Search, Social, and Content Convergence: Developing Hybrid Marketing Skills

The search marketing environment has evolved and converged to such an extent that in order to survive and succeed, marketers now need adopt a whole new set of working habits. Search is no longer the silo that it once was and the modern-day search marketer now has to build a whole new set of hybrid skills sets to keep themselves, and their organizations, ahead of the digital marketing curve.

The convergence of paid, owned, and earned media has meant that the relationship between marketers and consumers has become significantly more complex. For example - according to theGuardian article on Google’s ZMOT, on average a consumer engages with 18.2 pieces of online content before making a final purchase decision.

Organizations, agencies, and consultants, as a result, can struggle to keep their skills, learning, and training up to date and in line with such a rapidly developing and complex digital marketing ecosystem.

Did you know that 40 percent of marketers want to reinvent themselves but only 14 percent know how?

Hybrid Marketers

The answer lies in developing cross-channel marketing experience and building hybrid marketing skills and competencies.

Hybrid marketers are (in essence) converged media marketers who are highly proficient writers, analytical, and tech-savvy and have strong competencies in business, IT, and human behavior.

The Converged Media Mind

Two different sides, or hemispheres, of the brain are responsible for different ways of thinking and as soon as we look into the difference between the left and right brain hemispheres, it clearly becomes apparent why some people are more technically driven than others and why gaps in talent in some organizations widen. It is also the reason why, for example, SEO and content marketers battle for ownership.

Left-brain marketers who tend to be analytical collide with right-brained marketers who think holistically and are more open to conceptual thinking. The converged media mind that hybrid marketer’s possess utilizes both the left and right part of the brain and applies this thinking to the appropriate channel with the appropriate approach and subsequent metric.

From the diagram below you can see that analytical and technical PPC and SEO disciplines utilize left-brain thinking and right-brain thinking can be associated with social and creative content.

Hybrid marketers understand and view the role of search, social, content, and digital media, in the above, as integrated holistically but fragmented by skillsets.

People who master hybrid marketing can:

1. Understand the different marketing channels
2. Identify a point of overlap/convergence
3. Manage and matrix manage people and departments who have different skill sets - they bring skills, people, and departments together and foster collaboration

The result is a happy, motivated, and successful set of team members who do not only just understand the multiple components of integrated marketing campaigns – they understand each other.

In my next post I will tall through how best to set up attribution systems for content and hybrid marketers. After all, we should also optimize for people and ensure "organizational attribution" systems are set in place to allow hybrid marketers to measure performance and flourish through an organization.

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How to Repurpose Existing Enterprise Content Assets

The concept of developing a continuous stream of branded content can be overwhelming to some companies. How can you possibly come up with original, insightful ideas to share with your audience on a constant basis?

The good news is, in many cases, you don’t have to. By repurposing existing content assets that your organization has already developed, you’ll be able to quickly and easily develop new forms of shareable content that can help your company reach new audiences.

Here’s a look at some examples of existing content you might already have, and how you can breathe new life into it through repurposing:

Convert a webinar into a white paper—or vice versa

If your CIO spent weeks developing a detailed webinar to showcase your latest product solution, don’t ditch those slides just yet. You can use the slide material and transcript of her speech to develop one or more white papers from the material.

In order to do this, draw out a series of linked key points from the slideshow, and use them as the basis of a white paper outline. Integrate statistics and data points used in the webinar, as well as those that you’re able to glean through independent research. The goal of a white paper should not be to present a sales pitch for your company; instead, it should provide its reader with analysis and evidence-based details about how to solve a business problem. Once you’ve developed your white paper, you can use a contact form to generate leads from new prospects.

Existing white papers can also serve as fertile ground for the development of new webinars. A longer white paper may be broken down into a series of webinar presentations, each designed to attract a particular audience segment. This Moz article shares some advice on repurposing white papers as webinars.

Break down an e-book into a series of blog posts

While e-books and white papers are typically used as “gated” content to attract new leads, repurposing their key messages as blog posts can help you attract organic search traffic and serve as teaser content to help you attract more downloads.

While an e-book or white paper is likely to be design-heavy and focus on research-based analytical content, your blog content can generally take a more casual tone. For example, an e-book might offer an in-depth comparison of content marketing software vendors and use cases, but a series of blog posts might provide quick, actionable tips on three questions to ask when choosing a vendor, or five ways to assess your vendor’s ROI. Each post should end with a call to action encouraging prospects to learn more by downloading your e-book.

Use stats from a white paper or other industry research to develop an interactive quiz

Your team has no doubt collected many industry-specific statistics and facts to support your product offering—so why not encourage your prospects to test their own industry knowledge in an interactive game? Create a multiple choice or true-or-false quiz that uses data from industry studies to help prospects see how much they know about a certain subject, and scores them accordingly. By asking them to share their email addresses to collect the full results, you can also turn the quiz into a lead-generation tool. Creating quizzes needn’t be difficult: There are a variety of free and premium tools that can get the job done, as this HigherVisibility article shares.

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16 Blog Content Ideas for Your Company Website

If you use your website to market your company, you should be blogging. If you’re not blogging, make it a point in 2015 to at least give it a try. You might be surprised at the number of quality leads it brings to your site. Additionally, blogging is great for increasing your brand trust, it provides a valuable extra layer of service for your customers, and it gives you a chance to influence your industry in both subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways. The right blog post can go viral and have a remarkable effect on your business.

Many business owners don’t blog because writing is a difficult discipline to work into your routine. Plus, it’s pretty hard to think of a steady stream of topics to write about if you’re not used to writing. The good news is that there are ideas all around you; you just have to know where to look.

Blog About…

• Your New Employee: The new guy or gal in your office can be the source of a quick, informative blog post that helps introduce your company to the amazing people who make it run. People like reading about other people, so sit down with your new employee and let them tell you their story for your company blog.
• Your New Equipment: If you provide services to your customers, tell them when you get a new piece of equipment. It’s a good way to brag to your readers and show them you’re an industry leader. It’s also a good way to introduce the new services your equipment allows you to provide. Capitalize on that big purchase by promoting it on your blog.
• Local Events: To drive potential new visitors to your website and inform your local community, consider publishing a local events calendar. This not only provides a valuable and relevant service to readers, it also increases your brand’s visibility when consumers perform a local search for events. Updating a resource like this at least once a month is a valuable content type.
• Common Myths or Misunderstandings in Your Industry: Every industry has myths surrounding it that just aren’t true. Dentists, for example, get a bad rap for root canals, but most people who have had a root canal in the last ten years will tell you it wasn’t too bad. Come up with a list of common myths or misunderstandings and debunk them. These types of blog posts tend to do well and paint you as an industry thought leader.
• Other Blogs in Your Industry: Make a list of the top blogs in your industry. It’s a quick, easy way to promote your industry as a whole, and it may lead to some beneficial partnerships, especially if your website is a big part of your overall marketing efforts.
• Happy Customers: Besides claiming you have “happy customers,” why not interview a few of them so they could say it for themselves? This not only showcases customer satisfaction, but it also informs prospects about the types of customers your business helps. This is a great topic for videos, but you can post written interviews or share online reviews as well. For B2B businesses, you could ask the customer to share how they found out about your business, what kind of solution you provided, and how they felt about working with you. Then don’t forget to let them know the blog about them is on your site, they will be sure to share it.
• Famous People: Everybody loves celebrities. If you come across a news story about a famous person using products you sell or find out a celebrity relies on a type of service you provide, share it with your readers.
• How the Times Have Changed: Unless you work in 3D printing or some other relatively new field, your industry has probably undergone substantial change–maybe even while you’ve been working in it. Tell your readers about how your industry used to work, how the products have changed, or how the services used to be performed. Nostalgia resonates well with many audiences.
• How Things Could Be Better: If you think there are problems in your industry that aren’t being addressed or impacting the consumer, write a quick post about how it could be better. A post like this offers solutions instead of complaints, and it shows off your expertise to your readers and potential customers.
• The Good You’re Doing: If your business is engaged in any kind of charity or community action, write about it to let your readers know. Tell them what you’re doing and maybe include a few pictures if you’re working on a project. This type of blog post is not only good PR for your company, but it’s also a way to shed light on the cause you care about.
• A Problem Your Company Solves: You’re in business because what you do, what you make, or what you provide solves a problem. Write about the problem in a way that most people can relate, and then explain in simple terms how your business solves that problem. This idea can actually be the source of many blog posts depending on what you make, do, or provide.
• Something Unique to Your Industry: Is there a tool that is only used in your industry? Is there software that your industry uses to complete a task? Is there training that only employees in your industry have to receive? Think about something unique to the industry you’re in and tell your readers something they don’t know about.
• A Day in the Life of Your Industry: TV shows have been created for the sole purpose of telling others what a certain type of employee does every day at work. Write a blog post about a day in the life of one of your employees and tell your readers what it’s like to work in your industry.
• Getting a Job in Your Industry: Chances are some of your readers want to know what it takes to land a job in your industry. Does a prospective employee need certain credentials, training, or education to work in your field? Do you use recruiters to find employees or do people enter your industry in a unique way? Tell your readers what it takes to work for a company like yours.
• Frequently Asked Questions: Do you or your employees hear the same questions over and over again? If so, chances are people are on the Internet trying to find answers to those questions. Write a blog post about the top frequently asked questions and give them a way to find the answers on your website.
• Statistics: Appeal to your readers’ sense of logic by sharing interesting statistics about your industry with them. Write about the prevalence of people using your product, or how many people suffer from a problem you provide a service for. Use statistics to tell the reader why your business is right for them.

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Travel-Related Shares Drive 40% More Engagement Than Other Content [Study]

ShareThis’ new consumer sharing behavior report reveals that travel shares generate more click-backs than other types of content.

Marketers looking to boost engagement across social platforms may want to post something travel-related, as new research from ShareThis shows that on average, each travel share generates 18 click-backs. This is 40 percent more than other types of shares.

In its newly released consumer sharing behavior report, ShareThis collected data from its 52 million unique users registering more than 1.9 billion social signals. It found that 10 percent of users share content related to trips and vacations to their social networks, and 19 percent of users who are in the process of planning a trip share travel content.

"Travel is an expensive and time-consuming activity with a lot of variables and touch points, so we often tend to lean on other people's past experiences and recommendations when making travel plans," says Vivien Pillet, research manager at ShareThis. "These days, social networks present a highly compelling source of travel research, and a compelling channel through which brands can reach consumers."

Each social channel has a different influence on the travel-related content that users engage with, according to the report. Close to 70 percent of consumers use Facebook to share travel-related content, and 11 percent use Twitter. However, when consumers research and plan their trips, they are more likely to engage with (or click back on) the content shared through Pinterest, Blogger, and email.

Pillet explains this is likely because Facebook and Twitter are widely used to display personally curated content about a specific travel experience, such as photos and stories from a recent trip. In comparison, Pinterest and Blogger tend to be platforms for more informative content.

"To that end, marketers looking to reach a more engaged travel audience at critical moments in their planning phase should focus their strategies on these channels," he adds.

A deeper look at the sharers shows that Millennials generate 35 percent of total travel sharing, compared to only 22 percent of general sharing. This demographic also drives social conversations around budget travel.

"Travel would certainly be one of those expenses Millennials would cut back on, if possible," Pillet explains, adding that aside from budget travel, travel tips and business travel are popular topics for Millennials as well.

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5 Content-Driven Customer Acquisition Tricks

How can you best use your content marketing to build up an engaged subscriber base? Here are five tips and tricks from experts in the field.

Chances are that you want to build a new audience. You likely also have lots of content designed for prospects interested in your product, service, or brand. How can we best put this content to use – or create the right content – in service of acquisition, when often, we don’t know anything about these anonymous visitors interacting with our content? Sure, we all have Facebook fans and LinkedIn groups and Twitter followers. But we also need subscribers who are engaged with us over time and on our own properties. While outside social platforms are a great way to find a new audiences – and nurture ones you have – they are also much better used to build a subscriber base that you own.

How do we use content to build that subscriber base? I spoke with some smart marketers and gathered these five tips and tricks:

1. Keep It Real

You have to remain human-to-human, said Ed Youngblood, vice president of messaging and communications at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprises. "Remember who the target is. A burden to marketing today is automation for automation sake, and how difficult it seems to be for marketers to address human needs and to speak through content the way we’d speak to a person."

2. Focus on Subscription as the Key Metric

According to the Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs recent content marketing benchmark report, less than one-third of all marketers are setting subscription goals as part of their content marketing. "That means all the content being created is focused on activity metrics (shares/traffic) or direct sales/commerce," says Joe Pulizzi, founder and chief executive (CEO) of the Content Marketing Institute and author of Epic Content Marketing. "I believe this is incredibly short-sighted. Perhaps the holy grail of content marketing measurement comes in the form of an opt-in email subscriber to your content. Then, once we can build a relationship with that reader, we need to look for metrics that show the difference between a subscriber and a non-subscriber. Do they buy more? Do they stay as customers longer? Is the sales cycle shorter?"

3. Be Relevant by Leveraging Real-Time Posting

"Being a marketer nowadays means being digital – which is all about creating content, sharing content, and making it easy for others to share the content," says John Balla, director of marketing for the SAS Institute. "One of my favorite ways to build a new audience is to create content at a time when my audience is concentrated and tuned in to the same place. Twitter is very good for that, such as during a publication-produced webinar or a Tweetchat. Another perfect example is real-time blogging during a large conference, while actively using the show’s hashtag on Twitter. The key is to do it during the conference when everyone is tuned in.

"I try to write ‘real-time’ blog posts at every large conference I attend – usually one to two blog posts each day and publish within 30 minutes to an hour after the session is over. Then, I tweet about it like crazy using the show hashtag. It’s not easy to do well, but preparation helps make it possible. I use the show program to get prepped in advance on speakers and topics, but also to form my own viewpoint so I can write quickly and enthusiastically about the topic."

4. Create With Intention to Scale

"We are starting to be much more intentional in scaling the use cases of the content," said Youngblood. "We used to create a white paper and then think about how to use it. That is a bit backward. We now take a strategic approach before putting time into the creation of those singular assets. We also repurpose and customize content that is created in different regions – using content from Europe in the States and even sharing between the East and West coasts."

5. Be Share-Worthy

"Share-worthiness has to do with whether or not the content is valuable to the reader or somehow clever or funny," said Balla. To me a jackpot is taking an idea and adding humor to it so people want to share it. I also like to spotlight good thought leaders, because their followers are then inclined to share the tweet about my blog post. Also, people love pictures – I like to take lots of pictures during conferences and use the speakers’ Twitter handles and company identities and I get more Twitter followers that way (and re-tweets)." A summary of Balla’s activity at the most recent DMA Annual Conference on Eventifier is located here.

Employ these tips not just in the pursuit of content creation, but also to build a subscriber base that will continually engage with your brand and community. Owning the content platform is a much better way to market over the sales cycle, and to provide insights and feedback on your content choices. What are your tips and tricks for acquiring customers through content? Please use the comments section below to share.

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The Perfect Length for Every Type of Content

What do you think about this infographic? Do you find these kinds of data-driven suggestions helpful? Or, do you prefer to go your own way? 

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Writing Your Way to the Top of Search and Social Results

Search and social media writing - we’ve come a long way in the past 10 years. Hiring nameless, faceless, anonymous writers from underground sources at $25 a pop is so yesterday. Poof! No more. Garbage in, garbage out.

Today’s smart brands are putting their money where the return on investment (ROI) is, investing in the growth and development of real authors. 2015 brings a new set of standards, the art of producing real, genuine, authentic, and high-quality content coming from an accredited and trusted real person with a notable byline.

Fast and furious content days are over. Search and social experimental writing is history. It’s the dawn of authenticity where bots, fakes, and frauds can’t survive. We’ve entered the era of intelligent content that is laced with smart optimization and is penned by qualified writers who have a name, rank, and serial number of credentials and influence.

Follow Google’s Right Way to Write

Where do brands begin with gaining quality content? Start by hiring writers with a reputation backed by:

• Expertise
• Authority
• Trust

Brands and marketers can gain inspiration from the E-A-T (expertise, authority, and trust) concept outlined in Google’s Search Quality Guidelines when creating quality content guidelines for Web pages, social media posts, press releases, or educational guides.

After all, don’t we want to influence the quantity and quality of traffic to a website or blog from search and social? If we look at just Google search traffic, organic results dominate, receiving about 80-82 percent of its search traffic, while ads receive a mere 18 to 20 percent of search traffic. In today’s race for attracting quality eyeballs, the most influential factor can be in the writing quality of a brand’s content, down to every last title tag, meta description, and tweet.

"High-quality writing conveys expertise and trust signals," said Virginia Nussey, content and media manager at Bruce Clay, Inc. "The better the writer, that is a trust signal of their understanding of the topic."

SEO and Writing - It’s So Meta

Optimization and writing go together like peanut butter and jelly. If you think about it, it should be easier to teach experienced writers how to optimize than to teach technical SEO programmers how to write. Make it a best practice to invest in educating writers, content creators, and even your public relations team with basic SEO training. This can turn your quality content into search- and social-friendly content that can be better found in search, whether that searcher is performing a Google search or a Twitter search.

Provide writers with data such as targeted keyword phrases and trending hashtags that can help them help you optimize better. Invest in your writers with training and resources so they can deliver. Utilize reliable SEO resources that offer free guides, content, and tutorials on writing for SEO; these organizations make a living offering free SEO educational materials and tutorials:

• Hubspot
• Moz
• Bruce Clay, Inc.
• Digital Relevance

Tip: Free can cost you if the information is outdated! Be sure to offer your writers resources that are provide current and up-to-date information that follow, for example, Google’s and Facebook’s ever-changing algorithms.

The Long and Short of Content

Let’s face it - as brands and marketers we are writing all forms of content ranging from 100-character tweets to 600-2,000+-word blog or news articles. We are writing for the attention deficit mobile user and the desktop power researcher. The one thing in common is that the content, regardless of size, must be well-written and optimized to maximize the search results and social sharing opportunities.

Going for the Hail Mary of long-form content such as a case study, guide or in-depth analysis? Make sure to:

• Use bullets
• Tell stories
• Use call out quotes of some of the main points
• Keep it visual with charts, graphs, or infographics
• Think about the mobile use and have a visual slideshow version

As brands morph into news publishing-like models, it’s important to take note of what types of content work best on news sites. Experts say to avoid 500-800 word counts because it’s not long enough to have substance and too long for the average reader’s attention span. But quality content of 400 words is about what today’s social and mobile readers really have time to read. Hmmm…makes sense now that newswire services such as PRNewswire recommended word count is around 400 words.

"I recommend blog posts be at least 1,000 words in length and offer up the most detailed content," said expert blogger Ian Clary of Razor Social. "But that does not mean a 400 well-written post can’t be successful."

Pinpointing the Persona

Regardless of size, the target audience is what is important to a brand’s writer. Who are we writing for and targeting? The more specific information we know about our buyer personas, the easier it is for the writer to create content and for the marketer to properly target - ultimately impacting the brand’s results. Creating persona profiles that will illustrate who the content is intended for can create a magnetic win-win by reaching the right audience with the right message. Take Starbucks as an example - you might be writing for Sally Sales Executive who is a frequent coffee customer looking for reliable Wi-Fi and a temporary desk with a latte on the side. Or you could be writing for Stay-at-Home Dad David who has five minutes to get his java fix refill before the after school carpool. Both are possible personas for Starbucks, but both require two different types of writing style of content.

Share Words of Social Influence

If you have research and data that will help a writer include words that work best for social networks or tips in email writing, do share it with them! QuickSprout produced an infographic to help writers understand what words work best in different social media networks:

• To gain more retweets on Twitter use the words "Free," "Retweet," or "New Blog Post"
• Facebook users respond best to words such as "Inspires," "Discounts," and "Submit"
• Looking to land a deal on LinkedIn? The best words to include are "On Time," "Accomplished," "Created," and "Researched," but skip the overused words such as "Creative," "Responsible," and "Strategic."
• Google+ users take action on words such as "Share," "Promote," and "Increase."

User-Generated Content

When going for the trust factor, your brand is actually not your best and most reliable source of content for your customers. It’s the reviews that matter most to today’s social-savvy consumer. So although you want to invest in the most qualified writers, your best writers don’t actually have to be hired guns; they can be your biggest brand advocates who are ready and willing to write reviews for your products and services.

Less Is More

Filling space with junk content results in junk audience or no audience. It’s most important for businesses to spend more time writing less content that's better content. So that means reduce the editorial calendar work and publish less with an eye on a more focused execution.

When Facebook finally admitted that organic reach was down for many businesses, they explained why by pointing out that Facebook is dedicated to show only the highest-quality content and reducing the amount of spam-like content in the newsfeed.

"Organic content still has value on Facebook, and Pages that publish great content — content that teaches people something, entertains them, makes them think, or in some other way adds value to their lives — can still reach people in News Feed," noted Facebook’s Brian Boland in Facebook’s Product News.

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Fast SEO Competitive Analysis Part 2: Competing Content Comparison

1. Understanding Search Behavior and Choosing Target Keyword Categories

Continuing the example used in part one of Google Sites, which describes itself as a "...free and easy way to create and share webpages," it makes sense to filter out highly competitive keyword categories like business, design, and blogging. Removing these, branded terms, and unrelated terms (quick manual scan) from the pivot table from part one leaves us with an ideal list of targeted keywords, all of which Google Sites should easily be coming up in search for.

While the filtering process can definitely get tedious, it is used as a benchmark to track ongoing progress. Time well spent if it’s going to help showcase SEO efforts over time. Boiling down the relevant keywords people are using in search and having the mindset that these are the avenues in which customers will eventually find your client’s content is also rewarding!

For Google Sites, relevant keywords people are using to find content they should be coming up for in search, is as simple as customers wanting to build/create/make/start page(s)/site(s)/website(s)/webpage(s), and they want it to be free/easy/online.

Using the filtered Pivot Table (copying and pasting into a new tab) as a template, we can begin pulling other relevant metrics and creating a dashboard, to help understand the competitive landscape of these search trends and ultimately form some solid SEO strategy.

2. Competing Content Comparison

Now that we know exactly what keywords Google Sites should be coming up for in search results, we need to understand the extent to which existing content reflects how people are searching.

To do this we can look at the top ranking search result on Google.com for our target keyword. Then limit the search to a specific domain in Google and compare.

Looking at the term how to build a web page , the top ranking result ishttp://www.thesitewizard.com/gettingstarted/startwebsite.shtml in Google search results.

Limiting the same search to the google.com domain using site:google.com how to build a web page, https://support.google.com/sites/answer/153197?hl=en is seen as the most relevant in the eyes of Google’s algorithms.

As seen above, sites.google.com doesn’t come up in search for this example of a relevant keyword, even when the results are limited to the google.com own domain. We can use this as a starting point to understand where our content needs to be to achieve our goal of eventually coming up for this search.

Automating Competing Content Comparison

Let’s apply the concept explained above to all of our target keywords. Using Advanced Web Ranking, we can pull the top 10 search results for all of our keywords, then pull that data into ourdashboard using VLOOKUP.

Conclusion

Comparing the content Google sees as most important on your site vs. the Web can help you understand where your site is lacking. For example in the image above, Google Sites is seen as the most relevant page when people are looking to build a website, but not so much when they are search how to build a web page. Subtle nuances make can make a big difference, and perhaps adding a little verbiage to the target page would be enough to begin coming up in search for a whole new category of keywords.

Making sure the page you want to come up in search is seen as the most relevant when the search is limited to your own domain should be seen as step one. The goal here is to meet and beat your competition from a content perspective for all relevant keywords. In part three we’ll be taking a look at this in more detail by slicing and dicing the ranking data, in an attempt to understand exactly which competitor pages, per category/search trend, Google likes the best and why.

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The SME content creation toolkit for images, video and text

Video:

Instagram Hyperlapse

Hyperlapse is fairly new and many have discovered it's great for a polished look, or at least a video that feels like it's been professionally edited.

If you sell a product that has to be assembled or want to show the making of something, this tool is perfect.

Here's Econsultancy founder Ashley Friedlein on our recent Marketing Cycle charity bike ride in Dieppe.

Reflector

Reflector allows you to mirror a mobile device on your computer screen over a WiFi network.

It's great if you want to record an interaction on your smartphone or tablet. Say you've just created an app and want to encourage people to download it from your website, this tool will allow you to shoot some video and then you can investigate how to turn it into a GIF or edit it in iMovie.

Alternatively, it's handy to have on your laptop for meetings, if you want to show something from your mobile without crowding round a small screen.

Reflector costs $12.99 but it's simple to use, effective and much better than bothering to jailbreak your phone.

 

iMovie and YouTube

Two obvious choices but invaluable ones. Youtube for its small and useful edits as well as how easy it is to host and share, iMovie for its ease of use and wide functionality.

Images:

Video to GIF creator

There are a number of websites that allow you to upload a video file (in several formats) and will convert it to a GIF for you, often emailing you the resultant file.

Whilst some of these sites don't look promising, they're often easier for the novice than converting in Photoshop. I've used Zamzar before and it worked well.

imgur

If you're embedding images, it's often advantageous to use imgur to host. The links are more likely to remain, longer term, than one you've taken from elsewhere on the web and you shouldn't see any images go missing.

One of the advantages of the Chrome extension of imgur is that it adds a 'rehost image' button to your context menu, allowing you to stash images quickly.

Of course, make sure you're not taking anything that is copyrighted.

Awesome Screenshot and Mac shortcut

We often recommend Awesome Screenshot as the best way to screengrab and annotate.

Note, though, that it doesn't always work on websites with lots of HTML5 or obviously those that block screen capture. In that instance it's easier to hit shift+cmd+4 on your Mac to access the snip tool.

On Windows, I often simply take a screen capture using the keyboard button and then crop/annotate in MS Paint. I don't profess to be an expert.

Very meta 

Infographic creator

Piktochart is a good one. Get stuck in if, like me, you are pants at Adobe. 

Text:

WordPress

Wordpress is more than just text, I understand. But for 'distraction free writing' it really is the best.

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The Importance of Repurposing Content

Repurposing content, meaning changing its format and the audience to which its targeted, can help you maximize your resources and increase the effect of your content marketing efforts.

In the world of SEO, we all understand and embrace the idea that content is king. For most, that means challenging teams to constantly create fresh new content that's constructive for site users and easily digestible for the search engines. A lot of time and energy can go into generating those content ideas. Sometimes, though, it shouldn't require that much energy. Sometimes, the content is right there, already published on the site and it just needs some retooling to breathe fresh life into it. Let's look at the concept of repurposing content and the relative benefits.

Repurposing vs. Revamping: Is There a Difference?

First, we need to make a distinction between repurposing and revamping content. At first glance, they look similar, but they are different concepts. Knowing the difference between the two as well as your specific goals and promotional strategy will dictate which one you might employ.

The primary distinction is this: revamping a piece of content will serve the same purpose for which it was initially intended and target the same audience. Updating a blog post would be an example of revamping content. Repurposing content means changing the format and likely the audience to which it's targeted. An example would be taking key content from an existing PDF and creating an eye-catching infographic.

Image source.

The Benefits

Revamping content can be beneficial to both the audience and consequently SEO. Using the blog update example, if your new information is significant enough, that post may impress readers and earn new life being circulated and ultimately improve the chance for it to rank well for critical keyword phrases.

Repurposing content adds value in multiple ways:

1. Reaching Across Multiple Platforms: Doing things like converting webinars to videos, or turning dense PDFs into infographics, it increases the ability to promote that content across multiple channels beyond your domain.
2. Reinforcing the Message: By broadcasting your message across multiple media in different formats, you increase the likelihood that the message will be remembered and acted upon.
3. SEO Benefit: Creating variations on a theme and distributing across multiple channels increases the potential for organic search traffic from a host of sources.

Here are a few examples of the variety of content that could be produced repurposing existing content:

• Infographics
• Newsletters
• Case Studies
• Podcast
• Whitepapers
• Lists
• Memes
• Webinars 

Cross-Promotion Is Vital

When you develop new content, be sure to leverage it across all of the tools at your disposal. If you've created a new video, certainly you want that posted to your site's YouTube channel, but don't forget to promote that across any and every social media channel at hand. Push it out on your Facebook page, tweet it on Twitter, and announce it on LinkedIn. Use every reasonable channel you can access to push that content to as broad an audience as possible to increase the potential that it's going to be shared and establish authority.

In short, when considering how to generate new content for your site, don't forget to evaluate the potential of repurposing critical existing content into new formats. Sometimes you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You just need to renew the treads to get more constructive mileage.

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It’s Not an SEO’s Job to Create Content

For some reason, as SEOs we think it is our job to do everything.

Content marketing has quickly grown in popularity within the digital marketing industry and of course we SEOs have deemed this our responsibility.

However, it’s not an SEO’s job to create content.

I want to explain why we SEOs should stop trying to take on content creation so we can get back to focusing on making websites perform better in search.

Content Creation Is Hard

Creating content is freakin’ hard.

Successful content doesn’t happen by accident – a lot of hard work, creativity, and planning goes into effective content marketing. As SEOs we commonly underestimate the amount of effort involved in creating popular content.

Creating compelling and engaging content requires a full team of skilled individuals. The content creation process has many facets and a proper content team will consist of employees from multiple backgrounds. Some of these people include:

• Writers
• Editors
• Graphic designers/artists
• Web developers
• Videographers
• Etc.

Assuming SEOs can fulfill the roles of all these people by themselves is a huge mistake. Finding a single person that excels in all the various areas required to create successful content on a consistent basis is highly unlikely.

Outstanding content is typically the product of a coordinated team effort. Moreover, the skills necessary for content creation aren’t naturally found within an SEO. Some SEOs may have those skills, but they traditionally aren’t there.

Even if you were somehow able to handle all these various aspects alone, it would still take a great deal of time. Content creation takes time – time that SEOs typically do not have. If we were to focus all our time on content creation it wouldn’t leave much time to do actual optimization work.

Regularly crafting successful content takes a dedicated team of skilled people from a variety of backgrounds. Attempting to replicate this with a single person or group of people with a single skillset and lack of necessary training is foolish.

As SEOs we should simply leave the content creation to those who are better equipped to execute it effectively. That doesn’t mean, however, that we shouldn’t be involved.

We Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Collaborate

Another thing we need to learn as SEOs is that it’s alright to collaborate with others.

Let’s be honest, SEO as an industry hasn’t always been portrayed in the most flattering light to the general public, and it seems every year we see a new article on a major publication declaring SEO is dead.

So it’s no surprise that SEOs tend to be a bit defensive about our industry and work. However, this does not mean we cannot work effectively with people in other marketing disciplines. If we want to become legitimate marketers, SEOs need to learn to collaborate with other departments.

Successful online marketing is comprehensive and incorporates aspects from multiple digital strategies (SEO, content marketing, PPC, PR, etc.). SEOs can maximize their efficiency by combining efforts with other online marketers – specifically those in content marketing.

Now let’s be clear, SEO and content marketing are two completely different practices.

Although SEO and content marketing are indeed separate strategies, they are also complementary. Specifically, content marketing can really supercharge link-building - leveraging great content is the easiest way to build real and worthwhile links. Especially considering content specialists aren’t always the best at promoting content – this is where SEOs can help.

But commonly SEOs make the mistake of assuming too much responsibility. We know that content can boost link-building efficiency so we decide it should be our job to create that content and make life easier for ourselves. Unfortunately by doing this we tend to spread ourselves too thin, which leads to shoddy content and is also detrimental to our SEO work. We’ve all seen really bad content made by SEOs trying to build links – many SEOs simply don’t have the skills needed to create great content.

If we would simply collaborate more with those in other marketing disciplines it would not only make our job easier, but more effective. Content creation should be left to those who are qualified to do it. Just like SEO, content creation requires precise skills and training, and SEOs lack that proficiency.

However, this does not necessarily mean SEOs should be completely removed from the content creation process – the key is collaboration. As SEOs we have unique insights into how content might perform, and it is important that we remain involved in the process to offer this perspective. SEOs can be particularly helpful during the content ideation process by:

• Offering content suggestions based on past performance (links) of existing content
• Analyzing the competition’s content to see what has worked in the past
• Evaluating niches to identify potential content gaps that could be filled

Brian Dean wrote about a similar process which he refers to as the "skyscraper technique" here.

SEOs possess the analytical minds and skills to contribute to content ideation. The actual content creation should still be left up to the experts, but SEOs can certainly provide assistance to the content ideation process in an advisory role.

Effective online marketing requires a holistic approach, and consequently open collaboration between numerous digital marketing specialists.

SEOs Don’t Need to Create Content

Finally, SEOs don’t need to create content.

When we let the content creation specialists handle the creation of content, it allows us to focus on what we do best – SEO.

Once excellent content has been created we can concentrate on optimizing that content for search. This is much more in our wheelhouse as SEOs excel at optimizing and promoting content.

For example, take a great piece of content like this from Jeep.com:

It’s a map of trails recommended by Jeep. This is an incredible piece of content that should have a large number of inbound links and linking domains right? Wrong, according to Open Site Explorer this content has just seven linking domains:

This is a perfect example of where superb content has already been created, but not heavily promoted. This is precisely where an experienced SEO could step in and leverage this content for the links it deserves.

Furthermore, while exceptional content can maximize SEO effort in terms of link-building, content is not wholly necessary for building links. It can be a bit more difficult, but it’s certainly not impossible to build links without content.

SEOs should focus on optimizing for search, and the activities and techniques that achieve SEO goals. Although crafting high-grade content can be beneficial for SEO in many respects, the true potential of that content will never be realized without an SEO helping guide the process and promoting afterward.

Summary

SEO has its own merit and value, and it is not dependent on content. The growth and development of content marketing has led many SEOs to assume they must create content as well. However, this is not true – not only is content creation something SEOs are ill-equipped to handle, but it’s simply not their responsibility.

Identifying quality content and devising ways to leverage that content for worthwhile links has always been part of an SEO’s duties, but this does not require actual content creation. As SEOs we must learn to collaborate with other departments, like content creators, to achieve overarching marketing goals.

Traditionally, the skills necessary for content creation are not inherent in SEOs. Advising during content ideation and promoting first-class content once it’s produced are much more in our wheelhouse. SEOs should be an integral part of any online marketing initiative and by working with other departments effectively we can further demonstrate our value.

Plainly stated the job of an SEO is to optimize for search, and that can involve content. But it’s not an SEO’s job to create content and we shouldn’t place this burden on our shoulders alone.

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