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Cosmetic Surgery SEO Newsjacking Alert Example from the Apprentice

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drleah

We know how competitive “cosmetic surgery” SEO is and so that anything that can give us the edge is useful.

If you have a cosmetic surgery client you have probably already created a piece of content about Dr Leah Totton winning this years Apprentice. If you haven’t there is still time, the story is still warm but chilling as fast as a Polar Bears toenail.

But here is the bit to get your teeth into:

Thousands of viewers have called into the BBC asking for cosmetic surgery help as a result of watching the final of ‘The Apprentice’.

From Huffington Post

The thing to note is the Dr Leah Totton story is still in the popular section. As any linbkaiter wielding a large sharpened news hook knows, you target that which is in the public’s focus.

Andrea is probably joking BBC viewers suddenly realising they want to be injected with gallons of Botox (surely thousands of treatments would be over a gallon of Botox juice), but it’s a good gag and it engages you with the content.

I know I always bang on about headlines being crucial, but in the 3 step formula of linkbait it’s Attract, Engage and get a reaction. Once you have the attention of the reader through a killer headline you have to engage. A juicy line, an interesting first paragraph is what will be needed to engage the reader with the rest of the content.

The reaction that this piece of content wants is probably a social signal (note how low the Google+ social signal is).

Where to now?

Having identified that this is still a story, I would recommend a reaction post to the anti- Dr Leah Totton sentiment, which was to be expected. Reacting to this post would be an obvious one and attempting to engage the writer of the piece over social media is always a way to continue the engaging narrative.

This story is going to have long term viability in the cosmetic space because a real, well funded business backed by Lord Sugar will be happening and is going to be of interest.

Oh and ranking form “Dr Leah”, which is the name of the business, should be added to your targeted keywords if in the cosmetic surgery space.

Stories or narratives, are the bread and butter of the Newsjacker. I will in a future post tell you more about how telling stories is crucial in getting a website ranked in Google.

This is an article from the forthcoming Newsjacking Alerts service

Truro, Cornwall Christmas Shop opens on Hottest day of the year

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cornwall-christmas

On what seems to be the hottest day in the year and has driven me from the oven that is my home office to the air conditioned coolness that is the Truro Starbucks, the Cathedral has decided to open a Christmas shop.

christmas-shop

I first saw this story about 20 minutes ago on the BBC Website where it is the 4th most read story. A local newsjacking moment I thought. So quick walk in the City (more of a village really) took a few photos and spoke to the shop keep

truro-christmas-shop

The shop was a Whittards 6 weeks ago and the Church of England bought the shop as it’s so close to the Cathedral and thought lets have a shop that celebrates the birth of Christ all year long. I’m not sure they had devine advanced knowledge of the current heatwave the UK is under, but it’s perfect buzz marketing.

And of course raises the issue of local newsjacking. The Sun newspaper has already visited as have a number of other outlets, so for a day or two this will be national news.

What this has to do with an SEO site, well it’s helping focusing on the concept of newsjacking and the news alert service I am launching. If you happen to have a local business that has a blog, you should be looking at blogging about this story, it’s possible you could add another angle to it and get some publicity yourself.

Most of the time, doing a bit of newsjacking is free and usually folds in to your current process. It takes little effort to spot a bit of news, add your own twist and then push it out into the world via your blog.

Anyway, happy Christmas and pass the suntan lotion

Note: I own copyright on the pictures and only ask you to give a web link back if you use them. Or they can be puchased for £200 each

Audio Test with Evernote on the iPhone

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I’m going to go multi-media (about time) and so am going to post tests here as it’s always useful to know what kit others are using and the results.

I had posted the audio direct from my iPhone to Facebook, but I don’t like the results as it hosts the file on Evernote and it’s always better to have fewer points.

I will be testing other multimedia systems and posting the results here.

I’ve now uploaded the audio file to this post, let me know what you think of the quality.

evernote-test

Newsjacking Sports Direct for links

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This is an example of the type of email alerts you will get at Newsjacking Alerts

sports

Sports Direct shop workers hit the jackpot

2,000 Sports Direct staff to receive £100,000 bonus after record profits
Workers hit the jackpot after profits soar 40% to £200m, as sports retailer reaps benefits of 2012’s summer of sport

If you are in the sporting good niche this is an easy story to newsjack. You could offer Sports Direct employees a free bonus. For example, if you sell iPad covers you could offer a free cover to every Sports Direct employee who gets in contact with you in the next 24 hours.

Maybe something better than an iPad cover.

If you are selling a sports product you could offer a free product worth £50 -£100 to anyone working for another retail outlet, saying you don’t want them to be left out.

If you were a local shop you could make the offer open to anyone getting to your shop with their Sports Direct wage slip and offer them something tasty like an iPad mini.

Sell sports bras

Give an uplift to a local sports charities, free sports bras to local sports groups. The idea is that getting a gift is always fun. By celebrating the Sports Direct payout to staff you offer firm support to your local sports groups.

Other niches can take advantage of the concept of rewarding good work and use this story to launch a bonus for staff or even customers.

it would be a brave company that rewarded the staff of their competition, but I am thinking this would make a strong story. if there was some way you could put a caveat on the deal to limit the take up but increase the narrative.

I want to explore this idea further and see if we can come up with a digitally delivered version.

Thinking caps on

Fear that Robots are blasting Sydney Harbour Bridge from Google Maps

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Sydney_Harbour_Bridge_from_Circular_Quay
Fears have been raised that Google Maps may be removing Sydney Harbour Bridge from Google because it is now cleaned by grit blasting Robots.


BBC News website is reporting that robots developed at the University of Technology, Sydney are now operating on the bridge, applying high-pressure grit blastingcleaners and following a 3D map of the bridge area.


 As we know that Google takes a firm line on webmasters who employ robots to perform black hat techniques such as spam website creation and machine written text and we fear that Google will remove the Sydney Harbour Bridge from their newly refreshed Google Maps.


To keep the Google search index fresh Google often removes websites from their search index without warning because of robot action.


We beg the Google spam team not to remove the Sydney Harbour Bridge from Google Maps because of this robot action. These are good robots not the bad robots that spam the Internet.


Help save the Bridge.

Picture credit

Why Linkbait and Content Marketing are Basically the same thing

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A recent post on Mashable on entitled, “Stop Linkbait Before it Ruins Content Marketing” by Sam Slaughter.

linbait-v-contentmarketing

OMG, you mean Content Marketing can be ruined?

I have two positive things to say about this. First, what a cool name, “Sam Slaughter”. A quick whiz around the intertubes reveals quite a few Sam Slaughters though. The part of me that looks out of the window to stare into the distance yearns for one of them to be working in an abattoir whilst secretly writing crime fiction.

Second positive thing, it’s a great headline. Ironically baiting those who wave both the Linkbaiting flag and the Content Marketing flag. People usually get excited about such stuff when it is relative to the amount of food they can throw on the table after a day hunting on the Internet hinterland.

I love how it suggests that Linkbait should or even can be stopped, as if it’s a rampaging, well hung bull smashing through the delicate china of the content marketing shop.

And ruining “content marketing”, that’s very interesting. No, I am not being sarcastic, I really mean it. Because it is setting up a very interesting narrative in the brain. What the headline is actually doing is pandering to opposing prejudices and then exciting them in different ways. Very clever stuff.

If you are a content marketing flag waver you will feel indignant that the backstreet ruffian, Linkbait is going to ruin the Golden Goose that is content marketing. If you are a Linkbaiter you will feel indignant that any will stop Linkbait working and that the deity of media communications will throw the switch and make Linkbait work no more.

But are you thinking what I am thinking?

This article is a piece of very good linkbait, the kind of which Mashable has been built on.

Sam poses the question.

How do we create standards that ensure the quality of content stays high?

It’s quite simple Mr. Slaughter, we don’t.

There is already a mechanism for the ensuring the quality of content stays high and that is if the techniques work or not. I am in the business of training people to create content which is attractive, engaging and gets a reaction. If it does not fulfill this basic criteria then it fails.

We can label a piece of media communications linkbait, content marketing, spin or whatever, but what we call these labels are mostly for selling books, membership sites, and for the writing of Mashable headlines. Even Sam points out that such labels are vague:

The problem is that “content,” in this context, is so ill-defined and poorly understood that unscrupulous content creators flood the web with low-quality schlock meant to appeal to base online instincts. Or, as I heard someone ask recently:

The problem is that “content,” in this context, is so ill-defined and poorly understood that unscrupulous content creators flood the web with low-quality schlock meant to appeal to base online instincts. Or, as I heard someone ask recently, “Does content marketing have a side-boob problem?”

Lets ignore the fact I have no idea what a “side-boob problem” is and confirms that I do not run with the uber hip neoglogistic crowd. No professional Linkbaiter of Content marketer is interested in  “ low-quality schlock”, because it simply does not work long term and it’s the long term where the big payoff lays

These articles are useful as they force us to question what the labels actually mean and discover what is working when it comes to persuasion communication.

Persuasion Communication, is the fundamental term we should be using, but it doesn’t scan and it isn’t fluffy. The term sits under the aim of nearly all media that we see every say.  We write and create media to persuade the reader on a number of levels.

I must say though, the mashable article did raise the ire of some of the linkbaiters on Linkbait Coaching. Which created a great learning opportunity.

It’s all about the Comments

I find the comments of blog posts a very interesting place to understand the mind set of people in the space.  The comments on this post reveal a savvy audience.

Mxx points out:

Linkbaiting..you mean like today Mashable’s:

15 Young Adult Books Every Adult Should Read
14 Tips to Nail Down Demographics
11 Words We Learned on the Wienermobile
10 TMI Parent Moments on Facebook
11 Musical Vine Videos That’ll Get Stuck in Your Head
10 Mom Blogs Full of Inspiring Advice

and Andre Dubreuil says:

I find it highly ironic to read an article decrying link baiting on Mashable and I’m sure I’m not the only one. There’s hardly any room for real articles on this site among all the insignificant top x lists and Google+ is a ghost town kind of rehashed nonsense that is found in here at the best of time

Which gives me hope that the crowd gets the concepts behind this post and understands the fundamentals at work here.

Although I must confess I am regarded more as a linkbaiter, than a content marketer, I find the terms interchangeable and which one I use depends more upon the person I am speaking to and their mind set.

Is it me or have the articles on Mashable got better recently, or perhaps I only notice the stuff I want to notice. It’s still a great place to go and learn a few things and whilst engaging writers like Sam Slaughter are hanging out there I will be reading.