Search Engine Optimization

Every month my company attends the Boston SEO Meetup, a Meetup event for local SEO and internet marketing professionals, business owners and anyone else interested in learning more about SEO. At November’s event, founder Dave Matson spent a few minutes talking to the group about some of the challenges he has writing content for his clients, criminal defense attorneys. He explained that it’s hard to get people excited and wanting to share a blog post about DUIs, but that doesn’t mean he can’t find creative ways to incorporate trending topics into his content marketing and still have it accurately reflect your brand.]

He recently wrote a blog post that talked about what Occupy protestors should do in case they were arrested during a protest. It got picked up by some of the bigger Occupy Facebook pages and received 1,000 Likes in the process! He explained that the information was pretty basic, but that it was repackaged for the right audience at the right time. Dave found a way to create content that would get people’s attention and was still in line with their brand.

Content marketing isn’t as hard as you think it is!

The number one problem most of my clients (and a lot of businesses in general) have with content marketing is that they don’t think they don’t have anything to say. First off, if you’re not passionate about the industry you’re in, it might be time to find a new job! Secondly, there are fascinating aspects about every industry that the right audience is eager to hear more about. Many of us know our industry inside and out and we forget that our audience isn’t privy to that same insider information. What you consider common knowledge might be a eureka moment for one of your readers.

A lot of B2B marketers understand the value of a strong content marketing campaign, but don’t think their products/services are as glamorous as some B2C products. Sure, it may be more fun to blog about expensive cars or designer handbags, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to make a blog about personal finance more interesting. Just look at what Mint did! You don’t even have to step that far outside of your niche to create engaging content that will not only help you connect with your audience and build your online brand, but that you’ll actually enjoy writing.

If you are really stuck for blog topic ideas, check out this content marketing topics post over on the Brick Blog.

I came across this great post the other day on searchengineguide.com. Written by Stoney deGeyter, it’s 30+ SEO analogies that struck me as funny and yet so very true at the same time. I believe in having a sense of humor about your work and this post was right up my alley. One of my favorite analogies was this,

SEO is like a Michael Bay movie. It can look pretty, but if you’re just throwing a bunch of crap at your audience, they’ll just shrug and walk away.

I think Stoney hit the nail on the end with that one, especially when it comes to content marketing, a critical component of SEO.

Michael Bay isn’t a director known for his poignant and gut-wrenching plot lines or character development; he’s the guy you call when you want to blow stuff up. And while explosions can be incredibly entertaining, there isn’t much depth or value of them other than being fun to watch.

You do not want to pull a Michael Bay when it comes to your content marketing! Fluff and promotional content may look pretty, but it isn’t going to do any good for your brand or your audience in the long run.

Here are 3 rules you should follow to create great content that is both entertaining AND useful:

1. Strive to teach your reader something
It’s not about you, you brand or your products. Your content should focus on the reader and what they need. Do they have a question you can answer? Can you teach them something new? Is there a problem you can help them solve? Don’t just churn out content that shows off how great your products and services are; make sure you focus on what’s in it for your target audience.

2. Simple is good
Ever come across the phrase “too long, didn’t read” (also shown as TLDR) anywhere in the blogosphere? It means that the reader didn’t bother to read the entire post/article because it was too much to handle at once. You don’t want to throw pages and pages of text heavy content at your readers; most won’t take the time to get through it. Bullet points, lists, infographics and so forth—anything that can break up or condense you content into manageable chunks is useful for your content marketing. You don’t have to be afraid of the long article, but you don’t want to intimidate your readers either.

3. Keep it focused
Sometimes your content marketing cup runneth over and you’re brimming with ideas. Don’t throw them all down in the same piece of content, especially for your blog posts. Pick one idea and flush it out completely. It’s more valuable as a reader to get all the information about one thing than it is to get snippets from a dozen different ideas. By focusing your content on one main idea, you make it easier for your target audience to find the information they are looking for.

Since content is anything that is public and shareable, it can spread across multiple platforms. That’s why it’s so important to ensure consistent branding and messaging with your content recycling campaign. Make sure images, logos, author bylines, contact information and other pertinent information are consistent with each other. This makes it much easier for someone to do business with your brand, no matter which touch point they connect with you at.

Watch this week’s SEO video tip here!

For more SEO video tips and lessons from Nick Stamoulis, check out the Brick Marketing SEO video lesson archive .

Once you decide to invest the time and energy in a content marketing campaign, you have to determine what kind of content you will focus on creating. It could be educational, informational, promotional or newsworthy or a combination of all four. Just make sure that the content you are creating is inline with your online business goals and is the kind of content your target audience is looking for.

Watch this week’s SEO video lesson here!

For more SEO video tips and lessons from Nick Stamoulis, check out the Brick Marketing SEO video lesson archive .

Incorporating videos into your online marketing is essential to success. While coming up for ideas for your video marketing may be intimidating at first, the trick is to not over think it! Videos allow you to connect with your target audience in a new and engaging way and don’t have to be expensive to be useful for your customers.

Watch this week’s SEO video lesson here!

For more SEO video tips and lessons from Nick Stamoulis, check out the Brick Marketing SEO video lesson archive .