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Simple Steps for Conducting Creative Content Research - Moz Blog

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Simple Steps for Conducting Creative Content Research Posted on: Monday 25 May 2015 — 02:15 Posted by Hannah_Smith Most frequently, the content we create at Distilled is designed to attract press coverage, social shares, and exposure (and links) on sites our clients' target audience reads. That's a tall order. Over the years we've had our hits and misses, and through this we've recognised the value of learning about what makes a piece of content successful. Coming up with a great idea is difficult, and it can be tough to figure out where to begin. Today, rather than leaping headlong into brainstorming sessions, we start with creative content research. What is creative content research? Creative content research enables you to answer the questions: "What are websites publishing, and what are people sharing?" From this, you'll then have a clearer view on what might be successful for your client. A few years ago this required quite an amount of work to figure out. Today, happily, it's much quicker and easier. In this post I'll share the process and tools we use. Whoa there... Why do I need to do this? I think that the value in this sort of activity lies in a couple of directions: a) You can learn a lot by deconstructing the success of others... I've been taking stuff apart to try to figure out how it works for about as long as I can remember, so applying this process to content research felt pretty natural to me. Perhaps more importantly though, I think that deconstructing content is actually easier when it isn't your own. You're not involved, invested, or in love with the piece so viewing it objectively and learning from it is much easier. b) Your research will give you a clear overview of the competitive landscape... As soon as a company elects to start creating content, they gain a whole raft of new competitors. In addition to their commercial competitors (i.e. those who offer similar products or services), the company also gains content competitors. For example, if you're a sports betting company and plan to create content related to the sports events that you're offering betting markets on; then you're competing not just with other betting companies, but every other publisher who creates content about these events. That means major news outlets, sports news site, fan sites, etc. To make matters even more complicated, it's likely that you'll actually be seeking coverage from those same content competitors. As such, you need to understand what's already being created in the space before creating content of your own. c) You're giving yourself the data to create a more compelling pitch... At some point you're going to need to pitch your ideas to your client (or your boss if you're working in-house). At Distilled, we've found that getting ideas signed off can be really tough. Ultimately, a great idea is worthless if we can't persuade our client to give us the green light. This research can be used to make a more compelling case to your client and get those ideas signed off. (Incidentally, if getting ideas signed off is proving to be an issue you might find this framework for pitching creative ideas useful). Where to start Good ideas start with a good brief, however it can be tough to pin clients down to get answers to a long list of questions. As a minimum you'll need to know the following: Who are they looking to target? Age, sex, demographic What's their core focus? What do they care about? What problems are they looking to solve? Who influences them? What else are they interested in? Where do they shop and which brands do they buy? What do they read? What do they watch on TV? Where do they spend their time online? Where do they want to get coverage? We typically ask our clients to give us a wishlist of 10 or so sites they'd love to get coverage on Which topics are they comfortable covering? This question is often the toughest, particularly if a client hasn't created content specifically for links and shares before. Often clients are uncomfortable about drifting too far away from their core business—for example, if they sell insurance, they'll typically say that they really want to create a piece of content about insurance. Whilst this is understandable from the clients' perspective it can severely limit their chances of success. It's definitely worth offering up a gentle challenge at this stage—I'll often cite Red Bull, who are a great example of a company who create content based on what their consumers love, not what they sell (i.e. Red Bull sell soft drinks, but create content about extreme sports because that's the sort of content their audience love to consume). It's worth planting this idea early, but don't get dragged into a fierce debate at this stage—you'll be able to make a far more compelling argument once you've done your research and are pitching concrete ideas. Processes, useful tools and sites Now you have your brief, it's time to begin your research. Given that we're looking to uncover "what websites are publishing and what's being shared," It won't surprise you to learn that I pay particular attention to pieces of content and the coverage they receive. For each piece that I think is interesting I'll note down the following: The title/headline A link to the coverage (and to the original piece if applicable) How many social shares the coverage earned (and the original piece earned) The number of linking root domains the original piece earned Some notes about the piece itself: why it's interesting, why I think it got shares/coverage Any gaps in the content, whether or not it's been executed well How we might do something similar (if applicable) Whilst I'm doing this I'll also make a note of specific sites I see being frequently shared (I tend to check these out separately later on), any interesting bits of research (particularly if I think there might be an opportunity to do something different with the data), interesting threads on forums etc. When it comes to kicking off your research, you can start wherever you like, but I'd recommend that you cover off each of the areas below: What does your target audience share? Whilst this activity might not uncover specific pieces of successful content, it's a great way of getting a clearer understanding of your target audience, and getting a handle on the sites they read and the topics which interest them. Review social profiles / feeds If the company you're working for has a Facebook page, it shouldn't be too difficult to find some people who've liked the company page and have a public profile. It's even easier on Twitter where most profiles are public. Whilst this won't give you quantitative data, it does put a human face to your audience data and gives you a feel for what these people care about and share. In addition to uncovering specific pieces of content, this can also provide inspiration in terms of other sites you might want to investigate further and ideas for topics you might want to explore. Demographics Pro This service infers demographic data from your clients' Twitter followers. I find it particularly useful if the client doesn't know too much about their audience. In addition to demographic data, you get a breakdown of professions, interests, brand affiliations, and the other Twitter accounts they follow and who they're most influenced by. This is a paid-for service, but there are pay-as-you-go options in addition to pay monthly plans. Finding successful pieces of content on specific sites If you've a list of sites you know your target audience read, and/or you know your client wants to get coverage on, there are a bunch of ways you can uncover interesting content: Using your link research tool of choice (e.g. Open Site Explorer, Majestic, ahrefs) you can run a domain level report to see which pages have attracted the most links. This can also be useful if you want to check out commercial competitors to see which pieces of content they've created have attracted the most links. There are also tools which enable you to uncover the most shared content on individual sites. You can use Buzzsumo to run content analysis reports on individual domains which provide data on average social shares per post, social shares by network, and social shares by content type. If you just want to see the most shared content for a given domain you can run a simple search on Buzzsumo using the domain; and there's also the option to refine by topic. For example a search like [guardian.com big data] will return the most shared content on the Guardian related to big data. You can also run similar reports using ahrefs' Content Explorer tool. Both Buzzsumo and ahrefs are paid tools, but both offer free trials. If you need to explore the most shared content without using a paid tool, there are other alternatives. Check out Social Crawlytics which will crawl domains and return social share data, or alternatively, you can crawl a site (or section of a site) and then run the URLs through SharedCount's bulk upload feature. Finding successful pieces of content by topic When searching by topic, I find it best to begin with a broad search and then drill down into more specific areas. For example, if I had a client in the financial services space, I'd start out looking at a broad topic like "money" rather than shooting straight to topics like loans or credit cards. As mentioned above, both Buzzsumo and ahrefs allow you to search for the most shared content by topic and both offer advanced search options. Further inspiration There are also several sites I like to look at for inspiration. Whilst these sites don't give you a great steer on whether or not a particular piece of content was actually successful, with a little digging you can quickly find the original source and pull link and social share data: Visually has a community area where users can upload creative content. You can search by topic to uncover examples. TrendHunter have a searchable archive of creative ideas, they feature products, creative campaigns, marketing campaigns, advertising and more. It's best to keep your searches broad if you're looking at this site. Check out Niice (a moodboard app) which also has a searchable archive of handpicked design inspiration. Searching Pinterest can allow you to unearth some interesting bits and pieces as can Google image searches and regular Google searches around particular topics. Reviewing relevant sections of discussion sites like Quora can provide insight into what people are asking about particular topics which may spark a creative idea. Moving from data to insight By this point you've (hopefully) got a long list of content examples. Whilst this is a great start, effectively what you've got here is just data, now you need to convert this to insight. Remember, we're trying to answer the questions: "What are websites publishing, and what are people sharing?" Ordinarily as I go through the creative content research process, I start to see patterns or themes emerge. For example, across a variety of topics areas you'll see that the most shared content tends to be news. Whilst this is good to know, it's not necessarily something that's going to be particularly actionable. You'll need to dig a little deeper—what else (aside from news) is given coverage? Can you split those things into categories or themes? This is tough to explain in the abstract, so let me give you an example. We'd identified a set of music sites (e.g. Rolling Stone, NME, CoS, Stereogum, Pitchfork) as target publishers for a client. Here's a summary of what I concluded following my research: The most-shared content on these music publications is news: album launches, new singles, videos of performances etc. As such, if we can work a news hook into whatever we create, this could positively influence our chances of gaining coverage. Aside from news, the content which gains traction tends to fall into one of the following categories: Proving or debunking myths: Smart people listen to Radiohead, dumb people listen to Beyonce & Mashup illustrates how country music sounds the same Creative stuff like this: Albums covers extended to reveal background action & Christopher Walken dancing - 50 films mashed up & 99 Red Balloons played only using red balloons Artist-centric stuff like this: Why Eminem is one of the most impressive lyricists ever Science! (Actually not science): Why we love the music we heard as teenagers & What the internet has done to your love of music Earlier in this post I mentioned that it can be particularly tough to create content which attracts coverage and shares if clients feel strongly that they want to do something directly related to their product or service. The example I gave at the outset was a client who sold insurance and was really keen to create something about insurance. You're now in a great position to win an argument with data, as thanks to your research you'll be able to cite several pieces of insurance-related content which have struggled to gain traction. But it's not all bad news as you'll also be able to cite other topics which are relevant to the client's target audience and stand a better chance of gaining coverage and shares. Avoiding the pitfalls There are potential pitfalls when it comes to creative content research in that it's easy to leap to erroneous conclusions. Here's some things to watch out for: Make sure you're identifying outliers... When seeking out successful pieces of content you need to be certain that what you're looking at is actually an outlier. For example, the average post on BuzzFeed gets over 30k social shares. As such, that post you found with just 10k shares is not an outlier. It's done significantly worse than average. It's therefore not the best post to be holding up as a fabulous example of what to create to get shares. Don't get distracted by formats... Pay more attention to the idea than the format. For example, the folks at Mashable, kindly covered an infographic about Instagram which we created for a client. However, the takeaway here is not that Instagram infographics get coverage on Mashable. Mashable didn't cover this because we created an infographic. They covered the piece because it told a story in a compelling and unusual way. You probably shouldn't create a listicle... This point is related to the point above. In my experience, unless you're a publisher with a huge, engaged social following, that listicle of yours is unlikely to gain traction. Listicles on huge publisher sites get shares, listicles on client sites typically don't. This is doubly important if you're also seeking coverage, as listicles on clients sites don't typically get links or coverage on other sites. How we use the research to inform our ideation process At Distilled, we typically take a creative brief and complete creative content research and then move into the ideation process. A summary of the research is included within the creative brief, and this, along with a copy of the full creative content research is shared with the team. The research acts as inspiration and direction and is particularly useful in terms of identifying potential topics to explore but doesn't mean team members don't still do further research of their own. This process by no means acts as a silver bullet, but it definitely helps us come up with ideas. Thanks for sticking with me to the end! I'd love to hear more about your creative content research processes and any tips you have for finding inspirational content. Do let me know via the comments. Image credits: Research, typing, audience, inspiration, kitteh. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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Seth's Blog : We are all social entrepreneurs

We are all social entrepreneurs

It's tempting to reserve the new term 'social entrepreneurs' for that rare breed that builds a significant company organized around the idea of changing the culture for the better.

The problem with this term is that lets everyone else off the hook. The prefix social implies that regular entrepreneurs have nothing to worry about, and that the goal of every un-prefixed organization and project (the 'regular kind') is to only make as much money as possible, as fast as possible.

But that's not how the world works.

Every project causes change to happen, and the change we make is social. The jobs we take on, the things we make, the side effects we cause—they're not side effects, they're merely effects. When we make change, we're responsible for the change we choose to make.

All of us, whichever job or project we choose to take on, do something to change the culture. That social impact, positive or negative is our choice.

It turns out that all of us are social entrepreneurs. It's just that some people are choosing to make a bigger (and better) impact than others.

It's a spectrum, not a label.

       

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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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Angry Voters Hand Spain’s Ruling Party Heavy Regional Losses; Podemos Scores Upset Victories in Barcelona, Madrid Posted: 24 May 2015 04:44 PM PDT The Spanish economy will supposedly grow at three percent. The bad news is Spanish employment is well over 20 percent and is also expected to stay that way. Angry voters unhappy with that setup took it out big time on PP, the party of prime minister Mariano Rajoy. Please consider PP Suffers Heavy Regional Losses. Spain's ruling Popular party suffered heavy losses in Sunday's string of regional and local elections, as two upstart movements made dramatic gains at the expense of the country's established parties. The PP still emerged as the biggest party in nine of the 13 regional contests, but its ability to head governments at both the regional and local level was severely curtailed. According to preliminary results, the party of Mariano Rajoy, Spain's prime minister, failed to obtain an absolute majority even in its historical strongholds — meaning it can govern only with the support of at least one of its rivals. The PP suffered a particularly marked decline in Madrid. Esperanza Aguirre, its high-profile candidate for mayor, beat a coalition of leftwing groups only by the smallest of margins but has little prospect of forming an administration. A similar leftist alliance also scored an upset triumph in Barcelona, meaning Spain's two principal cities are now likely to be led by a pair of charismatic, leftwing women from outside the political establishment: Manuela Carmena in Madrid and Ada Colau in Barcelona. The ruling party's losses were mostly the gain of two political newcomers, the anti-austerity Podemos movement and the centrist Ciudadanos party. Both were on track to enter regional parliaments in force in several key regions, potentially handing them the role of kingmakers. Podemos was also the leading force behind the two municipal victories in Madrid and Barcelona. Sunday´s elections took place in 13 of Spain's 17 regions and in more than 8,100 municipalities, providing a crucial test of the national mood ahead of general elections later this year. The overall picture, based on preliminary results, confirm what polls have been saying for months: frustrated voters are turning away from the established parties in ever greater numbers, converting Spain's decades-old two-party regime into a much more volatile four-horse race. Like Syriza in Greece, Podemos had been running on an anti-austerity platform. Podemos went even further, threatening to exit the euro. Voters simply do not believe in the recovery. Nor should they with youth unemployment near 50% and overall unemployment near 23%. For discussion of Spanish unemployment, please see Spain's Unemployment Rate Increases to 23.7%; 114,300 Jobs Vanish in First Quarter, Public Sector Jobs Rise. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com  Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Greece Will Default on June IMF Repayment Says Interior Minister; Greek Choice Same As It's Always Been Posted: 24 May 2015 10:11 AM PDT One way or another the crisis in Greece is highly likely to come to a head in June. Greek finances are in such sorry shape it needs a third bailout or it will be unable to meet payment obligations in August. And unless an agreement in June is reached to unleash more funds, Greece will not make it to August. Today we learn, Interior minister warns Greece will default on June IMF repayment. Greece has again threatened to default on loan repayments due to the International Monetary Fund, saying it will be unable to meet pension and wage bills in June and also reimburse €1.6bn owed to the IMF without a bailout deal with creditors. "The money won't be given . . . It isn't there to be given," Nikos Voutsis, the interior minister, told the Greek television station Mega. He claimed the EU and IMF were pressuring Greece to make unacceptable concessions in the current bailout talks in return for unlocking €7.2bn of aid frozen since last year. Predicting when Athens will run out of cash has proven a fraught affair for eurozone officials, who have been bracing for default since March. Given the repeated warnings from Greek officials that bankruptcy is imminent, some officials have begun to disregard such threats, believing Athens is now using them as a negotiating tactic. But a senior Greek official with knowledge of the government's funding position confirmed that Athens would be unable to make the IMF payments, which fall due in four separate instalments of more than €300m each between June 5 and June 19, unless a deal is struck. "We won't accept blackmail that says it's either liquidity with a memorandum [the Greek term for a bailout programme] or bankruptcy", Mr Voutsis said. The government has ruled out a domestic default on payment obligations to Greece's 2.9m pensioners and 600,000 public sector workers, saying they have first claim on the country's shrinking resources. People who have spoken to Mr Tsipras say he is in a dour mood and willing to acknowledge the serious risk of an accident in coming weeks. One official in contact with the prime minister said: "The negotiations are going badly. Germany is playing hard. Even Merkel isn't as open to helping as before." Recall that Greece was only able to make the May IMF payment by borrowing money from the IMF. That emergency credit line has been entirely used up. For details, please see Greece Empties IMF Reserve Account to Pay IMF; Liquidity "Terribly Urgent" Says Finance Minister. Although we have seen crisis after crisis come and go with various kick-the can mechanisms, at some point there is no can left to kick. Is this finally the time? 'Catastrophic' Eurozone Rupture The Telegraph reports Greece to Miss IMF payments Amid Fears of 'Catastrophic' Eurozone Rupture. Finance minister [Yanis Varoufakis] said that the Syriza-led Greek government has now "made enormous strides at reaching a deal", and that it is now up to the ECB, IMF and EU "to do their bit" and "meet us one-quarter of the way". One possible alternative if talks do not progress is that Greece would leave the common currency and return to the drachma. This would be "catastrophic", Mr Varoufakis warned, and not just for Greece itself. "Whatever some analysts are saying about firewalls, these firewalls won't last long once you put and infuse into people's minds, into investors' minds, that the eurozone is not indivisible," he added. Mr Varoufakis' and Mr Voutsis' words followed a declaration from Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, that bargaining with Greece's creditors would soon come to a close. "Rest assured that in this negotiation we will not accept humiliating terms," Mr Tsipras told Syriza's central committee. "The overwhelming majority of Greek people want a solution and not just an agreement ... it supports the government in this tough negotiation," he added. For Greece itself, using the common currency is now like using a "foreign currency", and any exit from the eurozone would be "a disaster", Mr Varoufakis said. He continued: "Trying to get out of it is tantamount to announcing a devaluation 10 months in advanced." Economists warn that if Greece were to leave the euro area, it could trigger huge levels of capital flight. In turn, Greece would almost certainly have to resort to capital controls in order to stem the tide of money out of the domestic economy. Ratings agency Moody's has warned that there is now a "high likelihood" of such controls, which might be necessary to keep the Greek financial system alive. An estimated €30bn has been withdrawn from the country's banks since snap elections were called in December 2014. Mr Varoufakis said that at some point the Greek government would have to make a choice between paying salaries and paying international creditors. Greek Choice Same As It's Always Been The choice Greece faces now is precisely the same choice four years ago: Whom to pay. Greek citizens overwhelmingly want to stay on the euro, but they do not want further cuts in pensions accompanied by higher taxes and more layoffs. So which is it? By fighting to retain pensions, Tsipras will at least have some cover if and when Greece returns to the Drachma. Meanwhile, the smart money has already left. Those with euro deposits in Greek banks above and beyond what is needed to make immediate payments are fools. I have been pounding the table for months warning Greek citizens to pull their money out. This may be the last chance. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

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