Beyond Analytics: The best SEO Tools for Content Marketers
“We all want content marketing results, but they can be hard to get without the right SEO tools. Here is a list containing 27 search optimization essentials.”
SEO changed over the past few years through the Google Search algorithm updates: from being a complex, tech process involving back links and labor – and to be fair not always very “white hat” – it became synonym for “regularly publish great content“.
This means that SEO tools have considerably changed and while analytics tools like Google’s or Moz are still very important, they help you measure but they don’t solve the main problem content marketers have: how to scale the content volume without sacrificing quality.
So we’re not surprised to see content-focused tools in…
Read MoreImportant Stats You Should Know from Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report
Last week, Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers presented her Internet Trends report for 2014 at the Code Conference in California. Each year since 2001, KPCB has partnered with some of the best data analysts in the country to create a comprehensive report of rising Internet trends across all industries. This year, the presentation resulted in a 164-slide deck that you can read in its entirety here. Since we’re fans of tl;dr analyses & content curation, though, here are some of the most important points from the first half of the report.
Read MoreBrand Stories vs. Product Stories
Read MoreOne of my core beliefs of effective content marketing is to deliver content people actually want. Publish stories they actually will enjoy – to read and to share.
Livin’ on the Edge: 7 Sites That (Thankfully) Don’t Hold Back
Where do you get your news? Some sources are too concerned about political correctness to give the news the treatment it deserves. The following are some news websites that (thankfully) don’t hold back.
Read MoreLearning to Learn: How To Look Like an Expert From Day One
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Working in the world of entrepreneurs and startups has given me a whole new appreciation for the phrase “fake it ’til you make it.” This isn’t to say that everyone who is just getting started in their companies or careers in general is completely faking it, but just that they are doing the right things to position themselves correctly before they might actually be a full-fledged expert.
In this post on Entrepreneur.com, the extremely smart Dorie Clark tackles a question that almost all of us have tried to figure out at one point or another: how do I make myself seem like I know what I’m doing when I’m just getting started?
Read MoreHow to Unleash the Power of Employee Advocacy
Every one of your people can become an advocate for your organization and your brand – an employee advocate.
Excellent point made by Mike Bailey that reminds me of an argument also made by Marketo here. And exactly the trend we see happening with more and more of our enterprise clients at Scoop.it: while a lot of companies are still in a command-and-control mode with small marketing teams in charge of every aspect of outbound communication, we see a growing number of organizations realize they need to leverage their employees – and their employees social network – so that their communication becomes much more effective.
As the graph above explains, an employee sharing content to their networks has up to 20x more impact than when the brand does it (when you normalize their number of followers/friends).
Content curation plays a key role here: you not only need to create relevant and engaging content hubs for employees but they need to be easy for them to curate, share and publish from. As often, adoption is key and you need systems where employees can easily take ownership through a rewarding experience which seems to be what’s driving more and more demand to use Scoop.it internally within the enterprise.
See on socialmediatoday.com
Read MoreCan SMB’s afford the impressive ROI of Content Marketing?
Is content marketing worth it? Can your company achieve a positive ROI by investing in blogging, social media, and marketing automation?
A great compilation of studies on the ROI of content marketing from Eloqua and Hubspot. There are lots of interesting numbers which show how valuable content marketing can be in the long run: unlike advertising which costs increase with success, content marketing scales up by delivering economies of scale with lower and lower costs per lead or visitor.
Now, the caveat is that these studies focus on sizeable organizations who can afford the following investments: “According to Eloqua’s findings, a mid-sized organization should expect to spend approximately $12,000 a month and a larger-sized company could expect about $33,000 a month.”
This raises the question of the accessibility of content marketing to small and mid-size businesses. To really be the new advertising, Content Marketing needs to become accessible to all – hence the growing interest for leancontent solutions and tools.
See on www.business2community.com
Read MoreHow Martin Smith Uses Scoop.it To Find Content Marketing’s Over / Under
Visual Marketing Over/Under or How I Use Scoop.it
Friends like Phil Buckley and Mark Traphagen are curious about how and why I use Scoop.it. This G+ post shares a detailed analysis of how Scoop.it helps reduce #contentmarketing risks, provides fast feedback to influence social media marketing and creates a safe envrionment to test assumptions, create validated learning and learn fast.
7 types of online influencers and who to target based on your goals
Read MoreAhh, Influencers. A key component to your social media and inbound marketing success. Not only do we need them to propel our marketing efforts to the next level, but they also play a large part of your relationship marketing strategy. An Influencer campaign should be a part of your social media engagement strategy.
The Science behind viral stories on the Web
From the New Yorker: “When Jonah Berger was a graduate student at Stanford, in the early aughts, he would make a habit of reading page A2 of the Wall Street Journal, which included a list of the five most-read and the five most-shared articles of the day. “I’d go down to the library and surreptitiously cut out that page,” he recalls. “I noticed that what was read and what was shared was often different, and I wondered why that would be.” What was it about a piece of content—an article, a picture, a video—that took it from simply interesting to interesting and shareable? What pushes someone not only to read a story but to pass it on?”
This piece that Gregg Morris initially scooped on how some people have been putting a lot of analysis to understand how and why stories go viral: after all – as this great article points out – this was already something Aristotle was intrigued by.
The findings are interesting and I encourage you to read them as it can inform your content strategy. Keep in mind the conclusion however – which I think is great and wise: the more we understand viral content collectively, the less we understand it.
Why?
Because whenever humans are involved, martingales don’t exist for long.
It reminds me of financial markets: whenever stock information is perfectly distributed and statistical models are the same for everybody, no one really has an edge.
For content, the same that applies: when everybody’s trying to do an Upworthy-like headline, they become much less effective than they used to be.
See on www.newyorker.com
Read MoreWhat is Google Authorship? Tips and Resources
Last week, Scoop.it announced its integration with Google+ Pages and Google Authorship. As CEO Guillaume Decugis explained, “we actually believe curation is a form of creation. So just as Google introduced Google Authorship as a way for publishers to be more visible in search results and benefit from a natural SEO method, we felt it was also important to add Google+ to the platform. So from now on, you will be able to link your Google+ profile to Scoop.it and not only be recognized in search results for your curated content but derive higher traffic from Google Search through the improved visibility authored results enjoy.”
Read More5 ways curators can improve user experience
Most people curate for the benefit of themselves or their organisations. What if we considered content curation from a user centered design perspective? What would audience centered curation look like?
An interesting look at curation from the user experience side.
For Content Curation to generate goodwill – in whichever form you can see it: thought leadership, brand awareness, lead generation, etc… – it needs to be first and foremost valuable to your reader.
How can you make curated content not only more useful and interesting to your audience, but ensure that they are having an enjoyable and successful experience consuming this content?
Great tips from Sam Burrough.
See on weelearning.co.uk
Read More4 ways to leverage the Interest Graph through impacting Content Curation
As the volume of content published on the Internet continues to grow, consumers can help shield themselves from the noise that doesn’t matter to them by curating only the content that matters on interest graph platforms
Content curation and the Interest Graph are two different things but are deeply connected. While some content curators like Maria Popova are great at being eclectic, a lot of value to readers come from being able to discover and read from publishers who address the specific niches they’re interested in.
Chad Politt from Digital Relevance clearly establishes that connexion in this contribution to the Huff Post and I would draw the following conclusions for content strategists and content curators:
Read MoreThe decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO
Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.
The head of the Google Webspam team has spoken: guest blogging is now on the hook and won’t be an SEO strategy you can rely on in 2014.
Following the demise of massive link building (which now can have adverse effects), this is another strategy once recommended by traditionnal SEO consultants that disappears as part of Google’s strategy to fight spam, cheap SEO tricks and promote great quality content in search results. The more Google Search evolves, the more it relies on new criteria such as social signals to promote quality content.
What this means is there’s no way around this simple truth now: to come up in search results, you need to publish good quality content and add value – either through great original content or carefully curated quality pieces. And in the race to publish great content frequently, it’s likely you will find the latter very useful.
See on www.mattcutts.com
Read More2013: What You Read
Ahh, December. The best time of year for bloggers. The one month at the end of every year where we take the time to look back over the last 11 and – you guessed it – make lots of lists. Lists of fails and lists of wins, lists of bests and lists of worsts.
As Buzzfeed has certainly proven, everyone loves a list. Lists are easy to write, easy to read, and extremely shareable (hello, #leancontent!). But, what makes a list even more exciting is objectivity. I’m sure my list of the best albums of 2013 would be extremely different than my dad’s. There’s one thing that doesn’t lie, though, and that’s numbers. That’s why I decided to make an end of the year list based on your opinions, rather than my own. Take a look back, re-enjoy the 6 top posts from the Scoop.it blog from this year, re-share them, and if you happen to be inspired, start writing your very own post for us for 2014!
How Content Curation is reshaping learning organizations
A framework for using Curation in a learning organisation
This excellent and very comprehensive article looks stall the aspects in which content curation is transforming organizations – from individual professional development to collective collaborative learning and communication.
“Increasingly we are being challenged to deliver ‘more with less’ in the learning department. Curation potentially holds an interesting answer to some of the constraints we’re facing in time and cost. Why build new content, when you can curate?”
Bill Gates once stated that in the future the way we would control information in business would determine whether we win or lose. Here’s an interesting framework to be among the winners.
See on www.ht2.co.uk
Read MoreCan Facebook People-Centric Model Really Scale?
In 2008, Mark Zuckerberg laid out his theory about people sharing content on Facebook. “I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and [the] next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before,” he said.
This article reminded me of my own post on Business Insider predicting that the Facebook people-centric model will see its limits. Two years and one IPO down the road, we’re exactly there: with 1,500 potential stories to show to an average user news feed every time they visit, Facebook has a tough time determining what’s really important.
Perhaps more importantly, Facebook lost its raison d’etre
Read More4 Steps to Becoming a Modern Sales Professional
“The Internet has changed the role of sales forever (…) what’s even more interesting is the source of where the information is coming from. In most cases it’s not the brand you’re researching, but a highly regarded 3rd party expert – or influencer – in the industry.” [See on traackr.com]
Read MoreHow much is twitter worth (to small businesses)?
Today the third major social network is becoming a public company. As with all major IPO’s, we will read a lot of diverse and conflicting opinions on its valuation: to some Twitter will be an overpriced money-losing startup, to others it will be the next major player of the Web and undervalued.
To add a data point to the debate, the Scoop.it team decided to study the value of social networks to small and mid-size businesses.
Read MoreWhy Bashing Content Curation Is Not The Answer
Eric Wittlake uses a provocative title to list four reasons why content curation is not a silver bullet in b2b content marketing. While I agree with him there are no silver bullets in marketing, he makes some points which I disagree with.
Read MoreWhy we’re more creative when we’re tired, and 9 other surprising things about how brains work
Read MoreYou may be hardwired as an introvert or an extrovert. But don’t worry there are ways to change how our brains work.
Driving revenue with social, content, marketing automation
Slodes of the talk Jason Miller gave at the Scoop.it #leancontent meetup on Sept. 25, 2013.
We recently hosted our event series, #leancontent, with a guest from LinkedIn. His presentation focuses on driving revenue using smart content and optimized distribution steams. Check it out!
See on www.slideshare.net
Read More8 common mistakes in how our brains think and how to prevent them – – The Buffer Blog
What are the biggest thinking mistakes all of us do nearly every day? We’ve collected the 8 biggest thinking mistakes here today for you:
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5 free tools to organize your thoughts | PCWorld
Web-based text outliners range from Notepad-like simplicity to sophisticated, searchable, collapsible idea wranglers.
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10 educational and enlightening Twitter accounts you should follow
Twitter may share some things with Facebook, but it’s ultimately a different beast altogether.
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Content curation for SEO — from professional purposes to personal passions
Editor’s Note: We’ve always held that content curation (with added insight and value) is great for SEO. The below infographic (courtesy of TechMagnate and Beth Kanter) lays out some of the benefits of content curation.
What exactly is content curation? To Scoop.it, its the “meaningful selection and sharing of online content for professional purposes or personal passions.” Professional purposes run the gamut from thought leadership to product marketing, and personal passions can be gathering and sharing knowledge about anything that gets your engine going. Many people curate every day without knowing it — whether it is sharing an insightful article they discovered on their favorite blog or retweeting a thought leader of their choosing. Curation is everywhere!
Read MoreTwo models of success for European startups | Tech Cocktail
29 ways to stay creative [infographic] via dailyinfographic.com
Editor’s Note: As content curators, we sometimes think we might not have anything super interesting to say or struggle to add value on top of the message within the content we’re curating. Here are a few ways to re-spark your creativity while curating! Enjoy!
Stealing images from the web vs using images ethically [infographic] | visua.ly
Editor’s Note: Copyright and fair use of images is oftentimes a difficult set of rules to follow. It’s very easy with the tools available (namely Google Image search) to grab pictures and use them without thinking whether you are using that image fairly or not. While this infographic is a bit self-promotional on behalf of imgembed.com, they are a useful platform for making the web a better, more fair place. Take a look!
Read MoreMedium and being your own platform – Marco.org
Some interesting insights in this article about writing for external sites instead of your own individual “platform.” All of this is based on the assumption, however, that to have a platform, one must have their own blog or original content at all. Is this true?
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