Tag Archives: Content Strategy

Optimizing your content for search engines? Where do you draw the line?

The world was recently shocked at Robin Williams’ sudden death. As the news spread over the web everybody was searching for it. People wanted to know more about the actor, his depression, all his work and actually what led him to commit suicide, if at all he committed suicide. There was news of his daughter Zelda Williams quitting Twitter and Instagram because of the horrible treatment meted out to her by the notorious Internet trolls. Web-based newspapers and blogs were vying for the top search engine positions for terms like “Robin Williams dead at 63”. One of the news editors at New York Daily actually sent advisory to its writers and editors on which words and expressions to use in the headlines and when to scale up and scale down these words and expressions like “Robin Williams”, “dead”, “suicide”, etc. Here is how the internal email goes (the link above is the source):

From: Everett, Cristina

Date: August 12, 2014 at 5:33:00 PM EDT

To: WebEditors

Subject: ENTERTAINMENT handoff!

NOTES ON ROBIN WILLIAMS STORIES/HEDES!!

Thank you to everyone who did a great story [sic] with keeping our stories SEO strong with the * Robin Williams dead at 63 * header for the first 24 hours. Starting tomorrow morning, we can scale back on the robot talk (meaning no death header) just as long as the stories continue to *start* with his full name and include buzzy search words like *death, dead, suicide, etc.*

If you look at the comment thread in the above-linked short blog entry, you will get some interesting perspectives. Some people are cynical, and some say, well, what’s the choice? Aren’t people searching for these terms? If a renowned celebrity dies, and people are going to search about his or her death, the circumstances and other such bits of information and if you want to be found for such information, why not optimize your titles and content accordingly? What if your entire business model depends on such optimization?

Providing optimized content is my business. If one of my clients were running such an online news portal, would I indulge in such “tactics”? Yes I will. Of course I won’t advise my client to use SEO spam and create scores of meaningless pages talking on and on about the same thing (why Robin Williams committed suicide, for instance), but if a major news is breaking and if it matters that this news be found on the search engines, and considering the fact that many people are going to use “tactics” to make sure that their webpages and blog posts appear at the top, if expressions like “Robin Williams” and “suicide” are relevant to my story, I won’t shy away from using them. Yes, a death has occurred, yes, it is a terrible tragedy, but if covering that tragedy is my business, I need to SEO my content accordingly, too bad. Someone gives a nice example in the comments section that it’s like accusing a coffin seller of making a profit if lots of people suddenly die. What’s the attitude behind the above-mentioned advisory? Nobody knows, and that’s a different issue.

If content creators and publishers have to use SEO “tactics” like these, there is some problem in the way search engine rankings work and people who create truly high-quality content often worry about this. Content that truly deserves to get higher rankings never shows up on the first page just because the people who can follow the “tactics” have an edge even while creating lousy content.

Content marketing and a tropical fruit tree

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Why do you create content for your website? If you take your content seriously then you must be publishing articles and blog posts regularly. “Regularly” can be everyday, a few times in a week, or maybe a few times in a month.

The point is, whenever you are writing and publishing content you must be spending a considerable amount of time – even money – on it.

Why do you do it? Do you really believe in the power of content marketing, or are you simply trying out one of those “new fads”?

For the sake of focus, I’m assuming you understand the importance of what you’re doing.

Even when we’re serious, even when our intentions are clear, sometimes we just get trapped in a rut and keep on doing stuff thinking that sooner or later it is going to pay off. That’s why it is important to regularly step back, and evaluate our work. It’s more so important in creating and publishing content for your website.

Content marketing, although one of the most effective ways of building targeted traffic and generating qualified leads on an ongoing basis, doesn’t show results fast, unless your effort is backed by a big budget. It actually works like a tree that has to fully grow before it gives you fruits. Just imagine realizing you have been growing the wrong tree all along, or you have grown a tree that gives no fruit at all.

So how do you ensure that you are sewing and nurturing a tree that will someday give you the right fruit?

Naturally, by having a clear idea of what fruit you want to have. In terms of content writing and content marketing, you need to have a clear idea of what you want it to achieve for you – what fruit you wanted to deliver?

Not every tree can grow and give you fruit in your region. In a cold, European city, town or village you may not be able to grow a tropical tree. You either have to move to a tropical region, or you have to create the right environment for that tree to grow.

What I mean to say is, you have to understand and recognize the importance of selecting the right sapling, creating the appropriate environment, and nurturing the tree with great care before it can bear you the fruit.

When you apply the concept of the tree onto your business, creating, publishing and distributing that content is the tropical environment that you need to create, targeted traffic is a tree that you plant and grow, and qualified leads that turn into paying customers and clients are the fruits you get.

Content marketing strategy for landscaping business

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Content Marketing Strategy for Landscaping Business

This year I have written content for more than four landscaping businesses so it will be safe to say that people in this particular industry realize the importance of targeted content writing and content marketing. So what should be your content marketing strategy if you want to promote your landscaping business?

In this business people are primarily influenced by the following:

Your experience/portfolio
The clients you have worked for
Personal recommendations
Visual collateral
Constant communication

If you don’t have a blog then you should definitely start a blog for your landscaping business website. A blog is not just a “trendy” thing to have: it is a top-notch communication channel. If this doesn’t motivate you, a regularly published blog can increase your search traffic easily by 100-200% within 3-4 months (it depends on the frequency and quality of your blog posts).

When we use the word “content marketing strategy” it means you are not simply going to publish content – you’re going to make sure that the content reaches the right audience and then it makes the right impact.

Not all your landscaping clients will be visiting your website. They will be on Facebook, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on other blogs and websites or simply looking around for a similar service on various search engines. Your content marketing strategy involves using multiple channels as well as multiple content formats to reach your prospective clients. Since I provide textual content, this is my focus.

So in order to launch a content marketing strategy for your landscaping business you need to do the following if you haven’t already done so:

Start a blog under your own domain name (something like http://your-business-website.com/blog) and start publishing content on it on a regular basis. Focus on quality but also be regular. In the beginning it will help you if you can post everyday or at least thrice a week. The growth of your blog should be gradual. It’s not a good strategy to hire a writer in the Philippines, for instance, make him create 50 blog posts and then publish them in one go. In a day, publish just a single blog post.
Create Facebook and Twitter profiles and start interacting with people over there. Although this might sound like social networking but your content plays a vital role in creating a solid presence for you or your brand. People will recognize you on the basis of the content you regularly post under your profiles.
Carry out a content analysis of your business website. Are all the necessary pages there? Do you think all the information the client needs in order to make a decision in your favor is present on your website? Does it have testimonials and the FAQs section? Does it properly explain what sort of landscaping services you provide and what sort of material you use?
Set up an account with an email marketing service such as mailchimp. Permission-based marketing, although as old as the contemporary Internet, still rules the roost when it comes to reaching out to your target audience in the most effective manner. You will need high-quality content for your email marketing campaigns.

You must be wondering once you have established these channels (and many more) what you’re going to talk about. For instance, your blog. Of course you will be talking about landscaping. You can start by explaining the various aspects of how you carry out individual projects and what parameters you take into consideration. You can talk about various forms of landscaping, materials, methods and architectural conventions. Once you have started, the ideas begin to come on their own.

Remember that link building must be an integral part of your overall content marketing strategy. Google looks for quality websites and blogs that link back to you. So continuously create content people would like to link to as this will significantly improve your search engine rankings for your targeted keywords – primary, secondary and longtail.

The same holds true for your social networking and social media profiles. Keep in mind that search engines these days list social media content also. So be careful of what you are posting.

The difference between content marketing and content strategy

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There was a time when I used to think that content marketing is a subset of content strategy, but now I believe that both content marketing and content strategy can be subsets and supersets of each other.

You cannot have a successful content marketing campaign without a content strategy, and a well-define content marketing campaign is an integral part of your content strategy.

So, if they are intertwined, what are the defining differences between content marketing and content strategy? What are the key differences?

In simple terms, the insights and data that you get through content strategy, you implement in content marketing. Content strategy gives your content marketing the needed direction. Without this direction, your content marketing turns haphazard and ineffective.

If content marketing consists of publishing regular content, content strategy is knowing what content to publish, what audience to target, and which platforms to use for publishing content.

As mentioned above, content strategy is based on the metrics and the insights that you obtain through analytics, observation, experimentation and third-party data.

Content strategy

What is content strategy?

As mentioned above, our actions must be well thought of if we want to achieve something. Here is what content strategy involves:

Knowing what content to publish and distribute.
Knowing who is your target audience and why?
Clearly defining KPIs.
Knowing how to obtain traffic and engagement data.
Streamlining content publishing based on goals and insights.
Zeroing in on the platforms that you will use to publish and distribute your content.
Establishing an audience engagement policy.
Figuring out which content type or format best suits your content marketing KPIs.

First, you need to know what is the purpose of publishing and distributing content and exactly why you need content marketing? How it can serve your business and help you promote your cause?

To be a successful communicator, you must know whom you’re going to communicate to. You should know your audience, you should know what they want, what they’re looking for, what their concerns are.

Data insight is a great power. When you set in motion your content marketing strategy, you will need to constantly analyze your data so that you can make timely changes.

You need a content writing and content publishing roadmap so that you remain focused and you always know what you’re going to published to cater to your core audience.

Merely publishing content doesn’t help you much these days. This is where content marketing comes in. You need to promote and broadcast your content so that it reaches the maximum number of people. For that you need to shortlist channels that you’re going to use to distribute your content, for example search engines, social networking websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

You also need to constantly engage your audience. Unlike conventional marketing, content marketing involves two-way communication between you and your audience (your customers and clients). Without meaningful and regular engagement it’s difficult to establish a rapport and make yourself more relatable and identifiable.

Content can be of multiple formats and if you have limited budget, you cannot target all the existing formats. For example, you can have written content (content writing, etc.), videos, presentation slides on SlideShare, images on your own blog, Facebook and Pinterest, sketches, infographics and basically, everything that you can use to communicate data and ideas. You may like to do something like content writing or images in the beginning and later on start focusing on other formats of content too.

This basically sums up your content strategy.

Content marketing

Content marketing explained

This involves folding your sleeves and actually getting down to the grind.

Whatever steps you have listed in your content strategy document, you implement during content marketing. Interestingly, there is a reason why there is “marketing” in content marketing.

Yes, sure, you publish targeted content. But, merely publishing content doesn’t bring you success. You need to “market” that content – you need to promote your content so that maximum number of people can access it and are then drawn to your website or blog.

Marketing is a proactive activity. You need to take steps so that the visibility of your content increases. You improve your search engine rankings. You broadcast newsletter updates. You engage audiences on different social media platforms. You closely watch and follow trends and publish content to leverage them. You make sure that you stick to your content calendar.

Why is content marketing important? I mean, why not simply advertise and promote your business the way people have been doing for decades?

There is a reason why a greater number of businesses are adopting content marketing rather than sticking to the old ways of business promotion. People these days don’t like being sold to. They want you to gain their trust. This is done through publishing valuable content.

On the Internet (and in real life) it is not physically possible to interact with thousands of prospective customers and clients on daily basis. Your content on the other hand can do the job seamlessly.

Content marketing is also called inbound marketing. Inbound marketing means your prospective customers and clients come to your website on their own after accessing your content or while trying to access useful information. It is their decision. It is they who find your link somewhere, click the link, and come to your website.

Outbound marketing on the other hand is a traditional form of marketing where you interrupt people while they’re doing something else.

You assume that they are going to be thrilled at receiving your marketing message, whereas this is not the case. People are annoyed when you are urging them to buy from you while they want to watch their favorite movie, or read an interesting blog post, or watch an enchanting cat video. You’re interrupting them, and you’re not just interrupting them, you’re also urging them to part with their money on an item or service that they may need, but right now, psychologically, are not prepared to buy.

Through content marketing you are simply there. You solve their problems. You keep them engaged. You seed conversations. They become familiar to you. They become comfortable to your presence in their lives (or on their screens). The more familiar you become, the more they trust you.

Here is a good definition of content marketing from this Forbes article (slightly old)

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly-defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

What should a small business focus on, content marketing or content strategy?

Frankly, there is no use doing content marketing without content strategy. Without strategy, your content marketing is going to be haphazard. It will be like throwing darts in the darkness. You may succeed, or you may not succeed.

Creating a content strategy may seem intimidating in the beginning, but it is not. Even if you spend 3 hours every month strategizing your content marketing, or at least, this is what I think, especially if you’re a small business, it is more than enough.

What is strategy after all? It is being aware of your environment, analyzing your environment, and then controlling your actions accordingly, to reach your goal.

For example, a strategy has a swot analysis – your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You may already have good content you can leverage by reusing and repurposing. There may be many gaps you need to fill. There may be some really good and useful topics you can write and publish content on. How is your competition faring? What can you do to beat your competition?

Using your analytics data is also a part of your content strategy and based on that you can give a direction to your content marketing efforts. If you use Google Analytics, your dashboard tells you the type of traffic your content is attracting. Is this the right kind of traffic or you need different traffic?

If you’re thinking in these terms, you are already using content strategy to make your content marketing effective.

Writing content for non-profit organizations

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Of late I have started taking care of the online presence of a few non-profit organizations including their websites, blogs and social media profiles. Aside from maintenance I also prepare and strategize content for these organizations.

Writing and organizing content for non-profit organisations is totally different from creating content for commercial businesses. In this case you’re not trying to sell a product or service, but a cause. You need to touch people emotionally (although personally I believe the work these organizations do is a lot more practical than many for-profit organizations do). Rather than promoting products and services you promote stories and experiences that really make a difference.

Many hard-core marketers often say that everything eventually boils down to selling. After all, you are trying to sell the inherent benefit of a cause. Why do you have a website for a non-profit organization? Almost every non-profit organization is looking for donations and fundings and a vibrant online presence can help reach out to a wide audience whether it is from website, blog or social media/networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Of course it is selling but then we all have our way of expressing different things.

Publishing content for non-profit organizations

As already mentioned above you can use different platforms to publish content for non-profit organizations. The idea is to reach as wide an audience as possible without diluting the niche. My personal observation, when it comes to niche concerning with social causes and social work, is that people who feel emotional towards one particular cause also are eager to associate themselves with another cause. For instance I have closely worked with organizations helping persons with disabilities and most of these organizations readily get involved with causes concerning natural disasters, environment and ecology, social justice, animal care and old age care (just to name a few). The underlying idea is, doing something good and constructive, and doing something that makes a positive impact. This is the message that your content on various platforms must convey when you publish.

Content on Twitter normally involves publishing small updates, links to useful information, news releases links and answers to some urgent queries.

Content on Facebook profiles is a bit more detailed, It involves messages that trigger conversations and other sorts of engagements. Since discussions can be threaded (multiple comments can appear under one posting) and there is no word limit, you can publish detailed messages, although they shouldn’t be as big as articles and blog posts.

Blogs are the best way to publish impactful stories and experiences. As long as they are interesting and gripping you shouldn’t worry much about their length. The style should be as conversational as possible although most of the non-profit organizations avoid publishing content on the first person basis (many businesses do this these days and it is recommended).

Making positive impact with content

When you write and publish content for non-profit organizations you are trying to achieve the following:

Raise awareness about an issue or a pressing need
Encourage more and more people to get involved
Encourage more and more people to spread the word regarding various activities and engagements of the organization
Encourage more and more people to provide monetary assistance

It is a humane activity and this is what you have to highlight in order to make people want to become a part of it. The stories should be personal as well as non-personal. Non-profit organizations are as much about people working there as well as people and environments they are impacting.