eflannery

M Posted 8 years 5 months ago

t 9 min read

Connecting SEO and content marketing trends and strategies with the people that execute them

At BrightEdge, helping our customers succeed is at the heart of everything we do. And this year, we continued to build and expand our programs and events to help our customers thrive in the fast-paced and ever-changing digital marketing landscape. In 2017, our investment in our users is reflected through success in three pillars: SEO Conference Share Global Insights Tour, SEO/Content Marketing User Groups, and the SEO and Digital Marketing Webinar Series. These three types of events were designed to inspire through thought leadership, promote best practices that deliver real results, and provide networking opportunities with other leading marketers to fuel personal and professional performance. Let’s dive into these events and see how the BrightEdge Community pushed the boundaries of the SEO and Content Marketing landscape in 2017.

The BrightEdge SEO Webinar Series: Taking SEO and Content Marketing to the Next Level

If you haven’t joined the 30,000+ community members engaging with our webinars this year, you are missing out! In 2017, BrightEdge hosted 27 public webinars featuring community speakers on a wide range of subjects including:

• Developing Pre-Optimized Content
• Debunking the Myths: Organic and Content Marketing Convergence
• Beyond SEO: Connecting Content to Conversions
• SEO, The Heart of Digital Marketing

On24 put it best in their recent 2017 Benchmarks Report: “Webinars have the ability to deliver deep and engaging content at a time when so many other communications are superficial or 'snackable.'” Webinars dive deep into the subjects’ marketers care about most and are a convenient means to access the best thought leadership in the business. Here’s what the community had to say about #brightedgewebinar:   

There are still five webinars coming up in the Fall Webinar Series for both B2B and B2C tracks. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to further develop your SEO and Content strategy!  Don't forget you can always access these webinars on-demand here.

BrightEdge User Groups: Connecting with the very best in SEO

Regional BrightEdge User Groups are a popular new element of the community in 2017. These customer-led groups meet to network and keep ahead of the latest trends impacting search sharing best practices to elevate the role of SEO across their organizations. So far, there are 11 user groups in the following cities: New York, London, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Austin, Dallas, Seattle, and San Francisco, with groups in development in Cleveland, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Nearly 400 customers have joined the community and the momentum is growing! Sam Khandelwal, senior director of marketing strategy and business development at Position 2, spoke about his experience with the local User Groups:

“The User Group in San Francisco has helped connect me with a lot of different ideas and insights and all of the ways we were not using the BrightEdge platform, and helps connect with folks who have similar ideas.”

If you are interested in joining the BrightEdge User Group near you, sign up to join today.

Share Global Insights Tour 2017: The Leading SEO Conference is a Wrap!

On October 4, BrightEdge concluded its Share Global Insights Tour with the final SEO conference in Chicago. Share, a series of four one-day SEO conferences for digital marketers, by digital marketers, stopped in New York, London, and San Francisco. This year’s tour saw even greater attendance than our three-day event in 2016, a great sign of community momentum. Read more about the first half of the tour. This year’s tour was centered around The Convergence of SEO and Content Marketing. At BrightEdge, we believe that performance starts with Smart Content and Smart Content starts by understanding consumer intent — which is possible through search. The Share Global Insights Tour aimed to give digital marketers actionable takeaways on how SEO and Content Marketing work together to deliver better marketing results. Great examples included:

• Scott Mowery, director of digital marketing for Cleveland Clinic, explained how site redesign helped drive both the general public and patients seeking care to the Cleveland Clinic site for general health tips and urgent medical needs [Share Chicago]
• Laura Ann Mitchell, Cisco, shared her journey and best practices around extending the value of search beyond the SEO channel and how to move SEO upstream in an organization by leveraging search to develop messaging, persona mapping and ultimately drive deeper engagement with your audience. [Share San Francisco]

A huge takeaway from the SF and Chicago stops of the Tour was the introduction of BrightEdge Content. Avi Bhatnagar of WhiteHat Security gave a live demo of the new product, showing just how easy it is to identify profitable topic opportunities and create new content that’s tuned for user experience and search success. Avi encouraged the audience to replace the traditional content marketing waterfall model with a new Smart Content methodology that focuses on customer intent, content optimization prior to publication, and embedding CTAs and dynamic content recommendations for maximum content performance. In his article for Search Engine Watch, digital marketing strategist and Share speaker Clark Boyd recapped key conference takeaways including his vision on teamwork and SEO.

“Working in SEO in 2017, therefore, requires a broad range of skill sets, from the technical through to the strategic and the interpersonal. Frankly, SEO fails if it exists in a vacuum and it requires input from across departments to reach its full potential.”

We would like to give a big “thank you” to Clark and the other 32 speakers who lead breakout sessions, spoke on panels, shared (pun intended) their valuable insights on stage in 2017. Check out the agendas and full lists of speakers New York, London, San Francisco, and Chicago.  

What’s next? Plans for 2018

BrightEdge is excited to announce that the Share Global Insights Tour is returning in 2018 and our flagship SEO conference, Share San Francisco, will take place October 9-10, 2018, at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. This two-day event will be packed with persona-based breakout sessions, dynamic keynotes, and a BrightEdge Certification course. Read the press release. Make sure to check our events page for updates on Share San Francisco and the other stops on the 2018 Global Insights Tour as they are announced! Specific questions about the Global Insights Tour can be sent to events@brightedge.com. This year, the BrightEdge Community has become an impactful network that shares insights, platform best practices, and, most of all, elevates the role of SEO and Content Marketers across the industry. We look forward to building on our community success in 2018 with more engaging events! Are you a part of the BrightEdge Community? Share your favorite moments of 2017 in the comments below!

maspillera

M Posted 8 years 5 months ago

t 9 min read

Doing small team SEO is often the reality. The lack in head count can be made up for in choosing the right kind of digital marketing talent and investing in cross-functional training. Running an effective digital marketing campaign with a small team can be daunting. It's doable, however, with a combination of planning, training, and technology. This two-part series will offer advice for helping brands to maximize resources in their small teams.

Businesses may find success particularly difficult to achieve without a strong digital marketing presence. 94% percent of B2B buyers report that they use online research before making a purchase. Forty-seven percent of millennials also report that their purchases are influenced by social media. Organizations that don't appear in the digital space, by way of the SERPs and a following on social media, will have lost the opportunity to engage with these customers, thus losing many opportunities to grow revenue. Creating and maintaining an online presence can, however, feel overwhelming.

There's a bevy of competing responsibilities. Building presence also involves more steps than just building a website and then forgetting about it. More than a billion websites currently live online. Buyers interested in a particular product or service have their choice of vendors/providers to patronize. Those prospective customers navigate towards their preferred brands through Search. Therefore, success typically comes to those who meet the buyer’s needs throughout their journey, so that they become the business of choice when the time for making a purchase arrives.

A major challenge facing many brands of all sizes, however, is navigating this rapidly changing, multifaceted discipline with limited resources. Numerous BrightEdge partners, for example, have to make digital marketing work for their organizations with as few as 1 to 3 professionals dedicated to the endeavor. That said, we believe that with training, proper planning, and technology, success is possible. The first step to successful small team SEO, however, is making sure that you have the right team in place.

Hybridization is key: Building a hybrid team

When you only have a few people on your marketing team, ensuring that each member can wear several hats is critical. A strong online presence is built on an effective website and smart content, complemented with effective SEO to ensure brand visibility in Organic Search. Email and social must also be used to keep up consistent communication with prospects across multiple moments in the buyer’s journey. Paid search can bolster the traffic to the site and help the brand to capture attention even on keywords they might otherwise struggle to rank for. These are three huge digital disciplines that can have (and have had) entire books written about them. BrightIdeas Webinar: Crushing the SEO Silo in 2017 These various disciplines should be combined, with a single member of the team leading multiple specialties.

For example, the responsibilities of website content, content marketing, and SEO could fall to a single person. In addition to team members needing to handle different angles of digital marketing, the members of the team must also be able to work seamlessly together. While the trend towards tearing down silos between marketing contributors has been playing out across teams of all sizes, for a small team, ensuring that all members can collaborate well and understand each other’s objectives and goals is a mission critical. Without that cooperation, you will struggle to realize the full potential of any of the employees managing your digital marketing.

The importance of collaboration

The value of breaking down marketing silos lies in the improved experience it provides to the end user. Customers expect a uniform experience across all platforms. Sixty percent of Millennials report that when they interact with brands online, they want to have the same experience regardless of how they initiate contact. These buyers will interact with organizations across many platforms including email, social media, and SERP listings -- both organic and paid. The voice the customer hears and the information they receive should be the same regardless of medium. Customers now move through the buyer’s journey by touching a series of micro-moments. These moments can occur in any order and any time frame. Brands who understand user intent, and thereby meet the needs of buyers regardless of the micro-moment they happen to occupy, will see the greatest growth and success in digital marketing.

Assembling a hybrid skill set for small team SEO success

Many teams who are trying to grow their digital expertise already have a team of contributors built out. This means that aforementioned goals of creating a team of hybrid professionals seems out of reach. It doesn't have to be, however. For these teams, professional growth can be done in-house and on the job. There are a variety of online resources that can provide the motivated professional with the information they need to become proficient across different marketing specialties. Google Analytics, for example, offers free online courses that teach professionals about using the GA platform and gaining insights from website performance data, empowering site owners with a ton of directional metrics. There are also webinars across the web that touch on different digital marketing subjects. Attending reputable ones and taking advantage of Q&A sessions can be an excellent means of learning from professionals in the field. Learn more about BrightEdge’s webinars here.

As you build the skills and techniques of your contributors, make sure that everyone understands their respective responsibilities. Although on a small team everyone should work together, knowing who will lead initiatives in social, or who to coordinate with for a paid campaign, is helpful for efficiency and ensures that all bases are covered. The training offered to the team should reflect those delineations. You should also work on developing outlines that describe how team members will work together. For example, have regular check-in meetings to sync on your campaigns and the respective roles that each member will play in them. Working efficiently with a small team and finding success is possible if you're motivated. It requires initiative and building skill sets to better incorporate the different disciplines of digital marketing. Opt in to BrightEdge blog push notifications to be notified when Part 2 is out.