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Creative Content Marketing at Scale: Lee Odden at #SESNY
Great content isn’t great until it’s discovered, consumed and shared, says Lee Odden, our CEO at TopRank Online Marketing and SES New York speaker. Lee gave his Creative Content Marketing: Winning Hearts, Minds & Wallets presentation this morning to a room packed with marketers striving to improve their content strategy. One example that highlights the importance of optimization for search, social sharing and consumption is this infographic novel from a company called Hostway. The authors took what could have been quite a dry, boring subject – internet security – and used a tale of zombies to resuscitate their message. The content itself was fantastic, though as Lee pointed out, it was difficult to share, lacking social share buttons in the PDF. “Whether social outreach, advertising or email marketing were used, the promotion of a remarkable content object should factor in the ability to amplify increased awareness,” Lee said. “That means optimizing the content object for social sharing and discovery as well as for discovery through search.” An infographic novel such as this one is a fantastic opportunity for content repurposing, yet several months after its release, images from the novel appeared in Google Image search only from the people – like Lee – who had taken screen captures and written about it. That is a great example of content marketing in the stretching phase of Altimeter’s Content Marketing Maturity model; they are experimenting, their content is there, but their promotion strategy and processes are developing. At the other end of the spectrum, you’ll find companies like General Mills, who use their Tablespoon recipe site not only as a marketing tool, but as an additional revenue stream. Their content is very visually engaging and they’ve built an active community around recipes and cooking tips featuring their own products. The site acts acts as a hub for their social channels; they even cross-promote their other brands in ads on the site. This is just one of many sites General Mills owns, with such high quality visual content that they sell their own stock photography. Your content has to be customer-centric and according to Lee, that’s what’s missing in brand content strategies. We have to know how people discover, consume and act on content. It’s about what your audience wants to hear, not what you want to say. It’s Not Just About CustomersThis is where creativity is essential, Lee said. Yes, you need to find out what customers want and give it to them. However, you also need to take a leadership position and show people things they may not have even thought of before. As Henry Ford said, “If I listened to my customers, we’d still be riding horses.” Search is based on demand existing, identifying that demand and answering it with content. Content marketing is about demand creation – creating something so interesting people didn’t even know they were looking for it. Lee shared his winning content marketing formula:
Each aspect is critical; any two together may result in good content, but you need your content to be great, especially in competitive industries. He recommends the Optimize 360 model to help marketers understand and always keep in mind the importance of optimizing for attraction, engagement and conversion. Further, marketers need to optimize across the lifecycle of each piece of content to get maximum value from their content marketing investments. Lee shared 5 sources of inspiration to help marketers get their content creative on. 5 Creative Content Sourcing Ideas1. Visualize trends to get a bigger picture look at your keywords and be inspired. Try semrush.com to see what competitors are showing up for organically, Google Keywords to see how often people search on a particular phrase. Or you might try the following:
Now plug your list of keywords into Wordle.net to see a visualization of your topic. 2. Use your own site. Do you have an internal search engine? See which queries prompt people to search again and create content around that topic. Or, when people fill out forms on your site, analyze the content for word frequency. For example, your contact form may have an open text field; analyze that to surface ideas for content. See which question-oriented queries are actually driving traffic to your site. Don’t forget to check your Google Webmaster Tools as well. 3. Frontline staff. Talk to your salespeople. What kinds of questions are people asking them? Can they bcc your content team when they respond to interesting questions via email? The content team could then anonymize and rewrite it into a blog post. 4. Become a publisher. Review planned stories in editorial calendars to get inspired. Watch how magazines structure content; they may have short and long form content, recurring features, monthly or weekly themes, etc. Think like a newspaper publisher and be objective. Work on your storytelling skills by modeling your content after TV shows – what are they doing to make their content interesting and how can you emulate that? 5. Know your customer journey. Understand your customer buying cycle and create content to meet the information needs of your consumer as they go through the buying cycle.
See an explanation and examples of each in his 4 Types of Killer Content post. Lee also offered a sample content plan template, to help marketers get organized and track the successes of each of their content efforts. The content marketing opportunity is massive. Do you have a plan in place to attract, engage and convert your audience with high quality content?
© Online Marketing Blog, 2013. | Creative Content Marketing at Scale: Lee Odden at #SESNY | http://www.toprankblog.com        The Secrets to Driving Social Commerce: Google & Mel Carson on Social ROI at #SESNY
Carson and Mara graciously participated in interviews prior to their session, to share their experience and advice with marketers looking to improve their social media channel awareness, content creation and social ROI. Carson, formerly of Microsoft, is the founder of social, PR and personal branding consultancy Delightful Communications. As moderator, he’ll have his hands full with the two powerhouse speakers. Carson told us, “I'd encourage anyone to come to see two very powerful women in the industry speak. Deitra and Tami bring a lot of insight into different tools and products, best practices and disciplines on how to prove the ROI in social media commerce exists and how to get more of it.”
Understanding the Social Data Available to YouOne of the features of the platform she’ll speak to in her session is Ripples, with reporting that creates a visual representation of the way post content has been publicly shared across the Google+ ecosystem. Circle size is commensurate with the impact of an individuals share, she explained, so if an individual has a large circle, their share has a larger impact than the share by an individual with a smaller circle. Mara explained to us why this feature is significant for brands looking to improve their social ROI: “These Ripple reports are available for any post that has had public shares, so a brand that's monitoring these reports will begin to see if there are particular individuals that are consistently sharing their content & doing so with a significant impact. These individuals are likely brand advocates & savvy brands are beginning to put them into their own circle so that they can then message to them directly or invite them to virtual focus groups via Hangout, etc.” See this example for a Ford post with a significant public share by Gabriel Vasile: Insights like these, especially presented in a visual and easy to digest format, are valuable for marketers, said Carson. When asked what he feels is the greatest untapped opportunity for marketers today, Carson told us, “Just the sheer wealth of big data that is out there, that we're not tapping into as comfortably as we have done with search metrics. It will come though. It's great to see social platforms like Pinterest, Google and Twitter getting more serious about providing richer analytics and targeting options.” The Integration of Search & Social – Each Has Unique Value; Together They’re BetterSocial annotations are another of Google’s tools that marketers should absolutely take advantage of, according to Mara. Advertisers who enable social annotations on their search ads see an average CTR increase of 5-10%, she said, with some advertisers reporting significantly greater impact. H&M, as an example, reported +22% CTR increase, while Interflora reported +31% CTR increase using social annotations, according to Mara. “We're seeing the impact of social endorsement on conversions, as well,” she said. “Recent Compete studies indicate a 91% lift in conversion rate on auto sites for unbranded auto terms when social annotations are present on ads – ie.: locating a dealer, requesting a quote, building your own model, etc.” Integrating your search and social efforts is key, said Mara. “We certainly wouldn't say that search or social is more important than the other, as each has it's unique value independent of the other,” she explained. ”The integration of the two is where we see savvy marketers really benefiting, because it's a better experience for consumers.” As a consumer, she said, “I want to see the recommendations of my friends & family as I search, I want to see more information from brands that I like, and I want those preferences integrated seamlessly into my search experience.” Based on the CTR & CNV impact of social annotations, they know that consumers find the integration valuable and that they're delivering an improved search experience. Moving Toward More Accurate Social ROI MeasurementTo help make brand content more discoverable, Mara recommends that brands first create and verify their Google+ Page, so that Google knows it's the official page for the brand. ”Then, begin posting engaging content & begin growing your following,” she advised. “We'll do the rest, working to surface your content to users when they search for your brand on Google.com, highlighting brand endorsements in annotations & promoting particularly relevant posts to your followers when they search for terms specific to your post content.” Marketers are closer to understanding the value of social and accurately measuring ROI, Carson said. “We're catching up for two reasons: One, we're getting better at translating what the data is telling us into words and wisdom that CMOs and non-digital purse string holders can understand,” he explained. Secondly, said Carson, “…it's a bit of a moving target (as most things are in the digital industry) as new platforms come onto the scene and others move the goal posts.” There is no doubt there is enormous value in having social media – or real-time digital response mechanisms – as part of the marketing mix, as participants will learn in this session at SES. Do you have your social ROI down pat, or are there areas you could stand to improve? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments. Image from Shutterstock.com.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2013. | The Secrets to Driving Social Commerce: Google & Mel Carson on Social ROI at #SESNY | http://www.toprankblog.com   More Recent Articles
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Content marketing is all the rage, though brands still struggle to attract the right audience, engage readers and convert them to buyers. Simply publishing content is no guarantee anyone is going to see it – or that they’d even want to, if quantity is currently trumping quality.
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In advance of their SES New York session on social commerce, I wanted to see what tips and tricks moderator 
Mara is Google’s Head of Social Solutions for North America. She started at Google in 2003 as a Creative Maximizer, working with advertisers to improve their ad performance primarily via keyword, ad text & campaign optimization. Over the next nine years, Mara’s experience across Google ranged from Vertical Sales & Operations to her role as a Search Lead, where she worked on global knowledge sharing & broader search adoption programs. She kicked off 2012 by moving into her current role, in which Mara helps brands to get the most out of Google+.
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