These slides are from the Danish Media Seminar in Copenhagen. I examined strategic and commercial opportunities in the market and gave two different presentations described below. How Publishers Use Social Media to Drive Revenue Many businesses have embraced content marketing, but what about the business of content? In a world where more and more content is free, how can sellers of content survive or even thrive? Publishers who offer top-quality content hold the key to success in social media and search, through traditional advertising as well as newer models, such as content syndication and custom content. How Search and Social Need Each Other If you've been focusing on search marketing, congratulations. If you've been making efforts in social media marketing, nice job. But if you haven't been working on both together, you're missing out. You can no longer succeed in search without social media, and your social media marketing will fall short unless you keep search in mind. Find out what you need to do to optimize search and social together and find out how Facebook and other social properties use search to decide what content users see.

1. Mike Moran
How Publishers Use Social Media to Drive
Revenue
Danske Medier
November 2, 2012
www.mikemoran.com © 2012 Mike Moran

2. Mike Moran
Traditional revenue sources are drying up
 Newspapers
have lost
classifieds to
Craig’s List
 Trade
magazines
compete with
free content
from their
former
advertisers
2 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

3. Mike Moran
Online consumers tend not to pay for any model
 Subscription or paywall: Readers subscribe to
content for a monthly or annual fee
 Freemium: Some content free with premium
content by subscription
 Metered: Content is free up to a point, such as
number of articles viewed
 Transactional: Individual downloads of content,
such as songs or reports
3 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

4. Mike Moran
But wait! Some models work, right?
 It’s not that they never work, but they rarely do
 Even successes aren’t as successful as people
think
 The Wall Street Journal online subscribers are
worth just ¼ of offline subscribers
4 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

5. Mike Moran
If you have deep, marketable content…
 …turn it into applications and experiences
 Understand what your customers’ problems are
5 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

6. Mike Moran
The freemium model works for deep content
 Platts gives away low-value information to attract
attention in search and social media
 They charge for
the deep content
that industry
analysts need to
do their jobs
6 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

7. Mike Moran
Aggregation is also under attack
 Is your data proprietary?
 If not, eventually you are in
trouble
7 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

8. Mike Moran
Crowdsourcing also attacks some sectors
 Some publishers don’t have deep enough content
 It’s hard to protect things people will create for free
8 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

9. Mike Moran
Many publishers don’t have unique content
 If you are running wire stories, it is now a
commodity
 You had a distribution business, not a content
business
 The first lesson: You
must be in the content
business because
distribution is free
9 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

10. Mike Moran
Even more important, advertising is under attack
 Advertising does still work
 But display ads are among the worst way to spend
online ad budgets
 And no one knows
how to monetize
mobile ads
10 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

11. Mike Moran
Even Google’s growth is under attack
11 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

12. Mike Moran
Advertising doesn’t work as well online
 But instead of lamenting the effect on you..
 ...think about what this means to advertisers
 What are they doing instead?
 Marketers have become
publishers
12 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

13. Mike Moran
Kraft’s iFood Assistant helps you make dinner
 Search for recipe ideas
 Not just at home, but in
the store while you are
shopping
 Kraft products highlighted
13
© 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

14. Mike Moran
Scott’s personalized lawn care advice
 Customer discloses zip
code and grass type
 Scotts provides tips for
lawn care, including the
right products to use
based on actual weather
conditions
14
© 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

15. Mike Moran
Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Center
15 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

16. Mike Moran
Pharmaceutical companies explain diseases
16 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

17. Mike Moran
Publishers must solve their clients’ problems
 The old problem: How can I advertise to
customers?
 The new problem: How can I use content for
marketing?
17 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

18. Mike Moran
The new buzzword: Content Marketing
 Provide quality
content
 Sell lots of stuff
 It sounds simple,
but it offers
marketers a new
set of problems
18 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

19. Mike Moran
Two ways that content marketing works
 Search
 Social
19 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

20. Mike Moran
What is high quality content?
 How to solve a problem Marketers must
think like
 A new use for your product publishers
 A case study for a client
 It’s not about advertisers—it
is about their customers
20 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

21. Mike Moran
Marketers have never had to provide content
 Public relations people did some of this work
 Marketers never did any of it
 It’s hard!
21 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

22. Mike Moran
It’s even worse for B2B marketers
 They never had any marketing!
 They had products and services, and they had
sales, but no marketing at all
22 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

23. Mike Moran
Where do marketers get all this content?
 Many are not doing it at all
 Many are trying to do it themselves
 Do you smell an opportunity?
23 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

24. Mike Moran
Opportunity 1: Syndication
 License your content to marketers and use your
name for its credibility
 The Associated Press syndicates content to
newspapers but also many online sources
24 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

25. Mike Moran
Opportunity 2: Custom content
 Publishers create content for marketers without
attribution
 A tech magazine publisher now writes hundreds of
white papers each month for high-tech companies
25 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

26. Mike Moran
Why would marketers want to work with you?
 You have reach to audiences offline and in social
 You might be underestimating what you know:
 Knowing what readers are interested in
 Recruiting experts who know the subjects
 Executing editorial calendars
 Controlling quality—especially plagiarism
 Licensing content, including permissions
26 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

27. Mike Moran
What weaknesses must you shore up?
 You aren’t experts in marketing strategy
 You might want to ally with agencies that have
similar problems
 They know how to do marketing
 But they have been dependent on advertising
 They do not know how to do content
27 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

28. Mike Moran
Thank you!
www.converseon.com
28 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

29. Mike Moran
Search and Social Need Each Other
Danske Medier
November 2, 2012
www.mikemoran.com © 2012 Mike Moran

30. Mike Moran
The new buzzword: Content Marketing
 Provide quality
content
 Sell lots of stuff
 But how do you
do it?
30 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

31. Mike Moran
Content marketing uses the buying cycle
 Answer “research
Search questions” with
informational
content
Learn
Use
 Respond to
product queries
Shop
with comparisons
Get
Buy  Provide detailed
model and product
pages for buyers
31 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

32. Mike Moran
Search keywords tip off the step in the cycle
You need bite-sized
Search chunks of content
Learn
• Learn baldness remedy
Use
• Shop rogaine
Shop • Buy rogaine coupons
Get • Get rogaine shipping
Buy
• Use rogaine side effects
32 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

33. Mike Moran
How do folks find your brilliant content marketing?
 When you launch your content, it’s all social:
 Blog about it
 Tweet it
 Share it everywhere you can
 That lasts about three days—a week if you are
lucky
 After that, virtually all of your traffic comes from
search
33 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

34. Mike Moran
Search and social must work together
 Search makes social better
 If no one sees your social media, it doesn’t matter
 Most blogs and videos are seen only because of search
 Social makes search better
 More search results
 Better search rankings
34 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

35. Mike Moran
What is high quality content?
 How to solve a problem Marketers must
think like
 A new use for your product publishers
 A case study for a client
 It’s not about advertisers—it
is about their customers
But how do Facebook and Google
know it is quality content?
35 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

36. Mike Moran
Do you want to be in Facebook’s newsfeed?
36 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

37. Mike Moran
Facebook uses a content algorithm for newsfeeds
 The EdgeRank algorithm decides what shows up in
news feeds based on:
 Connection: tighter connections are better
 Importance: more important updates are better
 Time: newer updates are better
 Brands have complained that it’s getting
harder to get into fans’ newsfeeds
37 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

38. Mike Moran
Facebook’s algorithm is a ranking algorithm
 Just as with search, there are many more updates
than can be displayed
 Estimates are that there are 500 possibilities for
every item displayed
 Importance (“weight”) keeps changing, but
engaging content seems to be the new key
 Do ads help? Maybe
38 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

39. Mike Moran
The search ranking algorithm decides who’s first
 Social does
not affect
paid search
results
 It helps
decide the
#1 organic
result
 Some will
do anything
89% of clicks on page 1
39 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

40. Mike Moran
Black Hat SEO experts fool everybody
 They fool Google
 They fool searchers
 They are extremely smart
and hardworking
 If it works for you,
good luck
40 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

41. Mike Moran
Some people reverse engineer the algorithm
 Google wants the keywords on the page
 Google wants the keywords in the title
 Google wants links to the site
What Google really wants
is high quality search results
for the searchers
41 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

42. Mike Moran
How does Google decide what quality is?
 Quality links
 Social activity
 Human ratings
42 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

43. Mike Moran
Why do search engines care about links?
 They are votes for
quality
 They mimic citations in
scientific research
papers
 The best papers have
the most citations
Velychko/shutterstock.com
43 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

44. Mike Moran
How do search engines value links?
 The most links
PageRank is
 From the best sites
Google’s name for
its page factor
 With the right anchor text ranking
44 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

45. Mike Moran
Social activity is now affecting search rankings
 Bing has a deal with Facebook to rank results
based on what your friends like
 Google downgrades sites with bad reviews
 Social media activity is becoming, like links, a
marker for quality content
 If you aren’t doing social for its own intrinsic value,
you need to think about its impact on organic
search
45 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

46. Mike Moran
If social activity doesn’t match link analysis…
 …it seems more suspicious to Google as spam
 It’s difficult for spammers to simulate both
46 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

47. Mike Moran
Google Plus and other social activity counts
Use social cues as
markers of quality.
47 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

48. Mike Moran
And some content has nothing better
 The views
are the
best
indicator of
video
quality
 Links to
videos are
not as
strong
48 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

49. Mike Moran
How do search marketers cope?
 You must think
beyond text
 But new media
still needs text:
Good titles and
good
descriptions
 And it attracts
links
49 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

50. Mike Moran
Optimize your social media for search
Get Pages  Ping your blog posts, open up
Indexed
message boards
Choose  Use keyword tools (such as
Keywords Google’s) so you use the best words
 Use those keywords in your titles
Optimize and throughout your content, but
Content
write naturally
Attract  Publicize your content so others will
Links share and link
50 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

51. Mike Moran
How else does Google know quality from spam?
Human raters doublecheck page
quality.
51 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

52. Mike Moran
Google added a new factor to the ranking algorithm
 Human beings rate a small subset of search results:
 Nice design?
 Speedy response?
 Quality content?
 Would you return?
 Sites that people like get
bumped higher in ranking
 The sites they don’t like
are shoved down
52 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

53. Mike Moran
Machine learning scales the human ratings
 Even Google can’t afford human ratings for every
page for every search
 So, it looks for patterns—common features
 If your site looks like the
low-rated sites, your site
gets ranked lower
53 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

54. Mike Moran
What does it mean to “look like” low quality?
 Machine learning detects patterns in what pages
look like based on “features”
 What could the features be?
 The length of the title tag
 The ratio of words to pictures
 The commonality of runs of words
54 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

55. Mike Moran
It’s not just about spamming
 Most of you don’t practice real You
black hat SEO
 But you don’t win by examining
the terms of service like a legal
document
 You see what works for
all three parties
Google Searchers
55 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

56. Mike Moran
That wasn’t just bad luck
 Tactics that help You
everyone get
rewarded
 Tactics that help only
you don’t
 Maybe you should
stick to what will work
long-term Google Searchers
56 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

57. Mike Moran
But wait! Does this sound familiar?
 Facebook wants high You
quality content in your
newsfeed
 Content that people like
will appear in more
newsfeeds
 Engagement shows
quality Facebook Users
57 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

58. Mike Moran
Don’t be a good scout. Be good at business.
 You’re not trying out for You
sainthood
 Do it because it works
 It’s less risky, easier to do,
and has fewer ups and downs
 Focus on a quality content,
and success will follow Google Searchers
Facebook
58 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike

59. Mike Moran
Thank you!
www.converseon.com
59 © 2012 Mike Moran
© 2008 Mike