Over the last two weeks, I’ve had several direct and indirect conversations (through clients) where an SEO firm is pitching the development of a WordPress.com blog that will house keyword-rich content. “It will be a great traffic driver for your site”, the SEO company says.
“Hold on. My clients already have blogs integrated within their websites,” I say.
“Yeah, but they’re not posting frequently enough”, they say.
“Ok. So why don’t you help them develop content for their blog?” I ask.
“They don’t think our keyword-rich content is a good fit on their blog. But we still need to improve their rankings with content and backlinks, so we’re creating a separate WordPress.com blog and we’ll post content to it daily,” they say.
“Uh…So if my client doesn’t think your content is a good fit, can you explain to me how it’s going to be valuable to a potential customer that comes across your “keyword-rich” blog?” I ask.
The core concept in The Publisher Method system is the “Publisher Paths” concept. When developing this program, we found that most content on the web (well, valuable content any
way) fits into 6 main categories: educational, entertaining, cause related, promotional, groundbreaking or curatorial (aggregated, filtered content from multiple sources).
When we do consulting engagements for our clients, we lead them through a series of exercises that helps us develop their overall online marketing plan, and one of those exercises is “The Publisher Path Exercise” where we help them find their ideal content paths. This strategic exercise ultimately becomes their foundational content strategy, a.k.a. the backbone of their marketing plan.
In The Publisher Method program, choosing the right path or paths ensures that your content will resonate with your audience, will help you meet your marketing objectives, and is in line with your business’ core values.
Here’s a quick explanation of our six Publisher Paths so you can wrap your heads around the “secret sauce” of our program.
First off, if you missed the first two videos in this series, here they are:
Can’t see this video? Click here to view it on Vimeo.
Quick recap…In the first episode I introduce the concept of RSS being the DVR of the web. The second episode provides a crash course of Google Reader, the most popular RSS reader out there. In video #3 above, I show you how to use your RSS reader to subscribe to and monitor the content stream produced by your industry leaders and competitors, and show you a simple way to monitor your brand reputation by pulling online mentions of your brand via RSS from SocialMention.com.
We hope you get a useful nugget or two out of the video.
Many of you probably have Google Analytics, or some sort of data tracking system, installed on your website. But here’s the million dollar question…
Do You Know How to Turn Your Data into Money?
Download the full-screen version – Subscribe to Our Webinars via iTunes
In this webinar, Brody Dorland and Jayme Thomason provide a crash course of the most popular web analytics program, Google Analytics, and show you how to read your data to help you with the following:
If you have a program like Google Analytics installed on your website, but you don’t know how to read your data to help you achieve the items listed above, click play above.
Just a quick note to let you all know that our second episode of the Content Marketing & Merlot Podcast is live over at www.contentmarketingandmerlot.com.
In this episode we review The Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane, get “so irritated” with Edge Shave Gel and talk social media management with Kevin Magee of Expion.
Don’t forget to subscribe either via iTunes or RSS to be automatically notified when new episodes are available for download.
A few months back, I received a phone call from a sole proprietor that had what sounded like a very unique and thriving business. In his initial inquiry, he requested some help with search engine optimization, social media and perhaps a website redesign. After probing a bit more and finding out that he had no real marketing plan, he gave us the green light to do a simplified version of The Publisher Method, our proprietary strategy process that helps companies build a complete online marketing machine.
During the first meeting of our strategic engagement, we always start with a client discovery and goal setting exercise that helps us begin to immerse ourselves into the client’s business. But we had to apply the breaks on this conversation when he struggled to answer several basic questions about his business, including…
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A funny thing happened to me in the grocery store the other day. Let me set it up for you. We just switched our company’s mobile carrier to Verizon after having been a long-time customer of T-Mobile. T-Mobile apparently noticed that I’d left, and called me to find out why…
In an effort to help you put content marketing to work for your business, we’ve created a podcast covering the latest in content marketing strategy, trends, tools and interviews from the people who are making it happen. While the podcast is informative and actionable in nature, we’re taking a modern, playful approach, hence the “and Merlot.” We discuss serious online marketing strategy while enjoying a glass of fine wine (or two) and mixing in a little barroom banter. We record the show in a wine bar (Cellar & Loft in the historic Kansas City River Market), ambient background noise and all.
We know you are busy…Why not learn the latest marketing trends and techniques during your commute? Or while you’re working out? Mowing the lawn? Getting groceries? You get the idea. Download our episodes automatically to your iPod, iPhone, iPad or other mp3-compatible device today! You can also just visit the website and listen to podcast episodes via the embedded mp3 player.
Subscribe via iTunes: Download our podcast episodes automatically onto your iPod, iPhone or iPadThis content marketing podcast is ideal for corporate marketers, small businesses, business owners, entrepreneurs and network marketers. If you have specific questions or situations you would like us to address during the show, feel free to submit your question either via email (questions (at) contentmarketingandmerlot.com) or via our podcast feedback form.
We’re also supporting our podcast community with a Content Marketing & Merlot LinkedIn Group. This will be our community hub where we’ll interact daily and post listener questions for group collaboration. Join the group today!
Please give our podcast a listen and feel free to leave a comment below or submit a review on iTunes.
Let me just call it like it is…A lot of us (corporate marketers, business owners and third-party marketing professionals) are just guessing when trying to determine which marketing mechanisms will really move the needle. Sure, every marketing strategy and tactic has been “proven” in some fashion, but every business is different and what works for one may not work for another.
Bottom line, a lot of marketing is experimentation and gambling. For companies that have the budget, experimenting with different marketing techniques/tactics, taking that bet with the understanding that it might not work, is built into the budget. But for most small businesses, investing in a gamble might be hard to swallow. Money is tight and they’re not in a position to experiment. They need to execute a strategy that is going to deliver, period.
So what’s the solution? How is a company able to get out of experimentation mode and start creating a marketing machine that will produce right out of the gate?
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