Six Principles Great Content Brands.

 Six Principles Great Content Brands.

1. Be the buyer

Everything starts with the buyer's challenges, needs, prejudices, and concerns.

Perhaps that has become something of a truism in content marketing, but it's way too important to let that fact kick it off the top of the six principles list.

Great content brands are always built around the challenges and interests of their target audiences. That appraoch isn't just a veneer of empathy pasted into your brochure.socialmediacoachingsite.com it's a real understanding of the things your prospects actually care about—not just what you wish they cared about.

Understanding your prospect's world takes a bit of work. But no effort will ever deliver a higher return. If you have doubts about your own company's understanding of your prospects, do this work first.

Take a few buyers to lunch. (I recommend sushi, but a decent southern barbecue works, too.) (Or risotto.)

Do it. Really.

2. Be authoritative

Stay in your sweet spot, where the things you understand better than anyone else intersect with the things your prospects really care about.

You know how you read one e-book and come away thinking "Meh"? Then you read another and come away thinking, "Wow!"? (Speaking of which, might I suggest Velocity's B2B Marketing Manifesto?)

The difference is almost always a matter of authority. When you write from a position of authority, you write useful, interesting content. When you bluff, you write hollow, obvious content that may sound good but convinces no one.

And authority is all about writing from your sweet spot (we talk about this in our Content Marketing Strategy Checklist, and we're really big believers in it).

Basically, you can screw up three ways:

Pandering. You write about things your prospects care a lot about, but you have no special authority or perspective regarding those topics. You might get their attention, but you will not have reward that attention with something in return. And people hate giving their attention to things that don't deserve it.
Navel-gazing. You drill deep down into your company's expertise, but if your prospects don't yet care... you'll only embarrass yourself.
Blathering. If you create content that neither speaks to your prospects' concerns nor offers expertise, you're really cranking out the crap.
If you stay in your sweet spot, your content will be 100 times more likely to get consumed, shared, liked, and tweeted.

So, spend time getting your team to agree on where your sweet spot is, then build your content strategy and editorial calendar around it. And that leads us nicely into...

3. Be strategic

One-off content campaigns don't add up to a content strategy.

"Fire and forget" content marketing is so last year. If you're like most marketers, you've at least dipped your toes into content marketing—and it felt great (as great as a toe can feel).

Now it's time for a proper content strategy. Why? Because your resources are limited and your competitors are getting good at this, too.

A content strategy sounds intensive and expensive, but it needn't be. It's just a summary of who you want to reach, what you need them to do, what content you'll create to encourage them to do it, how you'll get the content under their noses, and how you'll measure success.

The checklist mentioned above can help, but it's not rocket science. The important thing is to aim before you fire—and build consensus around where you're aiming.

If you don't have a content strategy yet, write one tonight on the train home. Fifty Shades of Gray (Kindle edition) can wait.

4. Be prolific

Content marketing is a marathon, not a shotput toss.

Each new piece of content has a shorter and shorter "golden period," when the most people want to get it and share it. The "Crap" slide deck itself is hot as I write this, but views will be down to a trickle by the time you read it.

So we all need to build efficient content machines that can keep the frequency up without sacrificing quality.

That means a good mix of content types, from quick blog posts to short videos to 80-page e-books, and everything in between. To do that well, you need...

Good writers who understand what you do
Good designers who know how to sell a story
You can't go hunting for those people every time you need to create something. You need to have them on staff or on tap inside a friendly agency that you keep close.

Find the best talent that you can afford. Reward it. Stroke it every Tuesday. Do whatever it takes to keep it happy.

5. Be passionate

If you don't care about this stuff, why should anybody else?

Passion is the secret ingredient of content marketing, so it's a shame it sounds like the latest CD series from a "personal improvement coach" ("Order now and get my 'Slam Dunk Your Soul' video!").

Passionate doesn't mean fake enthusiasm or free-form extroversion. It means finding the things you really are interested in (with any luck, they are somewhere in your sweet spot), then using content to discover and explore the things that make it so interesting.

That kind of passion is contagious. It's really hard to resist.

Here's the hard part: if you're just not really that interested in your company's sweet spot topics, you need to find something in there to interest you or... get another job.

You set the ceiling on how much your readers can care about any given topic. Aim for nothing less than Sistine.

6. Be tough on yourself

You know whether you're being lazy. Don't be lazy.

It's OK to fire off a blog post in half an hour—as long as you signal to the reader that's what you're doing.

But the bulk of your content marketing program will come from putting in the time to make each piece as good as it can be.

That means lots of rewriting—which most people hate. It also means sharing your earlier drafts with people you respect and asking their opinion. You don't want to waste their time, so a lot of your work needs to happen before you ask. Then you need to take their views into account... and rewrite again.

If that isn't your idea of fun, find someone whose idea of fun it is. You can find them in places like chess clubs or under rocks. Also LinkedIn groups

Social Media Coaching Site

SEO Mistakes Experts Miss Today: Make Content Creation a Top Priority

SEO Mistakes Experts Miss Today: Make Content Creation a Top Priority: Make Content Creation a Top Priority  See our new video taring on SEO and Social Media Video Training A to Z       If you want to grow...

Make Content Creation a Top Priority

Make Content Creation a Top Priority

 See our new video taring on SEO and Social Media Video Training A to Z      

If you want to grow your business it’s necessary to have an online marketing presence today. If you want to succeed in online marketing it’s necessary to create quality content on a regular basis. Content is really at the foundation of an online marketing strategy. Without good content you really can’t execute an SEO campaign, a social media campaign, a PPC campaign, an email newsletter campaign, etc. While content is such a necessary component to marketing success, many businesses still struggle with it. Common complaints are that there is no time to dedicate to content creation and that there is nothing to write about. It’s time to make time for content creation and stop using “there’s nothing to write about” as a lame excuse. There’s always something to write about, no matter what industry you are in.



Here are some content marketing tips to keep you on track:
Create an editorial calendar and stick to it
When it comes to content creation, organization is key. At the beginning of each month, determine what days/times will be dedicated to creating content. It could be 20 minutes one day, an hour the next, etc. It’s just important to schedule it into your daily routine. When something is scheduled it’s harder to ignore it or put it off until another day.

Keep a running tab of ideas
Some days your “creative brain” may be more active than others. Inspiration for content topics can really strike at any time so it’s important to keep some kind of journal or notebook of topic ideas. That way, when you sit down to write you can easily reference the notebook if you can’t think of a good topic that day. You should always have content marketing on the brain. If you are in a meeting, on the phone with a client, or working on a project an idea might come to you. Don’t think that you will remember what it was in the future. You probably won’t! Write it down then and there.

Speak to others within the company
Marketing content is typically created by the marketing team, but that doesn’t mean that other departments shouldn’t have a say. Speak to employees in other departments about their duties and what they do on an average day. It’s likely that there are some great topics in there that would be of interest to target audience members. The customer service team is always a great resource since they are working directly with customers on a daily basis and hearing what their questions/concerns are.

Minimize the approval process (as much as possible)

 This is an over view

Content is only valuable if it’s being published. Many companies require content to be approved by multiple departments, managers, etc. before it ever is seen by target audience members. While it’s a good idea to be thorough like that, it can take a long time. If possible, leave the content approval to one or two trusted team members.

Learn with coaching http://SocialMediaCoachingSite.com

SEO Mistakes That Experts Miss Today

 SEO Mistakes That Experts Miss Today



The SEO game has changed drastically over the last year. A lot of the tactics that worked 12 months ago don’t work anymore.  And it’s not just newbie SEOs who are making mistakes… even experts who have been in the field for years are making mistakes.

Here are 5 mistakes that even experts are missing:

Mistake #1: Building rich anchor text links

You probably already know by now that rich anchor text links are bad, but how rich is too rich? There’s actually a post penguin anchor text case study that just came out and shows that you can get rankings without building too rich links.

The site Doctor650 built 13 links with the following anchor text:

Here
Doctor 650
My site
Dissecting The 650 Credit Score
Here
Doctor650.com
Here
http://www.doctor650.com/ (no-followed link from YouTube)
Resource on 650 credit scores
Doctor650.com
Clicking here
Doctor650.com
650 credit score
Within 54 days of the site launching, it started to rank in the top 4 for the keyword “650 credit score”. This just shows that you can still rank for any term, even with a brand new site, but you have to rotate up your anchor text.

You don’t want your anchor text to be richer than 30% and you want to try and variations of your anchor text. Why? Because it is rare that someone would naturally link to you with rich anchor text 100% of the time.

I’ve ranked for terms like “online poker” or even “insurance quotes” all by building non-rich anchor text links that are relevant. And when I do build rich anchor texts, which is not too often, I throw in a lot of variations.

Mistake #2: Building too many links too fast

How many links do you need to build to rank for competitive terms? You actually don’t need too many, you more so need time. Slow and steady is what’s winning the race in the SEO game.

If you look at the Doctor650 site, not only did they not build too many rich anchor text links, but they also didn’t build too many links. I’ve done this with competitive keywords and noticed that the easiest way to climb to the top is to not build too many links. More so, just go for authoritative links.

And if you think building a lot of links is better for you, just look at this case study by Marcus Taylor, in which he built 10,000 links within 24 hours. He shot up to a number 1 ranking in Google, but within 3 weeks he was pushed down as he built too many links.

Google’s algorithm is sophisticated because they know what rate websites typically build links at. If your link count is growing at an unnatural pace, you won’t rank too well.

Mistake #3: Building too many links to your homepage

Have you ever looked at the link profile of the other sites in your space? What portion of their links are from .gov and .edu sites? What portion of their links is going to their homepage versus internal pages?

Instead of building links to your homepage, consider building links to the majority of your internal pages. Just look at Wikipedia, that sites ranks for almost every term out there and it is the 6th most popular site in the world.

Majestic SEO is showing that Wikiepdia in total has over 600 million backward links, while the homepage has roughly 6 million links. That means 1% of their total links point to their homepage, while 99% goes to internal pages.

If you want high rankings, consider building more links to your internal pages versus your homepage.

Mistake #4: Writing a lot of mediocre content

Have you ever read the content on sites like eHow?  They have over 5 million pages of content, they rank for a lot of terms on Google… and they have millions of backlinks.

Although they do well, it’s not worth copying their content strategy? Why, because their content is mediocre and not detailed. For example, if you Google “how to install a bidet”, this page from eHow ranks in the top 10.

Do you see the problem?

That page does a terrible job at explaining how to install a bidet. If eHow wrote articles that were over 2400 words and were very detailed like Wikipedia they would rank much higher and get more traffic.

Based on this article, you can see how Google prefers to rank web pages with at least 2000 words of content on page 1.

Mistake #5: Links build authority

By being classified as an authority site, you’ll rank higher. So how do you become an authority site? You get more links, right? Although links do help build authority, it’s not the only way.

Social media – by building up your social media profiles and getting more tweets, likes, and shares, your website will rank higher. Google and Bing have both publicly stated that they look at social signals.
Author rank – Google is able to verify authors, which means they can now track who is writing great content, versus mediocre content. So even if your site doesn’t have a ton of links, you’ll probably start seeing it rank higher in the future if you have authors with a lot of authority blogging on your website.
Age – although time isn’t a factor you can easily control, sites that are older tend to rank higher… even if these older sites don’t have as many backlinks. So if you are considering starting a new business, try to buy an existing website in your space that is at least 5 years old… this will help you rank higher faster.
If you want to rank higher, try to make your website an authority site. Just don’t focus all of your energy on building links, as it isn’t the only way to become an authority site.

Conclusion

SEO is a constantly changing game and if you don’t keep up with it, you won’t do well. Don’t focus on the quick hits, slow and steady really does win the SEO race.

What I’ve personally experienced throughout each Google update is that quality content will continue to rank high and receive traffic. For example, all of my blogs got a nice traffic bump by 15 to 41% on January 1 when Google made their update.

 Free SEO and Social Media Video Training at http://www.SocialMediaCoachingSite.com

 SEO Mistakes That Experts Miss Today



The SEO game has changed drastically over the last year. A lot of the tactics that worked 12 months ago don’t work anymore.  And it’s not just newbie SEOs who are making mistakes… even experts who have been in the field for years are making mistakes.

Here are 5 mistakes that even experts are missing:

Mistake #1: Building rich anchor text links

You probably already know by now that rich anchor text links are bad, but how rich is too rich? There’s actually a post penguin anchor text case study that just came out and shows that you can get rankings without building too rich links.

The site Doctor650 built 13 links with the following anchor text:

Here
Doctor 650
My site
Dissecting The 650 Credit Score
Here
Doctor650.com
Here
http://www.doctor650.com/ (no-followed link from YouTube)
Resource on 650 credit scores
Doctor650.com
Clicking here
Doctor650.com
650 credit score
Within 54 days of the site launching, it started to rank in the top 4 for the keyword “650 credit score”. This just shows that you can still rank for any term, even with a brand new site, but you have to rotate up your anchor text.

You don’t want your anchor text to be richer than 30% and you want to try and variations of your anchor text. Why? Because it is rare that someone would naturally link to you with rich anchor text 100% of the time.

I’ve ranked for terms like “online poker” or even “insurance quotes” all by building non-rich anchor text links that are relevant. And when I do build rich anchor texts, which is not too often, I throw in a lot of variations.

Mistake #2: Building too many links too fast

How many links do you need to build to rank for competitive terms? You actually don’t need too many, you more so need time. Slow and steady is what’s winning the race in the SEO game.

If you look at the Doctor650 site, not only did they not build too many rich anchor text links, but they also didn’t build too many links. I’ve done this with competitive keywords and noticed that the easiest way to climb to the top is to not build too many links. More so, just go for authoritative links.

And if you think building a lot of links is better for you, just look at this case study by Marcus Taylor, in which he built 10,000 links within 24 hours. He shot up to a number 1 ranking in Google, but within 3 weeks he was pushed down as he built too many links.

Google’s algorithm is sophisticated because they know what rate websites typically build links at. If your link count is growing at an unnatural pace, you won’t rank too well.

Mistake #3: Building too many links to your homepage

Have you ever looked at the link profile of the other sites in your space? What portion of their links are from .gov and .edu sites? What portion of their links is going to their homepage versus internal pages?

Instead of building links to your homepage, consider building links to the majority of your internal pages. Just look at Wikipedia, that sites ranks for almost every term out there and it is the 6th most popular site in the world.

Majestic SEO is showing that Wikiepdia in total has over 600 million backward links, while the homepage has roughly 6 million links. That means 1% of their total links point to their homepage, while 99% goes to internal pages.

If you want high rankings, consider building more links to your internal pages versus your homepage.

Mistake #4: Writing a lot of mediocre content

Have you ever read the content on sites like eHow?  They have over 5 million pages of content, they rank for a lot of terms on Google… and they have millions of backlinks.

Although they do well, it’s not worth copying their content strategy? Why, because their content is mediocre and not detailed. For example, if you Google “how to install a bidet”, this page from eHow ranks in the top 10.

Do you see the problem?

That page does a terrible job at explaining how to install a bidet. If eHow wrote articles that were over 2400 words and were very detailed like Wikipedia they would rank much higher and get more traffic.

Based on this article, you can see how Google prefers to rank web pages with at least 2000 words of content on page 1.

Mistake #5: Links build authority

By being classified as an authority site, you’ll rank higher. So how do you become an authority site? You get more links, right? Although links do help build authority, it’s not the only way.

Social media – by building up your social media profiles and getting more tweets, likes, and shares, your website will rank higher. Google and Bing have both publicly stated that they look at social signals.
Author rank – Google is able to verify authors, which means they can now track who is writing great content, versus mediocre content. So even if your site doesn't have a ton of links, you’ll probably start seeing it rank higher in the future if you have authors with a lot of authority blogging on your website.
Age – although time isn’t a factor you can easily control, sites that are older tend to rank higher… even if these older sites don’t have as many backlinks. So if you are considering starting a new business, try to buy an existing website in your space that is at least 5 years old… this will help you rank higher faster.
If you want to rank higher, try to make your website an authority site. Just don’t focus all of your energy on building links, as it isn’t the only way to become an authority site.

Conclusion

SEO is a constantly changing game and if you don’t keep up with it, you won’t do well. Don’t focus on the quick hits, slow and steady really does win the SEO race.

What I’ve personally experienced throughout each Google update is that quality content will continue to rank high and receive traffic. For example, all of my blogs got a nice traffic bump by 15 to 41% on January 1 when Google made their update.