Blogs, Videos, Social Media = SEO
Outside of a viral event, nothing pumps your SEO more than the continual offer of fresh, online content. By writing a consistent blog that promotes those around you, sometimes even the direct competition, a bedrock for longevity and complimentary partner-driven insulation can be created. We've all heard the phrase, "You are what you eat?" When it comes to powering up your website with increased and more-qualified visitation, this adage holds true as, just like the food we consume and which helps to define us, search engine spiders love to consume new material, both written and visual. Search engines rank your site higher the more original and consistent of material you serve up.
Perfect as a vehicle for creating exposure and growing your customer base, a blog resides on your website in non-interruptive fashion. Your blog should not be a commercial page for your product or service; that’s what the other pages are for. Rather, visitors will consume your blog content often in a much more willing fashion, frequently clicking on links well outside your website only to arrive back there, getting exposure to your brand while consuming the blog material. Whichever way your visitors do arrive at your website, the goal is to have your blog become a source for legitimate content. We will help you craft a set of story content categories that appeal to your target market user base and, through consistent writing and production of supporting graphics, we’ll help you keep them returning.
Don't people who like outdoor hiking shoes also enjoy reading stories about great mountain trails? Are shoppers who buy high fashion clothing and accessories also into where the best chefs are performing their craft? Is a great new book featuring history, hard science, and adventure appealing to someone on a site looking for downhill skis? Maybe, maybe not, but the aim is to create stories that hit multiple buyer personas while also lofting up partners most likely to push you within their own social circles.
Having written thousands of blog entries for myriad companies, we know what we’re doing here at DM3. Depending on the company, product, service, and strategic goals, there is an ideal type of content and posting frequency that can be designed to provide multiple opportunities to your company. Become a consistent source of useful and/or entertaining information about your industry, particularly those COMPLIMENTARY to your business, . Let us help you craft the perfect recipe to win.
The correct balance of “outside stories” vs. those considered “self-promoting” is critical in blogging. The rule of 85/15 works here with 85% of your material targeting external content, whereas the other 15% can be more product/brand centric. Image Courtesy: Aleksey Kuprikov
Balance and Tapping into Outside Circles
With the goal of increasing qualified traffic to your website and boosting sales, a balanced mix of complementary and product-centric postings should exist. The ratio of 85/15 makes good sense in that only 15% (or less) of your blog’s content should directly address your company’s products or services. The remainder of the content you offer should highlight complimentary products, services, indsutry elements, best practices, and more. The functional aspect here is to prop up other, non-competing entities and tap into their respective social media circles. As it goes, when you give press to an on-brand, complimentary entity, they are provoked to circulate and push the story because it features their business. The clear upside is that when those stories percolate on the web, each click leads back to your website. Known as a “backlink,” these redirecting links are one of the gold standards of SEO. Here people are clicking, willingly, to come to your site for material they’ve decided they want or need. You’re giving it to them. They appreciate it.
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Incredible discoveries are made at depth. In the world of SEO, depth is everything (well almost). Image Courtesy: Christan Vergara
How Deep Do We Go?
Turns out the optimal blog length is around 2,400 words. Yet, a blog posting can vary from just a few paragraphs introducing a great, new, complementary product, to a deeply-researched and in-depth article that takes weeks or more to complete. Deeper articles may include a site visit, interviews, photography, etc. No question Red Bull goes full-guns blazing when leveraging their blog and overall social media prowess. So the road can go low or high, and the results generally match the efforts. However, a company is not required to go “full enchilada” to bolster its conversions and sales. Instead, targeted and (as noted) helpful content can be made within a budget and promoted to build your company’s brand further. - Want to deep dive more on Content Depth? Check out this recent blog posting titled Content Depth: 10 Words or 10,000? right here on our site!
How Often Do We Post?
Everyone agrees that every blog post you put out there is an opportunity to bring new people to your website. Each post is also an opportunity to increase your website’s rank in Google and other search engines. Benchmarks show that Google favors fresh content. This is not to be mistaken for updating existing pages. Older pages are favored in Google results, however, a website that has new content weekly is considered more ‘fresh’. It is logical in a way, Google wants to favor websites that have up-to-date information, and it is natural for a website that is updated often with new blog posts and other material to be considered more relevant. In fact, Google adds a timestamp to all the indexed pages, which shows in the search results and is a testimony to how important freshness is to Google.
Posting often means that your domain gets more relevant. However, if your posting frequency drops, your relevancy and elevated page rank is short-lived unless you have some strong, pre-indexed material that has been resident on your site for over 2 years. So, down to brass tacks. What is that optimal number of blog postings per week? Most experts say at least two posts per week is needed to get any traction on your blog. However, opinions vary. Read more about SEO Blog Posting Frequency in our blog here.
Goals in Customer Engagement
Our goals are simple:
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Learn. The first goal of engagement in helping your company’s product or service create buzz is for us to learn all about it. What are the strategic goals? What makes things tick? From here, we can begin to imagine a blog strategy that will truly advance things.
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Design. As your brand and goals are understood, it’s time to design. In this phase, we’ll work with you on building your blog, and overall social media approach, to best fit your desired growth plans. We’ll look at how others have done it, what you like and don’t like, and we’ll create mock-ups. Focus groups may assist in getting the perfect look and content plan in place.
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Build. With the design in hand, it’s time to begin building. During this phase, we will code your new blog or work directly with (or become) your web designer to translate the new design into your site. We will also begin writing your blog stories, creating a video or two, and stockpiling some up-front content before launch so your blog appears “legit” when we flip things ON.
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Launch and Repeat. With sufficient launch content built, we’ll target and hit a launch date. From here, we’ll turn things ON and work with you to blast out messaging to complimentary partners, customers, and your social media in general. We’ll tap the circles of those affected by your stories to get their social engines running on your behalf. We’ll then feed your blog with ongoing content according to the strategic plan. Rinse and repeat!
History
The roots of DM3 go back to the early 1980’s and the beginnings of the personal computer. An early adopter, DM3’s founder, Dan Meyers, began programming on a Commodore 64 computer to create Zork-like games that utilized text and simple, sprite-based graphics. Always a lover of video games, this experience led to Dan becoming a creative writer for the video games industry here he honed his creative writing skills. While working as a writer and game designer, Dan got exposed to 3D modeling.
Founder Dan Meyers is an avid surfer, snowboarder and (very) former big wheel rider. So the one time he might be hard to pin down is when the waves are pumping or if there’s been a fresh dump of white stuff… Otherwise, super reliable! ;)
After securing an $11M publishing deal for a video game of his own design, Dan moved onto a new chapter by designing and patenting a water sport product called the WakeKite. Later selling the patent and invention to world water skiing and wakeboarding leader HO Sports, Dan became the global brand manager for WakeKite at HO Sports where he learned the ins and outs of product promotion on a world scale. While still at HO, Dan kept inventing, which led to another patent on a physics-based product called the ShadowBox 3D Sports Recorder. The ShadowBox allowed for athletes to measure such things as jump height, spin rate, g-forces, and more. As co-patent holder and brand/product manager on the ShadowBox, Dan got the chance to travel around the globe testing “the box” on myriad sports and being a judge for big air contests. Too much fun that! Working with world championship athletes, along with the U.S. Olympic Winter Sports Training Center in Park City, Utah, exposure for ShadowBox picked up and created a great exit for HO Sports.
Following the successful sale of ShadowBox, and now even deeper into global marketing, copywriting, 3D design, and microelectronics, Dan began consulting as an independent contractor for a variety of clients under the banner of DM3 Consulting. Leveraging his 3D modeling and brand management skills, Dan secured the gig of sole industrial designer for asurion.com’s home products skunkworks in Silicon Valley. The world’s largest electronics insurance company (see them on amazon.com), Dan was set with multiple 3D printers and a solid budget to learn the ins and outs of product design. This great gig ran for five years, only ending when the pandemic disrupted supply chains and asurion closed their Silicon Valley offices.
All the while and continuing to this day, Dan was flexing his love of writing and visual design through the provision of copywriting, graphic design, video production, and blog writing services to a variety of local, regional, and national clientele.
