This isn’t the case now. Rankings will change. Almost every day. They may well be changing multiple times a day.

Pick five keywords you want to rank for, and rate your success based purely on where these keywords sit in Google, and you’re going to be disappointed. Google is just too temperamental for companies to be putting all their eggs in a few keywords. Focusing on the success of said keywords (however many) only offers you a snapshot of the true picture – a picture that shows your SEO to be failing.

People Don’t Search Like That

The fact is that short, generalised searches (i.e. the type of keywords companies choose to target) make up around 30% of searches performed. The remaining 70% of searches are ‘long tailed’ (search terms of three keywords or more).

Even if you rank number one for all of your chosen keywords, it doesn’t mean that all is lost if those keywords start dropping down the SERPs. A Moz Client case study, (old but still relevant) carried out over seven months, showed that not only were more than 250,000 unique phrases used to reach the client’s site in those seven months, but over 80% of these searches didn’t use any variation of the client’s primary keyword.

To be fair, if said primary keyword drops, and you lose 20% of your traffic, the initial hit may look pretty tragic, but the truth is that in most cases, these short and broad search terms are far less lucrative than their long-tailed friends.

Long Tail Searches = Better Quality Traffic

In most cases, more specific search terms drive better traffic. If you’re selling kitchen appliances for example, and someone lands on your site for the term ‘kitchen appliances’ there’s a high chance you won’t have what they’re looking for, and they won’t buy.

In fact, such a broad search term signals that they don’t even know what they’re looking for, and therefore aren’t in a position to buy just yet.

On the other hand, if someone lands on your site via the search term ‘BELLING BI60F Electric Oven’ and they land on a product page for this item, there is a very high chance they will buy. They know exactly what they’re looking for and you’ve given it to them.

What We Should Be Looking At

In short: unbranded organic traffic, and revenue. Unbranded organic traffic is the traffic you get to your site via searches that don’t include any brand related terms. If this is growing month-on-month, you’re succeeding – regardless of where your core keywords sit in the SERPS.

If the revenue from this traffic is increasing too, then even better – your SEO is doing exactly what it should be.

Unfortunately, the link between SEO and trying to rank for specific keywords is so ingrained that many companies (and even some SEOs) can’t seem to get past the idea that success in this industry means a top 10 placing for x keywords. It doesn’t.

If you’re ranking in position one of Google for five keywords while spending £1000 a month with an agency to get, and keep, those positions, yet those five keywords are driving £700 of business a month – how is that a success?

Yet if you’re spending £1000 a month on SEO, visitors are finding you via around 500 different unbranded search terms a month, and together those search terms are driving £6000 of business – there’s no arguing that isn’t a success.

The SEO industry needs to stop placing so much importance on so-called lucrative keywords. If your unbranded organic traffic is increasing, and this traffic is making you more money than you’re spending to get it, then your SEO is working.

Mr Porter is probably grinning, revenge! I imagine that grin to look a little bit like this:

Disclaimer: This is not the real Mr Porter; I don’t know what he looks like!

What are these forces you speak of?

Mr Porter, back in 1979 identified five factors he believed that when analysed could help a company get a better understanding of the structure of the industry they’re in.  This understanding would help them to stake out a position that is more profitable and less vulnerable to attack.  These five forces are:

- Bargaining power of Suppliers

- Bargaining power of Buyers

- Competitive Rivalry

- Threat of Substitution

- Threat of New Entry

It looks something like this:

What makes Porter special?

Porter’s five forces model is great for analysing the market attractiveness and very useful for understanding where the power lies. Whether you’re thinking of getting into a new market or you want to understand the strength of your current position, the 5 forces will come in handy.

This in-depth understanding of the market has quite a few advantages:

-          Taking fair advantage of a situation of strength

-          Avoiding taking the wrong steps

-          Improving on a situation of weakness

-          Identifying attractive potential markets

The 5 forces model is particularly helpful in the planning process and for strategists. A common mistake that managers or business owners make is to underestimate their competitors or count their ‘direct competitors’ as their ‘only competitor’. However, that narrowed look could be very threatening – by analysing the: customers, suppliers, potential new-comers, and substitute products you’ll be looking in every corner to identify your competitors.

Would you agree for example that a restaurant’s only competitors are other restaurants?

The answer is obviously no. Any business that could be a substitute could be a competitor. Takeaways would be another direct competitor but even diets would be a substitute because they will make the customer substitute the restaurant for the diet. Saving up for a house, car, and holiday could also be a substitute, as well as places in the entertainment industry that offer food e.g. bowling alleys and cinemas.

All of these areas need to be analysed in order for that restaurant to ensure they’re planning adequately and to avoid them becoming a threat. This could be through various promotional activities and special offers.

Understanding the Forces

Bargaining power of Suppliers: In this force you’re assessing the power the supplier has over your business. If there are many suppliers, the power of the supplier would be low but if there aren’t enough suppliers the power of the supplier would be high. If the supplier has a lot of power over you they’ll have high bargaining power over their prices and you would have to agree on them but if you have alternatives suppliers, you’ll have the option of finding a better deal.

Bargaining power of Buyers: This will be assessing how important every single customer is to you and your business. If you have few customers, you’ll be more dependent on them – often they’ll be able to dictate the terms of the business. If you have a lot of customers you would be more in control and they won’t be able to dictate the terms. You also need to consider how easy or difficult it is for the customers to switch from your products and services to that of the competitors.

Switching in the mobile phone industry is very easy which is why providers are increasing the terms of the contracts. Initially began as a 12 month mobile phone contract increased to 18, and now to 24 so that customers won’t be able to switch as easily.

Competitive Rivalry: How fierce is the competition in the industry and how competitive are you? Do you lead or follow? Are there leaders in your industry? What do the competitors offer? If they don’t offer a good deal, can you offer one to have a stronger place?

Threat of Substitution: This is the factor that’ll enable you to look at your competitors from a different angle. Who out there can be a substitute for what you’re doing? Going back to the restaurant example – avoid just looking at your direct competitors. You need to be as broad as you can and analyse industries that aren’t directly related to you but could still be a substitute for what you’re offering.

Threat of New Entry: Your power in the industry will be directly affected by how easy it is for other people to enter your market too. Is it expensive or cheap to enter your market? Can you do anything to make it harder for potential competition to enter e.g. patents, licenses? The stronger and more durable the barriers are to entry, the longer you can maintain your position in the market. The same goes if you’re researching a potential market to enter into – if there are strong barriers to entry it might not be worth it!

Porter’s 5 forces is a simple yet effective tool that will definitely help you when planning and implementing strategies. My next post will be about another traditional marketing gem. I hope you’ve found this useful but if you haven’t here is something that’ll definitely be of some use!

Video marketing is a tactic that can easily be forgotten in an SEO strategy, but which could pull in a lot of links. Make a good video and share it around, before you know it people will be talking about it and posting links back to your site.

Actually making that video isn’t easy – but it can all start with a good idea.

Seeing What Others Have Done

I always find that it’s easier to develop your own ideas after looking at what others have done. When trying to come up with video ideas, there are a wealth of people that have done it successfully and profited from it.

Whenever I think of company videos on YouTube, I always come back to the Old Spice channel. Some of their videos have attracted millions of views – their most popular “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” has over 45 million views at present.

So what makes the Old Spice videos popular? They don’t discuss the products features – in fact, the videos hardly make sense at all. Even so, they’re funny and it stays in your head, making you more likely to remember it next time you’re in the shop.

The same can be said about the Dollar Shave Club. Their first video, titled “Our Blades Are F***ing Great” has over 10 million views. They’ve followed a similar route to Old Spice – opting for humour over showing off their actual product. It’s light-hearted and sticks in your head.

Evian’s latest video “Baby&me” isn’t even related to their product, but the video which has now racked up 53 million views and has been a great success for the company.

But What If Humour Isn’t Your Thing?

Not every business is suitable for humour and you don’t have to limit yourself to funny videos to have success with video marketing. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world – if someone wants to find out how to do something or see a product in action before buying it, they’ll come to YouTube first.

YouTube is packed with videos on how to complete tasks. Sainsbury’s, for example, shows people how to cook recipes using their products. B&Q, as I mentioned in my last blog post, show people how to do DIY around their home. ‘How to’ videos can still attract a lot of attention and might be shared around among the niche groups you’re targeting – reminding them you exist and bringing more attention towards your company.

Product demonstrations shouldn’t be forgotten, either. People visit YouTube to get an idea how something will work and if it’ll be right for them without buying it. I did this myself when I was looking for some bags for my motorcycle – I eventually settled on the ones shown in this video because I could see that they were exactly what I wanted. The trick is to make them interesting and discuss the features people are really going to want to see.

Coming Up With Your Own Video Idea

If you want to hit it off like Old Spice, Dollar Shave Club or Evian then you need a unique and interesting idea. As they’ve also shown, it doesn’t even have to relate too much to your product. If your video is great then it’ll stand up on its own but still attract people to your site.

Creativity is key, and sometimes the wackiest videos can draw the most attention to your brand.

Then again, you could always start with how to videos and product demonstrations instead. These will still get you found when people search in YouTube and are still likely to draw interest to your site.

Gaining Views

Please always remember that there is no guarantee you video will ever take off and reach millions of views. You can increase your chances substantially by optimising your video once it’s uploaded and sharing it on different social networks, but it still might lack that spark that sends it viral.

Researching what others have done and coming up with your own fantastic idea is definitely the first step towards video marketing success.

We were both hoping that the speakers would have some interesting stuff lined up for us (flashbacks of some of our most boring uni lectures were entering our minds). As it turns out, the conference was really good and we both left at the end of the day feeling pleased, creative and somewhat enlightened. Okay maybe I’m exaggerating a bit but really the conference was very good!

So without further ado I’m going to go over some of the presentations and points that stood out to me. The further along we got in the day the less notes I took because some of what was being said had been said during other talks. The speakers were all great though and this is in no way a reflection on them, as they say, great minds think alike!
 

The Sir Alex Ferguson’s Way of Building the Best (Content) Team

First up was Danny Denhard. Danny works at vouchercodes.co.uk and was at the conference to tell us about his marketing team/football team analogy. As a girl who liked to play football but doesn’t care about the “science” of it, and is pretty much only a fan for the big matches, this analogy seemed to be reaching a little bit for me. But I’m sure serious football enthusiasts loved it and he did make some pretty good points.

Check out Danny’s slides to see what the qualities should be for each team member.

My main take aways from Danny’s talk are:

• Always know your goals.
• Make the project last until the final whistle.
• Build the best team for each content project.
• The best players in the world don’t always work well together!
• Pick the right attributes however large or small your team is.
• There always needs to be a leader.
• Not all players can play every game – rest people wisely.

 

How to Create Content People Have to Share

Next it was Laura Edwards from Nitter Natter. Laura talked about the importance of making really good content that other people will want to share. When it comes to creating sharable content, Laura says there are two things that are required: investment and effort. She also spoke about the importance of having a great editorial team in place for blog content.

What I liked about Laura’s talk was the questions that we need to ask ourselves when brainstorming ideas for content to share. We must look at our target audience and ask:

• Where are you hoping for your content to be shared?
• Who are you hoping for it to be shared by?
• What are they sharing today?
• What are they sharing right now?

Instead of the traditional accompanying slideshow, Laura had an excellent video that went with her talk which is online with the audio track of the presentation so great news if you want to see everything that Laura had to say.

How to create content people have to share from NitterNatter on Vimeo.
 

Developing an Editorial Mindset in a Non-editorial Business

Dan Fielder from Sticky Content was next up with a talk on “Developing an Editorial Mindset in a Non-Editorial Business”. Dan’s talk gave a little more of a light-hearted and humourous approach; he began by telling us about a well-known brand of nappies that wanted to give advice on choosing schools.

He quite rightly pointed out that just because they cater to the needs of babies and parents, it doesn’t really qualify them to give advice on children’s education. So his point was that it’s important to find your niche, to find the “sweet spot” between your domain of expertise and your users’ information needs.

Here are Dan’s slides from the conference:

Developing an editorial mindset in a non-editorial business from Sticky Content

My take aways:

• The more niche the better.
• Have an on-going flow of ideas and bad ideas.
• Tried and trusted digital genres: FAQ, step-by-step, Q&A, News story, Top 10 etc.
• Don’t be tempted to think that your niche is too boring. If you’re good at what you do and have an expert knowledge there is always content and information you can provide.
• Information is what sells online.

 

Robots, Gumballs and Marxism

Following Dan was Ben Redford from Mint Digital. Ben’s talk was a little different from the rest in that he works in product design but it was one of my favourite of the day. It was mainly Ben’s tone and humourous approach that entertained me but he gave some very good points that we found interesting (he also has a super cool job!).

Ben was given the task of creating something that could be connected to the internet but doesn’t live on-screen. Now although I consider myself to be quite a creative person, when I heard this brief the first phrase that came to mind (in the words of Liz Lemon) was “what the what?”. But as Ben went on to tell us about the product that he created it all became much clearer and I then decided I also wanted to work in product design (seriously, this guy designs twitter connected robots!).

What Ben and his team invented was Olly, the smelly robot. Olly is a machine that releases a smell of your choice every time you receive a tweet. Unfortunately he didn’t get the backing he needed on Kickstarter but that didn’t deter him! He then came up with Polly, the sweet dispensing companion of Olly.

Although Ben’s creations didn’t get the commercial success they had hoped it would, the amount of attention they got proved that people love real, tangible things and real tangible things that can be connected to the internet they love even more.

Eventually he went on to create Projecteo. Projecteo is a mini instagram projector the size of a matchbox. You order your Instagram photos to be developed on a wheel along with the projector and there you have it, those digital images we are used to only seeing online projected onto whatever you like. Now although I think it’s pretty cool, I’m not sure that Projecteo is something that I would be particularly bothered about owning. That being said, it has been commercially successful and you can now buy your very own.

Ben also told us about Stickygram, the service allowing us to turn our Instagrams into magnets. I think the point of this talk, and my take away, is that creativity is not limited. And even in the world of online marketing, people do still love real things and it’s important not to forget that.

Unforunately I can’t find Ben’s slides anywhere online but here are some pics of Olly and Projecteo.

Olly the smelly robot Image source: http://www.ollyfactory.com/

Projecteo Image source: http://www.getprojecteo.com/

 

Great Content Marketing is About Great Storytelling

Tony Samios from Caliber Interactive was next with my favourite talk of the day! A very funny presentation on why great content marketing is about great storytelling. He showed us some excellent examples of great campaigns that brands have developed through story telling. My favourite video of the presentation was the Old Spice Director Wolfdog.

Tony’s point was that if people are going to share content then they need to care about it. It had to touch them emotionally, whether that means making them laugh or cry. Stories provide more of an in depth, emotional connection to a brand or product and can greatly influence the way we see them. A great example of this that came to mind while tony was talking, was the amazing online campaign that Greek confectioners Lacta did. Watch the case study below, I can guarantee you will love it as much as I do.

And this is what they did:

“Lacta is the leading chocolate brand in Greece. Continuing its strategy of being a symbol for the sweetness of love, Lacta invited its fans to submit their stories of unfulfilled love, with the promise to give them, the happy end they never had… on the cinema screen!

Three of these stories, formed the basis of a film screenplay, entitled “Love in the end”, to be released on Valentine’s Day, 2013. A transmedia campaign promoting the film, started with an online 20 minute short film, showing the beginning of one of the stories, ending on a cliffhanger. The campaign continued, with an Alternate Reality Game, launched when the heroine of that story supposedly posted a YouTube video, asking Internet users for help! The campaign became a big hit with audiences in Greece. 17% of the Greek Internet Population saw the online short, resulting to 700.000 views and hundreds of rave comments.

Anticipation for the film’s release was very high, evident by the increase of Lacta’s Facebook fans by 100.000, that made it’s page the biggest for any brand in Greece, with 650.000 fans.

Finally, the film had the biggest opening night for any Greek movie in the last 5 years, with more than 75% of the all movie tickets being sold, being for “Love in the end”!”

This is honestly one of my all-time favourite online campaigns and it actually converted me to Lacta chocolate. I always avoided it because the name put me off, it sounds like some kind of special chocolate for people that are lactose-intolerant. It’s now one of my favourite Greek chocolates. I got around to trying it because this campaign changed my perception about the brand and product.
 

Content Strategy > Make Data your Friend!

Okay so back to the Content Marketing Show! Next to talk was Simon Penson from Zazzle Media. His presentation was about using data to develop your content strategy. For me, this presentation was a little harder to swallow. I was concentrating more on listening to what Simon had to say so my notes are a little sparse but the gist of the talk was that we should all be utilising the various tools available to help guide us in the content that we create and share depending on what our audience wants, likes and already shares. Therefore no matter how ‘uncool’ we think data is or how much we dislike it, it’s invaluable and should be utilised as much as possible.

Some data tools that Simon mentioned:

• Facebook Power Editor
• CognitiveSEO
• SEOMoz Fresh Web Index
• Pinalytics
• Ad Planner
• Google’s Public Data Resource
• Real Time Insights Finder
• UberSuggest
• LSI Keywords
• Zanran

So what I took away from this is that although I’m a creative person and I prefer to stay away from data if I can, it’s incredibly important for crafting a content marketing strategy. Not really a take away but it stayed with me.

Simon’s slides:

Content Marketing Show 2013 from Simon Penson

 

What is the Right Mix of Content?

Sarah Howard from Red Rocket Media gave a presentation on getting the right mix of content. She broke this up into 5 steps which made it pretty easy to set out a guideline to follow when it comes to creating content. The presentation touches on different points from across all the speakers:

Step 1: Get to know your audience

Step 2: Give your site a content audit

-          Full content inventory

-          Quality analysis

-          Align Content with business objectives

-          Content to support prospects through the buying cycle

Another important point from this step: Include content to nurture leads for every step in the process from awareness to consideration to purchase.

Step 3: Get analytical

-          Visits, views, bounce rate, time spent on page

-          Conversions (assisted and direct), inbound links, rankings

-          Unique and repeat visits, social shares, comments

Step 4: Try it, refine it

Step 5: Make it a company-wide exercise – Teamwork will lead to great content.
 

Sarah’s main points and take aways were:

• Become your audience.
• Capitalise on what works.
• Get everyone involved.
• Adopt a data-led content marketing strategy

Sarah’s slides:

What is the right mix of content for your brand? Find out in 5 simple steps from Red Rocket Media

 

Why Multicultural Content Marketing is Key to Grow Your Business

Eric Ingrand of Enveritas Group was there to talk about “Why Multicultural Content Marketing is Key to Grow Your Business”. This was a lightning talk so not many notes and I feel that this talk was probably more relevant to bigger brands.

What Eric said, however, was interesting and the main point of the talk, which I completely agree with, is that your content can’t just be translated. It needs to be culturally relevant and created by a local person. I can’t find the slides for this presentation, which is unfortunate as I would have also liked to go through them again myself!
 

Selling the Content Marketing Story

After lunch it was Pak Hou Cheung from BlueGlass UK with a talk on “Selling the Content Marketing Story”. This talk made us all think about why we all need to focus more on content marketing. Maybe some SEO’s are trying not to think about the fact that we keep being bombarded with updates that undo all of our hard work and we have to start moving in another direction: content!

As mentioned in other talks it’s super, super important to define a goal and think about how content marketing will help you achieve it. And Just like Sarah Howard mentioned, valuable content is important at all stages from awareness > consideration > purchase > retain/upsell. Check out Pak’s slides below to learn more about this.

Content marketing show 2013 selling the content marketing story – 29.05.2013 – cv from Pak Hou Cheung

 

Putting the Conversion into Content

Justin Taylor from Graphitas spoke to us about “Putting Conversion into Content”. He talked about the relevance of social likes and shares. Sure they are great and they make us feel loved but if they aren’t converting then what’s the point?

He gave us 10 tips in 10 minutes for “Putting Conversion into Content”.

• Define your objectives: Focus on where you want to be, not where you are.
• Understand your audience: Do research, create personas, talk to people, hang out in forums.
• Use their language: Use jargon for the “tech savvy” audience, use aspirational language and create the “want factor” for fashion and use seductive language for luxury holidays.
• Concentrate on headlines.
• Anchor products into content: If someone is interested enough to read about something they will be interested enough to buy it.
• Calls to action and triggers.
• Visual impact.
• Add value.
• Never stop testing: Testing encourages innovation.
• Play to win.

Justin’s slides:

Putting the conversion into content – Justin Taylor from Justin Taylor

 

7 Content Marketing tips for Ecommerce

Another lightening talk, this time from Ed Bussey of Quill. He gave us 7 quick content marketing tips for online retailers:

• Value your content.
• Define your objectives (the most important tip of the day!)
• Customers first, SEO second: what customers want, not what Google wants (I love this!).
• Be consistently on-brand.
• Measure and optimise.
• Don’t translate…localise (just like Eric Ingrand said).
• Use solutions that scale.

 

Advanced Content Promotion Strategies and Tactics

Co-founder of Buzzstream, Paul May, came along to talk to us about Advanced Content Promotion and Outreach.

Paul talked about the fact that for most of us, simply publishing your content isn’t going to get you a huge amount (if any) links. There was a great quote in his slideshow from Hannah Smith of Distilled: “…if you spend 40 hours creating a piece you should spend 40 hours outreaching/seeding/promoting”. Paul suggested that the key to success is to “develop a system that allows you to scale outreach without sacrificing the personalisation needed to succeed.”

Some key points for me:

• Think big, start small.
• Commit to relationship building prior to outreach.
• Identify target segments > Plan your engagement > Build lists > Execute campaign > Measure and adapt > Start process again.
• 4 elements of a great outreach email:

-          Personalised

-          Positioned

-          Persuasive

-          Calling to action (aka make the ask)

Check out Paul’s presentation in more detail below!

Advanced Content Promotion and Outreach Tactics from BuzzStream

 

If I Had a Planner – Content Planning 101

During the first half of the conference I was sat behind Jo Kerr from VInspired and had no idea who she was until she jumped up on stage towards the end of the day and started launching sweets into the audience (I didn’t get any *sad face*).

She gave a great presentation and I loved her process of developing a content strategy – meeting face to face and using hand-written post-it notes instead of skyping each other and making notes online, who’d of thought?

She gave us her 5 tips for content planning:

• Meet face-to-face: Have plans with you, have the right people with you and bring a calendar!
• Align content with business aims: Look at the bigger picture; it’s not just about likes!
• Trust your editor.
• Plan ahead AND be spontaneous: A bit of an oxymoron but she ensured us that it is possible!
• Celebrate success and keep learning

 

How to Grow Social Media Communities

Luke Lewis from BuzzFeed provided us with our final talk. Luke spoke to us about “How to Grow Social Media Communities”.

I really liked Luke’s examples of content they had created, particularly the “planned spontaneity”. He told us about the Spotify playlists that they created as the Olympic opening ceremony was happening (which I loved!) and also creating different versions of content before events happen to align with the end results.

Luke’s 6 tips for Twitter:

• Be relentless
• Use photos
• If it worked once, tweet it again
• Tweet your greatest hits
• Use analytics
• Be geeky

Other tips:

• Exploit big events and react in real-time.
• Use planned spontaneity.
• Tap into people’s passions.

 
So there you go! It was a great day and both Lauren and I were extremely pleased to have had to opportunity to attend. We got some great tips and ideas for content marketing moving forward and can’t wait to start using them!

Whether it’s funny, serious, informative or important, if we’ve read and loved it it’ll be here. However as our team continues to grow we’ve decided to pick just one post that we’ve read in May (it doesn’t matter if it was published this month or a few years ago) and explain why you should read it too! Enjoy…

From Ian:

The Customer Journey to Online Purchase – a Google report

I think this is both a great visualisation of what “assisted” and “last interaction” conversions actually mean, and shows some real insight into the different contributions marketing channels and time make to conversions in different markets. Take a look at the difference between the total amount of revenue from purchases that take more than one day in Japan vs. France and Germany!

From Rob:

Google’s Impressive “Conversational Search” goes Live on Chrome by Danny Sullivan (https://twitter.com/dannysullivan)

One of the most exciting things I have read this month is Danny Sullivans piece on conversational search. If this takes off it could be big and could potentially change the way people optimise sites/pages. Google doesn’t want people to keep returning to the serps to continue the search, therefore if there is not a card, pages will need to rank for topics containing a whole array of information on a topic rather than just one query.

From Ben:

How Search Works on Google Glass by Matt McGee (https://twitter.com/mattmcgee)

I’m really excited by the idea of Google Glass and can’t wait to try it myself. Although, I imagine I’m not the only person who has spent time wondering how searching will work on the device. After all, it’s a Google product. This article shows how it’s working so far on the super limited explorer models.

From Gozde:

Breaking Out of the SEO Echo Chamber by Hannah Smith (https://twitter.com/hannah_bo_banna)

I think it’s awesome because its full of refreshing resources.

From Alison:

The Anatomy of a Perfect Web Page by Chris Gilchrist (https://twitter.com/hitreach)

A fantastically in-depth guide to perfecting your on page elements with lots of excellent recommendations for further reading.

From Amy E:

7 Deadly Mistakes to Avoid in Google Webmaster Tools Console by Vasilis Vryniotis (https://twitter.com/bbriniotis)

A great, informative read with some very helpful tips for Webmaster Tools users. Definitely worth a read!

From Amy F: 

Musings on the Bottom Half of the Internet by Hannah Smith (@hannah_bo_banna)

This great post explores why comment sections are looked down upon, why comments are actually pretty cool, and why the writers that are being commented on are no different, or better, than the commenters.

From Wayne:

Penguin 2.0: Breaking the News to Clients by Joel Klottke (https://twitter.com/cstechjoel)

Following the release of Penguin 2.0, Joel has put together a guide to breaking the news to your clients. There are a range of different excuses from ‘Blame the Intern’ to ‘Fire Up the Smoke and Mirrors’. *Please note, these email templates are for humour purposes only. Send to your clients at your peril!

From Lauren:

The Secret Recipe for Viral Content Marketing Success by Kelsey Libert (https://twitter.com/kelseylibert)

It’s a fairly lengthy piece that claims to offer the reader the secret recipe for creating viral content. It breaks the whole process down into manageable segments that are easily achievable; such as analysing the competition, using emotion, and understanding what it truly means to ‘go viral’.

From Katie:

Eight Silly Data Myths Marketing People Believe That Get Them Fired by Avinash Kaushik (https://twitter.com/avinash)

Smart advice on using Analytics the right way – and why you’re doomed to fail if you don’t.

If you’re looking for more awesome, then why not check out what the Boom team have been writing this month?

Katie (https://twitter.com/ksaxoninternet) has been busy writing about Six Uses of IFTTT For PPC Pros over at the PPC Associates blog. This blog will help you automate your online life, as well as  teaching you how to use Liam Neeson’s quote from ‘Taken’ to scare someone into returning your phone calls!

Meanwhile Wayne (https://twitter.com/wayneb77) wrote an epic post on Using BuzzStream’s BuzzBar with Link Prospector for the guys over at Search Engine Land. He talks you through BuzzStream’s latest new tool and how to use it effectively.

We also got a mention in Anthony Pensabene’s (https://twitter.com/content_muse) epic list of resources: Thank You, SEO Far. We’d highly recommend bookmarking this page, it’ll come in all sorts of useful!

Back in December the proverbial hit the fan for some of their customers when they announced that Google ranking and the SERP tracker, would no longer be included in their tool set. I have to admit that I was a little perplexed. Sure, the rankings were an important part of what Raven do, but that was it; just a part.

Raven has always provided a lot more than most other tools and at a fraction of the price.

Recently I got into a discussion with Jeremy at Raven about the recently released Site Auditor and how it was working out for us, and I promised to write about it. Whilst I was digging around, I soon realised that there are so many hidden gems within Raven that get so little coverage that it was probably worth talking about those instead.

Surely if people were digging deeper they would have seen that Raven was far more than a way to report rankings…

Site Auditor

The Site Auditor has only been live a few months but has already become a valuable go to for the Boom team. Although you are limited to 1000 pages at the moment it gives you a great snapshot of your site and its current health. It also allows you download issues into PDF format for reporting to clients (or potential clients) as well as csv to help you work through the on-site problems in a systematic fashion.

I managed to get a few quotes from Jon Henshaw about the Site Auditor:

Me: Some info on the background would be good. I know you guys have stuff on the back burner for a while. How long did it take to get it live? What are the logistics of running it for a big client base? Why the 1000 limit (it’s my only big gripe having e-commerce sites).

Site visibility is at the core of SEO and I’ve wanted to build our own site auditor for quite some time. In preparation to building it, we created a prototype and secretly tested it with several of our customers. That helped us refine the feature set to ensure a successful launch.

We plan on increasing the number of pages we crawl for each site. We started off with a 1k limit, because we wanted to ease into it and make sure we properly scale it and fix the edge cases first.

Me: Why should people use it over other audit tools? Not saying they shouldn’t…just asking! Any clues on what might happen next with it? I know what you guys are like!

Our focus was on making a site auditor that was simple enough for a novice to understand, but complex enough for a webmaster to use. I think Raven’s Site Auditor strikes that perfect balance and also includes the ability to create reports for clients and managers.

Since the launch, we’ve been actively updating the Site Auditor with new features and fixes. One of the features we’ll be launching soon is the ability to detect and report on Schema.org microdata. (note: since talking to Jon this has gone live – lazy Wayne)

Read more: http://raventools.com/blog/getting-started-with-ravens-site-auditor/

Quality Analyser

Raven Tools has a great section for analysing sites called Research Central. This is particularly useful whether you’re using it for audits or for competitor research.

A few months back Raven integrated one of their other tools, Custom Rank, into Research Central that allows you to set the scoring system for sites. Why aren’t more people talking about this?

By choosing the metrics that matter to you, you are then able to set the metrics and have a central system that allows your team to judge the quality of a site – be that for guest blogging, link resource page evaluation, website reviews or proposals.

The custom modules section lets you choose and then assign both the influence it will have of your quality score and how the scoring is segmented (you will find that you have different scoring for different verticals).

Read more: http://raventools.com/blog/did-you-know-create-custom-quality-scores-in-research-central/

Site Finder

Raven has a fantastic Link Manager section that allows you to monitor your built links and keep the sites in one Website Directory across all your sites/clients. The tool that is probably underused in this section is the Site Finder.

You simply enter the keyword you wishing to research and Raven goes off and finds the domains that link to the top 10 results (via Bing). Assuming all other things are equal you can imagine a link from some of the sites that link to the top 10 for chosen phrase will be quite valuable!

Wait for the results to come back in and you have a list of highly relevant sites that are potentially helping other sites to rank for your keyword:

Just be careful of authority bloat!

Read more:  http://raventools.com/blog/efficient-link-building/

Contact Finder

Finding contact details for the owner of a site can sometimes be quite labour intensive and Raven goes some way to addressing this with their nifty little Contact Finder.

Watch the magic happen:

Read more:  http://raventools.com/tools/site-finder/

Backlink Explorer

Whether you are checking a client’s backlink profile or that of a competitor you need to make sure they are healthy and (relatively) spam free.

Raven Backlink Explorer uses Majestic data (you shouldn’t just use OSE data) and allows you to chop it up within the tool – handy of you are looking for an overuse of anchor text or figuring out what tactics the competition are using.

It also has a handy filtering system to allow you quick access to the data that you need:

Read more: http://raventools.com/tools/backlink-explorer/

Raven Tools has always been more than a rank checker, it is a full internet marketing suite of tools. In today climate you need a more holistic strategy and the tool set to match it.

We’ve put together a reference guide of our favourite search operators which you can download from the link here.

Refining your search results with handy operators can help us perform a number of SEO tasks and save a little time while we’re at it.  We’ve put together a guide of some of our favourites and asked some of the industries top SEOs to share theirs!

Google Search Operators

Everyone loves Google, especially SEO professionals! As much as we curse their ever-changing algorithms the search engine provides us with lots of nifty tools to help us investigate site issues, build links or reach out to useful people in cyber space.

Search Operator	Description	Application	Example
site:	Focuses your search to a specific domain	Find out how many pages are indexed by Google	site:domain name
intitle: / allintitle:	Narrows the results down to results in the page title	Find pages using your keyword in the page title	intitle:keyword allintitle:keyword
inanchor: / allinanchor:	Focuses your search to results in the anchor text of links pointing back to a page	Find the competition who are actively using a keyword as part of their link building campaign	inanchor:keyword
inurl: / allinurl:	Reveals pages containing your keyword in the URL	Find the competition who have optimised their URLs for your keywords	inurl:keyword allinurl:keyword
intext: / allintext:	Results that have your keywords in the body copy	Find sites that are actively optimised for your keywords	intext:keyword
author:	Search for an author	Find articles written by a specific person. Get some background on the target of an outreach project	author:author’s name
cache:	View Google’s cache of your site	Find out if your latest updates have been cached by Google	cache:url
info:	Get more info on a webpage	Find out if you have DNS issues or duplicate content on your site as well as other links to useful info about your page	info:url
*	Wildcard search will insert any word into your query	This will bring up other things associated to your keyword, partial matches for phrases that may be useful	top * blogs

We are going to have a look at how careful use of search operators within Google will help us to perform a number of funky SEO tasks and save a little time whilst we are about it.

Diagnostic Tools

Finding out a little bit about a website’s performance is really handy and unsurprisingly a number of search operators are available for this task:

• Has Google been visiting your site? Find out by typing (site:url) into Google to see the list of all pages.
• Want to find out more? Type (info:url) and you can find Google’s cache of your site along with details of when it was last crawled.
• Are you worried about keyword cannibalisation? Type (site:url “keyword”) and Google will display a list of all your pages that are using the same keywords.
• Can the world read your blog? Type (site:url/blog) to see how many posts have been indexed by Google (you can substitute “blog” for any other part of your site you want to check)
• Does your site have canonical issues? Type (site:url –inurl:www) to see if there are any non-www URL’s in the index.

Link Building

Link building can be a time consuming task so anything that provides a helping hand will soon become another weapon in the SEO armoury. Advanced search operators are a fancy way of filtering search results to look for link building opportunities, below are some of my favourites:

Guest blogging is a great way of getting some links, a great way to start is by getting yourself an outreach list. These operators will help you find relevant sites that already publish guest posts: (keyword “guest post”), (keyword “guest blog”), (keyword “guest posting”), (keyword “guest blogging”), (keyword “submit post”), (keyword “write for us”), (keyword “submit an article”), (keyword “submit article”), (keyword “contribute”, (keyword “suggest”).

White papers are another great way to build links, once you have the content you can use search operators to help you in finding places for publication: (keyword “submit whitepaper”), (keyword “add whitepaper”), (keyword “post whitepaper”), (keyword “submit white paper”),

Combining a number of search operators into a monster query can really start to uncover some interesting results. This one’s specially designed to uncover guest posting opportunities, I can’t remember where I found it but would love to give the author credit (please let me know if it was you and we’ll give you a well-deserved link!):

(keyword 1 OR keyword 2 OR keyword3) (freelance OR guest OR contributor) (blogger OR writer OR author) (post OR article OR story) (intitle:”write for” OR intitle:”contribute to” OR intitle:guidelines OR intitle:submission OR intitle:submit OR intitle:submissions OR intitle:Wanted OR intitle:become OR intitle:Suggest) Phew!

Moosa Hemani

@mmhemani

SETalks

Search Operators is something I cannot live without as finding link opportunities is something I do for living…

Here are few simple search operators which have the power to help you get tons of links…

Inanchor:”restaurants in ohio” –site:domain.com

The reason why it’s good to target keywords in anchor text is because this way you will have the websites that are comfortable to link (within the website or external) with the keywords you are looking for so now what left is the process of outreaching to convince bloggers to get links.

Basketball inurl:”write for us”

This is another very simple yet advanced search operator which will help you to bring the domains in front which allow you to write for them. This saves lots of time as you don’t have to convince the blogger about why you should allow me to write on your blog but this will help you sort the bloggers who are ready to accept writings from 3rd parties.

These are 2 of many I use in my day to day life which helps me find some good links within minutes.

Other Handy SEO Applications

Here is a compilation of some of Boom’s favourite search operators and what to use them for:

Want to do some competitive analysis? Type (domainname.com – site:domainname.com and add the timeframe for your search here) and you can search for brand mentions for your competitor, you can adjust the timeframe for your query as necessary

Try some keyword research: (inanchor:keyword intitle:keyword) will help you discover who else is utilising your chosen keyword

Looking to find a thought leader to interview for a nice bit of link bait on a blog? This one will help you find the people in your niche who have interesting stuff to say (keyword “questions and answers with”).

Jason Acidre

@jasonacidre

Kaiser The Sage

I’ve actually got 4 favorite advanced search operators that I mostly use for link research, prospecting and acquisition:

inpostauthor:  I use this to track blogs/publications where active guest bloggers, especially competitors, distribute their content. (“inpostauthor:popular blogger”)

link:  this one’s definitely useful when used in Google’s Blog Search. This approach will allow you to easily identify and scrape all the blogs that have linked to your competitors’ site or any of its content. (“link:competitor.com”)

intext:  useful for finding unlinked brand mentions, getting easier link prospects/product reviews (since they have already mentioned the brand) and/or can be used for link reclamation. (“intext:brandname”)

related:  I use this in finding thematically relevant sites that already have strong search share (“related:topindustrysite.com”).

With these search operators, you can easily generate lists of highly qualified prospects. You can also use this link prospecting method with SEOquake or with the Mozbar plugin in Mozilla Firefox to export your custom search results to excel, populated with metrics.

Other Search Engines – Bing, Yahoo! and Duckduckgo.

Just like Google, the various other search engines around the web have their own search operators to help you narrow down your results.

While a lot of these search operators are shared with Google, some are unique to a particular search engine which makes them worth knowing about – especially since they can be really handy extra tools for finding the information you want that might not show up in Google.

Bing Search Operators

Bing has recently started gaining traction due to Microsoft incorporating it into many of their products and systems.

A few of its standard search operators are just the same as Google; you’ll still find the ever useful site: and exact match quotes in Bing.

You’ll also find, however, a whole range of other useful operators. Here are 5 really great examples, an explanation of each and how you might use them:

Rand Fishkin

@RandFish

SEOmoz

I love using the filetype:pdf and filetype:ppt to find great research, presentations, and content on a topic that may not have been translated into a better-read for of content (like a blog post, video, or infographic). You can also find a lot of great stats and data this way, which can make for excellent additions to whatever content you’re producing. Just be sure to cite the original source and you’re good to go!

Julie Joyce

@JulieJoyce

Link Fish Media

I really like the filetype command, so I’d use something like allintitle: “widgets” filetype:pdf to get content ideas, as lots of good old content exists on pdfs but not anywhere else. I’ve found some great stuff this way, and even if it generates no good content ideas, sometimes the sites are great link placements.

Yahoo! Search Operators

Yahoo!, like Bing, shares some of the same operators as Google. In fact, the vast majority of Yahoo!’s current search operators are ones you can find on the other two search engines – but Yahoo! Also have some useful keyword shortcuts.

These ‘shortcuts’ range from turning the search bar into a calculator or measurement converter, to jumping to a certain page on a site without seeing the SERPs beforehand.

For example, if you want to see a Wikipedia page on hats but you’re currently seeing the Yahoo! Search bar, simply typing ‘!wiki hats’ takes you directly to the appropriate page.

You can do the same for !ebay, !amazon and !flickr as well as Yahoo! Pages using !news or !video.

If you use Yahoo!, you could save quite a bit of time by learning a few of these shortcuts:

James Agate

@jamesagate

Sky Rocket Seo

Here are some of my favourites

+ “become a contributor”

This we find is a really good alternative query to “write for us” or “guest post” as you secure some different opportunities to competitors and more importantly you can often pick up higher value links as publications looking for “contributors” tend to be a higher calibre than those looking for “guest bloggers”.

and then we really like these:

yourcompetitorsite.com + “guest post” -yourcompetitorsite.com

yourcompetitorsite.com + “written by” -yourcompetitorsite.com

yourcompetitorsite.com + “contribution” -yourcompetitorsite.com

yourcompetitorsite.com + “from” -yourcompetitorsite.com

Again they are Google operators but basically you can scout out all sorts of competitor guest posts, which in the current climate makes for very interesting reading.

DuckDuckGo Search Operators

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that makes a really big deal about how it doesn’t track you when you’re searching online. This is much unlike Google, which uses your information for building up a profile on who you are and what you search for.

They have a whole number of search operators, which you might recognise from the previous two examples.

Again, they use the ever popular exact match quotes to include words and minus symbol to exclude others, as well as site: to focus on one particular domain.

They also use an operator similar to Bing’s Location:, called Region:.

But it doesn’t just end here. DuckDuckGo uses a feature similar to Yahoo!’s shortcuts, which they call !bangs. Again, it’s a way of searching another sites individual search engine from inside DuckDuckGo – but instead of the handful of sites offered by Yahoo, DuckDuckGo has thousands. The full list is far more than could be written out here, so check it out by clicking here.

Anthony Pensabene

@content_muse

AnthonyPensabene.com

I like using the * because you can search for words used together though separated by a few between.  For instance, use words like “love” and “hate” used in conjunction with services/products

Many people do web searches, but why not image searches, especially if you’re doing outreach.  Find pictures related to an author’s studies/personalities to perhaps find similar things in common with them. E.g. “Oh, you loved watching Thundercats as a kid too!”

Aren’t you tired of marketing humdrum?  Let’s find out what real people think. Do you have a service or product?  What are the benefits, as spoken by normal people.  Oh, your pillow helps me sleep better?  Gain a sense of your market.  Go to Google Groups and do a ‘insubject’ search.  For example, insubject:”trouble sleeping”

Social Search Operators

Twitter Search Operators

A ‘standard’ search on Twitter (i.e. just words, with no operators) will search for those words individually; i.e. the results will show Tweets and people that contain those words anywhere, in any order, of the text.

For example, if we search for    the results look something like this

: 

As with Google, we can use quote marks, in order to search Twitter for results those words in that exact order.

For example, if we do the same search with quote marks  the results look more like this:

If you’re looking to focus your results yet further there are lots of great operators to help:

Chris Dyson

@ChrisLDyson

TripleSEO

I have a number of Twitter Questions I follow e.g. “link building”  ? -filter:links

this shows me people asking Link building questions on Twitter & strips out links

allintitle:submit * contest

I use this one to find sites to submit contests/competitions to

Or just copy your competitors guest post footprint & scrape

BONUS

For shits & giggles & finding crappy SEO reports

filetype:xls pagerank URL email

Gisele Mendez

@GiseleNMendez

In Social We Trust

Here you have my top advanced search operators:

On Twitter:

[keyword OR keyword -keyword] to search for tweets that contain either one my keywords but exclude another one.
When do I use it? Great for finding and monitoring guest posting opportunities!
Examples:   “guest post” OR “guest blogger” -RT
“write for us” OR “guest bloggers” -RT

[keyword ? -filter:links] to look for tweets that include a keyword and a question mark, without linking to a URL (meaning it will most certainly be a question).

When do I use it? I manage some of our clients’ Twitter accounts and this formula allows me to find interesting questions I could answer.
Example: “idea for a date” OR “date ideas” ? -filter:links

On Google:
[site:] to restrict the search results to a specific domain.
When do I use it? There are many uses to this operator, from analysing your competitor’s site architecture and content, to finding internal pages and blog posts including a specific keyword.
Example: SEO tips site:boom-online.co.uk > What SEO tips have these guys given already? Is there anything they’re missing that I could write about as a guest blogger?

[inpostauthor:] to search for a specific author.
When do I use it? After reading this article by Anthony Pensabene, I’ve started playing around with this operator and it turned out to be a great tool for learning more about bloggers/writers, what they normally write about, which topics would be of their interest, etc. before reaching out to them.
Example: “guest post” inpostauthor:Leo Widrich  > What does Leo Widrich normally writes about when he is guest blogging?

Youtube Search Operators

YouTube videos are a great way to jazz up a blog post and provide interesting content to share on social media.  Here are a few search operators to help you find what you need amongst all the kitten videos!

To search your own YouTube videos, use these operators.

Chris Gilchrist

@hitreach

Hitreach

I thought I’d stick to Twitter for my selection as I use it a lot.

I have a column set up to catch mentions of my name or brand that don’t directly reference me in the Tweet. I include our short URL in there too so if I’ve shared a post and someone retweets it but strips my Twitter handle out I still catch it being shared in real time to thank them and interact.

So: Hitr.ch OR hitreach OR “Hit Reach” OR “Chris Gilchrist”
Another favourite is using Twitter’s advanced search to keep an eye out for work opportunities.

Let’s say I want to look out for people who want the recommendation of a good wordpress developer.

We don’t want to get involved if there’s no money (-free) or if it’s to customise a plugin (-plugin). It would help if they were in London (near:London) and within 10 miles of the centre so we don’t have to travel far to meet them(within:10mi).

So: Recommend good WordPress -plugin -free near:London within:10mi

Download our search operators reference guide

We’ve put together a handy .pdf reference guide of our favourite search operators that you can download here: Search Operators Guide – Boom Online.

Have we missed any of your favourites?  Tell in the comments section below!

Participants in the study were shown to literally ‘spend till it hurts’, splashing the cash until the insula activation became too high. As marketers it’s our challenge to overcome this pain of purchasing in order to increase sales and there’s plenty of neuropsychology research to help us.

Bundling

If purchasing causes pain then it stands to reason to try and avoid having unnecessary purchase points. Bundling items together gets the pain over and done with in one fell swoop like ripping off a plaster. Car salesmen use this technique all the time with optional extras all bundled up into one package. Customers don’t then judge the relative merits of the seat warmers and parking sensors against their individual prices but instead see one set price which is much less painful to consider.

Try grouping relevant items together to increase sales. For example if you sell digital cameras why not set up a package with a memory card and a case, perhaps even a book on photography?

If you sell a consumable product could this be scaled into a month’s or year’s supply?

Where you must have purchase points then make every effort to streamline the process to make it as quick and painless as possible.

Reframe values

Following on from the idea of bundling, it’s important to ensure that the bundled price is as well framed as possible. Whilst you could bundle a years’ worth of a service into a one off fee of £500, you’d be much more successful at selling it if you portrayed it as just £42 a month or even £1.40 a day. That way the customer has the benefit of just paying once but the price seems all the more reasonable. It’s much easier to rationalise a purchase at these smaller bite sized prices, but much less painful to pay this one off fee.

All you can eat

George Loewenstein, one of the researchers in the fMRI study, found that customers will even pay more for pain avoidance. An all you can eat package not only prevents individual price points but also assures customers that the pain of paying is over. Whether it’s an unlimited card at a local cinema or an all-inclusive holiday, the cost is incurred is more than the sum total of the individual purchases but paying a one off fee is a pain worth enduring for the customer. Do you offer a service where you could switch to an all you can eat buying model?

Buy now, pay later

Research has shown that for high value items, the pain of purchase can be reduced by delaying the payment. This finding even occurs with very affluent customers for whom money concerns are less pressing.  Offering a free trial or delayed payment option will ease the pain for high ticket price goods.

The less attractive decoy

In his book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely looked at customers’ behaviour in response to different pricing options for a subscription to The Economist.

Predicted revenue – $8,012.

Predicted revenue – $11,444.

Not a single person chose the print only subscription in offer B, yet it’s mere inclusion in the choices caused the Internet and Print subscription to go from attracting 32% of respondents to 84%. This print only subscription framed the ‘internet and print’ price as all the more reasonable by comparison.

Ariely goes on to describe a decision process between two similar holiday packages both including breakfasts, one to Paris and one to Rome. A tough call! By including a third option of a trip to Rome without breakfast, the Rome plus breakfast trip is made more attractive and wins the fight.

FMRI research further backs up these findings by showing that the process of choosing between 2 equal items is actually made a more pleasurable experience by the inclusion of a third less attractive option.

The decoy compromise

Decoys can be also be used to better frame your prices. Roger Dooley in his book Brainfluence describes a Stanford University study where participants chose between cameras. One group had two cameras to choose from, one with more features and a higher price tag than the other. The second group had these two cameras to choose from and a third camera that was even more expensive and had even more features. In the first group the purchases were split roughly 50/50 between cameras 1 and 2. The addition of a third camera for the second group however led to a huge increase in the number of participants choosing camera 2.

In a real word example Dooley describes a US retailer who offered a bread maker at a premium price of $275. They later added an even more high-end bread maker to the range at a 50% premium. Whilst they barely sold any of this super high priced item, they sold twice as many of the $275 bread makers than when this model was sold alone. This higher price item framed the $275 model as a compromise, or middle of the road choice, rather than the most expensive option and thereby is a more reasonable purchase.

The technique is used to great success in the restaurant industry where premium bottles of wine and expensive lobster dishes make high priced but cheaper alternatives seem more attractive.

Price anchors

Customers generally have an idea of how much they expect an item to cost, these values are known as price anchors. Pricing an item at vastly above the customers price anchor makes it seem unfair and triggers the dreaded pain response.

There are some items that have a relatively fuzzy anchor price when they are new to the market, especially in the technology world. It’s therefore important to avoid setting low introductory prices as it places the consumers anchor at this reduced value.  Any subsequent price increases then seem painfully unreasonable. By launching a product at a higher price instead, you set the anchor at this premium price tag. You can then reduce the price to the one you wanted anyway and reap the rewards of customers feeling like they got a great deal!

Luxury

Discounts can cause other problems too. Research has shown that the way we experience a product can be affected by the price associated with it. Researchers from Stanford and Caltech Universities found that participants brains actually experienced more pleasure when they thought the wine they were drinking cost $45 rather than $5, when in fact it was the same drink!

In my previous article on the psychology of persuasion I talked about Cialdini’s great book Influence. In it he discusses an example of a shop assistant who through mis-communication doubled the price of a low selling range of turquoise jewellery instead of discounting it. This actually caused the range to sell significantly better than before, as the high cost implied a quality and popularity of the product that hadn’t been present previously.

It’s a fine line to walk to price your product below the pain point without discounting it so far that the experience and perception of the product is diminished.

Precise prices

We all know that offering an item at £39.99 rather than £40 will lead to better sales but one of the reasonings behind it may surprise you. Janiszewski and Uy proposed the idea of a mental measuring stick against which we judge prices. Round numbers imply a lack of precision in the pricing which suggests it could be inaccurate or unfair. A £40 item may be judged as overpriced against a mental measuring stick cost of £38 or £39. By setting a more precise price of £39.99 our mental measuring stick sees smaller increments and compares the price to say £39.75 or £39.50.

Another study looking at house prices found that houses marked up at odd but precise prices like £494,500 sold for much closer to this asking figure than houses on the market at rounded figures like £500,000.

Choice fatigue

Researchers at Stanford looked into the concept of choice fatigue whereby individuals presented with too many choices will take an easy way out to escape the process.

In the real world Walmart found that after dropping two choices of peanut butter, sales in the category as a whole rose sharply. In e-commerce, choice fatigue can mean a customer leaving your website if they have too many items to choose from. Implementing a filtering system that allows customers to narrow down their search by price/colour/size etc can make the process easier and more pleasurable.

If you are a niche seller, for example a wine retailer with lots of similar choices, then help take the pain out of choosing by offering expert guidance. This can take the form of a best sellers section, product reviews or even live site chat.

By better understanding the processes customers go through when deciding to make a purchase, we can design our websites to make it as painless as possible!

If you’re struggling to come up with an epic new content idea then the best way to get the creative juices flowing is to look at something awesome. Here are three really great ideas to get you started…

‘What Are Chicken McNuggets Made Of?’

Questions like this usually send even the largest of companies running for cover, keen to put as much distance between themselves and the line of fire as possible. Not only does this make it look like they have something to hide, but it also provides the perfect springboard for rumours to start – they didn’t answer your question? They must be secretly pumping something really bad into their food!

Step forwards McDonald’s Canada.

This fast food behemoth broke the code of silence when they launched their ‘Our Food. Your Questions’ site back in June 2012. The site allows participants to ask questions about McDonald’s food, and actually get a response! In order to join in, you must sign in with either Facebook or twitter, providing social visibility for the company.

Since its inception, over 16,000 questions have been asked and a whopping 10,000 have been answered! The McDonald’s team have answered questions ranging from:

To those who are looking to steal McDonald’s secret to making their fries taste great (If you were wondering, the answer’s right here), calorie counts in milkshakes and what kind of pickle they use in their burgers.

There’s no skirting around difficult or awkward questions. They’re all answered honestly and openly, allowing them to dispel some of the less pleasant rumours surrounding the quality of their food, additives, and the treatment of their animals.

They’ve even taken their online content, offline; wallpapering sidewalks with real questions from their online forum.

What Can We Learn From This?

If Content is King, then trust is an Ace.

You could have the most amazing product or service in the world, but if people don’t trust your brand, they’re never going to buy into you. McDonald’s Canada has torn down the walls of silence and secrecy that’s usually associated with fast food and what goes into it.

By opening themselves up like this they’re able to convince people that their food is of the quality that they claim it is, and convert those who previously refused to enter the Golden Arches under the impression that anything they consume would be harmful.

You’ve heard the phrase ‘go big or go home’ and McDonald’s Canada have certainly gone big. By promoting information rather than their brand they’ve built trust with their consumer base, as well as reaching out to potential clients. You can’t place a price on this kind of content – and it won’t be long before other companies catch on.

Who Runs The World?

According to Beyoncé, and Dove, it’s girls – or more specifically, women.

Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ Campaign has been running for well over seven years, helping to empower women, make them feel comfortable in their own skin and let them know that it’s all about real curves!

It seems to be a fact that women are their own harshest critics and Dove’s most recent Real Beauty Campaign, Sketches, highlights this.

In this web-only advertisement several women are asked to sit down and describe what they look like to trained forensic artist Gil Zamora. When they leave, someone they chatted to earlier on is asked to enter the room and describe the person they have just seen. The result? One less than flattering sketch and one much more attractive sketch, plus a couple of tearful ladies realising that they are more beautiful than they thought.

Launched in April, this advert quickly went viral, and it even has a spoof spin off (worth a watch if you have four minutes spare). Whether you’re a fan of Dove products or not, there’s definitely something to be learned from these soapy, empowering giants…

What Can We Learn From This?

Emotion plays a huge part in Content Marketing – and positive emotions are much more powerful than negative. Whilst the response to this ad has been mixed (some calling it the most touching and empowering Dove ad to date, whilst others slating it for using psychology to pedal their products) for the most part the reaction to this ad is positive. It’s this feel good factor that encouraged people to share it 665,000 times on Facebook. Never underestimate the power of feel good!

In order for your content to go viral, you need to be striking some emotional chords. If you’re stuck for ideas, tell some stories to a friend who doesn’t know much about your business, and gauge their reactions as you tell them about your favourite customer, a funny incident and so on. It may not be the most scientific way of working out what stories you can use to create awesome content, but it’s a good starting point.

You Vs. John Paulson

Forex trading company MahiFX put an interactive infographic on their home page before launching the site to get some pre-launch buzz going. Their inspiration came from John Paulson, the billionaire hedge fund manager who beat the hedge-fund record in 2010 by making nearly $5 billion in one year. Hit their homepage and you’re faced with this:

It’s visual, it’s interactive, it’s personalised – it’s going to go viral!

Enter your annual salary in dollars, hit go and you’re transported to a world where you discover that John Paulson earns your annual income in 3.2 minutes and that if he dropped 200k in the street, it’s just the same as you buying a pack of gum. Ouch.

This particular piece of content hits three very specific sore points that we just can’t help but scratch:

1. The money obsession – we can’t help it, we’re a nation that just loves money
2. We experience less job satisfaction if we know others earn more than us – enter MahiFX and their billionaire-making ways!
3. Money can, apparently, buy you happiness
4. We want to do what everyone else is doing! If John Paulson is earning $4.9 billion a year through trading – we want in!

As a direct result of their awesome content, MahiFX were able to reap the rewards of hundreds of links, all because they hit a few of our emotional buttons. Score!

What Can We Learn From This?

If you want to create awesome content that’s easy to market, make sure it’s something that you would want to share with your friends, family and colleagues. If it’s not, it’s likely that your customers and clients won’t want to either!

Content that goes viral typically triggers some of the following emotions: amusement, interest, and surprise. MahiFX does just this. Not only do they have the right emotional triggers, they also engage the participant by making them interact with their content, yet another win. It’s like they read this recipe for cooking up viral content from SEOMoz before it was even written!

Final Thoughts

These are just three examples of some amazing content and content marketing. There are millions of companies in the world, all creating content and trying to get it in front of our eyes. I’m not saying to try and copy these ideas, but learn from what’s been done before you. What’s been successful? What’s been a complete flop? Observe what’s been done before and adapt that to your business.

When creating content, keep in mind the following:

Build trust

Get emotional

Get everyone involved

Don’t be afraid to fail

What other awesome examples of content marketing have you seen and what do you think you could learn from them? We’d love to know so share your thoughts below! You never know, your idea could be the next big thing to go viral…