Content Marketing Tips for 2017 - SEO

Can we finally stick a fork in the term "Content is King"?

Well, not exactly. Content is still King, but there
are more granular expectations on what Google considers effective content in 2017. Content is the gasoline that drives the fancy automobile of a marketing program you have. No gas, the car sits in the garage.

And in 2017, our competition is becoming more sophisticated as well, so we must step up our game to rank.

Before we get into the specific types of content, and how to optimize them, lets look at marketing content in general and apply some basic principles.

Content should quickly communicate:

• specific value to the consumer (beautiful, interesting, emotive, fun)
• how you can create and or specifically satisfy an existing consumer need 
• your specific marketing goal: ie your competitive advantage, brand message, eliciting interaction, etc. 
• brand and contact information
• a concept or idea that creates interaction

 In general, there is Text, Image and Video.

Text: 

• Comments on forums or on other's content
• Microblogging (twitter, reddit, etc)
• Image and Video title and metadata
• Blogging
• Website text optimization front and back end
• Social media posts that index
• Article submission
• Reviews
• Ebook or Pdf downloads
• Newsletter and Email blasts

Text is very powerful. Although an image is worth a thousand words, you can draw someone into reading a 2000 word post, telling a complete story creating brand loyalty. You can also get very specific with your message to drive interaction, calls to action and the like. 

In the end, there is text optimized for humans to read, and text optimized for the google robots. It is really important to understand what audience you are writing for and when. 

Humans struggle with keyword optimized text, and it can affect the tone of your piece, and the emotive connection your reader might have to it. 

Google struggles to understand the content of images and video, so the success of all your content depends on the text used within the content, to describe or tag it. 

Keyword research is highly important, and here is a nice guide for you to get started with the process. 10 keys to keyword research

When creating copy, you should always think about the motivation to enact the action you desire, out of your piece of content. Bob Bly has the definitive book about writing copy for the internet, I highly recommend it. 

Choosing the right tone for your text can be very important. It is crucial you dont build walls between you and your audience by using too formal of a tone. 

Images: 

• Images on theWebsite
• Images on blogs
• Image posting on Image sites (instagram, imgur, flickr etc) 
• Image posting to social media
• Images in newsletter and email blasts   
• Infographics
• Profile and header images
• Image advertisements 
• Favicons

This is often done with a combination of choosing the right image, tagging it with your brand and contact information, and linking it to your owned content.

Different images have different uses, and each should be designed for the marketing channel where it will be used, and the consumer action you are trying to create.

For example, you can optimize certain images to show up in an image search, including a 'tease phrase' in bold letters, large enough to be read when the image is displayed in miniature along with a gallery of image search results. Other images may be viewed at full size, and a smaller brand message or downsized content information is appropriate.

Images of specific sizes and resolutions should be carefully chosen to match how the image will be used. This will not only ensure the right experience for the consumer, but will increase how often it is shared.

Video: 

• Website
• Blog
• Facebook
• Snapshat
• Youtube
• Vimeo
• Webinars
• Live Hangout discussions 
• Live demonstration
• Video interviews
• Video Advertisements
• GIF's marketed as text 

Whether you are selling B to B, or B to C, Video is highly valuable to most businesses these days. Most can benefit from a robust video marketing effort if they an afford it. However, each and every business should have at least one professionally developed five minute video about your business.

That said, production value is not nearly as important as the content of the video, the message you convey and how the video is optimized. Low production value video is commonly acceptable, for the most part.

However, you do want to shoot and upload your video in HD, optimize for format and length for the given channel, and optimize the associated text (url, title, description, keyword tags, CC upload, etc.)

For the most part, we have left optimization and marketing amplification out of the discussion, but we will cover this in future posts.

In general, this process of content marketing should consider the entire lifespan of the given piece of content in both design and dissemination, in order to take full advantage of the opportunity to market this piece of content.

We will do a future post about 'How to amplify your content' and cover some rather sophisticated methods of promoting your content to increase it's effectiveness.

Having fun yet?

Tony Sternad
HabaneroMarketing@gmail.com
(510) 545-2054