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Yahoo Rolling Out Indoor Maps (via Nokia)

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An Introduction to PR Strategy for SEOs

Posted by SamuelScott

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

In case you missed it, Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, wrote this on January 20: “Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop.”

Three days later, Jen Lopez of Moz responded with this excellent post on “guest blogging with a purpose”:

As with anything, you don't want to be out there trying willy-nilly to get your posts on every blog for the sole purpose of building (probably bad) links. It's important to have this tied to your business and marketing goals, as you would with any other tactic. SEO is only one piece of the larger strategy, and if you focus solely on writing posts for link building purposes, you're missing out on a ton of other possibilities.

In Lopez’s post, I commented in some detail that “guest posts” are really just another name for what the public relations industry calls “by-lined articles” and that the goals of the two should be identical. In response later in that thread, Lopez and Everett Sizemore invited me to elaborate on the “PR side of SEO” in a detailed Moz post.

Well, let’s get to it!

Marketers, Assemble!

(photo courtesy of Marvel Studios)

First, let’s set the record straight.

As I’ve written elsewhere while using “The Avengers” as an example (Joss Whedon fans, unite!), "SEO" is actually just a slang term for a collection of best practices -- it is doing web development well, content creation well, social media well, PR well, and so on. This is why successful SEO, and digital marketing in general, necessitates that companies “assemble” a holistic, integrated team with expertise in numerous disciplines. And that includes public relations.

Rand Fishkin once tweeted a similar sentiment:

Here, I’ll cover how PR relates to content and linkbuilding.

PR By Any Other Name…

I can already hear the groans: “But, wait! I’m not a PR flak! I’m an inbound marketer!” I completely understand – as a former journalist, who only later went into SEO, I specifically had been looking for something in marketing that was not PR. But the fact remains that much of inbound marketing is just PR by another name:

• Are you interacting with influencers, journalists, and bloggers on Twitter? Sure, you can call yourself a “social-media marketer” – but you are really doing PR


• Are you pitching guest posts by-lined articles to news outlets and other online publications? It is not “guest post marketing” – it is PR.


• Are you e-mailing people in the hopes of getting links, mentions, or anything similar? It’s often called “e-mail outreach” today, but it is just doing PR via a specific communications channel

It took me a long time to accept the fact that a lot of what we do as “SEOs” is actually, well, PR. But the sooner that we accept that fact and throw away our preconceived notions about PR, the sooner that we can start to learn, adopt and benefit from its best practices.

Here’s the kicker: Technologies and communications channels change, but people do not. Publicists, for example, may contact reporters with Twitter more than the telephone today – but it is still one human being talking with another human being. And PR experts know how to work with people. Social media is often just a communications channel – and not a discipline unto itself – that can be used by PR professionals, customer-service representatives, lead generators, and more.

The Basics of PR Strategy

There are many types of PR. But since the idea for this post was born out of a discussion on guest posts, I will discuss PR strategy here specifically on pitching content and story ideas to journalists and bloggers. This is a brief summary of some of the ways that The Cline Group works with our PR clients – and the resulting “hits” (in PR-speak) give them the added bonus of gaining quality, natural links and social media exposure as well!

The first thing to understand is that public relations is an art, not a science. There are specific, defined ways to create XML sitemaps, ensure that Google can crawl and index a website, avoid duplicate-content issues, reduce page-load time, and more. PR methods, however, can vary as drastically as the number of people using them.

Here, I will present the overall strategy that The Cline Group uses in our public-relations work. This strategic, step-by-step process delivers the best results.

1. Goal Identification

PR is not an end. It is a means to an end. The goal is not to “get coverage” – the goal is to get coverage that supports a company’s overall business and marketing goals. Here are some examples of our PR clients’ goals:

• We want to gain VC funding or to exit by selling


• We want to maximize downloads of our mobile application


• We want to gain more leads who will become users of our B2B software


• We want to build our brand through authoritative content

It is useless to create a PR strategy without first having a clear sense of the objective.

2. Target Market Identification

The PR team must then research and compile a list of the general targeted audiences based on the goals that the client established. Here are some for the above examples:

• Investment: Angel investors, start-up founders, corporate VC funds


• Mobile Downloads: People who would be interested in a mobile app (of the given type)


• B2B Leads: The business owners, executives, and managers who would be interested in the solutions that the B2B software provides


• Content: The people who would be interested in the information that the content communicates

3. Messaging and Positioning

Once the goals are determined and the target markets are identified, then the PR team can determine the positioning (how will you brand the company/individual/product/content to the target markets) and messaging (what text, images, and more will you use to communicate the positioning).

Take one of our mobile-app clients, MediSafe Project. Which of the following pitches do you think would be more likely to interest reporters, and, in the end, their readers?

• “MediSafe reminds people to take their medication.”


• “A year and a half ago, Bob Shor’s diabetic dad asked him if he had seen his dad take his insulin. Bob’s answer, “No, I didn’t see you take your meds” was interpreted by his father as “No, you haven’t taken them.” His dad overdosed that day, which Bob says was the reason he and his brother Rotem created MediSafe, a collaborative app that helps keep track of long-term medication.”

The second example is the opening paragraph of a Cult of Mac article. That coverage came from positioning MediSafe as a personal story rather than as just another random app.

4. Media List Creation

The next step is to compile a list of the outlets – and the most-appropriate writers at those outlets – that are read by the identified target audiences. The importance of this phase of the process cannot be emphasized enough.

An ideal media list should usually be comprised of publications that have all of the following (in both PR and digital contexts):

• The publications that are read by the target audience


• The specific writers at those outlets that will likely be most interested in what you are pitching


• Publications with large readerships


• Outlets (and writers) with large social-media followings


• Publications whose online sites have high Domain Authority

When compiling media lists, remember that time is a limited resource. There are only so many hours that a PR team can devote to a campaign. At one extreme, they could send the same, generic press release to thousands of outlets via a wire service and just hope for the best. At the other extreme, they could focus all of their efforts on a single reporter at a single outlet that is highly desired. A simplistic example: Say a PR executive has one hour of pitching time – should he or she spend one hour on one outlet or five minutes each on twelve outlets? Usually, you want to be somewhere in the middle.

5. Press Release Development and Pitching

The final stage is to craft the actual pitches and press releases. Sometimes the same press release can be used. Other times, it is best to create individualized, tailored releases for each type of outlet or each specific reporter. It just depends on the context.

One example of online pitching will be discussed in the next section.

A good PR strategy can lead to great SEO results such as this outcome from one single campaign for iOnRoad, a mobile app that was later bought by Harman International following our work (the PowerPoint slide originally contained an animated GIF of Hugh Laurie – a.k.a. Dr. House – from back in his British comedy TV days):

This one campaign netted 591 quality links from 253 authoritative domains – and a lot more.

Whether digital marketers are promoting a company, a product, or a piece of content, those who use this general strategy will be many steps ahead of the competition. Sizemore once summarized the importance with the following statement in this essay of his:

If I had to choose between your average link builder and an expert PR professional who knew how to approach and interact with media outlets and presented well on camera, I’d go for the public relations person any day of the week.

Twitter's a PR Gold Mine

Twitter specifically is an invaluable tool for PR pitching – but it must be used strategically and wisely in this context.

My colleague Scott Piro, our EMEA Managing Director and Chief Strategy Officer, has written a guide to using Twitter for media relations. I highly suggest that Mozzers read his essay for more details (not that I’m biased!), but I will summarize some of his points here:

• Many busy reporters do not answer their phones and receive countless e-mails, but they do pay attention to Twitter


• Writers will often say in their Twitter bios whether they want (or do not want) to be tweeted with pitches


• Twitter is public, so do not give away too many details of an exclusive story – switch to e-mail or the phone as soon as possible


• Link to a press release somewhere online (on a company website or on a wire service)


• Know your audience and when to be more formal and when to be more friendly

Piro also gives two general examples of Twitter pitches:

• The Benign Intro: @journalist Do you accept story pitches? If yes, what’s the best way to send you one? THX


• The FYI: @journalist I emailed a story idea to your [media outlet name] address. Hope u can take a look; I think it’s rly a good fit

PR: The Old and New Off-Page SEO

I’d like to close this post with the rest of my comment on Lopez’s earlier Moz essay:

When I was a journalist, the point of submitting freelance articles or op-ed articles was to publish a piece of quality content to build your "brand" (as a writer or pundit). It was not primarily to get links (especially when links did not exist before the public Internet). In PR, companies submit what are called "by-lined articles" to build a brand and raise awareness of your company among the readers of a certain publication. (If you sell widgets, then you want exposure in a media outlet that is read by people who buy widgets.) It is not primarily to get links. Today, it's called "guest posts."

The same is true today. When my company gets articles in specific, targeted media outlets for clients, the point is first to build a brand and second to get referral traffic (and hopefully leads or sales) via a link in the author's biography or elsewhere. No-follow or not, it didn't matter…

I now advocate that no one do anything with the primary purpose of "getting links." Do the great content, promote it on social media, and the links will come naturally, indirectly, and organically. You are earning them and not building them. One of these links are worth ten of the others.

Example: My agency gets a client a great by-line article in a great outlet. The article may contain a (do-follow or not) backlink or not. But it doesn't matter -- the exposure is what matters. Then, the readers will see the content and perhaps write about the company on their own blogs with links. It snowballs from there. But in the end, it's not directly about the links. As long as a company does all of the "SEO" best-practices, the good links will come themselves over time.

I would submit that this is what Google still likes. It is "guest posting" for reasons other than links. The same is true for press releases -- you distribute news releases to get coverage, not links. The links will then come later.

It all comes down to what I’ve called the “PR-based SEO process”:

The idea can be summarized as such:

1. Do something newsworthy


2. Create newsworthy content based on what has been done


3. Promote the company and content


4. Repeat as often as possible

Linkbuilders often ask themselves: “Why would this website want to link to us?” Reporters ask a related question (at least to themselves): “I get dozens of pitches a day – why should I write about you?”

If you can answer this question, you’ve got a great head start. As I wrote in the linked post above:

What can a company do that would interest journalists? The possibilities are limited only by the imagination – release a new product, hire a big-name executive, conduct an authoritative analysis of the state of the industry, and so on. Then, create quality, engaging content in the context of the action – a blog post, an infographic, a press release, a video, a podcast, and so on.

The next step is crucial: use traditional public relations to promote the company’s news – and use online PR and social media to promote the content created for the news to obtain backlinks, citations, and social-media mentions. This practice will yield far better online PR results than just stuffing backlinks into meaningless press releases.

Here’s the secret: Reporters want to write about you. Years ago, space in a newspaper and minutes in a broadcast were limited. Journalists could be picky. Today, however, they know as well as we do that “content is king” and the way to maximize traffic and (for their purposes) advertising revenue. Writers are under constant pressure to write and write and write since websites can support an almost-infinite amount of content.

So, it can be easier to convince them. Just give them a nudge through the strategies that we’ve presented here.

For more details on SEO and public relations, I invite you to see my SMX Milan 2013 presentation and notes. I will also speak on a similar subject at SMX West in March 2014. I hope to see you there!

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A Deep Dive into Google MyAnswers

Posted by gfiorelli1

A few months ago I published here on Moz SEO in the Personalization Age, where I explained why, once and for all, SEOs need to be aware of the personalization of SERPs and the mechanisms by which Google customizes our search results. I also suggested some ways to convert what at first sight is just a complication into a competitive advantage.

This post is the ideal continuation of that one.

Here, however, I won't dig into SEO theories and patents, but I will try to put order in all of the existing information about the elements that compose MyAnswers, highlighting some clarification that many - wrongly - absent-mindedly forget, and suggesting actions that can mean the difference between winning or not the personalized SERPs.

You can call this post "Guide to MyAnswers" if you want, although I do not pretend to have written a real guide.

Finally, this post is also the result of conversations I had with Giorgio Taverniti, one of the leading experts on this topic and the creator of the most important Italian SEO Forum.

Personalized private search

When we speak about personalized search results, it would be more correct to use the term private search results.

It is not just semantics but how Google refers to them, and is also a result of the confrontation with the European Community.

Private is slightly different from Personalized, since it implies that a SERP is personalized only by our web history and only by the direct contacts on Google Plus and Gmail.

Keep in mind this detail, because it will explain a point I will affirm later in the post.

A classic example of Private Search is this:

Private Search consists of two elements:

1. Google Now, or our offline activities moved into our own online life;


2. Google Plus, or anything that I or people in my Circles share by G+.

Google Now

Right now you should be quite used to this feature offered by Google also in the desktop search.

Usually we refer to it for things like flight reminders, hotel and restaurant reservations, packages' deliveries, and for geo-targeted contextual suggestions.

Google Now generally operates in two eco-systems:

1. Mobile (and for that reason every example Google offers is mobile);


2. Vocal (you can create Google Now reminders with a voice command).

The fact that it is now also present in the classic desktop search is just a sign of the times (and of the shift from desktop search to "everywhere" search, thanks also to the instant synchronization of the Google account information in different devices).

As I wrote in SEO in the Personalization Age, everybody can ask to be integrated into Google Now. Be advised that it is not an immediate inclusion, as a nine-step process is needed to obtain the approval from Google).

The integration is possible using one of these Schema for Gmail:

• RSVP actions for events;


• Review action;


• One-click action;


• Go-to action;


• Flight interactive cards.

This video from the last Google I/O explains well all these options:

Every Schema for Gmail is interesting, but the most immediately useful ones are:

Review action, which offers us the opportunity to ask and let our clients to write reviews of our product, hotel, or service (or simply to evaluate them with the classic starred system) directly from their inbox. As you can see, it can be a big help in obtaining more reviews, as it responds to the old classic "Don't make me think" principle;

One-click action, which can be especially useful for eCommerce sites. Imagine you have users subscribed to your coupon/offers newsletter. When they will receive the newsletter with the One-click action SaveAction Schema implemented, they will be able to save the coupon in their Google Offers account.

If you want to dig more into the integration with Google Now, you can check out these two great posts:

• How Gmail’s Schema.org Support Changes the Game for Email Marketers;


• Email Schema: 6 Things You Need To Know Plus Some Conspiracy Theory.

Google Plus

I must admit that I still see many SEOs confused about how Google Plus influences Private Search.

To be honest, the fact that Google presents both Google Plus and Knowledge Graph (and sometimes Answers cards) in the same positions, or even mixed (i.e.: Google Plus Profiles enriched with Knowledge Graph information) is not helping to dispell this confusion. This, among other things, reflects something that still not everybody understands: Google Plus is a multi-platform product, and not only a Social Network.

Google Plus directly influences Private Search in three different ways, each one depending on the visibility we give to the message we share on G+:

1. Only You (or "shared privately")

As you can see, the visibility in SERPs is practically immediate (10 seconds is the time I needed to switch accounts).

Privately shared Google Plus posts can be also images, as Giorgio pointed out to me:

Opportunities in sharing privately

Imagine you did a good job building an authoritative profile on Google Plus, so that you have been circled by influencers.

When you don't have a close relationship with those influencers and your outreach emails may very well bounce back or be ignored, then sharing a private post with a link to content you think they may may like and share is a great alternative.

Thanks to this sort of inception marketing, the influencers will quite surely find that post in the first page for those keywords you are targeting them for and about which you have created the content you want them to promote.

If you have wisely crafted the post in order to have a catchy tagline (the first words, which will compose the title of the search snippet) and a convincing description with a strong call to action just after, then your post has a strong opportunity for being clicked, discovered, and shared by that influencer.

2. Limited

There are two kinds of limited Google Plus posts in SERPs.

1. Posts that are shared with us because we are part of a Circle (not publicly shared), and we have the person/business page sharing it circled too;


2. Posts that are posted publicly by people/brands, who are not in the Knowledge Graph but whom we have circled

For instance, Rand is not a node in the Knowledge Graph (yet), so what I see in the right sidebar of the SERPs is his information taken from his Google Plus profile and his latest post there in a limited-labeled box.

Opportunities in limited sharing

Usually people tend to share posts only using the Public option. By doing so, they lose the opportunity to obtain more SERP real estate for branded searches.

3. Public

A posts is public when a user or a brand shares it with all the Google Plus users. These posts are presented as organic search results, and they can rank as if they were a normal web page and even reach the first positions and remain in the SERPs if they earn links.

They aren't tagged with Public as it was once, but they present authorship data, and we always see them in the first page if we have circled that user/brand.

Opportunities in sharing publicly

The opportunities are obvious in this case.

The more people who have circled your profile or your business page, the more they will see your publicly shared posts in a outstanding position in the SERPs, including for very competitive head tail keywords.

Follow those simple rules about Google Plus posts' search snippets, and you will be able to obtain important volumes of organic traffic to your G+ profile and, from there, to your site.

Be aware, though, that Public shares tend to suffer when the Freshness effect decays and, if the post is not reinforced with backlinks, it will tend to slip out of the first page and, ultimately, from the SERPs.

The difference between Search Plus Your World (SPYW) and MyAnswers

This snapshot above is an example of how SPYW was working.

As you can see, Google was declaring how many personalized results were pulled in, enhancing them with the styled person icon, and showing the photo and name of the person who socially shared the content. It even offered us a list of people and pages on Google+ related to the search we did.

Now, with MyAnswers, this is not so anymore:

No indication of how many search snippets are personalizing the SERP. No person icon.

Of note, there is also no sign of the name of the person who socially shared the content if he is not in our Circles. The SERP, then, is personalized just with those Google Plus posts that were shared by people we have in our Circles.

Finally, there's no sign of "Suggested people and pages" in the right column.

These differences show one extremely important difference between SPYW and MyAnswers:

In SPYW, if we shared something with a friend, it was seen in a preferred position in SERPs by his friends, as well. In MyAnswers it is not.

Giorgio and I did a very simple experiment, with me sharing a post with him and "Extended Circles." The result was that Giorgio could see my post in a SERP when logged in with his personal account, but not when logged in with a test G+ profile that didn't have me circled but did have his personal account circled.

What does this mean? That sharing something with "Extended Circles," as Google itself explains in a somewhat involute way, offers an opportunity to make the post visible to un-circled profiles only in Google Plus, but not in SERPs.

As I was saying in the very beginning of this post, this is why we should speak of Private Search and not of Personalized Search.

And, as we will see, there's just one way to show something shared on Plus to friends of friends: the Google +Post Ads.

The MyAnswers catalogue

The version of the catalogue I outline here must be considered just a snapshot in time of the actual situation. As Dr. Pete taught us with his #MozCast updates, Google is continuously experimenting with new formats and layouts.

MyAnswers elements are present in the SERPs both in the right-hand column and in the main body of the SERPs.

On the right we can find:

Personal profiles of users we have circled

Personal Gmail contact information

This is "Only You" information pushed into the SERP from our Gmail, and Google shows it if the contact we have in Gmail doesn't have a Google Plus profile. Note that if he/she has a Google Plus profile, this one with an "Add to circles" button will be shown instead:

Business pages

If the brand is not a node in the Knowledge Graph, the business page will be shown only if we have circled it.

If we haven't, that space on the right will be empty:

Please note that this particular example is quite strange, because Moz is present with a page in Wikipedia, so the absence of a Moz Knowledge Graph box, or of Knowledge Graph information in the Google Plus business box seems quite odd and is something we should investigate further.

Google Plus local pages

There are three cases, and in all of them the box is visible whether or not you're signed in. The biggest difference is that we won't see whether our circled friends have reviewed a local business if we are signed out.

1) A non-verified G+ local page, as in the case of the Osteria Satyricon in Bolonia (click and you will see how the "verified business" icon is absent).

2) A verified but not circled page, as in the case of the restaurant of a friend of mine in Valencia:

3) A verified and circled page:

Another possibility: A Knowledge Graph and Google Plus page/business page:

The box, as can be easily seen, is a composition of Knowledge Graph information (extract from Wikipedia and "People also search for") and Google Plus (number of followers and recent posts).

This box is also visible if you're not logged in.

Pay attention, though, that it doesn't seem working in international Google searches, such as the Spanish or Italian ones. At least, though, in the majority of cases on Google.com it does.

Knowledge Graph, Google Plus, and Google Now

Substantially similar to the previous case, but with the "Keep me updated" button, which functions to push posts by the followed profile in our Google Now Cards.

It seems it is only shown if the person is a node in the Knowledge Graph and it is not available for Business Pages (at least I wasn't able to find any).

Google Plus Hashtags Search

Since last September it has been possible to search for hashtags in Google.

That means that if you tag a post on Plus with a hashtag, your content may have the opportunity to be shown in Google searches to people who have not circled you and are not signed in.

It would be worth an independent analysis of how Google chooses which public posts to show for a given hashtag, but what it is quite clear is that freshness is an important factor, as the posts shown tend to be the ones most recently shared.

Also pay attention to the hashtags you decide to use, as it seems that the hashtag must have at least a minimum of usage in order to be shown in Google search. For instance, I tried to search #MozCast and this was the result:

Opportunities

The only way to be always visible with a box in the right-hand column of the SERPs when people are not logged in and/or have not circled us is being present in the Knowledge Graph and having a Profile/Business Page on Plus, or having a verified Google Plus Local Page.

In the first case:

1. If we already are a node in the Knowledge Graph, then we must have an active page on Google Plus. There are tons of Brands that doesn't know this and are missing a wonderful opportunity to lend visibility to their content.


2. If we are not present in the Knowledge Graph but have an active Google Plus profile/business page, we can try to earn/force inclusion in the sources that the Knowledge Graph uses: Wikipedia and Freebase.

If you have a Google Plus Local Page, then you simply should start posting updates.

In the main body of a SERP we can find:

Shared Google Plus posts

As I mentioned previously, the Google Plus posts are visible both to people who are signed in and to those who are signed out if the posts are public, but they only easily rank in a top position for head-tail keywords for people who have circled us.

And, keep in mind that freshness has a key role.

URLs shared on Google Plus

If someone we have circled shares a URL in Google Plus, the web document shared will be shown on the first page in our private searches even if it isn't in a neutral search or in a more prominent position that actually is ranking:

Note that only one person needs to share the URL, which obviously means that if we were able to earn followers on Google Plus, the simple act of sharing the URL with them will make that page stand out in their SERPs, even for very competitive keywords.

URLs that have earned +1s

If someone we have circled +1s a web document, we will see that same page excel in the SERPs for all the keywords that page may rank for:

Google Plus local reviews

This represents a great opportunity for local businesses. If a business has been circled by an influencer, it should have to try being reviewed by him on Google Plus Local (Remember: You can do it using the Schema for Gmail, too).

If he agrees, all his followers will see your search snippet enhanced by his annotation, and if that is 4 or 5 stars...

YouTube

We should not forget that Google Plus and private search are also influencing our YouTube experience when signed in.

If we click on the Social link in the left menu, we will see all the YouTube videos people we have circled have shared on Google Plus:

Also remember that if someone we have circled not only shares a YouTube video but also comments about it on Google Plus, then we will see his comment in the YouTube page of that video too. Just check the latest Matt Cutts video about Paid Links, and you will see a good example of this. Note, though, that that same Matt Cutts video doesn't show any "Google Plus activity" in the SERPs.

+Post ads

Last December Google launched the Beta of +Post Ads.

+Post Ads may be defined as the Google version of the old (and now dismissed) Facebook Promoted Posts.

For Google they also are:

1. A way of selling ads on Plus without publishing them on Plus;


2. 
   

   A brilliant idea, because it is a way to bring more people into Google Plus but making them pay to advertise.

   
   

The +Post Ads are included in the Google GDN, therefore we can easily target the right audience and do really targeted inbound marketing with practically every kind of content we can create on Google Plus:

• Images+text


• Videos


• Hangouts on air (pre, during, and post-HOA)

Users can interact with the +Post Ad directly in the site where it is published without the need to visit our Google Plus page. Obviously, they need to have a Google Profile.

From an SEO point of view, +Post Ads are a great opportunity. In fact, the more people who share and +1 the ad (and comment on it if it is a video), the more all the people in their Circles will start seeing our post standing out in SERPs (and YouTube) even for the most competitive keywords.

Conclusion

Private Search, with its combination of Google Now and Social Search (aka: Google Plus) represent a big percentage of the SERPs users see, and its majority in case of mobile search users on Android devices.

Google Plus, then, due to its cross-product platform nature, influences the search experience also of the users not using it as a Social Network.

For these reasons we must understand how Private Search works, recognize its elements in the SERPs and take advantage of the opportunities it offers to us..

Maybe it's time to start optimizing our Google Plus content, don't you think?

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Scaling Up the Effort: The Process Behind Great (Contracted) Content

Posted by MackenzieFogelson

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that it's hard work to build great content that:

a) people want to read

b) people remember and will be motivated to share

c) helps you further increase the reach of your brand

This becomes especially true when you're building content for a company that's not your own.

This post isn't about Lesson #12,753 we've so valiantly learned here at Mack Web as we grow our small (but mighty) integrated web marketing team.

It's about you and the exceptional content you need to be building on behalf of the clients you work for.

That said, if you're like us, you find solace in, and learn a great deal from, the trials and tribulations other companies face. I've broken this post into three parts, each of which tackles a big question you might be wondering about:

1. How do you build great content when you're not the expert?

2. How do you make content generation more efficient and scalable?

3. How do you build great content with contract writers?

Sit tight. I've got some ideas.

How do you build great content when you're not the expert?

We've got a content generation process that has been working pretty well for us now, but it took a ton of failing to develop it.

For a while, we were treating content generation like a factory. We had clients. They needed a strategy. That strategy called for content. We gave the specs and details for the content to our writer. She generated the content. We optimized it. It went live. We did outreach. Rinse. Repeat.

It's not that the content we were producing in our "factory" was bad. It wasn't thin. It just didn't serve a purpose beyond meeting preconceived frequency expectations for their blog. Although it was intended to add value to the conversation, it wasn't going to rise above the ever-growing noise and help them build their business and further their brand.

Our factory approach was fine for a short while, but as we started to grow, level-up, and recognize that the lack of effectively executed, fully integrated content marketing strategies would make it increasingly difficult for us to earn audience engagement, we realized our content had to be better. It had to serve a higher purpose for the brand and it needed to integrate all the appropriate channels.

Which meant, of course, that we couldn't create it in a silo anymore.

General brand stuff vs. expert content

We've found that, for the most part, our clients have needed our help with two distinct types of content in order to build their audience: general brand stuff and expert content.

General brand stuff is the content that—if you've really done your diligence to fully understand the company, their industry, their persona, and the story they're trying to tell—you can essentially create content without putting too much extra work on their plate.

You still work together throughout the process (which I'll get into more in just a bit), but really you're taking the lead, doing the majority of the work, and ensuring you have approval as you move through the different stages in the content generation process.

Expert content is content that requires the knowledge of a subject matter expert (which hopefully you will find inside the company) to produce. The expert stuff places a great deal of the content generation responsibility on the client. Your job is to act as a guide, facilitator, and editor so that you're ensuring strategic alignment, brand integrity, and that the content actually gets created and connected to its intended audience.

When you're working with a subject matter expert to develop content, it's really important that you're taking as much weight off the expert as possible, and you're also earning their trust. You can do this in a few ways:

Allow the expert to drive

You may suggest trending topics and direction based on strategy and goals but, depending on your expert's writing prowess, you don't want to get in the way by controlling the process too much. Their time is extremely limited so you want to make the process as enjoyable and efficient as possible.

If the expert is driving, your goal is to cater to their needs and aid them in any way possible. Take the time to listen, observe, understand their writing process, and how you can fit into that. As facilitator and editor you'll be providing feedback on basic grammar, transitions, focus, and depth, but you're also working to keep them on task and accountable for deadlines.

Provide the expert with the structure

Maybe the expert doesn't necessarily want the freedom to drive, but they could use your help getting the structure together. It really depends on the expert, what they're comfortable with, and what their schedule will allow.

If they need your help getting the ball rolling, you can interview them for the key takeaways, write the outline for them, and provide them with anything else they need to get that first draft going.

We've also had great success writing the first draft for the expert so that they have something to take apart, integrate their expertise, personal anecdotes and voice, and then we help them put it back together.

In general, expert content will take longer to come together. You're usually talking about people with extremely busy schedules, and unless they find value in what content marketing is doing for their brand and company, it could take months to get content out of them.

What we've found is if you're properly balancing the creation of both expert and general brand stuff, you can fill any production gaps with minimal involvement on the client's part. That way you're still getting content out and you won't have lengthy time lapses in the execution of deliverables from your content strategy.

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How do you make content generation more efficient and scalable?

As we've been growing our team and our content department, we've been working to get more out of less. We have found that investing in processes that document the stages of our everyday operations (like our client on-boarding process and the base ongoing monthly stuff we do for nearly every client) has really helped us to be more efficient, but that hasn't always been the case.

Don't get me wrong; I am a very systems- and process-oriented person. I like things to be neat, organized, and, well, systematic. As much as I believe in investing in them, I've come to learn that you can waste a lot of time and precious resources on processes that don't work, don't get used, and don't help you become more efficient.

With processes, it's not about developing something that stands the test of time (because they never do). It's more about providing guidance and suggestions for a more efficient workflow. That tends to come in the form of checklists that you're continually iterating as living, breathing, dynamic entities inside your organization.

As such, this is what we've discovered to be incredibly helpful when developing our processes:

1) Determine the problem the process is going to solve

Clearly you're taking the time to develop a process so that you can make something you do every day (or something you repeat quite often) a whole lot easier. For us, we knew we needed to create better content and work more collaboratively with our clients in order to do that. We thought a process for managing content generation might help us make those improvements.

2) Identify the people who are going to use the process

This is key. If you yourself will not actually be facilitating a process you develop, it will almost certainly die. You need the specific, relevant individuals on your team to not only believe in it, but own it, or it will go unused.

I no longer develop processes for the company and simply present them to the team to be used. I now work with the team to develop processes and the team figures out what checklists and supporting documents they need to make the process work.

3) Find the tools that will allow you to run the process

These tools don't have to be expensive. We use a lot of free software like Google Docs, Spreadsheets, and Trello. Your tools don't have to be fancy; they just need to be accessible so that the people on the team who are using them can get to them easily.

4) Use the process

We've realized that every time we use a process it's going to change. That's just how it goes. There will be specific parts of your processes that won't get altered for long periods of time, but in general, as you use them, be attentive to contrast, taking note of the stuff you'll want to take some time to analyze and eventually change.

5) Modify the process

At some point, you'll need to dedicate the time to analyze your processes, make the adjustments, and then test those modifications. This is a continuous cycle if you want your processes to really work for you and provide a return on spending the time and resources to create them in the first place. Make sure it's your team who's taking ownership of this, not management.

Some pieces to facilitate the process

As we've developed a content generation process to produce better content, we've discovered that engaging the client and using these pieces have really made a big difference:

1) Use Strategy & 2) Pitch Content

We're trying to remove as much content responsibility and workload from the client as possible. We definitely need them invested and involved, but they've hired us as an extension of their team with the hopes that we'll free up their internal resources.To that end, we use the "unless we hear differently" model as often as we can throughout the content generation process.



Whether we're developing general brand or expert content stuff, we always take the initiative and pitch the intended direction of the content to the client. We use the goals we've set and the strategy we're working from, as well as trending topics, in order to determine the content we'll be writing.

3) Collect Data

When we're ready to collect data for the content, the client is familiar with the strategy that has been developed and what we're working toward. We've already done a great deal of listening so that we can come to the client and say (with confidence), "Hey, here's how we'd like this to go. Can we have your feedback?"

Once we've worked through some of these initial conversations, we send over a data collection (a template, if you will) that looks like this:

This data collection doc communicates our intent and requests the information we need. The "unless I hear differently" part comes into play in the suggested key takeaways and then asking the client to help us come up with additional details, photos, and anecdotes to support them.

This requires less work from the client, but involves them in the process. We've found that this also puts more meaning into the content because the client is participating by contributing the stories and first-hand experiences that we don't necessarily know (and that they sometimes forget to tell us during interviews and conversations about content).

4) Develop an outline with key takeaways

Once we get all of the information we need from data collection, we create a more thorough outline of the post to get another level of approval from the client before we proceed to first draft state. This saves a ton of time. From data collection to outline, things shift from the initial, proposed direction, so providing an official outline gives us the opportunity to once again communicate exactly what the client can expect and earn their feedback and approval.

In the official outline, if we have them available at that time, we will integrate all resources and media so that we're clearly communicating what we'll be writing about and what we'll be referencing. This provides the client with an opportunity to investigate the proposed resources and provide any direction change before we fully draft the content.

5) Provide a first draft with diagramming

Once we're ready to present the first draft of the content, there's a couple really important things we do before sending it across:

Indicate key takeaways (and feedback)

This part takes me back to my English teaching days. When we turn in the first draft, we actually diagram the post to illustrate the pieces of the original outline and where the key takeaways ended up. And, if the client provided some very specific direction or feedback to us, we make sure to indicate that they were heard by pointing those out in the diagramming.

This has really helped to reduce revisions because it's a subtle way to remind the client that what we are presenting in this content is what we've all agreed to throughout the process. And, as we're drafting the content, if we feel the need to go in a different direction, we use the diagramming as an opportunity to justify the change.

Provide the entire experience

When we provide the first draft of the content to the client, we sell it. We provide it in ready-to-publish form complete with links, videos, and photos embedded so that the client gets the full experience of what it would look like live.

Writing is a very personal thing and it's very easy to get emotionally invested in the content. Using data collection, outlines, and diagramming first drafts removes the emotion and keeps everyone accountable and focused on the content. If we're reminding the client why things are the way they are throughout our interactions, they're less likely to be distracted by new ideas or different approaches. We can rely on the process to keep the client (and, honestly, sometimes the writer) focused on the intent of this piece of content. And ultimately, this helps us create better content.

These deliverables have also streamlined the way we produce content and they really show the client that we get them and are trying to make life easier for them. Even though they are more involved in the process, we're displaying more initiative and skill which further reduces the burden on their end.

Working with the client in this way has earned more trust and flexibility. We're able to demonstrate better leadership, confidence, and how much we know (and care) about their business.

The more trust we earn and the more efficient the process becomes, the more we accomplish for our clients. But even with improved efficiency, there's only so much a small team can do in-house. In order to scale, we've got to recruit outside help.

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How do you build great content with contract writers?

Like I mentioned, a team like ours is too small to effectively write all of the content for our clients in-house. Using contract writers has allowed us to conveniently scale our content department and provide better content for our clients.

There are three really important things we've discovered as we've been building our base of trusted writers:

1) Find writers who are a value match

You've got to be willing to do your due diligence and hold out for writers who are a match for your values and expectations as a company.

2) Set them up for success

You need to spend time getting the writers invested in the client they are going to write for. Set them up for success by providing them with as much information about the client that you would expect your in-house, full-time team members to know.

3) Invest in their growth

Just like an employee, you need to be willing to help your writers grow. Writing is hard and even the best writers struggle. If you want to develop lasting relationships and continue to get great content from your contract writers, you've got to be willing to invest time in their growth and development.

As we're looking for great writers, we use a Google spreadsheet to keep track of the writers that we're interested in working with.

We review writing samples, check their references, and interview them in person or via video so that we can get a feel for whether they're a value match for us and that their writing style and voice will match up with one of our clients.

Once we've selected a writer, as they write for our clients, we assess their work. After they complete a few pieces of content for us, we can get a feel for their strengths. We can also identify trends. Do they honor their commitments with us? Do they communicate well? Are they responsive? Are they willing to learn? Maybe they're not a match for the client we have them paired with but they'd be great with another. We use the same Google spreadsheet to keep track of this stuff and also include any patterns we're noticing or feedback we're getting from clients about the content.

Helping your writers grow

No matter how well you qualify your writers, there will be a trial-and-error period with every single one. If you want long-term relationships with them, you've really got to invest the time (beyond this trial period) and continue to help them grow.

When we receive a piece of content from a writer, our in-house content strategist reviews it before it's handed off to the client for feedback. She reviews for quality, alignment of purpose, and also basic editing stuff. She diagrams the key takeaways to ensure that the content is on track with what the client approved in the outline/key takeaway part of the process.

If the post needs a little bit of work, our content strategist determines whether the edits are minor enough just to make them as she's diagramming, or if she needs to schedule time with the writer to have them adjust the post.

We are diligent about communicating with our writers. If they're learning and improving along the way, we're spending less time on revisions and providing our clients with the content they need to build their brand.

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An ongoing challenge

Content plays such a huge role when building a brand and a business. Trying some of these things in our content generation process has really helped us to create better partnerships with our clients, and certainly, better content.

This stuff may be working for us now, but we realize that building great content is always going to be hard (especially as the saturation problem gets worse). It's our job to continue pushing beyond what could just get us by and discover what's really going to make a difference in our clients' businesses.

Of course, this addresses just one small part of that challenge. I certainly have not covered everything that would help you build great contracted content for your clients. Share your secrets with me below.

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