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Online Discovery Tips That Will Get Your Content Promoted – Tips from Sarah Skerik of PR Newswire
 | Did you know? In one second on the internet there are 12,964 Instagram photos uploaded, 50,000 Tumblr posts, 400,000 Tweets. Among all this user-content that’s created every second, you have a LOT of competition for your buyer’s attention.
Sarah Skerik, Vice President of Content Marketing at PR Newswire, shared lots of tips in her breakout session presentation at Content Marketing World around creating press releases or creative content and how you can get them promoted so your target audience will see it.
"If you publish it, will they convert even see the dang thing?"
Build Discovery into Content Strategy:
- The most emailed & most shared stories get the most action – make a point to mine content that gets high engagement elsewhere.
- Demonstrate a timely response – FM Global Insurance company responded in an almost real-time way to a Hurricane Task Force Report released by the government and issued a press release linking back to their relevant disaster insurance web content. Tie your thought leadership to relevant events as quickly as possible – because people are already talking about them.
- Capitalize on trends & issues – positively. Jim Beam Honey Liquor creates the humorous “issue” of how bees were in danger due to bears – writing some viral, humorous content for the perfect channel – BuzzFeed.
- Use Editorial Calendars to inform strategy & timing – Most magazines list their upcoming editorial calendars on their website – spending some time creating content around the topics they already have planned will give you a leg up on what people in that industry will be talking about at that time.
- Leverage sponsored/owned content – leverage pieces/studies that other companies generated to use as your own news – highlighting the statistical piece that is most relevant to you.
- Utilize seasonal and recurring events – The Super Bowl and holidays are great times – to drive your content. There's attention and conversation around the seasonal topic, so tell stories that will be found due to their timeliness.
- Distribute the content – Consider a multimedia news release – turn a press release into a video, Slideshare, ebook, etc. to reach multiple audiences
Distribution Deep Dive
"It's not a press release, it's a vehicle for all sorts of news and info."
- Find, connect with and quote the people who care – Send your important and relevant information to someone who's important in your industry, in the hopes that they'll share it socially with their networks. It’s worth a shot!
- Use free press release distribution sites – judiciously – PRLog and PitchEngine are two great free options. Focus on different message elements than you would for traditional paid PR, and be sure to use trackable links.
- Balance your time & efforts against your results – Measure what worked against what didn't work – and use that to guide you for the next time.
"It takes almost 4 months for the average release to accumulate most of its views." (Give it time to do its job.)
Fast Formatting Tips & Tactics Proven to Improve Results
- Headline length really matters. Yours should be somewhere between 80-130 characters. Search Engines will pull 65 characters, the Associated Press will show 80, and your Twitter headline will show ~100 characters. Use a subhead to keep peers happy if you can’t get your message across within the character allotments.
- Employ multimedia elements to your content – Visuals have their own distribution networks and draw eyeballs.
- Dump the speed-bump. Give the reader a reason to keep reading past the initial sentence. (Don't bog down the reader with a huge description of your business. “XYZ company, a blah blah leader in blah blah technology based in blah blah…”)
- Embed a Call-To-Action – near the TOP rather than the bottom and link it strategically. Think about servicing the reader, and not solely about the SEO. Be sure to link to any profiles of those quoted in the message.
- Use keywords – being specific about your keywords makes the search interest more qualified in viewing your content.
If you utilize all these tips, it does sound like it requires a lot of steps and work to make one piece of content happen – but keep in mind the fact that you’re able to re-purpose it and distribute to multiple channels, making it more valuable than it being just one piece.
So remember, just because you publish it, doesn’t mean they’ll see it – take every step possible to ensure that doesn’t happen.
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2013. | Online Discovery Tips That Will Get Your Content Promoted – Tips from Sarah Skerik of PR Newswire | http://www.toprankblog.com
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Online Marketing News: #CMWorld Rocked!, Yahoo Yodeling, Foursquare Exploding, Livefyre Storifying
 | Yahoo's New Logo Still 'Whimsical,' Still Purple – Hot or not, Yahoo execs have finally decided on a new logo after a 30-day testing period. "We wanted a logo that stayed true to our roots (whimsical, purple, with an exclamation point) yet embraced the evolution of our products," Chief Marketing Officer Kathy Savitt said. You can see all the logo contenders that Yahoo tried out in its month long search. Ragan's PR Daily
In Other Online Marketing News…
Content Marketing World 2013 was a Smash Hit! – With a rock and roll theme, CMWorld brought in content marketing rockstars from all over the world including major brands, thought leaders and up and coming practitioners. TopRank made a big splash with the Content Marketers Who Rock eBook and Lee Odden’s presentation to over 400 attendees on the Future of Content on the Search and Social Web. In fact, Lee was one of the most mentioned people on Twitter during the entire conference according to analysis from Cision. See you gain next year! Coverage: CME, PR Newswire, Cision, Eloqua, King Content, Salesforce
Foursquare Touts 40M Users in Bid for Renewed Relevancy – Don’t count the location-sharing social network out just yet. With a growing user base and an increased focus on advertising, Foursquare is still kicking. Cnet
Google’s Cutts: Auto-Generated Content & Search Results in Our Index Violate Our Guidelines – Examples of content like this include Text translated by an automated tool without human review or curation before publishing and combining content from different web pages without adding sufficient value. SearchEngineLand
Acxiom Lets Consumers See Data It Collects – Aboutthedata.com was introduced by a marketing technology firm, Acxiom, that collects, stores, analyzes and sells billions of pieces of information about consumers. They are now offering individual consumers a glimpse of some of the details the company has collected about them. The New York Times
Pew Internet – Anonymity, Privacy, and Security Online are Growing Issues for Consumers – 86% of internet users have taken steps online to remove or mask their digital footprints—ranging from clearing cookies to encrypting their email. Pew Research Center
Retail Industry Remains the Largest Spender in US Digital Advertising – Whether on desktop or mobile, direct-response campaigns will continue to take the lion's share of digital ad spending by the retail industry with search marketing representing one of the most important components. eMarketer
Google Analytics Visitor Segmentation: Users, Sequences, Cohorts – As user behavior becomes increasingly complex, it is mandatory that your data analysis includes the ability to perform visitor segmentation. Occam's Razor
10 Useful Custom Google Analytics Reports and Dashboards for Publishers – If visitor segmentation is too complex at this point, then at the very least you'll want to take a look at these custom reports, including real-time visitor reporting to content marketing and social media dashboards to gain insight into what your customers want. eConsultancy
Livefyre Acquires Storify – Livefyre's StreamHub platform powers real-time conversation and social curation for over 400 of the world's largest brands and publishers. Storify helps over 850,000 marketers and journalists at these same companies tell stories online using social content. Seems like a natural marriage. Livefyre
The Data-Driven Future of Journalism: What Jeff Bezos and Keith Rabois Can Teach the Media – Data science is where the value is going to be created, but not just the accumulation of data, rather the smart application of it to reshape products, businesses, and industries in a continuous cycle of evolution and improvement. ReadWrite
New Google+ Enhancements: Author Attribution & Embedded Posts – When you create and share content online, you want people to know you’re the author— no matter how far that content may travel. Not only do you get the credit, you can also grow your audience over time. Google is piloting this with two major platforms, WordPress and Typepad. Google Plus Blog
Dell Officially Going Private – The plan to take Dell private was almost approved back in July, but a series of postponements delayed the decision. But yesterday, (Sept. 12) Dell shareholders approved the $25 billion buyout. Michael Dell, founder, intends to shift the company more heavily toward enterprise services as the PC industry continues to slow in the wake of tablets and smartphones. The Verge
20 Tips to Amplify Your Brand – This post is the third of a series of three posts which explore topics covered at a gathering for small businesses and local professionals to share ways to grow their business using LinkedIn. LinkedIn
From the Online Marketing Community
On "5 Creative SEO Copywriting Methods for Boring Topics," Nick @ Wishpond said, #1 is the best advice for writing any post. It’s one of the things that Joseph Sugarman (who is awesome!) stresses heavily when explaining how to write great ad copy. When he writes he imagines that he is writing to a single person.
This style works great for blogs and even Facebook Posts and Tweets. Marketers tend to sound like they’re speaking into a megaphone when they write for social media. They try to create a simple message that applies to everyone. But you should always imagine yourself talking to your ideal “Alan” customer – this will attract highly targeted people, as opposed to masses of people who will never buy from you.
On "The Future of Content Marketing on the Search and Social Web #CMWorld, Mark Fulton said, Thanks for sharing this recap of Lee’s presentation, excellent article. You’ve made it clear, the future of search, social and content marketing offer promising opportunities for small businesses to expand their reach and drive sales.
I like how Lee describes content marketing as being the best answer for your consumers, it reminds me of Google’s quest to deliver the best results and makes sense that we should align that strategy for SEO.
I’d argue that the future is closer than some might think. Our local business clients are using our “Nearby Now” product and mobile app to generate and publish dynamic, real-time content. Staff members are using check-ins with photos and more importantly, reviews from customers are collected and published automatically.
We hope that we are providing the best answer as Lee suggests! Thanks again for the insightful post.
What's Your Take?
Is Yahoo’s new look much ado about nothing? Is it possible to be truly anonymous online?
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!
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