MackCollier.com

by

You Will Share This Post, But You Won’t Read It

I check my Twitter notifications way more than I should.  Recently, I checked Twitter and didn’t see any new notifications.  I did some other work and came back just a few minutes later and was shocked at what I saw.

25 new notifications on Twitter.  That meant in just a few minutes, literally dozens of new notifications had come in.  I got excited, hoping this meant that someone had shared one of my posts, and then their followers had shared it, and then an avalanche of traffic would fall on my blog.  It would be glorious!

Sure enough, an ‘influencer’ had RTed one of my posts, and almost immediately, their followers started RTing the first RT, and within 10 mins, I had already gotten 25 people either RTing my post, or Liking it.

Excited, I rushed to my Google Analytics dashboard to check my traffic to see how many clicks this flood of RTs was sending to my blog and I was stunned at the number.

Zero.

Over 20 RTs within a 10 minute period had sent a grand total of zero people to my blog.  Something is definitely wrong.  We were all sold on the idea that sharing is caring.  That we want to see our content shared, because when its shared, that translates into more traffic.  And when you read a blog and see a post with a high share count, that means more people are reading it.

But is this really the case?

Research into the impact social sharing has on blog traffic has come up with a startling conclusion: There’s little to no relationship between social shares and a change in blog traffic:

A widespread assumption is that the more content is liked or shared, the more engaging it must be, the more willing people are to devote their attention to it. However, the data doesn’t back that up. We looked at 10,000 socially-shared articles and found that there is no relationship whatsoever between the amount a piece of content is shared and the amount of attention an average reader will give that content.

So if we accept that the relationship between social sharing and traffic is weak at best, what true value do those social sharing numbers really have?  Are they a true signal to readers that a piece of content is more popular (and thus more worthy of your attention), or is this another case of social media numbers being worthless?  Further, if we believe that social sharing numbers aren’t credible, what external factors can we use to judge if others find a piece of content valuable?  Comments seem like a likely starting point, but with more and more blogs turning off comments, that is increasingly being taken off the board.

What if you had no external signals to tell you if a piece of content was viewed by a larger community as being valuable? How would you know, would you have to (gasp!) actually read it?  Perish the thought!

by

The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 40: Writing Fan-Damn-Tastic Headlines

Hey y’all! Welcome to the 40th episode of #FanDamnShow! In this episode I talk about one of the surest ways you can improve your content; By writing better headlines.  It’s a vital tool for all content creators, but it does take some practice and know-how, and I talk about what you need to write better headlines in this episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show.

Show Notes:

2:05 – There’s a continuous stream of content being shared on all social sites.  We scan and as a result, the headline has to immediately grab our attention or we won’t click.

3:10 – A lot of bloggers write the post’s headline as a short summation of what the post is about.  This is the WORST type of headline to write!  You cannot simply summarize the post with the headline, it has to immediately be impactful and tell others why the post is awesome.

4:10 – How I learned first hand the power of writing an impactful headline with the success of this post.  The headline grabbed attention and led to a big spike in traffic to my blog and shares, all because of the great headline.

8:25 – The claim you make in your headline has to be backed up by the content in the post.  What is the specific promise you are making to readers with this post?  The headline needs to reflect that.

10:50 – When writing your headlines, think about what is in the post that’s worthy of the attention of your readers.

12:50 – This post is another example of a great headline I wrote that immediately grabbed your attention, and was true to the content of the post.

[clickToTweet tweet=”‘What is the specific promise you are making to readers with this post? The headline needs to reflect that.’ ” quote=”‘What is the specific promise you are making to readers with this post? The headline needs to reflect that.'”]

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that all available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again next episode!

by

The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 39: How to Connect With Influencers

Hey y’all, it’s time for another episode of #FanDamnShow!  In this 39th episode, I tackle a topic that a LOT of companies want answers to: How to more effectively connect with influencers.  So sit back for 12 mins of smartitude!

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that all available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again next episode!

 

by

How to Create More Social Media Content For Your Business

10651822923_55982fddd4_z

For years, the big focus in social media marketing was finding ROI.  It still is, to a great degree.  But as more companies bought into using social media, a new problem developed: How do we create more social media content for our business?  Scratch that, how do we create more social media content that is USEFUL to our customers, that also helps our business reach its goals.

It’s tough, it’s damn tough.  I was talking recently with a fellow consultant about balancing doing client work and creating a steady stream of content that helps us get more client work.  It’s a struggle for us, so I know it’s probably a struggle for your company as well.

The good news about content creation is that the more you do it, the easier it becomes.  So the first step, is to address content creation from a time standpoint.  We want to make the process easier and more efficient so that you can create more content in less time.

One of the main reasons that businesses explore using social media is because they want to build awareness for who they are and what they do.  Social media doesn’t excel at driving sales directly, but it can be a great channel for driving awareness.  It can also be a great channel for positioning and branding.  So if we attack our content strategy from the awareness/positioning/branding angle, we can accomplish multiple goals at once.

Remember the plant your flag approach to content strategy?  It means you ask ‘what do we want to be known for?’  If you were to explain your business and why its relevant in 30 seconds at a cocktail party, what would you tell someone?  What terms and ideas do you want to own?

Once you know who you are and why your business is relevant, you want to create and share content around those ideas.  Red Bull creates and shares content focused on extreme sports and extreme sports athletes.  Pedigree shares content focused on happy and healthy dogs.

So as you are keeping up to date on your industry and market, look for ways to share some of that content with your network.  At first this can seem counter intuitive; Why would you promote content that’s not about your business?  Because if it’s content that’s related to your business, it helps identify your business as being associated with those ideas or that industry, or that concept.

Plus there’s this: If someone isn’t aware of your business, they also aren’t aware of why they should pay attention to your business.  One way to increase the chances that they will pay attention is to associate your business with content that they DO find interesting.  For example, if your business is a hotel chain, sharing content that helps customers plan a road trip can increase the chances that they will pay attention to you.  The content on planning a road trip is interesting and relevant to them, so if you share this content, they will pay attention to it, and by extension they will be more likely to pay attention to you.

So start by identifying sources of relevant content for your intended audience.  If you want to reach single moms that need help cooking quick and healthy meals for their children, think about where they would get this information.  Then you want to find these sites, and share their content.  You are providing a service for them, and in the process you are giving these single moms an incentive to pay more attention to you.

So if you want to create more useful social media content, start by staying up to date on your industry and market.  When you can, share relevant content from sources that your audience trusts.  Just doing this can easily double the content you distribute via your social media channels.  As an added bonus, it also makes those sources more likely to want to promote your content.  I’ll talk about this more in Thursday’s post.

Pic via Robert-Couse Baker

by

My Blog Traffic and Podcast Audience Results For September

For every month in 2015, I’ve set specific goals for growing my blog readership, and podcast audience.  The end goal is that by December this blog will have at least 100,000 visitors for that month, and the podcast will be downloaded at least 10,000 times for December.  Every month I am going to write a post like this recapping how I did in the previous month, and share any lessons I have learned.  The goal is to help you learn how to build a blog readership and podcast audience as I do.

First, here were my goals for September:

Blog – At least 85,000 visitors

Podcast – At least 5,000 downloads

Blog Traffic Results For September

My blog’s traffic in September was 35,862 versus 36,154 in August, a decrease of less than 1%.  I got way behind on both the blog and podcast in September, only writing 3 posts in September.

I made a couple of changes last month to my blog that I think has at least improved my issue with falling search traffic.  The first is I went into my robots.txt file and made sure it including the path to my sitemap.  As soon as I made this update, I noticed in Google Webmaster Tools that Google immediately started indexing an additional 200 pages from my site.  Also, I noticed a slight uptick in search traffic from that point forward.  Not huge, but definitely noticeable.  So much so that I believe search traffic will actually go up for October vs September.  So this might be something for you to explore, I had manually submitted my sitemap via Google Webmaster Tools before, and that didn’t seem to register, but adding the sitemap URL into my robots.txt file seemed to do the trick.

Here’s how traffic broke down by channels in September vs August:

Organic Search – Down 2%

Direct – Up 11.65%

Referral – Down 7.71%

Social – Down 14.93%

Other – Down 12.33%

Email – Down 81.43%

Referral, Social and Email being down is directly related to writing fewer posts in September, as I only wrote 3 posts for the month.  I got too caught up with client work and didn’t devote enough time to regular posting and it bit me.  Case in point, I published more posts this week than I did all of last month.

Podcast Numbers and Overview for September

The goal for September was at least 5,000 downloads of the podcast, and The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show had 3,924 downloads in September. The drop was due to only having 1 new episode in September, and that didn’t publish until the last day of the month.  Given that, the number of downloads is actually pretty remarkable.  Here’s the number of daily downloads so far this year:

PodcastDLJan-Sept

Strong growth throughout the year but it did start to tail off the last couple of weeks of September due to no new episodes going up.  On Wednesday I published the first episode of #FanDamnShow for this month and daily downloads had continued to fall this month up till that point.  A good reminder for me to make the time to create regular content for both my blog and podcast in order to build or even sustain an audience.

Here’s the blog audience and podcast download goals for October:

Blog Traffic – At least 90,000 visitors

Podcast Downloads – At least 6,500 downloads

This are the goals I set at the start of the year.  I’ll check back in next month and let you know how I did!

by

Leveraging Social Media to Drive Greater Customer Insights

For the last 10 years, marketers have been trying to leverage social media as a sales channel.  It’s been a messy proposition at best, due to how people use these social tools.  Social media tools are used by people to create and share content about themselves.

But for smart companies, this creates an enormous sales opportunity.  The key isn’t to leverage social media as a sales channel, but to instead leverage social media as a listening channel that can better inform brands about who their customers are and what they want.  This has always been the case.  Granted, I’m no fan of how we are getting away from having truly social interactions with these tools and instead are becoming an army of social narcissists, but even that does create an opportunity for smart brands to learn more about their customers.  As customers are creating content about who they are and what they want, that content can be analyzed, and insights can be gained into those same customers and how to better market to them.

The great promise that social media offers for brands has never been about leveraging the tools as a way to sell directly to customers.  It’s always been about better understanding those customers so you can create more effective and efficient marketing…that increases sales.

Some companies have been proactively analyzing the content their customers create online and are adjusting their marketing to make it more inline with who their customers are and what they want.  The result are broadcast commercials like this from The North Face:

And this from Red Bull:

Notice in both commercials (both of which currently have over 7 Million views on YouTube), the product itself takes a secondary role to the customers themselves.  The North Face isn’t selling its clothing, it is selling the activities you engage in after you put on its clothing.  Red Bull isn’t selling an energy drink, it’s selling what you do after you drink it.  In both cases, the marketing isn’t about the product, it’s about the customers and the activities that they love engaging in.  This makes the marketing message more interesting and relevant to those customers.  And by extension, the brand bringing you that marketing becomes more interesting and relevant as a result.

This is the great promise of social media for brands: Gaining a better understanding of your customers.  By first investing the time to learn who your customers are and why they use these tools, you can then have an intelligent conversation with them that comes from a place of understanding, not ignorance.  Listen first, learn, adjust, and move forward with better marketing.  This is why I’ve always been so excited about social media from a business standpoint, the potential for better understanding customers and creating more interesting and relevant marketing communications as a result.  For decades, most marketing has devolved into nothing more than a nuisance and irritant.  This is to a great extent simply because the brands creating that marketing don’t understand their customers well enough to create an interesting marketing message for them.

Now, thanks to social media, companies finally have a way to get a better understanding of what their customers want and who they are on a grand scale.  Commercials like those above only begin to scratch the surface of what marketing could look like when it’s created from a customers’ point-of-view.

Listen. Engage. Improve.  Do those things in that order, and your marketing communications will become more effective, and the sales will come.  There’s never been a time to be more excited about the future of marketing than right now.

by

You Build Loyalty After the Purchase, Not Before

One of the key themes I cover in Think Like A Rock Star is to discuss and explain why most rock stars can create loyal fans so much easily than most companies can.  There are many reasons why rock stars so easily cultivate fans, but perhaps the biggest reason why rock stars have more loyal customers than most companies do is because rock stars focus on rewarding existing behavior, while companies focus on offering incentives to change existing behavior.

Let me say that again: Most rock stars focus on rewarding the existing behavior of their fans, while most companies focus on offering incentives to change the existing behavior of potential customers.  This also speaks to a fundamental difference between who rock stars and companies market to.  Companies seek to acquire new customers, so they create marketing strategies that are designed to change existing customer behavior.  Price-based incentives are a big part of this, such as coupons, rebates, discounts on shipping, etc.

Rock stars seek to develop deeper relationships with their fans, and as part of this they seek to reward their fans for their existing behavior.  In 2010 Taylor Swift had a special 15-hour autograph signing for her fans.  Taylor signed for over 2,000 fans over the course of nearly 15 hours on June 13th, 2010, only stopping long enough in the middle of the day to perform a 90-minute acoustic set.  All for free.  Because Taylor wanted to reward her fans for supporting her.

Yet this approach is also very powerful for building loyalty because for the fan it validates why they love their favorite rock star.  On the flipside, when a company offers you a coupon for purchasing their product, you understand that they want your business.  While this does increase the chance that you will change your behavior the next time you need to purchase that particular product, it does not increase your chance of being loyal to that brand after the initial purchase.  Brands build loyalty by rewarding existing customers, not by trying to acquire new customers via incentives.  For example, if you are a long-term Dish or DirecTV customer, you may have been upset over the last few years to see some of the incentive packages that the competing brands are offering new customers to sign up with them.  Often, the packages are better and at a lower price than what existing customers have!  This tactic works for acquiring new customers but it not only does not build loyalty among existing customers, it can actually lower levels of loyalty among existing customers!

Let’s again review the Loyalty Graph.  Companies are focused on acquiring new customers, so they offer incentives to this group, trying to win their business.  The problem with this approach is that New Customers is the group that’s the largest, but that also has little to no loyalty to that particular brand.  This is especially problematic if your brand offers price-based incentives to this group, because if another brand offers a higher discount, it will probably win that customer’s business.

At the other end, rock stars are focused on connecting with their fans (brand advocates), and rewarding their existing behavior.  Rock stars don’t have to offer incentives to their fans to encourage them to generate new sales because their fans are already engaging in this behavior.  Their fans are already going out and encouraging new customers to become existing ones.

So for your brand, that means you have two ways you can attempt to acquire new customers: By marketing to them directly (and paying a lot of money to do so), or you can connect with your biggest fans and delight them, with the understanding that their efforts will lead to new customers.

If you want to build loyalty among your customers always remember: Loyalty is built by saying ‘Thank you!’ for existing behavior, not by offering coupons as incentives for new behavior.

by

The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 38: Deeper Learning Via Cooking, Presidential Debates and 1980s Pro Wrestling!

Hey y’all!  Welcome to another episode of #FanDamnShow! Today I talk about deeper learning and why your fans want more intricate content that helps them learn more about the topics they love, especially the ones that relate to your products and services!

Show Notes:

1:55 – People that listen to podcasts want deeper insights into a topic, from my experience.  They want to go beyond the basic steps and want to actually learn how things work

4:15 – Consider your product or service and think about content you can create around this that dives deeper.

4:45 – Why I watch the Presidential Debates and listen to podcasts about 1980s Pro Wrestling to learn how to become a better speaker.

8:00 – Fans want deeper level content because they ARE fans.  They want deeper level content focused not on your product or service but the bigger themes and ideas that your product and services relate to.

9:40 – What is it that you can help your customers become better at?

10:10 – What are the bigger passion points that encircle your product or services?

11:20 – Podcasts can be a great way to deliver deeper level content for your fans.

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that all available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again next episode!

by

5 Ways I Use Google Analytics to Improve My Blog’s Content

First, if you haven’t added Google Analytics to your blog, do so now.  It doesn’t matter if your blog is your business or nothing more than your online diary, you need to know more about the people that visit your blog.  GA is a great way to give you those insights, and it’s free.  Here’s 5 ways I use Google Analytics every day to better understand the traffic that visits my blog and to make my content strategy more effective:

1 – I compare today’s hourly traffic vs last week’s hourly traffic for the same day.  For example, on Sunday, I will bring up the traffic for the current day, set it to hourly, and compare it to the previous Sunday’s hourly traffic.  This lets me know as the day progresses how the hourly traffic levels are comparing to the previous Sunday.  Here’s what it looked like for this Sunday (blue) vs the previous Sunday (orange):

Week2WeekTrafficGA This gives me a quick and easy snapshot of how traffic did on this Sunday vs the previous Sunday.  As you can see, a very good day, hourly traffic was up almost every hour versus the previous Sunday and traffic for the day was up almost 15% and Avg Session Duration was up over 40%, another huge number.

Here’s how you can get this same view for your blog:  Click on Audience, then Overview, both on the left side of the screen.  The default view is to just show you the previous 30 days before this one.  You want to change that view so click on the Down button next to the date range on the top right of the screen.  This will open up a calendar showing you this month plus the previous two months.  Under Date Range, the previous 30 days will be highlighted.  You want to first click on TODAY’s date.  Next, click on the small box right under it that says ‘Compare to:’, and it will have a dropdown menu that you don’t want to touch for now.  Two new date range boxes will open up under the first two, but they won’t be highlighted.  You want to click on the first date box on the left, and then go back to the calendar and click the date for one week earlier.  For example, if you are doing this on a Monday, for this you would click on the previous Monday’s date.  Click on it again so that the date range you are comparing to is the previous Monday.  Then click Apply.

At first, it will be set to the default view, which is Day.  It will show you how the current day’s traffic is doing versus 7 days earlier.  If you click on Hourly, you will then see today’s traffic broken down by hours and compared to the previous Monday’s traffic on an hourly basis.  The blue dots will be for today, the orange dots will be for the previous Monday.  So you can quickly see how hourly traffic is doing today vs the same day last week.  Here’s what the settings look like for the report I created on Monday to compare traffic to the previous Monday:

WeeklyGA

It can be a bit complicated at first, but pretty easy once you get the hang of it.  As you can see, you can easily adjust the settings to compare this week to the previous week or this month to the previous month, or this year to 3 years ago.  Whatever you want.

2 – I closely examine Real Time traffic, especially right after I publish a new post.  The Real Time traffic feature in GA is a great way to get an instant snapshot of the traffic that’s currently on your blog.  For example, as soon as I publish this post, I will share it on Twitter and Facebook, probably LinkedIn as well.  I will then check with Real Time traffic, to see which, if any, of those links are immediately sending traffic to the site.  This is great way to see instantly if certain types of content resonate more or less on a particular site.  For example, if the link to this post I share on LinkedIn immediately sends traffic and the link I share on Facebook doesn’t, that could suggest that the topic of using Google Analytics is more relevant to the more business-oriented audience on LinkedIn.  Plus, examining Real Time traffic can be a great way to get early notification of a new backlink to your blog or maybe an influencer with a large network Twitter just RTed your post.  Here’s an example of what this looks like:

RealTimeGA

You can see which content is being viewed, from what sources, their location, etc.  Also, if you get in the habit of regularly checking this you will get a sense of what times of the day are better for your traffic, which also helps you decide when to publish new posts!

3 – I examine traffic by channel.  For this I go back to the week to week comparison.  Click on Acquisition, then All Traffic, then Channels.  This shows me a breakdown of my traffic by different channel types, such as Organic Search, Direct, Referral and Social.  This is very important because if you just look at your overall traffic numbers you won’t get a complete picture.  For example, let’s say this Monday’s traffic to your blog was 500 visitors, and last Monday’s traffic was 450.  So that’s a weekly gain of about 10%, which is really good.  But without looking at the traffic by channel, you may assume that each type of traffic rose by 10%, but it could be that your Organic Search traffic was up by 40% and your Direct traffic was down by 25%.  But overall traffic was up.  Still, those are big jumps in both directions for your Organic Search and Direct traffic, so it’s worth knowing that so you can keep an eye on both moving forward.

4 – I dive deeper into channel traffic and sort by Source/Medium.  This is very important because all sources of traffic are not created equally.  For example, I am writing this post at about 6PM on a Monday night.  In comparing today’s traffic vs the previous Monday’s traffic, here’s what I currently see in Channel view for Organic Search:

Organic Search

There’s about 6 hours in the day so Organic Search for today will end up being close to 1,100 visitors for the day, which will be about a 10% increase over the previous Monday, so I’m pleased with that.  But, it’s worth remembering that Organic Search isn’t just Google, it’s all Organic Search from ALL search engines.  To find out exactly how each search engine is doing vs the previous Monday, we need to click Source/Medium heading above these results.  So while overall Organic Search is currently down 14.66%, here’s how each search engine is actually doing:

Google – Down 11.9%

Yahoo – Down 5.56%

Bing – Down 58.56%

So you can see that Google and Yahoo are actually doing way better than Bing is.  Now about 90% of the Organic Search is coming from Google for me, but your numbers may vary.  If the majority of your blog’s Organic Search was coming from Bing, it would be worrisome to see your traffic from Bing down by 58%!

5 – I look at the most viewed pages week to week.  For this view I click on Behavior then Site Content then All Pages on the left side of the GA dashboard.  I do this because I want to see what content is driving visitors, but I also am looking for irregularities.  Did one page get a lot of views this week and none last week, or vice versa?  For example, when I click on All Pages it shows me the most viewed pages for today vs last Monday.  Notice something interesting I found:

MostViewedPosts

See that post on the bottom, Ford Launches the Fiesta Movement?  That’s an old post, but notice it had zero views last Monday, but has 18 this Monday!  I would like to know if GA can help me understand why this old post suddenly got a lot of views this Monday, when it usually gets none.  Does anyone know of a way to further way to drill down with Google Analytics and figure that out?

 

Those are the 5 main ways I use Google Analytics to get a better idea of the makeup of my blog traffic.  What’s your favorite way to use GA?

by

How Keywords Fit Into Your Content Strategy

BrandAmbassadorSearchResultsOptimizing blog content for search engines has always been a moving target.  One constant in this evolution of how Google ranks content has been the keyword.  The rules governing how Google views keywords in posts has changed, but consistently the search giant has used keywords as one of its top signals for what a piece of content is about, and how it will rank against other forms of similar content.

Perhaps the best advice for how to stay ahead of the frequent changes Google makes to its algorithms is to write for humans, not search engines.  This means optimize your content first for humans, and if the content is useful for your readers, it will be shared and engaged with, which will signal to Google that it is useful content, and that will push it higher in the search results.

But having said that, keywords still matter.  They matter to Google, they matter to your readers, and perhaps most importantly, they matter to you.  I’ve written before about ‘owning’ or planting your flag on certain keywords.  So if you want to know what role keywords play in your optimizing your content for search, here’s the deal: It’s not about using the right keywords in your posts and content.  It’s about deciding what keywords you want to be known for and then creating useful content around those keywords.

The useful content helps establish your expertise around these topic for both your readers, and Google.  But perhaps more importantly, it gives your content strategy focus.  It also gives you direction and keeps you focused on serving YOUR audience.

Think of the 3-5 keywords that you want to be associated with your brand.  If someone were to ask you what your brand stands for or why it is unique, think about the keywords or keyword phrases you would use to describe your brand and why it matters to people.

Those are the 3-5 keywords that you want to own with your content.  This also helps bring clarity to your content strategy because now you have a better idea of the content you should be creating.  Your content flow should go through those 3-5 keywords that you are focusing on, and if you that, the search results will follow.

Here’s an example.  A few years ago while I was preparing to write my book Think Like a Rock Star, I realized that I needed to shift my content to focus more on topics like ‘brand ambassadors’ and ‘brand advocacy’.  Specifically, I wanted to work with companies that needed help in designing a brand ambassador program.  So I wanted to create content that would focus on those keywords, but that was also useful to readers, because I knew if it wasn’t useful to readers that it wouldn’t matter how many keywords were stuffed in it.

So instead of simply writing a short ‘here’s what a brand ambassador program is’ type post, I wrote a thorough post that was aimed at helping companies that were ready to commit to launching a brand ambassador program.  The result was a 1,200 word post ‘10 Things to Remember When Creating a Brand Ambassador Program‘.  Thanks to this one post, here’s how I currently rank in Google for the following search terms:

Brand ambassador program – 13

Brand ambassadors – 21

Brand ambassador – 28

That’s not bad for just one post.  A side benefit of this is that since that post was published I’ve gotten probably 100 email leads from companies that found the post by doing a search for brand ambassador programs or a similar keyword phrase. All because I focused on creating useful content that would help my audience.

So if you want to rev up your search rankings, focus on just a few keywords that are core to your business, say 3-5, and focus on relentlessly creating useful content around those keywords.  Not promotional content, that’s what most businesses do and that’s why they don’t tend to rank well for those keywords.  But instead you want to create content that helps your audience with its current business problems.  Do that, and the search rankings will follow.