Making Content The Sexy Part of Social at #LocalUp

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Thank you all for coming.

I am both a member of the Local U Faculty and CEO of Search Influence a, nearly, 100 person online marketing company headquartered in New Orleans.

Let’s face it, some of you have not been nice to Google.

Good content, however, has long been a driver of social engagement. And it’s with that in mind that I would like to reframe the discussion of what is social, and what is engagement around the idea of content as a foundational element in social.

In the beginning there was content and it was good.

We needed to preserve and share knowledge and so we built systems.

And along came the network and we decided to share that knowledge “online”.

And then, along came the “World Wide Web” and as of January 29th, there were an estimated 4.51 Billion pages on the internet.

All thanks to Tim Berners Lee

And then along came social networks. That, by the way, is Facebook’s claimed “monthly active users” number.

And that’s why this guy looks so happy.

So let’s start by talking about content.

In the beginning, what was it really?

It was content. A way to communicate stuff we wanted to know about.

And then, marketers got involved, and we started printing all kinds of junk.

And then SEOs got into “content marketing” and exponentially increased the amount of junk.

And it wasn’t good enough unless it went viral. And we started figuring out “triggers” and building networks to help content go viral

And most recently, we’re using content to corrupt the Fourth Estate. As the natural business of Newspapers declines, they’re looking to “Native Advertising” to save the day.

Talk about an opportunity for us.

A little bit of creativity, and a will to employ some of those out of work “journalists” and opportunities abound.

“Stick a fork in it”, Matt Cutts said about guest blogging. But as we know, authoritative content is valuable and “blog contribution” lives! Add value and you’ll get value.

Everybody’s looking for content. And if you’re the one to provide it, they might be nice enough to associate with your name. Or your company. You might even get a link. And if it’s good, it’s shareable.

Some well known “experts” have built their authority through content. One of my heroes of self-promotion is Larry Kim. He does a great job of getting his name out there, and Wordstream is more than happy to “boost” that content when necessary.

As if to prove that guest blogging is by no means dead. This is the email I got inviting me to Guest Blog. It’s like an SEO parallel universe. We used to beg for guest blogs. Now they come to us.

When I say “content” you might hear “text”. But content is any vehicle that conveys information.

It could be video. Funny story, new patients have asked the office staff if they think their outcome is good enough the doctor will want to do a video.

Visual is rocking now thanks to Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, Swipe and others.

There’s a reason there are infographics in most newspapers. They give bite sized chunks of information which make the readers look smart. When it was in print you could only share around the water cooler. Online, you can share everywhere. The second one, created for a medical directory got more than 300 Facebook shares and nearly 150 pins.

And, if you’re lucky, even your comments can be rich content which adds to the viral nature of your work.

News is content. Sometimes it’s dry and factual but sometimes it elicits an emotional response.

So you built it, or wrote it, or composed it, or shot it. Will they come?

You’ve got to make it sticky. There is so much content on the internet, and only so many connected hours in the day.

This one picture, which is pretty awesome, right? got 1983 likes, 73 shares and 50 comments on 1 picture. And I get you some of those who interacted weren’t in the Marines.

Desktop usage is going away. These numbers are Nielsen Netview unique audience of social media websites and apps by platform. You can see that Smartphone App + Web Browsers beats Desktop.

Users are distracted. Note how they use a bathtub to represent bathroom usage. More seriously though, if you live off the urbanized coasts, you understand that the car, or more likely the 3-row SUV, is the center of the family universe.

But alas, nothing lasts forever.

Where are MySpace and AOL? They still exist, but nowhere near the glory days. And even though Facebook is kicking right along, you don’t own it.

Sorry. Quick interlude. Even if they did own it they're not cultivating it. I like to call this, “If a tree service falls on Facebook does it really make a sound”? I keep checking back on these guys. Good news. They recently added one fan. Their first since 2011.

But the question is, why would you make such a big investment in something you don’t own.

I love Facebook. I’m a user, an investor, and a marketer. But, all that “free” audience isn’t really yours. As we’ve seen What we used to think was “free” may not be. So much for sowing what you reap. Thanks to Jay Baer for this graphic which illustrated the correlation between “Organic Page Reach” and Facebook’s stock price. Good news for me is I’m an investor and an advertiser.

Don’t forget, Facebook owns *your* audience. And they’ve told us, “Sales” related messaging won’t be seen without ad dollars.

But you do own your. Blog. Get to work. Use your blog as your platform then promote social. At least you get to keep the core asset.

This is old data, but it’s true. We still see that sites with blogs get more traffic, and links, and social shares.

But check this out. And, this is much more recent data, Blogger still has more unique audience members than LinkedIn and Twitter on the desktop per the Nielsen data. These Nielsen data may be a little off, but people read blogs. And share them too.

Why blog? Check this out: 9 out of the top 10 landing pages on the LocalU site are the blog. The 10th is the home page. This is how you build authority. This is how you prove you’re an expert. Traffic will come.

But in social, your authority only counts for so much. If you want exposure you’ve still got to pay to play.

The world is a kindler, gentler place than when I was a kid. We heard jokes like “you’re so ugly, your mama had to tie a steak around your neck so the dog would play with you”.

There is benefit too. You get all that great data.

We’ve got location PLUS Relationship Status.

Again, location plus what the Yellow Pages folks always called “Life Events”

Even going so far as to guess from your behavior what you are “interested” in.

Think of it as Facebook with a business card.

I love the fact that you can target industry PLUS job title, by location. This is Industrial Metal – not to be confused with Heavy Metal.

For this client, Local means the country you’re in.

But, when our client who does iPhone trade-in wanted to get the attention of mobile carrier corporate executives, local meant targeting the headquarters.

You darn skippy.

14,000 people reached with more than 1,000 reactions. All on a budget of less than 100 bucks.

Also known as “closing the deal”.

We talk about KPIs, conversion, and all that, but to that advertiser it’s really about goals. What do they want from these programs.

Sometimes they’re social goals. Some social goals are vanity, but some are leading indicators of more business focused goals like sales.

Some are actually about leads, and money.

The first step is to define “what’s a conversion” and then make it easy. In this instance we put a form with a clear phone number on every single page.

And, because our form tracks the inbound referrer we can see which of our channels affected the outcome. It’s cool. The way we built this it even tracks multiple touches and reports them in the email notification.

And in some cases phone calls are the most important “conversion”. Call tracking numbers are not all bad, but one has to be very careful.

So, wrapping it all up.

You want to produce content that communicates stuff people want to know.

With a little bit of seeding, whether social, organic, or advertised, you can get that knowledge to the people.

And the people become part of your virtuous cycle of informing, engaging and ultimately selling.

If you can do those things you will profit. While we know that profit is a big part of the equation, it’s important to approach the work from the perspective of sharing knowledge.

We can do it. Let’s commit to closing the deal with content.

Thanks so much.

Making Content The Sexy Part of Social at #LocalUp

Will Scott

Making Content The Sexy Part of Social at #LocalUp