One of the best tools in a marketer’s tool bag is evergreen content.
Because this type of content can be used again and again, year after year, it helps keep marketers from stressing about filling their content calendar, and it also allows them to focus on creating high-quality topical or time-sensitive content more regularly.
However, when used too often or for too many years, evergreen content can start to become stale, and your audience may notice you’re recycling content without any relevant value. Thankfully, keeping evergreen content fresh doesn’t need to take up much time. Below, 13 members of Forbes Communications Council each share one effective way to ensure any evergreen content you reuse in your marketing or communications stays fresh and valuable for your audience.
1. Adapt It To Your Audience’s Most Current Pain Points
Evergreen content thrives on empathy. Check the pulse of your audience’s pain points through continuous evaluation. It’s about deeply understanding your audience and adapting your content to reflect their most pressing issues. How they articulate their challenges evolves, so your content must too. Speak to their current emotions and aspirations, and your message will always resonate. – Sahil Sethi, Freshworks
2. Encourage Engagement And Interactive Experiences
Incorporate quizzes or polls to refresh evergreen content. This strategy revitalizes material and invites active participation, transforming static info into a dynamic experience. Engaging users directly creates memorable, personalized interactions, boosting interest and retention. This keeps your audience invested and eager to engage repeatedly. – Resha Chheda, Safe Security
3. Align It To The Company’s Latest Offerings
To keep evergreen content fresh and relevant, we align it with the company’s latest offerings. This ensures it stays up to date while directly supporting our business goals. This approach works well because it makes the content more engaging for our audience and creates a seamless connection between valuable information and our current strategy. – Jessica Wong, Valux Digital
4. Collaborate With Industry Experts And Influencers
Collaborating with industry experts or influencers to periodically update or comment on evergreen content adds new perspectives and relevance. This enriches the material with fresh insights and enhances its appeal, leveraging the experts’ credibility to keep the content engaging and aligned with current trends. – Cade Collister, Metova
5. Update It With Current Trends And Insights
One way I ensure evergreen content stays fresh for its audience is by regularly updating and contextualizing it with current trends and insights. Evergreen content is valuable because it’s timeless, but to keep it relevant, I revisit it periodically to add new data, examples or perspectives that resonate with today’s happenings. I call it falling forward. – Shanita Akintonde, ShanitaSpeaks, LLC
6. Embed Practical Use Cases
We ensure evergreen content stays relevant by embedding a practical use case, like a course, calculator, matchmaker or checklist so clients can consistently return to it for value. This approach works because it’s timeless and addresses ongoing problems everyone faces. This way, we ensure the content remains valuable and always worth revisiting. – Alaattin Kilic, Visa Franchise
7. Run An Annual Case Study Or Consumer Survey
Run an annual case study or consumer survey with consistent data points or questions; it will pay off big. This allows you to structure content to be updated in a new annual report each year. It will also allow you to link back to the prior year’s report to show changes over the course of time. Make it part of your annual content calendar to ensure consistency in the timing of annual reports. – Esther Bonardi, Yardi Systems
8. Focus On Deep, Authoritative Coverage Of Topics
We ensure evergreen content stays fresh by focusing on deep, authoritative coverage of topics. Rather than chasing trends, we minimize the use of easily outdated statistics, placing time-sensitive data in just a few sections. This approach keeps content relevant longer, requiring only minor updates, and allows us to maintain its value and longevity without constant revisions. – Kurt Uhlir, Ethereal Innovations, Inc.
9. Transform It Into New Formats
Most brands possess a wealth of content that remains accurate and valuable for driving company goals and revenue. Refresh this legacy content by repurposing it into different formats. Video content is particularly versatile and easily adaptable to various lengths and channels. AI tools can further enhance this by efficiently and effectively creating new clips from multiple sources, including text. – Kerry Curran, Revenue Based Marketing Advisors
10. Conduct Quarterly Content Audits
Content teams often get caught up in creating new content to meet the needs of the latest campaigns. However, an important part of content governance is to conduct quarterly content audits. Regularly evaluating the most popular content to decide whether it should be deprecated, updated or retained ensures that evergreen content remains fresh and relevant. – Rekha Thomas, Path Forward Marketing LLC
11. Take Cues From Your Core ‘Why’
Your evergreen content comes straight from your core “why.” It’s the reason that got you started, the one that will always be valuable. But it’s not about repetition. Generate a sentiment people will recognize, in a space where you are the undiscussed authority, and they will see that your brand is always on, always listening, always relevant. They will thank you for it. – Matteo Atti, Vista
12. Integrate Content Lifecycle Management
Integrate content lifecycle management into your broader strategy with a roadmap that includes scheduling updates, repurposing content and optimizing for SEO and performance metrics. Track performance, identify trends, incorporate user-generated content and automate updates for a proactive, data-driven approach that maximizes reach, engagement and ROI while keeping content fresh and relevant. – Mark Rainey, inQUEST Consulting
13. Focus On Stories That Reflect Your Brand Values
Evergreen content enables deeper audience engagement by focusing on stories that reflect your brand values, not just fleeting trends. This content showcases your unique position to target audiences and can be reused across various channels, from blogs to social media. By linking it to new topics, you conserve resources while maintaining strong audience resonance. – Alyssa Kopelman, Otsuka Precision Health
In this five-step guide, Michelle Hill of Vertical Leap reveals how to rejuvenate old, forgotten-about content that might be harming your search ranking.
Marketers face a lot of pressure to constantly publish new content. While it’s important to post regular, up-to-date content, you can’t forget about old pages once you hit publish.
Without proper maintenance, your blog quickly becomes bloated and relevance starts to suffer. To prevent this from damaging your SEO strategy, you should run an annual blog audit to review your content.
Why are blog audits important?
Old, out-of-date content results in fewer page visits, less average time spent on page and declining performance – all of which negatively affect your ranking in search engine result pages (SERPs).
The problem will only get worse over time as search engines like Google roll out new algorithm updates and ranking signals that your old content isn’t optimized for.
An annual audit allows you to review your blog content, keep getting value from your old content and send the right signals to Google. It also keeps you topically focused and turns your old content into an asset, rather than a liability.
1. Analyze your content
First, you want to analyze your content by collecting data on every post you’ve published. How much data you analyze will probably depend on the tools you’re using but, at the very least, you want to review the following: title, URL, topic/category, keywords, publishing date, word count, author and monthly visits.
For a more in-depth audit, you can also pull in engagement data (time on page, bounce rates, etc.) and usability insights like Core Web Vitals.
2. Review SEO keywords
Essentially, you want one blog post for each of your most important keywords, which you can keep updating and adding to. In other words, avoid having multiple pages compete for the same keyword because this splits your search ranking across each page. Instead, you want one high-quality page reaping all the SEO benefits.
Your audit will probably reveal multiple pages targeting the same keyword. This isn’t a problem so long as you review your content – and act on it. Once you have evergreen pages for your priority keywords, you can build content clusters around related keywords and sub-topics to maximize coverage.
3. Keep, combine, kill
Now you’re ready to start cleaning up your blog. We have our own tried and tested process that groups posts into three categories.
Keep content that is adding value to users and your SEO strategy. We can further optimize this by establishing expertise, authority and trust (key Google signals) and improving the content structure. Updating stats and sources, and adding videos and new sections can also improve the page.
Combine content covering the same keyword or topic (splitting your SEO rewards). This will attract more traffic to your site through better rankings as a result of improved pages and will lead to increased conversions through more authoritative and engaging content. It also reduces keyword cannibalization.
Kill low-quality content, poor engagement, generating no traffic, etc. For example, content that has no target audience and does not serve the user’s purpose is poorly written, off-topic, syndicated or potentially stolen/plagiarized. The same goes for any content that has poor performance metrics such as low/no organic page views, impressions, links, shares, conversions or engagements, or has a high bounce rate.
You want to remove all of the content in the ‘Kill’ category because these pages are causing more harm than good. For the ‘Combine’ section, you’re going to group all the related posts together and then merge them into a single, high-performing page. Once you’ve combined these pages, they’ll rank higher and generate more traffic.
4. Refresh old content
Now that all your blog posts are arranged to target specific keywords and topics, you’re ready to update and improve the quality of your content.
First, make sure all your posts are up to date with the latest information. Add recent statistics and insights with links to authoritative sources to back up the key message of your content. Also, add quality images with optimized alt-text and embed relevant video clips where suitable.
Next, revise the structure of your posts to ensure they’re optimized for readers and search engines. You should end up with a consistent structure across all your posts with optimized titles, headings and keywords.
In recent years, we’ve also had page experience updates, Core Web Vitals, product review updates, and many others.
With every content audit, you need to optimize for any relevant updates, guideline changes and new ranking signals. Right now, optimizing for E-E-A-T is a priority and you need to build trust by demonstrating experience, expertise and authority for all the subjects you cover.
As you merge and update your old content, make sure you satisfy the latest Google quality rater guidelines.
Helping your audience to find your best content is crucial to lengthening the time spent on your site. You want people to be able to find your most important content quickly and easily, which is where a featured post section can help.
Featured posts allow you to show people where your most helpful and popular content is at a quick glance. This section can be used regardless of what theme you use for your WordPress website.
If you want to add a featured post to your blog posts or sidebar, we’ll cover 3 easy ways to do just that. It’s so easy even beginners to the platform will be able to make their website more robust with this section of featured posts.
Let’s dive in and see why featured posts matter and how you can implement them quickly.
Why Featured Posts Matter on WordPress
A featured posts list allows your audience to find your most important content quickly. Even if they don’t know what to look for on your site, you’ll be directing them right to your most valuable content. This is a great way to capture their interest, engage them with your top blog post, and hopefully establish yourself as an authority in your niche.
For website owners who have been blogging for a while, you might have so much information that it’s overwhelming for people to wade through.
With a featured post, you’re telling them where to start. It might be a timely piece, pillar content, or your most-visited blog post.
Once they find what they’re looking for, they might spend even more time perusing the rest of your featured post list. This can help with website trust signals, indicating that you should rank higher in the SERPs.
How to Add Featured Posts in WordPress?
You can easily add a featured post or two to your website in one of 3 ways:
Adding a new list block
Adding featured posts to the sidebar
Using a plugin to display featured posts in WordPress
1. Add a New List Block to Your WordPress Website
Perhaps the easiest way to add featured content to your website is to simply add a new block. This will provide you with a list of featured content within the confines of another blog post. In the article where you want to add featured posts, you will need to follow these steps:
Click the “+” to add a new block.
In the menu of options, click “list.” You may need to click “browse all” to see the WordPress sidebar to get to the list block.
Simply type in the name of the posts that you want to link. You can even use only one post, if you want. The number you select is up to you.
Highlight the post title and press CTRL+K (Command+K if you’re a Mac user). In the box, enter the URL of the featured post you want to link.
Here is an example of what the finished product will look like:
Creating a Reusable Block
If you want to use this block easily in several pages on your site, you might want to consider taking a few extra steps to create reusable blocks for your featured post section.
Once your list is made and hyperlinked, you can modify the block as a whole. Click the three dots to the right of the sidebar while in the block with your featured post list. This will open a new menu and you can select “Create Reusable Blocks.” Give it a name that you can remember.
From here, you’ll be able to add your reusable block anywhere you want featured posts to appear. Simply add a new block, scroll to the menu of options, and type in the name that you selected.
With this saved, you will be able to insert your new list with the featured post without having to hyperlink and type it out each time. This can be a huge timesaver, freeing you up for more important website modifications.
2. Add Featured Posts in WordPress Sidebar
Adding featured posts to a WordPress sidebar is another great way to keep these posts front of mind for your audience. It takes a few more steps, but it can be worth it if you want it to be visible on each and every page of your site.
Head to Appearance on the left-hand sidebar of your WordPress dashboard. Select “Widgets” from the drop-down menu.
Choose where you would like your list to appear (right sidebar, left sidebar, etc.).
Click the “+” icon and add a list, similar to how you did in the last method.
Type in the name of the feature post you want to include.
Highlight the text (most likely your post title), press CTRL+K or Command+K to enter the URL of your WordPress post you want to include. Alternatively, you can click the link icon.
When finished, click the “Update” button in the upper right screen.
This will create a very simple text-only list of your featured posts. If you want more options like displaying a featured image with your titles, then you can opt for a paid subscription to a plugin like MonsterInsights.
3. Add a Featured Post with a Free WordPress Plugin
If you want something a little bit sleeker for your featured post section, then you might want to use a plugin. This requires just a few extra steps, but even beginners to the WordPress platform can learn to use it. In this post, we recommend using the free Display Posts plugin.
Here is how to add featured posts with this easy-to-use plugin:
On the lefthand sidebar, go to “Plugins” and “Add New.” Type “Display Posts” in the search bar to the right.
When it comes up, click “Install.” Wait for it to download, and then click “Activate.”
Under each article that you want to feature, add it to a “featured” category. You may have to create this category. (From the page editor of your blog, click the gear icon in the upper right corner. Scroll down to categories, add new, and label it “featured.”)
With the featured posts selected, you can now insert the shortcode to your pages. Click the “+” icon to add a new block. Click “Browse All” and search for “shortcode.” This will bring up a box where you can enter the code for your new plugin.
Type in [display-post tag=”featured”].
Alternatively, you can add featured posts with images using the same method. The only difference is the code that will be used in the shortcode box. To do this, you will enter the following text: [display-posts include_excerpt=”true” image_size=”thumbnail”]
The finished examples of the featured posts will look like this:
Adding Shortcode to a Sidebar
If you want to display featured posts in a sidebar, you can do so with a text widget using this plugin:
Head into your “Appearance” and “Widgets” area again.
Insert a “text” widget in the area where you would like your featured content to appear.
From here, you will follow similar steps to the above. Insert shortcode the same way with the same text.
Click “Update” to save your changes to the page.
Keep in mind that you will need to keep categorizing each new post if you want it to show up as a featured post in this section. How many posts you categorize this way is totally up to you, but you’ll need to refine these categories over time as you write more posts.
What to Include in Featured Post Sections
If you want people to find specific posts on your page, you need to know what to include. Generally speaking, there are a few types of content that you might include in this important featured post section of your website:
Time-sensitive material that involves a current event or news story
Your most important content that tells people how to connect with you
Answers to the frequently asked questions about your product or service
Most popular content
If there is a post that you want more people to engage with, it belongs in a featured posts section. Make sure that anything you include here is a decent length (usually recommended is 2,100 to 2,400 words but you can learn more in our article about how long should a blog post be) and is one of your best content pieces. It should engage your audience with relevant and useful details.
Final Thoughts: Adding a Featured Post Section
If you’re committed to giving your audience quick and easy-to-find content on your site, then you need to add featured posts. This allows visitors to engage more easily with your most popular or important content. Take some time to organize content to easily add it to your site.
It may require a one-time investment of your time and energy, but it will have far-reaching positive effects on your site navigation.
Ashley is an experienced freelance writer with an enthusiasm for finding creative ways to earn money online. She uses her passion for words to share what she has learned with the world.
She spends most of her time blogging for a multitude of websites and consuming everything she can get her hands on in relation to personal finance and side hustles.
Content is still a powerful proponent in creating a strategy that is both creative and effective. Utilizing tactics in storytelling and maintaining an analytical approach can certainly guide a mediocre campaign to becoming a successful bombshell for a company.
No matter which way you look at it, the ecommerce landscape is getting increasingly competitive. Staying ahead of the competition heading into 2023 will take precision. Advertising costs are up, and campaigns cantered on quality, customer-focused content have been dwindling because it has become more about making a quick buck.
According to Shopify, the future of ecommerce is in the rise of acquisition costs, steering clear of third-party cookies and the power of social commerce. Brands must be both authentic and readily available to their customers but also have the ability to engage their audience. As ecommerce continues to shift toward social platforms, content is the driving force behind a brand‘s success.
It all comes down to the value in customer retention and acquisition. What ecommerce storefronts should not steer away from is generating quality, timely and customer-focused content that will not only attract new customers but keep them loyal to your brand. The question you should be asking yourself is: What is my company doing to create an experience for my customers?
Content is king in determining ecommerce success in 2023
Content is still a powerful proponent in creating a strategy that is both creative and effective. Utilizing tactics in storytelling and maintaining an analytical approach can certainly guide a mediocre campaign to becoming a successful bombshell for a company.
The ability to tell a story that is consistent with a brand’s mission can serve as a powerful tool in attracting an audience and maintaining it as a valuable, consistent and recurring community for one’s business. However, it is important to remember that it is the people, not the product, at its core.
In 2022, paid social was not as much a determining factor for attracting buyers if the content did not resonate with its audience and customer base. The same will apply in 2023. The community needs to connect with an ecommerce business on a personal and even inspirational level, before buyers are motivated to maintain the needed consistency. If sales and traffic are both down, then there is a good chance that neither the content nor the reach is serving its purpose.
With roughly four months remaining in 2022, it is important to buck the trend of most B2C companies in halting the production of B2C content without focusing on B2C results. In other words, as we progress into the new year, companies should begin to create campaigns and strategies that essentially “hit home” with customers and followings, rather than turning in campaigns to generate a quick buck.
Content needs to use written, visual and audio to drive marketing funnels in building interest, desire, action and awareness. In fact, 2023 will be more about how content doesn’t necessarily drive customers to make a purchase, but rather, how it creates an opportunity to better their lives.
You may be asking yourself, how can I develop marquee content to give me an advantage over my competitors? There are roughly three factors to consider. It is important for the consumer, who essentially is digitally window shopping, to want to stop and see more of what your store has to offer. The proper steps here are to attract, engage and garner a positive outcome.
This is done by drawing attention to stopping the prospective customer, whether via an engaging picture, video or short-form copy. Remember, especially in 2022, attention spans are shrinking, and it is important to distribute the who, what, when, where, why and how for the customer quickly and painlessly. Next, customers need to feel engaged, so sparking their interest and convincing them to draw on their desire is important. Typically, the videos earning the most bang for their bucks are the 3-5 second Facebook videos and Instagram reels, while even the 30-second “shorts” on YouTube have proven successful as well.
Things to consider when approaching a 2023 game plan for your ecommerce store
Ecommerce will continue to migrate more toward working in conjunction with social media platforms.
Brand marketing and customer engagement, including advertising, is essentially moving more toward a social media-centric approach.
Video, and to a lesser extent, pictures, are providing a more social aspect to ecommerce sales, which is reimagining how companies engage with consumers.
Instagram is coming around, but in adopting a TikTok-type method, platforms are seeing the power of video when it comes to social media ecommerce. With the ability to perform consultations, recommendations and livestreams, products and experiences are personalized for consumers.
The moral of the story for the remaining months in 2022 as we progress toward 2023 is: When the customer has the desire to navigate and explore, action comes into play. The content should be results-driven. After all, it’s about the sale in the ecommerce world.
Digital marketing is an ever-changing world, with new platforms and algorithms constantly shifting the goal posts. Tom Welbourne, founder and director at agency The Good Marketer, tells us how to avoid rookie mistakes.
The constantly-shifting digital marketing landscape is exciting and full of opportunities. But this presents room to make costly mistakes, from underestimating the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) to lacking clarity about social media marketing goals. Gaps in your marketing plan can make otherwise promising strategies fall at the first hurdle.
To avoid making mistakes, the key is knowledge. We’ve compiled the six biggest mistakes that newbie digital marketers make to equip you with the knowledge of what to avoid – and how to do things the right way.
1. No clarity on audience
Think you know who your audience is? It’s time to rethink your assumptions and get more specific. Most people have an idea of who their audience is, but this is useless if you don’t clearly define their age, gender, and interests as well as broad audience categories.
For example, a mortgage provider will have multiple audiences, from first-time buyers looking for their first mortgage to more mature homeowners who have had mortgages before but are looking for a new agreement.
Use analytics tools like Google Analytics to find out who your audience really is, rather than who you think they are.
2. Lack of clear goals
You won’t get to where you’re going if you don’t know exactly where that is. Clear goals give you a clear destination and help to map where you need to hit along the way. If you establish that you want to reach 10,000 followers on Instagram, you can break this down into what you need to achieve month-on-month to achieve that overall goal.
Digital marketers use the ‘Smart’ (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goal framework to create well-defined growth goals that will give a direction to take and the basis to measure your campaign’s success.
3. Setting unrealistic goals
Perhaps the most important aspect of Smart goals is the ‘achievable’ aspect. Having clear goals is important, but you will always end up falling short if your goals aren’t realistic.
If you currently have 500 followers, setting a goal to gain 10,000 followers organically in six months is always going to leave you disappointed and feeling like you’ve failed.
To ensure your goals are realistic, evaluate based on past experience; do some research about similar businesses; or speak to other people in your industry about what could be achievable.
4. Ignoring SEO
Everyone loves an aesthetically-pleasing website, but how many people prioritize SEO when building their site?
SEO is an essential digital marketing strategy used to increase the online brand visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs). When someone searches a keyword related to your business, SEO improves the likelihood of making it to the top of those results.
When newbie digital marketers hear about SEO, they can mistake the acronym as something too technical for your average marketer, but they’d be wrong. SEO is something that even a beginner can do comfortably when equipped with the right knowledge.
5. Overlooking quality content
You’ve heard it over and over and will continue to: content is king. Your marketing strategy is nothing if you haven’t taken the time to create quality content that works for your audience.
Ultimately, your digital marketing strategy will succeed if your content can provide value to your audience. Whether you’re solving a problem or providing valuable insight, take time to reflect on how your content conveys value.
6. Lack of recorded strategy
Often, newbie marketers have a strategy in mind for how to reach their goal, but leave it undocumented and not fully developed. A written strategy gives you a clear outline of how to grow your brand or business, and how to leverage your USPs to achieve your vision of success.
Being a digital marketer is a learning curve. The mistakes will probably be plenty, so the best you can do is equip yourself with a solid framework that provides a path to follow. The best marketers are able to use the same process of goal-setting, strategizing and implementation no matter the project. Once you get to grips with how these stages can benefit you and your work, the world is your oyster.
Instagram is my waiting room app. I don’t use it every day, but when I have a couple of spare minutes, I like to casually check out what the people I’m following are up to.
The problem, lately, is getting to the stuff I actually want to see requires battling through a mountain of sponsored content and suggested posts. When it comes to ads on platforms, there’s a point at which a user inevitably will throw their hands up in the air and say: enough. This level is different for everyone, but for me, Instagram has not only reached it — it’s running circles around it.
Dude, where’s my content?
Let’s test this. I’ve just opened the Instagram app on my iPhone and counted 14 (fourteen) instances of ads, suggested posts, and sponsored content, in the first 16 posts on the top of my feed. I had to scroll past six ads before I got to a post by someone I actually follow. I’m not sure when Instagram became this aggressive when it comes to ads, but I don’t remember it being this bad earlier this year. A month-old Reddit post showcases the same issue, with a seemingly infinite array of ads lined up one after another.
Worse, there’s something deeply insulting by the content of the ads and suggested posts I’m seeing. Yes, I follow a couple of fitness-oriented pages, as well as wrestling pages, on Instagram. So its algorithms have decided that I must be into boxing and bodybuilding (I’m not). I’m constantly being served ads for boxing lessons, which I don’t particularly care about, and I keep seeing muscular men posing on a stage, which, again, is not my cup of tea. Instagram is relentless about this type of content; there’s little variety to it. I’m a human in 2022, which means I have the luxury of having specific, nuanced interests — I’m alright with bodyweight workouts, but not interested in bodybuilding. I can watch Brazilian jiu-jitsu videos all day, but not boxing. Maybe it’s the way I’m engaging with this content that throws Instagram’s algorithms off, but it just seems incapable of accurately predicting what I really want to see.
It’s not just me. Another Reddit thread, also from about a month ago, titled “Okay, we get it. Your feed is entirely ads,” has dozens of users complaining about how bad Instagram’s feed has become.
“60 percent of the posts on my newsfeed are from accounts I do not follow — yet there are accounts I do follow who post regularly and I don’t ever see their posts,” writes user HireLaneKiffin. “It’s gone from all my follows to every other follow and ad to as of today a three to two ratio of ads and promoted follows from the worst people and things,” writes user ilivedownyourroad. I don’t have a scientific method to determine how many ads are too many for the majority of users, but my guesstimate is that Instagram is well past it.
This behavior is spilling over to Meta’s other property, Facebook. On this platform’s feed, you’ll see at least some content from the pages and people you follow on top, but there will be a ton of ads in between, and every now and then you’ll see a suggested post from a page you don’t particularly care about — I’m looking at you, Nick’s Strength and Power. In fact, this particular page which serves bodybuilding-related content, probably has little to do with it; Facebook has decided that I must be into bodybuilding, and bodybuilding videos I will watch, so help me the almighty algorithm.
But I don’t wanna watch what Simon did next. Credit: Instagram/upromototraining
The sponsored overload is not as bad on Facebook as it is on Instagram, but Instagram may be an early warning here. A few months down the road, you might have to jump through the hoops of switching to chronological post order every time you open the app (to do that, tap “Menu,” then “See more,” then “Most recent” on the iPhone).
Can you help it? Yes, but not quite.
There are ways to alleviate this influx of ads, but Instagram is quite cunning about it. Once you’ve opened the app, there’s a little white arrow that appears next to the Instagram logo on top, letting you see content only from the accounts you’ve set as favourites. But the little white arrow only appears once you’ve scrolled past the first post — a way to force you, I reckon, to see at least one ad before getting to the content you want. Furthermore, you have to do it every time you start the app, and you also have to ardently add all the content you want to follow to your favourites, which is an additional hassle.
You can also get an Android-only unofficial app for Instagram that lets you get rid of ads altogether, but unofficial apps, besides probably being against Instagram’s terms of service, can be a way to get malware on your device.
The bottom line is that, for the majority of users, the Instagram experience is severely tarnished when you’re force fed stuff you don’t want. There’s a point at which even advertisers will start to complain, as they inevitably see engagement numbers fall from their tired and resigned audience. I’ve asked Instagram whether they think they’ve gone too far with sponsored content, and will update this article when I hear back.
UPDATE: Jun. 9, 2022, 12:21 p.m. EDT An Instagram spokesperson got back to me, saying that my feed having so many ads and suggested posts is “not the intended experience.” The company will look into it and get back to me with more information.
I know the mantra: If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the user, you’re the product being sold. But for me to consent to being sold, I need to get something back from the app or else I’ll just give up. Right now, Instagram is working very hard to make me give up.
The best SEO blogs provide the latest trends and insights in the world of digital marketing. They offer SEO tutorials where you can learn the best practices and tools to boost your technical skills and knowledge.
The topic of search engine optimization is varied and complex, so it’s important to read reliable blogs written by industry experts. SEO is continuously changing, it’s best to stay updated so you don’t fall behind the curve. Follow this guide to find out where to learn SEO and which blogs to follow to keep your SEO skill up to date.
How to Stay Informed About SEO Updates
When you’re just starting out in SEO, a great way to learn about updates is to find dependable sources and blogs and bookmark them to your web browser. You can also curate your feeds on social media and follow SEO experts or a digital marketing agency that provides free information to stay informed about important SEO updates.
Furthermore, you can use a site like Feedly, an application that aggregates reliable and informative sites and places them inside a highly optimized newsfeed. It’s a powerful application that lets you catalogue streams of information on your topics of interest while filtering out irrelevant information.
Success Lessons From the Top SEO Blogs
Success doesn’t come overnight, it takes time and a great plan to ensure you get the success that you want to see. These lessons provide a succinct explanation of key topics in SEO that you should know about.
Content is King
Content is the backbone of every great digital marketing strategy. Whether it’s in the form of video, audio, or written form, content is always teeming in the digital realm. Great and insightful content is one of the secret ingredients in developing your reach in SEO.
If you can create content that’s beneficial, informative, and interactive to your audience, not only will Google reward your content, but your audience will as well through shares and comments. Content is still the name of the game. Anyone who creates engaging content, whether it be to entertain or inform, has the upper hand in building their SEO.
Get a Niche
Your SEO strategy development will be easier if you find a niche. Specialization helps in optimizing your content to cater to a specific audience. This will allow you to cluster and segregate necessary keywords to fill your content with.
Finding a niche will also allow you to build brand authority and customer trust over your chosen topic. By positioning yourself to serve a target market, it makes your SEO efforts simpler by providing a clear-cut picture of what your intended audience wants to learn about.
Digital Marketing is Not Just SEO
SEO is an important factor in digital marketing but it’s not the only thing that makes up your digital marketing efforts. There are different factors like quality of content, user experience, and market reach that need to be taken into consideration.
A seamless user interface that boosts the overall experience of a website can benefit your SEO. Interactive content that engages your users and provides useful information can boost your SEO endeavours. Look beyond SEO for your digital marketing strategies, and understand that it’s not the only thing that’s going to bring in engagement and organic search traffic.
Best of the Blogosphere: Top Blogs About SEO
Ahrefs
Neil Patel’s Blog
Yoast SEO
Backlinko
The Moz Blog
Search Engine Journal
Content Marketing Institute
Marie Haynes Consulting
Practical Ecommerce
Gotch SEO
Best SEO Blogs: Where to Find SEO Support and SEO Tutorials
This essential reading list of SEO blogs targets key topics like domain authority, organic search traffic, and SEO ranking. These are some of the favourite SEO blogs by digital marketing readers.
Ahrefs Blog
Great for: SEO Strategies, Organic Search Traffic, and Online Tools
Posts Per Month: 12 articles
The Ahrefs blog is an SEO and online marketing blog operated by digital marketing professionals. The blog offers an extensive reading list on organic search traffic, search engine optimization, and digital marketing efforts like affiliate marketing.
Neil Patel
Great for: Content Strategies, SEO Insights, and Digital Marketing Industry News
Posts Per Month: 24 articles
Neil Patel is an SEO professional and an expert in the digital marketing industry. His articles on topics that tackle online marketing offer actionable content and act as a fantastic resource for your journey. The blog is an authoritative guide to the latest SEO topics and updates on a regular basis.
Yoast SEO Blog
Great for: SEO Resources, Content Creation, and Current SEO Trends
Posts Per Month: 4 articles
The Yoast SEO blog is perfect for people who want to start their journey in SEO. It has a dedicated section for the basics of SEO to begin your path towards becoming an SEO expert. The blog teaches you how to increase organic traffic and optimize content creation.
The Backlinko Blog
Great for: Online Marketing, Content Marketing Strategies, and Search Engine Marketing
Posts Per Month: 3 articles
The Backlinko blog offers comprehensive guides to search engine optimization strategies. Created by Brian Dean, Backlinko gives updated blog posts about SEO topics, search rankings, and deep insights to maximize your SEO knowledge.
The Moz Blog
Great for: SEO Industry Insight, SEO Trends, and SEO News
Posts Per Month: 4 articles
The Moz Blog offers how-to guides in optimizing your content and becoming an SEO master. It’s an amazing SEO blog that caters to advanced topics like domain authority, user search intent, and organic search traffic. Moreover, the posts are written by industry experts that are brought up to date on a constant basis.
Search Engine Journal
Great for: Google Search Optimization, Content SEO, and Search Marketing Industry Insight
Posts Per Month: 72 articles
Search Engine Journal provides in-depth guides to SEO insights and organic search traffic. This amazing blog offers a wide variety of articles that tackle different aspects of SEO, mainly SEO ranking, domain rating, and improved content creation. These topics help drive up organic traffic to websites.
Content Marketing Institute
Great for: Content Writing, SEO Tools, and Organic Search Traffic Updates
Posts Per Month: 16 articles
» MORE:Where to Learn Data Science: The Best Data Science Blogs
The Content Marketing Institute blog curates its information to give you the best insights on search engine optimization, domain authority, organic search traffic. The blog posts offer regular updates on the latest news and relevant information on SEO and content writing.
Marie Haynes Consulting
Great for: Google Search News, Organic Search Traffic, and Domain Authority
Posts Per Month: 1 article
Marie Haynes is an international SEO consultant that specializes in SEO services such as actionable insights in domain authority and in-depth articles in Google algorithm updates. The blog focuses mainly on Google to offer informative articles on organic traffic, search engine optimization, and advanced user experience.
Practical Ecommerce
Great for: Online Marketing, SEO News, and SEO Ranking
Posts Per Month: 32 articles
Practical Ecommerce offers SEO solutions using a competitive research tool like Google Analytics to boost organic search traffic for businesses. Its blog showcases regular updates on domain authority, ecommerce metrics, and niche categories like Amazon SEO.
Gotch SEO
Great for: Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and SEO News
Posts Per Month: 4 articles
Founded by Nathan Gotch, Gotch SEO specializes in complicated topics like SEO ranking and domain authority. Furthermore, it also tackles various SEO tools to enhance your skills and expertise in the digital marketing industry.
Where to Learn SEO
SEO resources and training can be learned through various online courses, both free and paid. Online learning platforms like Coursera and Udemy offer paid SEO courses that provide extensive training and information. You can also go to sites like HubSpot and ClickMinded for free SEO crash courses at your disposal.
There are also YouTube channels dedicated to SEO and digital marketing. Ahrefs and Neil Patel both have videos that give great insight into the topic. Moreover, there are also SEO podcasts for you to listen to like the Search Engine Journal Show or Voices of Search. There are different learning approaches to SEO, you just have to look for them in the right places.
Can You Learn SEO in a Coding Bootcamp?
Yes, there are numerous SEO bootcamps for you to enrol in. If you want to become an SEO specialist, then you can enrol in a boot camp to jumpstart your career and expand your understanding of SEO.
Bootcamps are training programs that teach extensive knowledge to students in a short amount of time. They are a great way to learn because they give students hands-on projects to build their own SEO portfolios and develop their SEO network.
SEO Support
Below are the best online forums for diving into the online SEO community. They have tons of users and active threads for you to read on a daily basis. If you want to read on a topic like domain authority, then you can do so in one of these forums.
This is the one-stop source for any questions related to Google products or services. The site is a very active forum with new threads coming in on a daily basis. It offers four categories for you to choose from.
Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking – Questions about SEO and algorithms inspecting overall website content for rankings on Google.
Security, Malware, and Hacked Sites – Inquiries on website safety measures, protective actions, and troubleshooting externally caused problems.
Structured Data – Queries on Google Analytics and how to properly optimize content for maximum search engine reach.
Google Search Console – Discussions on possible methods and tools in increasing a website’s Google Search performance.
Warrior Forum is a digital marketing forum that tackles everything and anything about online and virtual advertising. It has multiple categories for you to choose from, a beginner’s section, ecommerce, social media marketing, copywriting, and a whole lot more.
The Moz Community is an online forum that engages in online marketing and Moz-related products. It provides the latest discussions and questions about SEO and offers tons of categories to choose from, like keyword research, affiliate marketing, and conversion rate optimization.
What Should You Do Next to Advance Your SEO Knowledge?
The most logical step for you is to dedicate time to study and see if you want to learn more about SEO. On the other hand, if you want to fully commit to becoming an SEO specialist, you can enrol in an online SEO course. Furthermore, understand that building knowledge about SEO takes time and consistency. Start with the fundamentals of SEO and slowly increase the depth and complexity of the SEO topics you want to study.
Best SEO Blogs FAQ
Why is SEO important?
SEO is important because there are millions of people who use search engines in their daily lives. In turn, businesses and organizations have to use the search engine algorithm to make it works in their favour.
They use keywords to drive organic search traffic and establish domain authority. Moreover, when companies create engaging and relevant content, search engines will rank the website higher in the results feed. These SEO efforts improve a company’s brand visibility and market reach.
SEO specialists optimize and create content, improve landing pages and conversion rates, perform keyword research, and audit websites. These responsibilities involve a high level of knowledge in SEO and digital marketing.
Are SEO courses worth it?
Yes, SEO courses are worth it. You don’t necessarily have to spend money in learning SEO, there are free resources and blogs for you to try before committing to a paid SEO course. Check the reviews of paid SEO courses to ensure that they’re worth your hard-earned money.
AJ, from Manila, Philippines, started writing for Career Karma in December 2021. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Accountancy from AMA Computer College. Previously, AJ worked as a content manager for New Wave Media, handling WordPress websites, publishing SEO-friendly content, and supervising teams of writers and editors. He has also ghost-written content for SEO sites and his personal website. In his free time, AJ enjoys reading and journaling.
When I first started in brand strategy, I was introduced to the ‘brand key’. One of many generic strategy models that ensures that all the right bits and pieces are in one place. I can remember thinking, “surely the key to a brand’s strategy should look and be different for each brand it unlocks, right?” I was such a greenhorn, I kept quiet, thinking that there was probably a good reason for it that I was too ignorant to understand. Some 25 years on and I’m not such a greenhorn and the same question still bothers me – strategy positions a brand, describing its relation to its competitors and to its consumers. It dictates the form of all that follows, so why is it formless itself?
After my early training in a pure brand strategy agency, I quickly moved into heading up the brand strategy in a design agency and have stayed in this realm ever since. It strikes me as the best place to create properly rigorous brand strategy because your work is always in conversation with reality – is this theory actionable? Can we create something from it or is it just clever-sounding hot air? Over time, another thing happened from being in a creative environment where things became real. I came to believe that, in order for it to inspire, a great activation strategy needs to be something more solid than a theory. It needs to practice what it preaches and establish a form to match its content.
I’ll give you two examples of what I mean. Allpress is an incredible quality coffee company from New Zealand. It has a B2B component selling bulk coffee to independent coffee shops and gorgeous branded retail hubs in NZ, Japan, and London. We repositioned the company for its next stage of growth – kicking off with global semiotics of coffee and a series of stakeholder interviews. The resulting positioning captured the soul of the company, the values of its founders, and added a healthy dose of aspiration for the future – when we were finished, it was a thorough and inspirational blueprint to unify all brand activity. Signed off by the management, the next step was to share it – to take that beautiful keynote/ppt and present the hell out of it. But here we were talking about independent thinkers in this utterly generic form – it just didn’t feel right. So we made a comic. The first strategic comic ever. The brand history, brand strategy, behavioural principles were all covered, and form and content were in harmony. The way we said it was half of the message.
The same was true of a very different brand – Farmacy, Camilla Fayed’s biodynamic gourmet restaurant. As a lifestyle brand, a flat document wasn’t going to cut it so we made a beautiful, moving, and evocative film that spoke the strategy through the head of its biodynamic garden – the source of its difference and its beliefs.
If we look to art and culture it has always been acknowledged that form and content must match, so why has strategy been allowed to become a neutral ‘theory’ that is then given form by a creative vision? A strong strategy will always have a form that can be brought to life creatively. Strategy needs to get off the fence, put a stake in the ground, and stand for something.
Since leaving Uber a year ago, in October 2020, I’ve been making a living from writing – one with comparable income to when I was employed.
None of this would have happened if I did not start to write this blog several years ago. Writing which helped hone my writing skills, and build the credibility to start publishing books, and to start my weekly newsletter.
How do you find the inspiration and motivation to write? This is a question I frequently get – especially that regular blogging has led to making a living off writing. Here are the 12 approaches and steps that worked for me – some of which might be useful if you’d like to write more regularly.
1. Own Your Content
Start a blog or a place where you can start share your longform writing.
I am personally a fan for paying out of pocket for the writing platform I use. By doing so, I own my content. I took this advice from software engineer and blogger Scott Hanselman after reading his post Your words are wasted where he writes:
And still you tweet giving all your life’s precious remaining keystrokes to a company and a service that doesn’t love or care about you – to a service that can’t even find a tweet you wrote a month ago.
I pay a monthly fee of around $30 to use Ghost as a hosted service. Paying every month reminds me that I should write something to not waste all this money. It’s a small thing, but this guilt is what helped me get more articles out in the early days.
Getting started on free places where you keep your copyright like Hashnode or Dev.to can also be an option. The nice thing about them is you might get better reach, and more feedback or comments.
The downside with free-to-write platforms is that you don’t really own your content: those companies make a business directly or indirectly monetizing your writing and the traffic it generates. For example, see what happened with Medium: much of the content hosted there is paywalled.
2. Start Writing – Regularly
Few people know, but I have been blogging on another blog for years. Those posts were irregular braindumps on whatever was on my mind. It was a mix of personal updates, debugging stories and sharing when I released a new version of my app.
In 2015, I decided I want to write about software engineering – a field I had been working in for years. I took my inspiration from the once-very-successful Coding Horror blog by Stack Overflow cofounder Jeff Atwood. In the post How to achieve ultimate blog success in one easy step, Jeff wrote:
When people ask me for advice on blogging, I always respond with yet another form of the same advice: pick a schedule you can live with, and stick to it. Until you do that, none of the other advice I could give you will matter. I don’t care if you suck at writing. I don’t care if nobody reads your blog. I don’t care if you have nothing interesting to say. If you can demonstrate a willingness to write, and a desire to keep continually improving your writing, you will eventually be successful.
I read, re-read, and re-read this post. I then decided this is exactly what I need to do.
I picked a schedule and stuck with it for months. I decided to write an article every two weeks for the next couple of months. And this is what I did, shipping the first few articles on this blog:
If I started writing today, I’d join a community like Blogging For Devs, where you have a community that can feel it keeps you accountable, and a group that gives feedback on your early drafts. I’m a paying member here and drop in when I have the time.
Ship 30 for 30 is another great way to start. This is a program where you ship 30 writing assignments in 30 days as part of a cohort that keeps you accountable, which kicstarts this process and helps form this habit. The course is priced around $300: paying this amount and working in a cohort I’d expect will help you stick with writing through the 30 days.
3. Write For Yourself
When I (re)started my blog, I was wondering who would be reading my articles. In the end, I decided I don’t care: I’ll just write them for myself, as a reflection of the ideas and observations I have come across.
Approaching writing with this approach, it has been surprisingly therapeutic and a tool that helps me reflect. Writing my ideas down, in a form that makes sense requires a surprisingly large amount of thinking.
Writing is a forced way to think more clearly – and I’m not the only one to make this realization. Early Facebook employee Andrew “Boz” Bosworth shares a similar observation in the article Writing is thinking:
Even when I write for my own benefit, it is undoubtedly a bonus that at the end I have a document which I can easily share to invite critiques or enlist support. I know of no more scalable way to engage a large audience than the written word.
I’m glad I started out writing for myself: it helped my thinking, and it helped polish my writing as well. The early articles are noticeably shorter and, less pleasant to read, though they often took more time to write than later ones. They gave me early practice in forming and writing down my thoughts around various engineering topics though.
4. Copy Writing Styles You Like
Most of my favourite writers and bloggers have a distinct style. When I started writing, this made me think: what would be my style? What writing setup should I chose?
When starting out, I copied the writing style and approach of well-known bloggers. Most of my early posts were inspired by the quotation style that Jeff Atwood uses in many of his articles. He takes a 1-3 quotes from various articles on the same topic, then adds his own cents.
As I browsed blogs, this approach struck me as one that can help me get started easier. Commenting on someone else’s writing is a lot easier than writing from scratch. So this is what I did with my first few articles. If you look closely, the resemblance in style for these articles should be clear – but only if you know where to look for the inspiration:
Many early Pragmatic Engineer articles were inspired by the writing style of Coding Horror. Can you see the similarities?
As you start to write more, your writing style will evolve and you won’t feel the need to “copy” another style. This is what happened in my case. Current articles don’t lean on any one style: they’re a mix of what I have found pleasant and useful, over the years.
If you like this style – you’re more than welcome to copy the approach. I do, however, recommend the quoting approach for an easy start: it’s much easier for words to flow when there’s already a few thoughts from someone else that you can reflect on.
5. Capture Ideas As They Appear
Once I started writing, the biggest barrier I faced was the lack of ideas. After finishing an article, I’d be unsure what to write about next.
Capturing ideas as they popped into my head has been very helpful for my writing I almost always did this with a note taking app on my phone or my laptop – as ideas would often come when debating with a colleague, or having a conversation over lunch. I now use Craft Docs to capture these – both because of the slick UI, as well because my brother is behind the company – but any system works.
Once I started to capture these ideas as they hit me, I no longer had a shortage of topics. After a while, I had the opposite: too much to choose from. Here’s a screenshot of my “blog ideas” note in Craft Docs, and a fraction of my idea backlog:
6. Freewrite
Once you have the idea, it’s easy to get stuck on an empty page. One of the tricks that helps me break this block is to do twenty minutes of free writing. Here’s how I do it:
I set a timer for 20 minutes on my phone, and place it next to me.
I proceed to do free writing, typing out everything that is in my head. I don’t stop to correct grammatical errors, or to go back and fix anything.
I don’t stop to criticize my thoughts – this gets easier once you’ve done this a few times.
If I cannot think of anything to write, I write “I cannot think anything to write… okay, now I thought of this new idea on…”
The interesting thing is how it works, every time. After a few minutes I’m pushing out ideas, and I’m usually frantically typing when the timer goes off.
7. Draft
Following free writing, I have a good chunk of ideas. I then proceed to write a draft piece.
My approach is this:
I write out key ideas I want to explore as bullets
I write out each of those bullet ideas: either by copying from my free writing, or by adding a few paragraphs to each
I personally like to bold out the key ideas I’m exploring. It helps me focus on what I’m trying to say.
I often do research during the draft stage, reading up on topics I’m writing about, then quoting or linking to relevant resources.
My draft is complete when I wrote about all the parts I wanted to.
8. Edit
Once a draft is ready is when a very different staging of writing comes: editing. This one is something I often leave for the next day. Even when I start doing it after the draft, I take a break to get into “editing mode”.
Editing is about making this piece digestible for the reader. I do a few things:
1. Add a closing section. What is the takeaway of the piece? What is the one, or two things I should leave the reader with? For example, in the article Data structures & algorithms I used working at tech companies, I added this summary section:
Data structures and algorithms are a tool that you should use with confidence when building software. Know these tools, and you’ll be familiar with navigating codebases that use them. You’ll also be far more confident in how to implement solutions to hard problems. You’ll know the theoretical limits, the optimizations you can make, and you’ll come up with solutions that are as good as they get – all tradeoffs considered.
2. Make the opening count. The first few paragraphs need to grab the attention of the reader, make it clear why the topic is relevant, and what they’ll get out of it. I often set the context in the beginning as well.
Do you actually use data structures and algorithms on your day to day job? I’ve noticed a growing trend of people assuming algorithms are pointless questions that are asked by tech companies purely as an arbitrary measure. I hear more people complain about how all of this is a purely academic exercise. (…)
This article is a set of real-world examples where data structures like trees, graphs, and various algorithms were used in production. I hope to illustrate that a generic data structures and algorithms knowledge is not “just for the interview” – but something that you’d likely find yourself reaching for when working at fast-growing, innovative tech companies.
3. Tighten up the text. Once the opening and the closing are clear, I go through the article to tighten up the text, make sentences shorter, and fix any grammatical issues.
In the past, I used Hemingway Editor to spot overly complex sentences. I would then proceed to make them shorter and easier to read. Over time, I learned to write more clear sentences myself:
Making text easier to read with Hemingway Editor: before and after
I also use Grammarly to catch spelling, and grammar issues, and sometimes take suggestions the tool gives – though I just as frequently reject them.
An editor not only makes your writing more clear, but it’s a fantastic way to learn on how you can improve it. I would not recommend an editor for every blog post: but hire one if you’re serious about wanting to write better. My editor is Dominic Grover and I could not be happier with how he helps me write better:
9. Publish
Pressing the button to make my writing live is one I like to delay. However, I’ve always found that done is better than perfect. Most of my blog posts go out after light edits, and I set it live.
10. Feedback
For most of my early posts, I got no feedback, and probably very few readers. However, as soon as I start to get feedback, I often go back and tweak my writing based on what people say.
The most frequent feedback I used to get was on typos. I sometimes do get corrections, and additional ideas, mostly as emails or messages – both are more common since more people read what I have written.
11. Audience
Writing and people reading your writing is a chicken-and-egg problem. When you start out, there’s no one to read. When there’s no one to read, there’s little point in writing.
As uncomfortable as it is, you do need to share your writing to where interested people could be. This can be social media like Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. It can be groups like subreddits, Hacker News and other tech forums. It can be chat groups on Discord or Slack.
Self-promotion is something you’ll need to be wary of on forums: if you only join these communities for the sake of sending a link to your article, you will – rightfully – not be welcome at these places.
This is where it’s helpful when you start to write for yourself: you have less of a pressure to want to get people you don’t know read your writing.
12. Again. And again. And again.
The hard thing about writing is not on publishing an article: anyone can do this. The hard part is doing the writing on a consistent basis.
I found that setting up dedicated time – an hour each week, on a weekday – helped me get into the habit of writing. This is how I wrote most of the posts on this blog.
Over time, some posts resonated with people, while others saw very little interest. Still, every piece helped one person: me. Every time I published, I had the satisfaction that I’ve understood or explained something for myself – and maybe, for others as well.
And this satisfaction is what gave me the motivation to do it again. And again. And again.
These five simple rules can help you bring your content to the widest audience possible.
Everyone on the internet wants to go viral. In this column, I explain exactly how I’ve done this in four markets over 15 years. I define “going viral” as creating content that cumulatively gets more than a million views in a month or a single piece of content that gets over a million views in a year. Here are my four projects that qualify:
Borg War. While I am primarily a journalist, I am an animation hobbyist. In 2006, using a technique called machinima, I created the feature-length Star Trek fan film “Borg War.” (BusinessWeek said it was “better than Star Trek: Nemesis.”) Borg War has gotten more than four million downloads and streams. (You can still find it on YouTube.)
Sales Machine. In 2007, I started writing the blog “Sales Machine” for CBSNews.com, a site targeted at the general business audience. Sales Machine covered sales, politics, marketing, corporate culture, etc., with the line employee in mind. By 2010, it was earning about a million views a month.
Sales Source. In 2011, I started writing the column you’re reading right now, which is, of course, on Inc.com, a site targeted at entrepreneurs and managers. Until the pandemic (and an injury that cost me the use of my right hand), Sales Source was often achieved over a million views a month. In Oct. 2019, it hit 1.9 million views.
[TikTok Project]. I will write about this project in detail soon, but for now I’m keeping it under wraps. (Trust me, it’s worth some wait.) Suffice it to say that, despite an audience about which I knew nothing and a platform about which I knew nothing, within two months my TikTok project got three million views in one month.
What I’ve learned through experience is that there are five essential rules if you want your content to go viral:
1. Learn how your audience thinks.
This should go without saying, but 99 percent of the marketing content that comes out of the business world is “inside looking out.” It starts with “we’ve got this thing we to sell” so let’s figure out how to persuade people to buy it. This is especially true inside small firms with a “build a better mouse trap” sensibility.
Appealing to a wide audience means knowing what motivates that audience, how they feel, and what interests them, and only then considering how to communicate with them. Hint: If you have to force your audience to watch your content (for example, YouTube ads) to get to the content they really want, you’ve failed utterly.
With Borg War, for example, I worked with a team of four friends–avid Star Trek fans–who reviewed the “dailies” and provided me advice and ideas, while keeping me on target so that I was providing the right kind of “fan service.”
2. Create something original and relevant.
Based upon what you learned about your target audience, create something that they haven’t seen before. Since everyone lives in constant information overload, only something new and different cuts through the noise.
With Sales Source, for example, I have frequently called “bullsh*t” on the shibboleths of the modern workplace, like the open-plan office, and the insanity that is PowerPoint. Most online business writers were kowtowing to these sacred cows. By telling the hard truths, I acquired readers tired of the same old, same old.
3. Focus exclusively on content quality.
A lot of people on social media think that it’s a numbers game, that the more content you post the more likely it is that something will go viral. Sometimes that happens, but unless you’re already creating quality work, and can continue to do so after some of it goes viral, going viral is just your 15 minutes of fame.
I agonize over my content. I do a lot of rewriting and reworking. I would much rather have one solid interesting piece of content than 10 that are just so-so. When I’m working in animation, for example, I will often watch a clip or episode 30 times, re-editing until I’m not just satisfied, but utterly certain it’s my best work.
4. Interact with every commenter.
Going viral and staying viral is all about building a community, which means having ongoing conversations with your audience. Never let a comment go on answered. If it’s praise, thank them. If it’s critical, argue with them. If they’re trolls, make fools of them.
Staying atop your comments can be a burden, but it’s absolutely crucial to going viral and maintaining virality. With Borg War, for instance, I interacted with hundreds of fans on dozens of forums. Similarly, with Sales Source, I’ve often sometimes spent one or two hours a day on the @Sales_Source Twitter account.
5. Be obsessive about numbers.
Finally, and most important, check your numbers the moment new numbers are available. Think about those numbers and what they mean. Why did one post do twice as much traffic as another? Why did one post get a hundred comments but the next a thousand?
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure” (as they say) and you can’t create content that people want to view unless you know exactly how many people are viewing it, why they are viewing it, and how you can replicate successes and avoid failures.
NOTE: If you’re interested in having me help you figure out how to make your own project go viral, I do a very limited number of consulting sessions. Sign up on my personal website.
