SEO and Website Image Optimization 10-Point Checklist for Marketers

SEO image optimization should be second nature for content marketers, but it’s easily overlooked. Search traffic loses when haste wins.

Before I get into all of the nuances and tips, I want to be clear. Google still highlights some poorly optimized images on the primary and image search results. Why? Google is all about presenting the right information when it can. If the content is relevant to a search phrase, the image could appear high even if it misses the mark in terms of best practices.

For example, I searched for “excavators” on Google and John Deere did well even with a generic image name (r4a037882_rrd_75g_642x462.png). It was an image option among primary search results, not from an image search.

But that’s some of the time, not all of the time.

Why not at least tackle the basics to give your brand the best opportunity to succeed with SEO and images on Google and other search engines?

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1. Optimize images for SEO and the good of your site content

Yes, you want your images to appear with search results. But image optimization has more significant implications. SEO tactics play off each other. Each element – from the headline and the SEO page title to internal and inbound links – influences search-engine rankings. Images also play a role in the overall SEO value of a page.

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Headlines, #SEO page titles, and links influence search-engine rankings, says @mikeonlinecoach.
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2. Name images adequately

Generally, however, you can name images with keyword phrases and separate the words with dashes (some people call them hyphens). How many words? I suggest three to five. Could you use more? Sure, but what’s the point? A laundry list dilutes the image name and it can lose focus.

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For #SEO, name images with 3 to 5 keyword phrases & separate the words with dashes, says @mikeonlinecoach.
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Image names should be somewhat descriptive. Years ago, I spoke with one company that used general images to support an article’s overall theme. One story was about turbulence in the stock market. The image was a boat on a stormy sea. The image was called “boat” instead of anything involving the article.

Kroger, like many companies, uses first-rate images with useless names like:
53d8b67784aeddff2ec91bed.jpg

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3. Avoid abbreviations

No matter what you’re selling, maximize those keywords. Don’t settle for “pkg” when you mean “package” or “ind” for “industrial.”

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4. Condense and combine non-essential image elements

If you’re obligated to include image dimensions, special numbers, or “sm” for “small,” tuck them at the end and squish them together. Cozy is good for SEO.

Here are options for obligatory elements:

• applicant-tracking-software-250×400-sm.jpg (not fully optimized)
• applicant-tracking-software-250400sm.jpg (better)

Notice that I kept a dash after “software” to ensure that the keyword is separated.

Do you need to remove the “x” between the dimension numbers? One character may not make a difference, but you aren’t trying to rank for image sizes. “Jam” phrasing should rule for SEO purposes for non-essential info.

5. Use naming conventions efficiently

Production and naming conventions may force you to begin an image name with numbers or letters. It doesn’t mean that you can’t use the bulk of the image name for keywords.

Maybe you are under pressure to go with “xyzdiv” for a section of the website or a division. No problem, try this: “xyzdiv-surgical-elastic-bandages.jpg”.

6. Value consistent naming and productivity sensitivity

One of my clients uses the same image each time to reference a manufacturer’s logo. You might run into production nightmares if you name a single image multiple ways.

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If you name a single image multiple ways, you could run into production nightmares, says @mikeonlinecoach. #SEO
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For example, if you have a logo image called “dayco-engine-products.jpg”, you don’t want someone else working on the site to rename the logo image to “dayco-aftermarket-parts.jpg”. Multiple names for the same image are too much to manage when you use it often. If you rename a commonly used image, it may vanish from another live page and you may not notice the mistake.

7. Detail image alt attributes

Alt text is useful for visually impaired searchers who rely on screen readers or when images aren’t loading for some reason. Either way, Google finds the alt text and includes it as a ranking factor.

No one knows the perfect number of words, but plan on 10 to 15 to convey something about the image. Describe what’s happening, mention some of the features of a product, note colors, etc. Don’t simply repeat the same words from the image name.

CVS Health doesn’t nail it, but the company comes close.

The image name is: cvs-health-cvs-beauty-skincare-and-makeup-article-image.png.

The words “and” and “article” probably don’t provide value, but the text attribute is decent: alt=”CVS Pharmacy offers thousands of your favorite makeup, beauty and skincare products.”

8. Craft image titles

You see the image titles when you hover over an image on a website page. Image titles have some value – more from user engagement, which indirectly influences SEO. It’s not clear the extent to which the words in the image title impact search engine rankings, but you could add a quick call to action like “buy now” or “download today.”

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Add a quick call to action to your image titles to indirectly influence #SEO, says @mikeonlinecoach.
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9. Add captions

Unlike the image name and alt attribute, the caption text is visible on a website page (and that helps with rankings). You can use some of the same keywords from the image name or alt attribute, but try to mix it up. Every aspect of image optimization should have some unique keywords to support SEO.

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10. Detail anchor text

On occasion, you have an opportunity to include anchor text that leads to an image. Don’t just write “view image.” Guide visitors – and search engines –with descriptive words like “view our Alaska cruise gallery” or “view our compactor.”

Bonus tip: Image sizes

As you probably know, 72 dpi is a standard resolution for images and website development. Keep that in mind. You don’t need to upload a 300 dpi image in most cases because you want the image size to be as small as possible so it appears quickly. Users will appreciate it and search engines will favor pages that load fast.

What’s your experience with SEO and image optimization? What practices work well for you and what challenges do you face with your team?

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Want to ensure that your content (text and images) is optimized for great results from search engines and your audience? Subscribe to CMI’s free daily newsletter or the weekly digest with exclusive insight from CMI founder Joe Pulizzi.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post SEO and Website Image Optimization 10-Point Checklist for Marketers appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

4 Steps To Monetize Your Blog Like A Professional

Content might be king, but bloggers certainly struggle to feel like royalty. Maintaining a profitable blog in a crowded online market is genuinely challenging. Not only do bloggers have to find their niche, create great content, stay up-to-date, and encourage interactions, but they also have to find a way to make money off of their blogs.

Monetization is, no doubt, the biggest challenge any blogger will face. So, here’s a four-step strategy that could help you overcome these issues and monetize your blog like a professional:

Step 1. Understand Your Source of Income

Most bloggers make the fundamental mistake of not recognizing their client. As a blogger your community is your service. Your job is to find an audience that shares your niche interest and then connect that audience to brands that would like to approach them.

Blog’s generate income from digital marketing agencies, so it’s important to understand what they need. Agencies are constantly on the lookout for great content within a specific niche. These agencies are tasked with finding a target audience for their client’s business. Communicating with the right audience is their top priority. Once you understand this you’ll be able to hone your messaging more effectively.

Step 2. Use The Right Tools

After you’ve taken the time to define your target clientele (digital marketing agencies) you need to make sure your blog is meeting their benchmarks. The most logical way to do this is to benchmark the blog using tools most popular with digital marketing agencies. This includes MOZ, SEMrush, MAJESTIC, and sistrix. These tools are commonly used to dissect blogs and rank them on the basis of quality and quantity of their traffic. Digital marketers use them to understand how valuable your blog is, which is why you must use the same tools to track your performance.

Step 3. Benchmark

Once you’ve shortlisted the tools, you need to ensure our blog meets the minimum benchmarks on each of them. MOZ, for example, considers a Domain Authority score of 20 a minimum. Similarly, you can aim for a minimum traffic score of 1,000 on SEMrush and Trust Flow of 20 on Majestic. Meeting these benchmarks is absolutely essential for monetization.

Step 4. Get Discovered

Traditionally, digital marketers would directly email a blogger if they were interested. This helped them create a working relationship but the process is slow, tedious, and inefficient. Professional marketers are now more likely to use content distribution services to find the best blogs. These platforms list blogs alongside crucial test data from tools like MOZ, SEMrush, and Majestic. It makes it easier for quality blogs to get discovered and for digital marketers to find the right fit. Using these services is absolutely essential if you want to get discovered by the top agencies and monetize your blog successfully.

These four simple steps should have a noticeable impact on your blog’s ability to generate revenue. Once your blog meets the basic requirements you can turn your focus on maintain great content.

Original post: 4 Steps To Monetize Your Blog Like A Professional

This post is courtesy of: http://www.dailyblogtips.com

3 Hidden Lessons Behind Top Podcasts to Help Yours Stand Out

Every morning, I commute to work with about 20 of my closest friends. And they all fit neatly in my pocket.

OK, so I’m really talking about podcasts. There aren’t actual tiny people in my pocket. Except for Steve, the tiny person who lives in my pocket. Obviously.

Anyway, if you’re a fan of podcasts like I am, you’ll know why I dubbed them my “friends.” Each show feels built just for you. You get to know a host or a brand’s quirks and personalities in a deeper way than you can with most other forms of content. Podcasting is intimacy that scales.

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#Podcasting is intimacy that scales, says @jayacunzo.
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However, that personal, almost casual feel of many podcasts belies their true nature: A great show is incredibly hard to create.

Despite the difficulty in creating an addicting show, more brands are launching their own podcasts to support their marketing, including Slack, GE, eBay, HubSpot, Buffer, and venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to name a few.

But marketing teams face problems in keeping their show both consistent and high quality. Just ask brands that started strong then “pod faded” like Prudential or those with endless resources and smarts who can’t seem to grasp the simplest quality issues in their sound or listener experience like McKinsey.

While there’s virtually no barrier to entry to create and share a show, there’s tremendous friction in making that show great.

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A #podcast has virtually no barrier to entry, but there’s tremendous friction to make it great, says @jayacunzo
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Luckily, if we squint hard enough, we can see how top shows stay afloat and, more importantly, innovate. Let’s take a look at a few podcasts, each with one major productivity lesson we can learn for our own podcast process – as well as other forms of content marketing.

At the end, I’ve shared a template for a Trello board to help organize your podcast’s editorial pipeline.

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Lesson 1: At first, format trumps talent

­This is a hard pill to swallow, especially for someone like me. (I host two shows – one for my own business about creative intuition, and one for NextView Ventures about early-stage startups.) But as my executive producer Andrew Davis likes to say, “The audience has to fall in love with the format before they can fall in love with the talent.”

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#Podcast audiences have to love the format before they can fall in love with the talent, says @DrewDavisHere.
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In thinking about any truly big, special podcast, he’s right – there needs to be some kind of underlying plan to your show. It improves both efficiency and quality. It helps you ditch the meandering, awful intros that lose listeners. It helps you keep producing episodes when other things get in the way. And it ensures that you spend time thinking about the experience for the audience, not just the name of the guest and the size of his or her Twitter following. (Besides, if you’re in an industry that has a popular list of influencers, as I am in marketing, your listeners will be sick of the same names that appear on every single podcast or in every single blog in the industry.)

Ask yourself: What’s my show’s episode format?

Where we can learn this: The Full Monty from Scott Monty, CEO of Brain+Trust Partners

Scott Monty is the former head of social media for Ford and a well-known keynote speaker and brand strategist. He now leads the C-suite advisory group, Brain+Trust. His weekly newsletter, The Full Monty, features a companion podcast of the same name – a weekly, 15-minute show.

The hallmark of the show, aside from Scott’s golden voice, is a really tight format that helps him produce episodes with minimal time and budget while still delivering a really great product to his listeners.

Looking under the hood of his podcast, here’s Scott’s format, broken into blocks, similar to how a TV show writers’ room would view it:

• A BLOCK: Intro – 60 seconds: Scott intros the show concept in about 30 to 40 seconds. Then he gives you the headlines he’ll cover in the episode in the next 20 to 30 seconds.

• B BLOCK: Lead story – 4 to 5 minutes: Scott then gives one quick headline (e.g., “LinkedIn Spam”) that’s compelling enough to make you keep listening. He gives you the source of the story first, whether it’s coverage of a news event or a personal anecdote that led to a realization. He finishes this section with a clever limerick about the story.

• C BLOCK: Trivia question – 30 seconds: You then hear tuba sounds and an announcer briefly introducing the trivia section. Scott delivers the question and promises the answer at the end of the show – a great tactic to help him accomplish really the No. 1 job of any good host: Get listeners to finish the episode. The tubas then transition into the next section.

• D BLOCK: Page 2 – 4 to 5 minutes: The second and final large chapter of his episode is called Page 2. Scott teases a larger lesson from something that happened in the last week. For instance, when CBS Sunday Morning host Charles Osgood retired, Scott used Page 2 to talk about the cult of personality – a large topic with something both brands and individuals can learn in the era of social media, personal brands, and mini-media empires built around people. As in B Block, Scott closes with a limerick about the preceding story. He then plays a quick musical tone to move to the next section.

• E BLOCK: Trivia answer – 30 seconds: Scott answers the trivia question, followed by one final tuba sound signaling the end of the trivia and end of E Block.

• F BLOCK: Calls to action – 2 minutes: You hear the usual housekeeping list (got a story? can you rate us? want to subscribe?). Then, Scott points out a couple big news items from his newsletter that didn’t make the podcast, as well as the big questions they create. In doing so, he teases listeners to check out the newsletter.

• G BLOCK: Outro – 30 seconds: A similar sign plays each time, culminating in him saying, “I’m Scott Monty, and I’ll see YOU … on the internet.” The announcer reminds listeners to subscribe to the newsletter. Then, the music stops, and Scott drops one inside joke about the week that was (e.g., “I’m surprised the Emmys didn’t award Best Reality Show to the Donald Trump campaign.”)

Look, I know you’re thinking, “Man, that’s a lot!” And it is. Remember, that’s just a 15-minute show. But now that Scott can predictably and consistently create a high-quality episode, he can experiment with that rundown, produce more and better shows, and ultimately help the listener fall in love with The Full Monty.

Avoid the race to the bottom of simply booking the biggest guests in your niche and meandering through an unplanned episode. Instead, find your format.

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Lesson 2: Time constraints are your strength (Spoiler alert: Nobody wants your 60-minute show)

The beauty of podcasting is its open-endedness, and the danger of podcasting is, well, its open-endedness. So many things prevent us from creating an episode worth finishing. One issue is the amount of stuff we pack into an episode since we never get “talker’s block.” Another is that guests who readily agree to appear often love to talk – and they can often take the interview in directions you wish they hadn’t. Lastly, we simply fall in love with the wide open creative field that is podcasting and careen around without purpose.

But just like an episode rundown puts constraints on the creative, a time target provides the necessary constraint to make you a better host/producer/writer for your show.

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A time target constrains you to become a better host/producer/writer for your #podcast, says @jayacunzo.
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I know you love listening to your own 60-minute episode. You even hear from colleagues and others in your network that they love the show. And while drop-off data is tough to come by with this medium, look in the mirror and ask yourself: Is 60 minutes really necessary to deliver the most value to others?

If you answered yes, please call, email, or tweet me. Because, well, why don’t you just sit down a moment? We need to have a little talk …

Where we can learn this: The Way I Heard It from Mike Rowe

Mike is the host of the popular show Dirty Jobs and arguably the only podcast host whose voice is higher-karat gold than Scott Monty’s.

Mike’s show is a lot looser than Scott’s, containing fewer individual sections in the episode rundown. But Mike’s extremely tight time target makes the episodes incredibly good listening. While many of us struggle to keep an interview to less than 60 minutes or perhaps 30, Mike’s target is an eyebrow-raising 10 minutes! TEN! How can you possibly deliver value in the same time it normally takes branded shows to finish the intro music and resumes of its guests?

Well, Mike’s a pro who, yes, comes from TV, where the show rundown and time constraints are simply realities. He knows the value of maximizing every moment, and while this certainly makes the creative amazing, it also makes him way more productive than the average marketer.

Not unlike you, Mike’s a busy guy. He hosts Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel. He hosts another on CNN. He narrates several more. He does commercials, most notably for Ford. All of that requires travel and preparation time. On the side, he launched a foundation focused on blue-collar workers and jobs. So naturally, he wanted to launch a podcast, that friction-filled media project.

When he can finally find time to sit in a studio, don’t you think it behooves him to record multiple episodes? Kinda hard to do that with 60-minute shows, no? With his 10-minute format, not only is he forced to deliver just the good stuff, he can knock out tons of episodes in just a couple hours’ time. Brilliant.

Lesson 3: Create recurring segments or content brands within the show

Simply by trying a bunch of potential segments or series within your show, you can see what your audience loves and redeploy those segments periodically on a repeat basis. You can even give that section a name or a musical intro. Again, we’re killing two birds with the same stone, because man, how much do you just hate birds?

The first bird to aim for is the listener experience, and the second is your productivity. The experience gets better when a listener feels that sense of intimacy, and a semi-recurring content brand helps your audience feel like they’re “in” on it. They know what to expect and eagerly anticipate these sections of your show.

The second avian adversary to address is your own productivity. When you’re pressed for time, lack material, or need to work on something else, you now have a predictable section or entire episode style to use.

Here’s what this might look like …

Where we can learn this: Reply All from Gimlet Media

Gimlet creates highly produced podcasts, including Reply All, a show that claims to be “about the internet,” but really focuses on the human condition through the lens of the web. Over time, hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman have established multiple content brands within their show.

One such brand is called Yes-Yes-No. The concept is simple but addicting: The co-hosts’ boss and Gimlet CEO Alex Blumberg finds a tweet involving internet culture that he doesn’t understand, and the boys help him get it. Typically, the tweets involve multiple layers of internet meme-dom (e.g., a GIF from the presidential election but shared with someone’s comment that pulls from another internet trope). They begin the section by defining what a Yes-Yes-No is. Once listeners hear the tweet, each host and the CEO reveals whether or not they understand it. Generally, the co-hosts both say yes, while Blumberg says no – hence the name.

Bonus lesson: How to organize a podcast’s editorial pipeline

As a bonus, I wanted to share a public Trello board outlining the editorial pipeline of a story-driven podcast. Feel free to borrow, adapt, or outright steal from this – since it’s my show, I can say such things.

My podcast, Unthinkable, explores the interesting trend of everyone racing to average by following a list or best practice. How do you break from that cycle to create exceptional content instead? My thesis is that you have to trust your intuition. It won’t come from someone else’s idea or advice. I ask big, ambitious questions and want to match that concept with a big, ambitious show style.

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Create exceptional things by trusting your intuition, says @jayacunzo.
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All of this to say: My workflow could derail. Fast! So we rely heavily on Trello to stay organized, and I wanted to take you behind the scenes in the hopes it’ll help you better turn your creative intuition into action.

Image source

You can view the board here. If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer in the comments.

Want to hear how Jay’s three lessons work in CMI’s podcast, This Old Marketing? Subscribe to the free weekly podcast through iTunes or Stitcher.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post 3 Hidden Lessons Behind Top Podcasts to Help Yours Stand Out appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Stop Killing Your Content Team: 3 Ways to Scale Work With Existing Resources

Year after year, many content teams are asked to deliver more and better content with the same staff and budget. In fact, 73% of B2C marketers say they plan to produce more content in 2017 than they did in 2016.

But how? Here are three foundational tips for increasing output without burning out your team and losing the talent you rely on. (You may be surprised that only one tip is directly related to the content.)

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1. Learn to say no to unnecessary work

One way to scale your work with the resources you have is to let go of any content tasks that aren’t meeting your team and company goals. While this can be tricky to determine, there’s one simple question to ask, according to Michele Linn: Would anyone miss your content if you did not publish it?

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Let go of any #content tasks that aren’t meeting your team and company goals, says @hehurst.
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Ouch. Obviously, if you’re just starting down a content path, you have to give it time before people will miss it. But if you’ve been at it consistently for a while, and you can’t honestly say anyone would notice if you stopped publishing, maybe you should rethink that channel or strategy.

At an earlier employer, I inherited a content channel that I wasn’t convinced was integral to my team’s goals or necessary to overall business objectives, but the project’s sponsor lobbied strongly for us to continue publishing on it. We did so, until a technical glitch blessedly intervened. After a couple of months, with the glitch still not fixed, it became clear that not only did the intended audience not miss the content, neither did anyone inside the company. Saying adieu to that project was an easy proposition, and my team was freed for more relevant work.

But these decisions aren’t always so clear-cut.

It can be helpful to build a business case for each initiative, whether your goal is to justify to yourself how you’re allocating your resources, to prove the value of an initiative that others are questioning, or to justify letting go of a project you doubt but others champion.

Martin Webster wrote a how-to guide for creating the perfect business case. He says the purpose is to “outline the why, what, how, and who necessary to decide if it is worthwhile to continue a project.” Each business case for your content efforts doesn’t have to be as detailed as Webster suggests as long as all of the high-level ingredients are included.

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2. Get better at managing and prioritizing your work

Nobody likes a fire drill. You know, the kind where you get to stay late and work the weekend, all because someone didn’t plan well enough for the work to be accomplished.

Planning the resources needed, time estimated, and steps to take to accomplish a big deliverable is certainly an art. A lot of technology solutions, including project and work management software, can help to take the guesswork out of it. Whether you use software or not, it all starts with a solid process and building good work habits with your team. You can get back your nights and weekends by following these underlying principles:

• Automated work assignments: Use a standardized template to assign work the same way, every time. Automate this as much as possible to cut down on manual effort. You also can use this tool to view each team member’s workload before you drop a new assignment into the queue.

• Transparency for everyone’s workload: Whether you use an Agile burndown chart, a Kanban Work in Progress board, or software that achieves the same thing, seeing every team member’s top priorities at a glance makes it easier to slip new assignments into the mix, keep work balanced across the team, and reassign work as needed to keep work flowing at a steady pace.

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• Communication efficiencies: Anything you can do to cut down on unnecessary meetings (like status meetings) will give your team more time to focus on their most important work. In a recent survey, 62% of marketers say unnecessary meetings are the biggest culprit in productivity interruptions. That same survey reveals that after email, meetings, and other daily distractions, marketers are only able to spend 38% of their time on their primary job duties. Given these staggering realities, the more you can communicate and collaborate via Slack, Trello, or work-management software, the more time you free for content creation.

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Cut down on unnecessary meetings to give your #content team more time to focus on most important work. @hehurst
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• Streamlined proofing and approvals: If you still send proofs of your content for review by email, wait for responses, and aggregate feedback before making changes, you could be leaving hours of precious time on the table. Digital-proofing solutions like ProofHQ and WebProof allow every stakeholder to review and comment on everything from PDFs to videos to webpages in a shared space.

The benefits of better managing and prioritizing your work go beyond simply being more organized and productive. You’ll also improve morale, make more informed decisions about projects and personnel, and have more reliable data to justify staffing requests.

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3.  Leverage the content you already created more effectively

Finally, some direct content talk. There’s a wealth of information available to help with everything from treating your content team like a newsroom, to livening old content and atomizing one killer piece of content into 10.

Alongside these bullet-proof suggestions, I offer the environmentally friendly reduce-reuse-recycle approach to content marketing:

• Reduce the cadence, scope, or effort involved in your content releases – or perhaps a little of each – to relieve some pressure on your team. After all, when it comes to content marketing, frequency matters far less than consistency, relevancy, and quality. Using blog publishing as an example, will your audience object (or notice) if you publish three times per week instead of four? Will the world end if you take a few posts per month and convert them from original content to curated pieces? These low-effort posts can require nothing more than assigning a writer to find a thoughtful, relevant article somewhere on the web, write a brief personal reaction to the piece, quote from it, and link to the original.

• Reuse interview material, quotes, graphics, data sources, and topics to get the most bang from your initial investment. Angie Lucas, a Salt Lake City-based freelance writer, was asked by a client to ghostwrite six articles under three bylines for multiple publications that all pointed to the same report – in a time span of about a month.

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Reuse interview material, quotes, graphics, data sources, & topics to get the most bang, says @hehurst.
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“You might think you’d get better and more differentiated results by assigning the articles out to six different writers,” Angie says, “but I’ve found that you can save a lot of time and effort by having the same person tackle them all. Plus, it avoids accidental overlap.”

Angie says she conducted just a couple of interviews as a basis for all the articles, using different quotes from piece to piece. Relevant, particularly compelling statistics from the report were quoted in nearly every article.

Further, she was so familiar with each piece that if she wanted to make a similar point in another article, she could quote the bylined author of one of her other ghostwritten articles.

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• Recycle content when possible, transforming it into something new with each iteration. At Workfront, we invest in an in-depth survey such as the annual State of Work. From that research, we typically publish the full report, an infographic, a blog post sharing unique insights from the infographic, a SlideShare presentation, a blog post sharing a new and unique angle about the SlideShare presentation, a video or two, and more. Conference presentations or webinars often follow. The key with recycling content is to change the form rather than engage in mindless repetition.

Marketer Emily King describes it this way: “Atomization can squeeze more value from your successful content. It can bring that content to new audiences by adapting it for platforms and consumption preferences. It can extend the value of an existing piece of content by months or – as in our case – years.”

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Atomization can extend the value from your successful #content by months or years, says @ek6891.
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Angie says she has been asked to revise a previously ghostwritten article line by line. “The client had a publication opportunity for one of their executives on a prestigious website, and it turns out we had covered that exact topic a couple of years earlier,” she says. “Given that the executive was unavailable for a new interview under the timeline, I was asked to rewrite the old article sentence by sentence, finding new supporting quotes and updating the research. In the end, there wasn’t a single phrase duplicated between the two. It was quick, efficient, and it met the goal.”

CPR for your content team

The constant drive to produce more and better work, even without additional resources, doesn’t have to put your team into cardiac arrest. In fact, if you focus on your underlying processes, get better at managing and prioritizing your work, learn to say no, and follow the three Rs (reduce, reuse, and recycle) – you’ll be a few steps closer to creating the consistent, relevant content that your audience craves.

Want daily assistance to help your content team? Subscribe to CMI’s free newsletter.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Please note:  All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

The post Stop Killing Your Content Team: 3 Ways to Scale Work With Existing Resources appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

This Week in Content Marketing: The Battle for Custom Content

PNR: This Old Marketing with Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose can be found on both iTunes and Stitcher.

In this episode, Robert and I discuss the ongoing battle among publishers, agencies, and brands to dominate the content space and gain audience mindshare. In other news, while The New York Times releases its annual health report, we define the true role of the journalist. We share rants and raves on commitment and climate change; then we close out the episode with a missed content marketing opportunity in our example of the week.

This week’s show

(Recorded live on January 22, 2017; Length: 0:58:46)

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1.    Notable news and upcoming trends

• The battle for custom content keeps heating up (08:15): In a new video blog post, AdAge offers its perspective on whether agencies or publishers will emerge as the dominating force in the custom content space. And, in a follow-up article, AdAge lends support to the publisher side of the argument by outlining global marketing consultancy R3’s annual M&A report, which contends that publishers acquiring agencies was, perhaps, the biggest marketing business trend to emerge over the past year. While I’m surprised that AdAge took so long to enter this conversation, I’m hoping this will be the shot in the arm that agencies need to start accepting that building an audience is the key to content success. We also discuss what could be blocking brands from making their own inroads to become the media that serves their niche.

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Building an audience is the key to #content success, says @joepulizzi. #ThisOldMarketing
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• The New York Times sets its digital path forward (22:48): On its NeimanLab website, Harvard University’s foundation for promoting and elevating the standards of journalism offers a thorough analysis of The New York Times’ recently released multimedia publication: Journalism That Stands Apart: The Report of the 2020 Group. Among the points Robert and I debate are whether The New York Times intends to continue relying on paid subscriptions as the linchpin of its business model, whether it’s realistic for publishers to expect its content creators to be adept at web coding, and ways the publication might be able to continually evolve and differentiate its content.

2.    Sponsor (33:15)

• Pressly: The Starter’s Guide to Sales Enablement: It’s no secret that sales and marketing departments have a complex relationship. Each has entirely different objectives, workflows, and methods of measuring performance. But these departments also share the same essential need: Both require the right content, at the right time, in order to do their jobs. Pressly’s Starter’s Guide to Sales Enablement dives into how you can align sales and marketing and start building conversion-focused content today. Download it now!

3.     Rants and raves (35:45)

• Robert’s rave: Robert gives big props to Adam Kleinberg, CEO of San Francisco-based agency Traction, for his thoughtful – and completely spot-on – editorial recently published on Adweek. Robert views the piece, which runs through what it really takes for agencies to achieve success with content marketing, as a strong step toward educating this community and ensuring that they are prepared to walk the walk when making a commitment to the discipline.   

• Joe’s rave: I recently caught an episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, which featured Arnold Schwarzenegger. In it, the former governor of California criticizes environmentalists for communicating on the issue of “climate change” in terms of its future probabilities rather than focusing on “pollution,” which is a current and dangerous reality. I think this is something content marketers can certainly relate to – and should be cognizant of. If your content isn’t achieving its goals, consider the possibility that you are hitting the right mark with your content, but just need to find different words to inspire and activate your target audience.

4.    This Old Marketing example of the week (46:35)

• The People’s Choice Awards took place this past week. The televised ceremony has been around for many years; but what you may not know is that the event is not a Hollywood industry construct – it is fully owned by Procter & Gamble, and has served as a content marketing platform for the company since 1982. In fact, ads aired during the show have always been exclusively for P&G brands, though the company has started to introduce non-competitive brands into the mix as an additional revenue stream over the last few years. With this in mind, Robert decided to dig a little deeper into the People’s Choice Awards digital channel, and found it to be a wonderful content hub for all things related to entertainment. The site features editorial coverage of entertainment news, as well as polls, surveys, video clips, a subscriber newsletter, and more. The site also sells advertising. However, when he went looking for P&G ads, Robert made a fascinating discovery: It seems that the mobile, social, and web experiences are owned by the company to which P&G outsources production of the televised show – Mark Burnett & Hearst Integrated Media. And it’s one of that company’s properties – One Three Media – that controls the website. So regardless of the website’s strengths as a content marketing vehicle, in our minds P&G is missing a huge marketing opportunity by failing to integrate the TV and digital channels for this entertainment brand or to take advantage of year-round consumer interest in the awards show.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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The post This Week in Content Marketing: The Battle for Custom Content appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

3 Brands Driving Change With Social Video

Cause marketing can be a tough sell. You need to tell a story that compels the audience to take action, while resisting the pitfalls of coming across as desperate or preaching. The medium can make a big difference.

Unlike static images or text, video gives cause marketers the sensory tools to tell the type of rich, moving story that delivers important information while conjuring necessary emotion. To be successful, cause-related content needs to be sufficiently informative so viewers understand the cause, as well as appropriately digestible so they find it easy and enjoyable to share with others. It also has to be timely so it can be part of a larger conversation happening around the cause. Like any video, it needs to grab the viewers’ attention in 3 to 10 seconds to stop them from scrolling past. And it needs to be relatable and relevant to your audience so they are inclined to engage with you.

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#Video gives marketers the sensory tools to tell rich, moving stories that conjure emotion, says @CyndiC02.
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All that sounds like a tall order, but best practices can help marketers check all those boxes when approaching cause-marketing content. I’ve taken a closer look below at a few brands that got it right: Rescue Chocolate (self-disclosure: an Animoto customer), Girls Who Code, and UPS.

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Rescue Chocolate takes a stand against Montreal’s pit-bull ban

Brooklyn-based Rescue Chocolate donates 100% of its net profits from the company’s organic chocolate sales to animal rescue organizations around the country.

Last September, Montreal’s city council passed a bill severely restricting pit-bull ownership and adoption that would have led to an increase in pit bulls in city shelters being euthanized. As the decision became international news overnight, Rescue Chocolate posted a video to its Facebook page to take a stand against the law with a link to a Change.org petition. Over 360,000 views, nearly 10,000 shares, and 500-plus comments later — this small business played an integral role in raising international awareness. The SPCA of Montreal filed suit to stop the law.

Why did the video work? It was:

• Timely – The video gets posted one day after the Montreal bill was passed. Rescue Chocolate responds quickly to a story as it was trending, inserting themselves into breaking news in an organic way.

• Short – At just 30 seconds, the video gets the message across without fuss by putting the dogs front-and-center from the beginning.

• Simple – It uses a short video clip accompanied by a mix of original and stock images. An emotional, instrumental score adds gravity to the imagery. The law’s consequences are outlined in short, pointed blocks of text that don’t overwhelm the images. Including the text compels viewers to engage with the video even if their social feed is on silent auto-play.

• Scrappy – Rescue Chocolate demonstrates another important lesson — at times fast is better than perfect. It created the video in-house rather than outsourcing the project and missing the critical timeliness that this topic called for.

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Be scrappy with #video – sometimes fast is better than perfect, says @CyndiC02.
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Girls Who Code sends a message with humor and heart

Girls Who Code is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to closing the gender gap in technology. Between the ages of 6 and 12, girls represent 66% of students interested in and/or enrolled in computing courses. But between the ages of 13 and 17, girls only represent 33% of students interested in computing courses.

This past summer, Girls Who Code created a video with a simple concept — ridicule the ridiculous by having young women sarcastically adopting sexist rhetoric to explain why they couldn’t code. The video went viral, amassing nearly a half-million views on YouTube and garnering media coverage in national publications.

How did they do it?

• It is funny without losing the integrity of the cause. This video deploys humor and sarcasm in a way that is not only effective, but also true to the larger brand of Girls Who Code. Humor is an incredibly powerful tool if it happens organically. For example, humor would have been completely off-putting in the Rescue Chocolate pit-bull video. Find a proper tone to fit your topic and brand, and you’ll be on your way to creating better content and driving higher engagement.

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Find a tone to fit your topic & brand, & you’ll be on your way to creating better #content. @CyndiC02
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• It doesn’t include a song. In the other two videos mentioned in this article, instrumental songs — one somber, one upbeat — underscore the mood. Girls Who Code opted to punctuate scenes with a musical track that comes in and out and plunks along to the phrases of the girls speaking, adding drama to their dry sarcasm.

• It speaks directly to the audience. It may seem obvious, but the teens in this video are the reason the message is authentic and resonates with the audience Girls Who Code is trying to reach.

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UPS and Northwest Battle Buddies share the story of a man and his dog

UPS partnered with Northwest Battle Buddies, a nonprofit that rehabilitates shelter dogs to be service animals for U.S. veterans suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder as part of the package delivery company’s annual #WishesDelivered initiative.

In the 2-minute, 41-second video, they were able to use the organic moments shared between veterans and their new dogs to promote the cause. The video tells the story of Art Nelson, a veteran suffering from PTSD, and the joy he found in receiving his service dog, Trigger, who he calls a “godsend.” It walks the viewer through Art’s story and the work of Northwest Battle Buddies, and ends with the surprise — delivery of a new, UPS-funded service dog to a veterans’ support group.

What’s happening to encourage this strong emotional response? The creators chose to:

• Tell one complete, personal story. Focusing on one veteran and his experience returning home, the video informs viewers on the mission of the organization. Not only straightforward, the video’s message is easy for people to get behind and they feel good passing it along to others.

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Create a straightforward #video message that’s easy for people to feel good sharing w/ others, says @CyndiC02.
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• Keep community top of mind. This video taps into a close community predisposed to share this story — veterans and their families.

• Use the power of real people. Having a veteran who has encountered the challenges addressed by the nonprofit and who has experienced the benefits it offers lends credibility to the story. A person sharing his or her real experience in a powerfully personal medium like video almost always creates a stronger emotional response.

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A person sharing her experience in #video almost always creates a stronger response, says @CyndiC02.
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Conclusion

As UPS, Northwest Buddies, Rescue Chocolate, and Girls Who Code show us, the power of video can be gained without spending a lot of money or taking a lot of time. These examples illustrate that the keys to a successful video, particularly for cause-related marketing, are that it’s:

• Sufficiently informative for viewers to understand
• Digestible for viewers to easily enjoy and share
• Timely enough to be part of a larger conversation
• Attention-grabbing in the first few seconds
• Relatable (and resonates) with viewers

Those lessons are invaluable for anyone who wants to harness the benefits of video in their content marketing programs.

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Want to grow your video and other technology skills? Register today for the (free) virtual ContentTECH event on February 22, 2017.

Cover image by StockSnap via freestocks.org

The post 3 Brands Driving Change With Social Video appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

How Virtual Reality Could Change Content Marketing

No longer the domains of ultra-early adopters and video gamers, virtual reality and augmented reality are poised to take off in the coming 24 months.

“We see qualities in VR/AR technology that can take this from niche-use case to a device as ubiquitous as the smartphone,” Goldman Sachs Research wrote in its Virtual and Augmented Reality report.

More consumers are expecting to see the power of virtual reality too. According to Greenlight Insights 62% of consumers say they would feel more engaged with a brand that sponsors a VR experience and 71% of consumers think a brand is forward-thinking if it uses virtual reality.

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71% of consumers think a brand that uses virtual reality is forward-thinking according to @askgreenlight.
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Expert insight

Sarah Hill is the CEO and chief storyteller for StoryUP, one of the early pioneers in virtual reality for brands. She explains why VR is finally gaining a foothold, and what marketers should understand before they dive in.

CCO: Describe what virtual reality applications look like today versus what they’ll look like in the future? Where is the technology headed?

Hill: Today we are in the “brick-cell-phone phase” of VR. Mobile VR is taking off – by that I mean you don’t need a heavy-gaming PC to view VR; all you need is your mobile device and Google Cardboard. Yet most VR experiences are seated right now.

The future is walk-around VR or what’s called “room-scale VR,” where you can move around a virtual room. Imagine walking around a Walmart virtual showroom in your bedroom and using hand controllers to add items to a virtual shopping cart or browsing virtual clothing racks at Target.

VR is predicted to disrupt nearly every industry, but in particular education, travel, journalism, health care, architecture, and yes, even marketing. The world is no longer flat. The internet is fast-becoming a place you step inside. Just as you had to make your site responsive for mobile, so too will you have to make it responsive for VR.

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The world is no longer flat. The internet is fast-becoming a place you step inside. @sarahmidmo #virtualreality
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CCO: Marketers sometimes get excited about a new technology or new channel, and race to use it before figuring out fit or strategy. Can you offer pointers for those considering undertaking a virtual reality project?

Hill: There are certain kinds of stories that naturally lend themselves to virtual reality. First and foremost, in VR location is a character so you want to choose stories that have immersive environments or create one.

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In #virtualreality location is a character so create stories with immersive environments, says @sarahmidmo.
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You also want to choose a storyteller who’s experienced with crafting non-linear story arcs with immersive media. In an immersive story, the viewer is in control of the frame, not the storyteller – which means you need to use subtle techniques (e.g., visual cues and positional audio) to direct the audience where to look. It can be incredibly frustrating to the viewer if it’s not clear where they should be directing their attention.

Be wary of including camera movements in your VR story. Movement in VR is something that can make the audience feel sick. Hire a professional company that’s completed a lot of VR experiences, as hiring inexperienced people might result in something that could put your customers on the vomit train.

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Hire a professional, so customers aren’t on the vomit train, says @sarahmidmo. #virtualreality
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Also, make sure to pair your VR experience with a Facebook 360, Littlstar, or YouTube 360 campaign; without at least one of those, a limited number of people will see your content because not everyone owns a VR headset yet. (Those platforms offer a VR version of your content, which is meant to be viewed with goggles, but also offer a web version in which viewers can use their mouse to turn their perspective.)

Finally, learn about all the different forms of VR before embarking. Virtual reality is no longer just about video and audio anymore. We’re seeing new projects using haptics, ambisonic audio, hand controls, and even aromas as new storytelling “inputs.”

CCO: When considering a VR partner (i.e., studio), what questions should marketers ask?

Hill:

1. How many experiences have they created? Many studios are new, but even new entrants should have at least a half-dozen immersive items on their sizzle reel to show you.

2. What kinds of cameras do they use? Most VR video shops use GoPro camera arrays. We also use proprietary 3D rigs when we can procure them. (Jaunt, Nokia’s Ozo, or Google’s Jump cameras are all 3D rigs.)

3. Find out if the story will be monoscopic (2D) or stereoscopic (3D). Not every 360-degree story has to have 3D or depth. 2D, 360 stories – when well told and produced – can rival any 3D experience. The problem with 3D is that people don’t always know how to perceive depth. They see the 3D, 360 video and think, “that’s blurry.” It’s not blurry. The viewer is perceiving depth, but doesn’t always know how to process that kind of content. It’s up to you: you can play it safe and go 2D, 360. Or if you have a bigger budget and the shop you hire can procure high-quality proprietary camera rigs, shoot for the moon.

CCO: Can you give a ballpark cost of VR video compared to a normal video?

Hill: A VR video costs at least three times that of a regular video because it requires multiple cameras and because you have to stitch together frames with multiple software programs, and lots of post-production and rendering. I always joke VR is like sausage. Everyone wants to consume it but no one wants to see it being made. It’s a messy, complicated process that taxes your computers to the max. The exact cost really depends on the project, and whether you’re hiring a company from the coasts or from the Midwest. In the Midwest, our experiences range anywhere from $35,000 and up, not including travel. The camera rig we use also influences the price. Before I started my company, I got a quote on what it would cost to create a VR experience at the World War II Memorial; the bid came back at a half-million dollars!

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A #virtualreality video costs at least three times a regular video, says @sarahmidmo.
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CCO: You’re immersed in the world of VR. What excites you most about it?

Hill: The ability to lift spirits with VR. We’re doing research about how VR affects brain waves and how it has the ability to quiet the brain. We’re categorizing our stories on the basis of brain reactions like hope, joy, motivation, and empathy. People don’t just watch a VR story; they feel it. As a storyteller, that’s an incredibly useful piece of data. Story combined with VR is a powerful tool for calm, joy, and empathy.

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Story combined with #virtualreality is a powerful tool for calm, joy, and empathy, says @sarahmidmo.
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CCO: Examples and explanations

Hill: Monoscopic VR content is a 360 video presented in 2D. You stand at the center of a sphere and can look in all directions to see the world (real or imagined) around you. As you move, the camera moves with you. The image you see, however, resembles traditional video content. This MythBusters’ VR tour of a shipwreck in shark-infested waters is monoscopic VR.

Stereoscopic VR content is 360 video presented in 3D, meaning the images before you can be much more life-like and immersive. The problem, however, is that stereoscopic VR is much more challenging to produce, much less forgiving of errors, and worst of all, can cause severe nausea if done improperly. Felix and Paul Studios shares several of is stereoscopic VR projects on its site.

Honor Everywhere offers terminally ill veterans free virtual-reality “flights” to see the war memorials in Washington, D.C. StoryUP is currently looking for partners to grow the program, as well as volunteers with headsets willing to share VR at local veteran homes or assisted-living centers.

Zenith Aircraft Company sells kit planes and wants to give customers who can’t travel to its facility for a demo flight the ability to experience it. StoryUP created a virtual-reality experience for Zenith as well as a social campaign. Not only was the video highly watched and shared, the cost per impression was lower – meaning the project used advertising dollars more efficiently. Plus, Zenith saved on the cost of jet fuel for customers who ordinarily would request a demo flight.

This article originally appeared in the February issue of CCO magazine. Subscribe for your free print copy today.

Join Sarah Hill for our upcoming #CMWorld Twitter chat on January 31 at 12 ET when we talk Artificial Intelligence and content marketing.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post How Virtual Reality Could Change Content Marketing appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

How to Make Money with Videos Online

Even since fast Internet connections around the world became the standard, video has been a dominating force online. The explosion of smartphones and mobile Internet only reinforced this trend, as people are now able to watch videos on the go and 24 hours per day.

Guess what, if you want to make money online, you certainly need to consider a strategy that involves video. Below you’ll find some tips to help you in this path.

1. Know The Business Models

There are basically two available business models to make money with online video: release the videos for free and earn with advertising, or charge a fee to let users access your videos.

The first model is suitable for videos that will attract a large number of views on platforms like YouTube or Facebook. Funny videos and videos about celebrities, technology, politics or other popular topics tend to do well under this model. Keep in mind that you will need to publish many videos for this model to become profitable. It’s not uncommon to see publishers releasing several videos on the same day!

The second model is suitable for premium and educational content. For instance, educational videos that teach people how to program or build websites, how to earn money through investing, or how to gain skills necessary to make money on some professional field. The advantage of this model is that you will need to produce fewer videos, but it will take some work to produce the videos and to structure the learning platform.

2. Use a Professional Hosting Platform

Especially if you are going with the second model, using a professional platform to host your videos is essential. Online video streaming is complex, and if you try the do-it-yourself approach you might end up causing problems for your paying customers.

If you need a recommendation, check out UScreen. It is one of the most popular platforms around, and it has the advantage of coming with several other services that you might need for your educational or premium video website.

For instance, they have tools that will help you build your landing page and video pages. They also have built-in payments for both subscriptions and one-time payment for the videos. This can save you a lot of time if you don’t have technical know-how.

3. Have Your Own Website

If you are going to release videos on YouTube and make money via advertising, you might think that you don’t need to have a website. Even if you are going to charge for premium videos, you might be tempted to use some third party platform instead of hosting your own domain name.

This is a mistake. You need to have your own domain and promote it to your audience. That is because your own domain and site is pretty much the only online presence you control 100%. If your audience get used to visiting your site, subscribing to your email list and so on, you will never risk getting cut out of the business by external circumstances.

Imagine the despair of people who published all their videos on an external platform that went out of business and decided to shut down the website! You could lose everything overnight. If you are not a technical personal, check out SquareSpace, as it is pretty easy to build a website with them.

4. Leverage Social Media

Like it or not, social media is an essential part of any marketing plan these days. You will need to have, at the very least, a presence on Facebook and Twitter. Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn are also recommended options, depending on your target audience.

Make sure that you share all your videos on those platforms, as they can drive a lot of views. Facebook, for instance, is already the second largest video platform online, losing only to YouTube.

Original post: How to Make Money with Videos Online

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