Single Serve Content for Mobile Consumers

Single Serving Content for Mobile Audiences

We have previously discussed the importance of planning both the construction and deconstruction of your content.

The idea is that creating great content takes time, so while you are doing that put in a little extra effort to also plan which pieces of it will be shared on, let’s say, Instagram.

Content often brings to mind a blog post or an article, but as content consumption with mobile devices becomes the norm, you will need to redesign your content strategy to adapt.

The good news is that if your business is not yet creating much content, you may find these newer methods easier to sustain than traditional ones. Read further to learn why they work so well.

Create Bite-Sized Content Snacks

I recently co-authored a yet to be published article with my colleague Jay Baer. One of his suggestions for that audience was: Give your expertise away one bite at a time. This whets the appetite for what follows, which ultimately are the products and services your company offers.

Content marketing doesn’t make sense to some folks, but I think this snack metaphor nicely captures the essence of how it works.

Jay gives away content snacks with his daily video podcast entitled Jay Today. Top podcaster Pat Flynn used to answer audience questions on his weekly Smart Passive Income show. He accumulated so many that he now answers them every day at his new podcast, Ask Pat.

I’m planning a similar one myself, so if you have a question, leave a comment or send a private message and I’ll add it to the list.

Expand Your Audience and Boost SEO

There are plenty of people in your communities that will not always tune in to the your primary content marketing channel, which most likely is some form of a digital magazine (a blog). So, the choice is missed opportunities, or serving the bite-sized snacks some folks especially desire.

Do you still watch the evening news on television? Me neither. While they still attract an audience, many of us prefer to get our news in quick nuggets on our smartphones. Your customers are no different.

Can you come up with 365 tips or questions to answer for your community over the course of a year? All you need is a smartphone and 30 minutes a day to pull this off like my friend Ryan did.

You will learn in that article that Ryan realized significant SEO benefits from his micro-content strategy. When you consider the minimal time commitment, that you are serving a segment of your audience better, and the impact on your SEO, this is a no-brainer.

In addition to all of that, the increased connectivity with your audience will build greater familiarity and trust, which of course is vital for consummating new deals.

To get your single-serving content creation process going, all you have to do is choose a format and create templates to make everything repeatable. Then, it’s a simple matter of setting aside one morning or afternoon every week to knock out 7 pieces of content to serve up daily.

You can do it. Just take it one bite at a time.

About the Author:  Jeff Korhan, MBA, is the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business and host of This Old New Business podcast.

He helps mainstream businesses adapt their traditional growth practices to a digital world. Connect with Jeff on LinkedInTwitterFacebook, and Google+

Photo Credit

Google+ is Content Marketing on Fire

Google+ is Content Marketing Fire www.jeffkorhan.com

Sustainable communities are often described as ecosystems in which everyone gets what they want.

This explains why Google+ is steadily gaining momentum for attracting the attention of a wider audience than even Facebook, and quite possibly one that will prove to be more powerful for content marketers

Over the past couple of years we’ve watched as the Google+ community has evolved from predominantly technophiles, to an increasingly mainstream audience that includes regular small business owners like you and me.

In a worldwide web that is driven by content, there are three big reasons why ignoring Google+ any longer is to risk online irrelevance.

#1 – Search Drives the Web

It goes without saying that Google+ should merit your attention simply because Google itself controls approximately 67% of search here in North America; and Google+ is clearly the favorite son of the search giant.

A significant reason for paying particular attention to Google+ is that content mentions within Google+ seem to merit search rankings that are even higher than the original source.

While this is an observation that many of us have noticed in recent months, it turns out there is data to support it. According to Moz.com,  the number of plus ones on Google+ rate second only to the overall page authority for determining the search ranking of a site. Is this surprising?  It shouldn’t be.

When you consider that Google’s mission is to deliver the most relevant search results as quickly as possible, it’s logical that those infused with social context will be more relevant than static content.

#2 – Google+ is An Identity Service

It has been evident for some time that Google+ would prove to be an identity service. The first clue  was in 2011 when Google Profiles instantly became Google+ About pages for personal accounts. This was handwriting on the wall for things to come.

Then Google Places became Google+ Local. And most recently, YouTube videos and comments are by default now automatically published to our Google+ profiles.

Are you noticing a trend here?

It is clear that Google+ is the service that will integrate content from all of the Google properties, and by design, as much of everything else as possible.

What’s fascinating is that all of this is being done very quietly, and that may be because the tech oriented Google+ community tends to embrace change. Unlike the Facebook community, the general thinking seems to be: “let’s see what we can do with this.”

The bottom line is unlike Facebook, the Google+ community trusts Google+. This all dates back to the beginning when Googlers (Google employees) were active on the platform for the specific purpose of learning how to improve the Google+ learning experience.

This collaborative approach is one that you may wish to consider for your business in 2014. It’s certainly part of my strategy.

#3 – Social Context is Authority

One of the recent search benefits that enhances the Google+ social experience are the automatic hashtags. Some people are using hashtags and others are not. Therefore, Google+ is taking the liberty of appending your content with a hashtag to give that content some searchable context.

Make it your business to pay attention to which hashtags Google+ decides are relevant – and why. This will not only help you to better choose hashtags for Google+, but also for other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

It seems logical that there are topic areas that Google would like to drive more traffic to. This is the win-win. If several hashtags seem appropriate for your content, why not use the one Google+ chooses to establish your authority by having your content rank more highly?

Additionally, if you have not yet activated Google Authorship you will want to make that a priority to claim authorship of your original content. Here’s why.

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified results). The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”  – Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt

It stands to reason that relevant hashtags attached to your Google+shared content will further define your authority as a subject matter expert in those specific areas.

SEO used to be about links and keywords. Now Google+ is layering in Authorship, shares, +1’s, and relevant hashtags to provide additional social context to that content marketing equation.

I couldn’t be more excited about Google+. How about you? 

Update: At least for now, Google has officially killed Authorship. Many of us are scratching our heads as to why. More updates coming!

All the best for an outstanding New Year!

About the Author:  Jeff Korhan, MBA, is the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business and host of This Old New Business podcast.

He helps mainstream businesses adapt their traditional growth practices to a digital world. Connect with Jeff on LinkedInTwitterFacebook, and Google+

Photo Credit

How to Write Web Copy That Gets a Response

There is business writing and there is writing for the web. Writing for the web is an intentional process for eliciting a response, and often a series of responses. This is why it is sometimes referred to as direct response copywriting. Your web copy should be designed to attract attention, develop a relationship with an […]

Read the full article