MediaWhiz's SEO experts offer their best practices, tactics and techniques for effective search engine visibility and lead-generation success with content marketing.

1. Content Marketing
Like a Pro
Tactics and Techniques to Improve
Search Engine Visibility
Daryl Colwell
Vice President, MediaWhiz
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

2. About Me
• Oversee business development at
MediaWhiz
• 12 years’ experience in online
marketing
About My Company — MediaWhiz
• Integrated digital media &
performance marketing agency
• Part of Matomy Media Group
• Services: Affiliate, Display, Search, 20
1 2
Social, Data & Email
• Top-25 Digital Agency, Ad Age,
2012
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

3. What Is Content Marketing?
Content Marketing:
•Establishes authority and provides
useful information
•Should be useful even to someone
not interested in buying your product
or service
•Not disguised as independent
editorial
•Does not have to run in an editorial
environment, like a third-party
magazine
•Provides value to the consumer.
•Is honest and without hyperbole
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

4. Content Marketing — The Basics
Basic Rules
1.Lead Generation: Your content should generate leads for your business.
– Don’t create content just to have content.
– Caveat: Don’t create content that is purely sales-driven.
1.Context: Your content needs to be placed in the right venues for the right
audiences.
2.Have a Strategy: One-off efforts won’t cut it. Use an editorial calendar to
plan content each quarter.
3.Timing: Plan publication of content around customer buying cycle.
4.Factor in Cost: Content marketing is expensive. It’s a long-term
investment; not a short-term solution.
5.Make it Creative: Your content needs to bring something new to the
consumer. Otherwise, it’s a waste of time and money.
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

5. Why Content Marketing Is Important
It’s simple:
It’s the future of marketing.
Seriously.
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

6. Why Content Marketing Is Important
It’s also how you should
be generating new
business.
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

7. Why Content Marketing Is Important
You can write for “idea-
spreaders” or buyers.
Write for your buyers.
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

8. Great Content Marketing
Why It’s Great:
•Fits the brand
•Builds strong brand
affinity
•Generates new
customers via
subscriptions
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

9. Avoid These Mistakes
Being Overly Promotional Taking It to the Extreme
Takeaways Takeaways
•Don't make tone •Back an argument
obviously with convincing
promotional numbers
•Visualize the info •Use proportionate
•Ensure imagery sentiment
and graphics fit the •Inform the
content consumer; don’t
insult or offend
them
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

10. Avoid These Mistakes
Bland Content Misguided Content
Takeaways
•Make your
message
interesting and
distinctive
•Don't just directly
turn figures into
stats
•Use imagination
and wit
Takeaways
•Content needs to fit your brand
and that of third-party publisher
•Tone and context are important
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

11. Content Marketing & SEO
Benefits to SEO
•Attracts authority signals (links, social shares) —
improves SEO performance
•Positions brand as authority on relevant topics
•Increases conversion rates
– Educates users on topics that are difficult to
understand
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

12. Content Marketing & SEO
How Content Marketing Can Hurt SEO
•Don’t create content for “SEO”
– Write for humans
– Content with purpose of satisfying search engines has
short-lived benefits
•Spam
– Don’t syndicate content to article distribution networks or
off-topic properties
•Inconsistency/falsity
– Fact check and ensure consistency with brand messaging
– Consumers’ trust compromised by off-message or false
content
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

13. Improving SEO with Content Marketing
Step 1: Define the target audience
•Perform research on consumers’ buying patterns
•Understand what is compelling and how your product /
service benefits them
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

14. Improving SEO with Content Marketing
Step 2: Write about
topics your audience
cares about
•Use keyword suggestion
tools (i.e., Google Adwords
Keyword Tool) to understand
consumers’ searches
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

15. Improving SEO with Content Marketing
• Review Q&A sites (i.e., Yahoo Answers, Answers.com) to
see what people are asking about
• Stay on topic — don’t write about anything irrelevant to the
brand
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

16. Improving SEO with Content Marketing
Step 3: Offer incentives for readers to
share content
•Focus on the “why”, not the “what”
– How will your content help your customers?
•Facilitate sharing
– Include sharing buttons (Facebook Like, Twitter Tweet,
Google +1, etc) in visible locations
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

17. Improving SEO with Content Marketing
Step 4: Leverage influential and
authoritative authors
•Identify authors relevant to a topic
– Search relevant topics in Google+, Twitter, Facebook
(via Graph Search) and search engines
•Invite influential authors to guest post
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

18. Improving SEO with Content Marketing
Step 5: Develop your backend SEO setup
•Ensure proper tagging and mark-up of content
– Use rel=author tags in the byline to credit the author of
the content and leverage their authority
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

19. Content Marketing & Lead Generation
Your content should generate leads
•Content should help generate leads or incremental
business
•Proper tracking is essential
MediaWhiz as an example
•Create content for brand-building and lead-gen
purposes with marketers and advertisers
•Seed content across internal and external
publications
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

20. Content Marketing & Lead Generation
“If you’re not putting some
kind of hook to future
business into your efforts,
you’re not content
marketing.”
– Chris Brogan, Jan. 22, 2013
Source: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/contentmarketing201/
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

21. How to Generate Leads with Content
Rule #1: Make your buyer the hero
Produce content that informs
your customers and improves
their business
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

22. How to Generate Leads with Content
Rule #2: Never waste content without
offering an “Ask” of some kind
“Ask” is more than a “call to action” or intent.
It’s a request for a specific action.
• Mix of soft and hard sell
• Ask should be reasonable and related to
the content
• Examples of an “Ask”:
• Newsletter / blog subscriptions
• Free appraisals / audits
• White paper download
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

23. How to Generate Leads with Content
Rule #3: Make it simple for people to
give you their info
Place call-to-action copy strategically
throughout content
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

24. How to Generate Leads with Content
Rule #4: Make it simple for sales team to
interact with leads
Customize form
field page to
generate contact
info you need for
follow-up call /
email
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

25. Lead Gen Best Practices
Prep your sales team
• Prep your sales team for influx of new leads
– Some will be qualified leads; others not
– Schedule brief training session with sales team to review
new content
– Get feedback from sales team about questions they
hear from customers
• Use feedback to develop new content and generate
additional leads
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

26. Lead Gen Best Practices
Early outreach = lead-gen success
• Odds of reaching lead decrease by >10 times in first hour
• Odds of qualifying lead in 5 minutes vs. 30 minutes drop
21 times
– from 5 to 10 minutes the dial to qualify odds decrease 4
times
• Best time to call a lead: 4-6 p.m. Wednesday & Thursday
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

27. The Content Marketing Top-10
1. Know your audience: Write for a specific reader or customer.
Know what they want and how/where they consume
information.
2. Include images: Images will “pop” when content is shared.
3. Commit: Not a one-night stand. Establish an editorial calendar
and publish often. Give customers a reason to keep reading.
4. Engage the right buyers with the right content: Write
content for all levels of the sales funnel.
5. Repurpose content: Turn blog posts into white papers; white
papers into infographics, etc.
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

28. The Content Marketing Top-10
6. Create series: If you have 10 steps, share 5 now and 5 in next
post.
7. Measure ROI and leads: Track KPIs (visits, conversions, links,
social shares) generated to understand what content performs
best
8. Track trends: Relate your content to emerging industry trends.
Write content that answers customers’ questions about those
trends.
9. Be timely: Publish content when your customers are most
active.
10. Reference industry influencers: Enable others to generate
awareness and leads on your behalf
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

29. QUESTIONS?

30. Stay Connected
Daryl Colwell
Vice President
MediaWhiz
P: 646-442-5513
E: dcolwell@mediawhiz.com Tw: @DHColwell
Find out more at www.MediaWhiz.com
Call us toll-free at 888.866.9449
Follow us on Twitter: @MediaWhizInc
Become a fan at
facebook.com/MediaWhizHoldingsLLC
www.MediaWhiz.com @MediaWhizInc

31. ………........……. THANK
YOU.