Posted by RuthBurr

As inbound marketing is gaining traction, marketers in all inbound disciplines are realizing the importance of taking on keywords with a more holistic approach. It's time to start building your keywords into the bones of your site, rather than adding them once your site is already completely mapped out. 

In today's Whiteboard Friday, Ruth Burr discusses how you can use your keywords to drive personas, and ultimately affect your site mapping process for the better. Leave your thoughts and questions in the comments below! 

 

For your viewing pleasure, here's a still image of the whiteboard used in this week's video!

Update: Ruth referred to some code that Mike King of iAquire put together that may help your site if integrated into your analtyics. Give it a look!

Video Transcription

"Howdy, SEOmoz fans. My name's Ruth Burr. Welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. I'm the Lead SEO here at SEOmoz, and today I want to talk about using keywords to drive personas and ultimately your site mapping process.

One thing that we're really thinking a lot about as we move more and more toward an inbound marketing model, where there are multiple different people with multiple different functions all working together to have the best inbound marketing possible, is what we're doing with keywords and sort of when we're adding keywords into the site. I know that we've all had the experience in years past where we would get a site or get a piece of copy that was completely written and then just kind of have to plug our keywords into that existing content wherever they would fit. You might have an entire site that's already completely mapped out, it's got a sitemap, it's got information architecture, and then you're supposed to go in and put in your keywords. I've found that that is not always the best user experience for the keyword, and also isn't as effective as taking a more holistic approach.

So what I'm really hoping you guys will get out of this is take it back to your UX and your IA teams and really think about how you can build keywords more into the bones of the site.

One thing that Google is thinking a lot about that is really important for us to be thinking about as marketers as well is searcher intent. Search engines are spending tons of money and tons of time and tons of effort trying to figure out what people are searching for when they use a keyword. It behooves us as marketers to do the same thing because that way we can give people what they want when they tell us they want it, and that's the beauty of search engine marketing.

My example here is chocolate cookies, because I like to think about cookies. You might have somebody that's searching for the keyword "chocolate cookies," and maybe you own ChocolateCookies.com, a great domain. If that's the case, you don't really know what they want when they want chocolate cookies. They could be looking to buy chocolate cookies. They could want to learn how to make chocolate cookies. They could want recipes. You might also have ingredients. Maybe in addition to cookies you sell ingredients for cookies. Maybe you have recipe content and sales content, and you want to know how to serve up each of those pieces of content in a way that's really going to serve the user. What you can start doing is really thinking about the search intent of each one of these keywords and building that in to a traditional persona-based marketing model.

This is my example model. All of these examples are made up. The data is not real. You cannot use this data and take it out and just go build ChocolateCookies.com. You could, but results are not guaranteed. To reiterate, this data, made up.

In my ChocolateCookies.com example, we've got three different personas. We've mapped out who they are and what they want. Now we can actually assign keywords to them. Say you're trying to target people who want to make cookies. What they're looking for, they're looking for recipes, they're looking for ingredients. They are not looking to buy cookies. If somebody googles "chocolate cookie recipes" and they click through to your site and it's a page about how you can buy cookies from you, that is a bad user experience. Those people are not going to buy cookies, and they're also going to bounce right back to the search results.

That is the kind of thing that search engines are tracking. How quickly did somebody return to the search results page from your site? Did they do it without taking an action? If so, that can be a signal that you're not serving up quality content. It's bad from a ranking factor's perspective, and it's also bad because that person did not give you money and that's what we're trying to do, trying to sell cookie recipes.

So you really want to make sure that this person when they're searching for these keywords, which you've mapped back to their persona, you're serving up chocolate cookie recipes. And if they're looking for ingredients, you're serving up ingredients. Then you're creating an entire experience. You're not just paying lip service saying, "Oh, here's a recipe and then buy a bunch of stuff." You really are serving them up that high quality content that users love, that brings them back to the site again and again. If the recipe content is good enough, this baker might even share your content and share it with their friends, and maybe even link to it from their blog that's all about making cookies. Wouldn't that be nice?

Then you might also have somebody who does not want to make cookies because they don't have that kind of time. They want to buy cookies. They just want to buy them and then eat them. It's a model that I practiced for years. So they're going to be looking to buy cookies online. They're not going to care about recipes at all. They're not going to care about ingredients at all. They're going to be much more purchase-driven and be looking at keywords around their favorite brands and looking for sales. These are the people that you can really incentivize with calls to action and trust signals, like free shipping, delivery, sales, coupons, join our mailing list, and things like that. You've now mapped these back, so again you're creating this entire experience and all of this content based around the fact that this person does not care about recipes at all, they just want to buy.

Then our third persona is somebody who's buying at the corporate level. Maybe they're an office manager, or at SEOmoz, Team Happy is constantly buying us goodies and snacks, and we love that. But this person is in charge of the cookie supply at their office. What, does your office not have cookies? I'm so sorry. Get some cookies.

So this guy, he doesn't care about recipes at all. He's not going to make cookies every day for 100 people. He wants to buy them, and he's not spending his own money. He's spending the company's money. So he's looking for things like a corporate discount, a bulk discount, Maybe he's catering a party. He needs same-day delivery. These are the things that are really going to be important to this person. Since you know that, you can create content that is solely targeted toward this one person, this one buyer. Especially if you have things like a corporate discount, this is the place to really show it off.

So you've got these three different personas, and they're taking three very different paths through the site and they're consuming the site in different ways, whether it's buying a bunch of stuff, buying one thing, consuming your content and buying ingredients, coming back. Each of these personas is experiencing your content in very different ways. Rather than just creating one site and popping in keywords all willy-nilly so that all of these people are having the same experience, you can start crafting unique user experiences for each of these people based on their paths through the site.

Great, except that that takes a lot of time and money. Both in the fact that at most businesses time in some ways is money, and you may actually have to spend some money on it. One of the things that I actually really recommend doing during this part of the process is running some PPC campaigns around the keywords where you're trying to define user intent. If somebody's just searching on chocolate cookies, you might not know if they want to buy them, or if they want to make them or what they want to do. So use PPC, run a little test, and see whether people respond better if you've got recipes, or free shipping, or what the different calls to action are for those more generic terms. Over time you can start to see what the majority of users' intent is and what they really respond to and craft experiences for those more generic terms based around that. That's a really great way to use PPC as a little guinea pig test.

Now here comes my favorite part because it involves metrics. What you can do is go into your Google Analytics or whatever, use your analytics tools and start looking at these behaviors based on keywords. Once you've got your persona and you've got your keywords assigned to your persona, first of all make sure that all of these keywords really are the same persona. Make sure that users who enter on those keywords are taking similar paths through the site and executing similar actions. That's a great secondary indicator that all of these keywords do belong to this same persona.

Start looking at what they do. Maybe you get the most traffic from the baker, but you get the most revenue per order from the corporate guy. Maybe the shopper doesn't return as much, but she does convert at 2.4%. The baker spends the longest time on site, but maybe she doesn't buy as much. These are the things that you can start to look at and say, "Okay, so we know that the baker spends a lot of time on site, that's great. What can we do to encourage her to turn that into a purchase? How can we brand message to her in ways that make her feel more comfortable buying ingredients, or what can we do to incentivize her sharing this content which clearly she's consuming or loving?"

The same thing with the corporate guy. If he's got the highest revenue per order, obviously we want more of this guy. We want to figure out what does he want, what is he doing, and what are the triggers that we can use that get him to buy more or get him to return to the site more. You can start really testing, and that's great because it allows you, even just before you've done any of that amazing tweaking and testing, to say, "Okay where is the biggest mover of the needle among these two personas? What are the activities that we could be doing that could encourage them to do more of the activities they want to do fastest?" Then that'll help you prioritize and it'll help you target your efforts and your budget.

Then if you want to go above and beyond and really get in there and be a little bit creepy, what you can do is actually link up your site to Facebook Open Graph so that people are opting in to a Facebook app when they're registering on your site. They're connecting with Facebook. So there is that opt-in. You don't just want to take people's information. Once you've done that, you can actually, in your Google Analytics code, link it up to your Facebook Open Graph data, and you can start getting real demographic data on the actual people who are using these keywords and coming to your site. Now in addition to knowing that the baker is 40% of searches, you know that she's 35 to 40, you know she's female, and you know she's a mom. The corporate guy you know that he works at a company of more than 100 people most of the time. So you can really start targeting these people based on their demographic information.

What you also learn then is who these people are that like you so much. They're coming to your site over and over. They're buying things from you, which is really what we're trying to do here. And you can start targeting more of those people in your own SEO efforts, in your own customer acquisition efforts. You're targeting them on social. You're reaching out to them for links. You're buying ads to put in front of them, and you have more confidence that you'll have a return on those ads because you already know these are the kind of people who like you.

So you have all of this information about keywords and about personas. Now you can take that back to your user experience team, to your information architects and say, "Hey, let's redo the sitemap and have it be based on these personas, based on these proven user behaviors that start with a keyword and end with a purchase, and let's build experiences for those keywords." Now instead of just saying, "Well, here's what I think. We've got like About Us, Contact Us, Products." You can really say, "These are three main personas, so in the header we should probably have cookie recipes, shop cookies, corporate discount," and know that even from page one on the site whenever one of your target people comes to the site, it's really easy for them to find the experience they're looking for, make their way through the site, and then buy something.

Mike King of iAquire, who blogs at ipullrank.com, put together some code using Stack Overflow, which may or may not work on your site. Take it to your devs and see if they can make it work with your analytics. Every site is different. Your mileage may vary, but there is a link to it here at the bottom of the screen. There should be. It's invisible to me, but you can see it.

Now that you have this data, go to your UX people and show them the power of keyword-driven site mapping. Show them how SEO has so much to do with what they do, and not only will this project work for you, but in the future they'll be more likely to come back to you and say, "Hey, we're going to change the whole site, and we thought you should know before we do it." That's what you want.

That's it for Whiteboard Friday this week. Thanks for coming by you guys. See you next time."

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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!

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

SEO Book

Posted by Mackenzie Fogelson

Every day, things are changing in SEO. If you’re not already working on adapting, today’s the day.

It’s time.

It's not that SEO is dead or that links are obsolete, or whatever all that crazy talk is that's been going around. It's that there's a way to integrate all the pieces into the big picture of building a better company by building an online community around it.

There are lots of benefits to building a community around your company, but if I had to choose a few, here are my top five:

1. It will help you weather Google’s algorithms

   Building an online community is one of the best ways to weather Google’s algorithms. If you're continually chasing the algorithm, you're putting all of your power in what Google's going to do next. If you're building a community around your business, you're putting the focus where it belongs: on your business. Building a strong company and brand isn't something that Google can take away.
    
2. It will add equity and value to your business

   When you build online community, you have to do a bunch of stuff to better serve your customers like creating quality content and resources, enhancing your product or services, and improving your systems and processes. Doing these things adds equity and value to your business and attracts the right customers to your community.

    
3. It will help you have purpose

   There’s a lot of effort involved in building a community around your brand, and it’s not just about creating content or being on social media just because everyone else is doing it. When you’re strategic about community building, it forces you to identify goals and put a solid purpose behind your efforts.

    
4. It will help you stand out

   If you’re committed to the process of building a community, you are going to be doing a great deal of self-discovery (which often times can be pretty uncomfortable). During this process you’ll determine what you’re all about, what you love to do, and what it’s going to take to help you stand out among the competition.

    
5. It will put the focus on goals, not tools
   
Building an online community isn’t a bunch of fluffy stuff. It’s the seamless integration of tools like SEO, social media, content marketing, email marketing, and all kinds of other important stuff (like hard work and passion). But in order for the tools to be effective, they’ve got to be driven by a strategy that is rooted in the goals of your whole business.

In the last year, Mack Web has been working on building our own community (and helping our clients to build theirs). What we’ve found (through a whole lot of trial and error, joy and pain, sunshine and, well, you get the point) is that building community means building a better business. It’s a necessary online component for growth as it forges and fosters relationships that are essential to building a business online as you would in person. 



A present for you

For the past several months, I have been writing a lot about community. How to build it with value, how to identify it, and how to attract customers to it. And now, lucky for you, I'd like to share our process for how to build an online community for your business. 

What follows is a super awesome infographic and the play-by-play breakdown of each step in the process. I'm thinking it might come in handy (you can even listen to my webinar for the full effect).

Whether you’re building a community from scratch, or you’re working to grow an existing one, you can use this process to get your community rolling or optimize and leverage what you already have.

The order in which you attack this may differ depending on the size of your organization, your goals, and the stage you’re in as a company. I encourage you to take this process and meld it into what works best for you.

Here we go!

 

---

And, in case you want to steal this, here's the embed code ('cuz we're nice like that).
<p><center><img src="http://www.mackwebsolutions.com/img/mozimages/how-to-build-communities.jpg" width="540"> <br/>An infographic on <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-build-an-online-community-for-your-business">How to Build an Online Community</a> by the team at <a href="http://mackwebsolutions.com/">Mack Web Solutions</a></center></p>

---

Let me break that down into stages for you:

[1] Define your business objectives

Let’s start this entire process out right by thinking about your goals. What you want to focus on here is defining objectives for your entire business, not just for SEO, social media, content, or marketing. Stay focused on the whole picture of what you want to do with your company.

Keep in mind that there’s a lot more to defining business objectives than just writing down a bunch of goals. So before you do that, think about this:

1. What makes your company unique?

   Especially when you’re a new business (but this happens with old ones, too), it’s easy to feel like you need everyone to be your customer. But the fact is, what you really need are the right customers.



   Take Coke and Pepsi; Hershey and Dove; and Chipotle and Qdoba. All companies who sell similar products, but attract very different customers to their brand and their communities.

 Both are good (and to many people, taste the same). So what’s the difference? Why would someone be attracted to, say, Chipotle over Qdoba?



   Chipotle’s food has integrity. They serve sustainably-raised food. They support local farmers. They respect the environment. Because of these values, Chipotle attracts people who have similar philosophies and approaches to food and life. 



   Qdoba is about quality ingredients. These are very similar things, but the difference is something that people find common ground with, feel strongly about, and want to stand behind. It’s not just about the food. It’s what they believe in. It’s what makes them unique. And people want to be a part of that.



   So, determine what your unique selling proposition (USP) is. Do an analysis of your competition. What do you do differently than them (no matter how small)? How is that remarkable? Why does it make you special? That’s your USP. Own this and make it part of everything you do. On and offline.
    

2. Why do you care?

   Simon Sinek can probably say this a whole lot better than I can, but here it is: what is it that makes you care about your business? What keeps you pushing forward (especially when you want to quit)? The reason that you care has nothing to do with money, so besides that, what’s important?



   That passion that you feel for your business is not only a significant differentiator, but it’s part of your story and it’s far more motivating than money. Keep this sucker in your back pocket. You’re gonna need it.

    

3. What do you want to build?

   What’s your vision for your company? Think six months, eighteen months, and three to five years. What is it that you really want to do? Dream some of that stuff up and start making a list. You may even want to write down things that are currently on the horizon. Big changes, events, product launches, stuff like that. This will help you to begin defining the goals you have for your business both short and long term.

    
4. Who do you want to build it for?

   This is the part where you get really clear about who your customer actually is. What are their fears, concerns, and challenges? What are the problems (big and small) they would like to solve? Talk to them. Survey them. Ask them.



   Organize your audiences into groups. Build some personae around them so that they are real, live, tangible people (find a photo for them and everything). These are your targets.



   It will also help to understand your conversion funnel and how that relates to your audience. What do your customers need during the different stages of the funnel? All of this good stuff is going to help inform your strategy (and eventually you’re going to want to create the content and resources to serve those needs).

   

Just remember that every person on the web is not your customer. Go back to that USP that you’ve just defined. Focus on that and the people who resonate with it, and do whatever it takes to keep the emphasis on them.


The answers to all of these questions will help get to the root of what you’re working so hard for in the first place. From there, you can determine what you really want to do with your company. Then you can identify the goals you’d like to work toward (start with just a few). Once you have those defined, let’s talk about your team.



---

[2] Elect your team

We’ve been around the block a time or two on this community building thing, and there are many things that can become roadblocks. Team selection is one of them.

Here’s a few tips for getting the right team in place so that you can start working toward achieving your goals:

1. Understand the roles

   Building community is no joke. There’s a lot of work to be done and many roles that will need to be filled. If you work with an outside agency, they will bring most of the power, but you play an integral role. Keep in mind that an agency is meant to be your collaborative partner, and not just your mask. It’s your company, after all, so it’s important that you’re present.



   If you’re among the brave souls who are going to tackle all of this hard work internally, here’s a run down on some of the typical roles that your team may need to execute: (Please note that I’m not suggesting that you hire someone to fulfill each of these roles. I’m simply providing an overview of the different roles that are part of the community building process. Within your team, there will be individuals who can take on several of these roles).

   • 
Project management: Someone to keep all of the peeps on schedule and on task

.
   • Community management: Someone who can represent your company on social media, monitor, and manage the rest of your team who’s on there as well (pro tip: read Marty Weintraub's book on community management).
   • Design: Someone who can create any graphic assets that you need and make you look really good.


   • Content: Someone who can write (like the dickens).


   • SEO: Someone who loves research, analysis, keywords, and Google so that they can properly and effectively manage the optimization of all content. Ideally you want this dude to be more than passingly familiar with strategy as well.

   • Email marketing: Someone who can design, develop, and coordinate email marketing campaigns to deliver the value your team is creating in relationship to your strategy.


   • Reading & learning: Several someones who are continually reading and learning about your industry and looking for good stuff to pass around your community (that isn’t about you)

. More on this below, but this reading and learning stuff is incredibly imperative to success.
   • Outreach: Several someones who are developing relationships and helping to keep those people and your community involved in what you’re doing (so that they can partake and benefit, too).
      

   As you can see, this is a lot of weight for one person to carry, so ideally, if you don’t have the resources in-house, or you’re a freelance SEO, piece together a reliable team that can help fill in the gaps. It’s not that one person can’t do all of this work, but in that case both efforts and results will probably be slower to come to fruition.



   Also, because building community is a long-term, ongoing process, I wouldn’t recommend assigning the really integral roles (like community manager) to short-timers or interns. Of course, many companies have limited resources, so do what you can with what you have and just be consistent as possible with your efforts.

    

2. Elect, don’t just assign

   Thing is, especially if you’re a smaller company, you’ve got to work with what you have. Not every company has the luxury of bringing on an outside agency or hiring additional people to share the load of all of this stuff. But if you want these efforts to be successful, you’ve gotta have a team of people who are passionate and committed to seeing this thing through, even when it’s tough and you want to give up.



   Instead of just assigning tasks and dumping a bunch of (usually un-welcome) work on people, elect people for your implementation team who are committed to the success of the organization and are passionate about things like your company, social media, content, SEO, and communication.

 Oh, and humans. 

You’ve got to have people on this team who want to be there or your efforts will fail. Make it a selection process so that the team feels honored to be part of this whole thing (because it really is a movement).

    

3. Work together as one, big, happy family
   
Whether you’re working with internal and external teams, a whole bunch of interdepartmental teams, or a mix and match of both, do whatever you can to come together as a unified team (more on this below). Whatever you do, don’t silo. Collaborate and be friends. It will make all of the difference in the end.



Keep in mind that this team you’re putting together isn’t just going to be working on your marketing; they’re going to be playing an integral role in transforming your business. Do what it takes to be sure everyone is on the same page and working together to make things happen.

---

[3] Develop your strategy


Developing a strategy is what will actually help you to achieve your goals. A good strategy will assist you in breaking those high level goals down into actionable, chewable pieces that you can work towards and even measure.



Think about strategy in three pieces: the what, the when, and the how.

1. The what: campaigns

   Campaigns are where your goals meet your ideas. What is it that you’re going to need to create in order to actually accomplish your goals? Everything from your tangible assets like blog posts, videos, and infographics; to webinars and events like tradeshows, conferences, speaking engagements, and meetups.

   

If one of your goals is to become a trusted resource in your industry (a thought leader), then you’ve got to figure out what it’s going to take to accomplish it. Maybe it’s a four-part series that involves a mix of instructional videos that are integrated into blog posts, in-person lunch-and-learns or meetups, and maybe a speaking engagement at a conference. Whatever it ends up being, your campaigns need to break down all of the nitty gritty (and creative) detail of what is going to happen to take this bigger picture to fruition.



   But whatever you do, don’t plan the campaigns in your strategy for 12 consecutive months. It really makes it hard for the team to be agile and embrace stuff that comes up. We have found that every few months, it’s time to develop a new strategy (based on the data we’ve collected and the stuff that we’ve observed).

   Figure out what’s working and put your efforts (and your money there). Things are going to happen. Your business will change, you'll have a big victory that you want to explore further, you'll discover an opportunity that you didn't realize existed. So keep the higher level, 12-month plan in mind, but plan campaigns for 2-3 months at a time. 
    

2. The when: execution calendar

   Once you know exactly what you want to do, you’ve got to figure out how long it’s going to take. Develop a high level execution calendar that illustrates the coordination of all assets and vehicles over a two to three month period (long enough to collect some data, but, again, short enough to be agile and change direction).

 Your calendar may look something like this:

   

   You’ll also want to take all of those high level ideas and break them down to assign them to actual people with real due dates. We do this in Basecamp and Gcal, but anything that allows you to assign deadlines will do the job.

    

3. The how: ongoing efforts
   
The how is your plan for everything that needs to happen and continue to happen to make your efforts a success (people, assets, actionables). The biggest thing ongoing is to keep your commitments and stay accountable for the stuff that has to get done. But a really big (and important) part of ongoing efforts is continual analysis of your efforts and goals to make sure you’re always headed in the right direction (more on measurement and analysis below). 



   Thing is, there is no formula. You’ve got to be creative, try things out, and do what works for your business. Throw some stuff out there and see what happens. Make some educated decisions about that data and go from there. After a few campaigns you’ll get to know what works for your community and you’ll start to gain some traction. It’s all part of the process.

---

[4] Empower your team


Once that you’ve figured out what, you’re going to do to work toward your goals (with your super awesome strategy). Before you jump into go-mode, take some time to set the team up for success. 


Do not skip this step.



I repeat. This step is important. Don’t skip it.

Depending on the climate (and culture) of your company (or the company you’re working with), there’s going to be some fear, concerns, and even resistance that you’ll get from your team (even if you think everything is A-OK). Rather than ignoring it and pushing through, hit it head on. Talk about it. Get it out in the open. You’ll be glad you did.

You can empower your team for success by addressing a few simple questions:

1. Why are we doing this?

   Here’s your chance to build confidence and trust. The biggest source of resistance we run into is with teams who are afraid of the online space and of being on social media. 

Help your team understand that building an online community is not just about social media. It’s about working toward the goals that you have for your company. Social media is just one of the vehicles. If you use it effectively, you’re going to learn a ton of stuff, meet some really cool people, and turn up some pretty amazing opportunities. 

    
2. How much work is involved?
   
When people have a sense of purpose, they are more inclined to put the effort forth. Is there going to be a lot of work involved? Yes. Is it going to be hard? You betcha. 



   That being said, now’s your chance to reassure your team that you’ve taken the time to identify goals for the company and have developed a strategy that’s going to help achieve those goals. You have a purpose.

   Explain how the campaigns that have been developed in the strategy align with your specific goals.

 Also, let your team know that there is a learning curve for all of this and that you don’t expect them to know what they’re doing right off the bat. Integrate training for your team as an ongoing thing. Training that focuses on skills as well as approach. This will motivate them and help them to feel useful and powerful. 

    

3. When will we see results?
   
Let me be very clear about this. You can measure ROI in community building, but it’s not as simple as measuring a cell phone case purchase in a shopping cart. You’ve got to be creative about what and how you measure and know that it takes time to see results. And sometimes the stuff that brings ROI cannot be easily measured. 



   When discussing expectations about results, be realistic. Don’t sugar coat it. Building (or growing) a community takes time (and a lot of work). And so does accomplishing goals. Especially big ones. It’s important that you have open communication with the team about what can be expected in the long and also the short term. 



   We like to talk about examples of what the little victories look like. Like getting recognized for a good piece of content with a retweet on Twitter. Or a lead that was generated through a good conversation you had with someone on Google+. Again, it’s the same stuff you do when you’re building your business in person. You’re just doing it online.



   For the long term, we focus on realistic timeframes for their goals based on the steps we’re taking with their strategy. If the goal is thought leadership, and depending on the stage the company is currently in (are we starting from scratch?), there will be a whole lot of leg work (and foundational work) that has to be done. Like many goals, this stuff doesn't happen overnight.

   Discuss KPIs (that you all can agree on) that will provide the proof that your efforts are working. Maybe it’s a series of actions like downloading a whitepaper, attending a webinar, or being asked to speak at a conference. If these are the actions, determine how you’re going to track them (in Google Analytics or wherever else you want to collect the data), and then you’ll have the data to report on each month (more on communicating measurement below).



   One last thing on results. Remember that you may not ever reach the goals you set out. But certainly what can happen along that journey can be even more rewarding. Stay present and pushing forward.


The biggest thing to remember with empowering your team is that you have to help them disrupt their routine. Building community is about learning, growing, and pushing your company into new spaces. You can’t do this by tacking all of this new work onto the same routine you’ve been using for the last 5 years. You’ve got to start new. Disrupt your routine and start new. And then get ready for the long haul.


---

[5] Learn your industry


You can’t grow a business in a vacuum. If you want to stand out and be successful, you’ve got to be learning and growing.

All. The. Time. 



One of your number one priorities in marketing your business online is providing the best possible customer experience. And you can’t do that if you’re not learning continuously.

You can start by identifying your community and determining the blogs you want to be sure to read, the people you want to get to know, and companies that you will want to keep tabs on.

Embracing the knowledge in your industry is going to push you to be more creative, innovative, and agile. It’s going to open up opportunities that you didn’t even realize existed. But that won’t happen if you don’t dedicate the time to it on a consistent basis.

Learning takes place everywhere. So step away from your computer and meet some people (for Dr. Pete’s sake). Make new friends, find people who have a strength that you need to work on and ask them to mentor you. Build friendships with super cool people and companies. This is really the most important part.

Then go back to your computer and read a lot. More than you ever have in your whole life. Read the good stuff inside of your industry and outside of your industry. You’re going to see some cool stuff that will open up your world (that, my friends, is why it’s called the world wide web).  

All of this stuff is what manifests serendipity and although that’s the hardest stuff to measure, it’s also what ends up making the biggest difference when building a community (and a business).

---

[6] Create the value

Ok, now we’re getting to the real good stuff. Value is what your community is built upon, whether that’s “tangible” stuff like blog posts, videos, resources, and tools; or an approach, perspective, or virtue that is the basis for common ground.  Value that focuses on your customer and their experience is what attracts people to your business, your brand, and your community.

In general, there are two types of content that will help build your community: foundational and community building.

Foundational content is the more static stuff on your website (like your about and services sections), like pages that explain who you are and what you do. The problem with most foundational content is, let's be honest, that it kind of sucks. It’s really focused on self-promotion (as it should be; it is, after all, your website) instead of being geared toward the needs of your customer.

The challenge with foundational content is to listen to your customer. Observe their needs, the things in life that they struggle with, and then communicate how your products or services address those things. Use video and resources and case studies and infographics to provide an engaging and value-packed experience and make your foundational content worth reading (and worthy of links).

Community building content is the stuff that’s more dynamic in nature and usually lives on your blog. It’s the content that is less about what you do and more about what you know.

Community building content is the easiest stuff to make all about your customer because the purpose of building it is to help them understand your knowledge and expertise. This type of content indirectly promotes your brand, establishes trust and credibility, and really helps to foster relationships.

Just like your foundational content, this stuff needs to be full of your personality. Show who you are, what you believe in, and how you approach stuff. Balance your content with risky stuff and things that may help you stand out a bit. All in an effort to help your customers (current and potential) learn so that they’ll pass it around to their friends and come back later for more.

Here’s a few more things to remember when you’re generating your content:


1. It’s not about you

   Make your content about your customer, not about you. Focus on their needs. And don’t just guess, ask them. Do an email survey, or make a phone call, or take them to lunch. Listen and figure out how you can better serve them and then actually apply the feedback to the content and resources you’re creating.

    
2. Don’t forget about SEO

   SEO is an integral piece when building community and content. Certainly your content will be part of your well-planned strategy, but before you create it, don't forget to find out what’s already out there. Does what you're about to write already exist (in some form)? If so, find a way to do it better so that Google has a reason to index it and present it as the best option when someone conducts a search.



   Don’t forget the importance of covering your SEO bases and doing the basic on-page stuff. Do some keyword research and properly integrate it into your content so that people can actually find your stuff. 

    

3. Use pre-outreach

   Thanks to this tip from Rob Ousbey, pre-outreach has been one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal. Getting the word out about good stuff you’re doing is a lot harder if you don’t involve your audience in the process. Before you even create your content, think about who you could talk to, interview, survey, engage with online, and get valuable feedback that could help make your content more purposeful and more successful.

---

[7] Share the value

You may have heard me mention this once or twice, but the way in which you share the value that you (and others) create, is one of the most important pieces (and accelerators) when building community and your business.

It works like this: 80% of the time, share other people’s great stuff. But don’t just retweet it or hit the share button and place it on your feed. Read it. Internalize it. And then curate it. Tell people why it’s good. This helps you learn and also keeps the focus where it belongs: on the value that you're providing for the reader.

20% of the time, share your own stuff, but make it remarkable. This is the community building stuff that we just talked about. The stuff that provides a wealth of knowledge that people will thank you for.

And remember that just building something amazing, doesn’t guarantee that people will see it. That’s why there’s outreach (so do it, dude).

Outreach is code for making friends and being an authentic human before you even think about asking for anything. Build relationships with people online as you would in person. Then, when you’ve got good stuff to get out, they’re going to be excited to spread the word.

 Whatever your ratio is: 60/40, 70/30, 90/10, remember that it’s not about you. Stay focused on your customer and test out what works best for your community.

---

[8] Build and foster growth

This is the part that never, ever ends (that's a good thing). Building and fostering community is synonymous with building and growing your company. You’ve got to work at it. All the time.

There are lots of things that you can do to foster and grow your community. Here’s just a few:

1. Get in there

   Remember that you are a member of your community. You and your entire team. Get in there. Play an active role. Contribute and engage on a genuine level. It’s an extension of your company and your brand and it’s important to the growth of your community.

    
2. Embrace offline efforts
   
It’s so important to cultivate relationships with people in person. It’s an integral piece to growing your community. When you form a bond in person, it’s even more powerful online. 

So go to events and hold events. Ask people to coffee. Go to meetups and conferences. Embrace the offline, in-person, human stuff as much as you do with your work online. Meet people face-to-face and learn more about them. It will really help to build your community and your business.

    
3. Acknowledge and show appreciation

   Don’t forget that a community comprises living, breathing people who are supporting you. There are lots of great ways to show your appreciation, so make sure you set the time aside in your routine to acknowledge the humans in your community. 



   Of course you can always give them stuff. Providing free swag at events or sending it out as a thank you or just because is a great way to show appreciation and turn your members into your brand ambassadors.



   Be on the lookout for community members who are doing great things in their own businesses or lives. Recognize their good news and hard work and give them a virtual pat on the back.

 Engage with your community members and ask them if there’s anything you can do to help them. It’s a great way to create the content and resources they need that will also benefit others.

---

[9] Measure and analyze (and communicate)

This is the juicy part (and just because this is listed as the last piece in the process doesn’t make it any less significant). In fact, you’ll want to make sure that you’re thinking about measurement and analysis all the way through.


Measurement and analysis is an ongoing process when building community. Everything you do will include testing, feedback, measurement, analysis, adjustments, rinsing, and repeating. And then, you’ve got to communicate this data to your team (and/or your client).  

Here’s a few thoughts about measurement & analysis, but also ongoing, old-fashioned communication:

1. Weekly stand-ups

   When we’re helping clients build their communities, it’s a very collaborative process. There are lots of things that we do on their behalf, but there’s also some integral pieces that we need them to execute consistently and timely.

   We hold stand-ups every day as a team, and they work so well that we thought we’d try them out (once a week) with our clients. We don’t talk metrics at these meetings. Just a quick 10 minute meeting to get on the phone, a G+ hangout, or via Skype so that we can get connected for the week. This has really helped to boost motivation and keep the momentum of the strategy that we’re all working to implement.

    

2. Bi-weekly pushes
   
In addition to the weekly standups, we also do a little electronic pushing over email every two weeks. This is really just a collective here’s what’s going on reminder to again, keep the momentum.

 We used to do these in a document, but that wasn’t getting the response we needed, so we switched to a straight up email with a little "action required" nudge in the subject line.
    
3. Monthly reports
   
Monthly reports tend to be the best way to communicate all of the hard work you’ve been doing, but also prove that you’re making some headway on those goals you’ve set forth. In those reports, showcase the data that you’ve collected and then present it in a way that is meaningful to the client so that they can easily see how this is affecting their business.

   

Your goal with monthly reports is to illustrate the value you’re providing and the progress you’re making. But don’t just send these reports via email. Take the time each month to review (face-to-face) what’s been going on, and talk more specifically about how efforts are helping to reach goals (which equates to ROI). 



   Remember that it’s your job to provide the analysis. What does this mean to their business? Are efforts (and dollars) being spent in the right places? If you’re experiencing victories, share them. If the data doesn’t look good, tell them why and then what you’re going to do about it. That’s what the data is for. Analyze it and then use it to make decisions about your efforts moving forward.

    

4. Quarterly strategy

   At quarter's end, take a higher level look at what’s going on. Can you spot trends in content, social behavior, traffic? How does that affect efforts and what needs to be done with the strategy to adjust?

Just make sure you’re always bringing this stuff back to goals. Assess the journey and then figure out what needs to be done to change course and put a new plan into action.

---


Now it’s your turn

As you take this process and work to implement it into your company or with your clients, keep these final things in mind:

1. This is about building a brand

   At the heart of building community is becoming the company you’ve always wanted to be. Stay rooted in your passion for your business and remember that your efforts go far beyond your marketing. You’re working to build a brand and a company that you can be proud of and that people want to be associated with.

    
2. Stay grounded in your goals

   Whether you’re a one-person band, or a humungo company, there’s a lot to tackle with all of this good stuff. That’s why a strategy is so important. But you won't have a strategy to stand on if you haven't clearly defined your objectives for your business. Make sure you always come back to your goals. These are the foundation for all of the hard work you’re doing. Always put your focus on goals, not tools.

    
3. Don’t give up

   The number one question in all of this is when are we going to see results? How long does it take before something really great happens? Unfortunately there’s no formula with this stuff so there’s no straight way to answer these questions.

   What I do know is that results come in different forms and different sizes for every company.

   For Mack Web, it took us about a year of working through this process for our company before we started to gain traction, but that was after we’d already been in business for 10 years. If you want to achieve results, you’ve got to be willing to fail for a long time before you start seeing the wins. But if you can stick with it, you won’t be sorry (this is what happened to Mack Web's traffic in just a 10 month period of facilitating this process for our company).

What have I missed? What great things are you doing to build your brand and your community? I would love to hear more in the comments below.

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!

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Twitter 101 Series: Twitter’s 5 Best Friends — TweetDeck, Bitly, TwitLonger and More was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Whether you want to more closely examine your Twitter following, view multiple accounts, shorten a link or get tweeting inspiration, we recommend these five helpful Twitter companion apps and sites.

And as part of our Twitter 101 series, we’ve made sure these sites are all beginner-friendly, while still useful for twittizens from way back.

To shorten a link

140 characters isn’t the biggest of spaces and when you add a link to the mix, that space shrinks dramatically. That’s where Bitly comes in handy. Give a bitly a regular link URL and it will shrink it down to a bite-size portion, leaving you valuable room to # and @ to your heart’s delight. Bitly also lets you create bitmarks—bookmarks by bitly—that you can save, group and share with friends.

Using Bitly, this post’s link changes from “http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2013/04/twitter-101-twitter-companions/” to http://bit.ly/17tue2f. Now which would you rather tweet?

To cheat the 140 character limit

TwitLonger also understands the challenge of the 140 character limit. So they came up with a workaround. On the rare occasion that your tweet can’t possibly be compressed to 140 characters, compose your tweet with TwitLonger. Anything that goes beyond the microblog limits will be contained in a link. The link leads to a TwitLonger page that provides the rest of your expansive tweet. Tweeting multiple tweets to finish a verbose thought is bad Twitter form, so using TwitLonger is a great option for times when 140 characters just doesn’t cut it.

To view multiple Twitter accounts simultaneously

TweetDeck is an incredibly helpful dashboard that gives you a bird’s eye view of your Twitter account(s). With TweetDeck, you can easily toggle between multiple Twitter accounts and customize feeds to show streams of who has mentioned you or interacted with you, what is trending, who/what your followers are interacting with, etc. With TweetDeck, you can also schedule tweets for different times, as well as issue the same tweet from multiple accounts simultaneously.

To better understand Twitter users

Followerwonk allows users to track, sort and search your social graph. You can search analyze your followers’ locations and bios; compare your Twitter health to that of your competitors’; and match your Twitter activities to gains and losses.  explore your followers’ bios. Like TweetDeck, you can toggle between multiple Twitter accounts. FollowerWonk, which is an SEOmoz app, has a pro account and a free account.

To find great things to share

If you’re ever  looking for something to share on Twitter, Stuff To Tweet is a good source for finding things that are making waves on the Web. Stuff To Tweet aggregates the top posts on CNN, the New York Times, Youtube, Lifehacker, TMZ, Mashable, Digg, Del.iciou.us Daily Motion, Craig’s List, Amazon and more.

For more from our Twitter 101 series, check out 10 Basic Steps to Increasing Your Twitter Following from last week! Stay tuned for more of the Twitter 101 series, brought to you by @KristiKellogg via the @BruceClayInc blog.

Bruce Clay Blog

Posted by randfish

When creating a product, website, or communication, including a simple user experience is key to success. The easier you make the A to Z process for a user, the more likely they'll be to accomplish the plan you spent time and resources putting together piece by piece. 

In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand walks us through user experience and the actions that we can remove from our processes in order to drive more conversions, earn more links, get more social shares. Simplicity, FTW!

This week, we've added a still image of the whiteboard for easier viewing. Do you find this addition helpful? Let us know in the comments! 

Video Transcription

"Howdy, SEOmoz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I want to talk a little bit about user experience and the actions that we can remove from our processes in order to drive more conversions, earn more links, get more social shares. Let me show you what I'm talking about.

In this first example, embed codes, a lot of websites use embed codes all over the place. SlideShare is a good example. When you get to SlideShare, you find a particular presentation, and then you can copy and embed that onto your page.

Bitly is another good example. When you go to Bitly, they've got a little copy and paste sector. You paste in a link. It turns into the short Bitly link. You grab that out.

All sorts of things do this. YouTube does it. Vimeo does it. Any type of infographic that's embeddable, they all have these embed codes.

Embed codes are a phenomenal way to drive links, especially to content that people are likely to put on their own sites. The problem becomes when you make that a multi-step process. In fact, we've seen research and data from several sources now, saying that if you can make this a single click on here, and it says "copy to clipboard"' automatically, as opposed to popping something up like Bitly has started to do, or having to grab the entire embed code, Ctrl A, Ctrl C. I have to copy it myself, that actually will drive more embeds, meaning more links to the places you want with the anchor text that you want.

We remove an unnecessary step, that secondary piece, and make it so one click right in here with you cursor gets you copied to clipboard, a transitional message or a temporal message that pops up that says, "Copy to clipboard," or says below here, "Copy to clipboard." Now, all I have to do is paste, and I'm done. Very, very simple. Very easy.

Number two:  Shorter, more action-oriented emails. We send a lot of emails. We send emails for outreach. We send emails that are in newsletter format that are trying to drive actions back to our websites. We send emails to try and get shares from our friends or our network, those kinds of things. All of these can be made more concise and more actionable. I see a lot of challenges when we sort of go, "Oh, I'm going to start with some nice fluffy introduction. Here's who I am. Here's more about my company. Oh, and now here, here is the final action. This is what I was actually trying to get you to do. I felt like for some reason I had to do all of this."

Email is a medium where heavy communication is great between people you already know, where there are lots of things to say, and you need to have that more complex dialogue. When it's between new people, between strangers, between someone you're reaching out to, I find that the most effective emails I ever get from an outreach perspective are, "Hey, Rand. Love what you're doing over there at Moz. Would you send this over to someone on your product team or someone on your marketing team?" Or, "Hey, we have this app that we think would be great for your events folks. Could you make an intro?" That is something I'm likely to do very, very quickly. Or, "Just check out this new app. It does this." Great. Really quick.

All the press release ones I get are like, "Such and such is a this type of company, and here's all of this. Here's their latest press release. They raised this round of funding. Would you be interested in writing about them or talking to their CEO on the phone?" Dude, all you have to do is have that CEO email me and be like, "Hey, man. I want to connect." I'll be like, "Hey, let's chat. Sounds good. Sounds interesting,"' if it actually does sound interesting. Shorter, more action-oriented emails.

Number three:  Simpler sign-up forms. Oh, my goodness. You do not need to collect all of this data all at once. I need name. I need first name and last name. I've got to get this person's address, or at least the city and state they're in, because of this. You can collect so much of this data in the application later, as they're using it, if they're actually using it. You can collect some of that from IP address, location sensitive IPs, those type of things. You can tell the type of device they're on.

The thing is, as people browse the web more and more with mobile devices, this guy right here, when I'm on here, I absolutely hate filling out forms. The most I can ever do is an email and password field. A confirm password field really gets me going. It's just infuriating because it's a pain to type those extra letters, especially on something that doesn't have a full keyboard. If you can remove those and ask for that later, remember even if they get their password wrong and they forget it, you have still emailed them. You've got their email address, and you've sent them an email. It says, "Hey, click here to confirm." If they log back in, oh now the password is wrong or they forgot, great, you can fix that later, but you've gotten that initial essential sign-up. That's what you're looking for.

Number four:  I know HTTP is a common protocol. So is GTTP, or at least I'd like to make it one. Get to the point with your content. Get to the point. A lot of the time, I see this stuff tweeted and shared on social networks, put on Inbound.org or Hacker News, where it says, "Hey, conversion rate testing shows that this performs better than that." Cool. Then, I have to scroll and scroll. Where is that? Oh, there's the test. There's that test they were talking about. It's way down deep in the content. I'm not exactly sure why, but a lot of times with blog content, with even infographics, with videos, with stuff that we should be sharing on the web and is good content, we're trying to say, "Here's what I want to tell you, and I'm prioritizing that for some reason above what you actually care about."

What you actually care about should be the primary and potentially only thing on that page. If you really have stuff that you want to tell me, I will go investigate. I'll check out your About page. I'll check out your product pages. I want to see what your company does because it sounds interesting. You've got a cool brand, and you've got a great blog post and that kind of thing. If you really must, you can put it down here below the stuff that I actually care about. I came to your site to watch a video I was told was awesome, to check out an infographic, to see, to learn something about a test, to figure out something, solve some problem. Deliver that to me upfront, please. That will not only make me more likely to come back to your site in the future. I'll have a positive brand association. I'll be more likely to share that content. Just a beautiful thing.

Number five:  You actually see this a lot, and I see tremendous effectiveness when this is done, which is socially sharing links directly to what matters on the page or on an individual site. A lot of times, there will be a product tour section. Then, there's a video, a really interesting video or a demo. I'll see the social shares that are most effective are the ones that point directly. Sometimes, they have a JavaScript field in the URL that has a hash in it or a hash bang system or whatever it is. Those people who share direct do better than the ones who share the broad page. They've gotten into the process and dug around enough to share directly that piece that I care about. You can do this too.

In fact, I have recently seen a test where I essentially had been tweeting a link to something like where we were competing against another company for which company is better at this particular thing. I had been tweeting links to the page. Then you had to scroll down the page quite a ways, and then there was a little voting widget. Then I saw from the voting widget itself, there was actually some hash URL that would link directly to the voting widget on that page. When I tweeted that, it drove way more actions. In fact, like four or five times as many actions. I think something over 100 votes, whereas previously I had shared it a couple times and gotten like 15 or 20 votes from it. That is definitely a way to show that tweeting directly to the thing you want people to do, great way to socially share and to make those shares go further.

Last one, maintaining logged in state. Zappos, Amazon, all do this brilliantly well. Google actually does a pretty solid job of it as well. They maintain a logged in experience for as long as possible. Do you remember back in the day with Twitter? You used to get logged out all the time. They just weren't maintaining cookies and session variables and all that kind of stuff. You were losing your log in. You'd have to log into Twitter, even though you clicked that Remember Me button, you'd have to log in many, many times, every time you came back.

If you have this "Please log in" system here, and it does it even though you clicked "Yes. Please, remember me" down here, remember, please remember. Check. You're killing your conversions. I don't just mean conversions in terms of someone who makes a purchase. I mean someone who might have left a comment, someone who might have participated in your community, someone who might have shared something, someone who might have reached content they otherwise wouldn't have, someone who might have been a lead for you.

Moz actually did this. We have this as a conversion killer, and we can show the data. It was about 18 months ago, I think, that Casey and the inbound engineering team did a bunch of work to make sure, that most of the time, you're logged into your account. You wouldn't be logged out as quickly. I still find some challenges with it, but it's way better than it used to be. The data shows. You can see more comments per post view. You can see more people checking out and filling out their accounts. All that type of activity, that UGC that's driving long tail traffic, just a beautiful thing by maintaining this logged in state.

All of these are specific examples. The big takeaway message here is you don't need unnecessary steps. You don't need to be taking actions and requiring things of your visitors that they don't need to do, especially with the rise in mobile browsing and with the advantages that we've seen from web page speed increasing. We know, as web users and as people who build for the web, that visitors care tremendously about accomplishing tasks quickly. They're getting more and more used to it on their phones, on their desktops, on their laptops, on their tablets. We need to deliver that in order to be successful at marketing as well.

All right, everyone. Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. We'll see you again next week. Take care."

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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!

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

SEO Book

Posted by Stephanie Chang

Link building has fundamentally changed. Many types of link building activities that have previously been effective are now either short-term strategies or no longer considered best SEO practice. As a result, companies and clients alike are seeking to understand how certain forms of link building can be translated into longer-term content marketing campaigns. The purpose of this post is to help you develop a framework on how to start building a content marketing strategy for your or your client's site.

Why should you care about content marketing?

According to a Content Marketing Institute (CMI) 2013 Survey, 86% of B2C (business to consumer) companies are planning to keep or increase their current content marketing spending this year. 54% of B2B (business to business) companies are planning to increase their content marketing spending in 2013. Knowing that the demand for content marketing is increasing, it's worth investing resources to start researching and learning more about the opportunities content marketing can bring to a site. 

The growth of content marketing is also a concept that Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures agrees with. Content marketing continues to see growth because it is the future of online marketing. He likes to think of content marketing as "moving the message from a banner to your brand and changing the engagement from a view to a conversation."

Furthermore, Google's algorithm is continuously changing, meaning this pretty much guarantees that the quick win strategies that may have worked in the past will no longer work in the future. For instance, Google has announced that in the future, they will no longer be announcing/confirming Panda updates because it will be integrated into the search engine's existing algorithm (i.e. Panda is here to stay indefinitely). We've also seen recently the dangers of garnering links from paid advertorials (even on respected, high domain authority websites), a tactic considered as "buying links" in Google's perspective.

Now is definitely the time to develop a new type of strategy to garner links and traffic. 

Inspirational examples of phenomenal content

Below are some examples of companies that have created phenomenal pieces of content. Hopefully this provides ample motivation to take your site/client's site to the level!

1. Kickstarter: Best of 2012: An inspirational take on 2012.

2. BuzzFeed lists: Heartwarming content that is easily shareable.

3. Indeed Job Trends: Data-driven content that is direct and to the point.

4. Shopify's Pinterest infographic and their new E-commerce University: Content that is effectively targeted towards their demographic and developing their brand as the E-commerce authority on the web.

5. Airbnb Neighborhood Guides: A visually stimulating take on neighborhood guides, which differentiates them from other competitor's guides.

6. HBOWatch's April Fool's Day joke: Content with a clear understanding of target audience as determined by the high engagement metrics. It gained 1129 comments!

7. Epic Meal Time: Videos targeted towards a male demographic. Topic examples include fast food lasagna and whiskey syrup bacon pancakes.

---

The content marketing strategy framework

I've been fortunate enough to work closely with Distilled's Head of Outreach, Adria Saracino, who's been absolutely instrumental in defining the below content marketing strategy framework for a number of my clients (and has, subsequently, inspired my passion for content marketing). Adria has also written a great piece on how to get buy in from your company to invest in content marketing.

Below is the content strategy framework that Adria and I have implemented together for our clients. We've learned that this process isn't a quick win and that our most successful content marketing strategies have relied on dedicating at least 3 months to just research – market research, site audits, content audits, customer surveys, and customer interviews to name just a few. In addition, I'll also showcase a few specific examples of how we've built out each step of the content strategy process. 

Step 1: Researching the company

The first step in developing a content strategy framework is understanding the company. The type of questions we ask our clients before we even commence the strategy is to identify the following:

• The company's business model
  • How does the company bring in revenue?
  • What products bring in the most revenue? Why do these products bring in the most revenue (high profit margin, high demand, branding considerations)?
  • How is the sales team structured? What metrics are they measured on? 
• The existing customer base
  • Who are the company's existing customers?
  • How does the company currently attract customers? 
  • If the company's marketing team has already done a market research survey, ask to see the results.
• Marketing considerations
  • Understanding the existing content process
    • What are the editorial guidelines (if there are any)? What is the internal process to get content approved?
    • Who decides what type of content to produce?
    • What types of content does the team currently produce?
    • What are the company's brand considerations?

Step 2: Data collection (and lots of it)

I believe in utilizing the data that we have available to make informed decisions. This applies specifically to content; the more we understand about the site and the customers, the more we are able to make informed and strategic decisions to the type(s) of content we want to produce. In order to do this, it's important to gather relevant data. This data can come from a variety of the following sources:

• Competitor analysis
  • What types of content are your competitors putting together? 
  • How are users engaging with the content?
  • Comparing/contrasting SEO metrics (DA, PA, external links, etc.)
• Keyword research
  • ​What keywords bring traffic to the traffic (excluding not provided)?
  • What are the landing pages for those keywords?
  • What type of metrics does the keyword research and landing page combination currently bring to the site?
• Market research and customer surveys
  • The surveys may vary depending on whether the company is b2b or b2c.
  • Traditionally, some of the survey questions we've asked b2b clients include:
    • Demographic-related questions like occupation, industry, job title, age, and gender.
    • How long have you been a customer?
    • How likely are you to recommend our services, products, etc.
    • Specific product/service-related questions
  • The survey questions we've asked b2c clients are very similar, but often contain more demographic questions like: highest level of education obtained, marital status, number of kids, household salary range, and occupation.
    • We also include specific product questions, like:
      • How often do you purchase our product?
      • Why do you purchase the product?

*Important Note* Be sure to test out your survey using other individuals unrelated to the survey before releasing it. This ensures that there are no ambiguous questions or that any questions have been framed in a way that would lead to biased answers. 

SurveyMonkey has also produced a variety of survey templates to at least help you gain some understanding of the type of questions you might want to ask your target audience depending on your goals for the survey.  

Having these sample surveys is an excellent content strategy technique that SurveyMonkey has employed. 

Not only are the survey questions themselves important, but the email you send out in conjunction with the survey is a big indicator of your survey's success. Ideally, the more data you have accessible, the more likely the survey will become statistically significant. As a result, you want to make sure that the email template catches the audience's attention and also creates an incentive for them to fill out your survey. 

Below is an actual survey template that we've used for a client, which has generated 917 responses or approximately 50% of the client's email list.

• Phone Interviews with Existing Customers
  • As you can see from the survey template above, individuals voluntarily opt for phone interviews because there is a guaranteed prize incentive. 
  • Questions asked in the phone interview are much more detailed (allowing us to eventually use this information for target audience persona development). Fundamentally, the type of questions you ask in the interview must help you:
    • Identify the person's day-to-day responsibilities, likes/dislikes, frustrations/pressures, needs, concerns, and function they play in the purchasing process.
      • Function they play in the purchasing process is based on the following roles:
        • Initiator: identifies the need to purchase the product
        • Influencer: evokes influence on the individuals who can make the decision to purchase the product
        • Decision-maker: decides whether or not to purchase the product
        • Buyer: selects who to buy from and the agreements that come alongside that
        • User: utilizes the product
        • Gatekeeper: has access or supplies information to both the decision maker and/or the influencer

Step 3: Preparation and assessment

Now that new data has been collected from various channels, it's important to assess/analyze the data that has just been collected and see how it correlates with the data that you already have on-hand. During this stage, it's also critical to take a step back and make sure that the goals for the content have been clearly defined. 

• Create a benchmark audit using analytics
  • This provides an opportunity to compare/contrast results before and after the creation of the content 
  • Important analytics to include are:
    • Traffic
    • Pageviews
    • Pages per visit
    • Average time on site
    • Entrances/exits
    • Conversion rate
    • Bounce rate
    • Linking root domains
    • Page authority
    • Rankings
• Putting together a content audit
  • ​The purpose of the content audit is evaluate how previous content on the site has performed, as well as organize the existing content on the site to determine additional opportunities. 
  • For one of my clients, Adria and I analyzed the top 500 landing pages on the client's site and took a look at the content from three distinct lenses:
    • Analytics metrics: engagement (bounce rate, time on site) and number of visits (to identify potential keyword opportunities)
    • SEO metrics: linking root domains, page authority, etc.
    • Content perspective: is this useful for a user? What type of user would it attract?
      • We individually analyze each content page and determine where it sits on the content funnel.
        • Awareness: Content created for this part of the funnel is designed to target an audience that hasn't even begun to consider the company's product/services.
        • Trigger: Content created for this part of the funnel is when a user has become aware of the product/service and has started thinking about the possibility of needing it.
        • Search: User has decided to research the product/service in-more depth.
        • Consideration: User has decided to convert, but hasn't decided which brand to choose.
        • Buy: User decides to convert to the company's product/service.
        • Stay: Content targeted towards retaining clients, ensuring they remain a loyal customer/brand advocate.

The purpose of labeling what stage of the funnel each piece of content is associated with is to ultimately assess the distribution of content on a site and determine if there are any gaps. For instance, this particular site had 180 unique content pages and the distribution of the site's content looked like this:

In this specific case, it is apparent that a majority of the site's content sits at the bottom of the funnel. As a result, we recommended to the client that they create more content that targets higher up the funnel. However, it is also important to bear in mind that a site is not necessarily looking for an even distribution of content at each stage of the funnel. The amount needed is determined by various factors, like keyword research and an iterative approach in which content is built that targets a specific stage of the funnel. Afterwards, these pieces of content are analyzed to determine if they proved value based on the site's pre-determined content goals and KPIs. This closely ties into our next point, which is:

• Clarify the goals for this content strategy. Goals should be general like:
  • Increase in conversions
  • Increase in organic traffic to the site
  • Increase in audience engagement
  • increase in brand awareness
• However, goals/metrics should also be specifically correlated to where that content sits in the content funnel:
  • ​This great article by Jay Baer explains it in more depth:
    • Consumption metrics: How many views/downloads did your content receive? 
    • Sharing metrics: How often does your content get shared? (Tweets, Likes…etc)
    • Lead generation metrics: How often do the consumers turn into leads?
    • Sales metrics: How often do the consumers turn into sales? 
  • Ideally, the consumption metrics would be correlated to content higher up in the funnel and the sales metrics correlated to content located further down the funnel. See diagram below:

• Develop persona buckets
  • In order to achieve this, combine all the data that was derived from the content audit, customer surveys, and customer interviews. Once you've done so, segment individuals into different categories, like this: 

Image Courtesy of Kissmetrics

• Solidify the editorial process for the company
  • Who needs to be included in the content development and implementation phase? When do they need to be included? 
  • Have a clear understanding of the dependencies (i.e. how long does it typically take to get sign off from relevant departments?)
  • Determine the site's style guide/tone of voice/engagement standards
• Define the content strategy
  • What types of content will be produced on the site? 
  • Where does this content sit in the funnel?
  • Where would they sit on the site? In a separate category on an existing category?
  • What keywords would the content target?

Going through this detailed, research-intensive process allows a company to clearly see the opportunities at hand from a high-level perspective. When we go through this process, we identify ways to improve not only the company's organizational structure and create standardizations on how content and pages are released onto the site (static URLs, keyword targeting, content tone of voice/length). It's also through this process that we've been able to engage/integrate multiple departments and define ways to work together seamlessly.

Furthermore, we also gain a concrete understanding of the big opportunities for the site. It's impossible to go through this much research and not be able to discern multiple opportunities related to CRO, information architecture, keyword targeting, and analytics, to name a few. 

Step 4: Prospecting

This phase of the process is identifying individuals/sites who would be interested in the type of content the company will produce and engaging them at multiple points with the goal to develop relationships with key influencers.

• Identify and reach out to influencers
  • Identify influencers through tools like Followerwonk and Topsy 
• Keep on top of industry news
• Keep on top of the content that competitors are creating

Step 5: Create and promote the content

In this step, the "go" is to now create the pieces of content and follow both the internal protocols and sign off processes that were established in step three of the process. Ensure that editorial standards are being followed and assess that the content being created is actually phenomenal. 

• Create the content and consistently reassess to make sure it is meeting the following checklist:
  • Is the content credible?
  • Is the content informative?
  • Is the content easy to understand? 
  • Is the content useful?
  • Is the content exceptional?
• Promote and outreach the content to key influencers

Step 6: Assess content performance

After the content has been released and promoted, it's time to assess how the content has performed and any other learnings that can be taken away from the process, including:

• How has the piece performed?
• What learnings were taken away from it? Any changes that need to be made to the process? 
• What data have we received from the piece of content?

The long-term vision is that the content is able to fulfill the original goals of the content marketing strategy. Overtime, each piece of content produced should systematically become easier and easier, as learnings are developed and iterated each time. Although, the process appears very resource-intensive in the beginning, overtime, the goal is that producing effective and meaningful content becomes a crucial entity for the company.

---

In conclusion, the most valuable benefits of having a content strategy for your site is that, from a business standpoint, your site is no longer creating content for "content's sake" or to build "link bait." Moving forward, the site now has a framework of creating content that serves multiple purposes: to engage with current and future customers; to establish brand awareness and authority within the industry; and to consequently garner more traffic, conversions, and links to your site.

Furthermore, by integrating multiple individuals into the development of a site's content strategy, it automatically provides the groundwork of integrating SEO seamlessly into the other online marketing activities of the site, such as CRO, social media, and PR. 

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!

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Posted by Dr. Pete

This is not a post about SEO. It is, however, a post about the future of search. This surprised even me – when I started writing this piece, it really was just an idea about building a better review. I realized, though, that finding relevant reviews is a useful microcosm of the broader challenge search engines face. Specifically, I want to talk about three S’s – Social, Sentiment, and Semantics, and how each of these pieces fit the search puzzle. Along the way, I might just try to build a better mousetrap.

The Core Problem

Product reviews are great, but on a site as big and popular as Amazon.com, filtering reviews isn’t much easier than filtering Google search results. Here’s the review section for the Kindle Fire:

That’s right – 10,859 reviews to sort through. Even if I just decide to look at the 5 stars and 1 stars, that’s still 7,208 reviews. If I could click and skim each one of those 7,208 in about 5 seconds, I’ve got roughly 10 hours of enjoyment ahead of me (if I don’t eat or take bathroom breaks). So, how can we make this system better?

(1) The Social Graph

These days our first answer is usually: “SOCIAL!” Social is sexy, and it will solve all our problems with its sexy sexiness. The problem is that we tend to oversimplify. Here’s how we think about Search + Social, in our perfect world:

Unfortunately, it’s not quite so magical. There are two big problems, whether we’re talking about product reviews or organic search results. The first problem is a delicate one. Some of the people that you associate with are – how shall I put it – stupid.

Ok, maybe stupid is a bit harsh, but just because you’re connected to someone doesn’t mean you have a lot in common or share the same tastes. So, we really want to weed out some of the intersection, like Crazy Cousin Larry…

It’s surprisingly hard to figure out who we actually sit at the Crazy-Larry table. Computationally, this is a huge challenge. There’s a bigger problem, though. In most cases, especially once we start weeding people out, the picture actually looks more like this:

Even with relatively large social circles, the actual overlap of your network and any given search result or product is often so small as to be useless. We can extend our circles to 2nd- and 3rd-degree relationships, but then relevance quickly suffers.

To be fair to Amazon, they’ve found one solution – they elicit user feedback of the reviews themselves as a proxy social signal:

This approach certainly helps, but it mostly weeds out the lowest-quality offerings. Reviews of reviews help control quality, but they don't do much to help us find the most relevant information.

(2) Sentiment Analysis

Reviews are a simple form of sentiment analysis – they help us determine if people view a product positively or negatively. More advanced sentiment analysis uses natural-language processing (NLP) to try to extract the emotional tone of the text.

You may be wondering why we need more advanced sentiment analysis when someone has already told us how they feel on a 1-5 scale. Welcome to what I call “The Cupholder Problem”, something I’ve experienced frequently as a parent trying to buy high-end products on Amazon. Consider this fictional review which is all-too-based in reality:

I’m exaggerating, of course, but the core problem is that reviews are entirely subjective, and sometimes just one feature or problem can ruin a product for someone. Once that text is reduced to a single data point (one star), though, the rest of the information in the content is lost.

Sentiment analysis probably wouldn’t have a dramatic impact on Amazon reviews, but it’s a hot topic in search in general because it can help extract emotional data that’s sometimes lost in a summary (whether it’s a snippet or a star rating). It might be nice to see Amazon institute some kind of sentiment correction process, warning people if the tone of their review doesn’t seem to match the star rating.

(3) Semantic Search

This is where things get interesting (and I promise I’ll get back to sentiment so that the previous section has a point). The phrase “semantic search” has been abused, unfortunately, but the core idea is to get at the meaning and conceptual frameworks behind information. Google Knowledge Graph is probably the most visible, recent attempt to build a system that extracts concepts and even answers, instead of just a list of relevant documents.

How does this help our review problem? Let’s look at the “Thirsty” example again. It’s not a dishonest review or even useless – the problem is that I fundamentally don’t care about cupholders. There are certain features that matter a lot to me (safety, weight, durability), others that I’m only marginally sensitive to (price, color), and some that I don’t care about at all (beverage dispensing capability).

So, what if we could use a relatively simple form of semantic analysis to extract the salient features from reviews for any given product? We might end up with something like this:

Pardon the uninspired UI, but even the addition of a few relevant features could help customers drill down to what really matters to them, and this could be done with relatively simple semantic analysis. This basic idea also illustrates some of the direction I think search is heading.  Semantic search isn’t just about retrieving concepts; it’s also about understanding the context of our questions.

Here’s an interesting example from Google Australia (Google.com.au). Search for “Broncos colors” and you’ll get this answer widget (hat tip to Brian Whalley for spotting these):

It’s hardly a thing of beauty, but it gets the job done and probably answers the query for 80-90% of searches. This alone is an example of search returning concepts and not just documents, but it gets even more interesting. Now search for “Broncos colours”, using the British spelling (still in Google.com.au). You should get this answer:

The combination of Google.com.au and the Queen’s English now has Google assuming that you meant Australia’s own Brisbane Broncos. This is just one tiny taste of the beginning of search using concepts to both deliver answers and better understand the questions.

(4) Semantics + Sentiment

Let’s bring this back around to my original idea. What if we could combine semantic analysis (feature extraction) and sentiment in Amazon reviews? We could easily envision a system like this:

I’ve made one small addition – a positive or negative (+/-) sentiment choice next to each feature. Maybe I only want to see products where people spoke highly of the value, or rule out the ones where they bashed the safety. Even a few simple combinations could completely change the way you digest this information.

The Tip of the Penguin

This isn’t the tip of the iceberg – it’s the flea on the wart on the end of the penguin’s nose on the tip of the iceberg. We still think of Knowledge Graph and other semantic search efforts as little more than toys, but they’re building a framework that will revolutionize the way we extract information from the internet over the next five years. I hope this thought exercise has given you a glimpse into how powerful even a few sources of information can be, and why they’re more powerful together than alone. Social doesn’t hold all of the answers, but it is one more essential piece of a richer puzzle.

I’d also like to thank you for humoring my Amazon reviews insanity. To be fair to Amazon, they’ve invested a lot into building better systems, and I’m sure they have fascinating ideas in the pipe. If they’d like to use any of these ideas, I’m happy to sell them for the very reasonable price of ONE MILL-I-ON DOLLARS.

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!

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

SEO Book

SEO Book