A high-quality blog post can attract thousands of impressions, shares and comments - here are the engagement stats for an article I wrote a few weeks ago.
Writing such a post is easier than you think - in fact, I would argue that it’s the easiest thing to do, provided that you conduct your content research carefully.
Effective content research involves identifying the right keywords, topics, content formats and marketing channels for your content. Each of those objectives can be accomplished by using handy content research tools.
Here are some of the best.
1. LSI Graph
LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) is one of the factors which enables search engines to understand the context of your content - it means that search engines go beyond specific keywords to index synonyms and related words for more context in understanding concepts.
SEO specialists who understand this process can use it to create more search-engine friendly content, and LSI Graph is a keyword research tool that can help you source LSI themed keywords for your writing.
To use the tool, you simply enter your most relevant keyword and incorporate the resulting matches in your content.
Note that the more organic your mentions of LSI keywords, the better your chances at ranking on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
2. DrumUp
Success on social media involves a lot of networking, relationship-building and co-marketing. Content curation is key in building these relationships - by sharing fresh and relevant content related to your niche, you can earn the favor of both your social media fans and the authors of such material.
DrumUp is a social media tool that helps curate interesting posts that your fans and potential partners are likely to appreciate. Using DrumUp, you can curate relevant content for everyday use by setting up keywords and RSS feeds.
The resulting posts are accompanied by hashtag and @mention recommendations, which you can use to increase the visibility of your content.
3. Screaming Frog
An important part of creating great content is staying up to date with the topics that other writers in your field are discussing. You can do this by subscribing to newsletters or adding RSS feeds to a feed reader, if you want fresh content for sharing. But if your intention is to analyze content created by one competitor from the beginning of time, you can crawl their website individually by using a tool like Screaming Frog.
Screaming Frog indexes all page URLs created for a website, and displays them to you in the form of a list. For content and keyword ideas, scroll the list while paying attention to the slugs.
You’ll find tons of interesting ideas to use in your content.
Written by: Jessica Davis
June 5, 2018
7 Essentials for Any 2018 Digital Marketing Strategy
Digital marketing strategy is crucial to most modern businesses. Is yours following these best practices?
In today's tech landscape, a solid digital marketing strategy has become the CMO's new bread and butter; the only question now is how to best serve it up. Your business's success depends on the right type of strategy, and the right type of strategy can in turn lead to higher sales, new customers, and long-term growth.
Traditional online advertising is a thing of the past. Why? Bottom line, it's more annoying than effective. One study found that 18- to 34-year-olds are likely to ignore online banner and digital ads more than those on TV and radio or in newspapers. What's more, 54 percent of internet users don't click on banner ads simply because they don't trust them.
It's now a CMO's job to stay ahead of the digital marketing curve, keep up-to-date on trends, and break through the clutter. Here are seven tips to optimize your digital marketing strategy.
1. Prioritize customer needs over bells and whistles.
While your team is consumed with building your web presence and developing your product or service, it's easy to lose sight of the customer you want to target. "When building a brand online, too many people rush to buy ads and acquire traffic to drive revenues by brute force," says Tony Delmercado, co-founder and COO of Hawke Media. "Small efficiency improvements in conversion rates, email capture, and retargeting can pay huge dividends -- tighten up the mouse trap first, then buy eyeballs. You'll acquire and retain customers more cost-efficiently and keep money in your coffers for higher-risk marketing strategies."
2. Audit and update your SEO more frequently.
You may know your product or service is great, but is it reaching all the people it could be? Search engine optimization can significantly help your brand reach the people who want what you're offering. Industry experts recommend updating your SEO once a quarter; after all, Google updates its algorithm more than 500 times a year. Find the keywords that are making your business gain or lose traction in the search engine cycle in order to make your brand as discoverable and searchable as possible.
3. Prioritize blogging as a lead generation tool.
Speaking of SEO: Posting relevant and valuable content drives traffic to your website and social media pages, while also increasing your ranking in search engines. In fact, marketers who blog are 13 times more likely to experience positive return on investment, and companies that blog generate 67 percent more leads than those who don't.
Each post you create is one more indexed page on your website, making it more likely customers will find you when searching online. It also indicates to search engines that your website is active, which will help surface your content to the top of search engine results. Further, blogging gives your brand a voice, and 91 percent of consumers say they are more likely to buy from a brand that is authentic rather than generic.
4. Host high-quality webinars and live events.
There are a variety of digital marketing resources you can use to engage with your audience, including webinars, podcasts, and online promotion of live events. To streamline the process of event promotion, try using a third party to make the process seamless. Event technology platforms like Eventbrite help brands create and market an event, as well as promote ticket sales and manage their audience. By getting some external help with the details, you can focus on the big picture and create an experience your customers will remember long after it's over.
5. Expand and refine your email distribution efforts.
Email marketing is still one of the best ways to reach your audience, and the fact that it costs nearly nothing to execute makes it one of the best tools to add to your toolkit. Email open rates have increased 180 percent on mobile devices since 2014, and more than half of all U.S. cellphone owners access their email on their phone rather than a desktop.
Email works better than other mobile forms of notifications (like text messages) because they don't cost the consumer anything, can be accessed on devices other than phones, and have more space to deliver a message. Emails keep your audience engaged across platforms, which in turn helps keep your brand top of mind.
6. Don't give social media short shrift.
Social media has become one of the biggest tools for marketing any brand. By first finding out what platforms your audience uses, you can then target your posts to the best times and dates to share. Engage with your audience on social media by starting conversations and responding to both praise and grievances. Sixty-seven percent of consumers use social media for customer service inquiries, so make sure that you become a part of that narrative so that you can direct it to a positive outcome.
7. Make your marketing mobile.
Even if a desktop version of your marketing content looks great, be sure to check that it translates across devices. Consumers expect cohesion across platforms, and the better accessibility you provide your audience, the more likely they are to purchase.
Remember that authenticity reigns supreme in any of these strategies. Once you have that, an online presence allows you to connect with your audience in ways previously unknown and build a brand that they'll continuously want to engage with.
Twitter has published the latest version of its monthly event calendar, highlighting all the key dates in June to be aware of.
Twitter's event calendars can be a big help in guiding your content strategy - not only do they highlight all the major events you can tap into, but Twitter also includes specific tweet volume numbers for selected topics, giving you a better idea of just how much discussion each is likely to generate (note: if you want to get specific numbers for each event, you can check Twitter's event targeting listings)
So what are the key dates to be aware of next month?
As you can see, there's a broad range of events, with Father's Day being the big one, in a general sense (though the CMA Awards is likely to generate a lot more Twitter conversation). There's also a heap of sports tie-in opportunities, along with 'National Selfie Day' and 'Social Media Day', all worth considering for your promotions.
As noted, Twitter's calendars can be a big help in keeping you on top of the latest happenings, and if you're looking to tap into the rising tweet stream, these events can be a great way to increase brand awareness and make your brand part of the surrounding conversation.
You can download Twitter's June 2018 event calendar here.
Written by: Andrew Hutchinson
May 22, 2018
How to Find Quality Micro-influencers (Even if You're Clueless About Influencer Marketing)
Social media influencers are in high demand, with household brands courting them to become advocates and promoters of their products. But high demand for these influencers also pushes up the costs of using them - as a way around that, small businesses looking to use influencer marketing are increasingly turning to micro influencers.
Like celebrities, influencers with readymade audiences are difficult to engage. Micro-influencers, however, are more approachable, and affordable. They also often have the added benefit of better engagement with their audiences than their high-profile counterparts.
Credibility and trust sway consumer buying and purchasing decisions, and often, micro influencers have more on both fronts with their individual readers or audience members.
For small business owners, the challenge of building such trust with your target audience is time-consuming, but it is also vitally important in this hyper-competitive environment.
What is a micro influencer?
A micro-influencer is someone with a following of anywhere between 1,000 to 100,000 people. This can be on any platform, and many have their own blogs and websites.
Micro-influencers are focused on a targeted niche, and as noted, often come with the advantage of high audience engagement, since their follower numbers are smaller, and thus, easier for them to engage with more often.
Having smaller audiences also means the cost to compensate them is also generally significantly lower than celebrities and high profile accounts.
Where do you look for social media micro-influencers?
The first place to look is your own “backyard.”
Sift through your social media platforms and your blog. Check and see who's commenting and sharing your content. Sometimes these people are micro-influencers.
Now, if a micro-influencer is engaging with your brand, that person is already plugged-in to your target audience. Also, it’s likely they’re already predisposed to your brand, and familiar with your products, which will save time trying to persuade them to work with you.
When you do reach out, be sure to be polite and thank them for following you and interacting with your content. Be sure to follow them on their social channels and participate there - they will appreciate your taking notice and being active.
Whatever you do, don’t begin your dialog by bluntly asking them to participate in your influencer campaign. No one appreciates being sold to, and micro-influencers are no different. Be polite, it goes a long way.
Look for quality content
Quality content and integrity are paramount.
Here’s what I mean by that - does the influencer produce quality content (video, photos and blog copy)? Think of it from the point of view of your brand - is the influencer someone you want to be associated with? Do they produce content you want your company to be associated with?
For example, if you're a family-friendly brand, look to see if the micro influencers use profanity or engage in inappropriate behavior. Do they conduct themselves well and are they a good fit?
Be mindful of congruence and engagement
If you find a micro-influencer that's a huge pastry connoisseur, for example, but your business is about following a sugar-free diet, then they’re probably not the right influencer for you, even if they are engaging with your content.
Not only should they produce the kind of content you want to be associated with your brand, but they should get good engagement with their followers - remember, engagement is far more important than reach.
Check to see how often your targeted micro-influencer posts, and how much reaction it gets in the form of shares, comments, and likes.
The more a micro-influencer engages with their audience, the more influential they are with them. Frequency is good as they are more likely to be considered credible, relevant, and up-to-date with the audience’s needs and concerns. This is what you want.
Once you weigh relevance and communication styles, you’ll want to narrow down your micro-influencers by reach.
How to find micro influencers quickly and easily
An effective strategy for finding the right kind of micro-influencer for your business is using hashtag search features, particularly branded hashtags.
If you search #YourBrandName, you’ll be able to find people who are already engaging with your brand (if they are). This is a simple and straight-forward way of finding out which micro-influencers are already talking about you - these are some of your best bets, as they're already acquainted with your business and will be easier to persuade over influencers who aren’t familiar with you.
When you’re ready to expand your search, you can try hashtags for topics relevant to your brand and products. Simply type your hashtags into the Instagram search bar and a range of choices will pop up.
Let’s say, for example, your business is in the healthy food space. You’d simply type that hashtag into the Instagram search bar:
Another way to find micro influencers is to use influencer databases - some are free, simple and easy. They also provide the added bonus of statistical data on the influencers too.
For example, Scrunch is an easy to use platform which enables you to find micro-influencers quickly. You can also filter them based on category.
In the example below, I put in a search for influencers who cover the topic of marketing:
Some of the statistics Scrunch offers includes audience size, the social platforms the influencers use, the approximate cost to have them create content for you and the topics they post about.
These are all provided with the free version - more advanced statistics are available when you subscribe to the pro version.
Another platform to try is Tinysponsor. This tool focuses on micro-influencers, and enables businesses to find and collaborate, regardless of location or social platform. You can even pay the influencers through it.
When you visit Tinysponsor simply click on the “continue” button and set up your brand profile, then start searching.
Tinysponsor even allows you to search ready-made packages, influencer by influencer or in bulk, by platform, price, city (so you can get local) and tags, so there are lots of options to choose from.
You can add the packages to your cart, define your goals, then checkout. Sponsorships are confirmed by each micro influencer, and funds are held in a protected account.
This enables you to collaborate directly with each micro-influencer on your sponsorship. Once delivered and approved by you, payment is instantly sent.
Anyone of these methods and tools is sufficient to quickly find micro influencers relevant to your business.
The hardest part is getting started, but once you do, you’ll be able to find influencers on demand.
Wrapping up
Influencer marketing is one of the most effective forms of gaining mindshare with your ideal consumers quickly and effectively.
Because of their high engagement rates and cost-effectiveness, most small businesses can leverage this strategy anytime they want - but keep in mind this critical point: The size of the audience is not as important as the engagement. You want to see an active audience.
Even influencers with very small audiences can help you boost your brand’s authenticity and standing. Now you can outmaneuver larger competitors, because you can connect with an already targeted and motivated audience which will skyrocket your brand.
Written By: Tom Augenthaler
May 17, 2018
5 Ways to Build a Useful Editorial Calendar
Executing on a content marketing strategy is a lot of work, but when you combine the efforts of a well-managed team, the results can be downright magical. The challenge, of course, is co-ordination - each contributor has conflicting priorities, and their own, unique style. To keep everyone on the same page you need an editorial calendar.
In its simplest form, an editorial calendar is a document that communicates what you plan to publish, when you'll publish it, and who'll handle each component. But if you choose the right tool it could do so much more - an editorial calendar can also help you clarify the purpose of each piece of content and improve collaboration within your team/s.
But there isn’t one solution that’s ideal for everyone - the trick is to identify a tool that suits the complexity and frequency of your publishing schedule, and that your team will actually use.
Here are five ways to build an editorial calendar, and the pros and cons of each approach.
1. Using a Spreadsheet as an Editorial Calendar
Spreadsheets are great for many organizational tasks, and that includes editorial calendars. Anyone with a computer can access some form of a spreadsheet, and as long as you keep it simple, most people are reasonably comfortable using one.
Spreadsheet style editorial calendars are best for content teams which publish once or twice per week (or less), and it’s useful to set them up in a common environment (like Google Docs or OneDrive) so you can share them with your team members and collaborate on changes.
I sometimes see editorial spreadsheets that have been set up to look like an actual calendar - personally, I find that this limits the tool’s utility. Instead, I prefer to use the traditional row and column layout, so I can manipulate and sort the data when I need a different view.
The information included in an editorial calendar will vary from one organization to the next, but it will usually look something like this:
In addition to the columns shown here, it's often helpful to include other information. For example, I like to add the search volume for my target keywords and links to relevant research.
Pros of a Spreadsheet Style Editorial Calendar:
- Low barrier to entry. Most people have access to and feel comfortable using a simple spreadsheet.
- Limited adoption challenges. Team members can incorporate this tool into their existing file structure and workflow.
- Simple to set up.
- Some collaboration capabilities (if the spreadsheet lives on a shared drive).
- Few limitations. You can use a spreadsheet to do almost anything.
Cons of a Spreadsheet Style Editorial Calendar:
- Spreadsheets require manual maintenance. If your entire team doesn’t commit to using this tool it will become dated.
- Limited scalability. Spreadsheets are great for small teams who publish once or twice a week, but they can become unwieldy if your publication frequency increases.
- Permissions must be carefully managed to avoid unwanted changes to this critical document.
- Limited workflow collaboration capabilities.
2. Building an Editorial Calendar with Google Calendar
If your team uses Google Calendar, setting up a separate editorial calendar in that same environment is another viable option.
From within Google Calendar, click on the plus sign next to “Add a friend’s calendar” and choose “New Calendar.”
Then select your new calendar and click on the three vertical dots to the right of the name to edit the settings and share the calendar with your team.
Now you can populate the calendar with your content plan and keep everyone informed of the publication schedule.
Add alerts, files and links to each entry, so that your authors will have access to everything they need to complete each piece.
Like spreadsheets, using a Google Calendar to manage your content production schedule is best when your publishing frequency is light - although the tool is familiar and there are some collaboration capabilities, it can become frustrating to those who publish a lot of content.
Pros of Using Google Calendar as an Editorial Calendar:
- Low barrier to entry. Google Calendar is free, familiar and easy to use.
- Limited adoption challenges. Those who already use Google’s suite of tools will find it quite natural to integrate this option into their workflow.
- Simple set up.
Cons of Using Google Calendar as an Editorial Calendar:
- If your team doesn’t use Google Calendar they may not be willing to start now.
- Limited scalability. This is a very simple solution. Using Google Calendar to manage your editorial process can become cumbersome if your publishing frequency increases.
- Limited collaboration capabilities. Complex editorial workflows would benefit from a more robust tool.
3. Integrating an Editorial Calendar into Task or Project Management Tools
If your team already uses a productivity solution, you might be able to build an editorial calendar right into your existing tool. This is a terrific option when several team members work on each piece of content - the right solution can help you manage that workflow and keep everyone informed.
There are many such tools, but I prefer Asana and will use it to illustrate this point.
Asana organizes work into “projects” and the individual “tasks” related each project. You can then view those tasks as a list or on a “Kanban” board - here's an example of an editorial calendar project in Asana that has been set up using the Kanban method.
In this example, a card represents each piece of content (or task) you intend to create. As work is completed, you move the cards from left to right to visually track your progress. But the real magic happens inside each individual card.
Within each card, you can break down tasks into subtasks, and assign them to individual contributors. For example, if you need a graphic for your next blog post, you can assign that subtask to your graphic designer, and that person will then get an alert (with the requested due date). They can then either accept the assignment or request a change.
You can also attach files and communicate with your team right within the tool - this means you'll have everything related to each piece of content in one place.
This is just one example of how you might use a productivity tool to create an editorial calendar and workflow - the list of pros and cons will vary based on the tool you choose and how you use it, but here are the pros and cons of using Asana.
Pros of Using Asana as an Editorial Calendar:
- If you already use the solution you can build your editorial calendar right into your existing task management workflow. This negates the need to juggle documents or manage a complicated solution adoption process.
- Collaboration features make it easy to communicate the status of individual pieces of content and their associated tasks. This will help you avoid bottlenecks.
- Premium features add rich project management functionality that improves the tool’s utility.
Cons of Using Asana as an Editorial Calendar:
- If your team doesn't use a common tool for collaborating on tasks, you'll need to agree on a solution and go through an adoption process.
- Most productivity tools were designed to manage a wide variety of projects and tasks, which means that they may lack features of particular interest to content managers.
- Building an editorial calendar into your productivity solution should work for a moderate production schedule but may challenge your ability to scale.
If you like this concept (especially the Kanban method), but don’t think Asana is right for you, Trello and Monday are good alternatives.
4. Using Airtable as an Editorial Calendar
Spreadsheets and collaborative to-do lists are perfectly fine for managing the content needs of a small team, but you may find that you need a more robust editorial calendar solution as your program matures. Airtable is a good option for people who like using spreadsheets but need something more.
Airtable is a cloud-based application which offers the deep functionality and relational aspects of a database in a visually appealing spreadsheet format. The tool enables you to collaborate with team members, attach files and segment data - a basic version is available for free, while feature-rich upgrades are $20 per user, per month.
This tool is useful for managing a rigorous editorial schedule. There is a learning curve, but Airtable provides use case templates to get you started. Here's a screenshot of their digital content calendar template.
I choose this template because it shows how Airtable can work for a large, prolific team. They also provide simple templates for smaller scale projects, such as the management of the editorial calendar for a blog.
Pros of Using Airtable as an Editorial Calendar:
- Superior collaboration capabilities when compared to spreadsheets.
- Provides robust relational database functionality, combined with easy ways to view and sort the data. This flexibility satisfies spreadsheet fans while also accommodating visual types with calendar, Kanban and gallery views of the same data.
- Offers integrations with many popular applications. This makes it easier to build the solution into your workflow.
Cons of Using Airtable as an Editorial Calendar:
- Significant learning curve, particularly for those who are not familiar with databases.
- Airtable isn’t mainstream yet, which means you’re adding a new tool to the mix and may encounter resistance.
- Spreadsheet power users may expect certain functionality that isn’t yet available. This will require patience. The solution is becoming quite popular and is adding new capabilities all the time.
- Like a spreadsheet, manual updates are necessary to keep the tool effective.
- This solution wasn’t designed specifically for marketers. Marketing-centric features are present but aren't necessarily a top priority.
5. Adopting CoSchedule as Your Editorial Calendar
CoSchedule is a content planning and execution tool designed for marketers. You can use it to build an editorial calendar for all your content and campaigns, while you can also use it to collaborate with contributors and schedule social media posts, all in one place.
The company offers a wide range of pricing options - basic capabilities for bloggers start at $40 per month. The most advanced level of functionality (for enterprises) is $1,200 per month.
Planned content is presented on a calendar, which can show everything or a filtered view. You can manage each piece of content using a customizable, collaborative workflow, so that you always know where things stand. You can also set up a social sharing plan for each piece of content and use it to populate a built-in social media scheduling tool.
Pros of Using the CoSchedule Editorial Calendar:
- Designed for marketers.
- Useful for managing all types of content – blogs, resources, social media content, graphics, white papers, etc.
- Handles the entire content production process – from ideation to publication to social promotion.
- Doubles as a scheduling tool for social media posts. You can set up the entire social sharing plan for each piece of content as part of your content creation workflow.
Cons of Using the CoSchedule Editorial Calendar:
- Yet another tool to adopt and integrate into your workflow. It’s great if all you work on is content, but it doesn’t accommodate the need to manage other types of tasks (the company recently implemented an integration with Zapier, which may make this issue easier to work through).
- Analytics data is limited to the impact of social posts.
- The calendar format is the only option for viewing your plan - you can't convert it to list form.
- Calendar data resides in the tool. You can't extract it for further analysis. For example, if you want to conduct a content audit, you'll need to build an inventory of your content separately.
Choosing an Editorial Calendar Solution
The system you select for documenting and collaborating on your editorial calendar will have a big impact on your efficiency. Defining your requirements, and exploring the solutions above, is a good place to start if you’re working with a small or medium-sized team. There are other options that may be more suitable to your situation, but we'll save that discussion for another day.
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