The Content Code
The Content Code
Content Code
SIX ESSENTIAL STRATEGIES FOR IGNITING YOUR CONTENT,
YOUR MARKETING, AND YOUR BUSINESS
MARK W. SCHAEFER
This book was produced in part through the generous
patronage of Dell Inc. and gShift. Please support the
sponsors who made the book possible.
Copyright © 2015 by Mark W. Schaefer
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the
scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without
the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s
intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other
than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by
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your support of the author’s rights.
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE The Ignition Switch
CHAPTER TWO Structure, Strategy, and the Content Code
CHAPTER THREE Building Shareability into Your Content
CHAPTER FOUR 22 Practical Ways to Achieve Content Ignition
CHAPTER FIVE Building an Alpha Audience
CHAPTER SIX Borrowing Trust
CHAPTER SEVEN The Heroic Brand
CHAPTER EIGHT Distribution, Advertising, Promotion, and SEO
CHAPTER NINE Social Signals and Social Proof
CHAPTER TEN The Mystery of Authority
CHAPTER ELEVEN The Future of Content and Ignition
References
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Introduction
Each time I’ve written a book, I’ve tried to solve a problem and answer an
important and complex question on the mind of my customers, my students,
and my friends in the business world. My previous books have provided
answers to questions like …
Brand development
Audience and Influencers
Distribution, Advertising, Promotion, and SEO
Authority
Shareability embedded into each piece of content
Social proof and social signals
The beauty of The Content Code is that it’s accessible to anyone and
businesses of any size. Whether you have a little time for marketing each
week, or you can dedicate full-time resources to content ignition (and this is
beginning to occur), this book is filled with hundreds of ideas that will help
you triumph in the chaotic information marketplace today.
The future is more than copy writing. The future of marketing is copy
igniting.
So let’s get to it. Let’s discover The Content Code.
CHAPTER ONE
… and the list goes on and on. Rarely does a week go by when there
isn’t some significant, new Twitter-related innovation available for
marketers. You could literally make a career out of studying nothing but
Twitter.
Now, multiply that by every digital platform in the world and you’ll start
to feel a little dizzy! And while this feverish pace of change is something to
reckon with, it’s not even the biggest worry for marketers. There’s another,
more important, mega-trend impacting almost every marketing strategy,
tactic, and innovation in our industry: Malignant information density.
2. Entry barriers become too high for some to compete. The deep
pockets trend appears in even the smallest market niches. The companies
that can overwhelm the market with content can effectively raise the entry
hurdles for competitors and maybe even block them out of key search
results entirely. Essentially, winning marketers create Content Shock for
their competitors!
So the second implication of this trend is that barriers to successful
content marketing will become high, perhaps impossibly high, for some
businesses.
He left his corporate job in London and moved his family to the
Provence region of France.
In the teeth of a recession and with no previous wine-making
experience, he started a new winery called Mirabeau.
He had 600 established competitors—and that was just in Provence!
This chapter examines what your content marketing strategy needs to look
like in this Formula One–fast digital world, and I introduce the specific
elements of the Content Code that are unpacked throughout the rest of the
book.
But to kick things off, I need to talk about soup.
“Soup?” you say. “I bought this book to learn about soup?”
Trust me. I need to bring out the broth to tell a little tale that illustrates
how marketers must think about content and marketing strategy differently
in this era of information density and hyper-competition.
My friend Robert runs a downtown restaurant that specializes in soup.
He had the very bright idea to partner with a local car dealership to offer
potential customers a free lunch of delicious soup every Thursday
(SOUPER THURSDAY!). The car dealer figured the small cost of some
good soup was an intelligent investment in customer acquisition. And he
was right! Every Thursday his store was flooded with people seeking
Robert’s soup. Life was good.
But then a competing car dealership down the street woke up and
realized the advantage of the free lunch offer. The competitor started
offering sandwiches and salads head-to-head with Robert every Thursday.
The competitor even threw in his wife’s famous home-baked cookies for
dessert!
Suddenly, Robert and his dealership partner saw Souper Thursday visits
drop dramatically. Most customers abandoned his modest soup menu for the
competitor’s tastier offering. The dealership owner turned to Robert and
said, “Look what’s happening! The soup isn’t working anymore. We need
something bigger and better! Steaks! Lobster! A dessert buffet! Starting this
week, you need to be making epic gourmet food!”
Now how was Robert going to do that? He had limited resources and a
one-burner stove in his kitchen that could only handle soup! And would the
escalation stop there? Was this a sustainable strategy?
Saturation Guidelines
So what constitutes “saturation?” As these examples show, the higher the
information density in a niche, the more difficult it will be to create
outstanding content that will shine through on its own without investment in
distribution, promotion, and advertising. Here are rough guidelines outlined
by Penn, using Google search results as an index for relative saturation
levels.
If there are fewer than 10,000 pages of returned search results, full
speed ahead! There’s an opportunity for you since there is low content
density.
Between 10,000 and 100,000 results, expect some resistance, but it’s
surmountable with minimal investment, exceptional content, and
implementation of some of the Content Code factors covered in this
book.
If there are between 100,000 and 1 million search results, expect
significant resistance. Competing through content alone will be
difficult. Applying Content Code strategies might be the primary
means of rising above this level of saturation.
A result producing more than 1 million pages of content represents a
thoroughly saturated niche. Unless the content becomes a product in its
own right through significant investment, Content Shock exists in this
niche and is likely to bury even exceptional content creation efforts. In
this situation, the Content Code strategies would be the only possibility
of strategic leverage.
1. Focus on sub-categories.
The competitor had overlooked new demographic subsets who were coming
into the market and eager to use their products. When I did research on
these segments, I found a wide open opportunity. The competitor had no
content targeted to these personas. We set about dominating the under-
served channels with amazing new content served up especially for them.
Hygiene content: This is the content that serves the daily health of
your audience. This content makes them aware of your brand and
helps them connect to you when they need you most. This is the
specific, short-form content that is most likely to turn up in organic
search results. An example of hygiene content is a series of how-to
videos from a do-it-yourself store like Home Depot.
Hub content: While hygiene content might get somebody to your site,
hub content is intended to keep them there. This could be a series of
articles about a more in-depth topic, or perhaps a serialized story, that
makes people want to go down the rabbit hole and stay on your site.
This could also be “evergreen” content that people seem to love and
read month after month. An example of hub content is the addictive
and thrilling adventure videos produced by Adidas Outdoor featuring
daredevil athletes using their gear. Hub content lifts subscriptions to
your content, spurs engagement, builds brand interest, and may even
lead to brand loyalty.
Hero content: Hero content is something brilliant, dramatic, and bold
that transcends the normal day-to-day Internet offerings. This is the
content that creates viral buzz. A famous example is the epic videos
Nike created to celebrate the World Cup. The most recent one,
“Winner Stays,” playfully captures the schoolyard fantasy of young
soccer players who morph into their favorite global stars. This type of
content is difficult to produce. Nike was intentional in spending
millions to create this hero content with the goal of creating massive
brand awareness and dominating the conversation around the world’s
biggest sporting event. The video received 100 million views.
We’ll be exploring these “3H’s” of content and how they relate to social
sharing in Chapter 8, but for now it’s important to understand that each type
of content plays a role in the overall brand-building plan. One way to carve
a place for yourself is to create content in a category your competitors
might be missing. In the specific case of my client battling three big
competitors, we learned that there was an opening in the hygiene content
category that would allow us to capture a niche that leads to search engine
traffic.
Brand development
Audience and Influencers
Distribution, Advertising, Promotion, and SEO
Authority
“Shareability” embedded into each piece of content
Social proof and social signals
Now, if you’re paying close attention—and I’m sure you are—the first
letter of each piece of the Content Code spells out BADASS.
I consider this a giddy coincidence and perhaps the highlight of my
professional career. I’m tempted to end the book right now as I’m sure there
is nothing I can write that can ever top this. I bet you didn’t see that coming
did you? You should send me a selfie right now with the look of surprise
and amazement on your face. #BadassSelfie
Okay, time to settle down. We must get back to the topic at hand, for this
is a serious book for serious people. What does this BADASS thing really
mean?
Provided you start with great content (did I already mention that?), if
you commit to continuously working on these six factors you’ll begin to
crack the code. Although the six factors have been written about in bits and
pieces by many talented experts (whom I call on to help tell the story), this
is the first time the entire Content Code has been assembled in a cohesive
way, in one book.
In the chapters that follow, we will dive into each of these factors in
detail, but the overall recipe for how you execute your plan is up to you.
You see, there’s no simple strategy that fits everybody …
So the best way to use this book is to take a dive into all six pools and
see what fits for your particular situation. You don’t necessarily need to
work on all six factors to make progress. Pick out one or two that fit your
business situation and capabilities, and you certainly will be better prepared
for the future than your competitors! Most of the ideas in the book are
accessible to companies big and small.
While the BADASS thing is awesome and perhaps a useful mnemonic
device, I actually start the deep dive on this subject of content ignition with
an “S”—shareability—because I believe it’s vital enough that nearly every
business, brand, or individual needs to work on it. Building shareability into
your content may be the most important concept in the book. After all, what
good is all that content if people won’t share it?
CHAPTER THREE
“If an infographic is published and no one shares it, did it even exist?”
– Brian Solis
Welcome to Chapter 3. This is one bold and sassy chapter. It’s the barbecue
sauce of book chapters. It’s a chapter with a topic so gigantic, it takes two
chapters to cover it all!
In this episode of The Content Code, we’ll look at the fascinating
reasons why people share content and how we can use that insight to ignite
our own work. The next chapter continues the discussion of shareability
with an astonishing list of practical tips and tricks you can start using right
now.
The concept of shareability builds upon important tenets from the first
two chapters of this book, so here’s a quick review:
Business results on the web don’t come from content; they come from
content that moves.
Even if your content is great, there’s no guarantee it will rise to the top
in an increasingly competitive world.
Exploding information density effectively negates many traditional
marketing strategies and increases the cost to remain competitive.
Implementing elements of the Content Code (BADASS) will give your
content the best chance to cut through the noise and be heard.
The heart of the book, the first element of the Content Code, begins with
a critically important idea of shareability, which is actively building the
possibility for ignition into your content. I want to be clear that sharing is
different than a “Like,” a comment, or a “Plus 1.” Content transmission is
what you’re after. Spreading the word. Building the buzz.
It may be true that most frequently shared posts also get a lot of Likes
and comments, and there also many posts that are frequently Liked but
barely shared. A leading reason that posts can be Liked but not shared is
that a person may Like a post to support a political, theological, or
philosophical view that may upset a general audience if it is transmitted
broadly. We generally don’t want to make people uncomfortable, so we
don’t always share.
Liking lightly bonds us with other likers of that thing. But when we
share, we’re virtually shouting, “I’m in this club and I want to show the
world!” As you’re about to see, this kind of commitment isn’t necessarily
easy to achieve.
Content that moves on the web may or may not have anything to do with
quality, or even the content! Why do you tweet a link, post a video to
Facebook, or email a link to your family and friends? Is it because
somebody did a very, very good job with search engine optimization? Is it
because the video has superb cinematography, or the writing in a blog post
is scintillating? Perhaps … but chances are the reason is more subtle … and
surprising.
Understanding why people choose to share content sheds light on how
you can adjust your strategy and carve out a competitive edge by
embedding shareability into everything you create. Think about content you
recently shared. Why did you do it? Do any of these reasons ring true?
And here are the industries with the lowest Facebook organic reach:
1. Appliances
2. Books
3. Telecommunications
4. Household supplies
5. Tools and equipment
6. Phone/tablet
7. Chef
8. Musical instruments
9. Industrials
10. Transportation and freight
Achieving status helps generate social currency and social sharing. After
all, what good is accomplishing something if you can’t tell people about it?
Word of mouth also can come from the voting process itself. Deciding
the winner by popular vote encourages contestants to drum up support. But
in telling people to vote for them, contestants also spread awareness about
the product sponsoring the contest. Instead of marketing yourself directly,
you use the contest to get people who want to win to do the marketing
themselves.
One of the most interesting competitions I’ve seen is the “Top Social
Media Blog Contest” compiled by Social Media Examiner, one of the top
sites on the marketing scene. The unique aspect of this blog is that it
routinely highlights competitor blogs.
Michael Stelzner, the company founder, explained that the unusual
contest drives web traffic, but there are other benefits: “It’s good for our
business to recognize bloggers who do an outstanding job with their
content. I don’t see any conflict in recognizing competing blogs to our own.
Instead, I have the view that all ships rise when more attention is brought to
those doing great work for the industry.
“In many cases, the winners of the Top Social Media Blog Contest have
told us that getting on the list has been a big goal of their business, or it has
literally helped propel their industry stature and authority. Of course this
drives an enormous amount of interest and traffic to the site but there are
other benefits. First, it helps us identify up-and-coming thought leaders who
we may want to have on our podcasts or speak at our events. Second, it is a
gift of sorts that establishes a lot of good will with those who are finalists
and winners. Third, the winners post award badges on their sites, providing
more exposure for our brand.”
In this example, Social Media Examiner effectively helps people achieve
status with its content, and it sends their content transmission sky high.
Another common tool for creating personal achievement through content
is quizzes, which explains why they appear on so many sites that depend on
advertising for their revenues. In 2014, eight of the 10 most-shared articles
on the entire Internet were quizzes. Sharing positive or funny quiz results
fuels our identity and ego. Others learn more about who we are, what we
value, and our tastes.
MIT cultural analyst Sherry Turkle11 says that people turn to quizzes to
fulfill an irresistible need to quantify the human condition. “Basically,
we’re trying to get a number,” she said. “And people will use a quiz to get
that number. It gives people something to look at, an object to think with.”
She adds that people have always loved quizzes, but in the pre-social media
days, we primarily took them for ourselves. “Now they’re specifically for
performance,” she said. “Part of the point is to share it … It’s the conflation
of who you are and who thinks you’re okay.”
So when you’re making quizzes for your audience, you’re giving them
an opportunity to learn something interesting about themselves and a
chance to start a conversation with their friends. It’s hard to say that about a
lot of other forms of content.
3. Make it exclusive.
In a web world where you want the content to flow freely, how do you use
exclusivity—holding content back—to your advantage?
Information is abundant, and almost any content can easily be found for
free. For any person or company trying to monetize scarce or premium
content on the social web, there is always somebody else out there willing
to provide the same webinar, video, or eBook for nothing, destroying your
idea of a scarce resource. Chris Anderson’s book Free: The Future of a
Radical Price codifies this idea by basically saying “get used to it”—you
have to find adjacencies and other revenue streams because people expect
Internet-based content and services to be free.
Is there anything scarce on the Internet?
Yes, there is, according to digital marketing savant Christopher S. Penn
of SHIFT Communications. “Scarcity is actually more powerful than ever
on the social web,” he said. “While content may be free, what has become
extremely scarce is time, attention, and influence. These are hot
commodities, rare commodities. As an example, I have tens of thousands of
followers on Twitter. I can’t tell you the number of direct messages and
tweets, Facebook messages, and emails I receive every day asking, ‘Hey,
can you promote my whatever’ because they know that it means something.
Moving content creates true value. So in that regard, scarcity is a weapon
that is in play like never before.”
On the other side of the coin, providing exclusive or limited access to
content can create the perception of scarcity that can make the content
move.
Scarcity and exclusivity boost word of mouth by making people feel like
insiders. If people get something rare, it makes them feel special, unique,
and high status. And because of that, they’ll not only like a product or
service more, but tell others about it more. Why? Because telling others
makes them look good. Having insider knowledge is social currency. When
people who waited hours in line finally get that new tech gadget, one of the
first things they do is show others. Look at me and what I was able to get!
As the publisher of a popular blog, I am deluged with requests to try
new products and services. I ignore these pitches because I know the same
email is being sent to a thousand other people. Why would I create content
on a subject that could appear in hundreds of other blogs the next day? I
want something exclusive. I want to be an insider.
But there is one type of content that makes me stop, pay attention, and
share what’s being offered—exclusive insight. Here are three examples of
companies who used “first access” as an effective way to transmit their
information:
How can you create content that will appeal to these personas? Are there
standard processes you can build into your content to make it more likely to
ignite? That’s what the next chapter is all about!
CHAPTER FOUR
Awe (25%)
Laughter (17%)
Amusement/entertainment (15%)
Pew Research5 reports that 35 percent of men and 43 percent of women
are on Facebook primarily to see entertaining or funny posts.
This idea also shows up in the Berger/Milkman research.6 They found
that content with a positive sentiment tends to go viral more than negative
content. It’s more complex than that of course—people share content that
expresses a wide range of emotions—but in general, staying positive should
help you trend toward better shareability.
Research by the company AgoraPulse7 found that the most-shared posts
on Facebook also had some element of inspiration in them, indicated by
keywords like:
And while we’re at it, the research also showed content behaviors that
shut down social sharing (don’t do these!):
4. Go long.
Every marketing trend seems to point to a need for short content. Six-
second Vine videos. High-level infographics. Tweets that top out at 140
characters. Shorter content enables social sharing in a busy world, right?
Not necessarily.
According to an analysis8 of 100 million web-based articles, long-form
content actually gets shared more than short-form content. In fact, the
longer the content, the more shares it may get, with pieces of 3,000–10,000
words getting the highest average shares of any category. Research by the
New York Times confirms this trend; more than 90 percent of their most-
emailed articles are more than 3,000 words long.
Not surprisingly, short-form content abounds—there are 16 times more
articles with less than 1,000 words than there are with 2,000+ words. Here’s
your opportunity to fill the gap. When writing long-form content, remember
to make it easy to scan—no one likes an intimidating wall of text. Using a
list structure is a simple way to do that. Write short, easy-to-read
paragraphs, and use subheadings and bullet points to break up the text.
Bonus tip: Using a keyword in a subheading normally provides some SEO
value.
6. Remember that the most important part of your content is not your
content.
Do you want to increase the shareability of your content by 400 percent in
one easy step? Lean in close now as I share this secret: Stop writing sucky
headlines.
In today’s world, you must craft a descriptive, emotive, accurate, catchy,
and “tweet-able” headline. This is so fundamental yet it remains a challenge
for many content creators. The headline is more important than the video or
body of the text. Why? Because we live in a world of scanners, and if you
can’t grab somebody by the throat in a nanosecond, you’ve lost them. They
will never see the rest of the post.
So here’s the official Content Code Ever-So-Useful List of Best Blog
Post Headline Practices:
Make it tweetable (i.e. short). Headlines with eight words or less are
shared 21 percent more than average.9
Make it descriptive and accurate. Never mislead readers.
Make it creative enough to stand out in a crowded list of content
choices.
Reference a numbered list to increase social transmission by 50
percent (like: “Six Extraordinary Lessons from The Content Code”).
Make sure the headline offers something helpful.
Include one keyword or phrase to help a search engine determine the
theme of the article and aid your SEO.
Don’t let your headline be an afterthought. The headline is the most
critical part of the post. Work it.
Warm words help, too. In a study of blog posts that had received more
than 1,000 social shares over a year, headlines that featured a “human”
word like “food,” “home,” and “lifestyle” accounted for 85 percent of the
world’s most viral content. Words like “business,” “tech,” and “news” made
up just 14 percent of this traffic.10
A useful tool to use when creating headlines is the free Headline
Analyzer from the Advanced Marketing Institute
(http://bit.ly/headlineanalyze). It works on the theory that increasing the
emotional marketing value (EMV) of your headline drives more social
sharing. In my independent research, I’ve found that social sharing drops
off if the headline is too emotional. The ideal score seems to center between
30 and 50 points.
7. Be visual.
Read a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10
percent of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65 percent.11 Reading is
inefficient for humans. Your brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, and
then you have to identify features in the letters to read them. That takes
time.
According to a BuzzSumo analysis, adding a photo or illustration
doubles the probability that your content will get shared. Another study
verifies that when using Facebook as your content distribution channel,
sharing of the content is doubled, on average, if you include a photo.
Naturally, brands are figuring this out—74 percent of all Facebook brand
posts now contain a photo.12
When formatting a photo for a blog post, most blogging platforms give
you the chance to assign a meta tag or “alternative text” to the photos.
Attaching the keyword or theme from the article to the photo doesn’t take
much time and can provide a small SEO boost.
Bonus tip: LinkedWithin uses an image from your old posts as a visual
prompt to keep customers clicking … another great reason to always
include a photo or graphic with your content.
How is this possible? If most blog posts die after four days, how did this
content keep chugging and chugging, finding new fans for years?
There’s a lot of sharing potential stored in content that is always relevant
and useful. This evergreen content answers your customers’ most common
questions and rarely goes out-of-date. For example, a “Mommy Jogger”
blog would feature evergreen content that describes the correct use of
jogging strollers. This post would be useful and relevant to customers for
years … and could also be re-posted as new people look for the content.
And that is exactly what I did. I could see that my “Un-follow” post was
popular, evergreen content that people enjoyed, so I tweeted the link out to
my audience about once a month. And each time I did, it received more
comments and social shares. A lot more!
This is an obvious strategy many businesses ignore because they feel
strange about posting “old” content. But you need to view evergreen
content as an investment in an asset for your business. If you bought a new
tractor for your farm or a new truck for your plumbing business, you
wouldn’t just let it sit around not being used. An investment in content is no
different. Use it!
There aren’t any hard and fast rules about sharing your most popular
evergreen content but every other month seems about right. If you have
enough of these pieces in your arsenal, you can build an evergreen content
promotion schedule.
Bonus tip: There are WordPress plugins available to help you schedule
and re-post your most popular content for months into the future. Igniting
content with no work? I like it!
And of course you can throw all of these guidelines out the door if
you’re trying to post at times and in spaces unoccupied by competitors. I
noticed that one of my blogging friends posted every Sunday. This seemed
counter-intuitive since blog posts usually get the least amount of traction on
weekends. His logic was simple: “All the established bloggers post on
Monday, so to stand out, I’m posting on a day that’s less crowded.” A very
sensible approach. He’s finding an unsaturated niche based on the day of
the week!
14. Be practical.
In Chapter 1, I recounted the story of the Mirabeau Miracle. The winery’s
proprietor, Stephen Cronk, made YouTube history with a 90-second video
showing how to open a wine bottle with his shoe.
This was not epic content. It wasn’t even original. The trick had been
done multiple times before on YouTube. The Mirabeau case study doesn’t
seem to follow any rules about emotion or storytelling. But it’s an amazing,
well-executed little demonstration, and it was a practical, useful tip.
In the book Contagious, Jonah Berger explains, “Today, direct
opportunities to help others are few and far between. Modern suburban life
has distanced us from our friends and neighbors. We live at the end of a
long driveway or high up in an apartment building, often barely getting to
know the person next door.
“But sharing something useful with others is a quick and easy way to
help people out, even if we’re not in the same place. Parents can send their
kids useful advice even if they are hundreds of miles away. Passing along
useful things strengthen social bonds. Our friends see we know and care
about them, we feel good for being helpful, and the sharing cements our
friendship.”
People love to help their friends save money, so building extraordinary
value or a deal into your content is a way to help it move. Not surprisingly,
the bigger the perceived deal or the more exclusive it appears, the more the
content moves.
Curation is another good way to provide practical content. Curating or
summarizing valuable content by industry, career discipline, or interest
saves people time because you’ve done the work to filter content for them.
In the pharmaceutical industry, summaries of new surgical or medical
breakthroughs are a good way to bond with doctors and provide truly useful
information. Several wealth management companies curate global financial
information to make the world of investing less complicated. You can find
opportunities to curate along any interest you can imagine.
All of these personal spins on data can make compelling original content
highly valued by your most passionate audience members.
End your post with a question. People hate an open-ended post and are
more likely to close the loop by answering your question in a
comment.
Ask specifically for comments. In Chapter 7, I cover the importance of
comments and social proof, but prime the pump by asking a few
friends and work colleagues to leave a comment. Comments spur
comments. People feel better about leaving their views when they see
they’re not standing all alone in the comment section.
Mention influencers with large audiences in your post and link to their
content. Most of the time they will be “pinged” when someone links to
their content, but don’t be afraid to let them know the link exists.
They’ll probably share your post.
Notify potential commenters. Send an email to people in your industry
who would be interested in your post. You need to use this method
judiciously—you can’t keep going to the well until it’s dry! If they
trust you and the request, you’ll almost certainly earn a comment and a
share from these connections.
If you’re like most people, you probably picked the second option in
these examples. Even though these posts would be appropriate for a
corporate blog, the headline hints at something personal, unique, and
revealing. The first headlines could have been written by anyone. But the
second headlines could only be written from the perspective of a real
person. Create content for humans. Create content that only you can create.
Well, that should give you enough to work on for a few weeks. But
we’re just getting started! Your work to build shareability into your content
will always be sub-optimized if you don’t also find and nurture an audience
who is primed and ready for ignition. Let’s discover a BADASS strategy to
create an Alpha Audience most likely to share your content.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Today, artists get record deals because they have fans – not the other
way around.” – Taylor Swift
Content is merely the match lighting the fuse of an ignition plan. You have
to find the people to actually do it! You need to amass an Alpha Audience—
an elite and engaged tribe at the top of the social sharing food chain, the
bedrock of your business. Google research shows that these most loyal
members of your audience are more than 250 percent more likely to
transmit your content!
To set the stage for our important work together on this subject, I’d like
to provide a short case study illustrating one of the biggest problems
companies face when it comes to activating their digital audience of friends
and followers.
The initial audience connections made through social media are weak
links that don’t drive action on their own.
Building emotional connections and relationships with these weak
links can convert them to a loyal strong link Alpha Audience that you
can activate.
Influence doesn’t come from audience size alone.
GoPro8: This company sells small video cameras that can be mounted
on your body or vehicle (well … anything really) to capture your
activities (like a camera on a helmet worn when skydiving). The
tagline “Capture + Share Your World” is the core of its marketing
theme. GoPro has become one of the highest-performing brands on
YouTube, a calculation based on popularity, time on site, repeat
viewership, and shares. When you look through GoPro’s YouTube
channel, you find videos of everything from people jumping off of
roofs to a fireman saving a kitten. GoPro’s customer-evangelism
strategy is to curate videos from users of its products and broadcast
them on YouTube. Not only does GoPro provide a place for authentic
advocates to share their most enthralling moments, but its channel is a
great way for potential users to see the products in action.
Fiskars Scissors: How do you ignite passion about something as
mundane as scissors? With people who love scissors, of course! After
about a year of research, Fiskars decided there was an opportunity to
create community around a group of people who are passionate about
scrapbooking and the tools they use in their hobby. Part of the process
involved turning their blog over to customers—four lead “Fiskateers,”
who sparked a scrapbooking movement that now includes store
appearances and conventions. Letting their Alpha Audience lead the
content strategy has helped the company dramatically increase positive
brand awareness, loyalty and sales.
Urban Outfitters9: The retail chain has a successful social media
franchise with its #UOOnYou initiative. This campaign invites
shoppers to upload and tag photos of themselves wearing branded
clothes. The retailer selects photos to feature on its website, Instagram,
Tumblr, and product pages. The shopper gets to be a model, other
shoppers are inspired by these authentic styles, and for current items,
the images link back to OU’s e-commerce to make them shoppable.
J. Crew: The retailer noticed that shoppers were posting online photos
of one of its most popular Madewell bags—a transport tote—and
launched a contest encouraging them to tag the images #totewell for a
chance to be featured in company advertising. Even after the contest
closed, the most loyal shoppers continued to add photos and artful
images to their social profiles and to the brand’s various online outlets.
Not only did the effort generate content and buzz, but the effort was a
good way to identify new Alpha Audience members.
Tourism Australia: Jesse Desjardins calls himself community
manager and leader of “the world’s largest social media team.” His
agency receives thousands of fan photo submissions to post on the
Tourism Australia Facebook page, one of the largest destination sites
in the world. It’s not unusual for their amazing photos to get tens of
thousands of Likes and shares. Tourism Australia outperforms every
other tourism board in the world, and it accomplishes that based on
two primary ingredients: user-generated content and community co-
creation. Desjardins told me, “We aim to make our audience the hero
of our site.”
Medtronic Diabetes10: A company that manufactures diabetes
management products doesn’t have a new product to announce every
month. It does, however, have a large and active consumer base.
People with diabetes want to hear from other people with diabetes.
They don’t want to hear yet another doctor giving advice in “medical
speak.” Medtronic taps into that audience and regularly asks for
stories, resulting in awareness, news, and sales:
Nearly 300 customers have shared stories and photos.
Over 80 percent of customers have given Medtronic the rights to use
their stories and photos in other media.
Their “Share Your Story” Facebook app is responsible for a two-to-one
increase in return on investment in the effort.
“Be real.”
– Joyce Cherrier, health and wellness writer
I look for ways that I can actively be supportive and encouraging to the
people in my audience, while providing a positive, not-so-conventional
picture of what healthy living is all about. I like to use my own photos, and
my personal experiences to create content, as well as share the content of
others that I feel will be of benefit. Making my content as personal and
applicable to life as possible makes my core audience feel more like old
friends who I live and grow with, and I believe that’s a key element for any
brand.
Borrowing Trust
The Celebrity
Kim Kardashian will happily promote your content for $200,000 per tweet.
That kind of promotion might seem silly, but it also works … and it has for
more than a century.
According to Thomas Mickey, an advertising and PR industry historian,
the first paid celebrity endorsers were probably the stars of P.T. Barnum’s
circus troupe in the 19th century. “Barnum would have his most popular
clowns and entertainers go in advance to the next city,” he said. “They
would be the faces on the posters and the newspaper ads and it was quite
effective. That was the first example of using the power of a character in the
media of the day to get a consumer to take action.”
When motion pictures and radio were introduced at the turn of the
century, technology became the enabler of a new era of celebrity … and
companies loved having these glamorous stars use their products. Celebrity
endorsements became commonplace and the most popular program hosts
and stars would simply mention the show’s sponsor during the broadcast as
a means of funding the mass media entertainment. Companies like Proctor
and Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, and Kraft built their businesses by
funneling millions of dollars into the hands of newly emerging advertising
agencies, who eagerly lined up celebrity talent to promote the household
products.
The most popular stars of the era, Charlie Chaplin and American
baseball star Babe Ruth, endorsed everything from cigarettes to cereal.
Ruth’s popularity as a pitchman grew to the point that his earnings from
advertising far exceeded his salary as an athlete. He was the first individual
in history who had to hire a business manager and an accountant just to
keep track of all the money he was making from his paid product
testimonies.
Today many companies still align themselves with stars. These
celebrities have vast audiences and may not even have a deep connection to
the products they’re promoting. And the cost? Well, for most businesses,
it’s simply out of reach. Aligning with a celebrity can also be risky, as
dozens of brands learned when golf star Tiger Woods’ personal life turned
scandalous and dominated the news and public opinion.
True Advocates
True advocates need no convincing or cajoling. They already love you and
can’t get enough of whatever you’re doing. This is the Alpha Audience that
is difficult to find and assemble, but they will probably stick with you
forever if you treat them right.
Your true advocates might be the teen who makes videos of her
shopping spree at your store, the skateboarder who is never seen without his
can of Dr Pepper, or even the quiet fan in the realms of dark social media
who worships your work quietly and talks about it with her friends and
family.
These are the people who have always been at the heart of word-of-
mouth marketing success. Years ago, they were your neighbors, the local
power brokers, a labor leader, or the respected business sage. As markets
went global, it became more difficult to accurately know who or where
these power brokers were, but with the incredible analytics available from
Internet data, there are a number of reliable free or low-cost tools available
to track influential connections by topic, industry, and region. Combining
analytics with observation and insight can provide a historically important
opportunity for you to learn about influential new advocates who can help
spread your message and your content.
3. The Ask (part 1). By this time, the people from Groove were on the
radar of their target influencers and it was time to make a move. But they
didn’t ask for a favor. They asked for help—a subtle yet important
difference. Most people have a hard time saying “no” to an honest request
for help. This plea included a link to their site, a request for feedback, and
emphasis on potential mutual benefits. Using this technique, Groove earned
an 83 percent positive response rate from the influencers. “Help” is a more
benign ask, and more importantly, it helped Groove start real back-and-
forth conversations with industry experts.
4. The Ask (part 2). Now that the company was ready to launch their blog,
they needed a push from their new influencer friends. Since this group had
been involved in providing feedback to the Groove team, they had a built-in
stake in the company’s success. Groove sent these new advocates a link to
the first blog post with a request for help promoting it.
5. Results! Not only did most influencers promote the post, but almost all
of them also commented on the new blog. This level of response provided
proof to new visitors that the blog (and company) had traction. In 24 hours
Groove had acquired 1,000 blog subscribers, and by following up with
consistent, high-quality content, they attracted more than 5,000 subscribers
and 535 trial sign-ups through five weeks of blogging efforts.
In this case, Groove methodically built relationships with influencers
that led to measurable success. But there was another force at work here,
too—the powerful, magnetic attraction of involving key audience members
in your content creation and transmission.
As influence marketing has rapidly gained acceptance as a mainstream
marketing competency, the number of options for how to succeed in this
space have proliferated.
Hybrid/subscription approach
A hybrid approach is to subscribe to a sophisticated influence software
service like Appinions. Appinions has patented technology that scans the
web to assess millions of online publishing platforms and find your most
relevant online thought leaders, sliced and diced by many detailed
variables. These services aren’t inexpensive, but they can save you months
of work. If influencer connections are key to your success, software like
this might be the edge you need to get up to speed quickly and develop a
competitive advantage.
While reading this chapter, it may have occurred to you that it could be
fun to be on the other side of the relationship and become an influencer
yourself. Well, then. You’re going to love the next chapter in our content
ignition adventure! Have you thought about becoming a Heroic Brand?
CHAPTER SEVEN
“When people believe that what you believe is what they believe, they
turn you into a belief.” – Michael Bassey Johnson
1. Establish congruity.
There are a number of readers of my blog who share it with their audiences
almost every day. One of them is the media-savvy Brooke Ballard, founder
of B Squared Media in New York. She recently told me why she makes the
decision to share my content so regularly:
“My relationship with the author matters. I started to get to know
about you through your blog, as you serve up little slices of life to
your readers. We hear about your travels, your life, and your
family ... and if users are following you on social, they get other
tantalizing bites through actual pictures of those things. An entire
portrait is painted—providing insight to who you really are.
Maybe it’s my own love of psychographics and being human that
leads to that connection, but very few people let others in the way
you do— with true transparency.
“For me, tone also has something to do with it,” Ballard
continued. “Your tone is similar to mine. You’re firm in your
beliefs and teachings, but fair when others comment and disagree.
You simply add another layer to the lesson. This helps me share
your content because I trust you. I know my audience will learn
something, they won’t be scolded for having a different
viewpoint, and they will be encouraged to elaborate when they
have questions or want to know more. Your willingness to
respond to comments on your posts helps people connect to you
in a meaningful and personal way.”
Nearly every expert I interviewed for this book mentioned the
importance of honesty, trust, and congruity as the centerpiece of their brand
strategy. Remember that a decision to share content isn’t trivial. It’s an
extension of self-identity. We feel better sharing content from those we
know and trust. The only way to establish that through your content is to
have the courage to reveal yourself and connect to people in an authentic
and meaningful way.
6. Market yourself.7
You’ve found your niche, toiled tirelessly at your craft, and networked with
the best in the business. The work is just beginning because none of this
matters if you’re not known. The trick is, how do you do promote yourself
and not come across as a jerk?
The first step is understanding the true value of self-promotion. Sure,
you have a self-interest in the activity, but when done the right way and not
seen as merely transactional, it can also help others know what talents and
knowledge you have that can help them.
The next step is to focus on facts, not brags. No one can argue if you say
that you’ve been blogging for more than a decade, or that you have a degree
from Michigan State University. But they can argue plenty if you call
yourself a “social media expert.” Whatever your field, it’s fine if other
people want to christen you an expert, but it’s presumptuous to do it
yourself, and you risk a great deal of blowback.
Third, demonstrate your expertise with actions and stories, not words.
Saying “I’m great at pitching investors” sounds egotistical. But sharing a
compelling tale of how you rounded up seed funding allows others to
deduce your skill without making it explicit. Also, research shows8 that
when listeners are exposed to your stories, many more sections of their
brains light up; they’re literally immersed in the moment with you, making
a far deeper impression. They may hear your words if you say you’re
awesome, but telling them a story allows them to feel it for themselves.
There is power in humility. According to research published in
Psychology Today,9 the overwhelming emotion people feel when viewing
their Facebook timeline is jealousy. In a world where we always present our
shiny best selves, it’s easy for feelings of jealousy to become inflamed. It’s
fine to present information about your successes, but keep in mind that
every brag may also elicit feelings of inadequacy from your audience.
Another factor to consider when promoting yourself is cultural
sensitivity. In a speech I gave to an audience in a Baltic country, I
mentioned that I had just come from England where I lectured at Oxford
University. I thought this was a point of interest but also a way to quickly
establish credibility with an audience who was unfamiliar with me. After
the speech, one person told me how he admired the boldness of the
Americans—people in their country appreciated humility and would never
make such a comment in public! A week later I gave a talk to a group of
Chinese MBA students and was told to leave humility at the door—I
needed to list my accomplishments upfront to establish my “worthiness”
with this group. Viva diversity!
In today’s competitive online world, even the best content may not rise to
the top on its own. Sometimes it needs a little nudge. This chapter is all
about nudging your content and brand forward through something other
than organic distribution channels.
To assemble something meaningful, actionable, and accessible on these
broad topics, I’ll take a strategic view with this chapter. Rather than diving
into niche services and tactics that will be out of date in a year, I focus on
imperatives that will be as relevant years from now as they are today. Let’s
take another step toward unlocking the Content Code with an assessment of
alternative methods of igniting your content, the “D” in your BADASS
strategy—Distribution, Promotion, Advertising, and SEO.
Distribution
Distribution is one of the most overlooked components of the Content Code
and yet an opportunity brimming with potential.
Mitch Joel, president of Mirum (one of the largest digital marketing
firms in the world), explains how finding new distribution outlets
transformed his content efforts. “I’ve been blogging for well over a decade,
almost every day. I’ve produced something like 4,000 entries. I’ve built an
audience over that time but a couple years ago I noticed it was getting
harder and harder to attract new people to the content. It wasn’t necessarily
me or what I was writing, although you can’t rule that out as a factor, but
what happened is true Content Shock. There’s simply too much content and
the content is so great it’s hard for anything to rise.
“The strategy I took to reach a new audience was to go beyond my
walled garden—the framework of the blog, my podcast, the social channels
like Facebook and Twitter—and start writing in other channels. Huffington
Post. INC Magazine. Harvard Business Review. A book.
“What I quickly realized is that by taking quality content and making it
work for another platform—and a relevant new audience—I was driving
attention back to my home site and content, and ultimately the work that we
are doing at our agency. The results to me were astounding. It showed up in
the analytics, but it also brought a new energy and enthusiasm to the
audience who was consuming my content. I realized that I can’t keep all of
my content in one place. I need to get in the hands of people wherever they
are.
“I look at a lot of content that brands are producing and it’s fantastic,”
Joel continued. “And I often wonder why they would not embark on the
same kind of strategy. I think if they could tweak that content and submit it
to other channels—authentically, not some part of a PR spin—they could
build audiences on other major platforms they would not normally access.
That would be profoundly powerful. I think this will happen—brands not
necessarily paying to spread their content, but creating work so excellent
that it is eagerly picked up and shared by mainstream media.”
This type of earned media—validation by powerful third party sites—is
the most important and effective method to market your content, attract
relevant new audience members, and build credibility as a content creator.
Anything a brand or marketer says is immediately suspect, but
amplification from trusted third parties is a valuable win for content ignition
with potentially far-reaching impacts.
Let’s break this type of distribution down into some actionable ideas:
12. Syndicate.
Almost every industry has some resource that’s curating relevant, timely
content and summarizing it in a regular newsletter, website, or newsfeed. If
a curated content site doesn’t exist in your niche, consider starting one. It’s
a helpful way to keep industry leaders on top of the news, and it can
position your company as the go-to place for valuable information.
If curation services already exist, develop relationships with these
resources and learn what it takes to add your content in the channel. In
addition to the obvious exposure, this work can also lead new audience
members to your home site and possibly provide valuable backlinks that
will enhance your status with search engines.
I want to conclude this section with some sage advice from journalist
Dorie Clark. Dorie has built her brand almost entirely through other
people’s distribution channels, including Forbes and Harvard Business
Review. But it’s not a perfect strategy, and it requires balance. There’s a risk
supplying content to platforms that you don’t own.
“I go back and forth about this distribution strategy,” she said. “On one
hand, you can get an immediate boost of credibility from associating with
well-known brands, and when you’re first starting out, you really need that.
You also have access to an established readership base that otherwise might
not discover you.
“But the downside is that Forbes or the Harvard Business Review owns
those readers and those relationships, not you. It’s a much slower, but
perhaps more valuable, process to build readership on your own blog or
content site. I’ve tried to thread the needle by continuing to blog for larger
outlets but try to drive people (through my bio links or by mentioning my
site in the body of the article) to my website, where they’ll hopefully sign
up for my mailing list. Growing my mailing list substantially is one of my
top goals going forward, because it’s so critical to be able to speak directly
to my readers.”
Advertising networks
Popular options include Google AdWords, Facebook and Twitter ads,
Outbrain, and OneSpot. There are many strategies for using advertising
networks, but they’re especially effective when you need to ramp up initial
awareness at the beginning of a campaign, when you don’t have time to
build an audience, or when the issue and content is particularly time
sensitive (like an event). The primary formats for digital ads are:
Pay per click (PPC): The most common paid method. When a user
clicks on the ad, the marketer pays for each click.
Search PPC: Requires the marketer to identify specific keywords.
When searched by a potential customer, the ad will display on the page
of search results.
Content PPC: Appears as content suggestions on sites, often
underneath similar articles.
Retargeted advertising
Keeps track of people who visit your site and displays your ads to them as
they visit other sites online. Technically all that is necessary is a JavaScript
tag in the footer of your website. This code creates a list of people who visit
your site by placing anonymous retargeting cookies in their browser. This
list allows retargeting vendors to display ads to your potential customers as
they visit other sites. It’s relatively straightforward to set up, and it’s a
demonstration of how paid media reinforces great content by intelligently
distributing it with discretion.
Sponsored content
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many other platforms offer paid
opportunities to selectively boost the visibility of your content. The
advantage is that you increase awareness to your current audience as well as
others in a very precise demographic category. Sponsored content is a good
way to increase exposure to highly targeted audiences and possibly attract
new viewers for your content.
Native advertising
The Interactive Advertising Bureau defines native advertising as “paid ads
that are so cohesive with the page content, assimilated into the design, and
consistent with the platform behavior that the viewer simply feels that they
belong.” According to the IAB, native advertising contains six different
types of ad units: in-feed, promoted listings, in-ad with native element, paid
search, recommendation widgets, and custom.
By partnering with publishers, your content is integrated into the
interface of a media company’s site. One example is the paid editorial
features on the Forbes website. Native advertising provides the credibility
of being associated with the media brand, validation of being featured in the
editorial portion of a site, and opportunity for vast exposure to a relevant
audience.
However, it’s also a controversial strategy as traditional publishers
devote increasing space to “advertorials” that at times can be
indistinguishable from the publisher’s content. Sponsored articles have
received pushback from some publishers, brands, consumers, and even
government regulators who are concerned because the articles resemble
editorial content. One commenter described it this way: “How about we try
treating our audience with a little more respect and intelligence? Native
advertising is the uninvited guest who makes his predicament worse
through a seeming lack of self-awareness and clumsy attempts to fit in.”
This misdirection can damage the editorial integrity of a publication, as
well as a brand’s image. The only way this strategy works in the long-term
is by focusing on providing relevant content that equals the quality of the
content in the editorial portion of the site.
5. Make the most of unused real estate on business cards and other
business properties.
If you have several content properties like I do, trying to list them on a
business card can be a challenge. That’s why I have links to all my sites on
the back of my card. I’ve created short, easy to remember links through
bit.ly. For example, the link to my blog on my business card is bit.ly/grow-
blog, which is much easier to list and remember than
http://www.businessesgrow.com/blog. You can watch your links on bit.ly to
see who is clicking through and sharing your content.
Be sure to list ways to access your content below your email signature.
Some people even promote their latest blog post or video in that space.
6. Ignite snippets.
Every post you write probably has a few short quotable gems that people
might like to share (because it makes them look cooler, smarter, funnier,
etc!). There are several plug-ins that allow people to tweet specific quotes
right from the text of your post. You also can embed short quotes on slides
in your live presentations. By spoon-feeding content in this fashion, you
make it easy for people to ignite your ideas right from their seats in the
meeting or conference room.
Topsy.com
BuzzSumo.com
Alltop.com
Twellow.com
CircleCount.com
As you can see, there were three posts that drove extraordinary traffic to
my website in this year. These are the posts:
Of these, hero content is by far the most difficult to produce. You just
can’t plan for viral. And yet each of my three “viral” posts did have
common qualities that transcended the ordinary daily drumming of the web.
This theory suggests that for most content, SEO is an essential part of
the discovery process. On the other hand, being wedded to SEO best
practices (popular keywords in headlines, links, and copy) may actually
inhibit the ability for content to attain massive reach.
A grand irony: My Content Shock article, written with no SEO in mind,
produced hundreds of valuable backlinks from many of the most respected
blogs in the business. By ignoring SEO, I had my biggest SEO success in
the history of the blog.
And that is a nice lead-in to the second big question about SEO …
“Look at all the awards and plaques on that person’s wall! She must be
really smart. I feel good about being here.”
“Everybody in this room has an Apple computer. It must be a great
computer.”
“There’s a long line of people waiting to get into that bar. We should
probably go there, too, since we don’t know the city very well.”
Promote your content “As seen on …”: Have you been quoted or
featured on a well-known blog, newspaper, or television show? Don’t
keep it a secret. Many content creators use “As seen on …”
testimonies to display where they have appeared, powerful social
proof.
Request endorsements: Here’s the cool thing about LinkedIn
endorsements—they’re public and permanent. And you can use them
anywhere. Go ahead and ask some of your favorite customers for a
recommendation and then promote the heck out of them.
Take advantage of friends and family: If you’re just starting a
content-creation effort, don’t be shy about asking for help. Explain to
everyone you know how important it is to get your blog off the ground
and ask them for a little Twitter or Facebook love. Ask them to leave a
comment, too, while they’re at it!
Activate employees: Every person in your company has a stake in
making your marketing as successful as possible. Identify employees
who are social media enthusiasts and ask them to help support the
effort with some social sharing. Devoted employees usually feel proud
about participating in marketing activities. You may even send out an
email once a week with suggested tweets that they can either post as
written or use as inspiration.
Highlight testimonials: Dr. Gary Schirr of Radford University left
this review of my book Social Media Explained: “Mark Schaefer is the
master of great little books about marketing.” That’s a great validation,
so I have that quote posted on several sites featuring my book,
including Amazon. If your company collects testimonials, sprinkle
them throughout your website on the pages you know will be seen
often. A quote from someone who says she learned valuable lessons
from your content can help persuade a visitor who’s not sure whether
or not to subscribe to your content channel.
Promote badges: Visit any university website and I guarantee you’ll
find at least one badge on the site touting something like “Named one
of the Top 10 Business Schools in Southeast New Mexico.” Everyone
is known for something. If you’re listed, named, featured, or honored
… let people know.
Focus on powerful customer reviews: When is the last time you
made a meaningful purchase on Amazon or an eCommerce site
without glancing at the reviews? Scoring systems are powerful social
proof, but don’t get too upset about a few negative reviews. Nobody’s
perfect, and the balance actually adds to the credibility of the reviews.
Keep track of subscriber counts: People feel comfortable joining the
crowd. Many sites feature a counter with numbers of subscribers to a
content channel. Hubspot has a simple call to action on their site:
“Subscribe to our blog. Thousands of others have.”
Collect kudos tweets: When people tweet nice things about you, start
saving them as a “favorite” tweet. Then you can link to the list of nice
recommendations as an entire stream of public, published social
validation, as in “Don’t take my word for it, click here to see what
others are saying about my (book, blog, podcast …).”
Publicize clients: Logo porn is a popular website tactic of displaying
client logos. It’s an easy way to establish credibility for your company
by simply showing who you work with. Some companies (especially
large ones) require permission before you can post a logo on your site.
I’ve added this as a contract line item: “Schaefer Marketing Solutions
may name you as a client on its website.” Customers are usually happy
to help you out in this way.
“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of
relinquishing it.” – George Orwell
Traffic metrics like returning visitors, page views per visitor, and time
spent on the site can all be increased by working on your Alpha Audience
as described in Chapter 5. Google likes to see engagement on your site,
known as dwell time. If someone finds you on Google, visits your site, and
then immediately goes back to Google, it’s a good indicator that Google
didn’t deliver what the customer wanted.
You can begin to see why site authority is the toughest of the six
elements of the Content Code to incorporate into a strategy because it takes
a lot of hard work and patience! And yet it’s too important to ignore.
Since Google doesn’t give you any way to quantify the value of your
site, independent companies have developed their own ratings which can
serve as indicators of performance on search results. One of the leading
algorithms is the free Domain Authority tool available on MOZ.com.1 Their
estimate is a logarithmic calculation of the authority of the site, meaning it’s
easier to rise from score of 30 to 35 than it would be to move from an 80 to
85 (out of a possible 100).
Where do you start with your plan of attack? For that answer, I turn to
Ian Cleary, a Dubliner and the founder of Razor Social Media. Ian reliably
presents a clear-eyed view of such complex questions.
A plan to improve your authority
According to Cleary, the Domain Authority rating is an accumulation of all
the individual rankings of the pages on your site. So if you work on
improving individual pages, you’ll eventually start moving the domain
number up, too.
Page Authority can be improved primarily by increasing the relevant
links to your site from pages that have high Page Authority themselves. If
someone links to you from a page that has a Page Authority of 70—and this
is a relevant link, meaning it’s in a similar industry—this link will help your
Page Authority. In the neighborhood analogy, it shows that people are
getting to know you and recommend you.
Here’s an explanation from Google: “Page Authority relies on the
uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an
indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link
from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B.”
The value of the links depends on the Domain Authority, relevance of
the links, and a whole range of other factors. For example, if you’re one of
100 links on that page, this link is less beneficial to you than if you were the
only link on that page! It can get quite complex, but in summary, if you’re
looking to get links, it’s best if they’re from relevant sites with a high
Domain Authority, and from pages with a high Page Authority.
When you consistently create content that is interesting and relevant to
your niche, build shareability into your content, and develop an Alpha
Audience who will ignite your content, you’ll inevitably increase your Page
Authority. People reference great content and build on ideas all the time, so
you’ll get links that provide credibility to you by association—you’ve been
“invited to the party.” In a very real way, consistently working on the other
five elements of the Content Code should eventually raise your Google
view. In addition, keep these ideas in mind as you develop content over
time:
Aim for stability. Every time you make structural changes to your site,
especially if you start re-naming pages, it could potentially break important
internal and external links. This of course destroys these link “friendships”
and sends danger signs to Google. If you go through a significant web
redesign, work with your developer to make sure authority from existing
content gets properly reassigned to the new pages.
This is the last chapter of the book, and before we part ways (sniff), we
need to figure out what to do with all these ideas. How do you incorporate
them practically into your team? And what’s on the horizon for your
content and ignition?
First things first: Let’s get organized.
These are just a few of the ideas you can begin working on now. Start
developing your plan today and put the Content Code to use!
Chances are, these “gray” messages are not weak signals at all. These
may be the equivalent of the vast, shy, silent majority virtually screaming
their love for you! These signals from our quiet, yet essential, Gray Social
Media audience are beaming to us all the time, but we’re missing them
because there’s no easy process to track, quantify, and develop these subtle
leads. Quiet is not irrelevant!
Certainly CRM and marketing automation software are evolving in a
way that can help us begin to discover these quiet voices, but there are still
a lot of limits. Wouldn’t it provide a competitive advantage if you could sift
through the babble on the web better than your competitors to find the
important Alpha Audience engaging in the gray area of the social web?
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
1. Romero, Goluba, Asur and Huberman Paper presented at technical
conferences WWW 2011 and ECML-PKDD 2011 called “Influence
and Passivity in Social Media.”
2. Facebook research cited in Marketo report, “Contagious Content:
http://oginenergy.com/sites/default/files/Contagious-Con-tent.pdf
3. Courtesy of The New York Times:
http://nytmarketing.whsites.net/mediakit/pos/
4. The psychology of sharing,
http://nytmarketing.whsites.net/mediakit/pos/
5. IPA Advertising case studies, http://www.ipa.co.uk/Page/IPA-
Effectiveness-Advertising-Case-Studies#.VK1swNE5DlZ
6. Naaman, Boase and Lai “Is it Really About Me?” Proceedings from
ACM Conference (2010)
7. Mitchell and Tamir, “Disclosing Information About the Self is
Intrinsically Rewarding” Proceeding of the National Academy of
Science (2012)
8. Tierney, John, “Good News Beats Bad News on Social Networks” The
New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/science/good-
news-spreads-faster-on-twitter-and-facebook
9. 2011 Journal of Marketing Research, American Marketing Association
10. “Coming Clean on Facebook Reach”, http://www.busi-
nessesgrow.com/2014/08/25/facebook-reach-2/
11. Maloney, Devon, “Popularity of Quizzes comes from Fear, Not
Narcissism” Wired http://www.wired.com/2014/03/buzz-feed-quizzes/
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
1. Many of the themes for this section came from the book Return On
Influence (McGraw-Hill).
2. Quote first appeared on the Small Business Ideas blog:
http://www.smallbusinessideasblog.com/how-to-promote-your-blog
3. Segal, David, “Riding the Hashtag in Social Media Marketing” New
York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/tech-nology/riding-
the-hashtag-in-social-media-marketing
4. “How great leaders inspire action”,
http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_act
ion
5. Segal ibid
6. Altucher, James “What I learned about life after interviewing 80 highly
successful people” http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2015/01/what-i-
learned-about-life-after-interviewing-80-highly-suc-cessful-people/
7. Many of the ideas in this section are inspired by the article “How to
Promote Yourself Without Being a Jerk” by Dorie Clark which
appeared in Harvard Business Review Online: http://ow.ly/Gl4Ai
8. New York Times, “Your Brain on Fiction”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-
neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?_r=1&
9. Psychology Today, “How Social Media Inflames Jealousy” by Ira
Hyman http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-
mishaps/201406/how-social-networks-can-inflame-jealousy
Chapter Eight
1. This case study courtesy of the Vocus white paper “Eight Great Ways
to Generate Publicity”
2. Courtesy Hubspot: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/2013-inbound-
marketingstats-charts
3. http://www.businessesgrow.com/2014/01/06/content-shock/
4. http://www.businessesgrow.com/2014/06/02/rising-social-media-stars/
5. http://www.businessesgrow.com/2014/11/11/speech-will-never-hear/
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
1. Mandese, Joe “Study shed new light on dark social media” Media
Post, http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/239139/study-
sheds-new-light-on-dark-social-finds-cons.html
2. Keller, Ed and Fay, Brad The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real
Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace (2012 Free Press)
3. An excellent article on this topic comes from Ardath Albee: “Extend
content reach with B2B buying committees”,
http://marketinginteractions.typepad.com/marketing_interactions/2014
/12/extend-content-reach-with-b2b-buying-committee.html
4. Godin, Seth, “You Are What You Share”
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/01/you-are-what-you-
share.html
Acknowledgements