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!