The Sun Newspaper in the UK is one of the Top 10 Read papers in the world because it has mastered two main aspects of media “Content” and “Reach”.
Content is obvious; We have all heard the saying that content is King. But the King needs a Queen in this case she is Reach.
Without reach, content will not spread and is as useless as a chocolate fireguard.
I often observe clients who have a proposal from another agency in hand that recommends creating a blog, Facebook page, new Twitter profile, YouTube Channel et al. This is fair enough if those agencies have the right strategy and established audiences for these channels. Often times the client is left stranded when it comes to amplification and promotion of the content. It is left to a Social Media Manager with key contacts across the social sphere to leverage and push out sometimes dissjointed content off the back of favours and goodies to save a campaigns KPI’s from sinking into the abyss.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Users and Consumers now seem to have inherited a severe case of low concentration due to information overload. When a client starts a Facebook page and tries to make it discoverable, there are a series of steps that they need to undertake. Facebook paid media / Sponsored stories is just one of them. There are other organic ways like including the Facebook URL in email signatures of all employees, on print ads of the company, in the corporate website of the company and the best way; is by optimising and promting the viral aspects of the page itself using the fans and followers across all channels to spread and discuss meaningfull content with each other thus extending the network. This is might not be a new learning in the PR world but it is so often used incorrectly as is our old favorite the ‘Press Release’. Press releases are pushed out and expected to spread and grow a brand campaign offering often to no avail. The content must be compelling and resonate with its audience, also the content is only as good as its location and distribution networks. If there are no readers or the readers are more interested in Cat food than Modern Automotive technology then why should they read, quote and share it?
So, how can great content be amplified?
Lets take a blog, as our first example; A single Blog post is a piece of content that needs promoting to its target audience based on interest and subject. The simplest method of pushing it out involves using an RSS feed. Tools such as Feedburner can simplify this process and make your blog accessible to many more people that the original website. Are your posts, descriptions and post titles search optimised each post should also gain some individual SEO so as to levearge search traffic. If you have other popular channels such as a Twitter / linkedin account use these to also spread the word about your new post and grow your audience.
Many Campaigns simply creating a new Twitter stream and add content via links. This is just tweeting to a vacuum and not going to get results very quickly.
Look for influencial ambassadors for your area ideally influencers / forums / communities that may be interested in your subject. You can find these by growing a pair of Social Media ears and listening to others in your area. This must be done from Day Zero and should continue all through the time your brand is in business. If you listen and measure interest carefully enough it will be obvious which influencers and locations you should be adding to your contact list. These are communities you should activley engage with both posting and responding to their content as well as asking them to respond to yours.
The most accepted method of accessing these groups initially is to politley respond to content and contribute to discussions currently happening then go through the group moderator or a popular group member and convince them within context to share your blog link with the larger group.
Other organic methods include getting existine community members / employees / agency staff to spread the word about the post but always remaining in context using their personal online vehicles. Company newsletters and industry news feeds are also a great way to amplify content as these locations will have existing readership and contextual interest.
Fianlly, once everything is in place and you have accessed communities and influencers, gained credibility and set up a site with clear navigation and conversion paths consider further amplification using paid media. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter ads are a cheap and efficient way of targeting your niche. It may seem overkill to promote a single blog post using paid media but this is something that most agencies may have already considered but it is probably the easiest way to build “Word of Mouth” once everything else is already in place. A blog is not something that builds on its own even if the content is super clear and useful It needs to seeded with the right initial influencers and communities for it grow virally.
So, content remains the King, but people will never know that the King exists. Without its Queen providing the reach and promotion.
Without Reach the King will remain lonely and make your social media effort pointless.
As a final note: Pariser suggests, “Giving people what they think they want is easy,” he said, “but it’s also not very satisfying: the same stuff, over and over again. Great editors are like great matchmakers: they introduce people to whole new ways of thinking, and they fall in love.”
These introductions require context and reach otherwise the revolution will never begin.
Incoming search terms:
- can a king be a king without a queen (2)
- a king without their queen quotes (1)
- can a king be a king without a queen? (1)
- can kings be kings without queens? (1)
- can you be a king be a king without a queen (1)
- king without a queen quotes (1)
Look at linking as a giant networking event for websites
We have all heard that in order to build successful and natural search engine results websites need good incoming links. With the number of sites growing and links constantly being created all over the web what about non page rank links and strategies that can create traffic without the big G, Y! and B getting involved.
Link building can be used in two ways. The first and most noted is to acquire incoming links so that search engines rank your site higher. The second method is to post links and get involved with relevant communities who will talk about your website and send you traffic.
These can both be seen as a giant networking event. If you go to a party and sound interesting everyone will want to talk to you. If you are the desperate sales man looking to score a lead out of every conversation you may end up hanging out by the bar on your own for most of the night.
Treating Link Building as networking is a good way to acquire great quality links that will also send natural traffic to your site AND be immune from future Google slaps when the algorithms change.
Here are a few ways you can get great quality links and by being interesting your can amplify the responses quite easily:
1. Press Releases: Press releases are a very important ingredient to any online marketing campaign. Links embedded into the press release can generate very useful links for your website from other industry related sites. If it is a really newsworthy topic and other websites pick up the information it will be even more beneficial in generating new pathways to your website.
2. Articles: Articles used to have a bit more weight to them but they are still very important. The right types of articles could very easily get picked up on other industry leading websites leading to very good links and a steady stream of highly targeted website traffic.
3. Profiles: Website profiles usually only give you one link but that one link is a very important link. Whether it is from Facebook or LinkedIn the links let the search engines know that you are serious about growing your business in many different areas online.
4. Forums: Most forums are very old so the links you could get from them will help your business in a great way. Not to mention the traffic you could generate from being active in a forum is sometimes very surprising. Many of the older forums have a great deal of activity and if it’s a forum dedicated towards your industry than you should be there regardless.
5. Local Profiles: Don’t think because you want to take your business international that listing yourself in the local places and directories isn’t important. The links will let the search engines know that you have a physical address connected with your business helping grow your trust factor.
6. Blog Comments: Leaving intelligent related comments behind on your targeted industry blogs is very helpful. Many of the links appear in Google webmaster tools all while driving highly relevant traffic to your website.
7. Industry Associations: Local online and offline industry associations are a great way to build trust with your website visitors. Often many times association memberships include the opportunity to have profiles and links to your website. This not only helps with link building but builds highly relevant visitors to your website.
8. Directories. Industry directories (similar to what you call Industry Associations) are more beneficial than general directories because they are more relevant and are still crawled by bots.
9. RSS Feeds. These are an excellent way to quickly post a large number of backlinks across the internet.
10. Social Media sites. You mentioned social media profiles, but even more important are posts on social media sites (especially Facebook and Twitter). This is because Google and Bing have both established relationships with these sites and posts on these sites show up at the top of search results VERY quickly (often within 30 minutes). The downside is they fall off relatively quickly as the search engines are always looking for the most recent posts, but they can help build links to your other links.
11. Relevant websites. Getting custom backlinks from other websites can be difficult, but it is worth the effort to target high PR websites and try to get backlinks from them (even if they are reciprocal).
12. Videos. With most video sites, you can include a description with backlinks when you post the video. As a result, posting videos on the top 30 media websites is an excellent method of generating lots of backlinks to your site relatively quickly.
The best links are those that are rarest and most difficult to get. It takes a very minimal amount of thought to get featured in your local press. Run a charity event. Organise an unusual competition for local people. Start a programme for local employees. In short local news and being helpful will generate positive PR and make you stand out. Anything that gets you in to the local newspaper and thus in their online website is good. Keep an archive of interesting stories to give you ideas.
The same goes for all things on the list. Putting a story on an articles site is not totally worthless but nobody reads those sites apart from people looking to ‘submit’ articles. Your article needs to be published by a more popular and credible site. This can only be done if they search you out.
And remember make it interesting, get involved in the conversation and respond to others social media questions. If you position yourself as an expert in a particular area you will soon start to generate a traffic swarm that will be unstoppable!
Onur