SearchLove Boston 2018 - Casie Gillette - The Power of Data: 15 Keys to a Successful Content Strategy
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In a world of content overload, standing out has never been more challenging. Good content means creating the right content, for the right people, and delivering it at the right time. Enter data. In this session, we'll dive into the biggest issues facing content marketers and break down the 15 key data points that can help guide your strategy.
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SearchLove Boston 2018 - Casie Gillette - The Power of Data: 15 Keys to a Successful Content Strategy
- 1. THE POWER OF DATA KEYS TO BETTER CONTENT CASIEGILLETTE•KOMARKETING
- 2. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE • Sr. Director, Digital Marketing at KoMarketing • 13 years in Digital Marketing • Find Me on Twitter @casieg • Most importantly….
- 8. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE 2 million blog posts published every day
- 9. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE 72 HOURS of video are uploaded to YouTube every 60 seconds.
- 10. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE The average reader spends 37 seconds reading an article or blog post.
- 11. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE Content marketing is up 300%, but only 5% drives engagement.
- 16. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE Content is everywhere.
- 21. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE WHY WHAT AM I DOING THIS? DO I WANT?
- 22. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE ORGANIC VISIBILITY FORM / REGISTRATION SHARES / ENGAGEMENT PURCHASE
- 24. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE “2/3 of all survey respondents reported not having needed content resulted in lost sales.”
- 25. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE CONTENT + BUSINESS OBJECTIVES
- 26. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE TRAFFIC BY CHANNEL 3
- 27. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE ORGANIC VISIBILITY FORM / REGISTRATION SHARES / ENGAGEMENT PURCHASE
- 28. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE 0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000 140000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 TOP 10 BLOG POSTS
- 29. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 TOP 10 RESOURCES
- 33. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE what are you measuring against?
- 34. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE BELOW AVG CONTENT 5
- 36. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE • OLDER • RELEVANT • LOWER TRAFFIC
- 37. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE KNOW YOUR DEVICE 6
- 38. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE HOW ARE USERS CONSUMING CONTENT ?
- 39. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE BLOG = 30%
- 40. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE NEW PHONE WHO DIS?
- 44. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE IMPRESSIONS, POS & CTR 8 OH MY!
- 46. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE HIGH IMP / HIGH POS / LOW CTR
- 47. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE NEW CONTENT OPPS!
- 49. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE THE 5-10 CONCEPT 9
- 53. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE Keyword Target Answer Box More Questions QUESTIONS
- 57. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE 27% of search queries are questions. - BlueNile
- 58. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE PAA were in ~33% of SERPs - GetStat
- 67. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE CONTENT & LINKS
- 76. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE 14 REAL PEOPLE. REAL EXPERTS
- 77. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE DISCOVERY QUESTIONNAIRE KICK-OFF CALL KEYWORD & TOPIC RESEARCH CONTENT INTERVIEWS
- 78. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE GOALS BUSINESS OBJECTIVES BASELINE TRAFFIC BY CHANNEL BELOW AVERAGE DEVICE REFERRALS & LINKS GSC KEYWORDS 5-10 CONCEPT QUESTION FORUMS SITE SEARCH SUPPORT SMES
- 81. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE GOALS BUSINESS OBJECTIVES BASELINE TRAFFIC BY CHANNEL BELOW AVERAGE DEVICE REFERRALS & LINKS GSC KEYWORDS 5-10 CONCEPT QUESTION FORUMS SITE SEARCH SUPPORT SMES
- 83. @CASIEG #SEARCHLOVE THANK YOU!CASIE GILLETTE • DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL MARKETING • KOMARKETING CASIE@KOMARKETING.COM@CASIEG @KOMARKETING
Editor's Notes
- I also love content. I started as a pure SEO but I’ve always loved writing and when I realized we needed content to be successful and just how much of a role it played in marketing as a whole, it really became a passion.
- But it’s changed over the years. When I started in search, you threw a bunch of keywords on the page and called it content optimization. You created a bunch of pages with a few words changed and called it a strategy.
- Remember this? We wrote one article and then spun it out to 100+ networks. Man, that was awesome.
- But Google came along and was like nope. Content is hard now.
- There are about 2 million blog posts created every day.
- And no one is reading them.
- Or sharing them
- Even worse, we as content marketers, can’t even justify what we are doing. Most companies can’t even attribute revenue to content marketing. What?!
- And what about our job role? I’m guessing the majority of people who signed up for the role of content marketer weren’t expecting they’d have to know CSS, HTML, or be spending so much time in analytics
- Content got hard.
- But at the same time, content marketers are in demand because let’s be real, content is the cornerstone to everything we do.
- And it’s awesome that content marketers are in demand but this…this isn’t ok. If we want to be taken seriously. If we want more budget, we have to be able to prove our value.
- And that comes down to data. We have to use data to make decisions on the types of content we are creating, to understand why we are creating it, and to ensure that when the content is created, we can actually measure it.
- We have to stop creating content because it’s what we think we are supposed to do and create content with a purpose. That’s what we are going to cover today. How we can use data to create content with a purpose. Content we can measure.
- The first one is your goals. I was at a conference a few weeks ago and a girl came up to me after and said she was really interested in getting more content on her company’s site. She was writing new posts and she was really trying to get some infographics pushed through but was having a hard time. My question to her was “why”? Why do you want infographics? And she didn’t know. And this is one of my biggest pet peeves. If you don’t know the goal of your content, how can you measure performance? How can you know if your content is “successful”?
- Before you start creating content, think about why you are doing it? What do you want it get out it? Once you have that, how you create the content itself changes. A blog post I created for organic search purposes is different than a graphic I created for sharing purposes. Set a goal.
- Here are some examples.
- Look, we all want to do the fun stuff right? It’s like people who want to do social media. They think they just get to play on the internet all day and make memes. Not so much. While I would love to be out making cool videos for my clients or creating interactive graphics, it’s not in their budget and it doesn’t tie to their business goals.
- Check this out. This is a survey from seismic on content marketing and sales integration. Essentially, we are losing sales because we don’t have the right content. This is so sad and it’s also so common. Our teams are still siloed and until we fix that, we will continue to see things like this.
- Our content goals need to tie to our business goals.
- When we are making decisions on content, we are often looking at pieces that have performed well in the past. And that makes sense. But there’s an important distinction and reason I say traffic by channel and it goes back to our first point.
- All content is not created equal and all content does not have the same goal – therefore, it can’t all be measured the same.
- Notice anything odd here? This is a client who had a blog post hit the answer box for a pretty high volume search time and stay there. If I were to make decisions based on just this data, without looking at why it has such high traffic or what channel it’s coming from, it wouldn’t be that helpful. Why? Because this piece isn’t even that relevant to their business.
- What about this? That’s a pretty big different between the top asset and the rest? The reason? We did some paid social to promote it on LinkedIn. The point being that when we are looking at our content strategy, we can’t make decisions about our content as a whole. It has to go back to our goals and are often dependent on channel.
- What is good content? That’s certainly a subjective question and I could go on and on but here’s the thing…good is going to be defined by your goals. And once you have them, you can start to measure.
- Know your baseline. When we are thinking about content, we are always trying to be better, to get better, to see better results. To do that, we measure each piece by the average.
- How do you do that? Take your content from the past year, by channel, or grouped by goal, and find the median. If your new content is performing below that line, then you need to rethink the strategy and perhaps rework the content. Now the caveat is of course time. For organic, it can take a few months to see results, and that’s ok. You will want to measure as frequently as makes sense.
- But the key is understanding, what it is you are measuring against.
- Ok…you know how I just said all that stuff about measuring against the baseline and being better. Yeah…that’s true. But you know what else is helpful? Taking below average content and making it better!
- I am huge fan of content repurposing and refreshing and I like to say it’s because I’m lazy. But really, it’s because we spend so much time creating new content and then just forget about it.
- Take a look at the content that is performing below average. What we want to look for is older pieces that are still relevant and still driving traffic. This works especially well for organic pieces. Give em a refresh. See what they are performing for, take a look at the SERPs and give em an update. It’s an easy way to take these, and make them these. New isn’t always better. Use what you have.
- It’s not secret mobile is growing. It’s no secret voice search is here. And yes, Google wants our sites to be mobile friendly.
- But ask yourself this -- how are users consuming your content? Because we are told to think mobile first and I’m not saying that you shouldn’t. But just like anything else, you should look at how your visitors are accessing your content.
- I have a client in the healthcare space. Their site is responsive, we keep mobile in mind, but less than 18% of their traffic is coming from mobile. How much effort do we need to put into ensuring our content is geared toward mobile? Honestly, it’s not a top priority. Except for the blog. The blog is at 30% and that makes sense. That means we need to ensure our content uses best practices like headings, optimized images, shorter paragraphs, etc.
- I’ll just say this, before you jump through hoops, make sure you know where your audience is.
- I talk a lot about brands and consumers and why we like certain companies better than others. And when it comes to content, I often talk about why we share things. It essentially comes down to trust. We believe the company is authoritative enough, their information is good, and we trust them.
- The same thing applies to the people linking to you. To me, referrals are one of the most underrated and underutilized metrics in analytics. Why? Because of what we just talked about. If someone is linking to your content, they trust you.
- Take a look at your top referral landing pages and the top pieces of linked content. Dig into understand, what are the types of assets that people are linking to? Find some common themes. For us, we have a lot of news stories and reports, particularly on social media and B2B…that makes sense and it also means we should prioritize that type of content. Don’t forget about this, it’s good stuff.
- You know what’s really awesome? Building a piece of content, watching it move to the top of the SERPs, and getting no traffic. No, that’s not awesome. But it happens when we create content that doesn’t match the intent of the search results.
- There’s a lot that can be said about keyword intent. In fact, I wrote a post about it at searchenginejournal. But the primary problem is we do keyword research, we write a post, and it seems like it makes sense. However, it goes live and we don’t get the results we want.
- In GSC, take a look and see what posts have high impressions, high positions, but low ctr.
- Alternatively, take a look at posts to see what other keyword opportunities are there? If a post is ranking for a ton of terms, it can’t possibly fit the intent of every single one.
- This all stems from that strategy.
- Who here is familiar with the 5-10 concept? It’s not about height but I saw this picture of a dog on stilts and I mean, come on. Ok, so I may have made up the term but the 5-10 concept is something we do all the time.
- And it simply involves looking at which keywords are in positions 5-10. Why? Because if you focus on moving those, you have a good chance of actually increasing traffic. Similar to what we talked about for your content refresh, take a look at what content is ranking.
- And then go here for each of the terms.
- I want to talk you guys through a quick case study. This is just one instance of how this works but it’s soooo powerful and is honestly one of my favorite strategies for organic traffic. We’ve been writing for a client for a few years now and we are constantly re-evaluating, trying to get better, updating old pieces. And when we started looking at their 5-10s, we found this.
- A few of their primary keywords had answer boxes and PAA boxes. And we were on that pages so we figured, well, we have as good a shot as anyone in getting in that answer box. So, we re-wrote our content, looked at what the competitors had, and made ours better.
- This is what happened.
- Go back and look at what’s here. This is your opportunity.
- Do you guys know how many people are asking questions every day? Yeah, me neither. I was hoping one of you would.
- The last stat I had was this and it’s from 2015.
- But a more recent study from GetStat showed People also asked boxes were in 33% of SERPs. And that’s crazy! It means people are asking questions and Google knows that. They want to give them the answers.
- I mentioned earlier customers and our love of brands and reality is, your customers want answers. Google isn’t doing this because they are nice people. They are doing this because it’s a better user experience. And whatever your feelings on these types of results – google stealing your traffic – you had better make sure you are the one who is there and you are the one giving your users the answers to their questions.
- So how do we find those questions? For me, there are a number of tools I defer to. I think most people are familiar with answer the public at this point. But I still love to put it in here because for the person who doesn’t, they go to the site and they are like WTF?
- Who here is familiar with buzzsumo? What’s also cool is that it tells you where people are asking but we will get to that in a second.
- You guys. I have to tell that I talk about this a lot and I still get excited. This information is crazy. These are real things your potential customers are asking! You should feel like scrooge mcduck diving into his money bank.
- Ok, I just showed you BuzzSumo and to me, one of the best parts about this is that it not only gives the questions, it gives you the link to the place people are asking the question!
- Go there! See what people are saying. It’s a great way to not only get content ideas but later, after you create something, you can go back and actually promote it there.
- Another tool to do this with is FAQFox. I first started talking about this tool right here on this stage in 2015 and it still doesn’t get enough love.
- Do you know where else you can get real data from your customers? On your site! This one is so obvious it hurts my heart how many people don’t use it. YOUR OWN SITE SEARCH! Make sure you have site search enabled in GA. Exercise on gdpr.
- Story of when I was at grasshopper.
- How many people are using chat on their site? How many have access? Get that shit man. These are real people.
- You know who else is real? The people within your organization. The people who spend every day with the product, talking about the product, improving the product. One of the biggest challenges of being an agency is having to learn a client’s business really fast.
- When we start a program that includes content, there are a few steps we always take. And they almost always include interviewing SMEs. Not only is it a great way to learn about the company and the product, but it’s a great way to actually build relationships with people in the organization. In many cases, people are putting their names on your writing so they need to trust you.
- All right, so we’ve gone through a ton of stuff here. There are a lot of data points and this isn’t everything! Do you know what that means?
- It means that as content marketers, we have no excuse for this.
- Or this. Or any other shitty statistic that tells us we don’t know how to measure our content. We have so much technology at our fingertips now. It’s not a throw evertyhign against the wall and see what works. It’s not estimate impression and hope someone walks through your door.
- Now, you may or may not have noticed that the last one is blank? I mean Casie, you said there were 15. I’m going to let you all in on a little secret.
- When you send in a presentation title noting 15 data points, make sure you have 15 data points ready.