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Tag: content marketing

  • Science of SEO Debunked in One Word

    When I started Atlanta Tech Blogs as just a project to stay on top of the Atlanta tech startup scene, one of the concepts that kept popping up was “SEO“. I was familiar with SEO, but not in a guru kind of sense. I knew what it meant and I knew that if you want people to find you via a Google search, you need to pay attention to SEO.

    Aside from that, I really didn’t know – or care – about SEO. But once I started running Atlanta Tech Blogs, I quickly realized that if I wanted more website visitors, I needed to think about SEO. Since the site is built on WordPress, I also learned that Yoast SEO plugin was the way to go. A million people can’t be wrong, right? That part was easy.

    I set one goal, and that was to be on page one of the Google search for “tech blogs“. That’s it. Meanwhile, I was banging away at curating more content, automating as much as possible, and building the social media presence for @atltechblogs on Twitter. Side note: I went back and forth with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+, but ultimately decided to keep them going, and even added Tumblr, really just as a test.

    And that’s what this whole “project” has been: a test. A bunch of experiments in content marketing, social marketing, content curating and aggregating. So I kept experimenting with different ways of doing things. Here’s how Atlanta Tech Blogs works today.

    • Blog posts are curated via RSS feeds, and a post is created from each feed item. If a blog doesn’t have an RSS feed, like this one, then that blog doesn’t get promoted. If you have a blog, make sure you have a valid RSS feed. It’s built in to most blogging software.
    • Titles of blog posts are changed to reflect the content of the post, rather than a title that only that blog’s organic audience would understand, so anyone can glance at the title and have some idea of the content of the post.
    • Blog links are published to the front page as rel=nofollow outbound links only. I’m still on the fence on this one, as to whether nofollow is better for SEO or not.
    • We capture whatever is included in the RSS feed (the source controls that), but redirect all traffic to each blog post back to the original blog, so that content is never seen on our website, other than the new title on the home page.
    • We include the canonical link as part of each post title link, so the original author is always recognized by Google, and so no one mistakes us as the author or source.
    • All new posts are tweeted with their new titles, and also auto-posted to Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Tumblr.
    • Every day, Mailchimp’s RSS-to-email system gathers up everything that we posted since the previous email, and puts it in a nicely formatted digest for easy clicking and reading for our subscribers.

    That’s it. It’s simple, and best of all, it has worked. Up until mid-February, Twitter generated most of our traffic by a long shot, but in the middle of that month, traffic from organic Google search surpassed that of Twitter, and the gap continues to widen. Also, at that time, we made the front page of Google search results for “tech blogs.” As a bonus, we’re very high (sometimes first) for the following Google searches:

    My next goal is to hit the charts for “startup blogs“, but we’re not even close there. Yet.

    All this is to say that, other than using the Yoast plugin for WordPress, there is no dark art or black magic or pseudo science that has gone into our SEO. Nothing. Here’s what gets us great SEO:

    • Exact match domain name for what we do.
    • Publishing new content every day.
    • Using Google Webmaster Tools (including a sitemap).

    Yup, that’s pretty much it. I don’t write code, nor do I know or do anything related to meta key words. We curate content, promote content, and change the titles of the blog posts we promote in order to give the random viewer a better idea of what the article is about. I tried using https, but that had no effect. Our WordPress theme is mobile friendly by default.

    So, what do you make of these three amazingly complex and double-secret probationary tactics? Getting an exact match domain is tough, and not always tempting. AtlantaTechBlogs.com is 16 characters (not counting “.com”), whereas Buffer says the optimal length for a domain name is 8 characters. Anyone can – and absolutely should – use Google Webmaster Tools, so no excuse there. What’s left?

    Content.

    Brand new content every day. Period. Content is king for SEO. Want better SEO results? Publish more content.

  • What’s your zone?

    Yup, another Michael Jordan post. Way back in 1992, the Bulls played the TrailBlazers in the NBA Finals. In game 1 of the series, Jordan decided to start shooting three-pointers. He hit six threes in the first half, and ended up scoring 35 points just in the first half. After he hit number 6, he was running back down the court, and looked over at the scoring table to the announcers and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “beats me!” Jordan was not known at all for being a 3-point shooter, so the Blazers had no answer for this brand new threat from the player that nobody could guard anyway.

    After the NBA Finals were over (Bulls won), Jordan was asked in an interview why he was not regarded as a great three-point shooter. His reply was epic: “I’ve never shot the three before.” In other words, Jordan wasn’t known to be great at it because he hadn’t yet tried it.

    In that same interview, Jordan said he was “in the zone.” He said the basket looked like a swimming pool and he just couldn’t miss and he knew it. I can recall a half dozen times or so when I was playing competitive soccer when I was in the zone. I couldn’t see anything around me. No distractions. Like I was wearing blinders, and yet I couldn’t miss.

    Have you ever been in the zone? You’d know if you had. Well, that’s a really long intro to a meeting I had today. Thanks for sticking with me here. :-)

    I met with an experienced entrepreneur today to talk about his business. The business is very much product centered at the moment, and they have several add-on products that they are planning to launch very soon. That’s what he was very excited about as he described the great experiences their customers are having using their product. As he talked about his products what they have built and are building, he was in his zone.

    Throughout the discussion, we talked again and again about how they’d like to engage in content marketing, but they didn’t know where to start, and their entire team is made up of engineers. Creating code for them is child’s play, but blogging and creating a content strategy? Nah. They could do it, if they were horse-whipped daily, but they would never get near “the zone.”

    But when he’d ask me questions and get me talking about content and strategy and telling your story…that’s when he looked at me and said, “You’re really excited about this stuff.” I didn’t even realize it. That’s a great feeling: loving what you’re doing and being able to evangelize about it without even knowing you’re doing it.

    What’s your zone? What are you really excited about? That’s what you should be doing. Go do it.

  • More Speaking & Teaching In May

    We had so much fun last Saturday offering the Digital Marketing Bootcamp at General Assembly that we’re going to do it again in June! It really was a great class, thanks to the 14 future digital marketers who attended and shared their visions for what they want to do in digital. We’ll be offering that same Saturday class again on Saturday June 20 from 10-4pm.

    But before we get to that, here’s what’s coming up in the next two weeks:

    • Advanced Social Media Strategy – Wednesday May 13th from 1-4pm – Social media marketing is an extension of content marketing. In this half day class, we’ll walk you through practical best practices for each social marketing channel, what not to do on each channel, and how to really engage your customers using simple techniques that anyone can practice on a daily basis.
    • Blogging Bootcamp – Need to blog? Silly question. Everyone needs to blog, especially startups and small businesses. But not everyone has a WordPress developer at their disposal. The good news is, you don’t need one. In this Saturday bootcamp, you’ll start with nothing, and leave with your own domain, a fully functioning WordPress blog with all the necessary plugins, a content strategy just for you, and your first three blog posts ready to go.
    • FailCon – You read that right: FAIL con. A conference about failure, because we all fail, have failed, are failing, or will fail at something. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing. I’ve failed a lot, so this one’s going to be just a little more personal than a bootcamp. If you’re up for some heartbreak, some joy, and some fun, please attend FailCon Atlanta on May 21st.
    I hope to see you at one or more of these events. They’re all going to be lots of fun. Thanks to GA for hosting all these great events.

  • The [DGM] Breakfast Club

    No, this was not us this morning, but I did spend an entire Saturday with 14 future digital marketers at General Assembly.

    The genesis of this offering was the 10-week Digital Marketing class that I led from Jan – Mar of this year. In the final session before Demo Night, we did a complete review of the entire course in a little less than three hours. That went so well that we decided to create a one-day “DGM bootcamp”, and that’s what we delivered today.

    First, thanks to everyone who attended and participated. It was a great group, with lots of unique marketing challenges, opportunities, and questions, and I thoroughly enjoyed leading this unique offering.

    We broke down the 10-week DGM class into 6 parts, walking through the nuts and bolts of each section, as listed below.

    1. Brand creation – starts with your core values; brand is everything you do; we used Atlanta Tech Village as an example of intentional branding & culture, and showed the Simon Sinek TED Talk on “Start with Why”.
    2. Measuring & metrics – measure everything, focus on 2-3 KPIs, analytics tools; we introduced the Google URL Builder as a very simple way to track each click in each campaign to have understanding vs. having only knowledge.
    3. The marketing funnel – reach –> CTR –> landing page –> conversion –> revenue –> loyalty loop; we watched the short Dave McClure (500Startups) video on “AARRR!“
    4. Owned content marketing – everything we produce is content; social marketing is content; we looked at Salesloft’s success in content marketing to build their company from nothing to $6M+ ARR in 2 years.
    5. Paid content marketing – Adwords and ads on social media channels are inexpensive, highly targeted, and powerful; we investigated how simple it is to advertise on Google Adwords, Twitter, and Facebook to conduct fast, cheap experiments to determine where your audience is and the best use of your digital marketing ad dollar.
    6. Marketing calendar – nothing hurts like a date and nothing helps like a plan; a plan implemented with a marketing & content calendar like the Insightpool freebie gives you freedom to win like Arby’s and Oreo and countless others.

    GA served up Chipotle for lunch, and we had a couple of minutes left for Q&A discussion. I think this offering is a great way for new marketers to get a solid overview of the digital realm, for those considering a career in digital marketing to see what they’re getting into, and for managers and leaders to understand the basic ideas and functionality behind digital strategy.

    I look forward to leading this class again on Saturday June 20.

  • Got Presentations? Create Blog Content.

    The average American reads approximately 300 words per minute. The average time that a speaker talks per slide of a presentation (one with slides, of course) is at least 30 seconds, and, depending upon the complexity of the content, up to three minutes per slide.  For the purpose of this blog post, let’s assume it’s 2 minutes per slide, so for a 30 minute presentation you would use approximately 15 slides.

    Now let’s do the math. If you talk for 2 minutes per slide, that’s approximately 300 words x 2 minutes, or 600 words, which is longer than the optimal length of a short, SEO friendly blog post. The image at the top of this post is a good example.

    The image is one slide out of 45 slides that I used to deliver a 3-hour seminar on “Advanced Social Media Strategy” at General Assembly last week. (Shameless plug: the class is offered again Wednesday, May 13 from 1 – 4pm). From this one slide, highlighting best practices for using YouTube videos to market your business, I was able to create a 622 word blog post, which is a 2-3 minute read.

    Unfortunately, I can’t make a blog post from every single slide in that presentation, since some are topic introductions, session dividers, examples, etc.; however, if I can use even half of those 45 slides, that’s a series of 20+ posts on one subject, each post a short, easily-digestible chunk of usable information.

    This technique is what’s commonly known as re-purposing your content. I spent about 3 hours creating the slide presentation, and about 20 minutes creating this first blog post, which can be shared over and over and over, not to mention I’ll be teaching this session again.

    If you or someone at your business presents slide presentations regularly, you already have TONS of content, and that doesn’t even include video of the presenter in action!

    How much content do you have? More than you thought.

  • The Interview

    When I’m not creating content (aka writing), I’m getting content from those who know it best: entrepreneurs. That’s the heart of the routine as your content creator & strategist. I ask you an open ended question, you tell me your entire story, which then becomes blog fodder for your content marketing calendar.

    If only it were that simple. That’s what it looks like from 100,000 feet, but down here on good ole terra firma, it’s a little different.

    1. Introduction (email, phone, LinkedIn, Twitter)
    2. “Who are you again? Oh, ok.”
    3. Set the playing field: content is king and you must blog.
    4. Arrange the first session.
    5. Reschedule first session due to conflicts.
    6. First session. Light bulbs go on.
    7. Create one-page strategy doc.
      • Content buckets
      • Voice, Message, and Mix (60-20-20 rule)
      • Schedule / Frequency
    8. Set interview schedule.
    9. Interview.
    10. Blog.
    11. Repeat steps 1 – 11 until success
    So, like most professions, there’s a lot of other stuff that has to get done and surrounds the best part of the entire process: interviewing and blogging. Or, said another way, learning your story and telling your story. That is the joy of this business. That’s what doesn’t feel like work. The interview is by far the most fun, because I’m learning something brand new. I may have an insight or two from a business or experience angle, but nobody knows your stuff better than you.
    The interview. It’s kinda like going back to school every day to learn something completely new.

  • Four Upcoming Speaking Events @ GA Atlanta

    My speaking & teaching calendar for April and May just got a little busier, thanks to the great folks at General Assembly. If you haven’t visited their sweet new space at Ponce City Market, you should do yourself a favor and head to midtown Atlanta and have a look.

    While you’re there, you can get some learning in, too. Here are the workshops I’m leading in April & May at GA Atlanta.

    • Wednesday April 15 – Advanced Social Media Strategies – Step by step, we’ll dig into how best to engage your target audience on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media channels through best practices and some little-known but powerful personal tactics.
    • Wednesday April 29 – How to Measure Social Media ROI – You know social media is powerful, but now that it’s become part of your marketing mix, you have to measure its ROI. How do you do that? Join me for this hands on workshop and leave knowing how to measure the fiscal effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts.
    • Saturday May 2 – Digital Marketing Bootcamp – the entire 10 weeks of Digital Marketing in one day! Bring your PC and something to write on, because you’re going to need them both as we cover branding, analytics, social, content, the marketing funnel, and your marketing calendar in a blazing fast half day.
    • Saturday May 16 – Blogging for Your Brand Bootcamp – Come with your PC and leave with a fully functioning WordPress Blog, including a custom domain, vital plugins, a great theme, social media connection, a content strategy, and your first three blog posts.

    There are certain skills everyone needs to thrive in today’s digital marketplace, and GA is covering them all. I’m excited to help new marketers and bloggers dive in headfirst and learn skills that they’ll actually be doing in the workshops and then take home to their businesses the next day.

  • Why You Must Blog If You’re Running A Startup

    I’m in the content marketing business, so that’s generally the subject that ensues when someone asks me what I’m up to these days. When someone asks me what that means, I break it down into two parts: I create content strategy and I create content.

    What kind of content? Blogs. Those who understand the value of content marketing have no more questions. Those who do not (yet) understand the value of content marketing continue asking, mainly to determine how (and why!) one might make a living creating content (aka writing blogs) for other people.

    After a few minutes of explanation, the conversation usually ends up in the same place, which is what Mark Suster has said any number of times: if you’re a startup, you must blog. I could quote Suster’s Techcrunch article over and over and over, and I highly recommend that anyone considering a startup just bookmark it, and refer to it anytime you wonder why you’re trying to create prose when you’re not creating product. So go there and read it, and heed the advice of one of the most respected tech marketers on the planet.

    But there are other resources out there who (duh!) agree completely and offer up even more reasons that startup entrepreneurs should blog.

    Still not convinced? That’s ok. You will be, either by trying it and seeing the results for yourself, or seeing one or more of your competitors winning through inbound marketing strategies, the simplest of which is starting, growing, and maintaining and active blog.

    Suster repeats what I’ve heard so many times: “I’d like to blog, but I don’t really know what to talk about.” Don’t make it harder than it is. You know enough about something to start a business, right? Then you know enough to blog about that thing you’re building for that space you’re building it for and that problem you’re solving.

    That’s what you blog about. To quote Suster again, and wrap this thing up, “If you write about something for which you’re both knowledgeable and passionate, I’ll bet you can pump out more than you think.“

    Start your startup’s blog. Today.

  • “Does SEO make anyone feel warm & fuzzy?”

    Lindsay Trinkle Visits #DGM2 Class @_GAAtlanta

    As we begin the second half of our 10 week Digital Marketing class, we welcome another great guest speaker from the Atlanta digital world. Our first speaker blew the doors off of market & customer segmentation, setting the bar high for our remaining three guest speakers. Tonight, Lindsay Trinkle, whom I met at The Village and is now at Write2Market, where her aim is “to help entrepreneurs find their voice and tell their stories,” put down some fantastic information about content.

    Here are the high points from Lindsay’s 49 minutes of content magic entitled “CONTENT: How to make it better”:

    • What is content?
      • the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. – content marketing institute
      • what separates us from salespeople
      • blogs, white papers, video, social media
      • Social Media is content marketing, not just a channel of content distribution
    • Some statistics on content marketing:
      • Content marketing generates 3X as many leads per dollar spent as traditional marketing tactics
      • 7/10 readers prefer to learn about a brand via content, not ads, especially millennials
      • 65% of people are visual learners, so use visual content, infographics
      • 82% of consumers trust a company more when leadership – mainly the CEO – is active on social media and blog
      • 70% of consumers “feel closer” to a company when they consume that brand’s content marketing
    • Content marketing is not selling. Content marketing is creating a relationship with a prospect that makes them feel closer to your brand
    • Content marketing builds credibility & trust
    • Content only matters if it matters to your customer/user

    Lindsay’s Content Ratio Rule of Thumb:

    • 60% educational posts
      • Example: moz – read it and think, “wow, this company actually cares about me”; they never pitch their product in their eBook; they just tell you how to do SEO better, which builds trust.
    • 20% conversational posts
      • This one is tricky; this is where the “CEO is on social media” thing comes into play; your brand must be personified, humanized in some way for it to be relevant and trustworthy; put a human face to the words; focus on the team (e.g., “We’re going to SXSW!”) adding a human element, face, name, job function; “conversational” isn’t the accurate word, since we’re not engaging in discussion, but rather just more “human”, talking about the people of the brand and what they’re doing.
    • 20% promotional posts
      • posts that actually talk about your product, brand, or services; tips on how to use the products, etc. Keep this to a minimum; never over 20%. Don’t work this into every other post. Keep this separate. Your instinct is to create a great educational post, and then put a call to action to get an offer at the bottom. Don’t.
    More about this formula for content creation:
    • This rule of thumb is hard to define when you’re putting it into practice.
    • The point of white papers & eBooks is to put them behind a form and do lead gen. WPs no longer than 15 pages, or else it’s an eBook. Both are PDFs, just formatted differently. Put it behind a marketing automation tool.
    • If they’re interested in your content, then they’re interested in what you have to offer.

    Great tools for visual content creation:

    Other golden nuggets of content marketing from Lindsay:
    • SEO, linkbuilding, blah blah blah yada yada yada: focus on creating content that connects you to your audience.
    • Re-purposing content is wonderful, but you have to be creative about it.
    And finally, “Does SEO make anyone feel warm & fuzzy?” Consistently create great content that engages human consumers, and you’ll win the SEO game.
    Lindsay killed it. The class loved her, and peppered her with questions that she handled like a boss.

    Next class, we’ll be joined by the one and only Van Baird, of Relational Equity, the most interesting Insurance salesman in the world, as he brings his own version of digital marketing: ““Shut Up & Listen!” Using digital for Referrals, Retention, Revenue, Relationships and Other Words That Start with R.“

  • 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Bloggers

    A-Conversation-On-Trends-Best-Practices-E-Commerce

    Beyond the obvious (write), there are tactics that you should build into the DNA of your blogging strategy. These are things that should become habitual, so you don’t even have to think about doing each of them. These are blogging habits that you see in the most successful blogs, but they are not advertised as “Here’s how you do it right.” But you can do these things. They are not difficult. Rather, they are so simple, that you might overlook them or think that these 7 habits of highly effective bloggers are not all that important— they are.


    1. Be consistent.


    Regardless of how much you blog, you must adopt a rhythm, a cadence, a regular schedule for your posts. As you build your audience, your predictability will add value to your regular readers, who will come to expect your posts at certain times on certain days. Whether you push a long form story out once a week at exactly the same time like The Bitter Southerner or post every night between 9pm and 10pm like Atlanta tech entrepreneur David Cummings, you should be consistent in order to grow the readership of your blog.

    2. Talk about what you know.

    Tell your  story. That’s why people will follow, read, and share your blog. It’s your blog, so talk about your experiences, the things you know the best, what you personally have learned through this experience or that. You are unique, and so is your point of view on the world. I’m not going to write about cricket or ballet because I have no knowledge of those things. Rather, I write about tech startups and my (good and bad) experiences living through 7 of them.

    3. Tell a story.

    Everyone loves a story, so entice your readers with stories that you’ve lived, seen, or been a part of. The greatest stories always have lessons, and your experiences are no exception. Telling your story, helps you provide your own context for the lessons you’ve learned and are now teaching your readers. When you tell a story, it makes it real for your readers. They can then share your story and the lessons you’ve learned in their own lives.

    4. Use good grammar.

    You knew this article would get uninteresting at some point, didn’t you? Grammar. Every amateur writer’s nemesis. One poorly used comma, apostrophe, or gerund, and you’ve lost a portion of your audience. Fear not! You have two lines of defense against poor grammar. First, read it out loud. Does it sound right? If not, chances are it’s not. But don’t let your voice be the only decider. Grammarly offers a great, simple, free browser plugin that checks everything for proper grammar use.

    5. Include an image.

    The age-old adage “a picture tells a thousand words” is famous for a reason. Adding a beautiful, relevant image to your blog post helps capture the reader’s attention, adds color and beauty to your words, and helps your reader feel like they are part of your story. Also, when you promote your blog in social media, the results of using an image in a Facebook post or Tweet speak for themselves. Hubspot reports that using an image in a Facebook post gets 53% more Likes than a post with no image. Twitter is not shy about its research that adding a photo to a tweet increases engagement by 35%, among other promotional benefits.

    6. Quote outside facts.

    Do you see what I did there? Quoting relevant, authoritative 3rd party facts gives you credibility that you are not just making this stuff up. Do the research so that your readers don’t have to. They can rely on you to give them all the information they need. Nobody knows it all, but everyone knows something, so share other people’s knowledge to earn credibility for your own writing.

    7. Share & engage.

    Sharing is easy and fast with the plethora of social media and email plugins available for any blog. If you want people to read your blog posts, you should share each blog post on the social media channels that your audiences frequently visit. If your audience is on Pinterest, sharing your blog posts on Google+ may not reach them as effectively. Then, once you share, unless you’re writing for you, like Indie Developer and Partner at The Iron Yard John Saddington, you must engage your readers. Reply when they comment or ask a question. Engage in the conversation on your preferred social media channels. Let them know you’re real by accepting comments, corrections, and even criticism.

    It takes 21 days to create a habit of just about anything. Therefore, if you practice each of these 7 things for your blog for 21 straight days, each one will become a habit, and from then on become part of your blogging DNA, helping you become a better, more consistent, and more popular blogger.