’t allow people who participate in ‘body snark’ (talking badly about other people’s bodies). They just don’t need to be a part of her community because they go against what her site stands for. You don't want people in your community who are going to drive away your target visitors. Think about core values. What are the top 2 or 3 things they should think about when they hear your name? How to Make Sure Your Community is Full of the Right People Defining your community will naturally filter out some people online. But there are a few other things you can do to make sure your community is full of readers you want that will enjoy and share your content: Address commonness: You can create a very strong, robust community on any topic or subject. What matters most is that you’re passionate, can come up with ideas, and have a clear enough point of view that people will want to come for you. Find what you all have in common and start there. Be conscious of size: Communities be humongous, but they can also be small. Sometimes, the smaller the better. A small, extremely passionate one can be more invested in what you’re doing than a massive one that's only minutely interested in your topic. Spend your time thinking about who you want to be in your community and who you specifically want to talk to, and attract those people. Actual Things your Community Needs Rules/Boundaries: This community represents you and your site and what you're about. For example, The Lingere Addict has a rule "no body snark" because Harrington wants all of her visitors to feel welcome regardless of shape or size and know they won't be attacked for their bodies. Whatever your rules are, make sure they’re enforceable and easy to remember -for you and your readers. Sense of Direction and Purpose: What makes you different? What do you have to offer that no one else in your particular niche can offer? Why should people listen to what you have to say? What needs are you answering that aren't being currently fulfilled? Those things can help you provide the best content for your community. Relevant Issues: They need you to be a leader about the topic you’ve chosen. Sometimes you’ll have to talk about things that are completely different than what other people are talking about, and that’s ok. Being different helps you stand out and gives your community a reason to become loyal. Access to You: It’s essential to interact with your community. That will mean different things to different people. What it boils down to is paying attention. Show that you're paying attention to people as individuals—that they're not just blips on a screen or lines on a chart—that you actually care about them. Connections: Be a connector–how can you connect your readers to things they haven't heard about, or other people in the industry they should care about? Doing so shows you care about them and are interested in helping them. A community should be a place where people feel safe to contribute, engage and participate. Use your blog or your site to create that space for your audience. Then put in the effort to maintain it so they don’t fall by the wayside. One of the best things you can to do turn your audience into a community, "don't be wishy-washy," Harrington says. "People will know, and they'll call you out on it and that's no good. Know what you're standing for and be prepared for the consequences of it." How have you attracted the right people to your community? Keep your eye out for our continued coverage of NMX. For instant updates and quotes, follow @BenBrauen, @elizalynnsteely, or @NickEhrenberg on Twitter! How to Get Thousands of Facebook Fans in 6 Months #NMX When I first wrote this headline, it almost sounded too good to be true. Sure, you can generate Facebook fans via random followings, scattered postings, and local word-of-mouth. Eventually, you'll run out of steam – and your company page will run out of influence. There is a better way to handle social marketing on Facebook – and it can bring thousands of active people into your community. Social media consultant Andrea Vahl presented such a plan at NMX, focusing on the harmonious relationship between content strategy and efficient Facebook page design. You won't even need to raid the company budget much – Vahl emphasized that these tips are made for businesses with little room for additional social marketing funding. Here are Vahl's 5 easy steps to skyrocket your Facebook brand page: 1. Set Your Goals How do you want to achieve your Facebook growth plan? Vahl noted that social managers should set goals that make sense – overall growth is still good for awareness, but subscribers are the best goal. Goals should be specific, measureable, attainable, realistic, and timely. Vahl made specific mention of Facebook's recent firestorm over organic search, and ultimately argued for a change in behavior. Social managers should shift their mindsets on organic search, as Facebook is becoming more pay-to-play at this point. Consider it more as a subscription model – the sooner that you realize Facebook isn't free anymore, the better your results will be. 2. Set Up Your Page There are multiple tactics and best practices to optimize your Facebook page. Vahl highlighted five key strategies to make your page more attractive: Use an engaging profile picture (sized 180×180 pixels) Create a well-design cover photo (sized 831×315 pixels) Craft keyword-rich copy on your About page — add testimonials, use milestones creatively, and add your FB page policy Create tabs that capture visitor email address Set up your custom page URL These tips should help your page look cohesive and professional – an important goal regardless of the business direction. 3. Develop Your Content Plan As organic search is declining in Facebook, you should adjust posting strategies accordingly. Vahl suggested evenly splitting status updates between text and photos, and using links only 20 percent of the time. Engagement is the primary goal with your social content, so encourage frequent sharing and post on a regular basis (at least 2-5 times daily). As an added tip — instead of using the share button on updates, post something straight on the page and tag users with their Facebook page name. Vahl argued that this generates greater reach potential. 4. Grow Your Page Your Facebook page – business or personal – is a fluid, dynamic property. It doesn't exist in a vacuum, nor should it linger soulless in the digital ether. You'll need to build and cultivate your audience – and there are several strategies that can help. Invite your warm market. Use the Invite Friends button, and reach out to customers via e-mail. These are the people most likely to follow right away, so utilize them to kickstart your plan. Participate as your Page. Target complementary pages, comment on posts as your page, and watch local pages. Spend at least 5-10 minutes per week on community management. Use all areas of Facebook. From your page to your personal profiles, to natural groups and private groups. There's much digital real estate for the taking. Use Facebook Ads. Focus on news feed ads, which generate the best click-through rates. Also, look to Sponsored Stories for building social proof. Add a Facebook Like Box. Embed this handy widget on your website for additional inbound traffic. Run a Facebook contest. Providers such as Offerpop, North Social, Woobox, Tabsite, Contest Domination, ShortStack, and Strutta offer contesting services via Facebook. These are just some of the tools readily available for page managers, and they can help attract, engage, and convert new members. 5. Assess What Works Your Facebook Insights page is a gold mine for engagement data. Look at engagement rate — the percentage of people who interact with your post from those who have seen it. This will help identify which posts are most effective with your audience. Keep an eye on traffic spikes as well – they are often attributed to a single update or interaction. There are no guarantees in social media, but these strategies can help any Facebook page manager legitimately boost their audience – and likewise increase their influence within the market. What strategies have you found useful in increasing your fan base? 12 Easy, Simple Ways to Up Your Blog-Writing Game… From a Fortune Cookie Fortune cookies are notoriously cheesy. They tend to be something that could happen to anyone (e.g. you'll meet someone special today) or something extremely vague (e.g. there is a big success in your future). But what if they could teach you how to become a better blogger and a better writer? Spud Hilton made it so they could. While in San Francisco, he had tips printed and folded inside the sugary cookie to pass out to random strangers. He dedicated his NMX session to teaching those 12 tips, and elements of good writing to help bloggers up their writing game. Why Quality Matters: People will tire of you before they tire of the topic. Your topic is always going to have more longevity than you do. You need to make sure you're presenting that topic in a straightforward way that's unique. Those people want to read blogs by people that sound smarter than them. If you're not writing well, presenting yourself in an intelligent manner, you're missing out on an audience and essentially leaving behind people who feel that they want to read something by someone smarter than them. Knowing your audience is the important piece—write to that and understand how elements fit into that. Elements of Good Writing: A Point: Writing has to prove a point (premise, angle, nutgraf). Every element has to—down to the captions. When you start to write something you have to know what the purpose is. In order to find it, ask yourself 3 questions: Why do I want to write this post? Because I want to inform? Engage? Because I want hits? What are you trying to do? Who's the audience? New media takes a lot closer look at who the audience is than more traditional media. What's the message you want readers to take away? The trick is once you answer this, you have the point. Observations: There's a difference between observation and description. A description is the facts. A photo can describe visually but it can't make an observation. That's why it's such an important element. It's an interpretation of the situation and makes your writing more interesting. But you have to mix them with reporting and narrative because Hilton says, "Observation without narrative and reporting is basically an unsupported rant." Reporting: You need to know if your story is false—you have to do the actual reporting. Look up info from some other source to verify what you're talking about. It's not enough to just have you support you. That's how fake news stories get picked up by so many publications. Every time that happens the credibility of all writers drops. Hilton points out that, "Reporting without narrative and observation is Wikipedia. It's a list of facts and doesn't tell your story." Narrative: This is whatever format your story is in and who it's told by (e.g. first person, third person). Narrative without observation and reporting is your diary. We're in the age of sharing and putting yourself out there and really getting into people's personal everything—but no one wants to read your diary. Fortune Cookie Tips: Grab the reader's attention and grab it now! Grab it by the throat. You absolutely can't bore a reader at the beginning of a story. More than ever it's important to grab their attention immediately. If you just start with context and the background of your topic, it won't grab anybody. Zen editing: When is it done? The great thing about zen—it's not done when you've put everything you can into it. It's done when you've taken everything out of it. Filtered content—things that you made decisions on—is going to be better than if you just leave everything in. Prose is the frosting, not the cake. Everybody gets bogged down in prose—telling things in a pretty way. But it's not the point. It's frosting—it's the extra stuff you put on. You still have to have a good story to tell, a good point, something to say. Be creative with context. When you have a lot of facts,and are trying to explain something big or why it is superlative—how do you do it? Be creative with context—taking things you talk about all the time that are plain, and do some reporting to make them interesting. Metaphors and comparisons are great for this! Where is the emphasis? You have to figure out where the emphasis of your sentence, caption, paragraph, and story is and pay attention to that. What is the point? Avoid brochure speak. Take a more authentic, forward role in your vocuabulary. If you start with a question, people associate it mentally with advertising and a brochure, but you want them to feel like they're getting the real thing. Showing that you're quality over time will help you keep readers. Use language to your best advantage but if it doesn't sound like you, it won't work. Check Your A.S.A. It stands for: Action. Storytelling. Aesthetic. It applies to photos and content. Does it have action? Does it tell a story? Is it pretty? You can get away with it if you have one of those things—it's great if it's two of those things, but if it has all 3 it's incredible. If it has none of those things, do you know where it should be published? Nowhere. You grossly overestimate your own photos and your own content because you know the context behind them. Go back and ask yourself: will people understand what I'm trying to say. Does it need to be about you? Make sure you're presenting the topic, not you. Try to present the topic without talking about yourself. Then go back and sprinkle judiciously and sprinkle in a few "I", "me", and "we". Find the humor. Snark gets tiring really fast. It will only take you so far. What you want to look for is the absurdity of a situation and point it out. How do you find it? Using observations and a little reporting of course! Did you stay on point? And did you kill the bunny? You're getting ready to write a great post and you've stayed on point, except there's one little thing you REALLY want to put into it but it doesn't fit. It's your bunny. Don't try to force things that don't belong into your story. Hilton says, "Kill your bunny. Or at least put it into the freezer until you need it later." Read everything twice. Once for fun and the second time to dissect it. Do it with other people's content too. Find the elements—the attention grabber, the examples, the point. Then you can begin to see patterns emerge and what's working and be able to emulate it in your own writing. Quirky is currency. It's money in the bank. Think about it. If a nightclub tells you they have bottle service, do you care that much? No probably not. What if the nightclub told you they had a package that included a swanky designer selection of champagne that range in size from 750ml to 30 liters (which weighs 80 pounds by the way and holds the same amount as 40 normal bottles)? That gets through the wall instantly and resonates with people. You can study SEO until the sun goes down or try the latest trick, but that doesn't tell you how to keep those readers or how to engage them over the long term. Better quality will do that. Make a commitment to become a better writer and produce more quality content for your readers. How have you committed to producing quality content over quantity?

The What, How and Why of Schema for Bloggers #NMX

	The What, How and Why of Schema for Bloggers #NMX I use Google more times a day than I should ever admit. I look for restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses around me. I use it for directions, looking up people or places, and occasionally for spelling if I just can’t seem to get that word right. My point is: I expect Google to have the information I want and present it in a way that I can consume at a glance or on-the-go. Google must think there are others like me because the way they display their results is constantly and dynamically changing to provide more relevant, meaningful information in SERPs. Things like carousels for local results, image and video results, and authorship markup are helping searches find what they wanted, even if they didn't know it. Schema.org markup can be implemented on websites to help search engines like Google gain a stronger understanding of a page's content, and create those rich snippets we finicky and busy searchers find so useful. Schema can also be leveraged in the blogging arena. However, it can be hard to know how to explain schema, what types there are, and how to implement. Throw Google+ into the mix and you’re likely to get a tad overwhelmed. Mitch Canter, a veteran front-end developer and WordPress programmer, explained it all during his NMX session. Why Structured Data is Important As content creators we are always told we have to write for humans and robots—those crawlers and analytics machines that read and rank our site. We strive to create a balance between the two, but more often than not our content is geared more towards one than the other. The problem is: search engines aren't humans—they're not thinking, they're processing. As a result, sometimes they can get confused. They might even index your content for something you never even intended it to. That brings your website traffic that has no value. In order to solve that conundrum you have two options: Optimize. But the overkill kind that involves keyword stuffing. Robots used to like this, but humans become alienated and quit reading. Structure. Structuring is not just how your content is written, it's in the actual development process and code and a few other elements that help search engines know what the page is about without alienating readers. What is Schema? There are several textbook definitions of schema that are mostly very technical and hard to understand. Canter boils it down to: taking human-readable content and taking out the inference layer for the search engines so all they have to do is process the information. They don't have to guess, they can just look and know what's going on. Essentially, schema takes human-readable content and changes it into search-engine readable content using microdata. (Microdata is an HTML5 specification that allows machine-readable data to be embedded in HTML documents). How is Schema Implemented? 1). Define the format. This involves some coding which Canter says, "A lot of people look at like guys look at shoe shopping." Coding can be a difficult thing to wrap your head around, but it's not as overwhelming as you think. You'll have to insert a few things into the code on your page: itemscope: this tells the search engines/robots that this group is an item. An item, for all intents and purposes, is a collection of all the data we want to use. This element of code will be added to the HTML tag that encloses information about the item. itemtype: you’ve indicated that your page has an item with the itemscope code, but now you have to specify what kind of an item it is. You can do so by using the itemtype attribute directly after the itemscope. 2). Assign properties. First you'll have to define some of the properties you'll want to name. Think of a movie for example: there are actors, directors, reviews, ratings and more. All of those things show up differently in search, so it’s important to distinguish what kind of content you have. You'll be using itemprops—an attribute that labels the properties of the content—throughout. A few of the elements you can insert itemprops for include: Permalink to the Title: this indicates where other people will go to view the blog post. It's the URL, but we're telling Google this is where people are going to go to see this content. Author Information: you want to define the author by linking to their Google+ profile. This will tell Google who wrote the content, and give your authors some credibility and recognition in search. Date Published: this lets Google knows when your content was published. Keywords: this can be your categories or your tags, depending on which you use most to indicate what the content is mainly about. What are the Types of Schema? There are several different kinds of schema that you can implement depending on what kind of content you're creating. Canter covered several during his session and clarified a few things that fall in each category: Article: things like news articles or investigative reports fall under this category. Blog posts can fit in here, but there is a specific blog post schema that has come out. Review: a review of things like restaurants, movies, stores, books etc. Event: an event happening at a certain time in a certain location. Person: a person (living dead, undead or fictional) – a definition we all found funny. Embeddable Objects: video, audio, images or anything else that is non-text. Creative: books, movies, recipes or other creative works. Product: anything you are selling or offering. You can break it down to SKU, weight, width, and several other aspects of tangible products. These can be nested—so you can have a review inside a blog post, or a person inside an event. They also happen to be program agnostic making the possibilities endless! Is There a Plugin for Schema? There are a few schema plugins that you can install on your site or blog to help out with some of these technicalities. Schema Creator was mentioned by an audience member. However, if you use a plugin you are constrained to only what the plug in can do, so it does have the potential to limit the possibilities. Canter offers some advice from a past math teacher, "Learn to do it by hand, then use the technology." Why Bother with Google+? You worked really hard to create all of this content, and implement your schema. So why should you bother with Google+? Among other reasons, you can claim your Google Authorship which helps let Google know you own that content, and make a two-way connection between content, your Google+ profile, and your website. In addition, you get a Rich-Text Snippet. Things like your avatar will appear next to your authored content in SERPs. How to Set Up Authorship Verify your email Link to your Google+ profile to your website Link your website to your Google+ profile: this helps create the two-way connection between your profile and your website Schema is a very technical concept and is new enough that not everyone has heard of it and only a handful have actually implemented it. It allows us to do what we do best—writing content that our human readers can infer things from and think critically on, and still dumbs it down for the search engines. Schema lets you have the best of both worlds without having to keyword stuff. Stay tuned for more liveblog coverage of NMX! For instant updates follow @elizalynnsteely, @benbrausen, @nickehrenberg on Twitter!   Becoming A Pinterest Power User and Taking Your Pinning To The Next Level #NMX Social media has the power to drive an insane amount of traffic.  While many may not think of it has a source of huge potential, Pinterest drives more traffic than Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit combined.  But how do you harness the power of this social network powerhouse to drive that traffic to your blog?  Cynthia Sanchez, one of TopRank’s 25 Women who Rock Social Media, gave a session on Taking Your Pinterest Account to the Next Level. Her  strategies for attracting followers and driving traffic to your blog showed great ways to blow your blog up on Pinterest. Pinterest's power point is traffic generation-it’s designed to send traffic out.  The site’s referral traffic grew 66.52% from 2012-2013. While conversations and things the other social network sites offer are part of Pinterest, sending people out to discoveries is the key.  That offers lots of opportunities for your site to be seen.  So how do you get seen?  Lets look at a number of tips to get the most from your Pinterest presence. Strategy Like everything else in marketing, if you go in without a strategy ahead of time, your chances of success are slim.  When pinning, keep in mind why people goto Pinterest: For something to buy – gift for themselves or friends Find information – recipe or tutorial Find people with similar interests For inspiration – art or design For fun So what do you need to appeal to the things people goto Pinterest for?  You need content.  The more content you have, the more traffic you will generate. Your site is already full of content, right? On other sites your content lives once.  You post it and it lives in that moment and is shortly forgotten.  On Pinterest, if you have something that's seasonal go ahead and re-pin it again when it's relevant. On top of that, it’s important to lay out your game plan and know your goals. Make Your Pins Pop Keep SEO and keywords in mind. Pinterest SEO goes over into Google SEO, so much so that some pin boards are the ranking number 1 in search. Make sure people have something good to come to, should they find your Pinterest account through search.  Make sure your bio includes who you are and what you are offering. Have at least 5 pins on each board.  If you have less than 5 it's like an empty shelf in a store.  It doesn't look complete.  If you don't have that many, is it really important enough to have a board for it? Provide multiple images within each post.  This gives people more options on what they pin.  What you think is super pinable might not be and there might be other options people like better. Repurpose lists.  List posts are very popular on blogs and making a graphic on canvas for that list can make your content very pinable. Make your images tall instead of wide.  While width of pins is set, length can vary.  This is why infographics do so well.  They take up a lot of room which makes them hard not to miss.  Take advantage of this with long graphics. You might not have actual content but some text on a graphic can make unrelated images interesting and enticing.  Have a great presentation?  Turn quotes from it into pins.  Quotes are the trading cards of Pinterest.  They don't tend to drive traffic back to your site but people love to re-pin them and follow those that post them.  Numbered tips are great.  If people see #4 and like it, they're going to want to find #3, #2, and #1 too. Adding Pin It buttons to your site makes it super simple for people to share your content.  Also make sure your mobile site works with it.  Over 50% of the traffic to Pinterest comes from mobile devices.  You could be missing out on huge traffic.  Also be aware of the auto-created title from the Pin It button. Use a tool that allows you to customize that description so you can target for the keywords you want to be known for. Pin to multiple boards.  This gives your pin multiple places it can be seen.  Not everyone follows all of your boards.  You can also experiment with posting the same pin to different boards at different times of day.  Not everyone is on at the same time so you might catch different people at different times. Quick tip: ShotPin is the secret weapon.  It's a Chrome browser extension that takes a screenshot of the screen you're on and creates a pin out of it.  It will then link back to that page, making pinning quick and easy. Building A Following Like any other social network, this takes time.  The best place to start is using what you already have.  Tell the people on your other networks about your Pinterest.  If they like you one place, why wouldn't they like you elsewhere?  Be sure to tell them why they should follow you there.  What are they going to get?  Why will they like it? Link your Facebook and Twitter accounts so you can follow your those friends and fans on Pinterest.  If they follow you on another platform, chances are they'll want to follow you there too. Strategically follow.  Don't just follow in hopes they will follow you back.  When you search for those you might want to follow, make sure they have boards that are relevant to what you're sharing too.  Why would someone with completely different interests want to follow you and re-pin what you are pinning?  Having followers that have no interest in what you're offering is of no value to you and is really a waste of time. Make sure the people you are pinning are active.  Click on the number of pins in their profile.  Then click the first pin in the list to find the most recent pin.  How old is it?  If they haven't been active in months or years, why would it make sense to follow them? Pinning vs Re-pinning - Want someone to notice you?  Don't pin from their site.  Go and re-pin the content they've posted on Pinterest.  They'll notice it, especially if you pin multiple items.  Leave a comment on some of their pins.  They'll see you fill their notifications list and take notice.  Once they take notice, they might follow back. Unless you can tie each of your pin boards back into your site somehow, you don't need it.  If you sell car parts, why would someone follow a baking recipe board from you?  Tie it in with the things you offer.  It may take some creativity but it’s possible. Using these great tips Cynthia laid out in her session, anyone can drive big traffic to their site using Pinterest.  Give these great strategies a try for yourself and let us know what kind of traffic increases you see! Keep your eye out over the next few days for the rest of our NMX coverage. You can follow @BenBrauen, @elizalynnteely, or @NickEhrenberg on Twitter for real-time information! Unleash Your Inner Influencer with Content Marketing #NMX Everyone wants to be valued for their insights, and today's content marketing-fueled age presents multiple opportunities for people to become influencers. I covered how to crowdsource these influencers in an earlier post, but what if you wanted to become one yourself? What does it mean to be an influencer? How do you reach a point where people in your industry are clamoring for your perspective? Finally, how do you build your business from such influence? It's not as difficult as you think, and it all revolves around efficient content marketing and re-purposing. Serial entrepreneur Chris Ducker outlined the process in an NMX super session, charting the path for people to build their influence. Ducker, author of The New Business Manifesto, presented a plan for entrepreneurs to build personal/brand influence with content marketing, eventually seeking to launch a business from that attention. Here are Ducker's five steps for entrepreneurs and content creators looking to build the "Business of You": 1. Identify your niche. It's difficult to be truly original in this era of content re-purposing. As a result, few ideas are truly original. What separates your content from everything else is personality. Ducker noted that when you build the "Business of You," nobody else can copy it. Before any entrepreneur or content creator can devise unique ideas, they must first identify their own corner of the content generation map. What do you want to write about? What drives you to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard/touchscreen)? 2. Know who you are helping. Now that you have your niche foundation, identify the audience that you're aiming to influence. Ducker insisted that this involves more than simply following them on social media. Building customer profiles can help you focus your efforts on people that have a need for your content. (Note that these are customer profiles, not listener or viewer profiles. Content marketing is still a business, after all.) 3. Create great content. Content is the gateway to building strong relationships with your followers. Ducker argued that great content should be centered around three main categories: Educational – Are you looking to teach or instruct your followers? Inspirational – Do you want your followers to be motivated to make change, or perform an action? Entertainment – Should the content make them laugh or smile – while still generating attention and conversions? At first, you won't have the necessary data to hone your content strategy, so you'll need to create content what you think the audience wants. Once you collect feedback and quantify the results, you can then start to create content the audience needs. 4. Build lasting relationships. We are in a relational business, and connections help drive influence. Ducker referred to this concept as the "people-to-people" (P2P) philosophy, and he saw a lack of it in the sales/marketing industry. Content creators want their fans to connect with them, ask questions, offer feedback, and hang out with them. They must build relationships with their fans and generate a P2P connection. In the end, the audience will determine what the "Business of You" actually becomes. 5. Monetize the brand. Even with a large social following, it's difficult to generate influence as an entrepreneur unless you monetize your personal brand. It's a difficult aspect to tackle, and many content creators are uncomfortable selling themselves. But Ducker argued that monetizing your brand drives authority, and to be seen as a powerful influencer, you must be "seen to sell." Ducker proudly proclaimed 2014 as the year for profile content creation and marketing. Such content helps build those P2P relationships, and let loose the influencer inside everyone. Stay tuned for more from #NMX, and follow @NickEhrenberg, @elizalynnsteely, and @BenBrausen for live coverage on Twitter! Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter. © Online Marketing Blog, 2014. | Unleash Your Inner Influencer with Content Marketing #NMX | http://www.toprankblog.com Read More » How to Craft Jaw-Dropping Content & Become a Better Writer #NMX Growing up, there was always a battle in my life: school vs. cartoons. School taught me to be structured—the elements of good writing, the processes to follow, the fundamentals. Cartoons taught me to be creative—to think outside the box (thank you Wile E. Coyote), to be creative, and to strive for the eye-bulging, jaw-dropping outcome. On weekends, cartoons always won out. But Paula Pant, a blogger, journalist and entrepreneur, believes the lessons of cartoons should always triumph. The title of her NMX session, The Art of Crafting Jaw-Dropping Content: Why You Should Forget Everything You Learned in School proves that. Crafting creative, memorable content that motivates readers to share is the goal of almost every digital marketing agency. Each has it’s own approaches, methods, and beliefs. Regardless, Pant believes that you should "kill your darlings, murder your adverbs, and embrace active tense" through stories, the power of thirds, and your own natural pacing. But how? Here are a few tips to help writers like you and me create that eye-bulging, jaw-dropping result we all strive for: Be Simple & Tight with Your Writing In school we're taught to take a sentence that could be said in 5 words and stretch it out to 15. We are taught to cloud our writing and to make simple things complicated. Forget it. Be direct. Be simple. Ask yourself how to express your thought in the simplest language possible. And never unnecessarily complicate a sentence. We've all listened to someone tell a story and wished they'd just get to their point. Don't write your blog like that. Write tightly by cutting any extraneous information. Long blog posts are fine, as long as that post is as concise as possible. Cut out any sentences that don't push your reader forward. Be Clear Watch for repetitive verb forms. When you see two similar parts of speech together, try to eliminate one. For example "rather than trying to draw the blueprints" can become "rather than drawing the blueprints”. If you can't eliminate one of the two, group them together. "Buy the medicine and distribute it" becomes "buy and distribute the medicine". Start with a subject. It will help your reader know what you’re talking about right away. Start with a present tense active verb—especially in lists. They add power right up front in your post and they force you to economize. Model Your Writing After a Sandwich (Not a Fairytale, Inverted Pyramid, or an Hourglass) Traditional stories and fairytales follow a format that looks a big like a hill or a bell—they start out slow, climax somewhere in the middle or towards the end, and slow down again. Journalists tend to write in inverted pyramids giving the most newsworthy information first and going down from there. Others write like an hourglass—starting off with the inverted pyramid but adding a twist in the middle to get readers to stick around until the end of the piece. But Pant's favorite structure is the sandwich. You begin with a face or an anecdote (the bread). Then, progress to the meat of the story—the facts, the details, the data, the research, the tips—the things you want your readers to know. Then, you'll close out with the face. This structure allows you to emotionally connect with your audience, helps get your point across, and gives them a reason to read your entire piece of content. Be Rhythmic Every story needs to have rhythm. It isn't just for poetry or for music, it happens in a blog post as well. The best way to include it is to mimic the natural ebb and flow of how people speak. How? Alternate long sentences with shorter ones. When we talk, we pause to take a breath. Give your readers time to take a breath—take a sentence. Embrace the hyphen. Adding a dash in the middle of a sentence isn't necessarily grammatically correct all the time, but it reflects the way we talk. Your job as a blogger is to bring pixels to life and add character to those pixels. Rhyme. Would you remember "an apple a day decreases the risk of coronary failure"? Nope. But you remember "an apple a day keeps the doctor away". It doesn't necessarily make sense, but it's memorable. Alliteration sets up a pattern and is easy to do. Create one in your headlines, in your titles, anywhere in your content to help make it a bit more memorable and create rhythm. Use onomatopoeia. Write out how something sounds—"Zing" "Woop woop!" or "Briiiiiiing". It catches attention, shortens sentences and is much more interesting to read. Make your content audible. Be Powerful Verbs move your story; they sell your story; they're powerful. But they have an enemy. Adverbs. Adverbs enable us to get away with using weak verbs. For example, "he shut the door forcefully". Shut is a weak, overused verb. But "he slammed the door" is much more powerful. Pant advises replacing your adverbs with a powerful, killer verb. But you don't have to all the time. Occasionally, they're ok to leave in. For example, "he ran faster and fell" being changed to "he ran and fell" conveys two different things. In this instance, the adverb is justified. Imagine you're a publisher paying $2 a word. If it's worth the $2, it can stay. If not, delete it. Spice Up Your Adjectives Adjectives like great, wonderful, and fantastic are overused. Try to use ones that aren't. Create cognitive dissonance. Mouthwatering is usually used in regards to food. Use it in a new context—talk about mouthwatering content, or mouthwatering shoes you saw—something to become more memorable. Be Engaging Personally, I like to read for fun. I love books that bring you into a different world. I get so wrapped up in the story that I lose track of time, I'll laugh out loud, or get so emotionally connected I can't put the book down even though it's really late. Pant offered a few key tips to help us write like those books: • Add pops of expression. Example: "they're announcing layoffs on Friday. Yikes!" • Add teasers and suspense. Example "but that's not all". The reader can't leave—they'll want to know what's next. • Write in visual metaphors. Example: "teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows" instead of "teach yourself to read in minutes as well as hours". Creating jaw-dropping, interesting content doesn't have to be hard work. It should be a creative, fun process and should appeal to your readers. Think of things you find interesting in a conversation and try to include those in your writing to resonate with your readers. How do you convey a voice in your writing without creating nauseatingly-long content? Be sure to follow the TopRank team at New Media Expo 2014 while we liveblog more of the awesome sessions.  @BenBrauen, @elizalynnteely, or @NickEhrenberg

10 Marketing Lessons from 10 Years of Blogging

	10 Marketing Lessons from 10 Years of Blogging @LeeOdden Keynote at #NMX 2014 Over the past 10 years of blogging, TopRank Online Marketing's Lee Odden has learned a lot. In his New Media Expo 2014 keynote address to full room with standing room only, Lee talked about the 10 lessons he learned in 10 years and over 3,500 blog posts. 1. Stand For Something Specific If you're trying to be all things to all people, you're competing with all companies in all spaces and yourself. That’s a lot to try to outrank! Ask yourself: what is the one thing I want to be known for? Be specific and make it easy for others to understand what you're all about. Each of the things you want to be known for can have it's own spoke, own content plans, and each their own channels for distribution. After all, specificity rules when it comes to search and social! 2. Know Your Customer: Empathy Drives Relevance Make an effort to know your customer and reader. What are their preferences for consumption? What do they like? Do they like news content, short or long posts, mobile content? Do they prefer videos, images, or blocks of text? It’s essential to know what your audience likes and how they consume it in order to optimize the experience to be fantastic for them. Empathizing with the experience of your target audience can help you create more relevant content, in the best format, in the most looked-to places. 3. No Plan Is A Plan To Fail Experimenting is cool (and can sometimes work), but you should have a plan to get you where you want to be. Align the topics you want to be known for with tangible goals when creating a plan. Managing a content creation schedule/plan can help you stay on topic and consistent with your content creation and measure your progress towards those goals. By including things like keywords, titles, customer segment, and position in the buying cycle you can create more compelling content. You can download TopRank’s free editorial schedule here: http://tprk.us/keyedcal 4. Social Drives Discovery Search Validates It used to be that there were was so much searching that you could focus just on search. But now, social gets so much of users’ attention and people get their recommendations there that you have to split your attention between search and social. People tend to get suggestions from social and then validate them with search. Be active on social. Listen to what your audience is saying, produce and promote relevant, meaningful content. Then back that up with a website or a blog post that can validate what they learned on your social network. 5. Go Holistic With SEO: "Be The Best Answer" Wherever Your Audience Is Looking Some people believe that if they create good content, the traffic will come. Odden says good luck with that. Content isn't enough. You have to bake in promotion with it too. Customers don't care that you have an email marketing campaign or are running ads, they just want to solve a problem. You have to be the best answer for where they go to solve those problems. While you’re creating content it’s important to create the signals of credibility that translate into you being the best answer for your audience. Make sure your pages are optimized, and that you provide the information they’re looking for where they happen to be searching. 6. Co-Created Content Is Social Networking Content is also a great place for social networking. It connects you with others, becomes a source of ideas, and can help increase links to your content. Whoever your target audience is, find out what they need and then fulfill that need. Co-create content is the stuff that you’ll both care about! 7. Look Beyond Yourself Almost every blogger has run out of ideas once or twice, or struggled to think of a creative, compelling one. When that happens, ask for help from your team and connect with your community. People will always have an idea, a problem you could help them solve, a question you could answer or a new perspective you haven’t explored before. Some potential ways to engage your community? Do polls, ask questions about trending topics or tools, or ask for advice they’ve found useful in the past. 8. Whatever Can Be Found In Search Can Be Optimized Pay attention to what actually shows up in search for the things you actually want to be known for. Go search those terms and phrases. Are there a significant number of video posts? Are PDFs hanging towards the top of the SERPs? Are images showing up? Each of the items that rank become a potential entry point into rankings and consumer’s minds. Looking at who shows up, along with what type of content shows up, can provide valuable insight into how you can optimize your content to  rank on the first page. It can also be a source of ideas for content creation. Maybe you really should make that video you’ve been thinking about after all. 9. A Blog Is Only As Interesting As The Interest Shown In Others If all you do is talk about what you want to talk about, people aren't going to be that interested. The solution? Ask and recognize. See what your followers want. Ask for interviews, ask for books to review, ask, ask. Then compile those answers into a blog post. Afterwards, don’t forget to recognize them for their contributions and efforts. People will work for money but die for recognition. 10. Optimize for Customers Attract – Engage – Convert While creating your content make sure you’re optimizing for your customers. While in the conceptualizing phase, ask yourself three questions: How is this going to attract attention? What messages will be included to promote engagement? What key messages will be included to motivate conversion? This notion of creating demand is giving people information where and when they need it. In order to be there when your customers are looking, be sure to make your content accountable by posting regularly (and consistently), and optimizing for their experience. Bonus: Key Takeaways Closing out his keynote Odden offered fa few key takeaways to help bloggers be successful in the years to come: If you start blogging, finish it – there are so many big companies that aren't blogging much anymore. They aren't inspired to do it anymore. This opens up the arena for other blogs to be heard. Don’t give up! Focus on meaningful vs. mechanical – don’t just populate your social channels with automated messages. Create unique content that matters to your audience and motivates them to engage Create value, brand and demand Don’t go at it alone – ask for help! Ask your team, your employees and your customers and you’re bound to never run out of ideas. Stay tuned for more coverage of the NMX conference. For instant updates follow @elizalynnsteely, @benbrausen, or @nickehrenberg on Twitter. 5 Tips on Crowdsourcing Your Brand's Influence #NMX Leveraging your audience for blog post ideas is common practice in content marketing, and it can generate unique ideas from a customer-side perspective. But what does it take to use crowdsourcing as a tool for generating influence? Brands frequently target thought leaders to help amplify their content, but what is the best way to collect these resources? Dino Dogan, founder of influencer marketing service Triberr, proclaimed a new age of crowdsourcing influence at his NMX content marketing super session. Dogan summarized his perspective with a simple question for brands: If your customers doesn't know the brand, why would they trust its assessment of itself? Dogan argued that brands should identify a group of influencers – bloggers, podcasters, Youtubers, etc. – to become paid brand advocates. These influencers could then pool their small, dedicated audiences together (in "tribes") and spread the brand's good word. They are members of the "creative class", adept at creating compelling content where companies and brands often fall short. By crowdsourcing these influencers, brands can utilize their creative talents and expand reach among dedicated audiences. Here are 5 specific tips Dogan offered to help brands crowdsource their influence: 1). Focus on the intimacy of the audience, not the size. Nike has Michael Jordan as its paid influencer, but there's only one of him so marketers will have to settle for someone else. An influencer with an intimate, loyal following is a great choice and can produce great results for the brand. Bloggers are celebrities with these audiences, regardless of the size. Dogan argued that small size is not automatically a detriment – in fact, it can be a valuable resource if that audience is dedicated. 2). Apply an indirect approach to brand marketing. Many brands follow the direct approach to influencer generation – brands talking about themselves to their audiences. But what if brands and marketers applied an indirect approach, recruiting influencers and letting them promote the brand? Consumers are more likely to believe recommendations from people they know, so why not take advantage of their expertise and passion for the brand's benefit? This is the foundation of crowdsourcing influence – brands are trading some messaging control for the chance at increasing a loyal influencer team. 3). Allow the influencers to advocate for themselves. It's best practice in content marketing to connect with thought leaders for content amplification. But, rather than choosing influencers to represent the brand, why not have them come to you? Dogan's service Triberr allows brands to create campaign pages – essentially a Kickstarter page for brands – and have potential influencers advocate for themselves as brand representatives. Have the brand list the price, campaign duration, and other pertinent information on the campaign page, then enable people to apply to become an influencer. This way, they are signaling willingness to dedicate time and effort for brand promotion. Back-end campaign managers can then pick from the list of applications, and identify which candidates fit best for the company's messaging strategy. 4). Pool the resources of these influencers. If you're able to hire a good group of brand influencers (whether it's 20, 50, 100, etc.), have them then share their audiences and resources with each other. If everyone is part of the same mission, with the same milestones, payout, timeframe and assets, you can achieve a greater level of collaboration. 5). Allow the influencers to track themselves. You don't need to stop crowdsourcing when your team is in place. Tracking results can be team-wide production as well. Dogan emphasized the intrinsic motivation of his crowdsourced model — when you have 100 influencers working together, sharing audiences, and tracking results, this means that every time you publish a blog post, you are guaranteed at least 100 shares. What happens when you get the right brand working with the right influencers? Dogan believes you generate "home–cooked, meaningful content", which differs from the "fast-food, meaningless content" often found on the Internet. Stay tuned for more from #NMX, and follow @NickEhrenberg, @elizalynnsteely, and @BenBrausen for live coverage on Twitter! Want To Be A More Productive and Effective Blogger? Here Are 15 Social Media Tools To Help #NMX If you're a blogger or a social media marketer, you”ll undoubtedly end up multitasking. Multitasking doesn't usually work very well.  We overwork.  There has to be a better way.  This is where the tools come into play.  In his New Media Expo 2014 session, Ian Cleary reviewed 15 Social Media Tools to Become a More Productive and Effective Blogger. Some are designed to help you find content to write, others to automate and monitor, or optimize. Regardless, they can all help make your social media life a little easier. Finding The Best Content To Write Social Crawlitics – This tool crawls through your blog and analyzes all the social shares and shows a chart based on those shares.  This lets you see content that gets shared more than others,  and what topics touch your audience.  Then you can focus your efforts on those topics and ideas. You can also look at your competitors. The page-level results shows which pages have the most shares, pins, LinkedIn posts and more. Topsy – This tool can help you find content people are linking to already.  With Topsy, you can simply choose the 'Links' section and search for the topic you want to write about.  The tool will show you the content that got the most links. Then, you can look deeper at it and see why it was linked to so much.  Now you have the ability to make content that is more valuable than the top linked.  Once you’ve made your great content, see who is linking to other posts on the same subject and tell them about your new piece of content.  Chances are they’ll want to share. SEMrush – Most of us know of SEMrush.  Using this tool, you can enter a website address and it will give you analytics related to the site.  While it provides so much useful information, Organic Keywords is a spot of focus.  You can see where your competitors are getting traffic based on these organic keywords. This gives you an idea of what you can look to focus your content on and make more sharable/linkable content. Help Create Content Canva – People love to look at and share graphic content.  Images add interest to blog posts.  But hiring a full-time graphic designer can be very expensive.  Canva is graphic design without the need for a graphic designer. Cleary saw a 450% increase for his traffic since he started using it and says it’s super easy.  Select from a document, presentation, blog graphic, and more.  Then select your template.  Modify the text and add images (there are more than 1 million to choose from).  Bam, you’ve made great looking sharable graphic content.  Very simple, quick, and easy. Piktochart – Most people have an easier time visualizing data than simply reading it.  This is why info graphics are so popular.  They offer a highly consumable way to digest information.  You can make great looking info graphics easily using Piktochart.  The tool provides a range of templates that you can then customize and publish. You can even make infographics.  This tool is very low cost and easy to use. Automate and Monitor dlvr.it – Save time sharing your posts from one social network with another network.  dlvr.it lets you list the source social network and the destination network.  It will then take any posts added to one platform and automatically post it to your other networks.  It’s a great way to automate the sharing of your blog posts. The tool also provides analytics on your posts. SocialOomph - Write blog posts, let dlvd.it share your post to your other networks, then put it into SocialOomph.  On a regular basis, it will send out that post again.  Content useful now is just as useful in 6 months so why not share it more than once?  SocialOomph even lets you create variations for your messaging and automatically picks from a queue of your posts.  Guy Kowasaki posts everything 4 times and just look at the social success he’s seen. Zapier – Automate over 250 web apps.  Take your posts from one source and send them out to other social destinations.  Create triggers for everything. Want a Buffer post made every time a video is posted to your YouTube channel?  Zapier can do that for you. Friends+Me – While Facebook and Twitter let you schedule posts in advance, Google+ currently doesn’t.  This tool posts your updates from Google+ to your other networks.  Queue up great content and make sure it posts to G+ at the best times, even if you can’t be there to do it yourself. DoShare - Like Friends+Me, this Chrome plugin allows you to schedule content for Google+.  While it may be a bit simpler than Friends+Me, the downside to DoShare is your browser does have to be open for your posts to go out. Brand24.net – Low cost and very useful, Brand24 graphs mentions across networks.  It then allows you to zoom in and see where people are talking about you and your brand.  These are great interaction opportunities.  When it finds the mentions, it shows where they come from and you can break them down and sort and categorize to make it easy to manage. Optimize Your Content OpenSiteExplore.org – This one is great for finding the domain and page authority for a competitive page. It’s especially useful if you've found a page you want to overtake in SERP rankings.  If your site numbers are generally higher, you might be able to overtake them with a little work. WordPress SEO by Yoast – This is one everyone that uses WordPress should be using.  It gives you a breakdown of the SEO items you’ve got covered and what is missing from your posts, making sure your posts give Google what it wants. MozBar - This browser plugin shows domain rank and page authority of each page showing on the SERP of every search you do.  You can then see if there are low ranking pages that are ranking high in search.  This gives you a great idea of what you might be able to overtake. Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool – This tool shows you all the page titles on your site.  You can then go back and look to update bad titles and optimize them all. Great content alone won't win the day.  Successful promotion of that content through social media will drive even more success for bloggers looking to be seen.  Using the these great tools, bloggers can bring their blogging efforts to the next level.  Give them a try and let us know if they bring you new success.  The goal is a little bit of craic. Keep your eye out for more liveblog coverage of NMX! For instant updates and information follow @BenBrausen, @elizalynnsteely, or @NickEhrenberg on Twitter. How to Create a Mobile Content Marketing Strategy #NMX When was the last time your checked your mobile device? Ten seconds ago? A minute? An hour? (Wow, you have strong willpower.) Whatever the case, you know that mobile is already a significant influence in our lives. For businesses, it's fast becoming a necessity for content marketing: 57 percent of mobile users wouldn't recommend a business with a poorly-designed mobile website. However, creating an effective mobile content strategy involves more than repurposing desktop content to fit on a smaller screen. The magic formula, according to MobileMixed podcast host Greg Hickman, involves a restructuring of control between businesses and customers. Hickman was adamant that if you're not considering how, when, where, and what devices your audience is using, you're wasting your time. Mobile is the fastest growing audience – by 2015, more people will access the Internet from their mobile device than their PC. You need to get your content ready to go anywhere — because it's going to go everywhere. Here are the four steps that Hickman outlined to develop an efficient mobile content marketing strategy: 1.    Understand the Behaviors of Your Mobile Audience. It's a myth that mobile users are distracted when using their devices. Hickman noted that more people are choosing the mobile device as their only form of accessing the Internet. Because of mobile, customers now have greater control over the format and style of content they consume. Businesses must now order their content marketing efforts to be optimized and easily digestible on mobile devices – and even seek to create exclusive content for mobile users. 2.    Mobilize Your Site With Responsive Design. Smartphones, tablets, smartwatches — the amount of devices and resolutions available in today's market is greatly expanding. How do you deal with different screen sizes? You could do nothing…and lose your mobile customers in the first five seconds. Or, you could utilize responsive design plugins and tools to adapt with these devices. Responsive design is a fairly new practice which uses media queries to determine screen size, and adjusts the content accordingly. Some of the most common responsive design tools include: Responsive WordPress themes – including Themeforest and Studiopress. These themes provide the responsive foundation for the entire site. Responsive WordPress plugins: WPTouchPro, available starting at $50. Alternately, companies can create an entirely separate mobile site (e.g., mobile.walmart.com, m.facebook.com), though development and maintenance costs can increase with separate sites. 3.    Design for touch. Hickman argued that mobile sites should be built with the finger in mind. Use large buttons for call to action events, and make the targets big so they are easy to tap. Ideal mobile CTA buttons should be at least 44×44 pixels, the site should incorporate touch events (swiping, pinching, etc.), and text links should be spaced out. Ensure a smooth and unobtrusive experience for your mobile audience. 4.    Distribute your content through mobile. How can you make your content more snackable for users? Learn to use numbers and short subheads to make content easier and more inviting. Hickman advocated for the "5-7 rule", which requires all subject links to remain between 5-7 words in length (roughly 60 characters). Anything longer can be wrapped around a mobile screen – or even worse, cut off completely. Challenge yourself to write succinctly. The mobile audience wants content on demand, and they don't wait long before going elsewhere. Hickman noted that 74% of consumers will leave a mobile site after just five seconds – and 46% are unlikely to return if the site didn't work the first time. The initial impressions are even more crucial in mobile, simply because there are so many other sources and distractions to draw away attention. Your audience is already mobile. It's your turn to choose to be mobile. Stay tuned for more from #NMX, and follow @NickEhrenberg, @elizalynnsteely, and@BenBrausen for live coverage on Twitter!