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There are all sorts of tips, tricks, and techniques to drive more traffic to a blog. They usually involve either paying for it in some way, improving an avenue such as through search engine optimization, or building subscribers. The reality is this – all of these things take time. What doesn’t take time other than the effort that is required to make it happen is writing better blog post titles. The right titles can increase blog traffic. The wrong titles can desperately hurt it. This is an immediate effect.

More and more businesses are starting to blog today. They are syndicating, optimizing, promoting, and doing all of the best practices that the gurus are giving them. Still, they are only seeing small increases in traffic if at all. Every now and then, they see a post that spikes. Was it amazing content? Possibly. Was it shared by the right people on social media? Probably. Did it have the right title? Almost definitely.

It blows me away when I see so many titles that simply suck. Yes, they suck. They aren’t attracting anyone.

The title in the blog post above attracted people. It was wildly shared. It was blogged about on other websites. It made an impact. Despite being wildly popular and talked about around the web for weeks, the story itself wasn’t that interesting. It was good, but not good enough to make it the talk of the blogosphere for as long as it was. The title, however, was brilliant.

Depending on your style of business and blogging voice, here are some quick examples of blog post styles. This is a very basic sampling. You can do better.

• Emotional Statement – The Biggest Reason Your Blog Traffic Sucks
• Numbered List – 7 Reasons Why Top 10 Lists Still Work
• Play on Common Phrases - Why Good Guys Really Do Finish Last in Sales
• Contrary Statement to Common Phrases – Good Guys Finish First if They do These Things
• Big Time Promise – Cut Your Blogging Time in Half While Doubling Your Posting Frequency
• Three Worders (use sparingly) – The Blogger’s Conundrum
• Nonsense Titles (that make sense) – The Best Blog Titles Work Best if You “Backwards Them Write”

Again, there are plenty of other types of titles out there. The key is to check out the right sites. See how other blog posts are being written and what titles they’re using. Just because it’s a business blog doesn’t mean that it has to be bland and boring. Titles drive traffic quickly. Make them count.

Back in the days when Yahoo was fighting against Alta Vista, when Bing was still called Microsoft Live, and when Google was trying to get the big Y to buy them, onsite content and meta tags were search. It was a day of keyword stuff, of hidden text, and of content scraping that helped porn sites rank for the term “toys” while male enhancement drugs could be found on searches for “big fun”. Google emerged as the leader in part because of their pure design, but also because they started looking offsite for signals about search rankings.

The days before Google’s innovation were the peak of onsite SEO. Google turned search on its head by focusing more on what other websites were saying about your website through links rather than anything you put on your site itself. PageRank changed search forever and helped to eliminate some of the poor spammy techniques that websites employed for the sake of getting search engine traffic. Of course, with any good thing comes the bad parts and spammers started learning how to manipulate offsite signals as well.

This persisted until about a year ago. It was at SXSW 2012 that Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s Duane Forrester told SEO guru Danny Sullivan that changes were in the works to help rein in offsite link spamming. A month and a half later on April 24th, search was changed forever with the introduction of the Penguin search algorithm update. It helped to eliminate a lot of the offsite spamming techniques, enough so to take some companies out of the SEO business (or out of business altogether).

The pre-PageRank days were the only ones when having the right website made more of a difference than it does today. With the rise of content marketing as a hub for SEO and social media marketing rather than a component of the two disciplines, having the strongest possible website content is essential in promoting a brand on search as well as social media sites like Facebook. You can’t just have a website and drive links to it anymore. Today, you have to “bring it” from a quality perspective. While it’s possible to have a dealer website that stays completely focused on the task of selling cars and services, it’s better to have one that’s diverse with information, articles, and other pieces of content that bring value to the visitors whether they want to buy something or not.

Google is smart. Bing may be smarter, albeit not at marketing themselves. They can tell the difference between SEO content and valuable content for the website visitors much better than most are will to admit. SEO spam is dying. Bulk is dying. Today, the search engines want to see effort. They want you to amaze people with the content you put on your website.

For the most part, most dealers understand the importance of having content on their websites. They know that search engines love unique content and if they have any hope of ranking well for keywords other than their own name, they need content to help expand their reach.

Things have been changing a bit for the last year. A new type of content is rising in importance from both a search as well as a social perspective. The two go hand in hand; if you have good content that people are willing to share on social media, this helps the website in search as well thanks to the rise of social signals as a component of the Google and Bing ranking algorithms. The problem with nearly all dealer websites is this: none of your content is worth sharing.

People don’t share inventory listings, but we need them to rank well. People don’t share specials, but we want our website visitors to see them. This poses a new challenge for dealers – the content that we want to be found isn’t the type of content that people are willing to share on their social media profiles or through links that they create on their websites. Thankfully, Google and Bing both know this. It’s not a problem that is unique to the automotive industry. Their answer: build content that is made specifically to benefit the reader regardless of whether they’re buying your product at that very moment or not.

Engaging content is quickly becoming the most important content on dealer websites that are building them. The reason that they’re so important is that they’re unique. Every dealer website has inventory. Differentiating one inventory from another is challenging, particularly for brands like Dodge and General Motors that require their dealers to use the same inventory types across the board. Dealers that also build engaging content on their websites are able to do better in both search and social because they’re bringing value to their visitors in the eyes of Google and Bing.

Long story short – if you build content on your website that is engaging, it will help your other important pages like inventory, specials, and the homepage itself rank better in search. Check out this story about making the most of your CMS, then check out these four content types that would work well on your website.

1. Educational Content – This is actually the easiest type of content to put on the site and also the most common used by a handful of dealers today. You’re the expert. Show it. Make a video about how to connect a smartphone MP3 player to the stereo system in a particular vehicle. Write the process up step by step (make it unique – don’t copy and paste!), post it with the video and perhaps some images, and you have a very shareable piece of educational content.
2. Entertaining Content – You don’t have to be a comedian to entertain. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of focusing your automotive passions. Pictures of cars, videos from the local community, and write-ups about people doing amazing things with their vehicles all make for great entertaining content.
3. Customer Experience Content – This is a tricky one but can have the dual-benefit of helping with your reputation while engaging with your customers. One great example I saw a while back was about a grandson who was helping his grandmother to find the perfect car for her, only to find out after the deal was complete that she was actually buying the car for him as a college present. Great pictures, heartwarming, and puts the dealership in a great light for playing along with the ruse until the end. With this type of content, you’ll always want to make sure you have permission from the subjects before proceeding.
4. Community Focus Content – This is another tricky one, but it can be helpful for the dealership while helping a cause as well. In essence, you’re taking things that your dealership does from a charitable perspective and using the website to help spread the word. It’s important to be selfless in this case. Your benefit is from the content and promoting the cause, not from promoting the dealership itself.

There are other content types that are engaging, but these will give you a good starting spot as you get to building additional content. Remember, sometimes the best way to get people to the content you want them to see is to give them the content that they want to see first.

Okay, you got me! This article has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with you.

On a daily basis I analyze dealer websites which I’m convinced had the same content writer. Have you ever seen websites with sentences that read like this, “Our team of automotive professionals have the knowledge you need to buy the right car...”? or “We understand that everyone has different financial situations, that’s why we’re proud to offer auto loans for every credit situation...”? or my favorite, “We are an award winning ________ dealer here to serve you!”...

OH SHOOT; that’s your website?!? Don’t worry, I’ll look away while you quickly delete those portions of your site content.

If you’re familiar with dealership website content that reads like a conceited teenaged football jockey wrote it, then read on! I’d like to dispel a myth and offer a content creation suggestion that you can take to the bank.

The Myth: Talking about yourself and your achievements makes you look more professional

Wrong! It makes you sound like the kind of person who stares at himself/herself anywhere a reflection can be seen. Nobody cares about you. They don’t care about your stupid awards. Why? Because they are your awards, not theirs.

You see, everyone has a favorite letter of the alphabet. Can you guess what it is?  Yup, the letter ‘I’. Instead of spending so much time talking about yourself and calling it a day, try refocusing your content on how being an award winner will help the consumer move closer to what they’d like to achieve or obtain.

This leads me to...

A Suggestion: Make Your Site Content All About The Consumer!

There are several ways that this can easily be done, but here’s the suggestion I’ll make here.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Write out a list of things that automotive consumers would want/need to know to help shape their purchase decision. This list could include topics like:

• Buying vs. Leasing

• Used car buying 101

• Private seller vs. Certified Dealership

• Financing options

• Credit rebuilding program

• Graduate student program

• Senior discounts

• Military discounts

• Affinity programs

• Used car specials

• New car specials

• ...and the list could go on and on

Once you’ve compiled the list, think about your customer. Make every sentence you write a benefit to them. Show them how they can get what they want by working with your dealership. If you truly aim to help others achieve what they want, you will get everything you want (If you know who said that, write it in the comments below).  

Last thoughts

We could go in a million directions from here, but doing so would end us right back to where we are now. Confused about what makes good content, and discouraged not know how to get started. To summarize; stop talking so much about yourself, start talking about your customers.

How have you used content to drive more sales?

This is part 2 of 4 in an ADM series about setting Facebook goals:

1. Define Your Facebook Goals Before Determining a Strategy
2. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Safe Approach
3. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Aggressive Approach
4. Facebook Marketing Goals: More Aggressive Approaches

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Setting goals on Facebook is extremely important. As I wrote last night, it’s the root cause of one of the biggest challenges businesses are facing in Facebook marketing: a lack of a proper strategy. If you don’t know where you want to go, you won’t be able to get there very easily.

There are two primary approaches to setting a Facebook strategy that I’ve put in the boring categories of “safe” and “aggressive”. Here, we’re going to go over some of the safe approaches to Facebook that businesses can employ if they want to be truly successful in their goal-oriented strategy. These aren’t my favorites; I’m an aggressive goal-setter. Still, they may be the best way for your business to operate on Facebook.

Goal: PR-Only

Social media has the potential to be an amazing communication tool when done right. It is the best way to have a two-way public relations presence. You can get your messages out and mold the perception of your company’s personality the way you see fit while having an open method through which people can reach you. PR should always be a portion of every Facebook strategy.

There is an option of using it strictly for public relations. This is the easiest way to go. It’s the least productive goal to set, but it’s by far the safest approach and easiest to implement. If your company either does not believe in the value of using Facebook to reach more customers or you don’t have the time to implement an aggressive strategy, the PR-only approach is ideal.

In essence, this goal is to use Facebook sparingly. You aren’t going for visibility. You’re using it for defense only. Growth in the local market isn’t important. You aren’t playing the EdgeRank game nor are you advertising on Facebook at all. With this approach, the only audience that concerns you come from two sources: your website and the search engines.

With the PR-only approach, you play it very safe. You can post sparingly – once or twice a week is plenty (no less than that, though) – and finding content is easy because it doesn’t have to be viral. It technically doesn’t even have to be interesting. It’s an expression of your company’s personality to a limited audience. You can post links to your blog, pictures from the office, industry news, congratulations to employees, customer testimonials, etc.

Because you’re not worried about exposure, you don’t have to worry about getting into your fans’ news feeds. Those who want to get a feel for your company will be able to find it in searches for your name on Google or Bing as well as by clicking on the link that you post on your website and blog. You’re painting a picture with no fears of hurting your affinity and limited worries about getting negative feedback on your posts. Very few people will see it, but those who do have the opportunity to get a good feeling about your company because you’re not taking risks.

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, you will not be reaching people with this strategy. You will have a presence for those who want to find you, but there will be no growth, no additional leads or sales, no engagement, and you won’t be popping up in news feeds. The PR-only approach is a way to hide from all of the potential negatives in social media while still maintaining a presence that isn’t embarrassing. It’s as safe as it gets.

Goal: Basic Presence

This is similar to the PR-only approach, but there’s a chance that it can expose the brand to some additional people. Not many. You won’t be saying a lot but you will be interesting enough to get a little love.

If your goal is to have a basic presence, there are several strategies that can work. One of the easiest is to go with the daily industry picture. This strategy is extremely easy and maintains your presence without much effort. You simply schedule an image that’s relevant to your industry once a day, every day. That’s it. A Jeep dealer would post an image of a Jeep once a day. You can’t mess it up.

This goal is not one that will allow for much growth, but the chances of it ever hurting you are limited. Much like the PR-only approach, having a basic presence is designed mostly for those who find you on search or get directed to the Facebook page from you website. Because it’s likely going to be images that are of interest to your visitors, there’s a chance they might like some of them and get you an EdgeRank boost that can push your posts into news feeds.

This is the most common goal for local businesses today. Ironically, it’s the one that many wrongly classify as aggressive since they’re stepping outside of the bounds of pure business needs and trying to entertain their audience. The reason that this classification is wrong is because it’s still much safer than posting messages. Being fun isn’t necessarily aggressive. It can be, but we’ll discuss that type of goal in the next post.

Goal: Be the Industry Resource

Of all the safe goals, this is the one that requires the most effort. You’re trying to share your knowledge within your industry to your fans. Using the Jeep dealer example, they would be posting tips to maintain a 4WD when it’s not used very often, for example.

This goal can be ramped up more than other safe goals because you’re trying to bring value to the table. Facebook ads can work and this goal can help with branding and public perception if you stay consistent with it. In fact, you can get very active and appreciative fans as the industry resource. There’s a chance that you can build some decent EdgeRank and get shared amongst your target audience.

It takes work. Those who are conservative with their goals but want to be aggressive with the implementation of the strategy will be constantly researching to find more resources to either create or share from other sources. It’s an excellent approach if you have a matching blog with tips and best practices.

Those setting this as their goal do not have to post every day. In fact, once or twice a week can work just as it can with the PR-only approach, but never let your page go dormant for longer than a week. If you have to repost something with a slightly different spin in the description, that’s better than missing a week of posts.

* * *

There are other safe goals out there, but for local businesses if you want to play defense and maintain a presence without spending too much effort keeping it up, these are the best ways that we’ve found to work. The social media game is all about ROI, so if your investment is low, the expected returns can be low as well. When playing it safe, you don’t have to be loved or even liked that much. You just have to be present.

Tomorrow, I’ll go over the aggressive goals that are (to me) much more fun but that also encompass more risk. Playing with Facebook from an aggressive posture takes time and effort and there’s a risk that the returns won’t justify the expenditures. However, there’s also a tremendous opportunity to move the needle.

This is part 1 of 4 in an ADM series about setting Facebook goals:

1. Define Your Facebook Goals Before Determining a Strategy
2. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Safe Approach
3. Facebook Marketing Goals: The Aggressive Approach
4. Facebook Marketing Goals: More Aggressive Approaches

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About a month ago I was asked when speaking before a group about what I thought the biggest mistake was that businesses were making on Facebook. I replied, “lack of coherent strategy” and went on about how too many business pages seemed like they were posting for the sake of posting, that they didn’t appear to moving in any particular direction, and that they were managing their social media presence on a day to day basis. If I could take back the answer (or better yet, elaborate further), I would.

I was wrong.

The actual biggest mistake that businesses are making starts a step before the strategy phase and would, in most cases, cure the ills that businesses are suffering with their strategy (or lack thereof). It really comes down to goals and the fact that most businesses are not defining their goals from the beginning nor are they adjusting them as their Facebook presence expands. THIS is the actual biggest mistake that they’re making. To those who heard me speak last month about this, I’m sorry to not give the most appropriate answer.

Every Facebook page should have a goal or set of goals that they want to achieve. Many will give the quick answer and say that their goal is to reach as many prospective customers and clients as possible, but this isn’t a real goal. Even in reach, it’s important to establish why you want to reach them and what messages you want them to receive. Are you wanting to reach them with your sales and marketing messages? Are you wanting them to see your logo and expand your branding? Are you wanting them to see that you’re involved in the various local and industry-specific conversations that happen on social media?

Keep in mind – “all of the above” is not a valid answer. That doesn’t mean that you cannot have a robust and diverse presence on Facebook that tackles multiple opportunities, but from a strategy perspective you’re message will get lost if you aren’t reinforcing it regularly. On average, only 16% of your fans are seeing your message at all and that’s if you’re doing a pretty good job at keeping your EdgeRank strong. While diversifying your message is important, keeping focused on a singular strategy should overrule the desire to be eclectic.

Over the next couple of days I will be diving into a wider range of specific strategies that you can employ. In the meantime, do you have any strategies that you’ve considered? Is there a technique that you’ve found to be effective or one that you think would work? I’m classifying the various strategy types into two categories: safe and aggressive. As with setting goals, determining strategies should be focused. Don’t try to bite off more than you can chew. You’ll end up spitting it all out on the table and embarrassing yourself.

The vast majority of business websites out there tend to stay laser-focused on their goals. Whether they’re intended to sell a product or generate leads, it seems that all of the content placed on their websites works towards this end. While there’s something that can be said about the strategy, changes at Google, Bing, and social media sites makes it beneficial to post content that does nothing more than educate, entertain, or act as a resource for people without attempting to sell or generate a lead.

If you want to truly get ahead of your competitors this year, you should be willing to devote a little bit of time (or money if you choose to buy it) every month on content. This isn’t the type of content designed to get ranked in the search engines, but it can help your important pages get ranked. It’s not the kind of content that will generate leads through social media, though you have opportunities every time someone lands on your site. It’s the type of content that is truly giving – you’re motives should be business-oriented but the content should be able to stand alone.

First, let’s take a quick look at why this helps. We’ve covered it before but here’s a refresher:

Valuable Content Helps the Rest of Your Site

Google, Bing, and the social media sites love quality content. They can tell the difference between quality content that is beneficial to visitors and content that is designed specifically to generate leads and/or sales. They can tell by the content itself in many cases (particularly in the case of Google) but they can also tell through inbound links that are earned and social signals that are given.

When you have content that people are willing to share, whether by linking to it from their websites and blogs or by sharing it on social media, the search engines and social media sites (Facebook and Google+ in particular) give additional trust to the domain. This is the primary reason that we strongly encourage having a blog on the primary domain itself. That’s not to say that there are no benefits from having an offsite domain, but for this exercise the benefits yielded come from the domain’s interactions.

A post that is valuable to visitors can link to other pages within the domain, helping both the domain in general and specific pages rank better in Google. For Facebook and Google+, sharable content ads the trust factor. Most domains do not appear as well on social sites regardless of the content because they do not have an established history of trust. By posting content that people share, the social sites start to get “acquainted” with the domain. You can tell if your domain needs a trust boost by having someone post content from the site and then clicking it on Facebook. If a warning comes up that “you are about to leave Facebook and go to blah blah blah”, then your domain is not trusted yet. You can fix this. You just need more people sharing the content on your domain. This can be achieved by posting quality content that people are naturally willing to share.

This type of useful content helps both in search and social. Now, let’s look at the content types.

Content Worth Sharing

There are several different kinds of content that can play well for the search engines when it comes to building two of the primary SEO signals: inbound links and social shares. The general way of looking at it is to take your industry, your area, or both and apply your knowledge into the creation of content worth sharing. Here are three examples:

• Entertain – Let’s say you have a Ford dealership. You can post a gallery of images of classic Mustangs, title it something like, “7 Epic Mustangs from the 60s and 70s”, and write up a 3-5 paragraph blurb about the storied history of the car. Many people love classic cars (and Mustangs in particular) and will be willing to share the page and the images on their social profiles as well as their blog or websites.
• Educate – With what you know about your industry and location, you should be able to teach people things they didn’t know. Even if you don’t know for sure, the internet is there to help. For example, you could post something like, “The Storied History of the Seattle Space Needle in Pictures”. Gather up some images of the Space Needle from when it was built and during times of note, write up a quick paragraph or even a sentence describing each scene (make sure it’s unique – don’t copy and paste!), and post something that will be educational on your site today and into the future. This has excellent sharing potential from locals.
• Resource – You’re the expert. Show it. There may not be a direct business reason to post a story titled, “How to SYNC Any Device in a Ford Fusion“, but the information can be helpful to those who run into challenges. They may share it. They may link to it. If they visit the page, they will likely stay on it for a while as they apply the advice. This component of the search algorithm isn’t discussed often but when a page is sticky, the domain gains trust in search.

These are very basic overviews of the ideas, but the key is to stay consistent. Some have asked me in the past why I keep it limited to two pieces of content. I don’t. If you can post every day, go for it! Twice a month is something that’s sustainable. In the business world, we often find ourselves starting a new project and abandoning it if it becomes too hard. Twice a month is enough to build up a nice library of content that can benefit your marketing immediately as well as over time.

The key is to stick to it. Schedule it. Make it happen. You’ll soon find you’re looking at your competitors in your rear-view mirror.

Call it human nature to mislead in order to promote a product. Call it deceitful selling. Call it ignorance. Call it whatever you want to call it, but the concept that has been being spread around the automotive industry that you don’t need content on your homepage is absolutely incorrect. In fact, the homepage is the most important page on your website from an SEO perspective. Building a website with a homepage that has no HTML text or links is like making a hamburger without a beef patty (even though ground turkey is acceptable and ground bison is actually superior in my opinion, but I’ll save that discussion for my food blog).

More than the sitemap, more than your navigation bar, the homepage content is the true gateway through which you can highlight the most important pages on your website for the search engines. On most websites on the internet  and nearly 100% of car dealer websites, the homepage is granted the highest level of authority by the search engines. The links within the content are given the most “juice”. Pages that are linked within the HTML of the homepage within context are considered to be the most important pages.

To have contextual internal linking within the context of your homepage content, you have to have homepage content. It’s that easy. Is it possible for a website to rank without content on the homepage? Of course. It’s also possible to eat a hamburger with buns, lettuce, tomato, onions, pickles, and mustard. Just as must people who order a hamburger expect meat of some sort inside, the search engines expect their “hamburger”, the homepage of your website, to contain meat.

Does HTML content detract from lead generation? No. Your customers aren’t that naive. This isn’t the first website they’ve ever visited that has words on it. Many won’t even scroll down to see the content and will find what they really want to see (inventory, specials, or department pages) in a second or two.

It came to our attention at NADA that at least one website vendor is preaching the concept that the homepage content clutter factor of content is not beneficial for SEO. It may be more. If you hear that idea spoken, don’t buy it. Instead, ask them, “Where’s the beef?” Even a vegan burger has a soy patty. Your website needs homepage content just the same.

CONTENT MARKETING FOR SEO

So where exactly does content marketing fit in to SEO?

Well…kind of everywhere.

Let’s start at the beginning: search engines need something to rank. And that something is content. Without content, there’s no reason for your page to be displayed.

CONTENT MARKETING FOR SEO INFOGRAPHIC

Sourse: contentstrategyhub

OTHER POSTS TO CHECK OUT…

How Social Media Impacts SEO ~ "Tweeting Cuts Indexation By 50%"

"If You Don’t Think Social Signals are Important for SEO, You Don’t Know Google Very Well"

Why Attend the Internet Sales 20 Group?

In business, there is no such thing as writer’s block. It doesn’t exist. Erase the phrase from your mind. You see, in any business, there are so many potential stories to be told that one should never run out of them even if they’re blogging daily. More importantly, this isn’t like writing a novel. It’s not professional journalism. You’re not writing a column. On a business blog, you have the freedom to pull from the ultimate content resource – the internet.

What most perceive as writer’s block in the world of business blogging is actually the brain’s way of saying that you don’t want to write at this moment. Get over it.

With that all out of the way, it’s time to look at some different types of blog posts that can be categorized into a proper plan. This plan can be an editorial calendar, a series of reminders in Outlook, or a notepad on your desk where you jot down your ideas. We’ll get into planning in a moment, but first let’s look at some of the ideas themselves.

Blog Post Ideas

This is a difficult topic to write about because no matter how much time and effort is put into it, the end result cannot be complete. The idea potentials are infinite. These are just some blog post types that can help you to get into the proper frame of mind when deciding about which topics to blog.

We’ll use my favorite topic, automotive, to flesh out the concepts:

• Industry News – As a business, you have the inside track to write about things that others want to know. You’re the expert. A car dealer can write about what’s happening to their brand, new vehicles that are coming out, recalls, races, or anything that is topical today. Here’s an example of an industry news post.
• Image Posts – These are often the easiest to put together because of two sources of content: what’s happening at the store right now and the internet. A Dodge dealer should have plenty of Dodge Chargers on the lot that can be positioned in various ways. They also have hundreds of worthy images of Dodge Chargers, old and new, on the internet. Keep in mind, if you’re taking images from other sites, make sure they’re receiving attribution. Here’s an example of an image post.
• Video Posts – As with image posts, most of the heavy lifting is done for you with video posts. You don’t have to a ton of investigating or write a 1500 word article to frame the video into a perspective. You want to write something, even if it’s only a paragraph or two describing the video and what it means to your industry, but it doesn’t have to be much. Let the video do the talking. Here’s an example of a video post.
• Activity in the Community Posts – Your business is likely involved in the community somehow. It can be a sponsorship of the local little league team. It could be something more significant. Talk about it. There’s nothing wrong with “bragging” if the intention is to highlight the source itself. Here’s an example of a community activity post.
• Infographic Posts – The internet is a visual experience. There are so many amazing infographics available to us that there’s really no reason not to use them. Make sure the data is accurate, of course, as you’re posting it on your website or blog, and definitely make sure to give attribution (it’s the reason that businesses make infographics in the first place) but don’t be shy about it, either. Here’s an example of an infographic post.
• Upcoming Product Posts – You know about new things coming down the road before your customers. Expose things to them through your site or blog. This is actually a no-brainer but so few take advantage of it. Here’s an example of an upcoming product post.

Again, this barely scratches the surface.

Planning

There really isn’t enough to say about planning to make it deserve its own section in this blog post, but it’s so important that we’re separating it out anyway. Make a plan. There are some great editorial calendar addons to WordPress and other blogging platforms that work nicely. Unless you’re blogging all the time, multiple times per week, these may not be necessary. It could be as easy as posting your ideas as tasks or calendar events in Outlook or whatever calendar software you use.

Me? I have a notepad. If it weren’t for that, I’d probably lose my ability to write with my hands because it’s the only time I ever use pen and paper other than to sign things. It’s archaic, messy, and less organized than the digital counterparts, but for me, it works. Whatever works best for you to keep you adding content to your blog or website on a regular basis is the right way for you to make your plan.

What are you waiting for? Start coming up with ideas, organize them into a plan, and get words onto your blog.

“I sit down at the computer and think of things to post on social media.”

This is the problem. It’s the challenge that faces many dealers as they try to explore new ideas to post about on social media. They have “social media time” set aside, and while this is good to schedule and maintain, it also allows people to miss some of the best opportunities available in social media.

It’s what happens in the day to day affairs of a dealership, the things that come to us when we least expect it, that really makes for strong social media posts. Dealers all too often try to come up with their social media posts while they’re at their computer and fully in “social media mode”. This is a mistake.

Social media is a reflection of life. In business, it’s often what happens at the dealership every day that makes for the most interesting social media posts because it is during these times that the reflections of real life actually occur. Examples:

• The happy customer who is really excited about their new car (beyond what we normally look to for testimonials)
• The employee who’s going to be playing with their band this weekend at a local bar
• A great coffee mug that an employee brought in
• An interesting quote from someone at the store
• A random thought that pops up in your head that is both relevant to your business and interesting enough to share

These all seem simple. They seem like they’re mundane aspects of life. They are. That’s a good thing. Find the little things that happen every day and make them interesting through creativity while in “social media mode”.

If you walked around the store or simply chatted with people throughout the day, both customers and employees, you’ll be shocked to find what kind of interesting things are happening at the dealership at that very moment. Take notes. It could be as simple as pulling out your smartphone and hitting the voice-recorder to get the ideas in a safe place for when it comes time to “do” social media. It could be recording a video at that very moment or shooting a picture of the scene. There are lots of choices available to us through the various technologies at our fingertips. Often, it’s just a matter of staying in “social media mode” at all times.

The best social media posts are natural. If you keep your eyes open for the opportunities, there will be nothing blocking you when it comes time to make the post itself.

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“Opportunities” image courtesy of Shutterstock.

For those with a business that has an active blog, you may say that this seems light. It is. It seems that there’s a huge gap between those who are adding content to their site and those who don’t so we’re going with a strong minimum. If you’re adding two pieces of content per month, you have the ability to make a difference.

I’m not talking about conversion pages. I’m talking about interesting, engaging content that people can and will share if they see it. I’m talking about building content that works for your business, that’s associated with your target visitors, and that comes from a unique place that is inherent to you. I’m talking about writing about what you know best – your business and the area that it’s in.

That’s not to say that those who are blogging regularly shouldn’t read about this. Most that I’ve seen who are “blogging” are actually just posting search-relevant content in hopes that it will help them gain additional keywords. This practice is fine but is not a replacement for the type of content that I’m talking about here. For this content, you have to make it real. You have to build content that you would be interested in reading yourself if you came across it on the internet or in a magazine.

We’ve discussed this type of content in the past regarding killing birds, but it wouldn’t be doing the topic service to write about it once and let it go. Here’s an overview:

Strong Related Content

Most businesses are starting to post some sort of content on their blogs or directly to their site. Unfortunately, the vast majority of it is completely self-serving. This is fine – you’re a business, not a media publication – but you’ll miss out on the benefits inherent with valuable and/or entertaining content if everything is about you. There are other stories to tell, other concepts that should be explored in your industry, and interesting aspects of your community that will help you create content that others can post to their social media profiles or link to from their websites.

That’s the goal. If you’re a dealership writing articles like “Nissan Altima Dallas Gets New Incentives”, it’s fine and can help you rank for the target term “Nissan Altima Dallas” but it’s not enough. You needgood content to support your conversion content. Not everything is about keywords. Done right, it’s easier to get the tougher keywords by going after something altogether.

As we’ve discussed in the past, content has two primary goals. Yes, it can help the search engines understand your website better, so the SEO value is strong within the content. This is what conversion content is all about. However, you won’t get anyone to share or link to this type of content, which is why engaging content is necessary to achieve the second goal: getting inbound links and social signals pointed to your website.

When you have an interesting piece of content that is shared on social media and linked to by others, it helps the entire domain achieve higher rankings in search for the “money terms” that you want. By mixing in pieces of content such as “9 Amazing Uses of Ford SYNC and Your Smartphone”, you’re on your way to getting higher rankings for other keywords. It does, of course, help with social media content as well, but even if you don’t believe in the value of this content, you’ll surely see the value of improving your rankings.

Two pieces of content a month might seem low, but how much are your producing today? Then, ask yourself which is more likely – to get in and post a lot of content, then get tired of it and abandon it altogether, or to schedule two pieces of content that don’t interrupt your normal routine too often and that have a tremendous impact on your overall internet marketing? This is why I ask people to start with two. If they build two a month for a few months, they might decide that the value is high enough to hire a part-time or full-time content writer. That’s the goal. Bring in some value, then expand on it.

Once you start, it’s hard to stop after seeing the amazing result.

The automation of Twitter for businesses continues to become the norm.

As micro-blogging, interaction, and expression get replaced by RSS feeds, Facebook feeds, and post scheduling that is all dominated by links, links, and more links, the power of Twitter is being replaced by the easy alternatives to actually, well, using the service.

This is a huge mistake for most. There are some who are simply overwhelmed by social media and internet marketing in general and anything that they can check off their list with minimal or zero effort is a good thing. For those who actually want to find success on Twitter, it’s not going to work with zero effort. Thankfully, Twitter is a platform that can work very well with minimal effort. There has to be some, just not a ton.

Post fewer links

When I first started using Twitter over five years ago, the site was loaded with communication. Links were in fewer than 20% of the Tweets in my feeds. It was mostly about, “look at what I’m doing here” or “I really like pickles”. Now, links dominate Tweets. For news sources and other publications, this is fine. For super-active accounts that talk to people regularly, this is fine. For businesses who are not super-popular on social media, links should be used sparingly.

Again, it comes down to time. If you simply don’t have the time to come up with 3 or 4 good, solid unlinked Tweets, interactions with everyone who reaches out to you, and proactive interactions with new people the way a proper Twitter strategy should look, then getting something out there on a regular basis is better than going completely stagnant. The effectiveness of the “bail out” strategy is minimal, but if it’s all that you can afford from a time perspective, so be it.

It’s it’s at all possible to tone down the links and get truly engaging with your posts, you’ll get much more out of the service for your business.

Talk to people

It would have been hard to imagine in the days when I was first getting started on Twitter that there would be a need to give this advice, but that need is here. Twitter is first and foremost a communication tool. Most businesses are using it strictly for broadcasting. The paradox that many fail to understand is that if you talk about yourself less and talk about others more, your messages about yourself will reach a greater number of people. In many ways, it’s about earning the right to broadcast.

Those who use Twitter regularly can smell a feed-driven Twitter account in seconds. They can tell when an account is strictly being used to broadcast and when it’s truly being used for communication. When someone is strictly broadcasting, they better be a publication like Mashable or a celebrity like Oprah Winfrey or the message simply won’t be heard.

Here are some quick ways to establish that you’re communicating on Twitter rather than broadcasting:

1. Send @replies – If you’re a standard business account that is getting a handful of interactions directed at you per day, reply to all of them. If you’re more popular, reply to the ones that are personalized. In other words, no need to reply to retweets unless the sender added their two cents to the conversation.
2. Retweet often – A decent account should retweet 5+ times a day. A more active account can get away with fewer but should be retweeting at least once a day. This isn’t the “RT @0boy…” style, though those should be worked in as well. These are the direct retweets by pushing the retweet button directly from Twitter. This is important because it adds different avatars to your stream. When visitors see that you’re retweeting others, they’ll be more likely to assume that you’re actually listening to the outside world rather than working inside your own little Twitter broadcasting box.
3. Start or join conversations – You’re an expert in your industry. You can chime in on conversations that are happening regarding your industry, your local area, or even the world in general. That doesn’t mean that you should butt in and start spreading your wisdom in one-on-one conversations, but it does mean responding to people’s Tweets or even starting the conversation with them directly. You can see in their Twitter streams whether they’re replying to people or not. Be sure that if you start a conversation, it’s with someone who will reply back to you.
4. Split your times up – This is all very easy stuff, but doing it all in one block per day isn’t the best way to do it. It’s better than nothing, but the preferred method would be to do it at least twice a day. A best practice is to do it first thing in the morning when you’re done checking your morning emails and then again shortly after lunch. You don’t want to do it at the end of the day unless you’ll be checking your stream from home in the evening because you’ll want to be timely with your responses when people engage back at you.

Once you’ve established that you communicate properly through Twitter, you’ll have room to post occasional self-serving links. If all you post is links, your message will get lost in the mix.

Post pictures and unlinked text

Twitter has a great filter feature for mobile images. Use it. Before we recommended Instagram but that didn’t work out so well, so Tweeting images directly through the Twitter mobile app works great.

If you use Buffer or any of the other posting tools that upload images directly to Twitter (Hootsuite doesn’t do this, FYI), scheduling images through a PC is another way to get your feed flowing with engaging content. It’s not as good as mobile uploads as people love to see real pictures taken by real people associated with the business, but it’s definitely better than nothing.

Text posts are great as well. They can be sayings, quotes, opinions, or anything that has nothing other than possibly hashtags linking out from the Tweet. This is particularly useful when posting about local area events and asking questions. One note: if you do ask questions designed to get a response from your followers, be sure that you’re available to respond to their answers. Don’t drop a question in the queue and walk away. Again, timeliness is important, even for a business Twitter account.

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Twitter is the one component of social media strategies that has been botched by most over the years. It’s hard to get real followers. It’s harder to get real engagement.

It can, however, prove to be extremely useful if you put the effort into it. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, the effort that’s required to take a Twitter account from decent to great really isn’t that much. It’s for this reason that if you have a little extra time every day, Twitter is a good investment of it.

There was a time when the search engines rewarded content of all types. If a website syndicated content from elsewhere on the web and exposed it to their audience, it wasn’t as good as unique content but at least it didn’t hurt. Some of the content would be de-indexed as duplicate but the overall health of the domain itself was not harmed.

Today, it’s harmful. Websites that are taking a lot of content from others and posting it on their own websites, even if they link to the original source, are finding that their overall rankings are dropping as a result. It’s one of many changes in the string of content attacks Google has been building upon ever since introducing the first variation of Panda back in February, 2011.

Some have gone to “spinning” content as an alternative. In spinning, content is taken and many of the individual words are changed in an effort to beat Google’s duplicate content filter. This worked for a little while and is still somewhat effective today but Google has come out against spinning in several public statements. It, too, is dying.

With Google’s focus on quality being hammered into us from all sides, it’s clear that their orchestrating a shift towards real content. This is a challenge for many businesses who aren’t really journalists and do not have the time to do the research necessary to create strong content. The alternative: commentary.

Thankfully, humans are loaded with opinions. The internet is a venue through which opinions can be shared. Share yours. It can be difficult to pick a topic that’s relevant to your industry and write an article about something, but it’s easier if the research and writing are already done for us, leaving our role as one of reaction rather than investigation.

The process is pretty simple. Read an article or two that pertains to your industry, then respond to it. For example, you may see an article on Smart Planet about how Ford and GM are opening their APIs to third-party developers. A car dealer probably doesn’t want to do the research about the developments, but they don’t have to. They just have to read the article and respond to it from their own perspective within the industry.

The research has already been done. The news has already been stated. Nobody will go to a car dealer’s website to read the news, but they may be interested in seeing the response about the development from the perspective of those who will be affected, in this case a car dealer embedded in the automotive industry.

This gives websites the ability to add value and participate in the conversation without having to do the technical research surrounding the news itself. It makes bringing valuable content to the table a much easier process and allows businesses to focus on what they know and what they have time to do rather than branching out and becoming the content researchers.

There is plenty out there on any topic through which a business can add valuable commentary. You don’t have to break the news to be valuable in the eyes of both visitors and search engines. You just have to have a unique perspective.

(Full Disclosure**: I'm writing this as I try to battle a viscous stomach virus, so bare with me :) )

We've all heard the phrase: "Content is King." (JD Rucker recently amended that phrase earlier this week: Content isn't King. It's More Like a President) Whatever value you put on Content (President, King, Duchess, Mayor, etc..), there is one thing for certain: your content HAS to be RELEVANT. 

Yet, what does Relevant Content constitute? What does Content even mean? Wikpedia defines Relevant as: "is a measure of how pertinent, connected, or applicable something is."

Whenever you're posting onto your business' Facebook or Twitter page, the first thing that should come to mind is: Is this relevant? Will my audience find this relevant? After all, you're trying to establish a connection with your customers, fans, followers and if you post something that they're not interested in, then there is no reason for them to click, comment, like or RT. For instance, I'm an avid reader of fiction (Sci-fi, thriller, mystery). I follow several independent bookstores on Twitter. If they start tweeting about DVD releases, then I'm going to hit the Unfollow button and move on. It's all about what's relevant to your audience. 

Another point I wanted to make is that every social media analyst, social media manager, etc.. should be somewhat of a news junkie. I'm not encouraging you to watch CNN, FOXNEWS, or MSNBC for 24 hours straight. That would drive anyone insane! Rather, each morning you should be spending a few minutes frequenting news sites such as CNN.com, Autoblog.com (Cars), mashable (Tech), buzzfeed (Memes, trends, viral posts), yahoo (they sometimes have quirky news), etc.. An important part of social media is "conversation." If you're unaware of what everyone is talking about, then how on earth can you join the conversation?

So, before you copy and paste that link that you may find interesting or funny, first ask yourself: Will Mary Sue and Joe Smith like this? Will they care?

By now, if you've been reading what I've been posting the last few months, you know that content marketing is the key to current and future search and social success. Businesses who really want to do what sites like Google and Facebook really want them to do will be using high-quality content on their websites as the hub through which they can make their marketing blossom.

This should by no means be interpreted that activities such as link-earning and social signals are not useful. In fact, the core of true content marketing to drive higher search results and stronger social interactions is still based around earning links and generating social engagement. It's for this reason that guest posting is a practice that should be considered if you want to get into more advanced techniques.

First, you have to be able to put high-quality content on your website and/or blog. Guest posting does not replace this. If you are having trouble finding the time to keep your own site active and growing, guest posting is something that you should consider. If you're doing well with your website and/or blog, then guest posting can generate exposure, earn links, and even send direct traffic to your website. As with all things in 2013, it all comes down to quality. I say it a lot, but it cannot be overstated.

Write What You Know

The biggest challenge is that we're often so immersed in "what we know" that we have a hard time identifying what can be interesting enough to get picked up by other blogs or websites. Sometimes the easiest way to fix this issue is to be mindful of what you learn about your industry. Fresh knowledge to you in your industry is likely brand new to others, so identifying "on the fly" can make it easier to find topics.

The second biggest challenge is that we tend to write in some pitching or marketing into our guest posts. At no point should you try to work in your credentials, products, or services into guest posts. You won't be accepted as easily if you do. The value that you receive from guest posting is in the links and the establishment of authority within the industry. Teach and/or entertain with your post, then link to your website either in context (we'll discuss that further later) or at the very least within the author's bio box.

Use Content on Your Website as a Resource

In the above example, you might have somewhere in the body of your guest post a paragraph like this:

One of the most common times when we go on longer trips is for summer vacations. There are [summer maintenance activities](link) that you can do prior to the trip that can handle much of the preparation you'll need to do before heading to the beach.

Find the Right Venues

You may think that the only place you'll be able to post is something that is hyper-targeted to your industry. This isn't true. In fact, it's sometimes easier to get a guest post in related industries rather than your specific industry because they likely already have experts in your industry. In other words, a car blog has plenty of car bloggers, so they might not need your car content, but a tech blog who has a bunch of tech bloggers might be interested in seeing interesting technology posts about cars. I know, as I accepted a guest post at our tech blog that was about automotive technology just the other day.

Local news publications are also good targets. They like local writers and with a strong series of content you can even get a regular posting spot. This is good, especially for branding in the local area, but don't get stuck on one site. The more places you can guest post, the better.

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Again, this is not a replacement for putting quality content on your own site. It's an enhancement if you're already putting the content there. Your goal in modern marketing is to use high-quality content to get exposure, links, social shares, and traffic. Guest posting is a tool that should be in your arsenal. Here's a video from last year from Google's Matt Cutts. Notice the importance of quality. Like I said, it can't be stated enough.

The marketing adage “content is king” has been around for a long time. In 2013, it appears that both the search engines and social media sites are focusing on content as their driving forces, but in a different way than most understand. Things are changing in the world of internet marketing. Here’s what you need to know.

Content was never really “king”. Though it made a nice talking point and allowed marketing companies an opportunity to charge for their labors, it was always a temporary fix. In search, it started off as extremely important for a little while until marketers started learning how to manipulate it, so the search engines switched to focus on external signals such as links. Then, the links started turning into link farms and “splogs”, so content re-emerged as a focus point.

Companies were built on the premise of “more is better” and started putting out low-quality, spun, or light content in an effort to fool the search engines once again. Google made moves to shut this down in February, 2011, with the first of many Penguin algorithm updates that effectively put an end to content farming.

Social media saw a similar shift towards spam in 2011 that was quickly sorted by secretive algorithm adjustments that took into account the different layers of liking, sharing, retweeting, and other social media activities to once again force quality of content to the front ahead of bulk.

For the first time ever, content is truly emerging as the leader in internet marketing activities, but it has manifested differently than most have seen in the past. There’s no longer SEO content, social media content, and conversion content that act separately from each other. Going into 2013, these three primary types of internet marketing content are consolidating into a singular strategy. It’s not that they are becoming the same. It’s that they have to work together for maximum results.

In essence, content is not king. It’s like a president. It has power, certainly, but the majority of that power must be shared, enhanced, and complemented by other factors such as links and social signals. Here’s how the president of internet marketing will work in 2013…

The different hats of a president

Just as any good president must wear different hats depending on the circumstance, a strong content marketing strategy requires that the content falls into the different categories depending on the needs of the moment. I mentioned the three most important – SEO content, social media content, and conversion content – but there are others that often come into play.

We’re going to focus on the three important ones for now:

• The President as an Organizer – The President can’t do it all. He or she must bring the leaders of Congress and the states together to demonstrate a coherent strategy for their country. SEO content works must the same way. Creating SEO content is different from creating content that acts as SEO for a particular page. True SEO content is designed to help generate inbound links, points the search engines in the right directions once they land on a particular page, and enhances the conversion pages through context and appropriate internal links.
• The President as an Ambassador – It’s important for a President to be strong, friendly, and build relationships with others. What the President says and how he or she says it makes a difference in perceptions. Done properly, the message is shared. The same holds true for social media content. You can have interesting things to post from your website onto other sites, but if the relationships aren’t there, you won’t get very far regardless of the quality of the content.
• The President as an Administrator – Despite what anyone says, a President has to be a good salesperson. They have to take their ideas and make them work within their country which requires the ability to direct the people appropriately and get things done that work. It doesn’t matter how good a President is at being an organizer or ambassador if they can’t deliver the goods at the end of the day. This is where conversion content finds similarities. You can have people interested, but if you don’t turn them into leads, customers, or clients, your other efforts are worthless.

From a practical perspective, you content must be able to bind all of the major internet marketing efforts into a working strategy. This is where content comes in. Turn it into the centerpiece of your internet marketing for 2013. Links, social signals, traffic, conversions – all are necessary for success. The easiest way to achieve them is through the strongest content that you can muster.

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“Mt Rushmore” image courtesy of Shutterstock.

I knew it would happen sometime in 2013. I’m glad it happened sooner rather than later.

For a while, many of the smaller bloggers such as myself have been preaching about how search, social, and content marketing are all actually a singular activity that can be broken down into a proper repeatable process. There have been skeptics and naysayers, the majority of whom work in one of the three industries and would not profit by the consolidation of things. In other words, someone who is trained in SEO who only opens up Facebook to see pictures of little Timmy sliding into 3rd base would not benefit by the emergence of social signals into search rankings, so they choose to pretend like it doesn’t help (or in some cases, saying that it can actually hurt your rankings).

When an article by Jeff Bullas, a respected internet marketing expert, came across my feed this morning with the title, “6 Social Media Trends You Should Not Ignore in 2013“, I was hopeful that he would mention the convergence of the three disciplines and was extremely pleased when it was the top trend mentioned…

“Expect to see more content marketing tools, tactics and strategies that accept the fact that social, search and content are increasingly integrated and intertwined.”

Tools – perhaps. It’s challenging to put together a tool set that doesn’t spoil the mix. The reason for this is the need to focus on quality and value above all else. With tools, they have a tendency to automate processes that end up hurting in the long run. By mentioning tactics and strategies, I couldn’t agree more. As someone who wakes up at 2:30 every morning to read my feeds and stay on top of the ever-changing worlds of search and social, I am always hopeful to find more strategies that will enhance my current playbook.

As we plunge further into the year, there will be more and more articles written about the convergence. Some will be spot on. Others will be misleading as the natural tendency to convert everything into a template will send many down the wrong path. You need skill, creativity, and resources at your disposal, not tricks or schemes. Google, Facebook, and Bing are getting smarter every day. They’re learning how to recognize the difference between content that truly brings education, entertainment, or resource value to the table and the content that is churned or spun. If you read about a strategy that operates without expertise or the human factor of discernment, run away as fast as you can.

Think quality. It’s the point at which search engine optimization, social media promotions, and content marketing converge.

As more businesses start to embrace the cost-effective method of social media promotions that Facebook Sponsored Stories offers, I’m seeing some mistakes pop up. As Louie Baur posted last week, you have to be careful what you advertise, as pushing the wrong content can do more harm than good.

I want to take that concept a step deeper using this analogy. It can be confusing to some who wonder why so much money is paid to sponsor racing teams. After all, their logo is placed on something that is attempting to travel so fast that the logos themselves cannot be read properly. What’s the benefit?

The reality is that everyone wants to be associated with a winner. They want to be associated with the sport itself and their hope is that their logo will appear on a winning vehicle and/or piece of racing apparel.

The same holds true with Facebook Sponsored Stories. You can throw money at anything and get it more views than it otherwise would have gotten, but I see too often that businesses are advertising the content that they think needs more help. The spammier it is, the more likely they are to sponsor it. This is the exact opposite of what businesses should be doing with Facebook advertising. If something is a winner – that’s the story you want to be pushing. You want to pick out content that would probably get likes, shares, and comments even if you didn’t sponsor it in the first place.

This has an affect on the rest of the “spammy” content that you might be posting more than if you sponsored the spammy content itself.

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Racefotos2008 / Shutterstock.com