Trying to explain WHAT content marketing is, let alone how it can benefit a business, can be a challenging endeavor.

Courtesy of ContentPLUS

Most business minds, from CEOs to marketing managers, are stuck in the mindset that all marketing should directly generate leads/sales, or at least directly impact your bottom line…especially when it comes to online advertising.  They’re hesitant to spend money on things that are more for branding then direct revenue generation.

At least, this has been true of smaller businesses in my experience.  Most big brands understand the importance of branding – after all, it’s usually one of the ways they became a “big name” in the first place.

Content marketing is all about building a name for yourself online, spreading your brand, and become an internet superstar in online communities.

The Fact Of The Matter Is…

I think anyone who knows anything about internet marketing can agree on two facts:

1. With very few exceptions, just about every business (both b2b and b2c) can benefit in some way from internet marketing.  In fact, businesses who haven’t made an effort to include online advertising in their marketing budget are cutting themselves off at the knees.
2. There’s already a TON of content on the web – and most of it isn’t very good.  Gone are the days where new content you post gets noticed easily because now there’s just too much of it.  Your content has to offer something pretty spectacular to get noticed.

Content marketing is about creating an awesome piece of content, whether a whitepaper, viral blog post, infographic, contest, or video, and promoting it online via social sharing and blogger outreach.  It can be useful content chock full of stats, something comical to make people laugh, something heart-warming to get their attention, or some tool that fulfills a need.

It’s most often used as both a branding and SEO tool to improve your visibility online.  (There are other definitions of content marketing, but for now the focus is on viral content marketing).

What businesses need to understand is that the audience you’re creating viral content for is NOT necessarily your segment of prospective customers.  They may be a secondary target, but not the primary.

The main audiences of most viral content are the communities of people on the web who love to spread, share, link to, and talk about cool content pieces, videos, apps, programs, etc.  These are the social media power users, the shareaholics, and the “linkerati” as our friends over at SEOMoz call them.

Your prospective customer base is your secondary audience – anyone who might need your products or services, or could potentially become a strategic business relationship.  However, if you’re in a smaller industry, there are not always easily identifiable, prominent web communities for your industry to which you can promote your content.

Occasionally, rarely, in the right industry with the right content piece, they do overlap…and when that happens, whoever created and promoted the content gets lifelong bragging rights!

So What Is Content Marketing Good For?

Just because a piece of content that’s gone viral doesn’t generate leads or sales on your website does NOT make it a wasted venture.  Instead, the success of a content piece should be measured in:

• The number of visitors your content piece receives, and whether a traffic spike is evident in your site analytics during the implementation and promotion of the piece.
• The number of backlinks the page on which your content piece is posted receives.
• The number of Shares, Likes, Pins, Tweets, etc. your content piece ends up with.
• Whether your website eventually starts ranking for keywords related to your content.
• Any major media mentions you receive thanks to your amazing content.

There are other ways to measure the success of your content marketing campaign – these are simply the most obvious.

So what’s in it for your business?  Well, your business and your website can benefit in several ways from content marketing:

1. The SEO effect – viral content tends to generate tons of social mentions (increasing your site’s “social signal authority” to the search engines) and backlinks to help increase your organic rankings.
2. The traffic effect – as the content spreads, people are visiting your site on a regular basis, increasing your direct, referral, and organic traffic.
3. The branding effect – your brand becomes a more famous name online as people notice your content and start remarking on it, helping to build you into a household name.
4. The sales effect – as the above effects take hold over time, you’ll see an increase in relevant traffic to your site, which typically equals more leads or sales for your company!

I was going to end the post with one or two awesome infographics about content marketing – but  last year, Joe Pulizzi over at ContentMarketingInstitute.com already put together a post compiling some of the best content marketing infographics on the planet (his words, not mine).

If you’ve ever been to a rodeo, you know that one angry bull can be a lot to manage. For a business owner or marketing director, juggling handfuls of social media outlets and accounts can feel like trying to rope a herd of bulls — each has their own quirks and personalities, and keeping them in line and relevant on a daily basis is a never-ending challenge.

Fortunately, as one social media outlet after another grows in users and importance, so do the tools that help lasso them all in. Of course, yourself and qualified staff should have the ability to post at will and keep your social conversations lively, from publishing Instagram photos to creating Pinterest pages to launching Foursquare campaigns. At the same time, it’s best to build a solid foundation and plan for your social media marketing outreach, guaranteeing daily content that’s kept fresh and timely by those ‘at will’ posts.

To get started on an organized social media marketing outreach plan, by week, month, or year, consider finding a service that will consolidate your posts, updates, tweets, and pins into one portal. Without having to constantly log-in to various accounts, you’ll increase your capability and likelihood of ensuring that each account stays updated. Here are some of the best:

HootSuite

If you want to manage multiple social media accounts and measure the effectiveness of your posts through each medium, HootSuite may be the current reigning king (with a client list that includes Sony, Virgin, and Lamborghini). They helped secure that reign by purchasing competitor Seesmic in September.

By including access to WordPress, Constant Contact, and Flickr, (in addition to Facebook and all the expected SoMe players), it’s easily the most comprehensive, allowing clients to send and schedule updates to each outlet, including syncing one message across multiple platforms. You can thus measure the effectiveness of e-newsletter outreach (i.e. Constant Contact) against your Twitter feed. Android and iOS apps allow mobile control, and the pro version runs $10 a month.

TweetDeck

Self-dubbed as “air traffic control for Twitter,” this useful service creates a unified portal for following messages and feeds and posting updates to Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and FourSquare. Although it’s not an analytical tool like HootSuite, it’s free and easy to use, making it an excellent choice for small businesses looking to simplify and shave a few minutes off their daily social media marketing routine.

SproutSocial

For business owners that like seeing clear results from social media campaigns, SproutSocial offers those in the form of easy-to-read charts and graphs. Instead of deciphering confusing numbers about click-through rates and readerships, this service makes it simple, consolidating the major SoMe outlets (including LinkedIn and Foursquare) into one portal to post and read results. It also wins props for its clean and simple mobile app for control on the go. For a small business with 10 or less profile pages, the Standard package at $39 a month will cover all their needs.

VerticalResponse

For an internet marketer looking to launch multi-faceted campaigns including surveys, event promotion, e-newsletters and social media updates, VerticalResponse provides a central location and package for managing each type of marketing. Updates and posts can be plugged in and scheduled for an entire month and synced across multiple platforms, with plans starting as low as $9 a month.

Have you tried any of these social media marketing aggregators at your business? Do you feel that pulling all of your social accounts into one dashboard compromises effectiveness or eases the task and broadens your ability to reach new and existing followers?

Erin Schwartz manages social media programs for 123Print.com, a leading provider of custom holiday supplies like holiday cards, folding and flat cards, and other holiday needs.

SEO meetups happen all across the country, and for good reason.  Just as in every industry, internet marketing has conferences, roundtables, and meetups where professionals and consumers interested in the industry can meet, learn, discuss, and network.  Every couple of months, the Lancaster Online Marketing Group holds a meetup.  The most recent, named the 2012 Lancaster SEO Panel and Live Audit, occurred on October 24^th, 2012.  Oliver Feakins and Mike Canarelli, CEO and COO, respectively, of Web Talent Marketing were kind enough to provide a venue and some of their own professionals for the panel.  There were 4 seasoned pros on the panel this time around:

• Lorianna Sprague – Director of Search Marketing, Web Talent Marketing
• Jonathan Bentz – Director of Client Marketing, ProspectMX
• Ray Carboni – Senior SEM Specialist, Web Talent Marketing
• Ganesh Harinath – Owner, The Dilatorg Group

Matt Self, the Vice President of Web Talent, acted as moderator.

Topics covered ranged from the buzz question, “is SEO dead?”, to the effects of social, to Panda and Penguin, and beyond.  It was a truly helpful, beneficial panel for beginners in SEO to advanced professionals.

Is SEO dead?

There was recently an article on Forbes with the title “SEO is Dead.”  It caused a flurry of activity and what could be considered a maelstrom of activity in the internet marketing world and on social media platforms.  Although much of the hubbub has died down, it’s still a question a lot of people haven’t answered yet.  Lorianna was the first on the panel to tackle the question and summed up the sentiments of the rest of the panel.  She explained that SEO has been defined and redefined over and over again.  One version “dies” and another one comes up.  It’s not so much that SEO is dead – it’s just evolving again.

How is social media affecting SEO and how do we know?

Bentz explained that it was easily manipulated and easy to see when the Google+ button was right next to the search results.  Once that disappeared from the SERPs, the focus shifted even more towards content.  If you have a piece that can go viral, social media platforms make it possible and shift the focus to making good content, something engaging, something that will convert, something that people will want to share and pass on.  Lorianna mentioned these are social metric validation factors.  Google, in particular, no longer ranks specific tweets in the SERPs, instead it ranks user profiles and content that has a lot of tweets.  The more social attention a piece of content gets the more it is validated as good content.

Ray added that it’s important to get involved through social media and post about what’s going on in your business.  Ganesh mentioned, in regard specifically to Google+, that since Google has the “keys to the henhouse,” of course they’re going to use that information to show more relevant search results.  Citing a recent article, if you’re using it for free, you’re the product.  Lorianna and Ganesh both mentioned that social is a great tool for getting bodies to your site and improving rankings, but Ganesh warned that Google will index personal profiles, not tweets, so if you’re using Twitter for rankings, you should probably change your strategy as you cannot rely on it alone.

Panda vs. Penguin

Two of Google’s largest algorithm updates have been named after cute animals starting with the letter “p”.  Possibly to soften the blow?  We’ll probably never know.  A lot of people are still confused on what exactly these two changes did and how to handle things moving forward.  Ray pointed out that Panda was released to target the content farmers.  Bentz added that Penguin was related to stuff happening off-site, specifically targeting backlink profiles and those links coming into your site that were obviously placed there just to improve rankings.  Lorianna continued, saying that the most recent Penguin updates targeted older sites who had gamed the system in the past.  Those who changed content benefitted from this update, but those who didn’t were penalized as they showed a declining backlink profile and just a few indexed pages without new, fresh content.

As far as what to do about it, Ganesh warned that though we should care, we shouldn’t change everything to change things tomorrow – it’s like chasing a moving target.  At the end of the day, Google is making search more relevant to make more money.  It’s a for-profit industry, so the best thing to do is print out those 23 questions to ask yourself for content and keep it in front of you.  Lorianna adds that it’s essential to stay on top of what is changing and why it is changing and employ those tactics.  Looking at updated webmaster forums, webmastering101, and those 23 questions are a good frame when starting out with SEO.

Other tips and tidbits

• Anchor Text Diversification Post-Penguin:

Lorianna stated it simply – think about what you’re doing.  The goal is to make a natural-looking backlink profile.  When you do keyword research, keep relevant long-tails.  Use brand names where it makes sense to use a brand names, add a keyword if you really want, but don’t be afraid to use the brand if it makes sense.  Utilize naked URLs and No Follow links.  Bentz continued, adding to comment on blogs, without links, but to remember one thing with backlinks and blogs for comments – you better have something useful to share.  If you have something good and helpful, you can link to that in comments, not to your product pages.

• Press Releases:

Ganesh and Ray mentioned, and the panel agreed; press releases are still a viable strategy; they’re a part of any successful marketing strategy and should be a part of any successful digital marketing strategy.  As long as press releases are not over-optimized and victims of keyword stuffing, they can be a great tool for engaging with your audience, raising brand awareness, and even getting some of those authoritative links coming back to your site.

• Free Tools:

Ray offered that Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer can give a good preview of what’s going on behind the scenes of a website, but he acknowledged you would have to pay for the full scope from both services.  Bentz added that SEO Book has something like that and for registering on the site, you can access a whole suite of free tools for checking rankings and other stuff, especially if you use Firefox.

• Bing It On!  Or Not?

Bentz mentioned that based on Analytics, Bing is not much of a contender right now, but if you want to decrease spend in AdWords, PPC in Bing can be a little bit of a lower cost with a little higher conversion rate.  Also, exact match domains tend to rank better in Yahoo and Bing than in Google.  Ganesh agreed that Bing may not be a huge contender today, but he’s not taking them off his radar just yet.  He asked us to take the wayback machine to the 90s when Google wasn’t a contender – look at it now.  Bentz added that the optimization we usually do for Google, normally works well for Bing too.

After the live site audit, Oliver jumped in to say that if you’re learning SEO, get a foundation before you get distracted by all the toolbars.  Page Rank is a good example.  It’s a number and, if you don’t understand the methodology behind the number, you can’t properly analyze it.  Read first.

In closing, stay educated, stay on top of what’s changing and why, employ the right tactics, and above all, create good, helpful content.

About the Guest Blogger: Bob Bentz is president of Advanced Telecom Services with offices in Philadelphia, Toronto, London, and Prague.  Bob helps companies make more sales through mobile marketing enhancements.  He sent 3879 text messages last month, just slightly more than the average teenage girl.

Going Mobile

Americans are on the go more than ever.

And, that means that they are searching for your products via the one medium that is always with them — their mobile phone.

In fact, according to Pew, 17% of all internet searches now come from the mobile phone and not the traditional desktop computer.

Do I Need a Mobile Website?

I always tell people to use the “thumb test” when considering whether they need a mobile website or not. If you can navigate your desktop website on your cell phone with your thumb only, then you will know what it’s like for a man with large fingers, or an older person with declining eye site, to navigate your site on a mobile phone.

In most cases you will find that a traditional desktop site simply doesn’t provide a good user experience for cell phone access. Mobile users are often on the go and not near a high speed internet connection so expect their load times to be slower. With 57% of visitors saying they will tune out if your site doesn’t load within 3 seconds, you need a lighter site that will load quickly.

Best URL’s for Mobile Search

The best way to optimize for a mobile website is to use the same URL on the mobile site as the desktop site. This way, you don’t have to do anything differently and you benefit from all of the optimizing that you’ve already done for the desktop site.

If you can’t go with the same domain, then it’s best to use the m.domain.com. This URL structure doesn’t provide any additional built-in SEO benefit, but it has become the industry standard as opposed to the original thinking that the .mobi suffix would become the mobile standard.

But, the best strategy is actually to use device detection to determine whether the user is coming in from a mobile device or not. Then, use canonicals so that your desktop site shows up in search results regardless of what device the consumer is using. When the visitor clicks on the desktop search result, the device detection will take them to either the mobile or desktop site depending on whether the user is on his cell phone or not.

Don’t Forget About Tablet Users

With over 75 million Americans owning tablets, this is clearly not a market that you can ignore. And, with the larger screen of a tablet, the customer may be on a wireless device, but want to use the greater content available from the desktop site. That’s why it’s important to always have a link back to the busier desktop site on the mobile site as well.

A Mobile Customer is Your Most Valuable Customer

Studies show that the mobile searcher is actually closer to making a buying decision than the desktop searcher. 85% of restaurant searchers, for example, convert to making a purchase. Hence, the mobile searcher is more likely to be a buyer now while the desktop searcher is more likely to be gathering information.

That makes mobile searcher the perfect storm of just the right searcher at just the right time.

Who says “boring” industries can’t have sexy content created for them?

Often times, if you can figure out a way to tie current events back to your “boring” product, or re-interpret recently published statistics about your “boring” industry, you can put your brand right in the middle of all conversation about your line of work.

To put your brand in the middle of all online conversations about your “boring” industry – you need to have something tangible worth talking about. Your community needs something to jump start their talk, or a piece of content they “click” with that shares their stance.

Give your community something to talk about – give them some sexy content.

“Boring” Product, Sexy Content: Infographic From KUKA

In the infographic I’m sharing below from KUKA Robotics, a global corporation that manufactures industrial robots, the myth of industrial automation taking jobs away from the US is reviewed – and pretty much debunked.

If anything, according to the sources cited in the graphic, industrial automation is actually an aid to bringing jobs BACK to the good old USA.

Robots And Automation Bring Jobs Back To The U.S.

With election season in full swing and jobs near the forefront of the issues, this infographic does a great job of outlining how the automation of manufacturing in America is not the culprit for job losses in mfg. If you are involved in the world of manufacturing – you likely feel something about the subject of automation. KUKA has reviewed all the statistics on the issue, drawn some interesting conclusions, and is sharing them with the world wide web for you – others, to talk about.

This infographic is not the first ever developed around current events, and it certainly won’t be the last. It is a great example, however, of what an attractive piece of – *cough* online content – can do for your “boring” industry.

How can your business leverage the 24/7 news cycle or the biggest issues facing your potential customers and put yourself in the middle of those conversations? Please share in the comments.