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London Content Marketing Tips: Our Top 3 Free SEO tools for getting your branded content seen

29th October 2015 by miranda Leave a Comment

Now we really have set ourselves a content marketing agency challenge here. We wanted to compile a list of some great free SEO tools that are out there to help all types of online businesses. The trouble is, the internet is awash with them. So we decided to try and list our top 3. If you want your branded content to get seen, search engine optimization is a must. Enjoy!

Mozbar

Moz is a fantastic resource and starting point for those who are new to SEO, and their free Mozbar is a handy little download for your browser. For SEO research and analyzing competitors sites, it’s a great start. By simply downloading it, you can view statistics such as domain authority, keyword ranking difficulty and other insightful on-page elements Not only do they provide great free tools such as the Mozbar, but Moz’s “how-to” guides are so useful for the novice SEO. Their beginners guide to SEO is a must-read.

Screaming Frog

It’s ok. No actual frogs are harmed here, but it is a more technical SEO tool. So we will leave this one to those who have a bit of experience in the field. Nonetheless, it’s an invaluable tool to crawl your site. With their free SEO spider, you can crawl up to 500 URLS for free, helping to diagnose broken links, errors, show redirects and many other SEO issues that can affect your rankings. If your branded content is sitting on a hidden page, no one is going to see it! Check out the Screaming Frog tool here .

Remove’em

This is a top choice if you’ve handed your SEO over to different companies in the past, and are a bit unsure of dodgy links. The last thing you want is for it to be made harder to find your branded content due to search engine penalties. To lessen your chance of getting penalised by Google, this backlink removal tool cleverly looks at your site to check for anything that might raise a red flag. All you do is type in your URL. Simple.

Branded content & the Infographic…is it here to stay?

28th October 2015 by miranda Leave a Comment

The internet and print media alike is awash with a particular type of branded content. You can’t help but notice the prevalence of infographics absolutely everywhere. A Content Marketing Agency will sing their praises and uses, and you can’t turn on the news or open a paper without seeing one. But the question is, are they a flash in the pan? We want to ask: are they genuinely useful pieces of branded content?

Because infographics are having a bit of a seminal moment, people are falling over themselves to create them. ‘Employ a London content marketing agency and get publishing’ seems to be the order of the day. However this means that there is an influx of people getting it wrong! Infographics are not always something that can be rushed out in a few days to keep up with the marketing Jones’.

Yet again we come back to that age-old marketing tool: storytelling. If your infographic isn’t telling a compelling story, don’t bother creating it. If your infographic isn’t sharing genuinely useful information, don’t bother creating it. If your infographic isn’t targeting anyone in particular, don’t bother creating it.

Infographics, more than other types of branded content, need a very clear focus. Their beauty is their simplicity, and their ability to communicate complex data through imagery. But achieving this is no simple feat. It has to be user-friendly, pretty, AND interesting.

If made well they can take the world by storm. If you didn’t see the ‘What happens one hour after drinking a can of coke’ infographic you must have been living under a rock. It’s a great example of an infographic done well: it’s simple, contains shocking info, and applies to so many of us. Done well, infographics will continue to entertain and inform. But as marketers we need to question the quality and audience first.

Does your branded content tell a story?

27th October 2015 by miranda Leave a Comment

Storytelling is undoubtedly a massive part of our culture. From a young age we are fed on fairy tales and riddles, they help us learn and understand people, and it’s an essential part of being human. Stories teach us about morality, entertainment and they ultimately educate us. Here at Word Wide, we don’t approach storytelling in the same way as any old content marketing agency. We think that storytelling lies at the very heart of what we do, and not just branded content, but marketing in general.

Think about your favourite ever branded content campaign, and what you love about it. It might be the most recent John Lewis Christmas advert, an infographic you’ve seen on pinterest or simply a clever illustration. What we can guarantee will unite them all, is a story. If you remove the story element, you remove the meaning and the very essence of the campaign.

Most stories can be stripped out the the very bare basics. In fact, we like to make a little London content marketing agency game out of it by naming our favourite stories and attributing them to a template (yes we are content geeks!). Jung-inspired psychologist Christopher Brooker wrote a fantastic book entitled “The Seven Basic Plots” and it really is worth a look. He claims there are 7 all pervasive plots and that all stories adhere to this. Examples of plots are: “rags to riches”, “voyage and return”, and “overcoming the monster”. And they really are ubiquitous.

So, why bother giving your branded content a strong story? To put it simply, it will be more relatable, more memorable, and therefore more shareable. When reviewing your campaigns, if you cannot put your finger on a definable story, try and find one. And remember to do this at the planning stage next time. It’s as true of infographics as it is videos. Consumers crave stories, and as content marketers they are our secret weapon, use it wisely!

Make your email subject lines work harder to promote your branded content

26th October 2015 by miranda Leave a Comment

As tempting as it might be to put ‘Click here for immediate free cash delivery’ as your email subject line, as a London content marketing agency, we would not recommend it. You want something that will not only drive open rates of your emails, but encourage users to explore your site and your branded content. So taking some time out to revise your sales email subject lines is advisable.

Firstly, you want to make sure that it doesn’t trigger the interest of your potential customers’ spam filters. To do this you need to avoid words such as “free”, “help” and “reminder”. We could go on, but this blog post pretty much has it covered with an exhaustive list. And any decent email service will have a spam checker tool.

Another tip is to include a question in the subject line. If you can arouse a person’s curiosity, all the better. People love questions, and most find it odd to see a question without an answer. If they’re as nosy as we are, they’ll click ‘open’ to find out the answer.

Make sure you experiment too, A/B testing is your best friend in this game. Test the same email content with different email subject lines to track the success of both. Any Content Marketing Agency will agree – this is the kind of evidential data that will keep your email strategy in check.

A great tip is to use localisation tools to make your subject line more personal. If you can include details of their location too, all the better. I still can’t help but open an email that exclaims my name and city in the subject line.

Whatever you do, make sure you keep reviewing and testing. If a certain email subject line doesn’t work, don’t spam the world until it gets results. But do remember it’s not just subject lines that affect your open rates, there are many other factors. Maybe we will write a blog about them one day, watch this space…

Disciplines