Brands as publishers — what does that mean, exactly?

I can tell you what it doesn’t mean:

• It doesn’t mean I have a computer and a blog
• It doesn’t mean I post content every day so I’m the winner

No, real publishing — like those who did it for hundreds of years before the Internet — has distinguishing features: processes and guidelines, to start.

In this post for the Content Marketing Institute, I outline the processes and guidelines that are key to building a publishing culture in your place of business by taking cues from traditional publishing environments. Enjoy!

 

 

I find it interesting all the fuss that’s being made over content right now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m elated that brands are putting so much focus on the quality of the content they produce, but it’s amazing that an industry can elevate the idea of content as the greatest thing since sliced bread in just a short couple years … especially when it’s been around in marketing for ages.

Content as a Form of Marketing is Ageless

Question: What’s a common way brands have been advertising and marketing for hundreds of years? If you guessed through “words,” you’re right. And in fact, whole disciplines were created and careers launched around this type of marketing. Think copywriters at ad agencies and marketing-communications professionals on a company’s marketing team. Before it was online, it was somewhere else.

And “content marketing” is not a novel concept, either. You only need look to traditional publications historically to see this in many forms. Take John Deere’s magazine, “The Furrow,” as an example of old-school brand publishing or branded cookbooks like Nestlé‘s to see how content marketing worked in the days of yore.

I was asked the other day by a reporter at Digiday (the article is here, although what I’m about to say didn’t make the cut) if brands, in their pursuit of becoming content marketers, publishers and even launching media companies, were somehow finding new ways to mask their intentions of marketing to appear more consumer-focused with these methods of communications.

And my answer to that is: Not anymore than brands have ever done (if you’ve seen “Mad Men,” you know what I’m talking about). The art of persuasion has taken many forms over the years.

The only thing that’s changed is the technology, the delivery and the accessibility of it all. And that makes it a great time to take advantage of available publishing methods. Now that we, as businesses, have the means to be as creative as we want with our content, and not be limited by the traditional media gatekeepers or to publishing only if we have a big budget for print, that puts us in a unique position.

Now Everybody’s Doing It …

Today, content has not only become a buzzword, but it’s also become this thing that everyone does. I read an email by Erika Napoletano the other day on this; she really despises the word “content.” Here’s a snippet:

I never set out to create content. I tell, every day, in some form or fashion, the story of my life. Some days, that’s business. Others, it’s dating. Others, it’s about getting your heartbroken or giving yourself the credit you’re do (because you’re fucking fabulous). Yet somewhere along the line, someone decided that all of that should all be called content. Which got confusing. Everything got all muddied up because everything became content. Blogs and articles and web copy and landing pages and images and videos and infographics and your stories and the things you love and the things you did and the things that happened to you and the heart you broke or got broken and…and…and…

It all became “content.”

I can empathize. Suddenly, everyone in digital marketing is in the business of content, and what that means is sometimes vague.

The other day, a friend and colleague mentioned how funny it was that everyone who was once doing [insert digital marketing discipline here] is now doing “content.” And here we are, she says, doing the same thing we’ve always been doing: content.

It’s true that creative marketers can come up with countless ways to make content visible online. And it’s very true that those same principles they’ve been applying for years to get content in front of the right people at the right time online still work in most cases. In that sense, these folks now touting content as the weapon are well qualified to talk about those practices that help market content.

But is “content” really what they’re doing? The description is a bit too vague.

On the flip side, we see people who traditionally would have fallen into the camp of content creators all-of-a-sudden becoming content strategists who perhaps may have no hands-on experience in executing strategy. Some may very well be suited to do this, but again, I think the term “content strategist” leaves much to the imagination.

But wait a minute, Jessica — don’t you say that bizbuzzcontent offers “content creation” and “content strategy” services?

Yep, I use the terms. Because this is what the industry is identifying with now, but how I define it may be very different than the next. And herein lies the problem.

So I think the “ugh” feeling we all get when it comes to the concept of content is the general lumping in of everything to the word, the vagueness around the practices within and the hopping on the bandwagon.

Defining Content

Yes, there are still some gray areas when we talk about content as a discipline and who does what, and it’s really up to us as an industry to help define it. Does everybody do it? Is it everything online? If we can start looking at the parts of content versus the sum of its parts, we might be better suited to make sense of it all.

This week, I had the good fortune of getting an invitation to attend ClickZ Live in NYC to help them out with coverage of the event for ClickZ.com and SearchEngineWatch.com. The sessions I picked looked at content strategy from three different angles: persona development, messaging and branded content. You can read more by following the links below …

The ABCs of Leveraging Personas for Search Success
How well do you know your customer? Grant Simmons of Homes.com led an informative session on tactics to build personas that help you better target your audience in search. Read more here at SearchEngineWatch.com.

Cut Through the B2B B.S. and Develop a Message Your Customers Will Listen To
B2B content has a different flair than B2C, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring. In this session, Craig Coffey of Lincoln Electric talks about finding the right message for the right buyer. Read more at ClickZ.com, here.

Making Branded Content Programs Work
This session, led by Robin Zucker of Playboy, Inc., discussed how to partner with other brands creatively to produce content that engages and leverages one another’s audience, including the influencers you — or they — have. Read more at ClickZ.com, here.

It’s always fun to see what the industry is up to. Not only were a lot of important and creative ideas shared, but also, for me, it helps benchmark. It was interesting to see that much of the approach in the personas session in particular is how I’ve approached persona development — of course, I got some great new ideas that I’m looking forward to applying, too! Enjoy the coverage …

 

You’ve probably heard the news by now that Google is expanding its use of “mobile-friendliness” as a ranking signal, starting April 21? This comes after small steps it has been taking to improve the search results for mobile users, including its mobile-friendly labeling system.

Now, going mobile is no longer a suggestion. It’s crucial. All of our marketing efforts – be it within the organic search channel or the paid search channel – are impacted by the quality of the Web pages we send our traffic to and the experiences they create.

So, where to begin? Here, we’ll look at some of the top considerations for your mobile content based on research and expert recommendations.

The journey begins by understanding your mobile customer base, and what they want in a mobile experience. Starting with industry research, we know that many of our customers are using mobile (not just desktop) to perform research these days.

Google’s “Mobile Path to Purchase” study showed that the search channel – not branded apps – is, in fact, the most common starting point for mobile research (48 percent start on search engines).

And, according to another study by Google (“New Multiscreen World”), 65 percent of consumers start their research on a smartphone, and 65 percent shop using the smartphone as the initial device, too.

This industry data is great, but it’s important to dive into your own website’s data, too.

If you’re simply using Google Analytics, you can get a picture of how many people are coming from mobile, like smartphones and tablets, and what they are doing when they get there – specifically bounce rate, pages visited and conversions.

You can even see which devices are the top devices amongst your audience:

Further, in Google Analytics, you should drill down into your top-performing pages or the most important pages to your business, and see what the device makeup is for those pages just so you have a benchmark. It’s interesting to look at historical data month-over-month and year-over-year to see how this is growing.

OK, so you have a grasp on what your mobile users are doing on your site, and how many of them there are. Now it’s time to consider what you’re going to do with your site to enhance its mobile friendliness.

First, how will you configure your site? While responsive design is Google’s official recommendation, Google supports other types of mobile configuration, too. It’s our job to determine the best type for the job. Some configurations are more complex than others, which is why responsive tends to be the favorite for implementation.

Each type of configuration – responsive, dynamic or separate mobile sites – has its potential pitfalls. According to research coming from BrightEdge, they found that Google does not discriminate between different types of mobile configurations in terms of ranking.

As that post by Jim Yu points out (linked to in the previous paragraph), some brands are testing dynamically served pages, where the content is not just responsive to a mobile device, but custom made for mobile users:

Some brands have decided to implement more than one configuration to further personalize the mobile experience for visitors. For example, a site may choose to use responsive design overall, but selectively choose dynamic serving for a site’s most critical landing pages.

After you’ve determined a configuration (and maybe you’re already mobile), next on the list is to consider how site speed plays into the mobile experience. As many of us are aware, site speed is a ranking signal in Google’s algorithm. We also know that Google recommends that all above-the-fold content render in one second or less for mobile users.

Because Google wants the mobile experience to be the best it can be for users, it provides a tool– PageSpeed Insights – that works as a grading system for the mobile experience that anyone can use on their pages.

Here’s an example of what the tool tells us using The Wall Street Journal online (they’re doing pretty darn good):

Regardless of which route you take, Google is quite helpful along the way with its guides and tools, like this one that can help analyze the mobile friendliness of a page.

So, the final consideration then is what type of content mobile users are truly looking for.

Consider your business and the industry you’re in. For example, if you’re a local brick-and-mortar, studies show that people are most likely looking for contact information and directions when coming to your site from a mobile device. In fact, according to Google, one in three smartphone users studied are looking for contact information on a site. So when designing, you may want to make that contact info front and center.

However, if you’re a B2B with information-rich content, for example, how you frame up your content could go a long way for mobile users.

Specifically, when it comes to landing pages (those high-value pages intended to convert visitors – be it to buy something or request a demo), conversion optimization pro Bryan Eisenberg likens desktop browsing to a full-course dinner, while mobile browsing is more like snacking, he says.

His opinion is that you want to be careful not to overdo it when it comes to mobile landing pages. More on that here:

In this post at Unbounce, professionals weigh in on what makes a stellar landing page for mobile, and again content that is specific to mobile users is at the forefront. See the following comments from Johnathan Dane and Alhan Keser in this screenshot from that post related to how to treat content for mobile landing pages:

It certainly seems like we have been talking about the importance of mobile for some time now, yet the mobile Web experience is still a testing ground for brands to find the sweet spot in content and experience.

How will you respond to your mobile audience’s needs?

Update: Here is the latest announcement from Google on April 21 regarding mobile friendliness.

I was recently invited to David Szetela’s show on Webmaster Radio: “PPC Rockstars.” His show is focused on paid media, while my specialization is on the organic side. That set us up for a nice talk about the intersection of PPC, search engine optimization and content – and how retail brands can embrace content to drive traffic and enhance the shopping experience.

I thought I’d recap the talk here in this post.

The SERP Relationship: Organic Content and Paid Content

One thing retail brands may not be thinking of is how their marketing channels can work together to drive more traffic, although I believe the habit is on the rise.

According to data I’ve been seeing, eCommerce brands in particular are starting to embrace content and the organic search channel instead of just PPC (the traditional method for retailers).

In fact, a recent study by Shop.org showed 41 percent of retailers said organic traffic was the most effective customer acquisition tactic. And, one study by Custora showed that customers coming from the organic search channel had a higher lifetime value than other acquisition channels.

And, the organic search channel and PPC have synergy. A report by Kenshoo in September 2013 showed that when a Web page was in Position 1, 60 percent of the clicks came from organic and 40 percent came from an ad from that company on the page. But, that ratio ebbs and flows … when the organic listing falls on the page, PPC picks up the slack with more clicks.

Bottom line: It’s always good to think about how you can be present in multiple ways on the search engine results page.

Using Content and SEO to Be Found

If you want to be found in organic search, you need content. And, to help the search engines better understand what the content is about, you need to optimize it.

Optimization is comprised of a great many things, but in its simplest terms, it’s about understanding the search engines and your users so your content is found at the right time.

For the purposes of this post, we’ll talk about using long-form content as part of your organic content strategy (Web pages, blog posts, etc.); this is in contrast to video, for example. Long-form content is usually appropriate for the research phase or comparison stage in a person’s shopping journey, when people are still learning about or making up their minds on a product.

As a retail brand (or any brand for that matter), the first thing you should do is ask yourself who your customers are. If you don’t have a lot of quantitative data, don’t worry – it doesn’t have to be 100 percent accurate to start, but you do need a picture of who that target customer is so you can create content for that person, or “persona.”

You’ll also want to do some keyword research to see what people are searching for, and you can do that in the AdWords Keyword Planner tool. Online advertisers should already be comfortable using that tool to perform that function.

Keyword research in itself can be an undertaking – but it only has to be as complex as you want. In other words, it doesn’t have to be complicated if you just want to see what variations of a term are driving more demand.

The next step is mapping useful content to those terms that people are searching for. Oftentimes you can back into this step – create the great content first, then modify some of the terms in the Web page or post to match the search demand.

When talking about “optimized” content, we’re talking about all those things that go into making a Web page more understandable by search engines. Optimization tells engines what the page is about, and can make it a candidate to match a searcher’s query on Google or Bing (or your search engine of choice).

This includes making sure the pages have Meta information, and that the Meta information clearly explains what the page is about. Remember the Meta information serves as your Web page’s snippet results on the search engine result page – so you want it to be good to entice click-throughs.

And while it’s slower going in terms of adoption, Schema markup is the next wave of optimization, helping brands have richer snippets in the SERP. As an example, think about when you see star ratings in the search results next to a listing.

Beyond the Click: How to Create a Great Experience

Once a user clicks through from the search results, how can retail brands create a better shopping experience with content?

Let’s think about product pages specifically for a moment. You want to ensure that whatever content you have on a Web page supports what the user is trying to do. So, put yourself in the shopper’s shoes, and ask: What type of information would be helpful?

A good exercise is to define the purpose of the page, even if it’s something very obvious. If the purpose of the page is to “sell pink dog sweaters,” write it down. Then, list everything that would help a shopper decide on a pink dog sweater and move them to the next step – the shopping cart.

What content on the page would be useful to pull in? Would a buying guide be helpful? Would a video of the product help? What about multiple views of the product or reviews of the product?

I highly recommend having a blog on the site, as a blog is a great way to add useful information on a consistent basis so the search engines keep coming back to the website to index the content, and so that users keep coming back, too.

You can then pull in any relevant blog posts onto a product page that might help a shopper on his or her journey (hint: write a series of posts on choosing dog sweaters, for example).

Retail brands may want to consider a resources section of their site filled with buying guides, videos, articles and so on, and then pull in related content onto product pages as needed. Of course, this takes some technical work. So work with a developer, technical SEO and content strategist who can advise on the implementation.

Examples of brands who are embracing some of these content concepts are:

• Overstock with their buying guides.
• Zappos, which has some useful videos to accompany their products on product pages.
• REI, which leverages in-depth blog posts and links to product pages where relevant.

Here’s a screenshot of Overstock’s buying guides integration:

Here’s a screenshot of Zappos’ video integration:

For more information on creating a great shopping experience through content, check out this post I wrote for Search Engine Watch.