For most people, content means words - blog posts, new pages, ebooks, or product descriptions. Content is so much more than words and at Pubcon Austin, I looked at how marketers can make visuals and video a part of their content marketing strategy.
2. ABOUT CASIE GILLETTE
• First Things First: Sounds like K-C
• What I Do: Sr. Director, Digital Marketing at
KoMarketing, a B2B Digital Marketing agency in
Boston, MA.
• I’m Old: In the online marketing industry for over
12 years, working on both the agency side and in-
house.
• Things I Like: SEO, Dogs, Pizza, Netflix &
Smiling…it’s my favorite.
• Find Me: Connect with me on Twitter @casieg.
@CASIEG
#PUBCON
I talk a lot about content but I’m excited about this session because it looks at content in a different way. Content isn’t just words.
When we think about content, the goal is to give people answers, it’s to help them, or to make someone feel something. And let’s be real, images can do it so much better than just words alone.
I mean, this picture is amazing! How happy does it make you? Pictures can be so much better than words.
That’s important for a lot reasons – one being that we as humans are lazy. 55% of people will read a blog post for 15 seconds or less. Yikes!
On top of that, people who do read don’t remember it while 80% of people remember what they see.
As a marketer, where the rule of 7 is a big deal, getting someone to remember your brand is a big deal. If we can show them something they remember…we are one step ahead.
Now…it wouldn’t be Pubcon if we didn’t talk about Google. Because per usual, changes are happening.
Google testing AMP stories / similar to IG or Snap. @andreacruz92
Google changing images – which to me, is awesome. It actually gives publishers some power back. If anyone in search a while, you’ll remember when they changed images, essentially taking away the majority of traffic to our sites.
As for video, Stat reported a jump in November around video carousel images, which I have definitely seen more of. Which makes sense given 75% of people watch videos on mobile.
And that’s just Google – We have all of these platforms where having video and images are that much more important.
So, after all that, the question becomes, we obviously need visual content, but WHAT type of content do we need and how do we build it? Now, I am going to touch on a few ways to determine what content you need, how to use assets you already have and some tools to use…Matt and Andrea are going to show you come very cool things.
In any content related presentation I do, I start with the question of “what is your goal?”—Nothing infuriates me more than when a client tells me they want content. Ok, for what?
Don’t create content for the sake of creating content.
What are these goals? Besides being awesome – which should be your #1 goal…
Consider factors like search, brand visibility, social, etc. Great, Step 1 completed. Once we have that, we can figure out what we need.
So, I like to go back, and break it down by our goals. Looking at the what, how and why.
I start with my data to see what is already working on my site. What topic are driving engagement, what topics are driving revenue?
Look at your analytics data – if your goal is organic visibility, what topics are resonating?
If your goal is social visibility, what content on your site is performing the best?
What types of topics are driving links?
What types of videos are generating the most engagement? Not doing video yet? Take a look at your competitors. This is what will get you started.
We can have to look at other outside factors. Throw your site into SEMRush and filter by which results have images, videos, carousels, etc. See what you’re already ranking for and if you can add an image to that existing piece or create an image around that topics, to get you into those results.
Pinterest -- Want to know what types of images are ranking? Throw Pinterest into SEMRush and filter by your target keywords.
You can do the same thing with youtube.
This is all really awesome data. We have to take it, funnel it, and that’s how we are going to determine the type of visual content we need. That we should be spending our time and money on.
Let’s start with some things you already have. I am a big fan of repurposing – Matt moderated my Pubcon Vegas session, I am talking about it again in a few months…I just love the idea of using what you have. What are some easy ways to create visual content?
Customer reviews – these are content gold!
Take those snippets and turn them into images or film short interviews with your customers.
Fruit guys example.
We did it this at KoMarketing. People love social proof // this video is on our page, we can break it up into customer testimonial snippets, share it on social, put it in emails.
You can also take news or blog posts and turn them into video. Cypress North, led by Greg Finn, is doing these really fantastic Marketing O’clocks where they cover marketing news.
Now, If we go back to looking at those assets that drove links – a lot of these look like lists.
Let’s find one that fits our topic, is in line with our goal, and we can create an IG slideshow, a slideshare, quote images to enhance the piece, whatever.
Same thing with that ebook you spent so much time creating and do the same thing. Pull out stats, create an infographic, whatever makes the most sense for your business. The key is that you already have the hard part done.
Ok, we are almost there – I think people get a little stopped up over the “how” to create these things. The good news is there are some really great tools, many free, that can help. A couple of my favorites.