Once the holy grail of SEO, attaining top organic SERPs results has lost some of its luster in favor of social media currency.

People seem to forget that keyword optimization is still a worthwhile pursuit that can make a big difference.

While the basics of keyword optimization haven’t changed much over the years, there are a few new developments worth knowing about. Keep these keyword optimization tips in mind when crafting content.

Make It Semantic, Folks

A lot of people are still set in their ways with regards to keyword selection and frequency within their content.

You can’t game the system simply by using an optimal density of major and minor keywords anymore. Focus instead on titling your posts to better reflect how people search the web.

After all, many Google users phrase their queriesin the form of a question nowadays.

Don’t Over-Optimize Anchors

While hyperlinks are still a great place to slip in keywords, quite a few marketers over-optimize anchor text. Don’t try to make every snippet of anchor text include a keyword that you’re looking to rank highly for.

Ensure that your links increase the value of the content in which they’re placed and point towards resources that make sense. Phrase your anchor text appropriately to avoid false advertising.

Lay Off the Homepage Redirection

One of the ugliest attempts to meld keyword optimization with internal linking is the use of keyword-laden anchor text that points at one’s own homepage.

While a lot of internal linking from one post to another found on the same site is a good idea, you can’t be too brazen about it. Don’t view every hyperlink as an excuse to funnel readers to your primary landing page.

Incorporate High-Profile Author Attribution

Some of the most powerful keywords you can use nowadays are the names of high-profile authors and experts.

In recent years, Google’s ranking algorithms have evolved to include digital name-dropping as an ingredient in the overall equation. Google’s own Authorship feature allows anyone to establish a singular digital identity for search purposes and link their work to it.

Work some big names into your content in a subtle way to boost keyword strength and build credibility.

Ditch Top-Heavy Keyword Profiles

Search algorithms have gotten pretty advanced when it comes to “understanding” the intent of a web page. You don’t need to hammer the point home by repeating main keywords over and over.

Doing so will make Google and Bing more likely to penalize you. Just use your top keywords a few times where it makes sense, then start working your way down a list of secondary LSI keywords.

Yes, They Still Matter

There’s a lot of garbage advice floating around the SEO world nowadays, though that’s pretty much always been the case. The notion that keywords don’t matter anymore is one of the latest myths to wash over the SEO landscape.

The truth is that keywords and their optimization still matter. Use the tips and tricks laid out above to improve your content’s organic standings in the SERPs.

The post Keyword Optimizations for the Modern SEO Technician appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Nowadays, visual marketing is becoming big business due to its extraordinary potential. According to a study by KISSmetrics, photo-augmented content gets 53% more Facebook Likes and 84% more click-throughs than mere text.

The reality is that images can double page views overnight. If you’d like to successfully leverage image marketing, you’ll need to keep the following tips in mind.

1. Ditch the Clichés

If you’ve spent more than 30 minutes on the web in the past year, you’ve no doubt witnessed countless examples of lazy photography on a variety of sites.

Using stock images to convey a message won’t work. Any visual material should be striking, unique and relevant to the subject at hand.

You’ll need to either take photos yourself or hire a competent professional to do the job.

2. Tell a Story in Pictures

Whatever your goal may be with a particular image, you need to do more than simply show off some hardware or visually back up a concept.

Instead, you should focus on using your images to convey a narrative. Draw the reader in with an image that resonates emotionally with the desired target audience.

The best images speak for themselves without the need for any explanation.

3. Clearly Imply Utility

If you’re using platforms like Instagram or Pinterest to improve the standing of your business, you can’t be vague regarding what you bring to the table.

Your visuals need to show consumers using your products in realistic, relatable scenarios that make sense.

Better yet, you should ideally provide examples of novel uses for your hardware, software or services that ordinary users might not have thought of already.

4. Include the General Public

User-generated content is clearly the next step in marketing ROI maximization. Combined with image-centric social media, it can kick things up a notch in unexpected ways.

Instagram is the fastest growing social network at the moment, a development that underscores the potential of image sharing as a promotional tool.

You need to get users on board with the idea of sharing your multimedia content with their peers. Run contests and other audience participation promotions to prime the sharing pump.

5. Give Images Inherent Value

Nothing promotes rabid sharing like a visual that’s more than just a pretty picture. Think infographics, visual how-to guides and flowcharts.

If an image explains how to solve a problem or can act as a handy reference, it’s far more likely to go viral.

Ultimately, virality is the end goal of any visual marketing effort. Add an artistic flair to your helpful images to make them stand out.

Putting Visuals to Good Use

Implementing the preceding strategies will require you to familiarize yourself with more specific tactics like graphic quotes and color psychology.

Learning to use online apps like Pixlr and Fotor to optimize your photos for any given situation is equally clutch.

The main takeaway is that visual marketing is booming in a big way nowadays and it will become all the more effective in the coming years.

The post 5 Must Knows for Image Marketing appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Even if you’re more reliant on email or social media marketing to woo followers, you’ll need a solid foundation to build your site on.

The following plug-ins will take your WordPress site to the next level.

Shareaholic

In this day and age, the ability to share content with broader social media networks is the ticket to making your content really go the extra mile.

Shareaholic is the easiest way for webmasters to allow devout followers to give their friends a heads-up when it comes to relevant content that really matters.

Easy Testimonials

The collective clout of high-profile followers goes a long way in boosting SERPs standings for any site.

Making it effortless for important characters to leave a thumbs up in the form of a testimonial is what Easy Testimonials is all about. Be sure to include it in your site for solid feedback.

MarketPress eCommerce

If your blog isn’t based around e-commerce, you may have forgotten about the selling equation for various items. If that’s the case, you need something to handle petty online transactions.

Brought to you by the folks at WPMU Dev, MarketPress eCommerce is the best way to quickly take care of online sales.

Infinite SEO

Like it or not, it’s impossible to ignore the importance of SEO on the web. You’ve got to manage SEO in an intelligent manner to ensure that your blog isn’t lost to the hinterlands of Google.

Infinitive SEO ramps things up to another level in a way that SEO Ultimate can’t match.

iThemes Security

Once upon a time, iThemes Security was known as Better WP Security. Though the name has changed, iThemes Security is still one of the best all-in-one firewall modules you can find to protect your WordPress installation.

Whether you’re concerned about bogus log-in attempts or SQL injection attacks, iThemes is the ultimate solution.

Google Maps Ready

Location awareness brings a lot to any site and the blog posts that come with it. Google Maps Ready makes it easy to add custom maps featuring various landmarks and measurements to any post.

It’s free and works flawlessly with any kind of sidebar, post type or page you can imagine.

WP Fastest Cache

When you hit a certain level of traffic, it’s important to focus on speed and efficiency at the server level.

WP Fastest Cache will make your site snappier by compressing Javascript and CSS files as well as caching common HTTP requests. The net result will be shorter page load times and lower resource consumption.

Push It to the Limit

Obviously, there’s plenty of must-have plug-ins like Akismet that are so obvious that they don’t need to be mentioned.

Those bedrock add-ons should of course not be ignored. For the purposes of putting out the best blog for any given SMB, the plug-ins mentioned above are the way to go.

The post Essential WordPress Plugins for Bloggers appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Most blogging campaigns don’t fail for lack of effort or good intentions. The reality is that far too many bloggers neglect the nuts and bolts underneath the hood that will ensure their success.

For the foreseeable future, the following up-to-date blogging tips should serve you well.

1. Link to High-Profile Authorities

Though it took years to come to fruition, Google’s long-term goal of tying relevance to identity has finally been realized.

Due in large part to the Authorship project, it’s possible to leverage the clout of specific individuals to boost link juice.

Whether it’s a simple namedrop or a more focused shout out, try to reference popular bloggers or authorities by name and link to their pages.

2. Use the “Pillar Article” Strategy

Readers need to hit a certain threshold of exposure to your blog to become serious followers. Ensuring that any given potential customer reaches that threshold is what the Pillar Article Strategy is all about.

Write general articles on broad topics and then develop further articles based on each issue raised within the pillar post. Ideally, this pyramid approach will turn casual readers into rabid fans.

3. Scientifically Optimize Post Length

There’s an optimal length for everything from Twitter blasts to Facebook updates if you’re interested in leaving an impression on followers.

A good rule of thumb is about 500 words per blog post to start. To find the right length for your niche, you’ll need to closely monitor your analytics to determine the sweet spot.

Whatever length you choose, be sure to publish on a regular schedule.

4. Employ Multiple Broadcast Formats

Nowadays, consumers use a wide array of devices ranging from desktop PCs to tablets to access interesting content. Consequently, bloggers that gain the most traction with their followers publish content in a variety of formats.

For instance, you could publish truncated versions of posts for mobile readers to sum up the corresponding full articles. Recording YouTube videos that flesh out your blog posts is always a smart idea.

5. Answer Questions with Your Posts

Quite possibly the most important thing to remember when crafting content is that your posts should answer specific questions that might be posed by potential followers.

More and more, people are asking questions of search engines like Google using natural language rather than merely punching in keywords.

If you focus your posts around answering questions, you’ll be much more likely to attain high SERPs rankings for content pieces.

Keeping the Train on the Tracks

Making the most of your blogging is as much about technical tweaks as it is about content. Once a post generates a certain amount of inertia, it’s far more likely to maintain a high rank in the SERPs.

It takes a concerted effort for posts to achieve high rankings in the first place. For the moment, these tips will help to make that happen.

The post 5 Blogging Tips That Will Supercharge Site Traffic appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Businesses that have invested years in a traditional content strategy aimed at PC users are particularly flummoxed by this shift.

Fortunately, it’s not that tough to modify an existing content marketing strategy to appeal to potential mobile consumers.

Know Your Audience

To get the most from your content marketing, you must understand the mobile browsing habits of your core audience.

For the most part, the typical web analytics rules apply when you’re analyzing visits to your mobile sites.

Look at how long visitors spend consuming different kinds of content and use that feedback to refine your approach. Perform a full mobile analytics audit at least once a week.

Make Use of Geotargeting

The most important thing that businesses need to understand about mobile marketing is that content impact depends greatly on geography.

Fortunately, search engines like Google already consider the location of the searcher when serving up content. You can boost the effectiveness of geotargeting through careful keyword optimization.

Use tools like Google Trends to find out what’s hot in general and localize your content with low-competition keywords.

Emphasize Visuals

It goes without saying that smartphones aren’t the best devices to use if you’re trying to peruse large quantities of text.

As such, mobile visitors will respond more positively to simpler graphics, maps and photographs. Liberally sprinkle visuals throughout your mobile content to boost its appeal.

Just be sure to optimize your images for mobile so that they’re easy to re-size and don’t bog down page load times.

Prioritize Brief Guides & How-Tos

Mobile users like bite-sized chunks of information that they can digest easily delivered directly to their devices of choice. Capitalize on this reality by crafting quick video tutorials that can be viewed in a minute or less.

This will reinforce your authority in the minds of potential customers and have a positive impact on overall SEO. Use current events and consumer trends to guide your topic selection.

Summarize Broader Posts

Many mobile users rely on apps like Pocket, Instapaper to bookmark content for later consumption.

When you’re publishing for mobile, make your posts general summaries of broader, more in-depth articles and videos and link to the full versions.

If even a fraction of your mobile visitors actually hit up your more expansive content on their laptops when they get home, you’ll see an appreciable surge in traffic.

The Learning Never Stops

As the old saying goes, change is the only constant in the content marketing world. Add mobile to the mix and the playing field becomes even more confusing.

You’ll need to keep your wits about you and be open to new content marketing techniques to stay in the game.

If you respond quickly to fickle consumer tastes, mobile content marketing triumph will eventually come your way.

The post Crafting a Mobile Content Marketing Strategy That Works appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

While knowing is often half the battle, many still struggle with the execution portion of the content marketing process.

Here are just a few surefire techniques that you can use to supercharge your own content. 

1. Mix Evergreen & Topical

Regardless of the specific form that your content takes on any given day, you need to vary the focus of your pieces.

Release a regular stream of content that's related to current events in your field. At the same time, try to put out periodic evergreen guides on niche-specific topics. 

2. Curate Content Regularly

An easy way to boost your content output is to use the work of others as a jump-off point. Content curation allows businesses to siphon off a bit of the buzz created by other businesses and sites.

Better yet, it's a great way to improve site SEO and boost SERPs rankings. 

3. Repurpose Old Content

Few businesses realize that there's plenty of content value lurking within their archives. Oftentimes, it's not even necessary to edit or rewrite content to squeeze a bit of extra life from older publications.

All you have to do is repurpose the content in question by promoting it to a new audience. 

4. Cross-Promote with Video

If you're not using video to augment traditional content marketing avenues like blogging, you need to start immediately.

More importantly, you should use your YouTube and Vimeo videos to promote other forms of content that you've posted elsewhere. Make sure that your videos mention your primary website and social media profiles. 

5. Use Q&A Sites for Research

Keeping your finger on the pulse of the community and using that intelligence to guide your content efforts is a must in this day and age.

Check out sites like Quora and Reddit to see what your potential customers are most interested in and tailor your content to address their concerns. 

6. Content First, Keywords Later

One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make when using content to raise their profiles is focusing too much on keywords. While keywords are important, they're not the be-all and end-all of content marketing.

Build your content so that it revolves around a particular topic and seamlessly incorporate the appropriate keywords later on. 

7. Focus on Unique Photos

While social media is an effective way to promote content, most of your traffic will come from Google and Bing. More and more, images are being used to search for content.

As such, it's vital that you optimize your images for search and use unique photos that set your content apart. 

Going the Distance

Devising a content marketing strategy that accomplishes your goals at a reasonable price is a marathon, not a sprint.

You can reach the finish line more quickly with less effort by employing established SEO best practices and putting out the best content possible. The tactics covered here should help you immensely.

The post 7 Content Marketing Tactics for Success appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

To achieve serious results with SEO, you’ll need to dig down and get a bit more specific. Without a doubt, Facebook Pages can be powerful tools in the fight for superior SERPs rankings.

The following Facebook SEO tips should improve brand visibility and lead to greater sales and conversions in the future.

Optimize About Page Keywords

The most important part of any given Facebook Page is the About section. Try to shoot for a description of your business that’s less than 100 characters in length if possible.

Since brevity is a priority, you’ll need to choose the keywords that best describe your business and its specialty carefully. Be sure to include the full URL of your primary website’s domain name as well as your phone number.

Keep Your Keywords Uniform

The keywords that you use in your Wall posts will no doubt change to suit the needs of specific promotional efforts over time.

However, it’s important that you select a core group of major keywords that you’ll use uniformly throughout your Facebook Page or Pages. This will help you to solidify a brand identity for your SMB and hopefully boost SERPs results over the long haul. 

Pay Attention to Image SEO

Optimizing your images to reinforce your business’s SEO health is incredibly important on Facebook. For starters, it’s a good idea to rename your image files to include major and minor keywords that are pertinent to your overall SEO strategy.

In addition, try to host your images from a cookie-less domain. Lastly, be sure to optimize the keywords used in the alt and title tags for all images. 

Leverage Vanity URLs

As soon as your Page is “liked” by 25 people, you can apply for a custom vanity URL. Before you even create a Page, you should have a vanity URL already picked out.

Typically, most SMBs simply go with their company name. If your company name is particularly short, you can tack on a few additional keywords that more thoroughly describe your business’s mission statement and niche. 

Drive Traffic to Offsite Content

Facebook is a “walled garden” of sorts in several ways. While some content posted on Facebook will eventually show up in the SERPs, you might as well play it safe and use Facebook Pages to send traffic to your primary website.

Host the bulk of your content on domains that are more open to indexing by major search engines. Be sure to cross-promote your Facebook Page from your website. 

Work Smarter, Then Harder

There are few businesses in existence that can’t benefit from a moderate helping of Facebook promotion. Before you invest a serious amount of time in your Facebook Page, you should learn to get the most from your efforts.

Once you know the ropes of proper Facebook SEO, you can get down to brass tacks and take your social media marketing to the next level for the good of your business. 

The post Effective Facebook SEO Tactics Every SMB Should Use appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

For a long time, PPC and affiliate marketing focused content marketing dominated the affiliate model. While those methods are still valid, new tactics are quickly becoming just as effective.

Affiliates that want to get the jump on the competition are always looking for new methods to promote their links. Here are a few that deserve a closer look.

1. SMS-Based Pay Per Call

These days, Pay Per Call marketing is doing well when it comes to commissions for affiliates and conversions for merchants. Ad networks are making it easier than ever for businesses and their affiliate promoters to make a serious impact.

While there are many ways to play the Pay Per Call angle, SMS messages are often the preferred technique for promoting mobile affiliate offers.

2. Niche Online Coupon Sites

One of the best things about the web is that it allows everyday consumers to save gobs of money. Simultaneously, it enables merchants to gain an edge by offering loss leader promotions that can attract lifelong customers.

Coupon sites are a great opportunity for affiliates in a number of ways. The top coupon sites get major traffic and are a great place to position affiliate links.

3. Offline QR-Code Campaigns

Not long ago, a short-lived interest in QR codes and their ability to drive web traffic sort of fizzled and died. Truthfully, QR codes can be pretty lucrative if you know how to promote them.

Offline QR code promotions have the potential to boast the best ROI of any marketing campaigns under the right circumstances. You’ll need the right approach and good locations to make QR codes a win.

4. Visual Marketing via Pinterest

Using images to promote offers is pretty much the future of affiliate marketing, at least in the short term.

While it doesn’t allow for direct affiliate pitches via images, Pinterest can still enable stealth methods of offer promotion if you’re willing to get creative.

The key is to utilize semi-offsite techniques for getting your image-based links in front of the right consumers. Try pinning YouTube review videos as a start. Use your imagination to push this method to its limit.

5. YouTube Tutorial Videos

While many major businesses use YouTube videos to establish brand credibility, few rely on how-to videos for direct affiliate marketing. Whatever your niche or approach, you can suck in tons of views and traffic by providing potential consumers with a quick how-to.

While they’re watching, include an in-video, clickable link that leads to your landing page. This approach can seriously jump-start a campaign that’s not going anywhere.

Seizing the Day

There’s no reason why you can’t use mainstream affiliate tactics like blog marketing and PPC in conjunction with the development of alternative avenues of promotion.

Of course, a scattershot approach only works if you have the time and resources to devote to each affiliate model. You’ll need to carefully choose just a few and go whole hog with each. Play around with a few formats and decide what’s best for you.

The post 5 Seriously Underutilized Affiliate Marketing Tactics appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

In the video marketing realm, YouTube is the undisputed king. As such, it’s important to focus a considerable amount of effort on YouTube-specific SEO. The following SEO best practices will ensure high rankings for your videos.

Create Sitemaps for Embedded Videos

Obviously, videos hosted on YouTube will already be highly visible to Google and Bing. The same can’t be said for instances of said videos embedded in other sites. No matter where your multimedia content ends up, you’ll want the sites that they land on to have properly configured sitemaps for videos. It only takes a minute and it can have a positive impact on SEO.

Optimize Video Description Keywords

No matter what happens with SEO in the future, keywords will always be a major determinant of which pieces of content rank well for specific queries. When uploading your content to YouTube, you need to carefully consider what to include in the description and tag fields. Titles are particularly important as well since they’re the first thing that viewers see. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner to guide your keyword efforts.

Use Annotations to Add Value

Businesses of all kinds can greatly boost the effectiveness of video content through the use of in-screen annotations. Adding annotations to your videos is simple and can accomplish a variety of goals. For one thing, annotations can clarify material presented within videos. They can also be used to refer viewers to related YouTube clips. Finally, annotations can increase traffic to your primary website or to your social media profiles.

Improve User Experience

One of the best ways to boost the SEO clout of YouTube videos and by extension your brand’s reputation online is by improving user experience. Consider adding transcripts and possibly captions that scroll to your video posts. Furthermore, you’ll want to pay close attention to the length of videos based on their intended purpose. Finally, be sure to optimize your videos for mobile users to reach wider audiences.

Add Geotags to Clips

Thanks to the increasing popularity of mobile hardware like smartphones and tablets, location awareness is becoming a big part of good SEO nowadays. Geotagging your videos so that they reference physical locations is a must. For SMBs that derive the bulk of their revenue from local traffic, geotagging can seriously turbocharge sales and conversions on the ground. You’re just leaving money on the table by ignoring the potential of geotagging.

Getting More Mileage from Your Videos

In many ways, video is the future of online content marketing. For many businesses, a heavy YouTube presence is the best way to maximize marketing ROI. As such, getting your video marketing blasts to rank highly in the SERPs is of paramount importance whether you’re an established business or a struggling startup. The SEO pointers outlined here should go a long way in making that happen.

The post YouTube SEO Tips for Savvy SMBs appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

In many cases, they’re not doing things wrong so much as they’re failing to take full advantage of the content that they produce.

If ROI is of any concern to your business, you need to boost the mileage that your content gets. Here are a few tips to ensure that this happens.

Repurpose Old Content

One of the easiest ways to get more from your content is to repurpose it. For instance, you could compile old blog posts into an e-book publication and offer it as a free download. Alternatively, it’s always a bright idea to dust off a popular evergreen article or video from yesteryear and update the information. Repurposing existing content helps businesses to squeeze extra value from content assets.

Find New Audiences

Try as we might, our content overtures aren’t always accepted in the manner that we’d like them to be. In some cases, the reason is that we’re barking up the wrong tree insofar as intended audience is concerned. If you don’t succeed the first time around with a particular article, infographic or video, try directing it at a new audience. You might be surprised at the results.

Catch the Crest of the Wave

Like it or not, timing is everything in the content marketing game. The best way to maximize the ROI of any content is to publish it as an event is trending online. A topic needs to hit a “critical mass” of awareness before it can attract serious clicks. Craft your content first and wait for interest in the subject matter to approach its peak.

Play Devil’s Advocate, Carefully

It’s widely understood that controversy is an easy way to attract attention. The problem with using controversy to promote your content is that public sentiment can quickly turn against you. Instead of being blatantly controversial, adopt an approach or viewpoint that gets people to look at things from a different angle. The idea is to spark conversation that’s constructive without being divisive and encourage sharing of your content.

Use UGC to Bulk Up Your Output

Finding the right way to incorporate user-generated content into your marketing mix can be trying. However, identifying the proper way to use UGC to bolster your content stream can massively increase ROI and be well worth it in the end. Try running a contest or sponsoring a crowdsourced project like a community Wiki hosted on your servers to illicit interactions with target demographics.

Eyes on the Prize

Today’s highly wired consumers expect a steady stream of fresh, thought-provoking content from brands at every level. Failure to deliver said content can mean losing clout and market share to competitors in your industry. To avoid this outcome without breaking the bank, learn to work smarter rather than harder. The tactics discussed above can help you to maximize the potential of any content creations you publish.

The post Do More with Less: How to Stretch Your Content Marketing Budget appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Realistically, your tweets can show up in high places in Google’s search results if you put in a bit of effort. Here are a handful of tips to make sure that happens.

1. The Username Weighs a Ton

On Twitter, your chosen moniker matters a lot when it comes to how followers and even window shoppers view your brand. Spend a little time picking a great handle for your account based on who you are and what you want to accomplish. Otherwise, you risk losing out on the more fickle consumers that judge a Twitter account based solely on the name you choose.

2. Get Them Above the Fold

When you get right down to it, Twitter is a tricky platform to master. The attention spans of most users are incredibly short when you consider the fact that no message can possibly exceed a short paragraph. Generally speaking, people pay attention to the first 42 characters or so and can’t be bothered to read on any further in many cases. Be sure that your main message is “above the fold” in your tweets.

3. Ditch Your URL Shortener

URL shorteners provided by Google or Bit.ly make it easier to cram more stunning information into your tweets but do little for SEO. You’d be better off optimizing your site’s structure to utilize short URLs so that you can include actual keywords in your links. Those keywords get indexed and contribute to better overall SEO. Ultimately, this increases the chances of getting into the SERPs for specific keywords.

4. Keywords Still Count Nowadays

Far too many have bought the hype regarding the obsolescence of keywords in the SEO equation. Like it or not, keywords will always help bots and humans to categorize content and find it based on the intent of different queries. You can optimize your tweet keywords for SEO without much effort and make a big difference in the SERPs depending on your cumulative social media clout.

5. Make Reciprocity a Priority

No doubt, it’s important to put some effort into on-page SEO in regards to your tweets. However, off-page SEO in the guise of re-tweets is every bit as important if you really want your Twitter campaigns to catch fire. There’s no magic formula to racking up loads of re-tweets other than good, old-fashioned social networking. Find others in your niche that share your passion and re-tweet their content with abandon.

SEO for 140 Characters or Less

In the social media SEO sphere, the first on the draw isn’t always the most likely to meet with success. While getting the jump on the competition in terms of when you fire off your tweets is a plus, it’s not the most important ingredient in a lucrative campaign. These SEO tips and tricks will help to ensure that your Twitter efforts aren’t in vain.

The post Top 5 SEO Tips for Twitter Marketing appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Ultimately, multimedia data will become just as important as text in the overall SEO equation in short order. Mastering visual marketing is something that should be done sooner rather than later. Here are a few tips to get you started.

Optimize for All Platforms

Nothing is more annoying than trying to view an appealing image on a mobile device just to find out that it’s not resizable. You’ll experience this phenomenon on Google+ quite a bit. Failure to optimize images for various platforms is a real showstopper. Optimizing visual content for Google+ as well as other platforms is a must in this day and age if you’re looking for maximum traffic.

Mix Up Your Formats

While a picture is often worth a thousand words, there’s more to visual marketing than merely slapping up a lone image file and letting it stand on its own. The effectiveness of infographics when it comes to selling a product or narrative should demonstrate how important it is to mix up image styles and formats. Try publishing slideshows of images with transition effects to bolster the impact of your visual marketing.

Add Text for SEO

Believe it or not, search engines can actually index text within image files nowadays if they’re Flash-based. As such, there’s no reason to not include descriptive text that follows the normal SEO rules within your visual content. Shoot for niche keywords that don’t feature a lot of competition for the best results. Just ensure that your text jives with the pictures that you’re publishing and you’ll be sure to see results.

Tell a Story Along the Way

If you don’t put any thought into how you arrange or present your images, you can’t be surprised when your visual marketing falls flat. Make your images tell a story instead of acting as mere accompaniment to other content. By doing so, you encourage others to share your content with their own online social circles and increase the chances of locking down a viral hit.

Ditch the Visual Cliches

Nothing ensures failure like relying on visual cliches to send a message. The web is rife with trite visual clutter in the form of hackneyed memes and unimaginative ripoffs. Check out pretty much everyone’s Instagram feed for examples of this trend. Skip the boring, worn-out visual cliches and actually come up with something original that hasn’t been done to death by someone else. In the end, it’s the only way to achieve results with visual marketing.

Eye of the Beholder

How your visual marketing actually affects any given audience depends on a variety of factors. To find that “sweet spot” where your visual marketing really shines, you’ll need to play around with your formula a bit and watch your analytics feedback closely. For better or for worse, visual marketing is likely the future of online promotion. Get on-board with the trend now or get left in the dust.

The post 5 Visual Tips to Increase Content Value appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Use High-Authority Authors

Taking advantage of the clout that comes with respected authorities to give your site a SERPs boost is the best way to leverage guest blogging. The increasing importance of Authorship as an ingredient in Google’s ranking algorithms means that author reputation is a major contributor to the success of guest posts. While you don’t need to attract world-famous authors, you should get respected figures in your niche.

Stay on Topic

A guest blog post should be relevant to the blog it’s posted on rather than the guest poster’s core audience. Ideally, posts will be mutually beneficial to both parties. Transparently self-serving articles will come off as spammy. This is precisely the behavior that Cutts warned about when he jumped the gun by claiming that guest blogging was dead. Be sure that guest posts target the blog’s audience rather than the guest’s.

Minimize Self-Serving Links

It’s incredibly important to avoid self-serving links that detract from the main message of a guest post. Including a link to a website or brand name in the author’s byline is sufficient. When it comes to using guest blogging to build a reputation, slow and steady wins the race. Overly promotional guest blogging is a surefire way to shoot yourself and your guest poster in the foot.

Publish Timely Content

Both Google and Bing are placing an increasing emphasis on the timeliness of content in regards to SERPs rankings. Guest posts aren’t really a great way to put out evergreen content. However, they are a good way to capitalize on trending topics by bringing in respected authors that can expound on them. Just be sure to publish content on subjects that aren’t too flavor-of-the-month to achieve considerable results.

Take the Path Less Traveled

The biggest problem with the vast majority of blog posts is that they don’t say anything particularly unique. If you want a guest blog post to succeed, it has to tackle a problem or topic from an angle that hasn’t been considered before. Coming up with a unique approach to a common issue is tough but ultimately the only way to win with guest blogging efforts.

Guest Blogging the Right Way

It’s not that difficult to make your guest blogging produce results if you avoid shortsighted tactics and shoot for quality. Go back to the basics of what makes for great blog posts and don’t even consider using gimmicks. Taking shortcuts is a sure path to SERPs penalties for your web properties. Long story short, guest blogging still has a bright future if you’re willing to put in the effort.

The post Guest Blogging Still Works. Here’s How appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

While quality indicators like authoritative organic links and social media clout are important, good on-page SEO is nevertheless still quite critical. Pushing on-page SEO to the back burner is a mistake that should be avoided at all costs. In 2014 and moving forward, you’ll want to focus on the following on-page factors.

Authorship Information

No matter how sophisticated search algorithms become, quantifying relevance isn’t an exact science. More importantly, what constitutes relevance is always changing from month to month. On an increasingly social web, author reputation is everything. Google Authorship gives bloggers and website owners a way to leverage their established clout for SEO gains. Be sure to include Authorship details on all published posts to benefit from the reputations of posters.

Fresh, Steady Content Streams

Today’s web is all about current events. Granted, evergreen content stands the test of time and search engines reflect that with SERPs attuned to highly specific search queries. However, the ranked content that’s served up to mobile searchers for the vast majority of queries tends to share one thing in common. That shared quality is almost always timeliness. To stay on top, publish original, relevant content at a predictable pace.

Clean Link Structures

Avoiding the dreaded duplicate content penalty is the name of the game for many sites. The proper use of rel="nofollow" goes a long way in this regard. Beyond that, it’s important to adopt a link scheme that eschews nonsensical numbers in favor of URLs that incorporate major keywords. Whatever your link scheme may entail, be sure that it’s standardized across your domains for the best results possible.

LSI Keyword Depth

Some SEO gurus are adamant about proving that keywords no longer matter. That assertion is so ridiculous that it’s not even worth addressing. Keywords are how search engines and people find and assess the relevance of content, for the most part. Latent semantic indexing is a more nuanced approach to the keyword conundrum. If you want better SERPs results, you’ll need to build out your keyword profiles.

Image Tag Optimization

If there’s one area where lower-level tag optimization matters, it’s the field of image categorization. More and more, the ability to search content based on visual data impacts SERPs like never before. Look no further than Google Images or Bing Images to witness the effectiveness of such approaches. As a result, descriptive image tags are quite important when it comes to getting your content exposed to a wider audience online.

End of Transmission

To summarize, on-page factors are still every bit as important as off-page ingredients in the SEO recipe. Obviously, SEO best practices such as optimized title and header tags still matter to some extent. However, most CMS platforms like WordPress or Drupal take care of those mundane concerns for you. In the coming year, the on-page factors profiled here will be the keys to improving your cumulative SEO health for all online properties concerned.

The post 5 On-Page SEO Keystones that Google Rewards appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be mindful of optimization goofs. There are at least five major areas where you should take care in terms of SEO health in 2014.

1. Narrow Content Focus

The appearance of duplicate content is bad news for any SEO campaign but it can be easily rectified. A more difficult task is ensuring that your web properties boast the appropriate content breadth and depth.

Today, so-called “silo sites” have fallen out of favor with Google. Rather than over-optimizing a given site’s content, adopt a well-rounded content marketing strategy where individual content selections reinforce each other’s value.

2. Keyword Stuffing & Matching

It’s tough for the search engine giants like Google and Bing to completely rid their algorithms of a dependence on keywords. However, they’re looking less and less at keywords density as a way to gauge relevance.

Consequently, making minor tweaks to keyword density won’t help. Emphasize a few major keywords and augment them with plenty of supporting keywords that clarify the purpose of the content.

3. Weak Linking Practices

It’s unlikely that links will ever cease to be a major contributing factor in good SEO. After all, links are often the primary indicators of content quality and relevance.

However, the manner in which web resources should be linked together for optimal SEO impact changes from year to year. In 2014, you’ll need to focus on avoiding in-bound links from low-authority sites as well as exact-math anchor text.

4. Lack of Social Media Exposure

Today, social media clout is a major ingredient in Google’s overall ranking recipe. Ensuring that your content is seen and shared by as many people as possible via Facebook and Google+ is one of the easiest ways to boost organic SERPs results for any given publication.

Besides the benefit of gaining effortless backlinks, social media exposure proliferates your brand identity around the web and builds trust.

5. No Mobile Integration

An increasing percentage of the web-using populace accesses content via their mobile devices. As such, it’s critical that you make your content easy to consume by optimizing it for the mobile web.

It’s not difficult or expensive to convert a WordPress blog to mobile with handy tools like WP Mobile Edition. Delivering a smooth mobile experience will help your content to reach as many eyeballs as possible.

Staying Out of Danger

Obviously, the little things like meta tags, XML sitemaps and micro-formats still matter. Use Google Webmaster Tools to see what you’re doing wrong in this regard and correct any errors.

However, perfecting the technical details are less important than avoiding the major SEO mistakes delineated above. If you put out timely and useful content, share it with the right people and represent yourself honestly, your SEO will yield positive, lasting results.

The post 5 SEO Mistakes to Avoid in 2014 appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

The following guidelines are a good start if you’d like to leverage content intelligently in your quest to build your audience and sales.

Hyper-Target Your Audience

Knowing exactly what your target audience wants is pretty much the name of the game these days. If you’re not an analytics ninja by now, become one. While knowing what your customers want now is clutch, it’s even more important to guess what they’ll want next. Analytics can help you to figure that out. Segmenting potential buyers based on their preferences and predilections will make all the difference if you commit to the effort.

Cater to the Thought Leaders

A big part of affiliate marketing nowadays is creating a following and using the most influential members of said following to get the rest to convert. Typically, the most successful affiliates identify which of their followers are the most respected and cater to their viewpoints and preferences. While this approach may be shallow, it definitely gets results. Make sure that the “thought leaders” within your following are on your side.

Bring in the Uber-Sociable

Generally speaking, “thought leaders” are good at promoting specific offers that catch their fancy. However, they’re not always the best at sharing your brand or identity with others in a less promotional, more organic manner. That’s where the social media butterflies come in. Try to attract the uber-sociable characters that’ll do all of your promotion for you.

Guest Blog Intelligently

There’s been quite a bit of talk in the last few years regarding guest blogging and its miraculous impact on overall SEO effectiveness. Guest blogging in 2014 will be all about truly boosting the cumulative health of a content marketing campaign rather than merely gaining a few backlinks. If guest posts don’t enrich the web properties on which they’re hosted, don’t bother publishing them in the first place.

Make Your Blogs Transcendent Hubs

The hallmark of effective content is that it’s more than the sum of its parts. Content that gets results brings together people from different backgrounds and walks of life, thereby creating a community that’s unique and fulfilling. In effect, it goes beyond its immediate purpose of informing and creates a movement that resonates with followers. Granted, doing this reliably isn’t exactly a cakewalk. If you can’t accomplish this yourself, hire someone that can.

Content Marketing That Delivers

In order for content to be truly effective, it must establish a meaningful connection with the intended audience. Regardless of your goals in the digital marketing realm, content should be the foundation upon which you build your promotional strategy. Shoot for where the content marketing world will be in six months rather than where it’s been and you’ll be more than happy with the returns.

The post The Content Marketer’s Blueprint for 2014 Success appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

There are at least six crucial analytics metrics one should look at when gauging (and improving) success online.

1. Introductions via Organic Search

One of the main axioms of business in any industry is that it’s far more expensive to acquire a customer than it is to keep them. Using organic search to produce viable leads is a good way to cut down on those customer acquisition costs. Google Analytics allows you to see which leads are introduced to your web content from search results.

2. Introductions via Blog Content

Knowing how many people find your site through the search results is a good start. However, it’s often more beneficial to know how many people first find you through content marketing via your blog. Fortunately, Google Analytics and its Advanced Segments feature enables you to determine this figure quickly and easily without a lot of hassle or overhead.

3. Total Content Downloads

Many use content marketing as a lead-in to more in-depth engagement with potential customers. Free downloads like e-books and whitepapers are a popular form of “bait” that marketers on the web use to draw in customers.

You can easily track the downloading of e-books and other freebies to see how effective they are when it comes to converting window shoppers into customers.

4. Visits Due To Paid & Organic Promotion

Many businesses make a stark distinction between paid and organic promotion when determining marketing ROI. The reality is a bit more nuanced. Many leads respond positively to both techniques prior to converting.

Setting up an Advanced Segment in Google Analytics to monitor these responses can help to get the best results from both approaches in tandem.

5. Leads From Social Media

As we all know, using social media to promote high-quality content is a must for savvy marketers these days. Consequently, measuring the leads and introductions to your content that come from social media promotion can help a business to greatly increase mind share in its given niche. Following this metric in Google Analytics should therefore be a priority.

6. Conversions Resulting From SERPs

Knowing with a great degree of certainty how many people find your site or your content through organic SEO is quite important. Even more important to the profitability of any enterprise is knowing how many of those introductions actually result in conversions. Google Analytics makes it easy to pinpoint how many leads actually convert due to great SERPs rankings.

An Analytic a Day

A firm grasp of the fundamentals of analytics as well as the latest developments in the field is critical to getting the most from your marketing efforts. Besides the obvious success indicators like bounce rates and time-on-site, try looking at the above metrics when poring over your data. Your bottom line will thank you in the end.

The post 6 Advanced Segments in Google Analytics You Should Be Checking appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Many think that link-building as an SEO tactic is dead and has no impact on organic rankings. The reality is a bit more muddled. As you’ll see shortly, link building can still yield results if done the right way.

Hummingbird Makes a Difference

Before proceeding, it’s important to give a brief overview of the Google Hummingbird algorithm. Long story short, Hummingbird is all about Google’s move from mere keyword and link analysis to a ranking regimen that’s dependent on semantics.

The idea is to serve up content that directly answers questions asked by searchers. As such, things like total inbound links and exact-match anchor text is less important. Basically, a ton of incoming links aren’t the key to SEO success anymore.

Where Links Stand at the Moment

At this point, we’re all well aware of the fact that the original Penguin algorithm update as well as Penguin 2.1 put a serious squeeze on low-quality links. In truth, PageRank and the “link juice” it can pass on to targeted domains still matters to some extent.

It’s one of more than 200 factors that Google takes into account when ranking content. However, links have gone from being a prime factor in the SEO equation to a mere supporting player.

How To Link Post-Hummingbird

Links still matter, that much can be said for sure. However, it’s the authority behind those links that really counts. Don’t bother wasting your time by optimizing niche keywords in your anchor text. For one thing, it won’t work. Secondly, it can actually negatively impact your SEO health over the long haul.

Rather than crafting a linking strategy based around keywords, try to use the authority of authors to signify relevance when creating backlinks to bolster web properties.

Making Your Links Pay Off

In the post-Hummingbird era, it’s clutch to get away from the notion that link quantity equals SEO success. You need to focus on intrinsic link quality such that your links reinforce the greater goal of delivering relevant content to local searchers.

Localized results are the bread and butter of Hummingbird’s long-term aims. If your links make it easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for, you’re golden. Use branded keywords in anchor text to establish clout.

The New Ranking Paradigm

By now, it should be obvious that you can’t juke Google’s stats through keyword chicanery. A holistic approach to a broader SEO strategy that places an emphasis on semantics rather than keyword matching is going to be your ticket to success.

Links are still important so long as they come from authoritative places. Don’t worry so much about link volume and focus on link value. These days, the clout of those linking to you is all that matters.

The post Link Building After Hummingbird: What You Need to Know appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

One of the best ways to improve the odds of dominating SERPs results for certain queries is newsjacking, a technique for leveraging hot trends by focusing content on a popular story. The following tips can help your newsjacking efforts to take flight.

1. Study Your Audience’s Consumption Habits

Without a doubt, the most important aspect of newsjacking that many fail to master is researching customer preferences before crafting content to appeal to their tastes. Once you’ve identified the kinds of stories, products and services your target audience is most interested in, you can go about producing content that capitalizes on recent events.

Keyword research and in-depth, in-page analytics work wonders in this regard.

2. Match Up Content with Events & Trends

Once you’ve determined the kinds of products or services you can market using current events, you’ll have to figure out how you’ll work them into content centered around specific stories.

If you’ve got a particular angle worked out beforehand, you can set up Google Alerts and track trending Twitter hashtags to determine the optimal time to release a particular content piece for the best results possible.

3. Use the News to Make a Point

If you’re going to use newsjacking as a major part of your content marketing game plan, you must be proactive rather than reactive. Instead of merely commenting on the news and nudging your brand towards the spotlight, you’ll need to demonstrate a truth that incorporates your company in a meaningful way.

Highlighting a relevant way that a product or service offered by your brand could solve a problem is always effective.

4. Don’t Get Lost in the Stampede

Timing is everything in the world of newsjacking. Publish too early and you won’t attract much interest from your audience. Publish too late and you may not get any views due to news saturation.

Furthermore, it’s tough to stand out from the crowd with so many looking to cash in on a story. Choose a novel approach to addressing trending stories when creating content aimed at your followers.

5. Be Selective When Leveraging the News

Attempting to cash in on a tragedy is never a smart idea if you’re trying to use newsjacking to improve the visibility of your business online. Tone-deaf marketing efforts that aren’t sensitive to the feelings of real people aren’t going to get you very far and can actually damage your brand in the long run.

Don’t choose stories that are particularly controversial or divisive when using newsjacking to create killer content.

The Moral of the Story

With a bit of prior planning, one can easily capitalize on news stories in the short term to strengthen content marketing campaigns. If that content turns out to be evergreen, all the better.

When executed properly, newsjacking can be a highly effective tactic that yields surprisingly positive results. As long as you remember the tips laid out above and learn from your mistakes, newsjacking will make a welcome addition to your regular content marketing regimen.

The post Newsjacking 101: Crafting Killer Content with News appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

The good news is that Hummingbird doesn’t seem to have hurt the SERPs positions of most sites so far. However, if you’d like to parlay Google’s new search paradigm into better rankings, the following tips should help out.

Use Content to Answer Questions

At its core, Hummingbird is the culmination of Google’s efforts to transition from keyword-based content indexing to semantic search. Understanding what searchers really mean in natural language terms is the name of the game.

The rise of voice-enabled mobile search has been an important driver of this trend. When crafting content, research questions that people are asking and make your content revolve around answering them.

Include Location & Context Clues

A big part of answering questions accurately is ensuring that people get the content they’re expecting based on where they are. Local keywords allow Google to better serve searchers when delivering results based on queries.

People in India aren’t expecting the same results as people in the United States when they enter a question like “Where can I buy a laptop?” into Google’s search bar.

Broaden Your Content Horizons

A focus on answering specific questions means that you’ll need to broaden your content offerings and drill down into niches to satisfy a greater proportion of searchers. As long as you don’t resort to long-tail keyword shenanigans, a niche approach will net results.

Furthermore, it’s important to diversify content formats in a post-Hummingbird world. Try a healthy mix of articles, videos and infographics to begin with.

Focus On Attribution

One of Google’s goals with Hummingbird and to a lesser extent with the updates that preceded it is to use publisher reputation to assess probable content value. In particular, on-page tagging using Google Authorship markup as well as Publisher markup allows content creators to link their work with their identities.

It’s no coincidence that Google+ and YouTube have been aggressively promoting the usage of real names recently.

Make Social Mentions a Priority

Besides author attribution, Google uses various methods to rank brands based on their relevance and authority. Social mentions of your brand and its content on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ help to cement your image as an authority worthy of recognition.

One can easily boost said mentions by fostering communities of like-minded people on social media networks and targeting content at those communities that you’ve built.

A Few Conclusions

If you’ve been going out of your way to give your current and potential future customers what they’re looking for in the way of information online, Hummingbird is actually quite beneficial. Google tries to reward solid content even if it’s not perfectly optimized. Having said that, the preceding rough guidelines will assist you in hitting the top of the SERPs if you keep them in mind when publishing content.

The post What Google Hummingbird Means and How to Thrive Under It appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Alongside content creation, link building is one of the main pillars of effective SEO. The best practices that govern the creation of links tend to change every year, often quite dramatically.

Here are a few tips you can count on to yield SEO dividends as we move towards 2014.

Update Older Content for Today

Creating content is time-consuming and expensive compared to updating existing work. In many cases, you can take aging content and update it with a smattering of new material to achieve high rankings in Google’s organic results for specific queries.

Doing so helps to maintain the value of your content and generate loads of fresh traffic all at the same time without a lot of effort.

Reinforce Your Brand with Authorship

Google’s Authorship markup has quickly become one of the most inexpensive and effective ways to improve an individual or brand’s standing online. By including simple HTML snippets in your work, you can strengthen your brand’s reputation overnight.

Once you’ve established a name for yourself, inertia takes over and your existing links lead to new ones. A unified body of work that’s respected by consumers can cement your status as an authority worthy of recognition.

Ditch Keyword-Optimized Anchor Text

For far too long, SEO practitioners have placed an undue amount of faith in the ability of keyword-optimized anchor text to improve organic results. These days, exact match anchor text smack of unnatural link building.

Basically, it makes you look like you’re trying too hard to build links that benefit you without focusing on improving user experience. Just make sure that your anchor text is accurate and descriptive without worrying too much about specific keywords.

Aim for Inbound Link Diversity

You don’t need to focus solely on getting links from high-profile web properties to make your overall link profile productive. Links from low-ranking sites can assist you in improving organic rankings as well.

Getting inbound links from a variety of sites at every level of the PageRank scale demonstrates that a wide swath of the general public or at least your niche finds your content helpful. Google will reward you accordingly for your content’s broad appeal.

Use Google+ to Proliferate Content

In the social media arena, nothing beats Google+ when it comes to generating organic links from all over the web. By using relevant content targeted at your top follower demographics, you’re guaranteed to pull in more links with little effort.

Obviously, you’ll need to spend a decent amount of time networking and building up a decent fan base. However, the results are well worth it.

A Link Network That Delivers

As you’re probably aware, one of the main goals of building links is to establish clout by highlighting your content. Your site’s authority in your niche in the eyes of the major search engines depends greatly on how many people are willing to link to your content without prompting.

Obviously, the best way to achieve this is by putting out content that simply can’t be ignored. Do that and the links you desire will follow.

The post Link Building Best Practices for Content Marketers appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Arguably, the biggest mistake that companies make when using content as a lead generator is forgetting about conversion optimization.

Though it’s generally not intended to spur immediate sales, your content should nevertheless aim to make near-term conversions whenever possible.

Try implementing the following tactics to reliably achieve that outcome.

1. Identify the Buyers in a Niche

It’s good PR for your brand to deliver quality information and helpful guidance without the expectation of something in return. Ultimately, that’s a big part of good content marketing.

However, you’ll see better conversion rates if you address the decision makers in your target demographic. Identifying the probable buyers in any organization and figuring out what motivates them is tricky but integral to your success.

2. Employ Target-Appropriate Tones & Styles

Once you’ve narrowed your focus and identified the decision makers that are worth catering to, you’ll need to determine the right approach to take. Some respond best to the direct approach whereas others are going to need some cajoling to make a move.

The proper tone to use will vary based on the demographic that you’re looking to score with, so be prepared to experiment.

3. Use Participation to Fine-Tune Your Message

When crafting web content that converts, it’s often helpful to include a fair amount of audience participation. Including your target demographics in the discussion accomplishes two distinct goals.

First off, it makes the content itself more valuable by including real-world users in the problem-solving process. Second, it gives content publishers valuable insights into the minds of consumers that can be used later when planning future content campaigns.

4. Include Actionable Exit Points

Without a doubt the greatest weakness of most content marketing game plans is a lack of clear-cut calls to action. Far too many choose to err on the side of caution without exploring where the line between helpful and pushy really lies.

The point here is that you need to include an unambiguous “next step” for potential customers to take if they like what they hear.

5. Focus On Consumer Retention

At the end of the day, even content marketing campaigns that boast phenomenal conversion rates won’t turn visitors into buyers overnight. That’s perfectly fine as long as you manage to keep yourself on your audience’s collective radar.

Keep consumers of your content in the fold by engaging them with social media and persuasive yet unobtrusive email reminders. Sooner or later, your persistent efforts should yield results from the more stubborn holdouts.

Taking Care of Business

The key to any fruitful content marketing strategy is striking a balance between keeping your distance and being too forward. Just because content marketing is all about carefully developing relationships doesn’t mean that you can’t make a case for yourself and your brand while you’re doing it.

As long as you’re bringing quality to the table on a consistent basis, a healthy dose of self-promotion isn’t a bad thing.

The post 5 Conversion Keys for Content Marketing appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

In the rush to capitalize on the worldwide potential of SEO, many forget about the local racket. The following areas are ones that you should focus on.

1. Google Authorship Markup

If you’re not using content to increase revenue by targeting local consumers, you’re doing your business a serious disservice. Local content marketing can be incredibly effective at improving overall SEO if you do it right and incorporate the right back-end tactics.

Google Authorship markup should be a key piece of your web publishing strategy so as to establish a dominant Internet presence for your SMB or brand.

2. Geo-Specific Keyword Usage

Keyword analysis and optimization are supposedly going by the wayside thanks to advanced Google algorithm updates that have made semantic search far more viable. In reality, unique local keywords can work wonders when it comes to making your content stand apart from the rest of the pack.

You can use local vernacular, geo-specific keywords and specialized query keywords and phrases to give your sites a boost in the local SERPs.

3. Proactive Listings Upkeep

Google and Bing really try to make local SEO as easy as possible for SMBs through their intelligent ranking and sorting algorithms. You can help them help you by using business listings aggregators like Localeze, Yext and Universal Business Listing to guarantee that your business data on the web is up-to-date and pertinent.

One can never be too careful when ensuring that online business listings data is accurate, thereby increasing the odds that your SMB ranks well in the search results.

4. Social Feedback & Interaction

Local SEO success depends greatly on social media and your interaction with a small but potentially profitable local consumer demographic. The emergence of Facebook Open Graph and similar tools for charting the connections between individuals proves that local SEO health hinges on who you know and how you know them.

Interacting with your target audiences through videos, contests and old-fashioned back and forth can make all the difference in the world.

5. Proper Negative PR Management

The idea that there’s no such thing as bad press has sunk more businesses than you could possibly imagine. The fact of the matter is that there is such a thing as bad press and toxic PR has become increasingly damaging in the age of the Internet.

A commitment to addressing concerns raised by the general public on social media sites such as Google+ and Yelp will help you to rank higher in the SERPs in the end.

A Holistic Local SEO Mindset

Today, organic SEO best practices are based almost entirely on content marketing and link building. This goes double for local SEO, where quality content and connections can make or break your efforts.

While the local SEO playing field often demands a bit more fine tuning to achieve results, the extra effort is worth it in the end for local players. Be mindful of the aforementioned areas of interest if you’d like to win the local SEO game.

The post 5 Bedrocks of Good Local SEO in Q4, 2013 appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

One of the biggest challenges for SEOs and content marketers at every level is matching content with intent. Search engines continue to become ever more clever with each passing month, which makes the proposition all the more challenging.

To rise above the rest in the SEO department, content marketers need to understand the concept of “semantic search” and its ramifications.

The Future of SEO: Introducing Semantic Search

There’s a persistent belief that Google et al. primarily use major keywords to index and rank content. The reality is far more complicated these days. That’s why it’s important to understand a concept known as string entity optimization.

Simply put, string entity optimization is all about crafting content that isn’t centered entirely around keywords. To better understand how search engines really categorize data, check out the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) course on Udacity.

It’s quite illuminating and worth looking into. If you don’t have the time, just know that search engines now use many indicators to better “understand” content in the way that actual human beings do.

On the Road to a Semantic Web

The crux of the matter is that keywords are becoming less relevant in the eyes of major search providers like Google and Bing. Today, they’re relying on databases of “entities” to determine the best results for a given query.

Take a look at Google’s Knowledge Graph or Trends to get an idea of how this works. Already, platforms such as Siri, Google Now and the much-vaunted but so far little-used Wolfram Alpha are addressing questions rather than searches defined by mere keywords.

In essence, the future of search is comprehending intent and responding the way a human would.

Make Your Brand an Entity

If you want to get ahead in the organic rankings, it’s crucial that your brand is well-represented by structured meta data that can be understood by cutting-edge search algorithms.

Using Trends as your guide, you can see how well you’re doing in this regard. Once Google has you indexed as an entity, you can go about creating focused content that will appeal to a specific subset of searchers asking specific questions.

More and more, context rather than keywords are ruling the day. Content marketers, take note: the rise of Google Glass and other contextual search portals are harbingers of the end for keyword-based web search.

How to Play It — Questions, Not Keywords

The impeding demise of keyword-based SEO presents both a crisis and an opportunity. For smart content marketers, little has changed when you really think about it.

Triumphing in a competitive marketplace will continue to come down to serving the public best. Using Q&A sites such as Quora to brainstorm your content optimization is highly in vogue and becoming more so with each passing day.

If you’d like your content to deliver results, it has to answer pressing, relevant questions regardless of the keywords used.

The post Semantic SEO & the Future of Content Marketing appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Chief among these is the fact that it allows a company to demonstrate authority, which enhances customer trust and ultimately results in conversions. Content marketing needn’t be a zero-sum game. By promoting other brands’ content, one can bolster their own and become a thought leader that people respect.

Content Curation Defined

Even though many people are at least casually familiar with the term content curation, most lack a basic understanding of what it is and how it works. Broadly speaking, a curator selects a coherent array of quality content out of the massive daily flow of information on the Internet to display to their readership.

Much like a museum curator deciding on which artifacts to display in a certain collection, a content curator arranges articles, infographics and more that revolve around a central theme.

Why It Helps Your Own Content

Many are of the opinion that steering traffic towards other sites is a bad idea. After all, search engine algorithms can actually punish sites with too many outgoing links and it’s usually best to keep visitors on your own site if possible.

However, you can leverage the content of others to enhance your own by giving your followers what they’re looking for most. By doing so, you build a reputation for helping out readers no matter what. Hopefully, those that you’ve helped will help you by consuming your content and eventually patronizing your business.

Establishing Niche Authority

The primary goal of curation is to position yourself as a taste maker and thought leader capable of influencing the masses. Social media platforms like Google+, Facebook and Twitter give ordinary folk the ability to dominate conversations by doing nothing more than promoting interesting content.

You can easily do the same and boost your brand’s notoriety on the web. By establishing your web profiles as the go-to spots for the latest news in your industry, you can create a rabid digital following that’s bound to skyrocket sales.

Getting Down to Business

Climbing to the top of the pile in your specific niche using content curation isn’t tough if you’re proactive and publish prolifically. Long story short, find the best content you can in your niche no matter what form it takes and put it in front of your audience.

The easiest way to do this is by using social networks like Pinterest, Google+ and Facebook to broadcast to your following. Social networks allow you to segment your audience based on their interests and more accurately target them. In addition, social media enables you to rack up massive followings in a short period of time (if executed properly).

Turning Theory Into Reality

While content curation can produce impressive returns, crafting a winning strategy is more easily said than done. To get the most from content curation, you’ll have to make it more or less a full-time job.

Those that aren’t willing to devote a substantial portion of their own time to it should hire someone that knows the ins and outs of curation mechanics to oversee their campaigns. If you curate content intelligently, you’ll ensure that your own content and more importantly your brand get the recognition they deserve.

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Modern web analytics enable businesses to track many aspects of their online marketing campaigns in real time, which can help us gain insight. Here are 5 excellent metrics by which the effectiveness of content marketing can be judged.

Social Media Mentions

Today, businesses can gain a wide audience for content through the use of social media networks. Thanks to hashtags on Twitter and Google+ as well as powerful native analytics on Facebook, tracking social mentions around the web is a fairly simple task. One can also use the custom analytics functionality found in programs like Hootsuite and Buffer to accurately track social mentions.

Unique Visitors

Websites often tout their traffic numbers by listing unique visits per month. Knowing roughly how many monthly visits are unique is especially important for SMBs trying to expand their reach and increase awareness. Pretty much any analytics engine such as Google Analytics or Piwik can be used to determine this figure for your main website. One of your primary goals should be to consistently increase this number every month.

High-Profile Inbound Links

If you’ve gotten the attention of your more well-known peers, it’s likely that ordinary web surfers are familiar with you as well. You’re no doubt aware that having authoritative, high-ranking sites link to your own domain can significantly boost PageRank. This in turn leads to better placement in the organic SERPS. Tools like Link Explorer can help you to analyze inbound links and identify valuable referrals.

Time Spent Per Page

Bounce rates rarely tell the whole story when it comes to determining the relevance of your content. If a visitor leaves immediately, it might be because the content they’re presented with doesn’t exactly match up with their expectations and they’re looking for something either more specific or more general. The amount of time any given visitor spends perusing a single page on your site is a better indicator of content quality and effectiveness.

Pageviews Per Visitor

Most businesses would love to have a visitor make an immediate purchase after only a single visit to their primary website. The reality is that it often takes multiple exposures to your brand via your content to convert a window shopper into a buyer. If you’re seeing sustained interest in your site’s content from a single viewer, it’s more likely that your content strategy is working and that they’ll become a paying customer.

Putting the Data to Use

Although traditional metrics like total pageviews matter, they’re by no means the only way to assess the health of your content marketing strategy. The metrics discussed in the preceding paragraphs give marketers and businesses deeper insights into their content’s impact online. By paying close attention to the metrics that really matter, you’ll be better prepared to adapt your content strategy to the ever-changing realities of online marketing.

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Considering the significant value represented by a brand’s accumulated body of online content, getting the most from this precious resource is critical. There are a few ways that a business can repurpose its content to maintain its long-term validity.

A Quick Polish & a Few Updates

The best way to bring your content into the present is with an honest appraisal of its relevance to a current audience and a thorough refurbishing. If you’re smart, then every piece of content you’ve crafted or commissioned will be fairly easy to bring up to speed.

If not, that should be a priority in the future. Go through older content and spruce it up to be relevant in light of current trends and viewpoints.

Markup to Strengthen Structure

While Google and its rivals have gotten quite good at assessing quality online, webmasters still need to help out search engines by structuring their content intelligently. You can do that by using things like rel=canonical tags and 301 redirects to make content easier to index.

Restructuring your content will ensure that it’s found by the right consumers via organic search. In addition, you’ll definitely want to look into using Google Authorship markup to establish either yourself or your brand as a thought leader in your niche.

Consolidation for Clarity & Brevity

Oftentimes, content that once seemed to be quite original and relevant loses a lot of its impact over time. What seemed like a good idea at first might not fly in the present day. What was once cutting-edge knowledge might now be common knowledge that doesn’t require as much explanation.

If you knew a bit of HTML in 1997, you qualified as a full-fledged web design geek. Nowadays, everyone is at least casually familiar with it. Consolidate older articles into truncated versions for a savvier, more modern audience.

Using Social Media to Find New Audiences

Even if you place an emphasis on creating evergreen content with a long shelf life, you may find that your original audience has outgrown it. That doesn’t mean that it’s not good anymore. It just means that you need to find a new audience that will appreciate it.

If it’s truly evergreen, you can use social media to push it in front of the right eyeballs. Rather than ditching seemingly dated information, nudge it in the direction of a new crowd for a second life.

Where to Turn for Help

Though it may seem like a simple task to repurpose content, it’s actually a bit more complicated. In fact, repurposing content can be more difficult than building it from scratch for those that aren’t exactly in the know on the content marketing front. If you’re not a suave content maven, it might make more sense to hire a content repurposing expert rather than tackle the project on one’s own. With a little elbow grease, older content can clean up nicely and continue to deliver value over time.

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For many, YouTube is synonymous with multimedia marketing. However, it’s not the only platform worth investing in when promoting a brand. Here are 5 excellent alternatives that deserve some attention.

1. Vimeo

A strong contender in the multimedia marketing arena is Vimeo, a hip, professional video hosting site with a rabid following. Businesses will want to look at the Vimeo PRO package, which costs $199 per year and boasts 1080p HD support, 50GB of storage space, advanced analytics and numerous branding options. If you’re looking to differentiate yourself from the many competitors that host their media on YouTube, Vimeo is a wise choice.

2. Dailymotion

One site that deserves more attention from online marketers is Dailymotion, a video hosting site that features a diverse array of content. Users can upload videos up to 60 minutes in length or 2GB in size. Due to its smaller user base, it’s easier for brands to attain the top spot in their respective niches. Thanks to decreased competition, it’s easier to attain a higher ROI than on YouTube.

3. Blip.tv

Though it may not have the name recognition of YouTube, Blip.tv is nevertheless a popular purveyor of premium web content. Blip allows for uploads of up to 1GB in size and offers a 50/50 split on advertising revenues. Thanks to its comprehensive suite of tools for promoting your content and monitoring analytics, it’s perfect for brands that publish videos as part of a larger collection rather than as standalone advertising.

4. Viddler

For business video hosting, Viddler
might just be one of the best options out there at the present time. It allows uploaders to use custom branding and geo-filter access to videos based on location. Videos can be monetized either by in-video ads or by selling access to premium video content via a subscription model. Finally, Viddler boasts some of the best default analytics capabilities of any video hosting platform around.

5. Metacafe

As the go-to site for short, entertaining video clips that can easily go viral under the right circumstances, Metacafe can be a powerful weapon in the hands of the right marketer. Though you won’t get rich from ads on your Metacafe submissions, you can significantly raise your brand’s profile and get tons of publicity with little effort. For companies that specialize in media or entertainment, Metacafe is good bet.

Closing Thoughts

While YouTube has been a reliably effective video marketing tool for years now, it doesn’t define the current multimedia landscape. If you’re willing to venture off the beaten path, there are plenty of sites that present viable alternatives. There’s multimedia everywhere online today and you don’t need to default to YouTube to achieve a decent return on your efforts when promoting your brand in the video marketing sphere.

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In many cases, the missing ingredient that’s being overlooked is thought leadership. A powerful concept that can quickly transform any brand’s online strategy, thought leadership can be tricky to master.

Thought Leaders Defined

Generally speaking, a thought leader is a person that is an undisputed authority in any given field who can shape the public’s perception of said field in a significant way. Today, brands can be thought leaders that are just as persuasive as individuals.

To understand this, look no further than tech companies like Apple and online publications like The Verge. Establishing your business as a thought leader in its niche should be a key goal for any content marketer.

Compelling Thought Leadership Advantages

Before embarking on the journey towards eventual thought leadership, one should be aware of the many benefits that come with attaining this position. For one, thought leaders can spur their followings to action more easily through their persuasive content. That means more sales, more conversions and ultimately an improved bottom line.

After all, those are the primary goals of a content marketing strategy. Furthermore, thought leaders can execute PR operations, damage control and branding with far less effort than those without such influence.

Creating a Movement via Content

Becoming a viable thought leader through high quality content has an all-encompassing impact on all channels of your online marketing strategy. Thought-provoking content boosts your status as a thought leader, which in turn helps to promote your content in a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

What you absolutely must do is inspire the masses and become the leader of a digital tribe a la Seth Godin, one of the preeminent thought leaders of the modern web. Attribution as quantified by things like Google Author Rank can often be a reliable indicator of overall clout.

Favored Tactics of Thought Leaders

If you want to attract a passionate crowd, staying a step ahead of the heard is clutch. Find a new use for an existing product or approach a problem from a new direction before anyone else does. Stay on the cutting edge by crowdsourcing your research on Quora and similar sites.

Delivering both value and wisdom in equal doses is integral. Once you make a name for yourself as an incisive and astute thinker, you can afford to be a bit more cautious when broadcasting your missives.

Blazing New Trails & Profiting

The key to establishing a business as a thought leader is rejecting the trite and embracing the uncommon. The vast majority of white papers found online simply regurgitate talking points and restate the obvious. The ability to make people look at problems from a different angle is the essence of a thought leader.

If your content doesn’t do this, don’t bother publishing it. Outside-the-box thinking is easy in theory but harder to achieve in reality. If you can’t bring that creativity, hire someone that can.

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In recent years, companies of all sizes have developed a renewed interest in content marketing. Now a $43.9 billion industry, online content is a thriving sector of the e-commerce economy. Brands that allot 50% of their marketing budgets to content report better ROIs than those that don’t. Furthermore, B2B firms that blog regularly boast 67% more leads per month than their non-blogging counterparts. When crafting your own content, the following tools are extremely helpful.

1. Google Trends

Timely content is a key ingredient in any successful online marketing strategy. Figuring out what Internet users are searching for can be accomplished with web apps like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, but they won’t really tell you anything about the relative popularity of competing topics. For that, you should use Google Trends to see what’s hot and more importantly what’s gaining traction with the general public.

2. Social Mention

Those looking for a “real-time social media search and analysis” tool should take a gander at Social Mention. It allows content marketers to gauge overall interest in various content pieces based on keywords on a variety of social media networks. In a nutshell, it enables you to quantify the effectiveness of content throughout the social media landscape at any given time. Better yet, you can set up alerts for various keywords based on popularity and reach.

3. Toluna

One of the best ways to brainstorm ideas for content is to rely on feedback from real world consumers. The main problem is getting reliable intelligence from your desired target demographics. A paid research service like Toluna can help you to cut right to the chase and discover what kinds of content your audience desires most. Toluna aggregates data from surveys to inform the results it ultimately delivers to customers.

4. Quora

Arguably one of the smartest social networks currently in existence, Quora can be a great place to find inspiration for new and unique content. The hardest part of content marketing is finding a question being asked by your followers that hasn’t yet been answered in a definitive manner. By perusing Quora’s extensive archives of Q&A posts, you can track down burning questions and research the best corresponding answers.

5. Facebook Graph Search

One of the most anticipated tools to hit the search world in recent years is Facebook’s Graph Search. Though fairly new, it has already demonstrated its potential to completely reshape social content marketing. Marketers of all stripes use it to illuminate the connections between followers based on shared interests. It highlights the topics and concerns that matter most to one’s core audience, allowing you to cater to that demand with highly specific content.

The Market Is Crowded

With so many companies rushing to leverage content marketing for their own ends, the field as a whole has become incredibly competitive. Consequently, many businesses are enlisting the help of content professionals to stay ahead of the game. At the moment, 62% of companies outsource their content marketing to some extent. If you need to get up to speed fast with content marketing, a few hired content guns may be the way to go.

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Many erroneously assume that retargeting is strictly confined to the realm of display ads. However, nothing could be further from the truth. If you rely primarily on content for clicks, retargeting can be a conversion bonanza.

A Quick Retargeting Primer

Generally speaking, retargeting is all about using web analytics and massive volumes of Big Data to increase conversions by fine-tuning your message for individual consumers. There are two basic ways to capitalize on this approach: search retargeting and site retargeting.

Search retargeting relies on the profiling of consumers via tracking cookies to nail down exactly what they’re searching for online. Site retargeting, on the other hand, is all about dynamically reconfiguring a website’s content to better appeal to specific visitors. It’s the latter method we’ll be interested for the purposes of content marketing.

Key Benefits & Advantages of Retargeting

There are many reasons why retargeting has become so popular in recent years. First and foremost, it can significantly improve the overall bottom line for companies by enabling them to stretch their advertising and content creation budgets. Less tangibly, it can also help to improve brand awareness for any business.

Content retargeting also allows brands to more accurately target consumers by using their past browsing histories to serve up relevant content that can help to better inform their purchasing decisions.

Productive Tactics & Techniques

In the content marketing arena, site retargeting is the preferred method for getting the most from a business’s present and future content. Through content retargeting, brands can achieve far higher click-through and conversion rates by strengthening connections to existing visitors.

Due to the fact that it’s less expensive than search retargeting, on-site content retargeting is ideal for SMBs with limited funds. Look no further than the recommended products listings on Amazon to see how effective content retargeting can be when done properly.

Getting Started with Content Retargeting

In order to retarget content effectively, you’ll need to log what visitors are looking at and searching for while browsing your site and tailor their next experience to be more relevant than the last. Oftentimes, initial visits won’t result in a sale or even a click-through. By retargeting content for repeat visitors, you can greatly increase the chances that they’ll make an eventual purchase.

Retargeting services like Chango and Big Fish specialize in helping online businesses to algorithmically reconfigure content for individual visitors. They can also assist SMBs in crunching analytics data to determine where best to spend their content creation dollars going forward.

Maximizing Your Content to the Fullest

Through the judicious use of retargeting, your existing stock of content can be leveraged to attract the appropriate consumers for any given promotion. If you’re already outsourcing content creation, calling upon third-party content retargeting service providers is a logical leap.

Evergreen content that can be easily repurposed will deliver the best value over time. Above all else, it’s important to remember that relevance is relative in the eyes of a potential customer. Retargeting can ensure that the right content matches up with the right consumer in the end.

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In the world of online marketing, a similarly analytical approach to ad spending and content usage when wooing consumers is quickly gaining popularity. As you’ll see shortly, programmatic marketing has already become a linchpin of successful online promotion.

What Is Programmatic Marketing?

In a nutshell, programmatic marketing is the use of Big Data aggregation to more accurately target potential customers. By gleaning valuable insights from said Big Data, advertisers can satisfy the needs of individual consumers more quickly and efficiently. Essentially, it’s marketing automation on steroids.

Thanks to ever more powerful and accurate web analytics, it can significantly boost advertising ROI and decrease Cost Per Acquisition for companies of all sizes. Using programmatic marketing tools, even a single marketer on a tight budget can massively expand their reach and effectiveness.

Programmatic Tactics & Techniques

At present, programmatic marketing can be divided into two general camps: site retargeting and search retargeting. Site retargeting is all about optimizing content, offers and advertisements for viewers that visit your site regularly. A good though rudimentary example would be Amazon’s product recommendations.

Search retargeting, on the other hand, is a more expansive technique that follows your desired target demographics wherever they roam online using their search query keywords as input. Both disciplines make use of RTB or real-time bidding exchanges to serve up display ads.

Tools of the Trade

When you get right down to it, programmatic marketing is all about carefully chosen algorithms that determine what a consumer sees and when. Knowing how to present the right information to consumers at the right time either on your own site or in ads on other domains can be tricky.

That’s where Data Management platforms come in. DSPs like Chango, Magnetic, Simpli.fi, Google Remarketing and AdRoll assist merchants and marketers in budgeting their ad spending most effectively. Most commonly, they rely on ad exchanges such as the Facebook Exchange (FBX), which allows advertisers to either optimize ads on their own sites or on others and track highly specific niches who’re interested in their products or services.

Future Consumer Targeting Trends

We’ll continue to see an increase in programmatic marketing in at least three key areas: campaign strategizing, market niche segmentation and content creation. In the strategy department, dynamic ads and the feedback data they elicit can help you to plan more effective promotions. Furthermore, programmatic marketing will make it easier and easier to identify and target lucrative consumer demographics.

Finally, increasingly sophisticated programmatic marketing tools will be used to customize content for individual users for maximum impact. If you’d like to know what the future of content marketing will look like, look no further than apps like Flipboard that deliver totally unique experiences to users.

A Final Thought

How you choose to adapt to the increasingly algorithmic nature of web marketing in the near future will largely determine your e-commerce success moving forward. Regardless, the most critical aspects of web marketing can’t be boiled down to simple formulas no matter how much data you churn through. After all, the human element is still the most important piece of the puzzle. As such, you’ll always need a live marketer with finely honed instincts to steer the ship and oversee operations no matter how complicated the tools become.

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More importantly, more than 1 billion daily video views come from mobile devices. As such, it’s a potential marketing gold mine if you use it properly. Here are 5 tips to keep in mind when marketing your business on YouTube.

1. Get to the Point

When it comes to video content marketing, immediacy counts. The first fifteen seconds of any video will determine whether people keep watching or bail to peruse other clips. If at all possible, keep it under 30 seconds in length to achieve the highest rate of engagement from your target audience. Above all else, put the most compelling information at the beginning rather than at the end.

2. Tell a Compelling Story

As a species, human beings are innate storytellers. While facts and figures are all well and good, they don’t always convey a powerful narrative in and of themselves. Steve Jobs was arguably the most successful CEO of all time because he could craft a compelling narrative that sparked consumers’ imaginations. Your videos must go beyond vanilla descriptions of your products or services and create a persuasive mental picture.

3. Teach a Lesson

Videos detailing the usefulness of your products or services are a must and should be given top priority. However, there’s something to be said for instructional clips that demonstrate a quick tip or skill. Consider this the content marketing portion of the equation where you give without the expectation of something in return. Focus on putting out helpful tutorials on a regular basis to raise your YouTube profile. Establishing your brand as a trusted authority is the best way to increase sales and attract new customers.

4. Cross-Promote with Like-Minded Brands

In the content marketing world, guest blogging is one of the best ways to maximize the impact of your efforts online. Setting up mutually beneficial partnerships with other brands allows you to reap the rewards of synergy. You can do the same thing with video by partnering with publishers in your industry whose channels are similar to your own. A reciprocal agreement with another company to mention each other in YouTube videos can yield huge dividends.

5. Attract New Subscribers with Unique Angles

To avoid being lost in the crowd, use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find under-served niches and develop video content that targets them. Try a mix of formats such as tutorials, reviews and opinion pieces to appeal to a broad swath of consumers. At the same time, develop a unique voice that sets you apart from the competition. YouTube’s powerful default analytics will help you to identify what works best. Lastly, upload a trailer for your channel aimed at non-subscribers that highlights your brand’s selling points.

Embrace Video or Perish

The basics of effective SEO apply to video just as they do to blogging. Link back to your site, include accurate descriptions and prioritize quality over quantity. Above all else, focus on the message rather than the medium. Ostentatious graphics often hurt the overall impact of a video by making you appear superficial and amateurish. If it’s not something you would watch yourself, don’t publish it.

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Long-Form Narratives on the Upswing

A journalistic approach to blogging is one of the best ways to differentiate yourself in the world of blogs. Shallow, flippant interpretations of the latest news are abundant online. Trite and pithy won’t get your posts noticed in the long run. These days, readers want to be presented with a compelling narrative that dives deeply into serious issues and offers a fresh take on a topic. The success of bloggers like James Altucher proves that this approach yields results.

Tighter Targeting via Analytics

The use of advanced analytics to increase conversions in every area of blogging has gone from being an optional technique to an absolute must. No matter what tack you take in your blogging, the use of highly targeted posts shaped by analytics feedback is a surefire path to marketing success. Insights into your core audience demographics and their unique tastes gathered by Google Analytics and competing platforms can help any blog to find an edge in an increasingly crowded market.

The Merger of Social and Mobile

It’s no secret that traditional search is becoming somewhat less relevant to the average web user when it comes to finding content. More and more, consumers are leveraging social media cues to discover compelling content that matters to them. In addition, the use of mobile devices to consume blog content online is on the rise. These phenomena are rapidly converging to create a new online marketing order. This trend will only accelerate as web surfers consume an increasing amount of content on their various mobile devices.

A Whole Lot More Media

At long last, the problem of indexing media content for search has been cracked by the likes of Pinterest and Google Images. This sea change has massive implications for SEO that shouldn’t be ignored by bloggers. Including a lot of relevant visual data can positively impact organic SERPs rankings when done properly. In addition, the use of video within blogs will continue to grow in importance as consumers demand more visual content from publishers on the web.

Staying On Top of Your Game

There’s always a temptation to resort to shortcuts to get ahead in the blogging world. No matter what blogging tactics you end up using, real results require real effort and ingenuity. In an always-on, 24/7 world that’s wired to the gills, genuine insight is one commodity that will always be in short supply. However you eventually choose to make your blog stand out from the crowd, quality will always necessarily be the biggest part of the equation.

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1. Authority

Establishing yourself as an authority in your field can only be accomplished the old-fashioned way: by demonstrating said authority through valuable, high-quality email blasts. Rather than inundating your audience with a flood of information, package your wisdom in compact, easy-to-digest nuggets. It’ll take time and hard work to earn the trust of your audience. If you need to hire outside help to accomplish this feat, it makes sense to spend some money on professional writers.

2. Consistency

Many a promising email marketing campaign has floundered due to a lack of consistency. Your email missives should be issued on a daily, bi-weekly or weekly schedule with regularity. Sticking to a timetable for email publication will ensure that your audience knows when to expect your informative letters. Also, a consistent tone is of the utmost importance when attracting a rabid following. Newcomers will be more likely to subscribe to your digital newsletter if you’re predictable.

3. Timeliness

High-quality content has no expiration date in the email marketing game. However, timing your transmissions to be as relatable as possible is a critical consideration. Though your email marketing campaigns should have an overriding theme, weaving in current events and tying them back to the central thrust of your content will make your emails seem more relevant. This approach has the added benefit of boosting SERPs rankings for your primary web properties.

4. Restraint

The most important part of email marketing is holding back something that’s actually worth paying for in the end. Your free content will serve as the appetizer. Your paid content, products and services are the full meal deal. Learning where to stop when it comes to giving away complimentary information and advice is a tough balancing act to nail down. Still, it’s the most crucial part of email marketing.

5. Shareability

Putting out content that lends itself to shareability and that may go viral under the right circumstances is an important goal for email marketers of all stripes. Convincing your subscribers to forward your messages to friends and colleagues can lead to further signups that will expand your newsletter’s reach. A greater following is one of the primary end goals of email marketing, after all. Just be sure that you don’t sacrifice quality in the pursuit of mass appeal.

Parting Words

Details like niche research and A/B testing are important when crafting a winning email marketing campaign. Ultimately, the technical minutiae will be less of a factor in your success than the aforementioned considerations. Like most marketing mediums, email is all about connecting with your audience in a meaningful way that spurs action from your following. You’ll find it difficult to succeed with email marketing if your campaigns lack these 5 essential qualities.

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This situation presents an opportunity for SMBs willing to spend some time learning to use Twitter to market their content and brand themselves decisively. Before embarking on a full-fledged promotional campaign, heed the following Twitter advice.

Identify the Right Hashtags

You’re no doubt aware of the fact that hashtags are how regular Twitter users zero in on conversations and get their tweets found. As such, including the right tags in your own tweets is of paramount importance. There are plenty of free tools available for researching the appropriate hashtags including SeeSaw, Twubs, Trendsmap and even the official Twitter Search. In order to get noticed by the right target demographics, it’s imperative that one adopt an analytical approach to hashtag selection.

Be on the Cutting Edge

As a real-time exchange of news and opinion, Twitter rewards those that time their blasts intelligently. This isn’t particularly surprising and the same has been true of blogging for years now thanks to Google’s increasingly sophisticated algorithms. If your tweets aren’t timely, they’re probably going to be ignored. Stick to what’s happening now and tie it back to your business in a relevant way. If you’re a bricks-and-mortar outfit, make your tweets hyper-local to attract your desired consumer audience.

Become a Trend Setter

Outside of latching onto trending hashtags, the best way to surge ahead in the Twitter standings is to create and popularize some tags of your own. There are many different routes that small businesses can take when creating hashtag memes. For instance, running a giveaway contest using your own custom hashtags will help to brand your business in the local Twitter sphere. Utilities like Bottlenose and HootSuite will help you to manage your Twitter campaigns without neglecting your other online promotional efforts.

Promote Lively Back and Forth

Starting a conversation with your current and hopefully future customers is easy if you’re willing to put in a little effort. As with so many other marketing tacks, consistency is the key. Though the medium of micro-blogging might seem like a frenetic blizzard of incoherent gibberish, you can create order from the chaos by taking charge of the dialog. Don’t just broadcast to your list. Rather, elicit responses from them that will provide you with marketing research that you can build on. Be a bit controversial if you must to get your followers talking.

Slow & Steady Wins the Race

While Facebook is the most popular social network at the moment due to its massive user base, there are signs that others like Twitter are becoming more trendy. Given Twitter’s relatively low utilization as a marketing vehicle, there’s great potential for small businesses to capitalize on an untapped medium. Local Twitter marketing can help a business to go viral in a variety of unpredictable ways. If you’re not using Twitter nowadays to further your SMB’s interests, you’re definitely missing out.

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Narrow Your Focus

Obviously, the goal of content curation is to provide a high-quality buffet of the latest and greatest information to a specific subset of readers. Digital communities and online followings tend to be self-selecting, so this shouldn’t be too tough. Just mind your Google Analytics and pay attention to which content offerings score the highest with your audience. Then, tweak your site as needed.

Diversify Content Types

Mixing videos, image galleries and SlideShare presentations into your typical procession of blog posts and full-length articles helps to flesh out your content profile. Even if certain visitors strictly prefer either video or text, everyone will appreciate a wider array of high-quality content. If you’re going to include infographics, ensure that they’re relevant and valuable.

Curate Consistently

Now more than ever, maintaining a non-stop flow of fresh content to your blog or your primary portfolio website is absolutely critical. In the wake of the game-changing Penguin update from Google, the words “recent” and “relevant” are practically synonymous. Updating your curated collections on a daily basis is a shrewd SEO move for content curators looking to make a splash.

Develop a Sharing Ecosystem

Great content that’s curated to appeal to your core demographic can be made even more effective through a concerted social media sharing effort. Passionate users who link back to your website through Twitter, Facebook and Reddit can ultimately explode your traffic if you make sharing simple, intuitive and hassle-free for them.

Utilize the Latest Software

To find the best content, use sites like Alltop, Feedly and Flipboard. They’ll give you a heads up on the latest news stories and trends that’ll interest your following. For actual content curation, Scoop.it, Bundlr, Pinterest and Storify are excellent platforms that can be used to pull together an eclectic yet harmonious mix of original and shared content.

Rubber, Meet Road

The hardest part of content curation is selecting the right tactics for the job. It’ll take a bit of trial and error with various content curation strategies to perfect your formula. Using Google Alerts to spot trends and guide your curation efforts is never a bad idea. In any event, curation is one long-term trend that’s worth investing in.

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A few striking, well-placed pictures can lend a lot of weight to your prose in ways you never imagined. Thankfully, you don’t have to spend any money to use great photos within your content. Here are five topnotch sites for free photography.

Creative Commons

As the granddaddy of freely available stock photography, Creative Commons is the go-to place to find pictures with permissive licenses. Aside from the official Creative Commons Search portal, you can find great photos via Flickr and on Google Advanced Search. However it’s found, a photo released under a Creative Commons License is good to go.

Stock.xchng

Another fantastic stock photography platform is Stock.xchng, a tantalizing alternative to Creative Commons Search. Within its voluminous web pages, you’ll find all manner of eye-catching snapshots that are perfect for any blog post, slide show or article you’ve got in the works. With nearly 400,000 photos and counting available, it’s nearly impossible to not find the perfect picture for your latest piece of content.

FreePhotosBank

If you want your stock photography to really stand out, you’ll need to think outside the box and use sites that aren’t quite so high-profile. FreePhotosBank is one such website that hosts thousands of royalty-free photos taken by some seriously talented amateur and professional photographers from around the world. For some truly unique images that’ll complement your content, think FreePhotosBank.

Wikimedia Commons

Like Creative Commons Search, the main Wikimedia Commons Search site is arguably one of the best places on the web to find a wide variety of images for any occasion. At present, Wikimedia Commons has over 15 million images available to not-for-profit users. Whatever you might be looking for, Wikimedia probably has it in one form or another.

MorgueFile

Despite the somewhat morbid name, MorgueFile is a truly innovative site with plenty of options for those who need flexible stock photography. What makes it special is the morgueFile Free License, which allows anyone to use posted pictures in any way they like so long as they don’t directly profit from them or lay claim to ownership of them.

Words of Advice

Integrating stock photography into your content for maximum impact is a subtle art. Even the best content written by the best content writers will fall flat if not paired with engaging imagery

For the best results, ensure that your chosen images will compliment your content rather than overshadow it. More importantly, avoid clichéd pictures that are seen all too often across the web. Long story short, the aforementioned sites are a virtual goldmine for all your stock photography needs in any scenario.

The post Top 5 Resources to Find Royalty-Free Graphics for Your Content appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

1. Pinterest

Before you say, “Well, Duh,” consider the impact that Pinterest has had on the SEO world in the last year. It could be argued that Pinterest is the most important content curation site online at the moment. Any e-commerce vendor, marketer, offline merchant and website admin can put forth their best content in a structured manner in seconds. Better yet, it’s one of the best viral marketing sites around.

2. Bundlr

If ever there were a cloud application that was custom-built for content creation, Bundlr is it. It allows users to bundle content from around the web into distinct packages with an easy “Bundle This!” browser extension. You could consider it to be a spiritual successor to Evernote, but with a focus on sharing rather than personal use. In other words, it’s every content curator’s dream.

3. Storify

One of the greatest challenges for any content curator is coming up with a compelling story to tell to their followers. After all, nothing spurs people to action like a solid narrative. Storify takes the headache out of the composition part of the process by providing a dead simple user interface for curating content across various social networks, making effective viral marketing a cake walk.

4. Attrakt

Sifting through the incalculable volume of new content that’s created online every day for curation purposes requires some intelligent software. Fortunately, an intelligent search engine for just that purpose exists in the guise of Attrakt. It allows users to bookmark their favorite sites and search them for content based on specific central themes. Conversely, it’s also the perfect way to share your knowledge of a topic with others.

5. Curata

The name really says it all with Curata, a platform squarely aimed at those who want to curate an experience for their clients. Curata’s own CEO pointed out rather eloquently why content curation is so popular, given the current frenzied online environment. Curata absolutely nails it on every front, especially when it comes to organizing and cataloging content.

Curate to Content Success

Nowadays, the task of curating content to deliver a structured experience for one’s followers is oftentimes too great a challenge for any mere mortal to tackle on their own. That’s where the tools we’ve just profiled come in. By curating an experience for your audience using these versatile utilities, you’ll put yourself head and shoulders above the competition. Tailoring said experience to the right demographic will always win in the long run.

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It Demonstrates Value

According to search engines like Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo, value is the product of a number of factors. Whatever those specific factors happen to be, a common indicator is the number of people that link to a site and share its content via social media. It’s an unfortunate truth of the SEO game that online content is only as valuable as its appeal to web users. Social media activity in the form of Facebook Likes, Twitter Tweets and up-votes on Q&A sites demonstrate value, and that’s just not going to change any time soon.

The Organic Boost: Post-Penguin Ranking Factors

Like it or not, social media impacts organic search results, a fact that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt readily admits. All those inbound links garnered from the viral sharing of social media matter. Google went on the offensive against cheap SEO tricks and link schemes with Penguin. Now, it’s not only the number of people that share your content but also who’s doing the sharing. Social media SEO is all about link authority at this point.

Constant Content Creation

While the latest Google algorithm updates place a greater emphasis on links and link authority, content is still the most critical determinant of value. More importantly, the freshness of content holds a lot of weight. That’s why sites like Reddit, Quora and Facebook manage to nail down so many keyword queries in organic search. They leverage social media to churn out a great deal of user-generated content without having to do much work. User-generated content is yet another excellent fringe benefit of using social media to enhance your SEO efforts.

Bringing It Together

Just because a billion people find something momentarily interesting and express their fleeting approval of it doesn’t make it a high-value resource online. Likewise, just because something has demonstrable value, it doesn’t make it instantly popular. Social indicators in SEO are just another technique that Google and Bing use when trying to rank content on the web. They’re increasingly important, but they’ll never completely take over. Regardless, webmasters and marketers need to factor in their weight when deciding on how to best promote content for wider dissemination around the Internet.

The post Why Social Media Is Important for SEO appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Impossible Dream

Creating marketing pieces that appeal to everyone is impossible. Word choice and the stories you tell will resonate with some and alienate others. If you do not make a conscious decision to aim at your target audience, then you may end up creating a variety of marketing messages that dilute your brand and fail to connect with those customers you hoped to reach.

Every marketing campaign should begin by identifying a specific customer. With a clear picture of this person’s attributes, likes, and fears, your company can create blog posts and marketing messages that speak directly to this target audience. Once you connect with these ideal customers with a clear brand statement, they will go on to help spread your message beyond the original demographic.

Begin with the Basics

To begin, you will want to draw up an ideal customer profile including specific details about:

• Age
• Gender
• Income
• Education
• Family Situation

A forty-year-old man with a high school diploma and three kids has a different worldview than a twenty-four-year-old woman enrolled in law school. The language they use is different, and they probably do not have the same fears and dreams. When you create your marketing pieces, the language you use will attract one more than the other. This is okay as long as you have chosen the right target.

Filling in the Details

Once you have the basics established, you can further flesh out your image of your target audience with details about the types of entertainment and cultural experiences this consumer seeks. He may watch football on Monday nights. She may visit museums on the weekend. They both might benefit from your products and services, but they do not respond to same messages.

The more you know about your ideal customer, the easier it will be to find the stories and references that will attract this audience. Do you know who your target audience is? Start with the simple exercise mentioned above to better understand your target audience and begin developing a marketing strategy to reach that audience.

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Small Social Networks = Less Competition

Smaller networks have fewer members. While this means that you will meet fewer people in them, it also means you will find it easier to become the local expert in your niche. As the big fish in a small pond, you will wield authority you can then leverage to the larger networks.

In small networks, the relationships feel more intimate. You will have time to respond to everyone and make them feel important. This can help you establish much stronger bonds than you might be able to build on larger platforms.

Once you have established yourself, you will find your connections turn to you when they have questions in your field of expertise. They will refer others to you when appropriate. They will even help promote you to their Facebook and Twitter streams when they feel your offerings add value.

Greater Focus

Small social networks are often more focused. Many forums target specific niches, but even those forums with diverse subjects organize themselves into topical threads. This allows you to communicate with those most receptive of your content.

On Facebook and Twitter, your messages compete with your followers’ varied interests and personal acquaintances. Many followers will learn to ignore your updates when they are not interested in exploring your topics or are distracted by friends and family. However, when these followers come to a forum to learn more about your niche or choose to spend time in a smaller network, you will not compete with the same distractions.

Finding Small Social Networks

You may have to dig a little to find social networks that suit your purpose because smaller networks are less visible. You also do not want to waste too much time building a presence on a network that is too small to be useful or which does not contain your target customers.

Search for your keywords with the words the word “forum” to find highly targeted forums. For example, searching “accounting forum” will bring up a number of results. You can also look for networks organized geographically, like “Wisconsin business forum.”

Finally, keep your eye on new networks that arise. Establishing your authority early on a new platform that catches on with the general public may make you the big fish in a big pond someday.

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SEO with Articles and Blog Posts

Content rules the search engines. Articles and blog posts are the content that contain your keywords in context and can attract interest in the search engines. Obviously, the more content you have on your site, the more likely you have the exact content a searcher seeks.

Beyond detecting keywords, search engine spiders cannot understand the words in your content. This is why the search engines got in trouble in the past. Low-quality sites were able to improve their SEO with articles and blog posts stuffed with keywords but of very little value for human readers.

SEO Spun Out of Control

At one point, the situation was so out of hand that some webmasters were spinning the same nonsense into new configurations over and over and reaping the rewards of first page listings. At last, Google took drastic measures to correct the problem.

Going forward, Google and the other search engines are looking for cues from readers and other websites to determine whether the content on a website offers useful information for searchers. Inbound links from authority websites will prove the value of a site and increase its visibility in the search engines, while low quality connections may draw penalties.

SEO with Guest Blog Posts

One of the best ways to get inbound links from authority sites in your niche is to place your quality content on those sites. Writing guest posts for other bloggers gets you high quality links from respected sites, while also building your visibility with your target market.

SEO with Articles on Directories

The changes on Google have forced webmasters to be much choosier about the directories on which they place their articles. Inbound links from sites which have a tarnished reputation in Google’s search can hurt your site’s reputation as well.

However, if you place your content on sites that supervise the quality of their articles, then you can improve your SEO with articles that link back to your website in the resource box. Some of these directories allow republishing as long as the resource box is intact. This can greatly increase the diversity of inbound links your site receives, another important cue for Google and the other search engines.

Some websites have been doing the right thing all along by placing quality content on their sites and others. These sites will continue to rank well in the search engines regardless of future changes because they understood all along the importance of improving SEO with articles and blog posts.

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Business Email Writing: Subject Line

If your name is not on the short list of priority senders a reader always reads first, then your subject is the headline that will either earn a click, a pass, or a deletion. Intriguing headlines get the clicks, but you should avoid tricks that can backfire if readers feel your content fails to deliver on your headline.

Tried-and-true headlines include numbered lists, how tos, and promises to solve a problem. Load your subject with the important words first, as many email programs cut off subjects at fifty characters or even as few as twenty.

Business Email Writing: Content

Engaging content solves problems for readers. Surveys can help you hone in on the content that your audience would like to read. Paying attention to those who click links in your emails and those who unsubscribe will further inform the topics you choose to address in your business email writing.

Every business email should get to the point immediately. Most recipients get far more email than they can process and will appreciate your directness. They also like it short. Consider having readers click through to a web page if your content will run more than 200 words.

Ideally, the first or second paragraph will state your purpose and explain how you will deliver on the promise you made in your subject line. You can use headings to break up chunks of text and allow readers to scan for pertinent information. This will then make it easy for them to retrieve the gist of a message should they need to refer back to it at a later date.

Remember that a casual tone does not forgive a sloppy approach to spelling and grammar. If you want people to treat you as a professional, your business email writing must set that standard for your brand.

Business Emails: Familiarity Breeds Fans

Businesses who use the responses of their email readers to guide their content creation and product development find that some of these readers go on to become brand ambassadors. Something about seeing a brand in their inboxes and hearing that “voice” in the messages causes them to invest in brand’s promotion. Use these tips to inform your business email writing and start creating the engaging content that helps you to connect with those who will become your biggest fans.

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Like an office reception area, the best business blogs invite prospects in and make them comfortable, usually by offering information or entertainment relevant to an ideal customer.

Blog for Business – Understand Your Goals

The best business blogs begin with the end in mind and employ a specific strategy related to their marketing goals. When they blog for business lead generation, they may use a strong call-to-action in every post. When blogging for brand recognition and promotion, they will emphasize subscriptions that lead to repeat visits.

Some businesses use different blogs for different goals, allowing them to target a variety customers. One blog might generate leads, while another educates new customers, and a third upsells to repeat customers.

Blog for Business – Content Rules

One feature all the best business blogs share is quality content. Once you clarify the goals for your blog, you need to get back into the frame of mind of your ideal customer so your blog will offer up the solutions or diversions this prospect seeks.

Unlike cold prospects who have their guard up when receiving a sales pitch, blog visitors relax because they control the flow of information. People who would never pick up and read your brochure cover to cover will dig deep into the stories you tell when you blog for business.

Subscription

Prospects need time to make up their minds whether considering a major purchase or simply agreeing to give up their email addresses. Just as it may take seven contacts before a customer is ready to sign up for a recurring lawn service, he may visit your blog seven times before he subscribes.

If subscriptions are important to your marketing strategy when blogging for business, be sure that every post has an easy and obvious subscription button and consider publishing a series of posts on a similar topic. Readers will be moved to subscribe if they like the information in the first post they read and do not want to miss future posts.

Less Is More

When you look at the best business blogs, you see that they have learned not to overwhelm their readers with too many choices. You may want to take some of the navigation off the front page and create a “Start Here” page for new visitors. Make it easy for visitors to find what they need and then do what you want them to do.

Blogs will change your business when you provide the content that pulls new customers to your website and then give them compelling reasons to return.

The post Engineering Your Blog for Business Purposes appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Some owners rely on haphazard and substandard blogging. Then they wonder why they are not experiencing the marketing results they had expected from their web content writing efforts. Others drop the ball when things get busy and never manage to parlay short spikes into steady growth.

If you find yourself challenged by the demands of producing web content for your inbound marketing plan, you should consider hiring a website content writer to provide quality content.

Hiring a Web Content Specialist

You probably recognize the need to hire specialists in several areas of your business. You consult an accountant or a lawyer when appropriate and hire a licensed driver to deliver goods. Outsourcing your web content writing to a website content writer allows your small company to promote itself professionally while freeing you up to do what you do best for your business.

A web content specialist has the expertise to create your content on schedule. Rather than spending time wracking your brain for a blog post, you can buy a whole week’s worth in advance from an expert website content writer with a few clicks of your mouse.

Web Content Writing Is Crucial to Inbound Marketing

A successful inbound marketing strategy aims to create a relationship between your customers and your website. Your blog posts and other web content writing build and strengthen the bonds with prospects you reach online.

Remember that the quality is as important as the quantity of your blog posts. Be wary of buying cheap posts that once worked with the search engines but never worked for building customer relationships. In other words, don’t choose your web content specialist on price alone.

Choose a Quality Web Content Specialist

You should outsource your web content writing to a web content specialist who can:

• Write on demand;
• Include relevant research;
• Produce content that pleases search engines;
• Use language and idiom that rings true with your ideal customer.

Web content writing should work seamlessly with the marketing and day-to-day operations you already have in place. If you are being pulled away from the tasks your business counts on to thrive, then you risk failing to deliver fully on the promises you make to your clients.

You would do better to hire a web content specialist to create quality content that keeps drawing new prospects for you, while you manage the day-to-day operations of your thriving business. You can do what you do best when you choose the right team to back you up, including an expert website content writer.

The post Why You Should Outsource Your Web Content Writing appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Identify Your Target Demographic

The more you know about the customer you intend to reach with your content marketing, the easier it will be to target your content to their needs and interests. Start by establishing their age, gender, and income level, then flesh out the profile with details about the media they consume. When planning your online content development, you want to consider:

• Television shows they watch;
• Books and magazines they read;
• And, of course, social media networks they visit regularly.

Content marketing allows you to create very specific and targeted messages, and this in-depth understanding of your ideal customer’s influences will give you the phrases and cultural references that will best succeed for your social media marketing strategy.

Online Content Development

Once you have a clear picture of your ideal customer, you should determine the type of content and the proper format in which to provide it.

A young audience may respond best to YouTube videos shared on Facebook, whereas a tech savvy crowd might gravitate to infographics posted on Google+. A business-to-business audience will be looking for educational material that answers their questions and solves their problems. If yours is a business-to-consumer company, you will want to lean more toward content that entertains or offers discounts.

Look at what your ideal customers are sharing already to learn what content marketing vehicles get passed along to their networks.

Social Media Marketing

Online content development does not end with the content you produce. Your social media posts will be part of the content you share and will affect the degree to which social followers participate in spreading your message.

You will want to keep in mind that each social media platform differs in nuance, and it is often better to have a highly engaged stream on one network rather than superficial, ineffectual streams on several different sites.

Sharing the content of power users in your chosen industry and social platform will you help you grow your social media marketing reach when they choose to return the favor. Many bloggers have seen their subscriptions shoot up the first time a power blogger tweeted out a post for them.

Content Marketing Rules the Internet

Everyone goes on the Internet looking for something. It may be news, information, entertainment, or companionship. Whatever they seek, content marketing makes finding it easier. With highly targeted online content development, you too can succeed with content marketing!

The post Dominate Social Media Marketing via Online Content Development appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Sometimes it helps to err on the side of caution and commit to fewer posts. Then you can write posts ahead of time and bank them for the future. You will be able to meet your commitments to your readers, and your credibility will grow.

In addition to the content for your blog, you should be setting goals for the off -page activities that help grow your blog as well. Guest posts, social media shares, and commenting on other blogs will raise visibility for your blog.

Goals Within Your Control

Focus on actions, not statistics. You might find it hard to hold yourself accountable for conjuring 100 new subscribers this week, but you could assign yourself three blog posts. It’s a realistic, measurable blog content goal that will lead to new subscribers and conversions. Your goals should address:

• Posts you will publish each week
• Guest posts you will submit each month
• Comments on other blogs in your industry each day

Why Buy Blog Posts?

Unless your blog pays a full-time wage, you have other responsibilities that keep you from producing as much content for your blog as you would like. Here are three good reasons to buy blog posts:

1. You want to increase the number of posts you publish weekly.

When your blog starts getting traction, you will see that the more quality content you offer readers, the more often they come back to read. You may want to buy blog posts to feed that flame and keep increasing reader interactions.

Content for your blog is an investment in your website’s search engine optimization strategy as well. When you buy blog posts to increase the content for your blog, those posts will sit on the web for years and become permanent beacons to future readers.

2. You have fallen behind on your goals.

Life happens sometimes. Surprises rear up and keep you from meeting the goals you had set for content for your blog. You can keep the flow of blog content steady when you buy blog posts.

3. You want to create a bank of posts to prevent you falling behind.

Maybe you have a vacation planned or a big launch on your horizon, whatever it is, you can buy blog posts ahead of time to prevent any lapses in content for your blog.

Keep Your Goals Visible

Once you have set your goals, be sure to print them out and place them prominently in view, so you will not lose sight of your commitment. These goals will alert you when you are falling behind and may need to buy blog content to keep your blogging reputation intact.

The post Setting Goals for Your Blog Content appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Article Writing Services

Inbound links are important for your site’s search engine optimization, and each article becomes another breadcrumb someone might follow back to your website. Article writing services can provide articles in volume for you to use to support your link building efforts. Some article writing services will even submit your content to appropriate directories, saving you even more time and effort.

If you can outsource this task, you can get your links out there much faster and reap the financial benefits of added traffic and search engine rankings sooner. When comparing those who offer article writing services, consider extra tasks like whether they will submit the articles for you or promote them in social media.

Blog Writing Services

Of course, inbound links only take you so far. The search engines expect quality content on your site too. Visitors will want to find content there, and a blog is the best platform for adding regular content. Blog writing services can help ensure you always publish on schedule, so readers learn to depend on you.

Many businesses start out blogging on their own, but fall behind when business picks up. Key employees may be tasked to attend to other matters as business volume increases, and without blog writing services to pick up the slack, the blog is dropped.

Worst Time to Drop Your Blog

If business picks up following the launch of an inbound marketing strategy, dropping the strategy would seem to be the worst possible reaction. However, when you are in the thick of increased workload and trying to meet the demands of customers and deadlines, you too may be tempted let your blog lapse. Later, when the leads dry up, you may find it hard to regain that momentum.

Blog writing services can help you keep building momentum when business picks up. When choosing blog writing services, ask about additional support like uploading the posts to the blog and promotion. Many blog writing services can include these administrative tasks features to keep everything moving smoothly.

Professional Writing Services

Everyone can write, but professional writing services employ those who have experience with writing to achieve a variety of voices and purposes. These writers have developed particular skills and expertise:

• They practice with language.
• They seek the right tone and tension for a subject.
• They have established networks and publishing relationships .
• They work with WordPress and other blogging platforms.

Article writing services can help you ramp up your writing to five or ten articles per day. Imagine the benefits a site would reap after a four week campaign of that volume. Many business owners cannot write that much and still keep up with their other business tasks.

Blog writing services can help you build consistency on your website. With a steady stream of content you will keep drawing the search engine spiders back to your site, while giving prospects new reasons to engage with your site.

If you are earnest about making the most of your inbound marketing strategy, consider professional writing services to support your efforts.

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Digital content creation is an important factor in the age of social media (now). If you spend your time writing for blogs or setting up blogs or marketing website content, then you need content – and that is where digital content creation comes in.

Should I Use Content Creation Tools, Like Software?

Yes, there is even some software out there that can perform content creation tasks for you using your keywords in the density that you require. With these types of content creation tools you may have to perform some editing, but some people can make it work. Having said that, it is more highly recommended to, instead, buy content from a digital content creation company or freelance writer. Do a quick Google search and you will find many reputable services (Crowdcontent being one of them) ready to sell you high quality content for a reasonable fee.

It’s all About the Money

The thing about social media today is that, for the most part, it’s about making money – whether the person reading the content knows this or not. Essentially, most (almost all) websites are set up to make money. The problem is, unless new content is added on a consistent basis, your website goes down on the top ten lists and it is hard to find. What good is a website that you can’t find? There is no point, which is why some combination of content creation tools is a necessity for your business.

Content Creation is an Ongoing Process

If you want to create successful content you need to have a combination of writers, spinners, and advertisers. Writers can be hired, or you can buy content, or you can write it yourself. Spinners (please Google to learn more about article “spinning”) are usually some type of software. However, you can hire people to spin your content for you. This is usually the better idea as sometimes spinning software creates content that is not very readable or that just does not make any sense at all.

Advertisers can include blogs you write on your site, blogs written for your site, and ads that give you money for impressions and clicks on your site. These can include in line texts, banner ads, and small video ads. In the end, though, to keep making money from your website, you have to keep creating new, fresh, and relevant content. It really is an endless circle that requires a content creation strategy that keeps delivering great content to your site while taking as little of your time as possible (in other words, provides good ROI).

Keep Learning!

These are just a few tips and ideas for getting the most out of digital content creation in this social media age. I encourage you to continue researching these concepts in an attempt to perfect your content creation strategy.

The post Content Creation in the Social Media Age appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

First, Why Buy Content?

I mean, why not just write it yourself? You are a perfectly capable human being who most likely knows a thing or two about internet marketing and has a decent writing style.

This may be true, but, it’s not the point.

The point = you are looking for a scalable opportunity. You want to fill your website with high quality content at the fastest pace possible while keeping costs reasonable.

To reach this target where you’re populating your website with fresh, relevant content every day, you will need to engage in a content marketing plan with an efficient and high volume content creation partner.

Crowd Content specializes in driving high volumes of high quality content to your website.

Content for Sale

As a side note, try to avoid places that provide pre-written “content for sale”. You need unique content written on demand and customized to your exact needs. Content for sale that is previously written will not fit with your site’s marketing angle.

Step 1: Sign Up

Create a free account with us. You will be able to see the client user interface and simple order process.

Step 2: Load Your Account

Deposit funds into your account using PayPal or credit card. If you have a promotional code, enter it into the “My Account” area. You are now ready to buy content.

Step 3: Create an Order

Click on “Create Order” and choose whether you want a Crowd Order or a Managed Order. Crowd Orders are best when you need the fastest turnaround. Buy content with a Managed Order if you have arranged special circumstances with your Client Account Manager.

Complete the intuitive order form. This form elecits all the required information from you that will help your writer create the highest quality content possible for your needs. With the order form, you can leave some questions blank, but we encourage you provide as much information as possible. Content buyers that follow this principle tend to get more high quality content pieces than average.

Step 4: Review Your Content

After the writer returns your completed content within your specifed time period, you have the opportunity to review it and (1) accept the order or (2) request a revision. There is no limit to the number of revisions you can request. All revisions are free of charge!

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Creating Effective Content

As discussed in an earlier blog post, determining the purpose, goals and audience is vital before any content creation gets done. Once you have pinpointed what you want you or your content creator to achieve, moving on to the content creation is less stressful and more efficient than jumping right into copywriting.

When it finally is time to create content, the following guidelines will ensure your copy is crisp, engaging and, most importantly, will lead to conversions.

Be Concise and “to the Point”

Although you know the ins-and-outs of every aspect of your product or service and it would be easy to write for days on the topic, your prospective clients just do not want or need to know as much as you about it. Especially in the case of digital content creation, people browsing the web are quickly turned off by walls of text and will either briefly skim the first few paragraphs or skip it entirely.

Keep It Simple

Even if your target audience is educated, content should not require too much analyzing. By keeping it simple, your content is more likely to be memorable and effective. A good rule of thumb to follow when making content that will achieve your goals is whether your content can be understood by an 8th grade student.

Likewise, it may be easy to fall into the trap of overusing creativity. Although writing clever or witty content might be more satisfying to you or get you praise, it usually does not convert readers to customers. More and more, advertising is viewed as a form of artistic expression instead being created to increase sales.

Another writing aspect that you should avoid while you create content is jargon. While you may know and can use your industry’s jargon naturally, your readers most likely will not.

Be Unique!

Not only is plagiarism illegal, it can lead to harsh penalties from search engines. If a search engine spider recognizes that content on your site has been previously published on another, your standing in search results will immediately be placed at the bottom if not removed entirely.

Additionally, if a viewer or prospective client notices that the information accessed on your site or copy is similar to something they have seen before, they will be likely to disregard your message or website entirely.

Create Quality Content

You may think your services or products are the best, but poorly written or constructed content will tell prospective clients otherwise. Ensure that you or your content creator is producing only the highest quality copy and achieving your goals will come naturally. Creating content hastily leads to low quality work. Low quality content will lead to transference of the notion that what you are selling is low quality as well.

Remember your purpose, goals and audience when you are going through digital content creation and ensure your content is concise, simple, unique and high quality. Following these easy guidelines will help propel your message or product to where you know it should be.

The post Creating Content that Works for You (Part 2) appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Know What You and Your Audience Want

Content creation might seem like a challenging task but the right mindset can help you achieve your goals. After the frills and fluff are taken out of the picture, you are left with content, usually text, that needs to convey your message or sell your product efficiently. The challenge is only furthered when you are trying to use keywords to effectively pull new clients or visitors to your website or to read your copy.

This being the case, there are some simple guidelines that you can follow to make sure your copy is appropriate and productive.

Determine the Purpose

What is the point of the content you are creating? Are you trying to inform the audience? Entertain them? Sell a product or service? No matter the reason for the content, pinpointing the primary purpose will make the rest of creating the content a much simpler undertaking.

Although figuring out the purpose of content seems inherent in whatever is being done, taking a few moments to clarify the point will ensure the project stays on topic and tone. Diving headfirst into digital content creation can easily yield an ineffective or inconsistent copy. All too often an article will begin as advertising copy and develop into an opinion piece or, worse, no longer be attempting to sell the product.

The more specific the purpose the better. Instead of, “The purpose of this content is to sell products,” you should go with, “The purpose of this content is to sell 20% more product to existing customers and to raise readership by 10% before the end of the fiscal year.”

Set Goals

When making content or working with a content creator, set goals that will help you figure out how much work needs to be done and by when. These goals should obviously coincide with the purpose of the content as conflicting goals will produce conflicted results. If the purpose is to increase sales or readership by 10% within a specified amount of time, the goal for the final product should not exceed that allotted schedule.

Likewise, goals should be realistic and measurable. One massive goal will be soon dismissed, but if a schedule is applied and intermediate goals are established, the work will be small steps versus an all-out sprint at the end.

Who Is the Audience?

Answering this question will have the biggest impact on the content over any other aspect. If you are looking to create content that sells a service to help senior citizens buy low-cost life insurance, there is no advantage to be gained through referencing hip colloquialisms or trendy subject matter. Similarly, if your target audience is a young, tech-savvy crowd and you are trying to gain readership for a blog or column, explaining each acronym might make your content seem laborious to read.

The audience can be easily determined through four simple questions:

1. Where are they located? Know what nation[s] your target audience lives in, whether they are in urban or suburban areas, if they own or rent their home, etc.
2. What is their age group?
3. What is the gender most likely to look for your content?
4. How much money – or time – do they have to spend on your product/content?

Once the purpose, goals and audience are established, it is finally time to create the content.

The post Creating Content that Works for You (Part 1) appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.