There’s been a recent trend in businesses and agencies abandoning their blogs to instead invest in social media.  I can’t say the decline is very surprising — blogging is hard work. It’s difficult to produce valuable posts, and it’s even tougher to do it on a consistent basis. Especially in the beginning, it’s frustrating to create content that no one sees. It’s hard to put your time, money and effort into an endeavor you only hope will lead to new business. So, many businesses quit blogging.   Most give up before blogging really pays off, and as a result, truly gain nothing from their investment.  They search for greener pastures and an easier way of accomplishing the same goals. As a result, it’s not surprising to hear that many of the businesses and agencies abandoning blogging are doing so in exchange for deeper investment in social media. With this in mind, I created a list of reasons why a company should quit blogging. You should quit blogging if… 1. You want an uncertain future Abandoning blogging for social media is a dangerous move.  What you’re really doing is giving away the keys to your kingdom. Not only are you eliminating many of the benefits of authorship that blogging provides, you’re betting the farm on the longevity and continued value of individual social networks. Sure, Facebook seems fairly invincible — but the landscape could easily change within the next few years.  In fact, I’d be shocked if it didn’t. In this fast paced online world, the only constant is change, even among the titans. What’s even more likely than the failure of any particular social network is the proliferation of additional “potentially valuable” networks.  This poses a danger of spreading your efforts too thin, eliminating the potential for building a noticeable presence on any single network. Alternatively, anything you publish on your blog is yours.  You’ve created it, and you can continue serving it to visitors as long as you pay your hosting bills.  As social networks rise and fall, your blog will live on. 2. You want to sell to the wrong audience Investing in a social media presence over a blog may make sense at first.   After all, it’s often much easier to secure a  Twitter follower or Facebook fan than it is to get a feed or newsletter subscriber. What most businesses don’t realize is that it takes very little effort and almost no personal investment for an individual to become a Twitter follower or Facebook fan.  The ease of acquiring connections is almost always inversely associated with the likelihood of selling to that connection. For many bloggers, each post and piece of content serves a very specific goal: to encourage readers to perform actions that increasingly strengthen their investment in the blog and brand.   It’s much more difficult to cultivate and continuously reengage with social audiences. By bringing these visitors to your blog and giving them a reason to stay, you’ve brought them into an inner circle where your brand and influence is much stronger. 3. You don’t want to get the most out of social media It’s ironic to think that businesses are leaving blogging hoping to gain more value from social media, especially when so many have been vocal about the difficulties associated with selling directly to social audiences.  Social ads often have extremely low conversion rates — arguably because there’s a mismatch between the intentions of social users and the actions advertisers are hoping they’ll perform. Social users are primed to share content.   This makes social media the perfect place to acquire new visitors to your blog, but one of the worst places to sell your products or services directly. Social audiences should be seen as the starting point:  the outermost, easiest, and most loosely tied connection to be made. Creating and sharing content you’ve created on your blog within social media allows you to effectively harness the power of social audiences (because you’re giving them what they want), while simultaneously increasing the likelihood that certain users will begin to invest more heavily in your message and brand.  Giving social users content to consume creates opportunities to keep them engaged. 4. You don’t want improved rankings Creating content for your blog is one of the most powerful things you can do to improve the way your website ranks in search engines, across the board.  As Google gets more adept at detecting manipulation, websites that create true value for users will continue to outperform those that don’t. By publishing content that is helpful to people, you’re sending all kinds of signals to the search engines that your site is worthy of high rankings. Blog content created with users in mind tends to: Generate more significant, natural links from a variety of websites Engage social users and drive social metrics that can influence rankings Rank for a wide variety of long-tail keywords By abandoning blogging, or by only engaging on social websites, you’re giving up on the power content has to generate the links that drive organic ranking improvements. 5. You want to be limited by someone else’s rules Twitter limits you to 140 characters.  Facebook limits you by their terms of service. Social platforms limit how you tell your story and dictate how others interact with the content you create. In some instances this makes sharing content easier, but it can severely limit the reach and impact content can have if that content is restricted to social platforms only. Running your own blog means you can test the limits of the browser and the user’s experience with your brand, including: Ability to run scripts and  interactive elements Ability to track user interaction without limitation No limits on content medium or message Capturing user contact information and building lists 6. You want to do more busywork and less real work Sharing content others have created does little to elevate your brand in the long term. And yet, this activity dominates the work performed by team members responsible for spreading a brand’s message through social media. There’s value in providing useful content for audiences you’re cultivating on sites like Twitter and Facebook. But, this value pales in comparison to the loyalty that can be cultivated by actually creating new and valuable content yourself. Creating content that is unique and provides value beyond the “me too” regurgitation of  ideas is the real, hard work required for online marketing success. Conclusion By now, you’ve caught on you should only quit blogging if you want to forfeit the many benefits that come with it. Instead of acting as a blog replacement, social media should be used to cultivate a targeted audience and lead that audience to your on-site content. Businesses that make the mistake of abandoning on-site content creation are making a grave mistake — but it’s a mistake you’ll want your competitors to continue making.  With less noise, the signal great content creates can become even more clear, providing even more benefit to those businesses willing to make the investment. Why will YOU never stop blogging? Let us know in the comments below.

In part one of this series we covered setting up Google product feeds. In part two we covered setting up Product Listing Ads in AdWords. In part three we covered properly tracking product search performance. In this post we will cover optimizing product feeds, product listing ads, and product extensions. Optimizing Product Search One of the great things about Google’s Product Listing Ads is that there is less to optimize than with traditional AdWords ads. You don’t have to choose specific keywords or even write ads; you just have to set up your feed properly, choose good images, have well-written titles and descriptions, keep the feed up to date, and build a negative keyword list. One of the terrible things about Google’s Product Listing Ads is that there is less to optimize than with traditional AdWords ads. We’re used to having a lot of control (or feeling like we have a lot of control) over our paid search marketing results. With product search we lose some of that control and put Google in the driver’s seat. With PLA, you do not (currently) need to worry about: Display Network results – PLA are only on Google.com and some search partners Mobile targeting – PLA are only displayed to computer users Ad delivery – Accelerated delivery is not supported with PLA Ad rotation – You aren’t writing and optimizing ads Right about now you’re probably thinking, “so what can I optimize?” There’s quite a bit you can do to ensure your product search campaigns are successful. The image below is a great example of what can happen if you don’t optimize your campaigns and feeds properly. Someone specifically searching for a red cocktail dress shouldn't be shown an ad with a picture of a black dress. Feed and Ad Optimization You need to approach product feed optimization much like you would website optimization, including utilizing keyword research and imagery changes, with a focus on the following attributes: Product_type Attribute This attribute within your product feed allows you to indicate how your product should be classified. This classification will probably closely match how you organize products on your website. For instance, if you were selling a red cocktail dress, this attribute may be Clothing > Women’s Clothing > Dresses > Cocktail Dresses. When choosing the wording used in this attribute, you will want to do some keyword research to determine the best words to use. For instance, in the example given above, you would research whether it was best to use ‘women’s clothing’, ‘women’s clothes’, or ‘women’s apparel’. You want to choose the wording that has the most potential traffic but with the least competition. Title and Description Attributes The text you put in the title attribute will be shown on the general search results page, as shown below, as well as on the Shopping results page. The description will also be shown on the Shopping results page. These attributes should be researched, written, and optimized on an ongoing basis. In the example shown below, the titles are not eye catching and only one uses the phrase “red cocktail dress” specifically. The second result even says “holiday red” but we’re definitely not in holiday red dress shopping season. Optimize your product feed titles and descriptions to increase CTR using the same tactics you do for ad text and SEO page titles and descriptions. Write titles that make people want to click. Additionally, you may want to change your titles and descriptions to capitalize on trends, holidays, or current events. For instance, leading up to holidays you may want to include the word gift in your titles and descriptions. Or, if you sell a product that was featured in a movie or television show, you should update your feed to say “as seen in <insert show>.” Finding and maximizing competitive advantages is a key to success in Shopping results. Image Attribute The image you choose can make or break your campaign performance. Make sure you are using images that display the exact product users are searching for, down to the color. If you are selling a product that other websites sell, make sure you use images that are unique to set your site apart from the competition. Finally, test different images and see what works best. Rotating and testing images in your product feed is the equivalent of testing new ad copy in your regular PPC ads, and should be made a priority. Negative Keywords Negative keywords in PLA campaigns work the same as in regular search campaigns. Using keyword research, common sense, and data you’ve gathered from other marketing efforts, you should build a robust negative keyword list to prevent your PLA from showing on unwanted searches. Continuing with the red dress theme, the seller of this dress may have campaign-level negatives such as ‘bridesmaid’ and ‘prom’ to prevent their ad from showing if someone were to search red bridesmaid dress or red prom dress. They may also want to have ad group-level negatives with more specific features such as dress length, sleeve length, or neckline type. Getting this granular with negatives can be tedious but will pay off in the end with higher click through and conversion rates. Bids Bids for PLA should be optimized in the same way that you optimize bids for regular PPC campaigns. Experiment with increased bids for additional traffic or decreased bids to increase return on ad spend. Test, Test, Test To properly optimize your feed, you will need to test changes one at a time to see which strategy is the most effective. You don’t want to test image and title changes at the same time because you won’t know which change is responsible for the change in performance. You may also have thousands of products in your feed to optimize, so testing feed optimization can be a tedious and time consuming task. But, regularly updating your feed and properly optimizing attributes will result in increased sales. Tip: Create a schedule in your calendar for feed optimization to ensure you stay on track and to break the project into manageable chunks so you don’t feel overwhelmed. Catch up on the rest of this series: Part 1: Setting up Google product feeds Part 2: Setting up Product Listing Ads in AdWords Part 3: Tracking Product Search Performance Do you have any feed optimization tips or shortcuts to make the process easier? Share them in the comments below!

Great content rests on a solid foundation, which includes writing style, research, and plenty of editing. The differences in sharability and engagement between normal content and the kind that explodes virally are huge, but the differences in how the content is created can be subtle. Is your content not receiving enough engagement or retaining an audience, despite brilliant ideas and promotions? Maybe your writing is to blame. How can you tailor your writing to improve engagement and keep your audience coming back? Below we’ll examine the elements that comprise the foundation of remarkable content. Before You Begin While your content is still in the idea phase, ask these three questions: 1. Who is your target audience? Researching your audience is essential.  Learn what content your audience shares and how they communicate.  Feedback can go a long way to helping you understand who your audience is and what content they’ll most likely share. 2. Why are you targeting this audience? Look beyond marketing.  What practical reasons influence you to share your content with your audience?  What is your audience going to take away from your content?  Consider your angle.  Is your content so entertaining or helpful to your audience that they’d feel compelled to share it with others? 3. What content does my target audience consume? Does your audience prefer light-hearted pieces or more serious, technical ones?  What social data can you obtain before production? Consider: Audience size How established your audience is Demographic information like age, gender, and education level Understanding who is consuming your content can help you properly decide what to produce. With a limited understanding of your audience, you risk writing a great piece of content that fizzles out before its prime. 6 Ways to Write Better for Your Audience Now that we’ve learned about our audience, how do we hook them? 1. Create Your Own Voice Early on we’re taught the mechanics of writing (like grammar and spelling), but not the additional elements that makes certain writing enjoyable to read and share.  Good writing is technically correct but also much more natural and personalized.  The best writing has a well-defined style. At BlueGlass LA, we learned about the importance of high quality writing and why it’s essential to the future of marketing.  Brian Clark of Copyblogger discussed having a distinctive voice and using it to build a relationship with your audience. Put some personal touches on your writing to better cultivate your voice.  Infuse your writing with your interests and personality.  Whether you’re sarcastic, geeky, or a “short and to the point” type of person, embrace it in your writing.  You’ll be surprised not only how much more natural your content sounds, but how much easier it is to create once you get the hang of it. Example: Seth Godin Seth Godin is a great example of a writer who effortlessly writes in his own voice.  He uses a concise, direct style with a clear call to action.  His writing is informal, pleasing to the eyes, and easy to absorb.  You want to read his writing. 2. Leverage Your Resources Good research is crucial to high quality writing.  At BlueGlass, we reference data in nearly every facet of marketing. As you’re creating your content, consider these questions: What is my topic? What area of expertise does my topic fall into? Are there others out there with similar expertise and skill sets? Use research to supplement your knowledge and personal views.  This gives your content authority and you’ll gain a trustworthy reputation. NOT ALL SOURCES ARE CREATED EQUAL The Internet is a big place, so it goes without saying that there is a lot of bad information out there.  You should always consider web site authority and relevancy when doing your research to avoid this pitfall.  Bad sources offer nothing to your content and can destroy your credibility (or worse, your reputation). Think like a journalist. Remain cautious but diligent when doing your research.  Start your research with high quality sites (major news publications, .gov and .edu websites) and then slowly work your way down to less authoritative sources. Always try to use primary sources when possible.  If you’re reading an article and it says it took a statistic from a “government website,” find the original source and use that instead of referencing the article. If your content is more light-hearted or fun, you can sometimes get away with personal blogs and less authoritative sites.  Just be choosy. Keep digging. Avoid sites with little information or that rely on user-generated content for facts.  When in doubt, look for a different source.  There are usually several reputable sources to choose from. Do it Yourself. Occasionally an idea will come along that’s so timely or unique that there’s little to no information on it.  If you can make the time investment, consider researching it yourself.  Awesome ideas often start this way. Let it Go. If you don’t have the time to do your own research or you’re unable to find legitimate sources that back up your idea, consider scrapping or reworking your concept.  Don’t set yourself up for failure with a shoddy idea. 3. Offer Your Own Perspective Let’s face it.  It’s getting harder and harder to write about a unique topic.  If you’re worried about your content coming off as too generic, then let your own perspective be your focal point. Personal insight is great for refreshing a stale or complicated topic, or when you’re passionate about your idea but your research has come up a little short. Example: SEOmoz The SEOmoz blog content comes from both their team and community members, so their posts offer a range of perspectives. This helps to brighten up dense or technical content, but also appeals to a wide audience since there are often divergent points of views among authors.    4. Be Transparent Offer a way for your audience to give you feedback (and when they do, return the favor).  Legitimate criticism is extremely valuable.  Responding to your audience’s feedback shows that you’re invested in your content and gives your audience a reason to share it.  Blogs and social media platforms make this incredibly simple. Ask for your audience’s opinion at the end of posts. They may know more about your topic than you do. Feedback is also a great way for you to learn more about your audience and come up with future content ideas.  Short polls and surveys asking what your audience wants you to write about can be a great source of ideas tailor-made for your readers. Example: Copyblogger The Copyblogger has a high level of community interaction not only because they write great content, but their team consistently responds to reader comments and questions. This encourages others to comment as well, since they know they’ll get a response. In the example below, the commentor received responses not only from Sonia and Brian from Copyblogger, but another reader also chimed in with advice. 5. Edit Your Butt Off Few things will cost you an audience faster than glaring errors in your otherwise awesome content.  Nobody expects absolute perfection, but content riddled with typos and factual errors is ugly and can make you look silly. Consider these basic editing tips: Be Concise. Brevity is often better.  Your audience will only spend a few precious seconds reading your content, so make them count.  Keep sentences brief and your voice conversational. Make Your Content Visually Appealing . Display your information tastefully and in easy-to-digest chunks.  Well-designed headers, pictures, short lists, and bullet points are great. Fix Your Typos . Check for grammar, spelling, and syntax errors.  Be thorough when checking facts from your sources.  Be consistent in your writing style to make your editing easier. Fix Your Typos… Again. Always double-check your content one last time before publication.  Consider having your colleagues look it over as well.  A second or third pair of eyes can catch hard to find typos that may otherwise be missed. 6. Relax Having trouble finding your motivation?  Step away from your computer and go unwind a bit.  A change of pace and environment makes for a wonderful muse and can be incredibly therapeutic.  Spending too much time working on the same task can actually hurt your productivity. On a bit of a time crunch?  Consider doing the more time-consuming aspects of your writing, like your research and outline, ahead of time and come back later to finish. Conclusion The key to a successful long-term content marketing strategy is reaching your target audience and enticing them to return. While there is no perfect formula for writing content, following the steps above will keep your work consistent and in tune with your audience.  Incorporating these into your writing process will not only improve your content overall but also increase your audience engagement. How do you connect your content with your audience?  What motivates you to write? Let us know in the comments below.

Social media cuts down walls and increases your ability to become a relationship-building all star. But, social media shouldn’t be used to actually send a pitch (and if you can send a pitch in 140 characters, more power to you!) or for one-time communication. Rather, social media should be used to help get your foot in the door and get to know a contact on a more personal level. From there, you can use social media to manage and maintain relationships with your outreach contacts. While there are now countless social networks to choose from, Twitter and LinkedIn remain two of the best for connecting with people you don’t know personally. In this post, we’ll show you how to successfully leverage these networks to build a relationship with a publisher. Building Relationships on Twitter Using Twitter, you can share an author’s content in a way that will get you on their radar. All Tweets Are Not Created Equal Tweeting a link to an article is a seal of approval that you value an author’s work enough to share it with your community. But, simply tweeting a link isn’t enough… Don’t be another bot. It takes two careless seconds to retweet an article. It takes 15 seconds to pull your favorite quote out of the article, and tweet that. It takes less than a minute to create genuine feedback using 140 characters. Pretend you’re me, the author. As the author, which tweet would get your attention? RT @KelseyLibert: [Title] [url] “[Pull quote]” [url] by @KelseyLibert Great tips by @KelseyLibert My favorite is [insert your favorite tip] found [url] (<– I hope you chose this one…I did.) The more time you take crafting a tweet, the more it shows your personality. You have a personality – so use it. 8 Tips for Crafting Tweets that Get a Response Give Credit @Author. Tweet the article, but give credit to the author, not the publication. Be Opinionated.  Append you opinion to the article that you’re tweeting. Show Appreciation.  Say how much you loved the article, and why. Pull Quotes.  Instead of tweeting the article title, pull your favorite quote from that article. Pull Tips.  Tips are not necessarily quotes…tips are actionable. Provide a Counter Point.  But tread carefully. If you disagree with something the author said, you could be jeopardizing a relationship. Be Recent. Pick something that was written within the last month. Be Relevant. Tweet an article that relates to your pitch, if possible. Tweets That Get Ignored The more popular the author, the more difficult it will be to get their attention. Keep in mind the following tweets will probably yield a low response rate… Tweeting an article that someone wrote over a year ago. Tweeting an article and providing credit to the publication, not the author. Retweeting a well-known author and not including your genuine input. Managing Twitter Relationships Have you ever left Twitter up, to come back a minute later to see you need to refresh for 52 new tweets? #headdesk No one has time to sit and watch their Twitter streams flood with noise (and if you do, let me know your secret). In order to keep up with editors and publishers, focus your Twitter stream by creating lists. Custom lists I love using include: Placed Content. Great for keeping in touch with editors that have previously published your content. Top Tier Contacts. Group all of your top-tier publishers and editors who are on Twitter. Publishers by Vertical. Group editors and publishers by the vertical they write for the most. Depending on the amount of outreach you do, you can further segment your groups. Be careful, too many lists is just as overwhelming as not having any lists. Another key point: always create private lists, never public lists. People you add to private lists will be unaware they’re on your list and only you will have access to the list. Building Relationships on LinkedIn Use LinkedIn as a place to get to know your contact’s professional ambitions and their role within the publication. Finding Contacts The first thing you want to do is find out who is in charge. If you’re doing outreach to get content placed, the people you want to find are editors and publishers. Do a “Company” search for the publication on LinkedIn. Next, narrow down your options within the left side column. Under the “Industry” select “Writing and Editing.” Evaluating Profiles Now examine the profiles that showed up in the above results. You should be looking for: If that person presently works with the publication you’re trying to get placement with. How many years of experience that person has in this industry. In other words, how many years they’ve been turning down bad pitches, and how well you will have to tailor your pitch. This will also give some insight on their seniority level. If that person has a private blog. This may may tell you more about their personality, past experience or life endeavors. This knowledge helps you relate to the blogger. Group memberships or interests they may have. Looking at someone’s profile means you will also show up here: Which in turn, could cause that person to look into who you are… Optimize Your Profile Make sure your profile is complete and gives an overview of who you are. Include links to your own blog, your company’s blog, and your Twitter account. Also make sure your current job description is up to date and accurate. Making your profile transparent allows your contact to learn about you and make it easier to engage in a conversation. Adjust your public profile settings so even non-connections can view enough about you to get a good feel for who you are and why you’d be reaching out. Tips for Reaching Out If you’re lucky, your contact will be using apps within their profile like  TripIt or LinkedIn events. Use these to determine the best windows for reaching out based on when they’ll be out of town or attending an event. When you DO send a message, it needs to be very personal to stand out from the typical spam people receive on LinkedIn. Remember, you’re not going to actually pitch someone through a social network, but a LinkedIn message can be used for an introduction that can lead to you getting their email address. In the example below, I saw via Twitter my contact would be out of town so I mentioned that in a message I sent on LinkedIn. This attention to detail is often appreciated by the recipient, adds a personal touch, and also helped me figure out when he’d be available. Conclusion Twitter and LinkedIn are the two best networks for getting in direct contact with editors and publishers. Since social media is plugged into our smartphones, laptops, emails and more, these networks serve as a platform for 24/7 access. Use it, don’t abuse it. Rand Fishkin had a great point in a recent SEOmoz whiteboard Friday, “[On social media] I highly recommend a minimum of four weeks of interaction with your [guest post] target, before you send them the request. Let them know that you’re a real person, you know who they are, you’ve researched them, you’ve been in touch.” Your goal is to develop a long lasting relationship, so be personal, interested, and genuine. What networks do you find are the most successful at relationship building? Are there certain ways you reach out? Share your tips in our comments below!

When you think of Tampa, chances are you don’t think “strong SEO community.” We want to change that.  It’s about time we rounded up the local online marketing talent for a great time, so we’ll be hosting our first SEOpen House at our Tampa office on May 30 from 6pm – 9 pm. In addition to the BlueGlass team, we’re opening our doors to the first 50 people to register. The only requirement? You have to be passionate about online marketing. And here’s the best part… it’s FREE to attend! Here’s the Plan Icebreaker Introductions Don’t worry, this won’t be your typical “My name is ____ and I do ____.“ Q & A session with Greg Boser We’re keeping this informal so there won’t be any boring PowerPoints to sit through. Instead, you’ll be able to ask anything you’d like and in typical Greg fashion, you can expect candid advice. Bring your burning questions! Cornhole Tournament Learn how to play, kick some BlueGlass butt, and win a prize for your efforts. Food & Drinks We never let our guests leave hungry or thirsty, so bring your appetite! There will be plenty of food, beer, wine and of course: energy drinks! Join Us Sign up here if you live in the Tampa area and want to have a fun night out at BlueGlass headquarters. We’re limiting attendance to 50 people and we expect it to fill up quick. One more thing… We’re always looking for talented people to join our team If you’d like to work with us, you definitely don’t want to miss this! We hope to see you later this month!

Unfortunately, not every content promotion you attempt will go as well as you expected. The good news is most content promotion fails are salvageable if you can pinpoint what went wrong and then take the necessary steps. Ask yourself these questions to help determine how you can save your promotion: Did you start your promotion during a holiday week or was there a huge news event that day? Did you submit to the right social sites? Was your content factually accurate? Just because your content marketing campaign is struggling, you don’t need to give up and move on to something else. Read on to learn 13 ways to revive a failed or struggling content promotion campaign. Social Outreach In the past, the best part of getting on the homepage of a site like Digg was the ability to place to your content in front of bloggers and influential social media users. Those days are long gone with the increased number of social media communities people are using. The competition to get in front of bloggers and influencers has also exploded.  A front page on one social network is no longer a guarantee that your content will be picked up and shared by multiple bloggers or influencers. So when a promotion isn’t going well, why not find and reach out to your targets? 1. Twitter Outreach A social community like Twitter is a great place to build exposure to your content, but there are a lot of people trying to do the same thing. While you may be able to get a few tweets, you may be unable to get your content in front of the users who would blog or help build traction to your content. Don’t just give up, be proactive and find the influencers you were looking for and reach out to them directly. Use site search (or user directories) to compile a list of influencers in your specific content niche. Review the shares of your targets to determine what type of content they like to share. Now create a target list of people you want to share your content with. Don’t just start spamming them with links! Instead, start a discussion with them, re-share their content,  and be sure you are providing them value before you ask for a favor. This might take a couple of days but it’s well worth your time, especially if you can build a long-term relationship.  Again, only share your piece of content with them if you know it’s something they and their followers will want to see. Consider asking them feedback on your content, especially if they’re a thought leader in your niche. 2. Facebook Fan Page Outreach Facebook pages around specific topics are a great place to build some additional traction to your promotion. They allow you to focus your content on a demographic or niche that will be interested in your content. A lot of pages share content from various sources and rely on their users to help find that content. Even pages tied to a celebrity or website tend to share user-submitted content. Use Facebook page search to compile a list of fan pages related to your vertical. Once you have that list, start to interact on their pages by leaving insightful comments, and re-sharing great content from their pages. Then using the message button located on the fan page (https://www.facebook.com/messages/PAGE-NAME) direct them over to your content. Don’t just send your link, make sure you include a small intro about it and why you think their fans would enjoy it. 3. Google Plus Outreach One of the biggest benefits of Google Plus is the “social circle recommendations” that appear in the SERPs. While Google Plus won’t send you a massive rush of traffic in one day, you can use it to build your long-term traffic from organic search. If someone searched for a beginner’s guide to astronomy, and they see a few options but under your link they see social shares including famous niche influencers like Neil Tyson Degrassi or NASA’s Google Plus page, you will a have much better chance of the user clicking on your article. Find Google Plus pages and users that are related to the niche using site search. Create a list of target users you like to share your content with. Start interacting with their page, sharing their content, plus one their updates, etc. Unlike Facebook, there doesn’t seem to be a contact button, so you will want to share a status with your content and tag the page or user you think should see it. 4. Tumblr Outreach One of the coolest features of this micro blog platform is the ability to submit directly to bloggers. This allows you to easily contact influencers or pages in order to share your content. An easy way to find users on Tumblr is to use the explore page feature. You can easily see the top users for all the popular tags. You can also use their in-site search to find users sharing content similar to your content. There are also a handful of Tumblr blogs around infographics that can be used to spread your content. I Love Charts  (charts only) F@5# Yeah Infographics I Heart Infographics Infographics Bin Infographr Media Aggregation Sites With the massive influx of visual media assets being created in the last year, many visual media aggregation sites have started to appear. There are few benefits to these visual sites: They curate and index popular visualizations allowing users to easily view content around specific niches. They allow bloggers and influencers to easily find content they would like to share with their followers. Content creators can easily find visual explanations of concepts they may be writing about. So why not get your content on these sites in order to increase the chance of a pickup or social share? 5. Infographic Aggregation Below are some infographic sharing sites that allow user submissions: Visual.ly Infographic Database Infographic Site Infographipedia Infosthetics Submit Infographics Visualizing.org Cloud Infographics (Only cloud computing or SaaS) Cool Infographics  Infographicas Infographic Gallery Infographics Archive Infographics Posters Love Infographics OMG Infographics Pure Infographics Rate My Infographic Videoinfographics.com Videoinfographic.com Improve Your Content and Submissions So maybe it’s not the promotion process that went wrong, but rather the content. It’s time to examine the type of content you are trying to share and your promotion timing. Did you meet the stickiness criteria with your content? Is the title bad? What time of day did you share it? Are your facts wrong? Do you need better images? Is the site loading your content? Do the share buttons work? 6. Change Titles The  titles you use are a huge factor and a weak terrible title can tank your promotion from the start. A great title can give you a huge boost. For example, when I originally wrote this article, I titled it “Ingenuous Content: Thinking Beyond Social Norms” and the article received a few tweets and died out quickly. We changed the title (the same day) to “7 Alternatives to Top 10 Lists” and re-shared it. Before we knew it, tweets started pouring in. A simple title change made it stand out in the noise and get the attention of influencers in our niche. Try experimenting with titles in your tweets and shares, and see which ones provide the best response. Here are some great resources for title creation: How To Write Magnetic Headlines – Copyblogger The Ultimate Guide To Writing Incredible Headlines – Contently How To Write Headlines – Kissmetrics 15 Ways To Rework Your Next Blog Post Title – Problogger 7. Images Sometimes when you choose generic images or no images at all, you can deter the success of your promotion. Images can be used to break up large chunks of content which allows social users to easily digest your content. A better experience with your content means increasing the chance the user will share your content. It doesn’t just have to be images, it can be line breaks, headings, bullet points, etc. Look through your content and see which visuals you can improve in order to provide a better user experience with the content. Do your images stand out? Do the images convey the message of your content? Could you reformat headers and bullet points to make the content easier to read? 8. Share Buttons If your users can’t share your content, how can you have successful promotion? Your share buttons should be checked on a regular basis to make sure your content is optimized for social sharing so it stands out from the rest of the noise on social media sites. Try cutting down on the buttons you may be using and focus on the ones that send you the user demographic you want. Are your share buttons working? Have you tested them? When you share content what image and title is being pulled in? Are there too many buttons? 9. Timing Timing plays a huge factor in content sharing and times vary based on the content you are trying to share. Try experimenting with your share times. Do a share in the morning as people are coming into work and see if you see more traction versus sharing during lunch or late at night. Sometimes just re-sharing the following day at a better time can turn your promotion in the right direction. Below are questions you should be asking yourself when reviewing the timing of your campaign. Did you start your promotion on the day of a huge news event? Did you push your content live as people are leaving work? Did you time your content pushes in order to reach multiple time zones? 10. Review Feedback Nothing kills a content promotion campaign like incorrect facts or misleading content. Sometimes a small error won’t hurt you but getting a major fact wrong can lead to a high volume of negative feedback, especially when your targeting a demographic that is passionate about your niche. In cases like this, I like to stop and correct my issues before proceeding. There is no point in continuing on if you’re losing credibility with every share. Review the feedback, thank the users who let you know of the issue and then restart your efforts. Never make the change and pretend it never happened. You will just make it worse. Besides people on the internet like to be right and appreciate when you acknowledge it. Always fact check and edit your content before it goes live, and try to have few internal members review it before it goes live. Social Ads A great way to give a content promotion campaign a quick boost is to mix in social ads.  There are many types of social ad platforms and services. Below I only outline three major ones but there a plenty more to choose from. You should be basing your choices on your goals and target demographic. If your target demographic mostly spends their time on Facebook, then don’t use Reddit ads! 11. StumbleUpon Ads StumbleUpon Paid Discovery is  a great tool for building traffic to a piece of content. It’s also a great way to jump start a submission that has puttered out. One of the best parts of submitting to StumbleUpon is the ability to get traffic over a long period of time. You might notice a burst of visits on the first day and then a month later another burst. Using StumbleUpon ads, you try and increase your odds of that long term traffic by doing a sponsored campaign. 12. Reddit Ads Reddit self serve ads are a great option to help kick start a slow moving promotion. Reddit allows you to target specific sub-Reddits. This allows you put your content in front of Reddit users that are interested in your content topic instead of the entire user-base. Don’t forget to do your research before targeting your ads. 13. Related Link Ads Related content sections have always been a great way to keep users on your site, consuming and sharing content. Recently ad networks have taken notice and have started to offer options to sponsor those sections. For example, Outbrain gives you the ability to share your content on related blogs. They allow you to use multiple titles (great way to test titles) and place your links in related content boxes below related articles on top blogs. This is a great way to find users that are interested in consuming content, interested in the content you have a created, and will most likely sharing your content. Conclusion Some of the above tactics should be included in your normal content promotion strategies, but sometimes it’s not feasible based on resources to use all of these methods. I highly recommend testing as much as you can to determine your best course of action. Before starting any type of content marketing campaign, you should always create a list of goals you want to achieve. Whether it be links, traffic, or brand exposure, if you don’t have a set list of goals, you won’t know if your promotion was a success or a failure. Your initial goals will also help you determine the steps you must take to revive a failed promotion. What tactics do you use to boost your content marketing campaigns?

You may have been watching the Twitter stream (long  live #BlueGlassLA!), but there’s plenty that wasn’t captured in the tweets… 6 Reasons Why BlueGlass LA Rocked It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly one thing that made BlueGlass LA so memorable. I’ve put together a list of what stood out for me, followed by some session highlights. I’d love to hear what stood out most for you, too… Photo credit and major props goes to Dr. Michael Dorausch, Steve Boymel, Austin Passy and Patrick Winfield. Otherwise, you’d be looking at pictures from my phone.  1. Networking While 48 hours may not seem like a long time, you can really get to know people by being on the same session track, eating all of your meals together, and partying until the wee morning hours. Funny enough, one of the tiniest details got the most attention: double-sided name badges! For those of us bad with names, these made it near impossible to forget anyone’s name mid-conversation (we’ve all been there...). We’ve said it before, but actual deals happen at our conferences thanks to connecting with the right people in the right environment… 2. Being Surrounded by 125+ Smart People This goes hand-in-hand with the above, but the collective enthusiasm for learning and sharing among everyone present is what made this event so special. Being in an environment where information is shared openly by the people shaping the industry was a priceless experience. When you can look around your table at a conference and feel like the weakest link, you’re in great company. At least I wasn’t the only one who felt like the dumbest person in the room… 3. The Parties The Standard was the perfect setting for parties that were lavish (two nights of open bar!) but laid back enough that I got away with not wearing heels (huge plus in my book). The hotel itself was a conversation piece (I’m still scratching my head over that reversed escalator) and the rooftop afforded some beautiful views of downtown LA. Rumor has it some people ended up in the pool, too… 4. SEO BBQ While the conference didn’t officially start until Monday, many of us started early at Dr. Mike’s SEO BBQ on Sunday evening.  This was a great icebreaker for those of us in town early and an incredibly generous gesture by our host, Dr. Mike. When he first offered to open up his home to everyone attending BlueGlass LA, I’m not sure he expected a crowd large enough to require multiple limo bus pickups! Thanks to Austin Passy who took some cool pictures (see more of his pics from #SEOBBQ here)… 5. Integrated Content / One Track The speakers did an excellent job tying all areas of Internet marketing together. This facilitated the entire flow of the conference, especially since so many sessions elaborated on something brought up in an earlier session. Regardless of the session focus, we were reminded of SEO during a content marketing panel, the importance of hiring a great  content team during a linkbuilding panel, and why great content should be the cornerstone of your site during a development session (in case you still haven’t caught on, content is kind of a big deal). 6. Great Food For me, food makes or breaks an event. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say the food was better than what I’ve had at most weddings. I’m still thinking about that guacamole. And, thanks to a constant supply of energy drinks, I survived my live tweeting duties. Session Highlights Chris Winfield kicked off the conference with hopes that everyone walks away with 4 “lightbulb moments,” and I think it’s safe to say we all went home with a much longer list. Below are some memorable quotes and takeaways from each session. Keep in mind some content was for “attendees only,” and the site review session was not blogged. For the complete BlueGlass LA experience, you had to be there Click the links below to see the full recap for each (somehow, Kelsey Libert liveblogged the entire conference almost verbatim!). Forward-Thinking SEO: What Past Changes Tell Us Start removing title tags and see how Google rewrites them. Let Google give you hints on what they think is best. - Greg Boser Takeaway from Greg: Setup rel=author. Get rid of personas and ghostwriters, instead hire writers with a huge reach who will influence people in the SERPs. Structured data WON’T fix your other SEO problems. – Jeff Preston Takeaway from Jeff: Use Schema.org and Open Graph to tell Google what type of content something is and stand out in the SERPs. How to Stand Out and Sell in Today’s Online Landscape If your product sucks, a celebrity isn’t going to make it better. - Mark Suster Takeaway from Mark: Despite rapid changes, Internet marketing will continue to favor those who are integrated, targeted, personal and measurable. Each landing page should only have 1 objective and 1 objective only. Focus the entire page around it. - Jason Nazar Takeaway from Jason: Headlines are what get people to take actions on landing pages. Headline text should be brief but descriptive and aggressively tested. Build Brand Evangelists Through Two-Way Loyalty I don’t need a billion users. I need a thousand awesome users. - Chris Brogan Takeaway from Chris: Effective email marketing is brief, doesn’t use html formatting, and a gets a human response when someone replies. There is no silver bullet, there’s just execution. – Brian Clark Takeaway from Brian: Have an audience first mentality. Get your audience’s attention, then let them tell you what they want. Expanding the Content Lifespan Act fast and do something radical. – Dennis Goedegebuure Takeaway from Dennis: Understanding the communities on news aggregator sites can lead to extremely high traffic on your news stories. Stick with the original URL. When you update the story, it resets the clock in Google News. – Aaron Chronister, on news stories that will be continuously updated Takeaway from Aaron: Breaking news doesn’t have to be long; a paragraph will do and then continue updating. Maximizing the Success of Link Prospecting and Outreach The best links I’ve ever gotten are through business development. - Jamie Steven Takeaway from Jamie: Create exceptional content, and the rest will fall into place. When you ask for a link, don’t ask for a link. - Jon Henshaw Takeaway from Jon: Relationship building is the new linkbuilding. Use the tools to track down the right people, connect in a sincere way, and the links will follow. Overcoming “Not Provided” Keywords Let’s not forget SEO is organic ad rating. – Marty Weintraub Takeaway from Marty: Comparing Google Analytics data with the same page in Webmaster tools can recover 20-30% of missing keywords.   If you think “not provided” is bad now, it’s very likely that eventually 100% of that entire system will be gone. – Alan Bleiweiss Takeaway from Alan: Focus on the data that’s been around forever and not going anywhere: direct visits, other search sources, referrer sites, PPC and existing page titles. Leveraging Customer Service for Public Relations Good content is about your customer…declare war on their top 10 problems and you will have content forever. – Sonia Simone Takeaway from Sonia: Don’t listen to what your customers say about you, listen to what they say about your industry. The greatest lover is a reformed hater. - Peter Shankman on the power of turning negative customer experiences into positive Takeaway from Peter: Embrace the concept, not the brand. Understanding your audience will lead you to the next greatest thing. A Look Into Content Marketing Success Stories Tap proven ideas. You don’t always have to reinvent the wheel. – Dan Tynski Takeaway from Dan: Audience is everything. If you’re not getting your content in front of the right audience, you’re hurting your chances for success. Tweet interesting and relevant shit. - Hiten Shah on how KISSMetrics grew a Twitter following with zero budget Takeaway from Hiten: Stop copying what’s worked for others. Only through your own tests can you determine what works for your audience. The Many Advantages (and Secrets) of WordPress Sites The more options you give your site visitors, the more you paralyze them. - Andrew Norcross Takeaway from Andrew: Focus on the things that really matter on your site: content, design, speed, and SEO. Design every site mobile first. Then don’t add too much after that. - Joost de Valk Takeaway from Joost: Using a plugin is like giving a developer the keys to your house;  you are giving them admin access to your site. Only use plugins from trusted developers. Until Next Time… If you’re like us, you want to keep reliving the event. Check out all of the pictures here and also read some different perspectives on BlueGlass LA: 50 Tips & Takeaways from BlueGlass LA LAist Interview: Tech Marketing Guru Chris Winfield An Example of a Well Executed Event Mixing a Cocktail of Great People & Online Marketing Smarts 10 Takeaways from BlueGlass LA - Part 1 & Part 2 A Quick BlueGlass LA Recap If you had a great time or wish you had been there, come join us in sunny Tampa on December 3 & 4 when we do it all over again. You can sign up here for details What was your favorite part of BlueGlass LA? What were your “lightbulb moments”? Let us know in the comments below!

It’s the second to last session here at BlueGlass LA! Is your brain over flowing with tips of the trade? Are you going right home and implementing these tips? We hope so! In this session, we’re packing on the WordPress knowledge, with big leagues Joost de Valk (Yoast), Andrew Norcross (BlueGlass) and Michelle Robbins (Third Door Media). Michelle Robins starts out by asking, “Who’s on WordPress, or managing clients on WordPress?” … More than 3/4 of the room raises a hand. Oh, it’s about to get interesting! Andrew Norcross takes it from here. When working with WordPress, you’re working with a blank slate. You can do anything you want with it. It’s important to not get overwhelmed, focus on what really matters, Content Design Site Speed *SEO We’ll start it off with Content, Ditch the plugins that have 10+ social sharing buttons. Focus on sharing options where your visitors are active. Code straight in the theme whenever possible. Find what is relevant for your audience. The more options you give your audience, the more you paralyze them. If you have four social networks you want to promote on, you better not have four separate plugins. You don’t need four plugins, and four option panels – this drains your site speed. Look at what your audience wants, and give it to them. Social networks (cough Facebook) are known for changing their coding on a frequent basis. Be aware of this. Test, test, test! Did we mention, test!  Don’t assume the site knows what you want. Keep up with the changes to specific sites. Example: Facebook recently changed the minimum size for thumbnails from 150 px squares to 200 px squares. Compare button code to “bookmarklets.” Pass the correct data. For Facebook, use the URL linter – https://developers.faceoook.com/tools/debug A lot of these sites will tell you what you want on their sites. Typically, they put “developers.[network]” to help you test the functionality. Design: Ditch the Clutter  Multiple calls to action confuse the visitor. Say goodbye to Web 2.uhhgg Mo’ Pieces, Mo’ problems People will click. Suddenly, they don’t know why they’re clicking, or how they got there. Then they throw up their hands and walk away. If you lose your audience’s attention span, it’s because you’re pointing them in four different directions. The more stuff you start throwing in, the more problems you can run into. Like anything else, it’s one more moving part. Sidebars and Footers Are they helping? Are they relevant? Do they maintain the expected flow or interrupt it? Think of everything in your site - is it valuable? You could get rid of half the plugins on your site with no difference, maybe more. Readability Is your site actually readable by human beings? Font sizes/ line height Forget the fold, find the flow A few tests you can do include a zoom in and zoom out. Try loading different OS, as fonts will render differently. Load browsers you don’t use (yes, he means IE). Don’t ignore the people that are looking at your site. Design: Reduce, reuse, recycle  Ditch images whenever possible. Replace old methods with CSS3 and HTML5 where apparent. Use sprites and a CDN. If you don’t need it, don’t load it. Anything that can be done natively, as opposed to a custom function, will always be easier and more flexible. Mobile If you’re still using flash, I’m sorry. You might want to get on that. Not everybody needs a mobile site, but no one can afford a bad mobile site. Compare analytics to ensure you’re providing the best experience for your visitors. Responsive design tests, http://mattkersley.com/responsive/ http://www.benjaminkeen.com/misc/bricss/ Speed If a human being can’t see it, it doesn’t matter how well you rank. A cheap host will cost you more in lost traffic than you could ever save. Use CDNs for image heavy sites. Set up cashing: W3 Total Cache. Consider a WordPress specific host. Most will have built in controls and services to handle issues. Plugins Actually do A/B testing on new plugins. Is the plugin worth the performance hit? Most importantly: log out, view your website like a random visitor. Look for ‘single serving’ plugins whenever possible. Move simple functions from plugins to theme whenever possible. Check for poorly coded plugins: Multiple javascript calls – jQuery should only load once if the plugin is coded correctly. Items loading on every page, regarldess of whether or not it’s needed “The more plugins you have, the more plugins you have to support. There is a plugin for everything, so be careful about that. Limit the number of plugins you use, in total.” – Michelle Robins Next up is Joost de Valk, who will discuss “WordPress stuff.”  Three Joost de Valk plugins that should grab your attention immediately include, WordPress SEO by Yoast  XML Video Sitemaps (coming soon) All of these plugins help Google find your content, faster than ever. Conversion optimization starts in the SERPs  Optimizing snippets is conversion optimization. Make sure your images are rich in color and clear. Make sure you stand out. Google also provides “social proof” with a five star rating. What users don’t realize is that you’re giving the rating. With conversion rate optimization, are readers going to get what they’re clicking on? Don’t show a date. Change your articles from a post, to a page. Google is very good at picking up date snippets. Pages don’t show up in your RSS feed, so Google doesn’t pick up a date associated with this. For cornerstone content, make sure that it’s a page, or update the date regularly. Make sure you have your keywords in your meta description. Preventing Malice  The biggest hacking threat is not WordPress itself, it’s all the plugins. Plugins run with administrator rights on your site. Only use plugins by people that you trust. Before you add  a plugin to your site, check out its: Average rating The last time it was updated Changelog  - to see what’s been updated in the new versions. If the developer doesn’t update this information, don’t use the plugin. Yes, this rules out 95% of WordPress plugins, but you’ll protect your blog. Understand WP version numbers: .1 is a major release, .2 is a security update The biggest lesson you can take away is to update your site regularly, including its plugins. In closing, WordPress isn’t a silver bullet. You have to actually write content worth doing things with.

Welcome back from lunch! If you missed it, Chris Winfield just announced the return of BlueGlass TPA! Sign up here for more information. Next up,  Hiten Shah (KISSMetrics) and Dan Tynski (BlueGlass) will share case studies from extremely successful content marketing initiatives. BlueGlass’ Loren Baker will moderate (and most likely tell a joke or two…). First up is Dan Tynski. Dan will be discussing two real life initiatives. He’ll discuss, Our goals Our results Our approach The first example is a case study for “The Content Marketing Explosion.” Our goals with this infographic, Announce new services offerings. Get acquisition press and mentions. Introduce and drive traffic to new service page. Build links and social signals to new service page. What do people normally do if they have mundane information they want to spread? Write a press release. Submit it to a site. Unfortunately, too often the PR needs of the business are mismatched with the needs of the publisher. What did BlueGlass do? Our approach was to use content marketing to promote the use of content marketing. We practice what we preach.  Our goal was to get big coverage and create buzz in social media. What was really important was the message – showcase our service offerings and announce the acquisition. We included a PR announcement, and emphasized the importance of our services. We generated a lot of links, and a lot of leads. Sorry, #youhadtobehere to see our results.  One does not simply create infographics. BlueGlass follows a five step process for creating viral infographics,  Find partners with the right audience Brainstorm and get pre-approval with publishers Collaboratively create content Enhance promotions after it’s published Add value for the publisher Step 1: Find the Right Audience  Publishers with 1M+ visitors per month High volume social sharing of content Open to a variety of content mediums Strong community: lots of feed subscribers, lots of comments on each post Step 2: Brainstorm Intelligently  Content needs to, Serve the needs of your business. Serve the needs of potential publishers. Get pre-approved. Work with people who have experience with their own audience to find the best idea to reach that audience. Step 3: Collaboratively Create Remarkable Content  Make the publisher feel that this was their idea, and they’ll want to promote it. “It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.” Nelson Mandela Tell a story that is: Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional The Content Marketing Explosion infographic met each of these points, Simple: Has a simple message Unexpected: Data points are surprising Concrete: Highlights many facts and figures Credible: Uses data from high authority sources Emotional: It’s a wake-up call After you created something that is marketable, you can take it further. Step 4: Enhance promotions (with ego bait and re-syndication)  Publish supplemental content by creating a blog post about your feature. Step 5: Add value  Drive traffic to the publishers post with: paid traffic re-syndication Make their life easier for the publishers by using: embed codes, QC/QA Make the publisher look good by: promoting their past content helping drive social engagement through your network The final syndication results for “The Content Marketing Explosion” :  Over 63 different mid to large sized blogs and websites wrote posts about our content A second infographic we’ll shared is a co-branded infographic we did with Copyblogger, 15 Grammar Goods that Make You Look Silly. Our goal with this infographic was to drive massive exposure. Drive high volume of targeted traffic Build lots of links to our new service page Spread co-branded IG far and wide Drive massive social sharing Drive leads How did we do it?  We capitalized on the opportunity to work with a great publishing partner. Then, we tapped a proven idea to create a piece of content with mass appeal. Tap proven ideas, you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel. The Grammar Goofs infographic came from a mash-up of three previous posts that were very successful on Copyblogger. So, the lesson? Choose a concept with mass appeal. Massively shared content has common traits, it is Universal but feels personal Nostalgic, or appeals to our vanity Dan’s Key Takeaways Audience is everything. Involve publishers and partners along the way. Create something remarkable. Once your content is published, your job has just begun. Always add value. The big picture: Content initiatives should be based around an editorial calendar. They should serve a larger overall strategy. In this case, these two initiatives drove links to the same place, the brand new BlueGlass Service Page. Combined, this strategy generated  natural and descriptive links: 466 inbound links from 108 unique linking domains 6,283 unique visitors the BlueGlass Next up, we have Hiten Shah  discussing social media, content marketing, and taking a high level strategic approach to content. First of all, you need to start engaging your people: Who are your customers? Where do they hang out ? How should you engage? This is not about where you can advertise to your customers, it’s where they hang out, and how you can engage with these people. So, who are your customers? Each customer is different, understand the main groups. Where do they hang out? Are there certain social networks that they are on more? What are the best ways you can engage with these people? The key is to know who you’re trying to reach, and engage these people based on where they actually are. Usually, you can double down on one place. In the last few years, on a zero budget, KISSMetrics leveraged Twitter to gain 88,000 followers, and 10,000 tweets. Without a blog, they built a following and got to know their people. Publish awesome content: Start a blog. Create content. Be consistently awesome. How to Start a Blog from Scratch   Use WordPress, self-hosted. Don’t use any other blogging platform. Use AWeber, drip email marketing. When it has to do with content initiatives. How to Create Content  It’s about creating content that people really want to read. It makes them laugh, and smile. Have an understanding of what your audience likes and dislikes. This helps you optimize your writing. Create content that teaches.  Be consistently awesome. Be ready to address any issues. KISSMetrics Case Study  Starting a blog: It costs KISSMetrics just $7.35 per sign up for 30-day trial. This was calculated by breaking down the cost of running the blog. Creating Content:  50 infographics, 300 posts, 10,000 comments Co-branding works extremely well for infographics Infographics are branding. They help people understand how you think as a business. “How do colors affect purchases?” – KISSMetrics infographic 15 k tweets 5k k likes 1 radio show “Bounce Rate Demystified” 4k Tweets 500 likes 300 LinkedIn Shares It’s best if you can create an infographic that is spot on with your audience. The next infographic is more informational. I don’t call them infographics, I call them info-guides. Infographics have lots of stats, they’re timely, they have a lot of data to back up what the infographic is about. “What Makes Someone Leave a Website” 3,900 Tweets 707 likes 366 LinkedIn Shares There’s a big difference between infographics, and info-guides. Measures and optimize your content Focus on actionable metrics for your content. It’s easy to drown in a seas of vanity metrics. Hone in on the metrics that matter based on your own specific business goals. Designing for conversions. Qualitative measurement. Quantitative measurement. Optimize and improve results. Design for Conversions. You have to collect email addresses when you first create a blog. Make sure it’s prominent on the page. Put up special bonuses – free downloads, tool kits, courses. Tailor this to your audience. Use overlays that pop up that actually hit on your audiences needs – they are willing to fill this out. These conversion rates are very high. House ads also help. One key thing you should optimize on a blog – page views per visit. Add side bars that include one of the following: most popular, case studies, latest current hits, all time, my favorite earn more, entrepreneurship, money diaries Google shows you vanity metrics – metrics that are not actionable I don’t care what analytics package it is, if they’re not giving you data for what’s actionable to you, it’s not valuable for you. Vanity metrics will kill your ROI. When it comes to measuring and optimizing, you need to have a process for what you need to test. Quality Measurement with Micro Surveys What do your readers want to read? Add “micro surveys” that ask your readers, “What should write about next?” Did readers get value from your content? Per post, get a score of its action-ability. Have a micro survey that asks “Was this article actionable” and provide only Yes [here's what I learned] and No [I was looking for...] answers. How can you improve your content? “What’s the one thing missing from our blog that you’d like to see?” Ask people, “I am a…” based on their job positions or industry How can you delight your readers? Use a survey to figure out special offers that your readers want. “If we really want to delight you and truly knock your socks off with an incentive to join our mailing list, how should we do it?” Quantitative Measurement Understand your email sign up conversion rate. Understand your sharing conversion rate – what percentage of people that visit your site, actually share? Which blog posts cause repeat readers? Which of your blog posts have sticky readers? This helps you create a readership by finding out what types of content creates repeat readers. Optimize and improve results.  It’s not the colors, it’s the words and hitting objectives that really matter. Testing button colors is lazy. Create buttons that will give your readers a decent understanding of what the product is. Test your call to action. Learn which variation leads to more repeat readers. It’s about discovering what really works for your audience and traffic. This is why micro-surveys work best. The Lean Startup: Build –> Measure –> Learn –> Build –> Measure –> Learn –> Build Download Hiten’s deck here: http://kiss.ly/kissblueglassla2012

The consumer voice is the new form of public relations. This next session will be a Q&A session with some the brightest minds in PR. Up next are HARO’s Peter Shankman and Copyblogger’s Sonia Simone to speak about a powerful public relations tool: trusted recommendation. Moderating this panel is Google’s Adam Singer. Question: Why is it that most PR people these days are so hideous?  Peter Shankman: Unfortunately, the industry hasn’t changed in 30 years. The technology to pitch journalists and hit journalists inaccurately has gotten easier and cheaper. I started HARO, which reverses the process. If you can answer the journalists, it takes the PR person out of the process. The biggest problem we have is that PR people are centered on getting their story in the press. In recent decades, the sewing circle died. Personal recommendation really went away. It was replaced by press people, telling you what movie to see, what restaurant to go to. Now,with social circles, the sewing circle is back. PR people are behind the times. They’re still married to getting the front page. You need to start talking about specific interaction with customers. Personal recommendation is the new PR, and PR hasn’t gotten this yet. Sonia Simone: Nobody cares about authority anymore, because everyone wants to know what their friend says on Facebook. That’s valid, in one sense. We don’t care so much about traditional authority figures (doctors, politicians, etc), but people still look for those who know what the hell they’re talking about. It’s your job to be awesome, and give them something to talk about. It’s a split role. You will always ask your friends, but you still need someone who knows what they’re doing at the end of the chain. Question: Because of the web, PR people need to be held to the same type of metics as marketers.  What are your thoughts on this?  Peter Shankman: The problem is, they said the same thing 30 years ago: “How much is this translating into revenue?” I’m in the belief that social media is very simple. When I worked at AOL, it was a simple premise. The internet wasn’t always free. We had one job, “Keep your users online as long as possible” because this is how you generate reveune. For every dollar you spend, you need to be making two. If you’re not generating reveunue with Social, Marketing, etc. you’re doing it wrong. If you’re pitching 75 people and not getting results, you should be fired. You need to generate revenue from PR. The trouble is, the business that continues to accept no results from PR people. Sonia Simone: What’s being measured is how many bullsh*t pitches you sent this month. If you sent a pitch to a big name, and he says f*ck off, he has a right to do so. Peter Shankman: Don’t expect a PR person to go and get you on the front page of Tech Crunch if you don’t have a story. The PR agents are at fault for taking on the client without the story. If you don’t have a story at this present time – what is your industry doing? Reporters love trends. For example, have you had incredible client success that you can turn into a story of customer service? PR works, if you have the right stuff to talk about. Sonia Simone: If you want coverage in any media, if you want people to talk about what you’re doing – do something epic.   What are you doing that’s worth talking about? Question: PR is more than just pitching. What advice do you have for a good pitch? Peter Shankman: If you can’t explain your story to 6 year old, and have that kid understand it, you don’t know what you’re talking about. So help me god, if you send me an attachment, I will call you out on Twitter so fast. Limit your pitch to three paragraphs: First paragraph: Hello, here’s what I’m about Second paragraph: Here’s why it’s specific to your readership. Third paragraph: Here’s my contact information. Anything longer than that … SQUIRREL! Sonia Simone: I don’t want to know why it’s perfect for me, I want to know why it’s relevant to my readers. Talk to me about stuff my readers want to know about. Adam Singer: Be brief, and include a link to what you’re talking about. Question: There’s a war on who owns content. People say PR should own content, some people say marketing should. Should content be a collaborative effort, who should own the content?  Peter Shankman: Content doesn’t live in a vacuum. There are different divisions of your company. The person who should own the content should be the most passionate about the content, but never let it out the door without it being proofed and clean. Bad writing is killing America, it will destroy your company. “The average attention span to gain a new customer is 2.7 – 3 seconds to get them in” – that’s a headline. Become great headline writers, because we’re a country of headline readers. There are studies that show the people who bounce within 5 seconds do so because the writing sucks. Sonia Simone: The department person who owns content should be really good at content. My favorite people are the ones who say, “what do you do?” and they answer, “I don’t know, I do a lot of stuff.” It depends on the structure of your company. Where are your really smart creative people, that don’t get along well with any other people in your company, because they’re so weird? Those are the people who should own your content. Question: What do you think PR people can do to become interesting? Peter Shankman: Take a writing class for starters. Anyone can call themselves a consultant, with no idea with what they’re doing or how they can benefit. If you want to increase your ability to provide good content, number one – take a writing class. See what other people are writing – cut, steal. Don’t plagiarize. Steal the concept of how they’re writing – does it excite you? Sonia Simone: Don’t talk like corporate robots. Good content is about your customers. If you want to create seriously good content – you need to listen to what the top ten things you customers are b*tching about. It doesn’t matter if it’s about you, or something unrelated to you. Declare war on the top ten problems your customers b*tch about in social media, and you will have enough to talk about forever Peter Shankman: Content doesn’t need to be the written word. If you don’t know how to write, then speak – do a video. Sonia Simone: Be entertaining, and useful at the same time. If you are entertaining and useful, and you sound like an illiterate ape, you’ll still be okay. Peter Shankman: Having an audience is a privilege, not a right. Give your audience what they like to hear. Don’t do contests, they bring in visitors that want free stuff, who will immediately leave. The same applies to an audience, they can go anywhere they want without a reason. Adam Singer: Copy the successful sites. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, look at what’s being done. Peter Shankman: Top ten lists still work wonders. People love numbers. Give people numbers “Top X ways to do this,” they love it. Question: What are some of the biggest mistakes that PR people are still making? Peter Shankman: Not tying something to current events. There is tons of news going on all over. How can you tie into that? Sonia Simone: It’s useful, I save money, and it’s entertaining. It always works. Adam Singer: You want to tag onto what’s happening, and be the second paragraph in that story. Question: What’s your advice for doing PR for things that aren’t as exciting?  Peter Shankman: Instead of focusing on national news coverage, try focusing on local news when relevant. The smaller the market, the better chance you have at getting something in the local news. Stop thinking big, start thinking smaller. PR doesn’t need to be in the newspaper, reach out to (outlets) themselves (that you want to get interested). Sonia Simone: Think about the story as a transformation. PR is not media relations. Public relations is now making a connection with people in the public. Sometimes it’s people who buy from you, sometimes it’s people who talk about what you do. Question:  What suggestions do you have to break the mindset of large, slow moving companies?  Peter Shankman: The greatest lover in the world is a reformed hater. Take a hater and make them happy again. Loyal customers are ones who had a problem, and you fixed the problem. Reply, listen and go out of your way to do one better. We expect to be treated like crap. Treat your customers one level above rap by listening, and they’ll be happy. Treat customers well, and they’ll do your PR for you. Sonia Simone: Find an intelligent executive, start giving them the Kool-aid. Translate between rational human thought, and executive thinking. If you can’t do it, The meteor is entering the atmosphere, and the dinosaurs have very little time left. [Find the person who is] giving a slight sh*t, versus giving no sh*t at all. You have to find the example of “if they can do it, we can do it.” That’s persuasive given to executives, give short lists. Question: We don’t want to fatigue ourselves by doing more pitches, and not burning out? Peter Shankman: If you have ten stories that you want to pitch to a report, cut it down to two. Find the best stories you have, and pitch those. Focus on the good customer experiences, and let them tell the story for you. Adam Singer: Go directly to the consumer. You don’t need media anymore – go directly to consumers. Sonia Simone: You can have your own blog. Publish your ten stories, and see what your audience picks as the most interesting story. Pitch that. The more listening you do, the more ideas that will have legs, that you didn’t have to thin of on your own. Question: How do you brainstorm ideas?  Peter Shankman: For me, I know that I have the attention span of twig. So what I do, I will never write unless I just got a workout in. Working out spurs creativity. A good hard run is the equivalent of an adderrol for some people. Try skydiving. I strongly recommend to write when the creativity strikes you. The best thing I did was get a MacBook air- it’s light I can take it anywhere. Carry a wireless 4G card, too. Best way to generate creativity is to up your exercise. Sonia Simone: It sucks. Writing for a living sucks. Don’t do it. Hire people, hire broke creative people – don’t do it yourself. It’s a rich untapped natural resource. If you insist on doing it yourself – have a tight relationship with your people. We have a community of customers. That is a great place. Look for irritation. If you look for irritation, through social media spying, etc. Go to your competitor’s page, see what’s pissing people off. Look for irritation, Anywhere there is irritation, you will have interest. Find the right answer to that question, and provide that answer. If you don’t catch your ideas, they just go away. Have something to catch your ideas. No matter how awesome it is, you’ll forget it. Adam Singer: “Write drunk, edit sober.” – Hemmingway Question: How do we extend our abilities to listen behind the walls?  Peter Shankman: Google tends to pick up specific mentions. You can get at least a sense. If you can’t get behind the wall, then join the network. Get to learn the network you’re reaching out to. Question: Peter, what were your four basic rules for writing?  Peter Shankman:  Be Transparent – if you know something about something, say it. If you’re connected in some way, say it. Otherwise, you’ll lose face. Be Relevant to your Audience. Be Brief. Learn to be top of mind. Stay connected, reach out to people and say hello. Don’t pitch, just drop a line. Never underestimate the power of being top of mind. Be a nice person, the world is full of assholes. Question: Headlines are super important. can we get a quick crash course?  Peter Shankman: The best headlines I’ve ever seen are 7 words that describe exactly what you’re pitching about. Give me something that makes me want to open an email. Read women’s magazines. Be a little self deprecating. Sonia Simone: Always put a benefit in the headlines. Reporters want trends. The headline has to tell people they’re going to get something they want. Don’t be the noise that doesn’t make sense. If it’s random and makes no sense, I won’t look at it. Make it clear, be beneficial. Use trends. Make it clear, be beneficial. If you’re at ninja level, you can include something curious. The best places to steal marketing ideas is by watching other industries. Key Takeaways Simone Takeaway: Listen to your customers. Don’t listen to what they say about you, listen what they say about your topic. Declare war on the ten topics they hate. Shankman Takeaway: Embrace the concept, not the brand. We all talk about the last greatest thing. What are the current concepts we’re dealing with? Understand your audience – they will tell you the greatest thing. I think it’s safe to say this panel made us all rethink how we interact with customers and the media! Time for lunch then we’ll be back with “The Anatomy of Successful Content Marketing Initiatives.”