This is what good content looks like.
I love the Blues Brothers and I love lego, what’s not to like?
Feed the viewer of your content as if it were a Velociraptor
When creating content you should always serve the meat first and then let the viewer gnaw on the bones after, if they so desire.
My thinking when it comes to this stuff is to put the meat above the fold and then allow the detail to be revealed to those who wish to scroll. This rewards the hit and run viewer who simply wants the meat and then to share it, and the viewer who likes to spend more time and dig down to rich detail and then share.
When you have made the massive effort of tempting the ravenous viewer to your page, to feast on your tasty content, don’t make them work for it.
Feed them Seymore
Don’t make them have to think. Viewers when asked may like to pretend they like classics like Dostoyevsky, but John Grisham always sells more. Don’t make them have to scroll further to get to the meat because even if the meat is the tastiest in the world, the viewer will probably give up before they get to the end..
The importance of having the meat above the fold is huge, as most people will even give great stuff a cursory glance. Content has to impact fast and smash it in the viewers face. The detail, the complexity and the “take the viewer on a journey”, comes after that and rewards those who stick around and want a deeper narrative.
It is tricky because when we create something we have been taught to take the viewer on a journey, this thinking developed for magazines and books, when the viewer had little distraction or need to quickly move on, as they had bought the book/magazine and intend to read as much as possible.
Same doesn’t apply to web content.
I see the modern web browser as a starving Velociraptor. They are not too concerned with the complex flavours or that hint of truffle oil.
They want meat and they want it now.
My solution is to radically change your layout so that the meat is always served first, and then as the blood drips from the Velociraptor’s teeth, let them gnaw on the bones of the detail.
The aim is to create art that satisfies the hunger on viewing and then allows for further investigation and confirmation that the content is worthy of a social signal or a link.
This thinking underlies my philosophy when I consult with clients on content that gets shared.
I hope my thoughts on this helps.
How to Compete with Kim Kardashian’s Ass
When you publish content online you are competing with the most attractive, most powerful content, humankind has ever thought up. Stop thinking you are competing only within your niche….
You are also competing with:
- Buzzfeed.com
- Netflix
- Donald Trump comments
- Star Trek
- Lunch
- Plants Vs Zombies
- Huffingtonpost.com
- and last but not least, Kim Kardashian’s Ass
The point is, don’t only consider the very small space that is your target website niche. Any niche is small compared to all the content that people are bombarded daily with and all this content is competing for the attention of your target. More content than a target may be interested in is being produced each day, this is what you are competing with when creating content.
When I was growing up – it was not that different to this Hovis advert – we had three TV channels to choose from, and to buy a newspaper, book or magazine you actually had to go outside and visit the shop, facing the problems of actually having to interact with people.
Effort and energy on the part of the reader had to be expended to be exposed to the content they wanted, this may have meant having to be in front of the TV at a specific time, or walk into town to buy the latest 2000AD.
Content creators back then (were not called “content creators”) had a lot less to compete with. The effort of publishing and actually getting the content in front of your target in the form of a magazine or TV program was usually enough. You didn’t really need to think about marketing that content like you do now, because the barrier to shipping was huge.
Now the barrier to shipping is a few mouse clicks.
To get traffic to a website you simply need to curate a blog post around Kim Kardashian’s Ass. Not that I am recommending that, but I want to highlight how easy it is to create content that people will be interested in and that TV, Tablets, Movies, etc. are also competing for the attention of your target.
90% of your content is useless. I make this claim after years of looking at clients and prospective clients websites and being asked to provide content marketing consultation. Most content is created by dead eyed copywriters, chained to the desk between 9 – 5, who care little about the words flowing from their keyboard and more about hitting the required word count.
Most content is without:
Passion
Usefulness
Most content does not have a chance, even if you only compare it with the daily output within that particular website’s niche, let alone competing with all the other great content attracting your target audience.
Beware those who say, “content is king”. They just don’t understand the space.
That was great in a time where Kings were rare, nowadays the Kings outnumber the peasants.
The solution is to have a Content Marketing Strategy.
It’s a fancy term isn’t it, one that is designed to wow and impress. What it means is that all your content shares one specific aim, which is tied up with your business model, your brand strategy and all sorts of other management speak guff. It’s something that goes down to the bones of what your business is about.
I know this kind of stuff is hard for a lot of website owners and business people to get their head around, I go through this each time I consult with clients on this matter.
It’s all about the Strategic Plan and using a combined forces mentality to build a machine that will compete with the posterior of any reality TV show star.
9 Keys to Effective Content Marketing
1. Content has to have passion
2. Content should have a compounding interest effect
3. Content should be seen as a long term asset
4. Content should inform the reader of how to feel about your brand
5. Content creation should involve building a network of fans
6. Content should deliver a measurable and effective ROI
8. Content should resonate with the targeted reader
SEO Success is more about Communication Strategy
This is a response to Eric Enge’s post
Why Is It So Hard to Increase Your Search Rankings By One Spot?
So the way to be perceived as the best is, in fact, to be the best. In today’s web world that doesn’t simply mean having the best product or service, but also the best plan for actively communicating that on the web.
Blogs and social media sites give you a way to do that in a non-commercial manner, and actively engage with communities, peers, influencers, and potential customers. These actions may not drive revenue directly, but they will help build up your brand.
Bold added
I’ve found that a simple answer confuses most people, or at least a lot of people who ask me how to rank their website in Google.
To echo Eric Enge, the answer is to be the best and to be perceived as the best. The perception part is important and is something that a lot of people struggle with when building businesses on the web.
Your offering can be the best whilst it is not perceived to be the best.
Perception is crucial.
It does not matter what you think about your stuff, it matters what other people think.
or
“It does not matter what you say it matters what people think you say.”
I see mediocre blog posts being tweeted more than brilliant blog posts all the time. Why, because the perception is that a specific blog post must be better because it’s published on a certain blog or by a certain author. It is not always the specific blog post that triggers such shares, rather it is the perception that this blog post must be worth sharing because of other factors.
Even when it might not be worth sharing.
Conversely, if the perception of a blog or blogger is low and yet they sometimes produce gold, it is liable to not get shared. This perception could be interpreted as branding of both the author and the website or blog.
It ties into what Eric was talking about because if something is perceived as being good, then the author must have some skills in communication and Google wants to send people to websites that can communicate well.
The ability to communicate must be pervasive, not only on the website but on other websites who link to website. The communication footprint which is sent out must be of a certain quality and usefulness.
You can think of it as branding if you like, but that’s oversimplifying. How communication is done has an effect on branding, but it is not branding.
It’s how you communicate, rather than “what your content is like”, that is more important.
Your content is merely a vehicle for your communication.
Most clients who come to me do not have a communication strategy, or even a social media or content strategy. That needs to be fixed, you need all the communication output to tie together and work towards specific goals. One bit of linkbait is not going to do this.
The most useful thing I offer clients is to create a Content Marketing strategy, or if you will a communication strategy. It’s not cheap and it goes deep into the problem and it’s also not cheap to implement. But having a road map such as this save a huge amount of time and money in the long run and it also gives you the ability to get where you are going more effectively.
In conclusion, it’s important to remember that SEO is not just about Excel spreadsheets and keyword data, etc. It’s about communicating to other human beings on a mass and yet intimate level. It requires a deep level of understanding about how human beings communicate and how their behavior can be infulenced by such communication.
Facebook is Dead
Read a very interesting article over at Marketingweek.co.uk written by Mark Ritson, about fickle teens, and came across a great quote
Do you really imagine that Facebook will remain the de-facto social media standard by the time today’s 13-year-olds exit the teenage segment in 2020? Do you really believe Facebook is somehow immune from the same disease that infected MySpace?
The writer goes on to say.
The data supporting a teen defection from Facebook remains qualitative at this stage. I am certainly in no position to suggest that Facebook is already losing teen users or that they are already spending less time on the site. But the key lesson from Abercrombie is that while Facebook’s teen downfall may not yet be upon us, it is nonetheless inevitable and will be expeditious once it begins.
There is a saying in share trading, “trying to buy at the bottom of the market is like trying to catching a falling knife”.
Likewise basing your business decisions on if and when a particular social media system is no longer worth the ROI is not very efficient and you could easily get stabbed in the back of the hand by the falling knife.
Google trends reporting for searches based on in quotes, “Facebook is Dead”.
We cannot predict when the fall from grace will happen, but we can design our online marketing strategy to be nimble, fast and adaptable. If you are told, “you need to get ready for change.”
You are listening to the wrong people.
Change has to be in your DNA.
When things move online they move fast, you need to be adaptable. If you think, “I’ve marketed on Facebook, it’s been good to me so I will always market on FB.” You will be dead.
Adaptability should be hard wired into your online marketing plan.
It should seep into your content marketing strategy to take advantage of techniques like Newsjacking, where you need to act swift and decisively.
The image is of Shackleton, a man who was able to adapt to enormous changes in his situation and survive a disasterous journey to the South Pole. You can get a great book about his journey, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage to the Antarctic
Afflink attached.