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The Greatest Misconception in Content Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 05:18 PM PDT

It's probably pretty clear to everyone that content marketing takes time, but there's a common misconception in just how much time. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand warns us of an overly optimistic mindset, and shows us how things really (usually) end up happening.

For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!

Video transcription

Howdy Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we're going to talk a little bit about content marketing and specifically this giant myth, this misconception that exists in the content marketing field about how the practice really works.

This hurts a lot of people. This hurts people on the SEO side. It hurts people who do social media. It hurts people who invest in actually building the content, and it hurts teams and executives and people who plan and strategize around what content marketing can and can't achieve and how it should work.

You know, I really came to this because I think it's been something that's been bubbling up in the world of content and inbound marketing for a long time. But I was speaking to a number of startups yesterday afternoon here in Seattle. I was talking to them about how we at Moz produce blog posts, video content, like Whiteboard Friday, presentations, and webinars in all of these different mediums.

I got this question, like, "Okay, it must be the case . . . how do you put out a blog post, Rand, that once you launch it, once people read it, they're actually going to go and buy from you?"

I had this moment of, "Oh my God, this happens all the time." People think that the reason you're putting out content is so that someone will consume that content and be inspired from it to go and make a purchase.

This is how the myth works. Step one, oh yeah, you know, ta-dak I created this amazing piece of content. Look, it's got lovely parallax scrolling, and responsive design, and beautiful graphics, and a lovely layout. Fantastic content. Wow. All right. People are going to download that. They're going to share it. They're going to love it.

Step two, thankfully, people are thinking about this at least. All right, I'm going to go tweet and Facebook share and put it on Google+. I'm going to point a bunch of links to it. I'm going to put it on my LinkedIn account. I'll promote that content through all of these platforms.

Then, look at these hordes of people right there. Not the most attractive horde. A little gangly. But, wow, that's really good. We should sign up for whatever these people are selling. They must be amazing, right? The visitors who experience the content, and then some percent of them, like oh maybe 2% are going to go and convert.

This doesn't happen, does it? This is not actually how content marketing works. But it's how a lot of people invest in and think about content marketing. But it almost never happens. With a few rare exceptions, this is not how content marketing really works.

How it actually works is you repeat step one and two many, many times, again and again and again and again until you start to get good at the process, until you start finding the XYZ, the piece of amazing content that really is going to resonate with your audience. That takes a lot of trial and failure. It really does.

Step three is entirely a myth. It is almost never the case, practically never the case that someone goes, experiences a piece of content from a brand they don't know about or haven't heard of, or experiences that content for the first time and then immediately goes, "I wonder what they sell. I should buy whatever that is." Or even sees kind of a plug or a pseudo-plug for their product inside that content and goes, "Yes, you know what, I'm just going to buy that right now." That almost never happens.

What really does happen is that people come many, many times. They essentially grow this memory about your brand, about what you do, and they build up kind of what I'd call a positive bank account with you. But that bank account, there are not coins and money in there. There are experiences and touches with your brand. Those content touches, and those social media touches, and those touches that come through performing a search and seeing you listed there, those build up the capital in the account.

Once you reach a certain level of memory and positive association about the brand that you've experienced all these things through, when you have the need for the product or the service or whatever it is they're offering, then you might remember to sign up with them.

Or you might perform a search query, and because they've done all of these things, they're more likely to have grown their rankings and their authority and possibly to be personalized in your personal search results. That brand might show up higher because you've experienced lots of interactions with them. Because of that, then you make that purchase with them.

As a result of this mythology, a ton of people and teams who invest in content marketing fail to properly plan for the required time and effort needed. That's hugely costly, because it means that a ton of pressure sits on the content marketer, and the social media marketer, and the SEO, oftentimes one person or a very small team of people who all do inbound marketing together. You don't have the budget or the bandwidth or the belief from your executives or your client, if you're being hired as an agency, to get to where you need to get to.

They fail to invest in the practice long enough, and they just give up too early. This doesn't work once, and a lot of the people who would have invested in content marketing, for the long term, are out of the game. This doesn't work three, four, five times and a lot more.

Now, this is, in some ways, actually a good thing for people like you and I, because it means that we don't have nearly the competition that we would otherwise have, which is kind of a beautiful thing. If this stuff were easy, everyone would be doing it. The field would be saturated. It would be very, very hard to compete, even harder than it already is, and it is plenty hard.

A lot of these folks fail to consider SEO properly, because what happens is they think of content marketing almost like it's a viral effort. It's just going to spread. We're not worried about where we might rank in search engines with this stuff or whether this helps our search rankings for other things.

So they do a few things that are really dumb. They don't take this piece of content and put links to potentially relevant stuff on their site inside there, and they don't internally link to it well either. So they've almost orphaned off a lot of these content pieces.

You can see many people who've orphaned their blog from their main site, which of course is terrible. They'll put them on subdomains or separate root domains so that none of the link authority is shared between those.

They don't think about sharing through Google+ or building an audience with Google+, which can really help with the personalization. Nor do they think about using keywords wisely. When you don't use keywords wisely on content pieces, remember, content pieces can, because of their potential to earn links, and social signals, and user and usage data signals, and all of these things that have primary and secondary impacts on your rankings, because they don't consider those, they don't have the opportunity to then bias the search results in the personalized results or to rank in the non-personalized results that they could've otherwise had.

A lot of them fail to do the right math on content versus other forms of marketing, either overly optimistically, or if they've had bad experiences investing, overly pessimistically. Therefore, you're not comparing things truly and honestly when you consider where to put budget, where to put people.

Last, but not least, is many, many folks fail to correctly attribute conversions and assisted conversions. What we know about people is that the path looks like this. For this person here, the path might look like visit one, visit two, visit three, visit four, and then a conversion.

Actually, at Moz, did you know that it's I think on average seven and a half visits before someone takes a free trial? So you might be watching this Whiteboard Friday, and this is one of your first brand experiences with Moz. On average, you're going to have six or seven more visits before you might take a free trial of our software. Those might be spaced out over months. We might lose the cookie through Google Analytics that actually even tracks your visit. So there's no real way to tie it back.

A lot of the investment has to be either serendipitous, or we're going to need some very fancy tracking. Moz has used, I think, KISSmetrics and Mixpanel, those kinds of things. Many other folks do as well to try and tie together those many visits and see when does a conversion actually happen.

If you can build this, if you can build a system that says gosh people who visit one of our blog posts at least, or two of our blog posts at least, or watch a video from us, or take this other action, or consume this viral piece of content that we've created are more likely to in four or five visits from now make a conversion with us, then you can truly track the impact of this.

To me, it's a little bit like looking at a soccer team, for those of you outside the U.S. a football team, or a basketball team and saying only the person scoring the goal matters. There's no one who gave a great pass. There's no one who assisted them in getting that basket. It's just about the person scoring the goal. That really minimizes the impact of the rest of the team, or in this case the rest of the process.

So this mythology, this misconception can be really dangerous. Hopefully, you're going to fix that with your teams and your clients. We will see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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2014 Inbound Marketing Trends

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 04:09 AM PDT

Posted by Kurtis

It's no secret that 2014 holds several promising opportunities for inbound marketers. The industry is projected to see a lot of continued growth aided by increased budgets for the year. Earlier this year, Cyrus wrote a post announcing the Moz Industry survey results. According to that survey, there seem to be a few slight shifts in demand for certain marketing activities, which ultimately has an effect on where marketers are allocating most of their time.

Though some of the data in this post includes data from the Industry survey, most of what you will find is a collection of information from 12 other sources. For more granular details, you can dive into the Slideshare embed at the end of the post. Let's dig in!

Marketers reported that demand for content creation increased by 70.94% in 2013, falling in line with most projections from early 2013. This trend is also expected to continue throughout 2014. Analytics was the second highest in demand, with an increase of 64.46%.

Link Building saw the biggest decrease in demand at 20.2%, followed by Email Marketing at 12.06%, Keyword Research at 11.03% and Link Removal at 10.87%.

When comparing demand vs. the percent of what Marketers are spending their time doing, the matchup is very similar. It makes sense. The biggest demands go hand in hand with where Marketers are allocating their time—Analytics, Content Creation, Social Media Marketing, and Keyword Research.

The Inbound Marketing industry is constantly changing and sees a ton of new, useful information on the regular. Keeping up on the latest industry knowledge is key; but what are the most popular avenues to stay up to date on the latest industry trends?

Surprise! (Not really.) 93.97% of Marketers use blogs as their go-to source to keep up with the latest industry shifts. Not too far behind were Social Media at 74.01% and Online Guides at 73.37%.

Of those surveyed, 45% say they spend more than 2 days per month researching and learning about the latest trends in SEO—more than any other area of digital marketing. I think it's fair to say SEOs are like a bunch of sponges soaking up water. Except in this case, the water is actually knowledge. SEOs = Content Carnivores!

SEO

Key takeaway: Budget increases are helping companies implement more marketing automation.

The results from the Moz Industry Survey reveal that Digital Marketers will have increased budgets in 2014, if projections stand correct. That's great news for the industry as a whole and shows the SEO industry continues to grow.

According to ExactTarget, 73% of those surveyed are currently using SEO/SEM in their marketing efforts and 71% are using some form of Content Management platform. The current and projected similarities between the two are across the board, due to the fact that both go hand in hand with one another, though Content is projected to grow slightly more than SEO/SEM in 2014.

Marketing Automation tops the list for where most Marketers plan to increase budgets, according to ExactTarget. It is clearly one of the most popular avenues for increase budgets this year, but it is imperative to understand that it helps scale your efforts; not actually do marketing for you. Once you've determined that it's time to invest in marketing automation, consider the platform that best suits your goals. HubSpot has a great learning guide that does a fantastic job explaining everything you need to know before making the financial commitment, and I strongly encourage you to read it; even if you aren't planning on adding it to your mix of tools this year.

Content

Key takeaway: Create a strategy so you have time for the king.

It is clear that Content is, and will continue to be, king of 2014. A large percentage of B2B Marketers are or plan to spend a decent amount of their budgets on Content this year, but it looks like there is still plenty of room for improvement. Data from CMI indicates 49.5% of Marketers don't have a documented content strategy and are challenged with producing engaging content.

Not having enough time is also a common thing we hear when it comes to content creation. The first step in the right direction is coming up with a strategy. Once there is a plan in place and you have nailed down your target market, you are one step closer to writing content specifically tailored to the group you want to reach. Creating a list of topics and a schedule for the posts is the next vital step. Believe it or not, schedules do help save time; it's just a matter of putting in the time to save time.

Social

Key takeaway: Use the network your target demographic is using.

Facebook continues to be the Social network of choice for most internet users, though some suggest it has reached its peak usage from the younger demographic. Despite those claims, Facebook continues to have the highest frequency of Social Media site use with 63% daily visits, according to PEW Research Center. With the highest number AND the most engaged users, Facebook continues to dominate the social landscape.

The key takeaway with Social Networks boils down to what channel your target market happens to be using. For example, if you are primarily targeting a female audience, consider focusing on Pinterest. According to a survey from Pew Research Center, one third of women in the U.S. use Pinterest. If you are able to focus on multiple Social Networks, look at the cross tabulation of Social Platforms for your target demographic to help determine where you should allocate your time and effort.

Mobile

Key takeaway: Put responsive design in your 2014 roadmap!

More and more people are purchasing smartphones these days, and the trend continues to climb the charts. On top of that, sales of tablets are also taking off—outperforming both PCs and laptops in the last quarter of 2014, according to IDC. Consumers have over 100 tablets to choose from these days, and the number of options continues to increase. Pew Research Center says that 90% of all Americans own a phone; 58% of which are smartphones. Of those, 63% mostly use their phone to access the internet. If your website isn't responsive, it is highly likely that you are missing out on an ever growing user-base.

With location-based services on mobile devices, we can connect in ways that were unimaginable only four years ago. Most people don't let their mobile out of their sight—44% of cell owners have slept with their phone next to their bed because they wanted to make sure they didn't miss any calls, text messages, or other updates during the night. We have the ability to know where our customers are and what their schedule looks like (through their calendar). Are we far off from walking into a store and automagically receiving special offers on our phone without using foursquare to check-in? The sky is the limit!

Whether you decide to make a mobile app or create a responsive website, 2014 is the year to get mobile on your roadmap.

Local

Key takeaway: Local mobile searches convert, so make sure you're the one that shows up.

The evolution of local has rapidly improved over the past year and will continue to do so throughout 2014. As mobile usage continues an inevitable upward trend, local searches on mobile devices will also soar. According to LocalVox, 88% of local mobile searches convert to a phone call or visit within 24 hours. It's clear that not keeping up with your local SEO will only help your competitors.

Email

Key takeaway: Email marketing increasingly provides a great value for a low cost.

Email is one traditional marketing channel that continues to show steady growth. According to ExactTarget, "98% of marketers plan to increase or maintain their spend in 2014. Email Marketing was among the top five at 58%." Being among the lowest cost per lead, also producing high quality and quantity of leads, it's no wonder Email Marketing continues to be one of the favorite channels amongst online marketers.

Despite what you may think, email marketing is a channel that continues to grow as marketers fine-tune their message to be more personal and capture the readers' interest. In the past, it was common for email marketing to be impersonal and somewhat spammy. As time has passed, we have learned how to better reach our audiences through video, high quality photos, responsive newsletter templates, and of course, well written content that all comes together to make readers want more.

For a more in-depth look at the data, feel free to take a gander at the slides on SlideShare!

Use Feature Formats to Improve Your Content

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 06:39 AM PDT

If you are writing an article or producing some video content and it isn't news, chances are you are writing a feature. The problem is that there is no such thing as 'a feature'. Instead, there are feature formats; predefined styles of writing that follow a consistent style.

The names given to the common feature formats vary from person to person, but the overriding styles remain the same. Understanding these common feature formats is crucial to producing good articles and pitching content ideas to publishers.

This post is designed to introduce you to the common feature formats with the hope that it will help you to:

Structure and write articles with a consistent format throughout
Plan content based on feature formats
Pitch your work to publishers more effectively
Avoid mixing feature formats and ending up with a mess

Before I begin I must make a quick nod to journalist Chris Horrie who taught me everything I know about journalism and wrote up in-depth notes on feature writing on the University of Winchester website.

Confessional Interview

This is an interview that is written in the interviewee's voice. This format is for the interviewee to express their personal experience from a position that is of interest to your audience. Confessional interviews are a firm favourite of popular women's magazines, where the interviewee 'confesses' to their triumph over tragedy.

This type of format typically involves the writer carrying out an in-depth interview with a person of interest. The interview notes are then written up in the voice of the interviewee. This gives the impression that the interviewee is writing up their experience from their own, unique perspective.

Things to avoid: This format is all about the interviewee, so don't be tempted to add in your own voice or opinion.

Content idea: My battle with a Google Penalty.

Feature Interview

Unlike a confessional interview, a feature interview features the writer as the 'star' of the piece. You can think of the Jonathan Ross Show (or Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon if you're in the US) as one big feature interview; it isn't about the person being interviewed but about how funny and engaging the host is.

Feature interviews are great for building and maintaining your profile in an industry. It can show that you have friends in high places and can be used to document your own learnings about industry news with other people of importance.

Things to avoid: Don't confuse or mix this format with profiles (we'll cover these in a moment). Profiles are objective, unbiased presentations of a person or entity. Feature interviews can be creative.

Content idea: Daniel Bianchini (interviewer) and Paul Madden (interviewee) sit down for a coffee and chat about link building in 2014.

Consumer Review

There are two questions that a consumer review needs to answer:

What is it?
Is it any good?

To produce a consumer review piece of any quality you should aim to review all of the options available and provide a genuinely useful insight into the product or service you are reviewing. Aim to send the reader away with some information that will make their choice easier.

Things to avoid: Try not to review only your favourite product or service and offer something more than simply 'I really like this'.

Content idea: Linkdex vs. the other campaign software packages.

Comment / Analysis

The best place to find an example of a comment / analysis piece is in the editor's column of any newspaper. A good comment or analysis piece should be centred around a topic that is current and of interest to your audience. It can be written in the voice of the writer or in the voice of the organisation / publication.

Comment and analysis doesn't just need to come in written form; it can also be a creative piece of content. The political satire cartoons in broadsheet newspapers can be classed as comment features.

Things to avoid: Try not to start a comment or analysis column and then give up after a few days or weeks. This feature format works best when you publish at the same time on a regular basis, so that your audience learns to rely on your point of view.

Content idea: White.net's monthly digital marketing point of view.

News Feature

A news feature is essentially the news behind the news. News features are usually longer, more in-depth articles compared to standard news stories. A typical news feature would be written as a follow up piece to a breaking news story that offers more detail on a specific angle (or set of angles).

Examples of news features can be seen in all national newspapers and many magazines. The key thing to look out for is their link to a recently published piece of news. Another hallmark of the news feature format is its heavy use of graphics and image-led content to help tell the story.

Things to avoid: Try not to use images and graphics for the sake of it; any use of images or graphics should add to the news feature and the story being told.

Content idea: Google's latest algorithm update and where it fits into the timeline (there is a strong case for use of graphics and/or video here!)

Profile

Perhaps the best way to describe a profile is as a 'pen portrait'; an article that tells the story of a person or organisation. It is crucial that a well-written profile focusses on who the person is and how they got to be where they are; there is no need for a profile to cover what the person thinks, this is not an interview!

Chris Horrie explains this better than I can:

DO NOT confuse with either “confessional” or “feature interview”. Don't mix styles (you will end up with a dog's dinner)

Your aim when writing a profile should be to tell the story of a person's life as it is. Research the facts, plan the piece and explain who the person is and how they became who they are today. Profiles work best when they are about someone who the audience is interested in, particularly if your audience aspires to become like that person. Profiles are usually written anonymously; who the writer is isn't important here!

Things to avoid: Try not to introduce opinion and unnecessary information, keep the profile clear and based on facts.

Content idea: From Rand Fishkin to Mr Moz!

Investigation

The easiest way to describe an investigative piece is as a news story that the writer has initiated. In the world of journalism a writer will typically follow all of the goings on within their 'beat'; that could be going to court, talking to police or monitoring the news wires. In investigative journalism the writer goes out and sources the information required to uncover a new story.

Perhaps one of the best examples of this was in 2009 when Daily Telegraph journalist Holly Watt received a disk containing the expenses claims of hundreds of MPs. Tasked with deciding whether there was a news story within, Watt went about entering each of the claims into a spreadsheet. It wasn't until she noticed that the spreadsheet’s auto-fill feature was attempting to complete what she was typing that Watt realised she had already entered the address of a house further up in the document; the address had already been the subject of a previous claim and was being claimed for twice.

This simple piece of investigation led to the publication of one of the most controversial and well-reported news stories of the past decade. The key to the story was the investigative work that went in beforehand – the writer had uncovered a new story rather than writing about something that had already been reported.

Things to avoid: The only thing I can recommend is that you avoid ignoring investigative writing and reporting. Investigative writing requires true hard work but, if done correctly, can be the making of you!

Content idea: It's up to you to go and find the idea, I can't just give these things away!

Observational

My favourite type of feature article; observational writing is all about painting a picture of what you are experiencing using words. In terms of style it is all about 'observing' what you see and putting this into words. A good observational piece should tell the reader what you see, hear, smell, taste and feel, to paint a picture of where you are and what you are experiencing.

Observational writing should focus on what you are observing (as the name suggests) and not so much on analysing what is happening – unless this is crucial to building the overall atmosphere. An observational article is as close as journalism comes to being like a piece of artistically creative work.

Things to avoid: Try not to stray too far from the realms of observation; tell your story through what you experience rather than through what you expect or analyse.

Content idea: What is a night out at BrightonSEO really like?

Response

The final feature format is the response piece. This is the classic 'agony aunt' style of content that responds directly to a question or comment submitted by someone else. The response format can also cater for 'how-to' pieces, advice articles, games and reader response. This article, in-fact, could be considered a response piece.

The hallmark of a good response piece is that it responds to a demand and speaks directly to the audience it is targeting. In this example, the article I am writing now is planned to address a perceived demand for expert advice on producing content. I am addressing this by presenting a 'how-to' / advice piece about feature formats. Note that I am addressing the reader and writing in my own voice.

Things to avoid: Try not to write any old rubbish; attempt to at least understand demand and encourage feedback and questions when producing this type of article.

Content idea: This article was my idea!

Summary

Although this list is certainly not definitive and is open to interpretation, these feature formats offer writers a good introduction to thinking about content in a strategic and logical way. Following feature format conventions is a crucial part of maintaining quality in your writing, as well as allowing you a structured way of planning your ideas and selling them to your clients / boss / editor.

I welcome any comments or questions!

Image credit: Pete O’Shea on Flickr

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