As Share15 approaches, we’re doubling down on our efforts to spread the word on content performance marketing. With content in mind, we’re excited to extend an invitation to our upcoming Twitter chat!

Follow #ContentBattleground on September 3rd at 11am PDT to see Share15 speakers from brands, like Cabela’s, The Home Depot, VMWare and Stone Temple Consulting (and a few big-brand special guests!) discuss and answer questions on all things related to content performance marketing. And don’t forget your own questions! We want to hear from you. The session will be moderated by Amberly Dressler of Website magazine.

So why #ContentBattleground? With brands opening microsites, producing how-to videos, and even opening their own publishing houses, content marketing has never been more prevalent — and essentially more competitive. As more and more brands invest in content, the landscape becomes increasingly crowded: a true content battleground.

But it’s not enough to just show up and stake your claim anymore — with more and more competitors entering the landscape, brands are finding that they have to fight amongst each other for share of voice. That’s where content performance marketing comes into play. While churning out content and spreading it around haphazardly may have worked once, the game has changed. For the best shot at success, marketers need their strategies to be powered by data-driven insights. When they see where they stand, where their competitors stand and where the opportunity areas are, they can develop a clear plan of attack that will lead to victory.

We look forward to discussing the Ins and Outs of the #ContentBattleground with you during our Twitter chat. And to continue the conversation, don’t forget to register for Share15, where we’ll have dozens of sessions and hands-on labs that can continue to arm you with information to help you find success on the content battleground.

Retail Marketing Advantage

Online shopping has become an increasingly important factor in the retail industry. Online retail revenue had 11 percent growth, year-over-year, during the first quarter of 2014. Online shopping retail is projected to continue to grow from $231 billion in 2012 to $370 billion by 2017. It is also estimated that more than a third of every dollar spent in retail stores has been influenced by digital interactions with the brand. For businesses to thrive in the modern marketplace, they must be able to succeed online. At Share15 we want to help our retail attendees gain the insights they need to make their online goals a reality. That is why we have brought in speakers from some of the leading retail brands to discuss some of the most pressing issues impacting those in this vertical. 

Creating a remarkable experience

The core challenge for many retail brands is to find a way to get their voice heard above the crowd. The marketplace today has become incredibly saturated with products and brands that fill nearly every niche available and it is extremely difficult to develop a product that cannot also be purchased from a competitor. This means that retailers must focus instead on the buyer’s experience. They need to be enticing from the first interaction with the customer through the transaction and even after the customer has made their purchase. Creating this outstanding experience begins online. An estimated 81 percent of shoppers will conduct online research before they make a purchase. This includes 60 percent who will use a search engine to look for specific products. People are interested in learning more about their options and what is available to help them solve their problem.

Retailers must focus on answering this need to begin the creation of a fantastic experience. Knowing exactly who your customers are and what they want to learn about can be particularly helpful. This can be done by constructing customer personas that illustrate the central categories of customers that your business attracts and what drives those customers to make a purchase. This will guide your content development, your optimization efforts and your personalization initiatives.

At Share15 you will be able to dive deeply into the creation of  customer personas and how to leverage data to understand your audience. Gain insights about how to create content for multiple personas and how to use your content to build engagement. Jesse Farley of retail giant Cabela’s and Erin Everhart of The Home Depot will be two of the presenters. You can also listen to Adam Audette of RKG speak about going beyond the algorithm. Many retailers struggle with the ever-shifting requirements. The year 2014 alone saw multiple updates that targeted low-quality content.

The mobile update of April 2015 also left many brands struggling to ensure that their content was up to date.Keeping up with the Google algorithm and how customers search Audette and his co-presenters will help you understand how and why the algorithm keeps changing and how you can optimize strategies and data that will keep your site in front of your customers’ eyes. They will speak about focusing on the end user instead of focusing on the algorithm and how this can benefit your company as a whole.

Using data to drive decisions

Given the intense competition of the retail marketplace, you need to leverage data to ensure that you are reaching your marketing goals. Listen to Jay King of Ben & Jerry’s and Stefan Zechner of Western Union Company speak about leveraging data to ensure that campaigns are executed with maximum efficiency. In the heavily competitive retail marketspace, keeping costs down whenever possible is critical for success, so ensuring that your marketing campaigns are aimed precisely at your target audience and that no resources are spent unnecessarily will be valuable. Data can also help you better engage with your audience by helping you understand them and what they want to find. This can further help enhance the customer experience. The power of data can be incredible.

Mastering the multi-channel approach

As a digital savvy retailer, you know that meeting your customers’ needs requires having a strong presence on multiple platforms. You want customers to find you on search, engage with you social, and convert either on your website or be inspired to visit one of your stores. Managing an integrated campaign that allows you to take a holistic approach and look at your customer’s journey across the different spaces where they might interact with the brand. This will help you remain relevant in the minds of your customers and improve brand reach. You can explore the convergence between search, social and content by listening to a presentation by Jamie Peach of House of Fraser (UK) and consider how to build marketing campaigns holistically so that you can reach your customers across the digital ecosystem.

Search and social are heavily intertwined with content as all three must work together to create content that is truly optimized and ready to bring in the retail customers that online marketing is capable of producing. You can also listen to Allan Price of Monster Energy give a presentation on managing an integrated marketing campaign. He and his co-presenters will look at how to use multiple channels and build cross-functional teams that can work towards a common goal and deliver a common message.

Managing a successful retail brand requires mastering the arts of online marketing, e-commerce, social, and physical retail. Meeting the needs of these digital customers poses many challenges for retail brands. Come to Share15 to listen to industry leaders and gain the insights you need to succeed. If you have not registered yet for Share15, visit our event website and sign up today. We look forward to seeing everyone in just a few weeks.    

You have 200,000 Twitter followers – you are an influencer right? Wrong - In today’s tech-savvy, socially-enabled generation, marketing influence can often be misinterpreted thorough social media statistics alone. Marketing influence should not be characterized by the number of Twitter followers a person, or brand have and/or the frequency in which they automatically repost and repurpose content.

Real marketing influence is a byproduct of credible and authentic personalities (people) and sources (content), and the best marketers and brands know how to combine human, psychological and behavioral best practices and then utilize technology to further enable them to understand, connect and engage with their audience of influencers.

Marketing influence can be defined as many things – from simply connecting with a person to impacting a defined and specific business outcome – but regardless of your goal or your technique (inter-personal or technological) there is a formula for success.

Below are nine steps that you can use as a guide for marketing INFLUENCE for blending interpersonal skills with social research and online tactics:

• Identify
• Navigate
• Follow
• Listen
• Utilize
• Engage
• Nurture
• Convert
• Evaluate

1. Identify. Before you conduct any marketing influence outreach make sure you are targeting the right people, at the right level and for the right reason. Building your target list is critical to outreach success. For example, ensure that you segment influencer types in terms of factors such as:

• Academic high -level market influencer
• Brand ambassador (customer, product and sales enablement)
• Community influencer (a specific topic or influence in a certain segment of market)

 

Build your marketing influence campaign accordingly and map your marketing influence strategy to key goals such:

1. Brand evangelism and sharing of insights
2. Specific corporate, product and customer success/sales goals
3. Specific metrics - a blog post, a joint content proposal, a business recommendation or a specific ‘relationship build’ goal

It is important to understand what type of marketing influence you want to have and what type of marketing influence is the best match. Many hybrid marketers target influencers across multiple persona types while for others specific individuals can be mapped to certain influencers.

2. Navigate. Navigating your way through to the right influencer takes a concerted effort. Many marketing influence campaigns are misdirected when they identify the wrong influencers based on researching vanity metrics and hence actually nurture the wrong relationship.  

Social media and user-generated content has meant that access to influencer connections are more visible and accessible than ever before. However navigating your way through to the right connection requires researching and developing, not just one, but multiple relationships through first, second and sixth degree connections.

3. Follow. The development of social media tools, monitoring systems and engagement platforms has empowered marketers to ‘follow’ as well as lead. Technology has fueled the growth of influencer marketing to such an extent that you can follow, monitor and listen to what your market, target influencers, brands and customers saying.

Platforms such as Twitter, Hootsuite, LinkedIn, Brandwatch and Radian6 are great monitoring systems that help bridge the gap between ‘follow’ and ‘listen’.

In this article, here, Lee Odden from Top Rank takes us through over 22 social media marketing tools that help source connections and follow influencers.

4. Listen. The ability to follow is easy but the ‘ability to listen’ is one of the most vastly underused tactics in this industry. Technology can help you identify and engage with influencers, but the ability to listen is a human/behavioral discipline. Technology can deliver the insight but it is up to you to digest it. This is especially the case in marketing influence.

Just like sales – successful marketing influence relies on listening. If you don’t really understand your target influencers in terms of what they say, what they like, how they feel and what they want, then your outreach and engagement campaigns become little more than spam. This is where social media monitoring technology adds real value to your influencing campaign.

Return on Ignorance

As marketers we, quite rightly, focus on ROI in terms of Return on Investment. However one of the main reasons why influencer campaigns, and business initiatives as a whole, fail is due to “Return on Ignorance” – the cost of not listening.

• Understand your target influencer ‘inside and out’ and work out what is in it for them, (WIIFT) not just you.
• Understand your target influencers’ company and brand
• Understand your target influencers’ market and key challenges
• Spend 60% of your time reading, consuming information and monitoring what is happening in market
• Assign 2 to 3 hours a day to read, listen and understand
• Utilize your knowledge – see next step

#5 Utilize

As mentioned earlier in the article – marketing influence is based on relationships. Relationships, like links, are actually earned. marketing influence is not bought, and building your influencer database takes hard work, dedication and time. Utilize all data, assets and information at your disposal to build up profiles of influencers you would like to engage with.

Work out what is in for you and what is in it for them and begin to think about how best to engage.

#6 Engage

To maximize business impact from your influencer campaigns only engage once you have established a meaningful goal, story or project of mutual interest. “Random acts of engagement” due to the proliferation of social media serve little purpose other than the individual ego.

As per the guidelines above - ensure that you have identified the right person or brand, listen and understand the needs and wants and have a message/story/goal that will resonate with your target. For example, if your goal and reporting metric (see evaluation) of success is number of followers, number of contacts, amount of content you distribute then you are actually on the wrong influencer track.

Engaging and building influencer relationships is part art and part science. Utilize all online tools at your disposal but ensure your ‘influencer mix’ includes:

• Online engagement – see the conversation prism below
• Telephone conversations (yes telephone!)
• Conferences and conference meet-ups
• In-person meetings
• First, second and third degree meetings
• Leading industry events
• Networking events
• Social engagements

7. Nurture. The key to developing long lasting and productive outcomes from influencer outreach lies in the ‘nurture’ stage.

There is a huge difference between a contact and a relationship. Using social media as an example, everyone in today’s new media ecosystem can establish a contact by simply using LinkedIn, Twitter or any other social media platform. However, marketing influence is not a contact - influence is an outcome of a relationship.

8. Convert. The art of persuasion is a discipline of which sales is based upon and being a marketer, influencer or thought-leader actually means you are a sales person at heart. The most successful marketers and influencers actually have strong sales backgrounds.

In this Fast Company article Kevan Lee shares a wealth of insight into the psychology of marketing influence, persuasion and conversion. 

To get the best results from any influencer campaign balancing marketing and sales skills is essential. Be it a company, individual or departmental effort sales and marketing (this applies to all marketing in general) should be aligned. Ignore the myths and focus on a result.

As with everything in marketing balancing soft measures of marketing influence (i.e. a connection, a conversation or objective) and hard metrics (i.e. a result such as an asset, sale or upsell) defines how you measure success.

9. Evaluate. As with any marketing campaign ensure that you take time to step back and evaluate your success in line with 8 points above.

The bottom line is that marketing influence can be conducted and measured in multiple ways. For one person that could mean spending $100,000 on a broad reaching conference, campaign or asset and gaining a 4X return. For others it could mean spending $1000 on a strategic, individual influencer project and landing a $2 million dollar contract.

Influencer marketing success can be evaluated in many different ways depending upon the scope of and aim of your approach. Smart marketers utilize and evaluate marketing influence success across multiple avenues – some they share and some they don’t.

Liked this post? Check out our new piece on SEO marketing strategy.

Data-Driven Content Marketing

Stefan Zechner is the Digital SEO, Social and Content Marketing Lead for Western Union. He focuses primarily on new customer acquisition through natural search and search optimization. He is accustomed to working with a variety of different departments, including IT, Content, Paid Performance, PR and Marketing at large.

Stefan ensures that there is cohesiveness throughout all of the different teams’ content activities and that all campaigns adhere to SEO best practices. Stefan’s incredible experience and expertise makes us excited to welcome him as a speaker at Share15. We had the chance to sit down with him and speak for a bit and we wanted to share some of the highlights from our conversation.

The Impact of Industry Changes

BrightEdge (BE): What changes in the search industry have had the biggest impact for you and your company?

Stefan Zechner (SZ): The mobile algorithm update in April 2015 was huge. It sparked a mindset change within our organization and helped us understand where our customer base and our future customers - especially millennials - have their focus. This, in turn, has been a huge influence on our UX department.

On the Rise of Personalization

BE: How do you see the space evolving over the next year - what should marketers look out for?

SZ: I think personalization is going to be huge. Semantic search is the first big step in this direction, but I feel strongly that this is just the beginning. It is all about getting more involved, more personalized and more direct in your communication with consumers as a marketer.

On His Presentation at Share

BE: What will you be discussing at Share15?

SZ: I will be delving into data-driven content strategy. I will explore how to use data to drive the right people to the right content at the right time and why SEO is such an important part of this process.

The Incredible Value of Share

BE: What will bring you to Share this year?

SZ: Because sharing is caring - but more seriously: I work under the mantra that when you share something, you challenge yourself and others to become better and more effective. BrightEdge is providing a platform, a safe-haven, for SEOs that ought to be used for collaboration and education. There are a variety of approaches to modern SEO obstacles. While we are all facing the same or similar issues, there are many roads that lead to success. I look forward to discussing issues, such as looking at content marketing and content creation through the lenses of compliance and legal challenges. The exchange of ideas and the opportunity to meet more professionals will be outstanding.

The Role of BrightEdge

BE: What role does BrightEdge play in your organization?

SZ: We use BrightEdge together with our agencies to not only assess current performance but also to check trends and research new keyword opportunities. We use a variety of different BrightEdge capabilities, in particular the Share of Voice and Competitor Analysis. The new StoryBuilder, which helps us create reports faster - and even on-the-fly - is awesome.  We love the variety and power of the BrightEdge technology. They also offer excellent customer support, which is always a fantastic resource.

The Fun Stuff

BE: Can you tell us some fun facts about your brand?

SZ: Western Union has been around for more than 160 years and has been transferring money for 140 years. We were the first company to launch a domestic communication satellite network, the first transcontinental telegraph line, the first microwave system to connect two cities, and the first singing telegraph. The brand has an incredible legacy and I enjoy being a part of it.

BE: What about some fun facts about yourself?

SZ: I cannot function in rooms that are warmer than 50 degrees. I also work best between 1 and 3 am and find that the best ideation can come during a good old SciFi series. This was a fun and enlightening conversation with Stefan. We look forward to hearing his presentation at Share in just a few weeks. If you have not signed up yet, make sure you do not miss the opportunity to hear him and the other speakers. Visit our event page and learn more fantastic reasons to attend.

Conference Details September 21-23 Westin St. Francis San Francisco, CA.

 

Majestic and Backlinks

Majestic is one of the leaders in providing backlink analysis and we are excited that they will be joining us in a few weeks for an educational lab at Share15. Majestic is our partner and helps to power our own backlink management software. The data our users can access through their technology is very useful and helps us provide a complete SEO management system that provides recommendations on how to get backlinks. We always enjoy having the opportunity to speak with Majestic, so we wanted to chat a bit before Share15 kicks off in just a few weeks. Dixon Jones, the Marketing Director for the brand, was able to find the chance to sit down with us. The conversation was very helpful and insightful and we wanted to share the highlights.

What Majestic will be presenting at BrightEdge's Share15

BrightEdge (BE): Can you tell us a little more about what you will be presenting at Share?

Dixon Jones(DJ): Our main objective is to let the attendees that are interested really get under the hood of backlink analysis because as people get technically proficient they are really able see the value of that data. Then there is a whole second learning curve in understanding how to turn “Link Analysis” into “Link Intelligence”. That might sound a bit cliche, but that is what we are doing. We will be running a workshop that will let attendees see how data is collected, how to analyze it, how to understand metrics and how to benefit from what we have to offer. By running this as an optional workshop, we hope to be able to go very deep into the Majestic engine without boring those that just want an overview. Those who are looking for more of an introduction can come to our booth with live data to see what we can offer.

What makes BrightEdge Share so special?

BE: Why Share15? What are you excited for the most about this event?

DJ: When we said that we would be at Share15 that was no small commitment. We will be traveling 5,351 miles from Majestic’s offices and we will be represented at director level. That is how important we view Share. Why Share15? Because we sense that this will be the “big” one. We attended Share14 and we were happy to be involved. There was an impressive turnout with fantastic attendees and speakers-- but we think that Share15 is going to be even better. It will have the same caliber of attendees, but also will be even more attuned to helping Majestic share knowledge and insight with the audience.

On getting the most out of the BrightEdge Share Conference

BE: What advice would you give to Share attendees to get the most out the event?

DJ: Network! There is so much talent at Share, but the talented people are not necessarily the extroverted ones. Just remember that the person that you probably REALLY want to talk to at the coffee break or the drinks reception is not the boisterous one taking up the limelight... but the quiet one in the corner. That said, you also want to have an exit route planned if you find yourself having to spend the entire conference speaking with the same person.

The Value of the BrightEdge-Majestic Partnership

BE: How has your partnership at BrightEdge influenced Majestic?

DJ: BrightEdge is Majestic’s largest user by many measures-- not least the sheer amount of data that they consume. It is enormous and both sides have invested a huge amount of energy in the early stages of the partnership, ensuring that the data bridge was robust enough for BrightEdge’s demands. I do not think any other partnership could have pulled this level of link-data crunching off. We respect BrightEdge’s ability to handle data and we believe that we have been a most reliable partner. To help cement that relationship, we allow BrightEdge to set up “BrightEdge Gold” accounts for their customers directly. This allows customers of BrightEdge to use one of the most advanced backlink checker tools and work directly with the Majestic data without any need for setting up a separate supplier agreement. This is a unique element of our very strong partnership. This was a fantastic conversation with Dixon Jones of Majestic.

We cannot wait to continue it in just a few weeks when Share15 kicks off in the heart of San Francisco. If you have not had the chance to register for the conference, visit our event page now to make sure you do not miss the opportunity.

Conference Details September 21-23 Westin, St. Francis San Francisco, CA

Generate Backlinks for SEO

Backlinks can be valuable for search engines looking to understand the role a particular website plays within the digital ecosystem of a topic. SEO backlinks speak to the perceived popularity and authority of the website and how helpful users find the information. As the Google algorithm continues to update to better understand user intent and identify high quality content, however, they have also been taking a careful look at these links. Link farms and links from low quality pages no longer can help websites and might even hurt them.

The role of backlinks in current SEO is debated as marketers try to determine if there is a place for link building in optimization efforts. We believe that SEO backlinks continue to play a valuable role in the success of content, but it is critical that you pursue your links effectively. Like everything else in SEO, your efforts become valuable when they offer something in turn for the end user. Here is what you need to know about effective backlink usage.

What makes a backlink valuable?

Google, and the other major search engines, want to see backlinks that come from other reputable sites to your page. It is understood that if a website is linking to another site, it is vouching for the content of that page. If the link is coming from a spam or otherwise poorly regarded website, however, this link will be worth little. When you have established and trusted websites linking to your page, however, it can have a big impact on your page’s traffic and how it is regarded by the search engine algorithms. It is worth noting a backlink SEO controversy that arose in the beginning of 2015.

John Mueller of Google seemed to imply during a Google hangout that webmasters should not be focusing on building links. When comparing what Mueller spoke about during this hangout when taken in context with what he said in past hangouts, however, it could be largely agreed that he was discouraging trying to build links with sites through spam methods. You want to make sure your links come from a variety of different sources and you want those links to make sense in terms of logic and consistency between your site and the referring site. You should not have to trick people into linking or negotiating a ‘you link to me, and I will link to you’ type scheme. These are the situations that Google frowns upon and could end up hurting your optimization efforts.

Link building is valuable when it provides purposeful and logical input for the end user. When a link to your site will help users further investigate a topic or answer their questions, you have a high-quality link. If you would want a particular site to link to you, even if it were a nofollow-link, then you know that is a backlink worth pursuing on a content and a traffic basis.

How to generate backlinks that are high-quality?

• Produce high-quality content
• Promote your content
• Leverage your thought-leadership
• Target particular sites that would be helpful for links
• Watch your backlinks profile

1. Produce high-quality content. If you want other reputable websites to link to your own pages, you need to first make sure that your content is worthy of the attention. People will only link to your pages when they find the information interesting and informative. Original hard data numbers draw a lot of backlink support. Focus on understanding exactly who the content is intended for and then dive into producing the high-quality information that they would like to read.

Generic and material that is replicated in different forms throughout the web will not produce the intended impact. Instead, analyze the topic, offer your opinion and deeply explore the material so that people trust your site and walk away from the information having learned something new.

2. Promote your content. Once your content has been developed to the quality standards that your intended audience would like to see, social media can be an excellent vehicle for promoting your material. Although Google has indicated that it does not check the social reputation of authors, they do index social media sites like other websites. That means links from social pages, such as Twitter or Facebook, may serve as helpful SEO backlinks where the networks are crawlable.

Social media will also help in increasing number of people come across your content. The more people who are exposed to your high-quality material will increase the number of people who share, forward, and place links to your content in their blogs and other websites.

3. Leverage your thought-leadership. Editorial links that involve company mentions in the media, such as thought-leadership articles that you write and publish on other highly regarded sites, are extremely beneficial for a backlink profile. To succeed in this area, you have to take your time to find a few sites that effectively target your ideal audience. You want to make sure you understand who reads the publication and what they want to see. The piece should not be focused on being promotional but rather aim to establish yourself as a leader within your field.

Keep overt company advertising to a minimum and develop content that is interesting and informative to increase editorial back links. It will be a great addition to your backlink profile while also expanding your brand reach and reputation.

4. Target particular sites that would be helpful for links. In addition to sites where you publish, it can be particularly helpful to target a few other sites that would generate backlinks that are useful. You want to find websites that also speak to your target audience and will find your information helpful while also having a strong reputation. Finding websites with desired traffic and page rank can be a challenge, but there are a number of tools that can help you evaluate the websites based upon the value backlinks can offer your own site.

At BrightEdge, we use Majestic’s technology to power our backlink analysis on our platform. Through a backlink analysis, you can easily track your own SEO backlink profile, including information, such as the type of link and the page URL. You can also track the domains that you are targeting for backlinks to monitor your success with your efforts. Once you have found sites that would serve you well for backlinks, you then need to attract their attention. Engage with the website and the authors on and off the page. Follow them on social media, comment on articles and become a part of the site’s community. This will encourage the site owners to look at your site and see what you have to offer as well. When you pair these efforts with the high-quality content you should be producing, you will have the recipe for success with your SEO backlinks.

5. Watch your backlinks profile. The idea of negative SEO is a controversial one. Although the major search engines generally say that it is difficult if not impossible to hurt another site through negative SEO, there are also reports of brands saying that their websites were impacted when they generate backlinks from spammy sites. It is always a good idea to check your backlinks and make sure that they are from reputable sites and can help your search engine rankings. If you find links that are not up to your quality standards, it is possible to disavow them so that Google knows that you do not want this site counted among your backlinks.

Backlinks are the fundamental structure of the Internet and are quality signal to search engines that your content is valuable and that people appreciate what you offer. The key to leveraging this signal to increase your page’s ranking is producing high-quality content and getting it in front of the people who are likely to link to it. Follow the best practices, and use the backlink checker tools available to you to get the most out of your SEO backlink building and optimization efforts.