2. INTRODUCTIONS!
The top 5 things you should know about Keith Ecker:
• He’s a vice president at a national marketing/PR
agency.
• He’s the founder of two of Chicago most successful
live literary events.
• He’s been blogging for more than 13 years.
• He has a dog named Lucky.
• You can email him questions outside of class at
keithecker@gmail.com.

3. EXERCISE: WHO ARE YOU?
Now it’s your turn to do the talking! Tell us:
• Your name
• Your level of blogging experience
• What you are seeking to promote, e.g., business, non-profit,
yourself, etc.
• Where we can find your blog online, if applicable.

4. BLOGGING & CONTENT MARKETING

5. BLOGGING & CONTENT MARKETING
To understand the “WHY” of blogging, you must first understand
the bigger picture of

6. BLOGGING & CONTENT MARKETING
Strategizing
Developing, repurposing and
curating
Distributing
Analyzing

7. CONTENT MARKETING METHODS

8. THE CONTENT WEB
Source: Content
Chemistry by Orbit
Media Studios

9. BUT WHY CONTENT MARKETING?
• Changes in technology
• Changes in traditional advertising, marketing and
PR, i.e., the media
• Changes in audience expectations, i.e., engagement

10. BLOGGING & CONTENT MARKETING
So where does blogging fit in?
 A blog serves as a central repository for content, including original, repurposed and
curated content.
 A blog is affordable to set up and often intuitive to use.
 A blog can easily integrate with social media, making deployment across the Internet
easy.
 A blog can allow for comments, increasing customer/audience engagement
opportunities.
 A blog can include internal links, thus increasing SEO ranking.
 A blog can include other elements, such as keywords, which can help increase SEO
ranking.
 A blog can be observed using such tools as Google Analytics to understand how
your audience interacts with you and your brand, which can help inform your
marketing efforts and product/service offerings.

11. AN SEO PRIMER
• SEO stands for search engine optimization
• It is important for search engine placement.
• Search engine placement is important so that
people will find your blog

12. SEO TACTICS – TARGET KEYPHRASES
• Target keyphrases – Groups of words you incorporate into parts of
your blog post that you want to rank for. The key is to find phrases that
are searched for frequently but have lower competition.
• Question: What are some keyphrases a company like the Chicago Tribune
might want to rank for?

13. SEO TACTICS - LINKS
• Inbound links – Links from other, external websites to your page.
• Internal links – Links within your own site, e.g. from an older post to
a newer post.
• Tip – When creating internal links, make the target keyphrase for the
page you are linking to the link text, also known as the “anchor” text.
• Example: If you’re selling software to lawyers, you should read up on legal
vendor PR.

14. BLOGGING BASICS

15. BLOGGING BASICS
Platform choices (among many):
Wordpress: http://wordpress.com/ or http://wordpress.org/
Drupal: http://drupal.org/
Squarespace: http://www.squarespace.com/

16. PARTS OF A BLOG

17. BLOG LAYOUT EXAMPLES
Keith Ecker’s Blog - http://keithecker.com/blog/
Essay Fiesta’s Blog - http://essayfiesta.com/
Orbit Media Blog - http://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/
The Hiring Site (CareerBuilder) -
http://thehiringsite.careerbuilder.com/

18. PARTS OF A BLOG – TITLE TAGS
• Incredibly important for SEO
• Should incorporate the keyphrase you are attempting to
rank for
• Often appears as the link in search engine results.
• 70 characters max
• Put your company name at the end

19. TITLE TAG EXAMPLES
• Blogging for Business | StoryStudio Chicago
• 7 Ways to be a business blogger | StoryStudio Chicago
• Why you should learn to blog for business | StoryStudio
Chicago

20. TITLE TAG EXERCISE
Content Kings Inc. wants to rank for the phrase “marketing
content” while also creating a title that will attract readers, should
it appear in search engine results. The company recently published
a post on its blog listing five content marketing tips.
Write three possible title tags that Content Kings could use to
accompany its blog post. Keep in mind it must both be optimized
for search engine placement but also draw the interest of the
reader.

21. PARTS OF A BLOG - HEADERS
• Incredibly important to draw in readers. It’s often the first thing a person
sees.
• Should incorporate “interest piquing” creative writing techniques, e.g.
• Superlative lists, e.g. “Top 5 Best…”
• Interrogatories, e.g., “Why…What..Who..How…?”
• Intriguing promise, e.g. “This post will change your life!”
• The bizarre/comical, e.g. “Hot pizza delivered by a drone.” (actual header)
• The service minded, e.g., “How to..”
• Important for SEO – use keyphrase at least once
• Can be identical to the title, but not necessarily

22. HEADER EXAMPLES
Let’s take a look at a site that has made amassed a following purely off its
headers:
BUZZFEED

23. HEADER EXERCISE
Create a header for the corresponding blog post in your
packet.
Think more about interest piquing copy than keyphrases.

24. PARTS OF A BLOG – META DESCRIPTIONS
• Like titles, they often appear as part of search engine results.
• People read meta descriptions to decide what to click on.
• 155 characters max is the approximate magic number or else it will be
automatically truncated.
• Incorporate the target keyphrase once.

25. PARTS OF A BLOG – BODY TEXT
• This is the “meat” of any blog post. It’s the substantive information.
• It should be geared toward your audience and reflect your brand
identify.
• Incorporate your target keyphrase approximately four to six
times, including one time within the first paragraph.
• Consider breaking up copy by using bullet points, numbered lists and
subheads.
• DO NOT KEYWORD CRAM!

26. BODY TEXT EXAMPLES
• The top 5 publications for legal vendor PR
• Viral Infections: How to Overcome Bad Press on Social
Media
• Cooking Training With a Pork Recipe From Journey

27. BODY TEXT EXERCISE
Write the body text for a mini blog post on the
topic of cooking an egg. Your target keyphrase is
“scrambled egg/s.” Pay special attention to how
you present the text through your layout.

28. PARTS OF A BLOG – INTERNAL LINKS
• These are links that point to other posts on your blog.
• They are important for reader navigation.
• They are also critical components of an SEO strategy.
• A best practice is to make the anchor text of the link the
keyphrase for the post that it points to.

29. EXAMPLES OF INTERNAL LINKS
An internal link is a hyperlink that is a reference or
navigation element in a document to another section of the
same document or to another document that may be on or
part of the same website or domain of the internet. In
articles like this one, the words highlighted in blue are
examples of internal links.

30. PARTS OF A BLOG - CALL TO ACTION
• Call to action is often the final line of copy in a blog post.
• It directs readers to act.
• Examples of actions it might direct readers to take include: posting a
comment, subscribing to a newsletter, filling out a form or downloading
a PDF.
• They are important because they can help foster engagement, generate
leads and share sales and marketing information about an organization.

31. CALL TO ACTION EXAMPLES
• Comment call to action: Share your thoughts about content marketing.
Leave a comment below.
• Newsletter subscription call to action: Did you enjoy reading this post?
Fill in the form below to subscribe to our newsletter and receive weekly
updates directly in your inbox! (We promise we won’t SPAM you.)
• Download a white paper call to action: To learn more about data privacy
issues in the EU, download a free copy of our white paper, “Best
practices for conducting international electronic discovery.”

32. OTHER PARTS OF A BLOG
• Categories and meta keyword tags – Also known as a
taxonomy, these can help organize blog posts for archiving and
navigational purposes.
• Widgets – These are plug-ins that some blog platforms enable you
to add into blog sidebars, e.g., a Twitter feed widget.
• External links – These are links that point to a site outside of
your blog.

33. IN-CLASS EXERCISE
Write a blog post relevant to your business or organization that
incorporates the following elements. For the sake of time, keep the body
text to only 100 words.
• Title tag
• Header
• Body text
• Meta description
• Body text
• Call to action

34. SUMMARY
• A blog is a critical component of a content marketing initiative.
• SEO (search engine optimization) is key to maximizing the
effectiveness of your blog.
• A blog post strikes a balance between SEO and entertaining
and/or informative and/or useful content.
• An individual blog post has a variety of parts, some of which
play more into SEO than others.

35. HOMEWORK
Find a blog post you like. Dissect it into its parts
and tell us what you think it does well and what
you think it could do to improve.