Monthly Archives: March 2014

Content

I’m Sorry, But Your Content Stinks

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‘Member When’ Content Was King?

Um, was it ever? 

I may be guilty of doing what the author of this piece rails against by re-posting it, but he says it quite well, and I know I’ll want to look at it again, so I’m posting it here so that I can find it later.

In a post on LinkedIn, John Silk at Bite says:

You might’ve seen Bite’s crusade to ‘stop content pollution‘. It’s a thing we’re doing to encourage companies to stop spewing out insipid, overly-messaged, relentlessly-search-optimised stuff for the benefit of their marketers and lawyers rather than actually add value to the good people of the planet.

I remember getting my first job as content manager of a website about mobile technology. It was the first time I’d heard the word ‘content’, and it grated on me. It’s such an ugly word. Not only did it work too well with the word ‘stomach’ and ‘bowel’, it also seemed to reduce the job of crafting words and pictures into sharp, insightful stories to fighting a never-ending flow of bilge.

15 years later, I’m not sure we’ve quite cracked the content conundrum. There are many more places where content can sit (like LinkedIn’s publisher platform, for example) and a lot of it, if you pardon my bluntness, stinks.

The main issue that businesses still need to get their heads around is why this content is being created. Do you create content to drive traffic to your site? Do you make a video to see how many views you can get? Do you write a white paper to generate leads? Are you writing to push yourself up the search rankings? Did you start a corporate blog because all your competitors did and you’re getting left behind?

Then stop what you’re doing right now. None of those reasons are any good.

There is only one purpose for the content you create, and that’s to improve a customer’s day. You need to inform or entertain. All the strategic stuff, like where the content is going to sit and how it’s going to flow through your marketing plan, can come later.

Spend time understanding your customers, and then spend even longer coming up with a brilliant idea about how to tell them something interesting. That’s really the only way to avoid being a polluter.

So here’s a tip: The next time someone is selling you content based on views, search, or leads, stop the meeting and tell the person something surprising that they didn’t know, or a story that you think they’ll find funny. If your customers wouldn’t react in the same way to the content you’re discussing, you’re doing it wrong.

If they would, then you’re a content crusader. We need more people like you.

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Cleaned up your content? Now go clean up a beach. Sign up for Surfers Against Sewage’s Big Spring Beach Clean, 28-31 March.

Pic credit: eutrophication&hypoxia

Created as part of LinkedIn’s #MyIndustry campaign.

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A couple other links: Mel Carson in Distilling the Science of Great Content, ironically enough, has a better title than, well, content – though its not bad – I can use Authentic, Relevant, Useful, Actionable and, since you can’t get away from Search if you care at all about whether anyone can find your content here’s Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land offering a cautionary tale about guest posts and Google penalties.

Marketing

Consumers Will Buy 3 Positive Claims About Product, But Not 4

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Here’s something that I think is both basic – and interesting – about advertising and marketing. I copied it, so I hope you agree that it contains all the appropriate credits.

Traci Pedersen

By Associate News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on February 15, 2014

If you are trying to sell a product, a service or even a personality (such as running for office), you will experience the most success if your marketing strategy includes three positive claims — no more and no less, according to new research published in the Journal of Marketing.

The findings show that giving three positive claims about your product creates a more positive impression than just two; but a fourth claim makes it look like you’re trying too hard — inviting consumer skepticism.

“Firms tend to believe their product is the best, which leads to a tendency among practicing marketers to present as many compelling claims as possible,” said associate professor Kurt Carlson, Ph.D., who co-authored the study with Suzanne Shu, Ph.D., of University of California, Los Angeles Anderson School of Management.

“But there is danger to that, as consumers’ awareness of persuasive intent will convert into skepticism, causing the consumer to discount all claims.”

“Whether it’s a corporation selling a product, a politician running for election, or a firm promoting new services, there is a tipping point of positive claims for target audiences,” he said.

The study offers important insights for understanding how the consumer thinks.

“We had previously examined how observing three events in a row was all it took for people to believe they were seeing a trend,” Carlson says. “We surmised a similar pattern might exist is discourse involving persuasive claims. And it turns out we were right.”

Prior research shows that people are more likely to think of three items as a complete set. In 2007, a study conducted by Carlson and Shu found that “people reached their maximal willingness to infer that a sequence of events was a streak after witnessing a third event, be it the third time a coin landed on head, the third basketball shot made, or the third day a stock closed up.”

According to Carlson, consumers say that the seller appears to be trying too hard when they give four or more positive claims about themselves.

The “charm of three,” does not apply, however, when the audience believes the message source has no persuasion motive.

Source: Georgetown University

APA Reference
Pedersen, T. (2014). Consumers Will Buy 3 Positive Claims About Product, But Not 4. Psych Central. Retrieved on March 21, 2014, from http://psychcentral.com/news/2014/02/15/consumers-will-buy-3-positive-claims-about-product-but-not-4/65934.html

SEO

Long-lasting SEO! Giving Google what Google wants

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It’s important to think like Google and implement strategies that are consistent with the spirit of what Google wants to attain. It’s also still important to understand that there are computer algorithms implementing Google’s vision. Leveraging Google’s algorithm at the expense of Google’s vision will not lead to long-lasting SEO success. That doesn’t mean you don’t do it, but you do it in way that you are cognizant of the algorithm and Google’s intent.

extracted from Post by: Mark Munroe, March 11, 2014 on LinkedIn

Learning Adwords

Clicks Should Add Up

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What do you do when the total clicks is bigger than the sum of the clicks attributed to each keyword?

In Google Adwords it happens, at least, it happened to me. It seems like only yesterday when I saw a video where a guy was boldly saying that Google Adwords was the best investment anyone could make in their business. How can I understand paying for Adwords – without seeing which keywords people clicked on – and avoid thinking its a great investment in Google’s business rather than my own?

So, to answer that question I asked another one . I posted it to the new guy forum that Google maintains to keep newbies from admitting publicly that some aspects of Google’s services are not immediately intuitive.

I wrote:

My keyword clicks are way lower than my total clicks

I foolishly asked my boss why the total clicks were higher than the sum of the clicks on all keywords. Now he wants to know too. I found that the total of the detail clicks equaled the total of all Search clicks – leaving the Display clicks to account for the discrepancy. I’m pretty sure that someone has solved this before but if there’s a discussion about it I didn’t describe my problem in the same terms.

I’m the new guy and I get a break, but I’d like to get up to speed. Thanks for your time.

About an hour later someone had taken on my question and said:

Hi Steve,

Sounds like you’re running a hybrid campaign of both search and display. Clicks from the display network do not get attributed to any keyword, so total number of clicks on keywords will not add up the total number of clicks. Add the number of display network clicks to the total of keyword clicks and you should come up with the same number.

This is only one reason most of us will recommend splitting your search and display campaigns into separate campaigns. There are other good reasons for doing this.

Best of Luck!

Pete
petebardo — Deadhead doing AdWords

The diagnosis fit the symptoms and I was so pleased to have a direction to go in that I didn’t consider that Pete might be wrong. (Can you really trust a Deadhead doing Adwords?) I immediately changed my hybrid campaign to search only and began looking for explanation in Google’s documentation.

Google Adwords Campaign editing page
Click this screen capture to see it full size.

Google links to Learn more about campaign types, right from the settings page for each campaign in Google Adwords.  It tells you more than you can absorb in one go about the ins-n-outs of your choice of campaign. It recommends a ‘hybrid’ campaign for newer Adwords customers and I didn’t see a warning about not counting clicks by keyword in the display ads. We’ll see what the results of my moving away from the recommended practice are in a day or two.

Today I learned:

  1. that asking for help can be a Good Thing and
  2. that display campaigns don’t emphasize keywords like search campaigns.