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Win a Free Pass to MN Blogger Conference

Written on September 2, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing, seo

TopRank Online Marketing is proud to be a founding sponsor of the first Minnesota Blogger Conference. Tickets for this event “sold out” within a few hours and there are over 100 people on the waiting list. Thanks to conference founders Melissa Berggren, Arik Hanson,  Suzi Magill and Katie Schutrop, it’s already one hot event.

The date is Saturday, Sept 11 (the day I fly to Hong Kong) and the location is at CoCo MSP in Saint Paul.  Topics to be presented range from “how to blog” to “how to get your blog published as a book” to “how to make money with a blog” to “blog analytics” to a “business blogging panel” that will include Adam Singer from TopRank Marketing.

If you’d like to attend this networking rich and information packed event, you can’t.  It’s sold out!

However, what you can do is win a free pass from TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog.

All you have to do is:

• Write a blog post explaining the most important thing you’ve learned from blogging yourself
• Or if you don’t blog yet, one thing you’d like to learn
• Why you should get to attend the MN Blogger Conference
• Use the MN Blogger Conference logo above in your post and also include a link to the page you’re reading right now: http://tprk.us/mnblog

All blog post entries must be published and we must be notified (mnblog at toprank dot org) by Friday 9/3 at noon Central.   Once received, all posts will be linked to from the bottom of this page and the TopRank Online Marketing staff will read the entries and decide the winner.  THE WINNER of a free pass to the sold-out MN Blogger Conference will be announced at 5pm on Friday.

So what are you waiting for? Get started now on a compelling, creative and persuasive blog post that explains why you should be the winner of a very rare MN Blogger Conference pass.

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Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from Google

Written on September 2, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing, seo

Aaron Goldman is an accomplished digital marketer that I know through MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit conference. He reached out to me while writing his new book, “Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from Google”, and asked if I’d like to contribute. Such a request is a great honor to me but unfortunately, I never did end up sending anything to Aaron even though he was incredibly patient and went out of his way to make it easy.

I know what you’re thinking: Smart AND nice guy? Yes indeed, that’s Aaron and now he’s on a blog tour to promote his new book, graciously stopping by Online Marketing Blog with a video recognizing how TopRank Online Marketing “Acts Like Content” (Chapter 7) as well as offering insights from the book on the value of content for marketing. Overall, the book offers 20 lessons “straight from Google’s playbook” that I think you’ll get a lot of value from. Check out the video:

Aaron also talks about a blog post by TopRank’s Adam Singer, 10 Keys to Content Marketing, that offers specific tips and guidelines on how marketers can make their brands memorable.  He finishes up with a freestyle rap that you’ve got to hear. Well done Aaron and thanks for the TopRank Marketing love.

Be sure to check out the Googley Lessons site and blog tour page to see where Aaron is going to show up next. You can check out his book at Amazon and anywhere else great marketing books are sold.

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The Real Cost of Buying Links for SEO: $4 Million

Written on September 1, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, book, marketing, seo

I was reading a copy of the Inc. 500 issue on my flight back from Dallas this weekend and came across an article about a seasonal online retailer that was “penalized” right before the Holidays for paid links. He estimated the revenue loss due to plummeting organic search visibility at $4 million in sales.  Now he’s “thanking” Google for the spanking because he’s mended his ways and is reborn as a social media enthusiast.

I’m not sure I buy the “social media has turned things around” story exactly, but I do wonder how many companies and consultants roll the dice and take shortcuts and loopholes to get ahead only to find out later it’s worthless? The notion of paid links is an old story (Paid Links Evil? Dec 2005) but many of the tactics used to shortcut results for SEO will always be a fresh topic of discussion.

It turns out the retailer in the Inc. story was doing SEO internally then hired two SEO companies to help out. The story goes on to say that a SEO company was to “reach out to relevant sites and ask them for links. Instead, one of the companies admitted it was paying for links.”  That’s worded in a way that makes you think maybe the retailer didn’t know the SEO company was buying links.

We don’t buy links at TopRank Marketing.

We never have. Not ever in 10 years of being in the search marketing business. As far as the retailer in the Inc. article, it’s surprising because buying links isn’t cheap.  If a company didn’t know the SEO consultant was buying links, it’s peculiar any way you look at it. Where did the money come from to buy the links? How did the SEO company not report what it was doing? How did the company owner not know what the SEO company was doing?

I polled followers of @leeodden on Twitter whether they or someone they knew knew had ever been penalized for buying links. Almost all of them said yes. When I’ve mentioned that we never buy links to other search marketers, the disbelief was like I told them I didn’t need to breathe air.

The point of relating this story to you isn’t so much about the risks and rewards of paid links, defining exactly what “paid means” (what about a 3 way barter?) or even judging those that sell and buy links. The point is that the online retailer in the story says social media tactics were largely ignored and now they’re committed to blogging, Tweeting and being active on Facebook. He claims all is now well in their SEO world. “We’re back on top.”

The point:  Why didn’t the online retailer commit to a better online marketing strategy in the first place?

It’s been promoted for years that paid links can carry consequences.  People like Google’s Anti-Spam Czar Matt Cutts make their perspective clear and make it easy to report paid links. Right or wrong, it’s the way search engines want to play.  Obviously, paid links with the right anchor text from very authoritative and relevant websites have a positive impact, or SEOs and website owners wouldn’t participate.  It’s important to note that Google doesn’t have a problem with paid links per se, but with paid links that pass PageRank.

The question I have for companies that rely too much on shortcuts and loopholes is, “Why not suspend the “free money now” attitude and invest in a smart and competitive online marketing program that can get results AND stand the test of scrutiny?”  Won’t a customer focused marketing effort that provides optimized and linkable content to a growing social network earn more links, more traffic and more revenue anyway?

I don’t think there’s much reason to put your brand and revenue at risk if you have a long term view of how the search and social web works. The investment in understanding and engaging customers plus the staff, software and time to implement content, analyze performance data and ongoing content marketing is well worth the cost and there’s virtually no risk.

“Don’t bring a sword to a gun fight”

Years ago at a search conference discussion about black hat and white hat tactics, Tim Mayer, ex head of Search at Yahoo! made the comment “”If you’re being entirely organic and going after ‘Viagra,’ it’s like taking a sword to a gunfight. You just aren’t going to rank” when discussing acceptable tactics in really aggressive industries like “PPC” (pills pron casino).

The temptation and pressures to profitability are great in industries that are flush with heavily optimized and marketed web sites.  However, most companies don’t fall in that category and I think smarter and more creative marketing can still win for the vast majority of websites, especially in the long run. We’ve seen it happen with our own clients nearly 10 years.

Why rent when you can own?

The reason I’ve never participated in link purchases or endorsed the practice isn’t as much about Google’s rules on paid links that pass PageRank. It’s because I could never understand why anyone would “buy” something with such risk associated with it when they could “earn it and own it”?   With roots in Public Relations, our online marketing agency has been accustomed to earning media placements and often times highly desirable links since we started the business in 2001. It can take more time to see aggressive results, but when you focus on making creative content and doing the hard work of promotion to earn traffic and links, the cost is one of investment vs. the often higher cost of advertising with no equity in what you’ve purchased. Then there’s the cost if the links are devalued by the search engines and subsequent lost revenue. I’d rather build, promote and earn those links that will be in place indefinitely.

Using that strategy, Online Marketing Blog has accumulated a substantial number and quality of links (according to Majestic SEO). The devil is in the details with this sort of thing of course, since it matters very much what the topic, anchor text and PageRank are of the link sources. But suffice it to say, we experience very good results in each of those areas as evidenced by over 21,000 different keyword phrases that sent organic traffic each month and top visibility for important and challenging keyword queries.

What’s your experience with managing risk with SEO tactics? Have you experienced what the online retailer above went through and focused anew on a sustainable and longer term online marketing strategy?

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Social Media SEO Success with Blogging

Written on August 31, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing, seo

Army Golden Knights: SFC Dave Herwig (@gkdave), SGM Steve Young (@gksteve), LTC Joe Martin (gkjoe)

My presentation on how to leverage Social Media SEO to improve the reach and effectiveness of blog content for marketing at OpenCa.mp DFW this weekend ended up being a lot of information in a very short period of time. The use of a video interview I did with Brian Clark as the segue into my presentation ate into some of the 30 minutes I had to present plus I simply had too many slides.

(Thanks to Lt Colonel Joe Martin for the photo taken right after the presentation. His team were literally sponges for information at the event.)

The good news is that there’s Slideshare, so I’ve embeded a copy of that presentation below. Chris Pirillo and Brian Clark gave witty, informative and entertaining presentations on blogging and copywriting for blogs before me, so the stage was set to talk about marketing that blog content.

Marketers familiar with “Push and Pull” can relate to Social Media being the push, where (along with listening & engagement) you syndicate, update and share your content via social channels. The pull is SEO, where you optimize that content with customer centric keywords they can use on search engines to easily find your content ahead of the competition.

My presentation shared a model that I call the Cycle of Social & SEO that starts with creating, optimizing and promoting content along with listening to and growing social networks. As the relevant content gets shared socially and others link to it, the exposure and traffic builds momentum to a point where search traffic and the social community you’ve fostered provides priceless data via social media and web analytics on what content to create and share on a go forward.

Guessing what keywords and what social channels your customers are connected to is the reason why so many companies don’t see an impact from their efforts. Being smart from the start and planning on developing a cycle that continues to provide value and refine effectiveness at meeting customer search and social media needs is a win for all.

Companies in the marketing space like Marketo, PRWeb and our own agency at TopRank Marketing have made strong commitments to content as well as SEO and Social Media with the payoffs coming in the form of competitive search visibility and growing social communities.

We’ve recently been engaged by another well known company in the online marketing space that sees the value in both our strategic marketing & implementation expertise, but more importantly, is making a commitment to content and it’s role in customer acquisition and customer retention through Social Media & Search Optimization.

Check out the presentation below and let me know what you think.

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Jumping Army Strong on Social Media & the Golden Knights

Written on August 27, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing, seo

Army Strong Stories is a program to draw attention to the real life and experience of being in the Army through soldier stories communicated via media socially. Recently Greg Swan of the Minneapolis Public Relations firm, Weber Shandwick, that is behind the Army Strong Stories campaign contacted me with a compelling opportunity to create my own Army story: “Would you like to go skydiving with the US Army Golden Knights?”

Who are the Golden Knights? In 1959 13 men joined together to form the Strategic Army Corps Sport Parachute Team, to compete in the communist dominated sport of skydiving. The team performed so well that on June 1, 1961 the Army maded them an official parachute team and the Knights (men and women) have been wowing audiences at air shows ever since.

Greg is a well known “social media guy” and works with the Army account for his agency. At first I was uncertain about the jump, but after looking at the competitive skydiving team’s website, YouTube channel and blog, I decided it was worth checking out.

One thing Greg didn’t know when he invited me was that I spent several years on active duty in the military. We later discovered I was stationed on the same base in Alaska as his Grandfather. My experience as a small town kid from Minnesota being exposed to a completely different world of the military allowed me to grow and mature in new ways.

My short experience with the Army exposed me to structure, challenge and reward in combination with raising my awareness of teamwork and a sense of purpose that was instrumental in the development of  things like character, integrity and confidence – All essential for success as an entrepreneur and business owner.

Also, without the Army college fund program, I would not have been able to afford a University education. So, while it was by no means a career for me, my personal experience with the Army left me a different person, better in many ways, than before I joined. It is with that backround and my interest in the Army Golden Knights’ use of social media that I accepted the offer to jump from an airplane for the first time in my life yesterday.

Disclosure: The U.S. Army paid for my transportation and accomodations in Addison, Texas where the jump occurred and I agreed to write a blog post however I wanted.

Meet the Army Golden Knights

The competitive skydiving team of men and women that make up the Golden Knights are the best of the best skydivers in the world.  These men and women have many thousands of jumps under their belts and participate in competitions all over the world, making them truly unique individuals and part of a very elite group.

I watched videos on YouTube of the Knights in competition as well as the tandem jumps I would be taking. These videos included VIPs like President George W. Bush, celebrities like Vince Vaughn and well known Digerati like John Pozadzides, CEO of Woopra. This gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect. As a marketer, I’m fully aware of how effective video can be at telling a story, but being able to watch videos of the Golden Knights do what they do was equally impressive as it was confidence building in that I would be in good hands.

The Golden Knights Use of Social Media

The Golden Knights have an official website as well as a blog, YouTube Channel, Flickr, Facebook & Twitter. Several of the Knights also maintain their own Twitter accounts and blogs.  The content published on these social channels gives potential candidates great insight into the life of a competitive skydiver.

• Official site
• Blog
• YouTube Channel
• Twitter
• Flickr
• Facebook

The Knights are a publishing entity like no other I’ve seen. On the day of our jump, nearly every Army Golden Knight had still and/or video cameras on their helmets. SFC Dave Herwig was busy all day editing videos as they came in for uploading to YouTube and posting online.  The Knights clearly see content and engagement as the key to getting the word out and social media channels are a perfect distribution and community building platform to that end.

Skydiving with the Army Golden Knights

I was not jumping alone of course, there were several other digerati types like Chris Pirillo, Cali Lewis, Trey Ratcliff, Dave Curlee, Scott Ellis, Vi Kim Vu, Frederick Van Johnson, George Ruiz, Jay Batson, Pelpina Trip, John Pozadzides, and Giovanni Galluci jumping as well. Our itinerary called for us to get breakfast and meet early in the morning at the hotel and walk over to a soccer field area where the jump would occur.

This event never would have happened without Carolyn Sullivan from Weber Shandwick & SFC Dave Herwig from Army Golden Knights aka Army social media guy

SFC Mike Elliott starts off by giving a pre-jump briefing

This puts jumpers like Frederick Van Johnson, Vi Kim Vu & Pelpina Trip and the rest of us at ease.

Next we suited up as Scott Ellis has done here

Then we headed to the plane used specifically for tandem jumps

The Army Golden Knights showed their stuff

A perfect landing just 20 feet from the spectators. Amazing accuracy from 2 1/2 miles up.

Media savvy Army Golden Knights are well-equipped to document their jumps on video and photos

After the jump, off came the yellow jumpsuits, which were hot! Rachel, Pelpina & Cali

Major Smith & Lt Col Martin made sure everything ran smoothly.

For more photos, I’ve put some up on Flickr and Facebook. When the Army and Weber Shandwick share the video taken of my jump, I’ll post that here as well.

I have to say, this experience was a blast. The men and women of the Army Golden Knights are true professionals and it was a priveledge to have the opportunity to do a tandem jump with them as well as learn more about what they do.

Thank you to Greg Swan and Carolyn Sullivan from Weber Shandwick for making the offer. Thank you to the U.S. Army for having me along and for all that you do for our country. Thanks to the organizers of OpenCa.mp as well for such a great event.

Here’s a pre-jump interview Cali Lewis of GeekBeat.TV did with Mike and Dave of the Golden Knights that will give you even more info about the Knights and the event:

Next up: Speaking of which, OpenCa.mp and all the WordPress, Drupal, .NET and Joomla! education you can shake a stick at is where I’ll be this weekend. I’m presenting a session on Social SEO for Blogs after Brian Clark and Chris Pirillo give their presentations on blogging. It should be a great event and be sure to watch for a few liveblog posts on some of the sessions.

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Video Interview: Dave Roth of Yahoo

Written on August 26, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing, seo

Dave Roth works as Director of Search Marketing at Yahoo. That means Dave is a Search Engine Marketer that works for a search engine. I’ve known Dave for several years and we finally decided to do a video interview. Watch the interview below to learn what a search marketer that works for a search engine does, especially the challenges and opportunities in communications on search marketing performance in a large company.

Of course, we couldn’t talk to someone like Dave at Yahoo without mentioning the transition of search results to Bing over on the Yahoo site. What does this mean for SEO? What does it mean for Paid Search?  What’s the fate of Site Explorer and where does it fit within Bing Webmaster Tools? Is SEO good or bad for search engines? How much of a signal does social media provide search engines? We discuss these topics and more.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks Dave!

Blog: Industrial Strength SEM
Twitter: DaveRothSays

The video is available in 480 and 780 formats as well, just click on the size drop down.

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Enterprise Level SEO Is Not For The Weak

Written on August 24, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing, seo

Thanks to Ray ‘Catfish’ Comstock for providing the title of this post with his opening remarks during the session.  Joining Comstock on this panel, moderated by Seth Besmertnik, CEO, Conductor, Inc.:

• Crispin Sheridan, SES Advisory Board & Sr Director of Search Marketing Strategy, SAP
• Bill Hunt,  SES Advisory Board & President, Back Azimuth Consulting
• Guillaume Bouchard, SES Advisory Board & President, Back Azimuth Consulting

As a good writer and analyst, I have to ask ‘why’ for even the most obvious problem posed.  So why is enterprise level Search Engine Optimization (SEO) not for the weak? The obvious answer: a lot of people, a lot of content.  Enterprise is difficult because management of a lot of content and people is difficult to scale.

A recurring theme at the SES sessions I’ve attended this year is the importance of communicating SEO in a language that non-search professionals (high level executives) will understand.  TopRank CEO Lee Odden even offered the presentation ‘Selling Search to the C-Suite.’

Let’s identify the problems a C-level executive may have with a fairly basic statement that illustrates the positive results of an SEO campaign:

“Our SEO efforts have helped decrease bounce rate 40% over the last 90 day from visits generated by organic keywords.”

• What is bounce rate?
• What do you mean by ‘organic’ keywords?
• Why are you not talking about revenue?

Let’s say the same thing a little bit differently:

“SEO recommendations made to our small business software page have helped decrease the amount of traffic that immediately abandons this page by 40%.  As bounce rate has decreased, the amount of visitors who have converted to sales has increased 75%.”

A great line from the movie Adaptation (which I am probably getting wrong) is ‘Get them in the third act.  No matter what else is wrong with your story, you’ll win if you can get them in the third act.’

Communicating a direct effect on revenue is a great capper for any communication with a C-level and a great way to get buy-in for other SEO tactics you KNOW you need to implement.  For example:

• Cleaning up duplicate content
  The more duplicate content we have, the fewer results search engines will show from our site.  Fewer webpages basically means we have fewer salespeople online.
• Creating content
  There is a huge gap in content for this topic between our site and our competitor’s site.  Here is a graph showing all our potential customers that are going to our competitor’s website.
  
• Internal linking
  Every link we add to our pages is like a ‘vote’ for this content to search engines.  Every vote ranks us higher and puts us in front of more customers.

You may notice that many of the tactics described above match recommendation shared in previous posts.  Ultimately, SEO best practices are SEO best practices.  All enterprise adds is the need for prioritization and the need for buy-in.

And the path to both is the path to revenue.

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B2B Marketing Tips From SES SF

Written on August 20, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing, seo

What’s the quickest way to catch a fish? Offer the right bait.

What’s the quickest way to get a B2B marketer to an SES session? Title it ‘B2B Marketing Tips.’

What’s the quickest way to get you to read this post? By diving right in to the top 5 tips shared:

1. Your conversion goals must become more sophisticated**
   Yes, probably even yours.  For the simple reason that you should always be testing and always be experimenting with something new.  The keywords that convert today may transform into completely new derivations tomorrow.  Always be tracking and always be testing.
2. Segment transactional from educational keywords*
   Keywords that drive sales tomorrow will rarely match the keywords that drive inquiries today.  Your transactional keywords are your bottom of the funnel phrases that represent a user closest to the buying cycle, while educational keywords are top of the funnel phrases used by someone looking for more information.  Third party tools and research can help identify what keywords lead a user down the path to a sale, while looking at repeat visits in analytics can help identify keywords that are educational.
3. Build custom strategies for transactional and educational keywords*
   Build different marketing strategies for different keywords. Working with transactional keywords?  Put as few barriers between the prospect and the sale as possible.  If you are working with educational keywords, developer softer offers via landing pages that freely provide information to hungry users.
4. Start conversations in social networks via member profile targeting**
   As business professionals flock to social networks like LinkedIn, these same professionals can be reached via member profile targeting.  Target users with paid social campaigns by their likes, interests, workplaces and industries.  The offer needs to be nothing more than the invitation of conversation.   Bonus tip? Headlines with questions tend to generate a robust response rate.
5. Don’t fear the multi-tier landing page***
   It can fly in the face of everything we believe to create a landing page that features multiple steps.  Some companies, however, have reported campaign response boost of more than 80% by transforming landing pages featuring one form to multi-tier pages that direct users to a landing page specifically targeted to their needs.  And the best part about these inquiries?  Once received, they are practically sales-ready.

Thank you to the panel of this session, to whom the tips above have been attributed:

Moderator:
Patricia Hursh, President, SmartSearch Marketing

Speakers:
Lauren Vaccarello, Sr. SEM Manager, Salesforce.com*
Andrew Chang, Marketing Manager, LinkedIn**
Scott Brinker, President & Chief Technology Officer, ion interactive***

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Is It The SEO Metrics Or The Connections Between?

Written on August 20, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing, seo

Ultimately, to measure Search Engine Optimization (SEO) success, you aren’t necessarily looking at individual metrics – you are looking for a connection between the metrics – and the resulting affect on revenue.

If my lead seems to negate the name validity of the SES San Francisco session, ‘Meaningful SEO Metrics,’  it is completely unintentional.

Moderated by John Marshall, CTO of Market Motive and SES Advisory Board Member, this excellent session featured on its panel:

• Richard Zwicky, Founder & CEO, Enquisite
• Ray “Catfish” Comstock, Director of SEO, BusinessOnLine
• Jon Glick, VP of SEO and GM European Web Properties, Become.com

“Infinitely measureable means adjustable,” opens Zwicky.  “And online marketing is completely measureable.”

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Zwicky recommends companies and marketers look at is Share of Voice, or in other words, how much traffic are you receiving for a keyword or phrase when compared to the balance of the marketplace?

Online tools, from Google Trends to Tweetscan, can measure the amount of traffic or conversation generated by competing websites or in social platforms to give you an idea of just how much voice is out there. It’s not perfect, but it’s measureable.

Another KPI from Zwicky is attribution across channels.  For example, plot out the sales your company achieves on a local or nationwide map.  Next map out visits from social media, local media buys – or any other metric you would like to compare against.  You now have a quick and dirty map that can be used to compare your metrics and help measure the effectiveness of your tactics.

Zwicky’s map segues nicely into Comstock’s keyword metrics, specifically branded vs. non-branded traffic, long-tail keyword traffic and personalized vs. local rankings.

Branded keywords, traffic coming to your site via queries containing your brand name, are oftentimes more an effect of outreach programs while non-branded are an effect of SEO.  Long-tail keyword traffic, the iceberg below the water, measures all the variations of popular keyword phrases driving traffic to your site. Finally, personalized vs. localized rankings are everything that will appear above traditional search results – at times wreaking havoc for those used to a certain ranking position.

Combine the insight of Zwicky and Comstock – for instance – analyze branded traffic in  markets where media buys are heavier, and you have an indication of the effectiveness of your ad campaigns in driving traffic.  Analyze corresponding revenue and you have an indicator of the effectiveness of your ad campaigns towards sales.

Glick closes the session by continuing to urge audience members to see how data fits together, and to implement the types of tests that will show these connections.

‘Pseudo A/B testing,’ the process of adding new features to subsets of pages, can help illustrate the connections between minor and major website updates and corresponding changes to the bottom-line.  Pseudo A/B testing offers infinite possibilities for analyzing the types of changes that can be made to compel bottom-line results when implemented sitewide.

The path towards online success is driven by data of a different stripe daily.

What metrics, or connections, have you found beneficial to look at?

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Blog Marketing & SEO: A Recipe For SEO Success At SES SF

Written on August 18, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Object, marketing, seo

It’s been several years since I have seen TopRank CEO Lee Odden contribute to the panel ‘SEO Through Blogs & Feeds,’ so I was eager to sit in on this session to close out my first day at this year’s SES San Francisco.

Joining Odden on his panel, moderated by Craig Macdonald, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Covario, was PRESSfeed President Sally Falkow.

As Odden states, creation and promotion of a successful business blog is just as simple and just as complex as planning a friendly dinner party.  How, exactly? More on that shortly.

While Odden opened the session, let’s begin with insight from Falkow as her remarks help expand the notion of traditional blogging.

“According to Google,” Falkow states, “a blog is simply a webpage with a feed.”

While someone reading a blog would certainly not see a repurposed, subjective news release with the same viewpoint as an objective, personal blog post – the point is succinct.  Content marketing is bigger than blogs.

Content, especially content that carries SEO value, does not have to be a blog.  SEO-focused content can be made up of everything from articles to product info.  From alerts to recipes.

By expanding our definition beyond blogs, the dinner party analogy Odden offers can be applied across multiple types of content, just as the rules for a perfect dinner party across multiple types of gatherings:

• Who’s coming to dinner?
  Your dinner guests are your audience.  They are the sole reason for your content to even exist.  Respect their wishes by creating the content they hope to see.
• What does your audience like to eat?
  In other words, what keywords is your audience consuming?  Delight your audience by speaking about topics they want to learn about and speaking in their language.  And because nothing is more boring than a dinner party that serves nothing but mesquite short ribs, look for new derivative recipes.  Make hickory short ribs your reminder to blog about something new enough to be exciting, but relatable enough to cater to your audience.
• What do you have in the kitchen?
  Would you ever serve fried fish without Shore Lunch in the pantry? (If the reference is too Minnesotan, the answer is no.  No, you wouldn’t.)  Just as what you have in the kitchen will shape what you serve, the knowledge you possess can help shape the content you create.  Target your content creation focus by leveraging what you know about yourself and what you know about your audience. And don’t forget to ask your audience what they think about your content.  As a blogger, this means looking into your analytics.
• Should we use the good china?
  The answer here, is yes.  And for a blogger, the good China is a good blog CMS.  And the best blog CMS? WordPress.  Seriously.  Have you ever used Drupal?  Have you ever been to gala event that served on paper plates?
• Who can guests invite?
  You want your parties to be the most popular, right?  Then you have to spend time creating a party that is second to none while making it easier for guests to invite their friends and boast about the time they had.  For a blog, this equates to links and social sharing – two key success metrics of a blog.  Note that neither of these is likely to be easy.  It takes time, practice and a taste of failure to finally throw that one legendary dinner party.  It will take time to create the one post, piece of content, or even domain that will skyrocket in popularity.  But you can expedite the process by helping readers share your content with parting gifts like social sharing buttons and thank you notes (ie RSS feeds containing your newest posts.)

Because blogging, cooking and entertaining are best when they are collaborative, we welcome you to add to this recipe for success via a comment below.

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