1. Clients Come First

Your first few clients are the life-blood of your startup. Marketing’s focus should be on their satisfaction, with lead generation being secondary. When your clients are happy, they’re more likely to generate referrals and act as references. Check in frequently, treat them like loyalty and escalate service requests so that they get resolved quickly. Understanding how they use your product, their pain-points, frustrations and successes will inform your marketing efforts going forward and allow for better communication with future prospects.

2. Establish a Community Quickly

It’s likely that your startup doesn’t have much of an online community, in terms of social media follower, blog readers and email subscribers. Look to your fellow employees, family, investors, beta-customers, vendors and partners to form your core tribe. Don’t be afraid to solicit them for recommendations and testimonials, or for content like guest blog posts, interviews, webinars, podcasts and case studies. Once you have some content, expand outward and begin to build to your community. Having core content established will add credibility to your community building efforts.

3. Looking Good Is Critical Early On

A startup will make a lot of critical first impressions in its early days, and you only get one chance to make a first impression. That’s why it’s important to add a stellar designer to your marketing team as soon as possible; one who can make your content look as good as possible. It can mean the difference between being immediately dismissed by a prospect and being a product they can’t ignore.

When your startup transitions into growth mode, it’s crucial that your marketing toolkit be equipped with rabid fans and beautiful content. What challenges have you faced while working in marketing a startup? Let me know in the comments below.

The Power of Referral

Looking at the past quarter of our own traffic, you can see that even though referral traffic represents a relatively smaller percentage of overall traffic, it generates the highest amount of conversions:

A further breakdown shows that referral traffic converts at almost 4x the rate of organic search:

Invest In Earned Media

An effective earned media strategy can drive referral traffic from trusted sources, like online media outlets and industry blogs. By placing your content on highly-reputable sites, you gain more than just a back-link. Your content will be infused with the brand equity of the platform it appears on, gaining you instant credibility.

Earned Media Comes In Many Forms

An earned media placement doesn’t just have to be a link in a blog post. You should also work to gain the attention of social media influencers:

Even an offline mention, such as Rand Fishkin referencing your CTR study in a live presentation, can drive downloads:

While these examples don’t represent “referral traffic” in the traditional sense, they are a form of earned media.

Getting Started

Everything starts with creating quality content on your own channels. By publishing expert content on your own blog, you can gain the attention of influencers, build your credibility and generate community.

Next, identify potential sources of referral traffic. Are there popular blogs in your industry that feature content from and about organizations like yours? Once you’ve identified those outlets, begin building relationships with editors and other gatekeepers.

Finally, tailor new, problem-solving content for those outlets. Remember: the content itself shouldn’t be designed to promote your products and services. That’s why our content centerpiece campaigns are so effective – the content is so helpful to readers that once they discover it, they don’t know how they ever lived without it.

Building relationships and creating helpful content is the key to generating earned media placements that drive highly-converting referral traffic. Not only is it more cost effective, it’s just more fun to generate!

If earned media is a new concept to you, or if you’re interested in more information about the earned media process and how your business can yield measurable results, download our Inbound Marketer’s Guide to Earned Media.

Google has referred to the addition as “a minor improvement to the Google+ profile page so that … you can connect your Google+ profile with the content you’ve authored, even if you no longer write for a given site.”

Curious as to how this would affect the appearance and ranking position of blog content in the SERPs, I monitored a blog article for one week.

As the basis of my experiment, I chose a blog that I contributed to regularly from 2011-2012 as “past.” These 57 posts make up a majority of my author stats in Webmaster Tools. On April 12th, I marked it as “past contributor.” Here’s what happened:

Author Rich Snippets

Over the one-week period, there was absolutely no affect on the appearance of author rich snippets in the SERPs:

Rankings

There does not seem to be a negative affect on content rankings. As you can see above, the article still ranks #1 for an exact-match title search. Two additional searches confirmed that rankings did not fluctuate in the week following:

Author Stats

Author stats also appear to be unaffected:

Though these findings are by no means indicative of the entire web ecosystem, it’s likely that marking youself as a “past” contributor won’t have any impact on authorship annotations or search rankings. The ability to further label the blogs you contribute to appears to be nothing more than a vanity option.

One interesting side effect of a “past” contributor label is the results page of a Structured Data Test. In testing the same link from above, while marked as “past,” the SDTT claims that authorship is not established:

After changing that blog back to “current,” the SDTT shows that authorship is established:

Despite the false signal on a “past” blog, author rich snippets in the SERPs persist. Could this be a temporary bug? Either way, this is certainly a feature we’ll have our eyes on going forward.

If you’re interested in learning more about Google Authorship or AuthorRank, be sure to sign up for our upcoming webinar “Why AuthorRank is the Future of SEO and What You Need to do About it Now” with Business2Community.

If you just can’t wait, you can catch a sneak peek of our slides here:

For more blogging tips, check out our Blog Post Optimization Guide.

The excitement, debate and anxiety over the perceived future of AuthorRank tends to overshadow the tangible benefits that setting up Google Authorship (a prerequisite for AuthorRank) carries with it right at this very moment. Regardless of if and when AuthorRank becomes a reality, Google Authorship can empower your content marketing efforts in ways that may actually eclipse the benefits of AuthorRank itself.

Google Authorship Can Create Content Champions

Because Google Authorship establishes a direct link between authors and their content, there tends to be a greater vested interest in the quality and promotion of that content on behalf of its author. As AJ Kohn puts it, the goal should be to build authority, not AuthorRank. And when a brand is willing to build up the personal brand of an employee through blog contribution with established authorship, that employee should return the favor by becoming a content champion for the brand.

Google Authorship Can Increase Content Production

Being able to tell prospective authors – both inside and outside of your company – that you establish Google Authorship for all blog contributors can be extremely motivating when attempting to solicit blog posts. When an author knows that their personal brand and social profiles will have that kind of visibility on a blog, they may be more likely to contribute regularly. In this way, Google Authorship can help increase your content output.

Google Authorship Can Increase Your CTR

When you establish Google Authorship, exhanced rich snippets appear in the SERPs almost immediately. Results with an image of the author, links to other posts they’ve written and a link to their Google+ profile just makes that result stand out amongst those without author rich snippets. Which of these results are you more likely to click on, regardless of position?

While AuthorRank may bring increased rankings for your content someday, Google Authorship can increase the quality and quantity of your content immediately, as well as its CTR performance.

If you’re interested in learning more about Google Authorship, AuthorRank, and the SEO ramifications they both carry, be sure to sign up for our upcoming webinar “Why AuthorRank is the Future of SEO and What You Need to do About it Now” with Business2Community.

If you just can’t wait, you can catch a sneak peak of our slides here:

For more blogging tips, check out our Blog Post Optimization Guide.

However, you may be sitting on a goldmine of epic content just waiting to be harnessed: your internal workforce. There is no substitute for the knowledge of subject-matter experts within your organization, but the challenge is transforming them into prolific writers. If you are serious about instituting a successful company-wide blogging initiative, here is a guide to help you get started.

Define your goals

Before approaching any employees about contributing to the corporate blog, the marketing department must first define its goals for publishing blog content on the web. Are you hoping to drive traffic and conversions? Share thought-leadership and improve your brand reputation? Will your blog be a mechanism for educating your current customers or a means to drive lead generation? What are your reader personas? It’s important to align the corporate blog with the business objectives of the marketing department, and to understand the audience you are writing for.

Create a topic model

Hopefully, your marketing department has already created a topic model that illustrates the areas of focus for your epic content marketing plans. If not, the early stages of a company-wide blogging initiative are a great time to make one.

A topic model is a visual representation of all potential subjects your authors can write about. Start with the core of your business and work outward into all of the potential sub-categories related to your industry. For employees who struggle with generating blog post ideas, this model will come in handy. It will also allow your marketing team to home in on the goals of the corporate blog, in general.

Train your employees

It’s likely that members of your marketing team understand the tenets of effective blogging. However, content marketing may be a new concept to the non-marketers within your organization — those employees on the services, managerial, and operational side. Invest in creating and administering a robust training program for those subject-matter experts who aren’t yet pro bloggers with the goal of teaching them best practices. Here are six sample training sessions you can use to get started:

1. Ideation/topic generation: Focus on the process of researching and generating epic blog topic ideas that will solve common problems within your industry and its customer community.

2. Blog titles: There are tried-and-true formulas for blog titles that win. Have your budding authors write 10 to 20 blog titles and discuss which would be most effective, and why.

3. Blog structure: In this session, outline the components of an effective blog post: the introduction, body, and conclusion. Your authors can use a simple body structure, such as:

• “tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em
• then, tell ‘em
• then conclude by summarizing what you told ‘em

4. Tone and style: Consider bringing in a professional copywriter, journalist, or creative writer to teach this session. Remember that effective storytelling has its place, even in a corporate blog. Your authors need to understand how to make their posts engaging and impactful.

5. Content governance: Explaining the rules and regulations that every blog post should follow will prevent extensive editing on first drafts. Will all the words in blog titles be capitalized? What kind of language is tolerable in the body of articles? This is your time to establish a standard that all of your blog posts will follow.

6. Repurposing: Content repurposing can take a lot of pressure off of your authors to create original content from scratch. Teach them how to lean on existing content like emails, internal documents, and sales/marketing collateral for new blog posts.

Even though attending your training program will take folks away from their work for a short period of time, it will pay dividends in the form of high-quality content.

Give employees freedom

Some employees may consider blogging to be a welcome break among their day-to-day tasks. Those who aren’t natural writers, however, may struggle to share their knowledge in a way that provides value to the marketing team.

• Encourage them to write about what they are passionate about: Doling out pre-defined assignments and mandated article subjects can squash creativity and make your employees feel as if they’re just fulfilling another job task. Provide your employees with a topic model, but encourage them to draw parallels between those topics and their own personal interests or hobbies.
• Be flexible on when they can write: Asking your employees to do their blog writing during off-hours can immediately turn them off to the idea of contributing to the corporate blog. It’s important for managers to recognize the positive impact that blogging will have on the business — even if it means the loss of an hour or two of productivity per week. While setting aside scheduled blog writing times may increase collaboration, it may not be compatible with workloads and deadlines.
• Set goals, roles, and expectations: Be clear about what you expect from your authors. How long should blog posts be? How often do you expect submissions? Who will be editing posts and providing feedback prior to publication? Will the author add calls-to-action, or will the editor? Who will make the final publishing decisions? Consider appointing a “blog czar” who can be the point person on delegating tasks, communicating and enforcing policies, and preventing production bottlenecks.

Being prepared for any issues or setbacks, and establishing how your marketing team will respond is critical to the success of any internal content production initiative.

Promote their personal brands

Some companies shy away from touting the personal brands of their employees through their corporate marketing efforts. While a single corporate brand message can be powerful, having many active and respected individual employee brands can have a multiplier effect on promoting your content. By taking an active role in building the reputation and visibility of an employee’s personal brand, their rise to fame can pay dividends to your company for years.

• Establish Google Authorship: AuthorRank isn’t here yet, but you can future-proof your content by establishing Google Authorship now. Establishing authorship has tangible benefits today in the form of author rich snippets, which can improve click-through rates from the search engine results pages (SERPs).

• Include author bios on-page: While your employees don’t need a robust author bio at the end of their posts to establish Google Authorship, providing them with an opportunity to display their experience and business achievements in their posts can help incentivize them to take ownership of their content. Let them choose their own photograph and write their own personalized bio, and don’t prohibit the inclusion of their personal social media profiles.
• Social media optimization: Include social sharing buttons that make it easy for website visitors to share blog content. Be sure to program Twitter share buttons in such a way that the author’s @username will automatically be included when others tweet their posts. This will increase their social exposure and transform all of your authors into natural promoters.

Appealing to the ego is a great way to get your authors excited about blogging regularly. After all, who doesn’t like to see their own face online?

Share feedback and reward achievements

This is your chance to tie blogging efforts directly to business objectives and encourage your team’s bloggers by sharing metrics that can boost their confidence. Let your authors know how much traffic, shares, and conversions their posts are generating using these tools and techniques:

• Set up author stats (using Google Webmaster Tools Labs): Author Stats is a feature of Google Webmaster Tools that shows you how often content with established authorship appears in Google SERPs. The feature can be found in the “Labs” section. Author Stats reports are a quick morale builder, as they show the tangible, quantifiable results of your team’s blogging efforts. To make sure credit is given where it’s due, each writer or author should set up a report through his or her individual Google account.

• Track authors through Google Analytics: SEOmoz has an awesome tutorial on its blog for setting up custom variables and reports in Google Analytics that will show you at-a-glance who your top performing bloggers are by traffic, where visitors are coming from, and what they do after reading a blog article.
• Give out awards: Consider investing in framed certificates or even trophies to bestow upon authors who excel at driving traffic to your blog. Recurring company meetings are a great time to hand out awards, allowing your authors to be recognized by all of their peers. Here are a few sample reward categories:

• Blogger of the Year
• Most Improved Blogger
• Most Social Shares
• Most Views
• Most Unique Views
• Most Conversions
• Best Title
• Most Prolific Blogger

Summary

If you train your employees, give them the freedom to express themselves within set guidelines, promote their personal brands, and celebrate their achievements, you’ll quickly find that they will become obsessed with the success of their own posts, addicted to the publicity, and genuinely concerned with the business impact of their blogging efforts.

For more insight on how to produce better corporate blogs, read CMI’s Ultimate Guide to Blogging.

What This Means

This change may have Google Authorship and AuthorRank implications. By separating active contributions to past ones, it’s possible that Google wishes to credit active publishing relationships over dormant ones. Unfortunately, it is unclear how much time constitutes a “past” contributor relationship.

Mike Arnesen has reported that the labels do change the rel=”contributor” tags, with Current links appearing as rel=”contributor-to”, and Past links appearing as rel=”past-contributor-to.” It remains to be seen what, if any, impact this will have on the appearance of author rich snippets and content rankings. Google remains quiet on the issue.

What You Should Do Now

If you have Google Authorship established on any blogs, review your “Contributor to” section and label each link as either “current” or “past.” If you aren’t sure which to choose for any blog, ask yourself “Will I ever write for this blog again?” and “Has a significant amount of time passed since I last wrote for this blog?” Use your best judgment here.

If you haven’t yet established Google Authorship through your Google+ profile, you can follow this guide to get started.

If you’re interested in learning more about Google Authorship or AuthorRank, be sure to sign up for our upcoming webinar “Why AuthorRank is the Future of SEO and What You Need to do About it Now” with Business2Community.

If you just can’t wait, you can catch a sneak peak of our slides here:

For more blogging tips, check out our Blog Post Optimization Guide.

UPDATE

Iska Hain from the Google+ Communications team reached out to me to provide the following statement:

“We’ve made a minor improvement to the Google+ profile page so that now you can specify whether you’re a past or current contributor to a given online publication. This way you can connect your Google+ profile with the content you’ve authored, even if you no longer write for a given site.”

What is a Community Manager?

Community Managers do just that – they manage the online community of the business, typically from their own persona rather than the brand persona. Their goal in doing so is to foster positive brand sentiment among those already in the community, particularly customers, employees and partners.

A Community Manager is more likely to be present in a B2C marketing department, and is common amongst SaaS companies. These businesses likely have thousands of customers and hence a larger community, as opposed to the B2B or agency world.

Tasks:

• Travel to / speak at events
• Publish original content (blogs, videos, webinars)
• Respond to customer complaints/concerns
• Curate U.G.C. (user-generated content)
• Share customer praise
• Share company news

Think of a Community Manager as the top brand ambassador and the public face of the organization (outside of the c-suite). For example, Yelp employees many Community Managers – each of which is assigned to one major city – who act as evangelists for the Yelp. They are more closely aligned with PR, Services and HR, and have soft KPIs like “sentiment” and “brand reputation.”

What is a Social Media Manager?

Typically, a Social Media Manager manages the brand social media accounts in order to generate traffic and conversions (sales or leads). They’re the voice of the brand and act as the brand, not as their own persona. Whereas the Community Manager works within the community, the SM Manager works to create or add to the community, by generating leads and sales.

Social Media Managers act behind the scenes, creating and executing marketing campaigns via social media, then report on the results. They’re Math Men, not Mad Men, and it’s likely that you’ll never see their face. SM Managers might manage or work with a group of employees, such as a team of online sales reps, and are more closely aligned with Sales and Marketing. They have hard KPIs like followers, traffic and conversions.

Tasks:

• Post updates/distributes content
• Run contests
• Listen for brand mentions
• Monitor analytics and generate report
• Track traffic conversions

While a B2C company can have both a Community Manager and Social Media Manager, B2B organizations may not necessarily require a Community Manager due to the (likely) small size of their community and the fact that most organizations don’t divulge their relationship or engage in many public conversations with their vendors, as opposed to individual consumers who are quite vocal about from whom they make purchases and utilize services.

So which is right for your business? It’s likely you already have someone in charge of managing your corporate social media accounts, but do you have someone who acts as a public-facing customer advocate and evangelist? If you only have a small number of clients or customers, a Community Manager may not be necessary. Either way, it’s important not to confuse the two roles or consider them as interchangeable, since they each fulfill unique, but core, functions across the organization.

Need help optimizing your social media accounts? Download our guide to Increasing Conversions with Social Media.

0. Q1 Assessment / Q2 Goals

Before getting started, take some time to review the first quarter performance of each of your active social media channels. Which networks drove the most traffic and conversions? Which are underperforming? Sit down with your analytics and isolate areas which need improvement, and set new goals for the second quarter. Pay particular attention to content type, voice and frequency.

1. Review Text Descriptions

An often-neglected aspect of corporate social media profiles are the text descriptions or “About Us” sections. When was the last time you updated the written copy here? If it’s looking a little out of date or stale, give it an update that more closely aligns with your latest marketing or customer service messaging. Keep an eye out for references to 2012 (or earlier).

2. Review Graphics

When was the last time you updated your avatars, cover photos or backgrounds? Challenge your graphic designer to put a bright, fresh face on your brand for the spring months. SEOmoz does a masterful job of seasonal graphic updates that let people know they’re paying attention.

3. Review Share Buttons

Your Q1 assessment should include an analysis of the performance of social media share buttons on your blog. If they’re underperforming, consider altering their layout and positioning. Take this opportunity to remove buttons that your community doesn’t seem to be using, and test new ones. Amazon recently released a “Send to Kindle” button for those who would rather save an article to read later on their Kindle.

4. Identify Dormant Accounts

Did you perhaps jump on the Pinterest bandwagon without a strategy, and now your boards are looking a little empty? A dormant account can look worse than a complete absence from a social network, so re-evaluate and either shut it down or make an effort to utilize the account.

5. Take Advantage of New Channel Layouts / Features

YouTube, Google+ and Pinterest released significant updates to their layouts in the first quarter of 2013, all of which are available to users today.

• YouTube: the new YouTube One Channel brings uniformity to all channel layouts, and includes new features like banner images, channel trailers and bulk meta data editing.
• Google+: enlarged cover photos now dominate Google+ profiles. Be careful not to upgrade until you have an optimized image ready.
• Pinterest: the new Pinterest layout is mostly superficial, but their free analytics tool allows marketers to measure the performance of their boards and pins.

All three networks should prompt you to upgrade upon login. Don’t hesitate to get started!

6. Help (New) Employees Optimize Their Channels

Employment in the social media age means that everyone is in marketing, even if they’re in services, IT or accounting. Encourage department managers to perform an audit of their employees’ social media accounts, particularly LinkedIn and Twitter. – if, and only if, your corporate culture is conducive to this kind of feedback and oversight.

If they’re a newer employee, make sure they’ve updated their LinkedIn employment status to reflect your company – and make sure that all employees have spelled and formatted your business name correctly, which can drive click-throughs to your business page.

For Twitter, encourage employees to include a link to the corporate website in their bio, and change any mention of the company name to the actual @username (Slingshot SEO vs @SlingshotSEO, for example). If you’re into uniformity, consider also supplying them with official branded background images and cover photos, as well as their official corporate head-shots.

Have your blog contributors set up Google Authorship through their Google+ profiles? Encourage them to add their author pages to their individual Google+ profiles under the “Contributor to” field in the “About” tab.

7. Explore New Networks

Early adoption is typically rewarded, so take some time to explore new social media tools like Vine or Pheed. If the functionality or user-base of any new network doesn’t quite align with your marketing goals, don’t be afraid to bail. Remember: you don’t need to have a presence on every social network in existence.

Just a few hours of housekeeping can make a huge difference in the visual appeal of your social media profiles, and improve your chances of making a good first impression to new fans and followers.

Need help further optimizing your corporate profiles? Download our guide to Increasing Conversions with Social Media.

“Just Put More Content On Your Website, You’ll Be Fine”

While there’s little doubt today that black-hat techniques do more harm than good, true copywriting has yet to make a full-fledged comeback. In fact, website content is still viewed as a commodity – something that can simply be outsourced at a large quantity and slapped onto a website, netting vast and positive search results. Why else are content marketplaces and article spinning software still so pervasive?

Truth Bomb: True Marketers Don’t Produce Content

While it may seem like mere semantics, there is a stark difference between website content and website copy.

Website Content:

• News
• Press Releases
• Video Transcripts
• Product Descriptions (manufacturer)
• Executive Summary

Contrast that with website copy, which should tell a story, explain a concept and persuade readers to action. Whereas content (while necessary) is boilerplate and mechanical, copy is built for conversion.

Website Copy:

• On-Page Text
• Blog Posts
• Social Media Updates
• Product Descriptions (original)
• Advanced Content (white papers, eBooks, guides)

As such, marketers should espouse copy over content. Effective copywriting requires thorough research and thoughtful editing, conducted by a subject-matter expert and a professional writer. It won’t be fast or cheap, but will pay dividends.

It’s The Sales Funnel, Sillyhead

When you draw a distinction between copy and content in this manner, you can see that they correlate directly to the structure of the inbound marketing funnel. Web copy is inherently top-of-the-funnel; built to generate leads, while web content builds trust after a prospect familiarizes themselves with your brand, and should be employed near the end of the sales cycle (bottom-of-the-funnel).

Don’t flip your funnel! Boilerplate web content is ineffective at converting website visitors, period. They should instead be greeted with thoughtful, original and creative copy that speaks to them at a personal level.

Copywriting should be laborious and painstaking (typewriter and scotch optional) but when your finished product comes to life and wows your reader, you’ll be thankful for the effort. Long live copy!

Monday Morning: Make a Statement

Monday mornings are a great time to plant a flag and make a strong statement. In this blog, let your subject-matter expert or thought-leader lay out why they do things the way they do, and why other people should do it that way too. It’s a great opportunity to set yourself apart from competitors and confidently assert your authority on a subject.

Example: “3 Reasons Why You Should…”

Monday Afternoon: Highlight an Industry Study, Trending Data or Research

Bringing new data or findings to the attention of your community a great way to show that you stay current on industry news. Check the leading trade journals and publications for new research, as well as the independent blogosphere.

Example: “New Research From ‘X’ Shows…”

Tuesday Morning: Write a How-(Not)-To Guide

How-to guides are guaranteed to be considered helpful by your readers, especially if you tackle a complicated process. Lay out instructions in a step-by-step manner and include screenshots, or describe how not to do something and show examples of notable failures.

Example: “[Guide] How To Implement the New YouTube Channel Layout”

Tuesday Afternoon: Comment on a Trending News Story

Depending on the industry you’re in, it’s possible that a trending news story, controversy or gaffe is dominating the headlines. Take this opportunity to “newsjack” the topic and steer the conversation to your blog.

Example: “What ‘X’ Can Teach Us About ‘X’”

Wednesday Morning: Review a New Service or Tool

Are there any SaaS tools that you use regularly, or perhaps a new release or feature added to an industry standby? Share the pros and cons of the latest software updates and startups – you might even get that company to share your critique!

Example: “[REVIEW] Measuring and Monitoring with Sprout Social”

Wednesday Afternoon: Share a Case Study

Here’s your chance to share the results of the great work you completed recently. An effective format is to present the case study as a suggested methodology (think: how-to guide), then link to the actual results as a downloadable.

Example: “Results of Latest Earned Media Campaign Show 45% Traffic Increase”

Thursday Morning: Weigh Two Opposing Strategies or Tactics

Initiating a debate on your blog is a great way to generate comments and social shares. Present two competing philosophies, weigh the merits of each and invite your community to voice their opinion.

Example: “YouTube vs Vimeo for Marketers: Which Is Better?”

Thursday Afternoon: Repurpose a Client Email

Client emails are a content goldmine. It’s likely that your client-facing employees write literally thousands of words a week to clients via email, some of which may answer technical questions. Why not identify one such email and repurpose it into a blog post? That way if another client or prospect asks the same question, you have something written up to send them!

Example: “What’s the Best Way to Tackle X’?”

Friday Morning: Roundup the News of the Week

An easy and repeatable blog post is a weekly news roundup. Your author can dig for the most talked about or shared articles of the week and compile them into a list, with a short (original) synopsis for each. As with sharing new industry data or findings, this is a great way to show that you stay on top of things.

Example: “Top 10 “X” Articles of the Week”

Friday Afternoon: Repurpose a Video

If you’re producing videos on a regular basis (you should be), publishing them on your blog is a quick and easy way of creating content. Be sure to transcribe your videos for out-of-the-box text content. Round out the post with an original intro and outro, and the embedded video, and you’ve got yourself a winner. Check out this guide to repurposing video content into blog posts.

Example: SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday Videos

Bonus Backup Ideas:

• Answer a question from Quora
• Highlight someone doing good work
• Repurpose a live presentation slidedeck, webinar slidedeck or podcast
• Introduce a new employee
• Recap an event you attended
• Introduce a new downloadable white paper, guide or eBook
• Interview an industry thought-leader
• Publish a company press release
• Highlight a customer, vendor or partner

Publishing ten blog posts a week takes dedication, discipline and diligence, but can pay huge dividends in the form of increased traffic and conversions. Rally your writers, assign topics and try it for a week!

For help optimizing all those blog posts, download this blog optimization guide in PDF or Kindle format.

While blanket statements like “never gate content” and “gate all of your content” are rarely accurate and advisable for all businesses, a good deal of thought should be put into the decision to gate any piece of content. Here are four questions to ask yourself before doing so:

1. “Is This Content Significant Enough To Warrant A Form?”

It’s common to gate top-of-the-funnel content like guides and eBooks that are purely educational and not directly tied to your products and services. However, a mistake that many businesses make is gating TOFU content that is simply not significant enough to warrant a registration form.

It’s somewhat problematic to quantify value based solely on the length of a document or by how much time was put into its creation. For example, infographics take hours to complete and provide a ton of information, but are never gated. One-page cheat sheets and guides are short and concise, but are frequently gated.

At the same time, a one-page document entitled “10 tips for (something in your industry)” may be more appropriate as a blog post rather than a downloadable, whereas a 20-page data study is probably worth giving up a name and email address to access.

Perhaps a better question is “Will the prospect value the content enough in this format to warrant giving their contact information away?” Taking a customer-centric view with regards to the packaging and substance of the content will help you make the best decision.

The following three questions may shed further light on this abstract issue.

2. “What Stage Of The Sales Funnel Is This Content Geared Towards?”

Every piece of content should be created with a specific stage of the sales funnel in mind. TOFU content like on-page copy and blog posts most likely won’t get gated, but a white paper might. As you move more towards the bottom of the funnel, it becomes more appropriate to gate content – like case studies or spec sheets – since the prospect appears interested in retaining your services. If you can infer intent from a download, and that intent signifies an interested and qualified prospect, gate that content!

3. “What Are We Going To Do With This Contact Information?”

If you do decide to gate top-of-the-funnel content, you should have a robust lead nurturing program in place in order to take advantage of that lead data. In fact, the volume of gated TOFU content on your website should be directly proportional to the sophistication of your lead nurturing. If your TOFU content varies by topic, it’s prudent to have segments defined and mapped to appropriate personas in order to effectively and quickly move leads through the sales funnel.

4. “Is This Content Available Elsewhere Without A Form?”

A great way to alienate potential leads is to present them with a gated piece of content only to discover that they have either seen this information elsewhere or discover it later on without having to fill out a form. Research the content of your competitors to make sure they aren’t giving away the same content without a form, or worse, if you’re gating content on one of your own channels while making it available without a form on another owned channel.

Whatever decision you make for your downloadable, it’s important to ask yourself these questions during the content creation process itself in order to ensure that the final product gets created for the exact purpose it was intended. Go forth and gate with confidence (or not)!

1. Complete Freedom Over Placement, Functionality, Look and Feel

When using a third-party plugin, you are limited to only the customization options that the developer gives to you. Often times, these are inadequate. Even though plugins will save you the trouble of having to insert code into your website files, the option to do so gives you flexibility in where and how they appear on your blog.

2. Increased Page Speed and Mobile Compatibility

Because social sharing buttons load javascript files from an external source (the plugin supplier), it can slow performance down in terms of button load time. In addition, some third-party solutions are not mobile compatible. The Digg Digg floating toolbar in particular is notoriously mobile-unfriendly.

3. The Social Networks Themselves Prefer It

Obviously, if a social network goes to the trouble of supplying a proprietary button creator, it’s likely that they would prefer you use that over a third-party solution. You can bet that the share count will be most accurate on a propriety button versus a third-party button.

Here are links to the proprietary social sharing button builders for each of the major networks:

• LinkedIn: http://developer.linkedin.com/plugins/share-plugin-generator
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/about/resources/buttons#tweet
• Facebook: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/
• Google+: https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/+1button/
• Buffer: http://bufferapp.com/extras/button

Perhaps the biggest benefit of using the proprietary Twitter and Buffer buttons is the ability to set account attribution to each tweet. For example, when a blog post is Buffered it can be set to include a “via @username” in the body of the tweet. Many third-party tools attribute tweets to their own service rather than the originator of the content.

While WordPress and Joomla users have multiple options to enable social sharing buttons on their sites, all webmasters regardless of CMS should consider taking the time to hardcode their buttons. The benefits make up for the added effort. Just take care in editing any website file!

1. Your Content Doesn’t Get Found

It’s not enough to simply publish a new white paper or infographic on your website. Getting it found takes a concerted promotional effort. Earned media is a great way to kickstart a content marketing campaign. By getting your content featured on a leading industry media outlet or blog, you can drive a large amount of traffic from a trusted source, resulting in views and downloads.

2. Your Content Doesn’t Get Shared

A lack of social shares may be an indicator of low-quality content. This can be extremely problematic, as referral traffic from social networks should be one of your biggest sources of downloads. Strive to create the most relevant, high-quality content possible through thorough research and careful production. Remember: the best content solves real problems. If your content does not solve a problem that someone in your community or sales pipeline wants answers, do not make that content. There are many tools for identifying the pain-points Internet users are experiencing. Use this understanding to better your own content.

3. Your Content Doesn’t Stay Relevant

The goal of every content marketing campaign should be to create what’s known as evergreen content. Evergreen content is content that stays relevant for years – not because it’s broad or not at all in-depth, but because it’s research and data-driven. For example, a “guide to effective video storytelling” will have a longer shelf life than a “guide to the new YouTube Channel layout” since YouTube routinely changes their layout. Non-evergreen content is disposable and is difficult to repurpose once its content becomes irrelevant, but can be appropriate in some cases (such as commenting on breaking news or educating on a new product feature). Finding a balance between content that will stick and content that doesn’t have to is the key to success.

No one wants to have to pick a flaccid piece bacon off a club sandwich and toss it in the waste bin, just like no one wants to go through the trouble of downloading a piece of content only to have it be a huge let down. So endeavor to make your content as high-quality and evergreen as possible. Who knows? Maybe it will draw the attention of a respected blogger or journalist resulting in a feature on one of the most popular websites in the world!

For help in crafting the highest-quality blog content possible, download this blog optimization guide in PDF or Kindle format.

1. Create Content Solely About Your Products & Services

Creating content solely about your business, its products or its services is a great way to fail at content marketing. My apologies if you’ve only been blogging about the features of your widget, publishing white papers about your unique differentiating factors or producing videos that show off your modern manufacturing process. The truth is that you are simply producing middle and bottom-of-the-funnel content.

MOFU and BOFU content have a very important place in the buying cycle, and marketers should take their creation seriously. This content is typically tailored for those who are close to making a purchase. If your intent is to generate leads, however, you’re missing a large piece of the funnel.

Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, asks the following in his blog post Content Marketing: The Fallacy that More Content is Better:

“Are customers sharing your content? Are members of your customers’ networks sharing your content? Is your content a central part of conversations on the web? Are prospects signing up to receive your content on an ongoing basis? If you don’t deliver your content at the regularly scheduled time, are customers calling you to find out where it is? Are influencers creating new content from your old content?”

Hopefully the answers to at least some of those questions are ‘yes,’ but it’s likely that they’re mostly ‘no’ if you aren’t also creating top-of-the-funnel, or TOFU, content.

TOFU content sits at the very top of the buying cycle. It’s purpose is to generate new leads, and is typically promoted towards those who are not yet familiar with your brand.

The best TOFU content shares two features:

1. is brand-agnostic, even when its created by brand marketers.
2. solves a problem, even if that means giving away free information

For example: when a financial services company creates an infographic about the stages of their mortgage refinancing process, it’s not brand-agnostic. Quite the opposite; it’s inherently tied to their brand and how they do things. It also doesn’t really solve a problem. It’s unlikely that this would generate any new leads, but could help a warm or hot lead move towards the end of the buying cycle.

Contrast that with a financial services company who creates an infographic about effective budgeting. Here, they’re giving away their knowledge for free in an effort to help people, even (especially!) non-customers. By remaining brand-agnostic, their content is more accessible to a wider audience and doesn’t scream commercial intent. And oh, by the way, this financial services company also happen to do mortgage refinancing.

See the difference? Having only one or two of the three types of content is problematic because it either strands leads at the top of the funnel, or never gets them into the funnel in the first place.

TOFU content is engineered to be shared. Do you think people would rush to share content that shows off a business process, or content that actually solves a problem?

Simply transforming your traditional sales and marketing materials – brochures, catalogs, one sheets – into digital content – blogs, videos, infographics – does not make you a content marketer. What makes you a content marketer is the ability to solve problems with content. When your intent is to serve, and not to sell, it’s amazing how endearing your brand becomes to prospects.

Ready to make some helpful blog content? Download our blog optimization guide in PDF or Kindle format.

1. Google Authorship Makes Content More Appealing

Google Authorship adds several visual elements to blog posts both as they appear in the SERPs and in their native on-page environment. Rather than making AuthorRank your goal today, instead focus on getting authorship-optimized:

• Author Rich Snippets: The most tangible result of establishing Google Authorship is the appearance of author rich snippets in Google SERPs. Snippets include an author image, a by-line (by “author”) which links to the author’s Google+ profile, and a link to more posts by the author. Posts with author rich snippets just look more authoritative and trustworthy than those without, likely resulting in higher click-through rates.

• Author Bio and Author Page: Supplying the bare minimum – a link to the author’s Google+ profile – will establish Google Authorship, but going the extra mile to add a full author box with a photo, bio and links to their (other) personal social media accounts will further personalize each blog post and help to promote the author’s personal brand.

2. Google Authorship Encourages Content Production

Authorship can be incredibly motivating to your employees, because they’re no longer contributing anonymous content to your marketing efforts with little-to-no recognition. Furthermore, when an author’s personal brand is associated with the content they contribute to a corporate blog, they will be be more likely to promote that content.

3. Google Authorship Future-Proofs Your Blogging Efforts

Just because author identity is not a ranking factor today doesn’t mean that it won’t be tomorrow. Given the relative ease of setting up Google Authorship and the likelihood that author citations will influence rankings, there’s little reason to delay in establishing Google Authorship for all of your blog contributors.

Transparent authorship is a key component in getting your content written, seen and shared. Keep an eye on the topic of AuthorRank as it further evolves!

For help getting your blog posts optimized, download this blog post optimization guide in PDF or Kindle format.

Content and Engagement

HuffPost Live streams content 12 hours a day, from 10am-10pm, with live segments airing one-at-a-time every 15-30 minutes. If you logged on right now, you’d likely join a segment in progress and be able to preview upcoming segments, as well as view previously recorded segments. The format includes an in-studio host and an expert guest interview, with topics ranging from politics, economics, and arts/culture. In its first month, HuffPost Live produced 1,200 clips featuring 2,000 guests.

HuffPost Live goes beyond the traditional interview format by opening the discussion up to viewers. The platform itself includes an interactive message board on each segment page. Users can post text-based questions/comments, and even submit video messages that occasionally get integrated into live segments:

In addition, live segments routinely include additional guests who join via Skype and Google+ Hangout. HuffPost Live producers actively monitor social media for chatter surrounding a particular topics, and invite those interested parties in on the discussion. This allows for a more interactive viewing experience and richer, more organic content. Contrast this with other news outlets who simply post previously recorded segments that consist of only an interviewer and guest, and you can see why HuffPost Live has built a dedicated community around their platform. In just the month of January 2013, the site racked up 27 million views.

So what can B2B and B2C brands learn from the HuffPost Live platform?

1. Commit to Producing Content Regularly

Producing 12 hours of video content, five days a week, may be a tall order. However, the most successful content marketers do commit to publishing on a frequent basis. Consider using an editorial calendar to schedule your blogs, videos and downloadables in order to hold your team accountable for hitting production deadlines.

2. Research, Monitor, Listen.

Brands who struggle to create content may be overlooking the conversations happening within multiple online communities. HuffPost Live succeeds through active social listening, culling content ideas from the chatter happening around topics they want to cover. Monitoring Twitter hashtags and browsing Quora threads can help you glean incredible insights into what subjects are of interest to your stakeholders.

3. Involve Your Community to Build Community

Beyond just relying on external conversations for content ideation, consider involving those stakeholders in the actual creation of content. Brands like SEOmoz excel at encouraging and soliciting user-generated content, which can take pressure off your internal content marketing team to continually be producing. UGC also multiplies your promotion efforts – it’s likely that the author will share content within their own communities, increasing your reach beyond just the corporate brand channels. An interactive approach can also pay dividends. Google+ Hangouts On Air are a great way to directly transform conversations into content.

Building an engaged online community isn’t easy. In fact, it’s impossible without rich, owned content and interactivity. If an often mired brand like AOL can get it right, so can you!

Cover photos just got bigger

An update to page cover photos allows administrators to take advantage of a significantly taller format.

In addition, page avatars have been moved to the lower-lefthand corner of the cover photo and placed within a white circle. Basic page information is also listed just to the right of the circle logo. The page +1 button is now located on the lower-lefthand corner of the cover photo.

It’s likely that these page details now cover up graphical elements in your current/old cover photo, so update to the new format as soon as possible.

When you first visit your business/organization page, you’ll be prompted to update your cover photo:

Upon clicking “Update yours now” you’ll be presented with a warning message:

Unfortunately, you cannot update your cover photo with a new image in the short and horizontal format. Any new image will be conformed to the new taller format.

From the “Confirm upgrade” prompt, you’ll be taken to the image uploader.

As you can see, the new cover photo is significant larger and takes up a majority of the above-the-fold real estate on your profile page. The max dimensions are 2120×1192, giving you lots of space to communicate whatever you want in the cover photo.

Revamped “About” tab

The new “About” tab layout has been refreshed and conformed to a two-column format:

A greater emphasis has been placed on who is in your circles and who has you in circles. As you scroll down through the profile information, you’ll notice that the navigation bar becomes a fixed header, giving users access to the “About,” “Posts,” “Photos” and “Videos” tabs at all times.

Local reviews tab

The “Local” tab has been added to the fixed vertical navigation for all users, allowing quick access to the reviews section of Google+:

With the added ease of use for users to navigate to visit the Local section, brands should take extra care to monitor and optimize their Local profiles and reviews.

According to Google, the new profile update should be available to all users “soon,” so check your pages often as your current cover photo will likely look odd once the new format hits.

Need help further optimizing your Google+ pages? Download our guide to Increasing Conversions with Social Media.

1. Identify and Involve Influencers

When finalizing your advanced content, put a draft in the hands of a few key industry influencers. Give them an opportunity to review the content and solicit their feedback. Then, include their one-line reviews in your promotional materials. This will add credibility to the content. You can even go so far as soliciting a longer foreword from one of your influencers and inserting it into the content itself. By involving influencers and giving them the opportunity to shape or contribute content, they will be more likely to share the finished product.

2. Create a Video Promo

A promo video is an excellent way of previewing the content of your eBook or white paper and introduce viewers to the authors. You can place these videos on your landing pages and promotional blog posts to incite downloads, as well as including them in any PR pitches.

3. Release the Content on a Widely-Read Industry Blog or Media Outlet

A killer earned-media placement is a great way to kick off the promotional campaign for a significant piece of advanced content like an eBook. Craft a guest blog post that introduces the content and links to your landing page, and offer it as an exclusive feature. Be sure to set up a tracking URL so that you can segment and measure traffic from the placement.

4. Create a Kindle Version

A Kindle or other eReader version provides an alternate method of consuming your content. The added credibility of having a Kindle version may increase conversion rates, and a Kindle Direct Publishing account can put your content in front of millions of Amazon users.

5. Repurpose the Content for a Webinar

Holding a webinar early on in the lifecycle of the promotional campaign is a great idea because it gives you the opportunity to take your message out into the world in an interactive and personal way. Even if you can’t secure a guest spot on an external webinar, holding your own webinar is still a good idea. You can invite those who have downloaded the content to attend and discuss the content, or simply repurpose the content itself into a new presentation. The webinar replay video can be used as a promotional tool, or further repurposed into blog posts.

6. Coordinate With Live Events

Similarly to producing a webinar, synchronizing your content release date with a major conference, trade show or speaking gig can be extremely effective. Going into a live event with newly release content will give you something to showcase in a presentation and will generate a lot of buzz among attendees. Don’t be afraid to bring printed versions of your eBook or guide to hand out.

7. Include the Content in Lead Nurturing and Automated Email Workflows

If you’re using marketing automation software, add the advanced content to any automated email workflows as part of your lead nurturing campaign. A lead who has downloaded similar pieces of advanced content in the past may be more likely to download the new offer, especially if they received a personalized email versus a plain email blast to your entire list.

Remember: you don’t have to do it alone! Industry influencers, media outlets and live event/webinar attendees can be powerful allies in promoting your advanced content. Be sure to keep an eye on your analytics to see which sources are generating the most traffic and downloads, then stick with what works and discard what doesn’t.

By the way, have you downloaded our most recent advanced content? The Enterprise Blog Post Optimization Guide shares tried and true techniques for creating blog posts that are discoverable, desirable and sharable.

Practically speaking, a rebrand carries with it different technical repercussions and ramifications depending on the social network. Some allow you complete control over all aspects of your account, while some are incredibly limiting in what you can change without having to start over from scratch – resulting in loss of followers, uploads and views. Here is a guide to rebranding your social media accounts in order to limit headaches and the loss of profile equity.

The Good News:

Accounts on the following social media networks can be rebranded with new vanity URLs without the loss of followers and other accrued metrics:

• Twitter
• Google+
• Pinterest
• Foursquare
• Vimeo
• Instagram

Twitter: Twitter will be one of your most painless rebrand tasks, provided the new desired username is available. Visit https://twitter.com/settings/account to change your username, then update your bio, avatar, header image and background. Your following/followers will remain unchanged.

If you know a rebrand is on the horizon, but you don’t want to pull the trigger yet, simply register a new account under your new brand name. Then, when it’s time to make the switch, change the new account to something new (a third username), and change your original account to the desired username that you were holding.

Google+: A Google+ page name can be changed at anytime without losing the following of those who have circled the page. However, there are a few details you should be aware of:

• If you haven’t yet been invited to set a vanity URL, your page URL will remain unchanged.
• If you do have a vanity URL set (“plus.google.com/+brand-name”), it will revert back to the default-style URL (lots of nondescript numbers).
• If you have verified page status, you will lose it upon renaming the page. Luckily, you can simply reapply right away.

Pinterest: Page administrators have full control over their company name and username/URL at https://pinterest.com/settings. Watch out for the 15 character limit on usernames. If you aren’t already operating a Pinterest Business Page, now is a good time to convert.

Foursquare: If you’re managing a location page (not a personal account), you should have full control over all aspects of your business profile, including name, logo, description and address. Changing the vanity URL (username) is a bit tricky, however.

If you visit https://foursquare.com/settings while logged in as your business, you’ll see a field towards the bottom labeled “Twitter Account.” This field is also your Foursquare username if you’ve linked it to your Twitter account. Assuming they are linked, when you change your Twitter username your Foursquare username will also change, changing the vanity URL of your Foursquare page. Neat!

Vimeo: You’ll find your Vimeo Channel URL here: https://vimeo.com/settings/profile

Instagram: Changing your username at https://instagram.com/accounts/edit will update your profile URL. You can update the rest of your information on this page as well.

The Bad News:

Feeling pretty good about the social rebrand so far? Pour yourself a drink because it’s about to get rocky. You can plan on starting from scratch on the following social media networks:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Slideshare
• Flickr

Facebook: Facebook will likely be the biggest casualty of a full rebrand, as the name of your business/organization cannot be changed, nor can the vanity URL (username) associated with the page.

How To Deal: Once you’ve created your new page, let the fans of your old page know through regular status updates in the first few weeks after launch. It’s a good idea to leave the old page up in tandem as the new page following grows. Your enemy here will be EdgeRank – the new page won’t have near as much authority as your old page, so don’t expect too many converts. Consider investing in Promoted Posts and Facebook Ads to get your content in front of a greater, targeted audience.

LinkedIn: Unfortunately, the company name and associated vanity URL cannot be changed.

How To Deal: Visit http://www.linkedin.com/company/add/show to create your new Company Page. Note that you will need an email address at the new company domain. All of your employees will need to update their personal profiles to reflect the name change. Be sure they format the company name in the exact way that the Company Page does, or their profiles will not link through to the new page. Consider running the old Company Page in tandem with the new until you’ve built a considerable following on the new page. As with Facebook, it will be difficult to migrate your old followers over.

YouTube: Since YouTube won’t allow you to change the Channel URL, it’s likely that you’ll have to start a new Channel from scratch. Though your videos can be archived and re-uploaded, you will lose view count, likes/dislikes, playlists, comments, friends and Channel subscribers.

How To Deal: First, archive all of your video files using Google Takeout. Next, manually archive your video titles, descriptions and keyword tags from the old Channel. Then, create a new Channel and re-upload your videos and paste your meta data into their corresponding videos on the new Channel. Prior to deleting the old Channel, visit the subscribers page of the old Channel while logged in as the new Channel, and subscribe to those users. Be sure to export any reports from YouTube Analytics that may be useful in the future.

Slideshare: Your Slideshare username can be changed. However, the public profile URL cannot be changed. This is likely a deal-breaker for businesses and organizations going through a full rebrand that includes a new brand name. Equity loss here includes views and followers.

How To Deal: Take an inventory of all of your uploads, then map and archive your titles, descriptions and tags for each. After deleting your profile, simply re-upload all of your files to the new account and paste in the meta data. Be sure to go back and follow all of the users you were following on the old account.

Flickr: Flickr users have spent years lobbying for the ability to change account usernames (which are reflected in photo stream URLs) with no luck. To add insult to injury, there is no efficient way of exporting/archiving your photos.

How To Deal: Pray Marissa Mayer makes Flickr awesome again.

One Word of Caution:

For those networks where your follower count will be reduced to zero: do not endlessly harass users who have not liked or followed your new page. Concentrate on sharing relevant, high-quality content while respecting the decisions of those who choose not to follow your new brand.

As with all tasks associated with a rebrand, updating all of your social media accounts should be approached delicately. Be diligent in identifying all of the networks you have profiles on, and updating or discarding them appropriately. Remember: there is no rule that states you need to be on every social network in existence, so use this opportunity to rethink your strategy and focus your efforts.

Looking for a few tips on optimizing your new social media profiles? Download our guide to Increasing Conversions with Social Media.

1. They Do Not Solve Customer/Prospect Problems

I could stop here. The only reason – and I mean the only reason – to create content is to help someone solve their problem. That’s it.

Now that content marketing has achieved wide adoption, the volume of bad content hitting the web on a daily basis is on the rise. Meanwhile, consumers are becoming more and more aware of when and how they’re being marketed to. This is putting us on a crash course towards a content bubble.

The Dollar Shave Club video worked for Dollar Shave Club because it was original, funny and solved a problem (or at least introduced a service that solves a problem). Delivering your company’s sales pitch in the Dollar Shave Club format is not original, not funny and does not solve any problems.

Only useful content generates views, shares and leads.

2. The Content Isn’t Evergreen

The best piece of content is built to last. Ideally, something you produce should stay relevant and searchable for months and even years after you release it (almost 16 months later, our CTR study still gets mentioned during conference keynotes). A viral video parody, however, only stays relevant for as long as the original work stays in the public eye, which is rarely longer than a few weeks. Is it really worth putting all that work into learning the dance moves or writing new lyrics to “Call Me Maybe” for that video to be completely useless a month later?

To all the brands doing the “Harlem Shake” videos, you know that’s not the Harlem Shake, right? Besides, it’s funny the first time, not the 11th. Create great content, not “viral.” – Scott Stratten

3. They Can Do More Harm Than Good

There are plenty of examples of backlash caused by businesses or organizations attempting to ride a meme. An otherwise flawless Super Bowl in Indianapolis was slightly marred by a “Super Bowl Shuffle” parody that drew national attention and ire. Eleven athletes from Susquehanna University were kicked off the football team following their rendition of the Harlem Shake. Several California lifeguards were also handed their walking papers (then rehired) after a failed “Gangnam Style” parody. Though these are extreme examples, it’s enough just to avoid negative tweets and comments when your parody falls flat.

Beyond all that, put yourself in the shoes of a customer or a stakeholder. Let’s say your satisfaction with a vendor is low. How would you feel about seeing shirtless employees gyrating to the Harlem Shake when they haven’t met your deadline for a project?

Yes, it’s a good idea to show off the lighter side of your business, but not in a manner that is bad for business. And if it doesn’t help your customer, it’s bad for business.

Ready to make some helpful content that will last? Download our Guide to Enterprise Blog Post Optimization.

1. Google’s Keyword Tool

Google’s Keyword Tool will take a base keyword or keyword phrase and make suggestions for related keywords and long-tail phrases.

Since the tool gives you an idea of how competitive the phrase is, as well as an estimate of global and local monthly searches, you can make an educated decision on how well the content will perform.

A Google account or @gmail.com address is needed to access the account, but a specific AdWords account or campaign is not required.

2. Quora

In addition to participating in the question/answer activity, Quora is a great site to data mine for content ideas. Topic questions make for excellent blog titles, and you can be sure that the content will be relevant since a real human is seeking the answer.

3. Übersuggest

Übersuggest operates similarly to Google’s Keyword Tool, with the addition of multiple nested layers per suggested keyword. Übersuggest first takes your base keyword and makes suggestions of phrases from every letter of the alphabet. Each suggestion can be unpacked for long-tail phrases.

4. Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is perhaps the least labor-intensive method of generating content ideas, and perhaps the most full-proof in terms of relevancy. Ask your community to submit questions directly via email or social media, and create content that answers those questions. This approach lends itself particularly well to video. If you can personalize the content, the chances of it being shared by the original solicitor will increase.

Between these four tools, you should be able to generate dozens of blog titles and topics for downloadable content like white papers and eBooks. Once you’re ready to put pen to paper, check out our Guide to Enterprise Blog Post Optimization.

Channel Trailer

On the homepage of your YouTube Channel, you now have the ability to feature a “trailer” to users who are not yet subscribed to your Channel. Currently, you can specify a “featured video” that takes up a majority of the space on a Channel homepage above the fold. However, this featured video is visible to all users. The Channel Trailer, however, is a good way to entice non-subscribers to subscribe to your Channel.

Consider creating a Channel Trailer now so that it’s ready to go when the new design hits your account. Check out an example of a Channel Trailer on iJustine’s Channel. You can see that she does a good job of welcoming non-subscribers and giving them a taste of the kinds of videos that she produces and uploads to her YouTube Channel.

Channel Art

Channel Art allows you to upload a branded banner image that sits at the top of your YouTube Channel. Previously, only YouTube Partners and non-profits had the ability to upload a banner image. With the new Channel update, all users will be able to take advantage of Channel Art. This banner image is even optimized for mobile viewing, and automatically displays social buttons if you have other networks connected to your account.

YouTube has created a comprehensive guidelines document to Channel Art in their Help section.

It appears as though background images are falling out of favor with YouTube. Luckily, Channel Art represents a new standard in terms of a defined fit and feel for all Channels. Log in to your YouTube account frequently to see if the new design layout has been applied to your Channel!

Bulk Actions

In a separate blog post, YouTube also announced that all users now have the ability to bulk edit video settings like privacy, tags and monetization. This is a huge usability upgrade, especially in cases where multiple videos need to be assigned the same keyword tags. Considering the increased visibility and importance of tags on the new Channel designs, producers should take a look at all of their tags and make adjustments as needed. The Bulk Actions feature is currently available to all YouTube users.

Happy YouTubing!

1. TweetCharts

HubSpot’s Dan Zarrella conceived TweetCharts while flying somewhere over the midwest. The tool allows you to run a report on any hashtag, word, phrase, username and even URLs. Depending on the volume of activity for your chosen query, the report can span a date range of anywhere from one week to one day.

Reports consist of a breakdown of activity type, tweet frequency and usage rankings.

TweetCharts is ideal for at-a-glance data on the kinds of tweets a user sends out and how often.

2. Twitalyzer

Twitalyzer designates itself as “Serious Analytics for Social Business.” Their sleek interface focuses on two metrics: impact and influence.

While TweetCharts gives you a breakdown of the anatomy of a user’s tweets, Twitalyzer measures their effectiveness. While their proprietary metric (Impact) isn’t terribly insightful, a Twitalyzer report can show days in which an account exerted peak influence and show what users influence that account.

3. Simply Measured Free Twitter Follower Report

Simply Measured has several free social analytics tools available, one of which is the Free Twitter Follower Report. Despite a slight barrier to entry – users must enter a Twitter account to be analyzed, tweet that they are using the tool, register by name and email address and wait for the report to generate – Simply Measured will email you a rich examination focusing on the followers of any given account.

Metrics include Top Keywords Within Followers’ Profile Descriptions, Followers by Time Zone, Followers by Date of Last Tweet and Users by # of Followers, among others. This tool is great for getting an idea of who is following an account and how they’re interacting.

The most successful social media campaigns differentiate themselves from those of the competition, and in order to differentiate yourself on Twitter you must first understand the activities of your competitors and capitalize on any gaps in their strategy. What other social media analytics tools do you use? Let us know in the comments below.

Having trouble organizing all of your daily scheduled tweets? Download my Editorial Calendar Template!

Image courtesy of Oreo

By the time the lights came back on in New Orleans, Oreo had racked up over 10,000 RTs, thousands of ‘favorites’ and overwhelmingly positive replies – all with a single tweeted image.

The fact that the cost of an ad during Super Bowl XLVII is around $3.7 million makes this social media win all the sweeter, especially since many of those brands who invested in :30 TV spots have been universally panned for crude humor and a lack of creativity.

Our hats go off to the social media team at Oreo!

How Does Vine Work?

Vine allows you to take a 6-second video and post it via an Instagram’esque interface. A published video also loops, giving it an animated .gif feel.

Users must first create an account within Vine, and follow other Vine users (you can scan your own Twitter profile for Twitter friends who also have Vine accounts and follow them).

The video capture mechanism is actually quite snappy. Though you only have 6 seconds, you can start/stop recording as many times as you can before a total 6 seconds of video is recorded. This means that your Vine video could contain numerous “scenes,” providing a surprising amount of content flexibility despite the inherent brevity of the app’s overarching concept.

Social functionality mirrors that of Instagram and comes standard with the ability to like and comment on other Vine videos.

Ready to create a Vine account for your business? Slow down a second (or at least six).

With Every App Comes an Application

“The (Vine) interface is cool, but a reminder that you’ve been able to make 6 second videos since the invention of video.” – Jay Baer

A lot is being written about possible B2C and B2B applications for Vine videos. And as Chris Brogan points out, big brands like Urban Outfitters and Red Vines are already producing quirky, substantive clips.

While Vine may be the hot app of the moment, it certainly doesn’t break down any video production barriers to entry. In fact, very few barriers to entry exist today. What it does do, however, is provide a gateway to shallow, sub-par content for too-eager marketers.

We Have A ‘Bad Content’ Problem

Katie Bascuas writes ”It’s one thing to create content, but it’s another to use it strategically to drive your mission and business goals.”

Any piece of content, whether a 6 second video or a 100 page eBook, should serve a business goal or solve a customer problem. Vine isn’t immune from this truth.

According to the 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America report from the Content Marketing Institute, 64% of B2B content marketers say they are challenged with producing enough content. “Enough” content, not “high-quality” content.

As more and more marketers jump on the content marketing bandwagon, consumers will find themselves inundated with low-quality content. Velocity Partners articulates this oncoming bubble perfectly in their “Crap. The Content Marketing Deluge” presentation:

Vine videos do have the potential to tell a great story in an elegant way, but just because the videos only last 6 seconds doesn’t mean you only have to put 6 seconds of thought into producing them.

Think Before You Share

Twitter is a natural delivery system for Vine videos. That doesn’t mean that your blog, a presentation, Facebook, or an email to customer are also natural delivery systems for Vine videos.

Although web video is versatile, not all web video is created equal. And a high-to-medium-quality production should not be applied or broadcasted in the same manner as a Vine video.

More and more, the medium is the message in content marketing today – which puts the onus on marketers to deliver targeted messaging custom-tailored for each distribution channel. With Vine, tread carefully and don’t cross the streams.

To get started in *good* content marketing, check out our free guide: The 5 Ws of Content Creation.