Life Beyond Google: Diversifying Your Digital Marketing to Increase Organic Traffic (#smx #12B)

I’ve got my cookie and it’s go-time for session two in the SMX East 2013 SEO Track. Search Engine Land and Marketing Land Editor In Chief Matt McGee (@mattmcgee) is our moderator. This session is all about Life Beyond Google! How to make connections, drive traffic, and make the big bucks all while taking our heads just an inch or so out of the keester of Google for a minute.

Ted Ives, Principal, Coconut Headphones (@tedives) is up first.

How are we thinking about getting traffic? What does it mean to try to get traffic and how do we go about it? He’s bringing us some foundational ideas, and will mostly be discussing the value of using White Papers for B2B.

Ted says its not really enabling to think “how am I going to get traffic by thinking about channels.”

We need to think about the whole system: What are we going to communicate, who are we going to communicate to, and how are we going to communicate it?

It’s all about Marketing content –> marketing channels –> marketing audience. You need to worry about all three. Not just one or two of them.

Start by designing and documenting a marketing content process. (He emphasizes marketing content and the power of process)

• Decide what documents you want to create and how
• Wire the output through social
• Make this function routine
• Set up the foundation, then use interns or digital marketers to make sure things happen.
• B2B – focus on white papers, presentations, podcasts, testimonials
• B2C – focus on surveys, promotions, contests, coupons and testimonials

Considerations while designing your process:

• “You fight with the arm you have, not the army you wish you had.”
• Expand to different channels/sources/content types
• Your companies “thought leaders” will make or break your content.
• Thought leaders are difficult to harness

Thought leaders are difficult to herd, but once they’ve said their magic you can repurpose it in 8 different ways.

White Papers Deep Dive

White papers are a great way to bring in traffic. White papers can be repurposed a ton of different ways.  (NOTE: It’s important that content is reworded and reworked to avoid duplicate content issues. Heed this warning!)

Generally: White papers should be 6-8 pages; three tables; 2 diagrams; “Really beefy.” Include lists. Lists of solving problems; pluses and minuses.  Leverage the heck out of your white paper in 50 different ways.

White papers should/can:

• Be easily repurposed (use as a download; send out in email blasts, run a webinar, etc.)
• Appeal to the ego of your market
• Transcribe information

Other tactics worth considering:

• Consider syndication (kind of like guest blogging, but more regular. This is a great option if youre producing a lot of contet; re: daily content)
• Use Paid Search data: create content around keywords you had a conversion. If you have not tested Paid Search yet – DO IT NOW!!!
• Interview an internal expert about the topic and make Q&A content about it
• Try to be a thought leader in a specific content area that resonates with your clientele

Marketing with YouTube

Matt Ballek, Director of Strategic Distribution Services, Magnet Media (@MattBallek) going to take us on a YouTube Adventure:

Some topics he’ll touch on:

• How to support the content you upload to YouTube (YT)
• Recent Algo updates to YT
• How to structure YT Content
• How to setup a process for continually creating video

Optimization and promotion are both necessary to support your video(s). Remember YT is the second largest search engine AND the second largest social network (behind Facebook). This is why you need to optimize YT as a diverse PLATFORM.

What’s the right YT KPI? Rather than considering Views we should be considering how much ENGAGEMENT each video is getting.

The YT algo factors in actual watch time, comments, likes and dislikes. So a video with less views can easily outrank a video with more views if it has better engagement metrics.

The Average Watch Time per day of subscribers is HIGH! This means your subscribers are IMPORTANT!

The people who watch your videos can be organized into a triage shape: Viewers on the bottom (the most), then fans, then super fans (the least).

Look at the networks of your superfans for new opportunities for YT collaboration. (If they like you, they like your competitors as well as the people you should be in cahoots with .)

Drive more viewers (bottom of the pyramid) with Evergreen videos + tutorials (IE: How to build a deck if you’re Lowes); Drive more fans by creating content that allows you to have conversations with viewers – EG: Q&A sessions, industry news, etc.; Reach Superfans with bonus videos and videos that allow you to COLLABORATE with your fans. You need to take your engagement to the next level with your superfans who love you and are more willing to take action.

YT.com/Audience is a tool that can help you get an idea for who your most engaged superfan subscribers are.
Need 5K subscribers to get access to the beta right now.

Having a consistent audience requires consistent content. Here’s Matt’s process:

Brandon Hassler, Senior Account Manager, 97th Floor (@brandonhassler) is going to talk about Social opportunity.

He says that with the up rise of Not Provided people are peeved with Google and that  maybe Google will no longer be the hub of our SEM activities in the next..say… 30 years. We all laugh.

He asks how many people are with agencies and how many are in-house. By show of hands we’re about a 50/50 crowd.

Marketing with SlideShare

Brandon’s talking SlideShare! (CA: W00t! I love this as a content marketing tool!)

First – infographics. What about slicing an infographic up into slides?? (Genius!) Every slide has a different fact from the infographic.  (CA: I know this is about getting away from Google, but SlideShare presentations are also indexed so this has good organic SEO potential.)

People who typically come to your website from SlideShare tend to stay on your website longer than people who come to your website from Facebook or other social media channels.

KEY! Make sure to end the SlideShare with a call to action! IE: “View the full graphic here.” Brandon says he’s found that buttons and arrows work really well. People are just magnetically drawn to the arrow.

SlideShare allows you to take advantage of Twitter. He puts a Twitter bird on each of his SlideShare slides to encourage viewers to Retweets facts and slide stats.

Marketing with Pinterest

Shifting gears, Brandon is now talking about Pinterst. He says people on Pinterst are looking for inspiration; to learn how to do something new or feel better. They don’t want to read infographics. He says to use “Instructographics.” IE: Graphics that explain to people how to do something.

Each instroctographic should be 500px wide x 2500 px long. Make the header big but make the actual instructions just a little hard to read so they actually have to click through to the website to see the instructographic instructions clearly.

He says 5pm and 5am Eastern are the best times to post on Pinterest. Work hours are the dead zone for pinners; the best times are right when they wake up and after work.

Chelsea Adams Brooks is a long-distance cyclist, aspiring cob house builder, schema/analytics/algorithm obsessor, and a former senior content writer at Bruce Clay Inc.

See Chelsea's author page for links to connect on social media.