It's Content and It's Links – Are We Making SEO Too Complicated?

Posted by AndrewDennis33

Content and links — to successfully leverage search as a marketing channel you need useful content and relevant links.

Many experienced SEOs have run numerous tests and experiments to correlate backlinks with higher rankings, and Google has espoused the importance of “great content” for as long as I can remember.

In fact, a Google employee straight up told us that content and links are two of the three (the other being RankBrain) most important ranking factors in its search algorithm.

So why do we seem to overcomplicate SEO by chasing new trends and tactics, overreacting to fluctuations in rankings, and obsessing over the length of our title tags? SEO is simple — it’s content and it’s links.

Now, this is a simple concept, but it is much more nuanced and complex to execute well. However, I believe that by getting back to basics and focusing on these two pillars of SEO we can all spend more time doing the work that will be most impactful, creating a better, more connected web, and elevating SEO as a practice within the marketing realm.

To support this movement, I want to provide you with strategic, actionable takeaways that you can leverage in your own content marketing and link building campaigns. So, without further ado, let’s look at how you can be successful in search with content and links.

Building the right content

As the Wu-Tang Clan famously said, “Content rules everything around me, C.R.E.A.M,” …well, it was something like that. The point is, everything in SEO begins and ends with content. Whether it’s a blog post, infographic, video, in-depth guide, interactive tool, or something else, content truly rules everything around us online.

Content attracts and engages visitors, building positive associations with your brand and inspiring them to take desired actions. Content also helps search engines better understand what your website is about and how they should rank your pages within their search results.

So where do you start with something as wide-reaching and important as a content strategy? Well, if everything in SEO begins and ends with content, then everything in content strategy begins and ends with keyword research.

Proper keyword research is the difference between a targeted content strategy that drives organic visibility and simply creating content for the sake of creating content. But don’t just take my word for it — check out this client project where keyword research was executed after a year of publishing content that wasn’t backed by keyword analysis:

(Note: Each line represents content published within a given year, not total organic sessions of the site.)

In 2018, we started creating content based on keyword opportunities. The performance of that content has quickly surpassed (in terms of organic sessions) the older pages that were created without strategic research.

Start with keyword research

The concept of keyword research is straightforward — find the key terms and phrases that your audience uses to find information related to your business online. However, the execution of keyword research can be a bit more nuanced, and simply starting is often the most difficult part.

The best place to start is with the keywords that are already bringing people to your site, which you can find within Google Search Console.

Beyond the keywords that already bring people to your website, a baseline list of seed keywords can help you expand your keyword reach.

Seed keywords are the foundational terms that are related to your business and brand.

As a running example, let’s use Quip, a brand that sells oral care products. Quip’s seed keywords would be:

• [toothbrush]
• [toothpaste]
• [toothbrush set]
• [electric toothbrush]
• [electric toothbrush set]
• [toothbrush subscription]

These are some of the most basic head terms related to Quip’s products and services. From here, the list could be expanded, using keyword tools such as Moz’s Keyword Explorer, to find granular long-tail keywords and other related terms.

Expanded keyword research and analysis

The first step in keyword research and expanding your organic reach is to identify current rankings that can and should be improved.

Here are some examples of terms Moz’s Keyword Explorer reports Quip has top 50 rankings for:

• [teeth whitening]
• [sensitive teeth]
• [whiten teeth]
• [automatic toothbrush]
• [tooth sensitivity]
• [how often should you change your toothbrush]

These keywords represent “near-miss” opportunities for Quip, where it ranks on page two or three. Optimization and updates to existing pages could help Quip earn page one rankings and substantially more traffic.

For example, here are the first page results for [how often should you change your toothbrush]:

As expected, the results here are hyper-focused on answering the question how often a toothbrush needs to be changed, and there is a rich snippet that answers the question directly.

Now, look at Quip’s page where we can see there is room for improvement in answering searcher intent:

The title of the page isn’t optimized for the main query, and a simple title change could help this page earn more visibility. Moz reports 1.7k–2.9k monthly search volume for [how often should you change your toothbrush]:

This is a stark contrast to the volume reported by Moz for [why is a fresh brush head so important] which is “no data” (which usually means very small):

Quip’s page is already ranking on page two for [how often should you change your toothbrush], so optimizing the title could help the page crack the top ten.

Furthermore, the content on the page is not optimized either:

Rather than answering the question of how often to change a toothbrush concisely (like the page that has earned the rich snippet), the content is closer to ad copy. Putting a direct, clear answer to this question at the beginning of the content could help this page rank better.

And that’s just one query and one page!

Keyword research should uncover these types of opportunities, and with Moz’s Keyword Explorer you can also find ideas for new content through “Keyword Suggestions.”

Using Quip as an example again, we can plug in their seed keyword [toothbrush] and get multiple suggestions (MSV = monthly search volume):

• [toothbrush holder] – MSV: 6.5k–9.3k
• [how to properly brush your teeth] – MSV: 851–1.7k
• [toothbrush cover] – MSV: 851–1.7k
• [toothbrush for braces] – MSV: 501–850
• [electric toothbrush holder] – MSV: 501–850
• [toothbrush timer] – MSV: 501–850
• [soft vs medium toothbrush] – MSV: 201–500
• [electric toothbrush for braces] – MSV: 201–500
• [electric toothbrush head holder] – MSV: 101–200
• [toothbrush delivery] – MSV: 101–200

Using this method, we can extrapolate one seed keyword into ten more granular and related long-tail keywords — each of which may require a new page.

This handful of terms generates a wealth of content ideas and different ways Quip could address pain points and reach its audience.

Another source for keyword opportunities and inspiration are your competitors. For Quip, one of its strongest competitors is Colgate, a household name brand. Moz demonstrates the difference in market position with its "Competitor Overlap" tool:

Although many of Colgate’s keywords aren’t relevant to Quip, there are still opportunities to be gleaned here for Quip. One such example is [sensitive teeth], where Colgate is ranking top five, but Quip is on page two:

While many of the other keywords show Quip is ranking outside of the top 50, this is an opportunity that Quip could potentially capitalize on.

To analyze this opportunity, let’s look at the actual search results first.

It’s immediately clear that the intent here is informational — something to note when we examine Quip’s page. Also, scrolling down we can see that Colgate has two pages ranking on page one:

One of these pages is from a separate domain for hygienists and other dental professionals, but it still carries the Colgate brand and further demonstrates Colgate’s investment into this query, signaling this is a quality opportunity.

The next step for investigating this opportunity is to examine Colgate’s ranking page and check if it’s realistic for Quip to beat what they have. Here is Colgate’s page:

This page is essentially a blog post:

If this page is ranking, it’s reasonable to believe that Quip could craft something that would be at least as good of a result for the query, and there is room for improvement in terms of design and formatting.

One thing to note, that is likely helping this page rank is the clear definition of “tooth sensitivity” and signs and symptoms listed on the sidebar:

Now, let’s look at Quip’s page:

This appears to be a blog-esque page as well.

This page offers solid information on sensitive teeth, which matches the queries intent and is likely why the pages ranks on page two. However, the page appears to be targeted at [tooth sensitivity]:

This is another great keyword opportunity for Quip:

However, this should be a secondary opportunity to [sensitive teeth] and should be mixed in to the copy on the page, but not the focal point. Also, the page one results for [tooth sensitivity] are largely the same as those for [sensitive teeth], including Colgate’s page:

So, one optimization Quip could make to the page could be to change some of these headers to include “sensitive teeth” (also, these are all H3s, and the page has no H2s, which isn’t optimal). Quip could draw inspiration from the questions that Google lists in the “People also ask” section of the SERP:

Also, a quick takeaway I had was that Quip’s page does not lead off with a definition of sensitive teeth or tooth sensitivity. We learned from Colgate’s page that quickly defining the term (sensitive teeth) and the associated symptoms could help the page rank better.

These are just a few of the options available to Quip to optimize its page, and as mentioned before, an investment into a sleek, easy to digest design could separate its page from the pack.

If Quip were able to move its page onto the first page of search results for [sensitive teeth], the increase in organic traffic could be significant. And [sensitive teeth] is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg — there is a wealth of opportunity with associated keywords, that Quip would rank well for also:

Executing well on these content opportunities and repeating the process over and over for relevant keywords is how you scale keyword-focused content that will perform well in search and bring more organic visitors.

Google won’t rank your page highly for simply existing. If you want to rank in Google search, start by creating a page that provides the best result for searchers and deserves to rank.

At Page One Power, we’ve leveraged this strategy and seen great results for clients. Here is an example of a client that is primarily focused on content creation and their corresponding growth in organic sessions:

These pages (15) were all published in January, and you can see that roughly one month after publishing, these pages started taking off in terms of organic traffic. This is because these pages are backed by keyword research and optimized so well that even with few external backlinks, they can rank on or near page one for multiple queries.

However, this doesn’t mean you should ignore backlinks and link acquisition. While the above pages rank well without many links, the domain they’re on has a substantial backlink profile cultivated through strategic link building. Securing relevant, worthwhile links is still a major part of a successful SEO campaign.

Earning real links and credibility

The other half of this complicated “it’s content and it’s links” equation is… links, and while it seems straightforward, successful execution is rather difficult — particularly when it comes to link acquisition.

While there are tools and processes that can increase organization and efficiency, at the end of the day link building takes a lot of time and a lot of work — you must manually email real website owners to earn real links. As Matt Cutts famously said (we miss you, Matt!), “Link building is sweat, plus creativity.”

However, you can greatly improve your chances for success with link acquisition if you identify which pages (existing or need to be created) on your site are link-worthy and promote them for links.

Spoiler alert: these are not your “money pages.”

Converting pages certainly have a function on your website, but they typically have limited opportunities when it comes to link acquisition. Instead, you can support these pages — and other content on your site — through internal linking from more linkable pages.

So how do you identify linkable assets? Well, there are some general characteristics that directly correlate with link-worthiness:

• Usefulness — concept explanation, step-by-step guide, collection of resources and advice, etc.
• Uniqueness — a new or fresh perspective on an established topic, original research or data, prevailing coverage of a newsworthy event, etc.
• Entertaining — novel game or quiz, humorous take on a typically serious subject, interactive tool, etc.

Along with these characteristics, you also need to consider the size of your potential linking audience. The further you move down your marketing funnel, the smaller the linking audience size; converting pages are traditionally difficult to earn links to because they serve a small audience of people looking to buy.

Instead, focus on assets that exist at the top of your marketing funnel and serve large audiences looking for information. The keywords associated with these pages are typically head terms that may prove difficult to rank for, but if your content is strong you can still earn links through targeted, manual outreach to relevant sites.

Ironically, your most linkable pages aren’t always the pages that will rank well for you in search, since larger audiences also mean more competition. However, using linkable assets to secure worthwhile links will help grow the authority and credibility of your brand and domain, supporting rankings for your keyword-focused and converting pages.

Going back to our Quip example, we see a page on their site that has the potential to be a linkable asset:

Currently, this page is geared more towards conversions which hurts linkability. However, Quip could easily move conversion-focused elements to another page and internally link from this page to maintain a pathway to conversion while improving link-worthiness.

To truly make this page a linkable asset, Quip would need add depth on the topic of how to brush your teeth and hone in on a more specific audience. As the page currently stands, it is targeted at everybody who brushes, but to make the page more linkable Quip could focus on a specific age group (toddlers, young children, elderly, etc.) or perhaps a profession or group who works odd hours or travels frequently and doesn’t have the convenience of brushing at home. An increased focus on audience will help with linkability, making this page one that shares useful information in a way that is unique and entertaining.

It also happens that [how to properly brush your teeth] was one of the opportunities we identified earlier in our (light) keyword research, so this could be a great opportunity to earn keyword rankings and links!

Putting it all together and simplifying our message

Now before we put it all together and solve SEO once and for all, you might be thinking, “What about technical and on-page SEO?!?”

And to that, I say, well those are just makeu…just kidding!

Technical and on-page elements play a major role in successful SEO and getting these elements wrong can derail the success of any content you create and undermine the equity of the links you secure.

Let’s be clear: if Google can’t crawl your site, you’re not showing up in its search results.

However, I categorize these optimizations under the umbrella of “content” within our content and links formula. If you’re not considering how search engines consume your content, along with human readers, then your content likely won’t perform well in the results of said search engines.

Rather than dive into the deep and complex world of technical and on-page SEO in this post, I recommend reading some of the great resources here on Moz to ensure your content is set up for success from a technical standpoint.

But to review the strategy I’ve laid out here, to be successful in search you need to:

1. Research your keywords and niche – Having the right content for your audience is critical to earning search visibility and business. Before you start creating content or updating existing pages, make sure you take the time to research your keywords and niche to better understand your current rankings and position in the search marketplace.
2. Analyze and expand keyword opportunities – Beyond understanding your current rankings, you also need to identify and prioritize available keyword opportunities. Using tools like Moz you can uncover hidden opportunities with long-tail and related key terms, ensuring your content strategy is targeting your best opportunities.
3. Craft strategic content that serves your search goals – Using keyword analysis to inform content creation, you can build content that addresses underserved queries and helpful guides that attract links. An essential aspect of a successful content plan is balancing keyword-focused content with broader, more linkable content and ensuring you’re addressing both SEO goals.
4. Promote your pages for relevant links – Billions of new pages go live each day, and without proper promotion, even the best pages will be buried in the sea of content online. Strategic promotion of your pages will net you powerful backlinks and extra visibility from your audience.

Again, these concepts seem simple but are quite difficult to execute well. However, by drilling down to the two main factors for search visibility — content and links — you can avoid being overwhelmed or focusing on the wrong priorities and instead put all your efforts into the strategies that will provide the most SEO impact.

However, along with refocusing our own efforts, as SEOs we also need to simplify our message to the uninitiated (or as they’re also known, the other 99% of the population). I know from personal experience how quickly the eyes start to glaze over when I get into the nitty-gritty of SEO, so I typically pivot to focus on the most basic concepts: content and links.

People can wrap their minds around the simple process of creating good pages that answer a specific set of questions and then promoting those pages to acquire endorsements (backlinks). I suggest we embrace this same approach, on a broader scale, as an industry.

When we talk to potential and existing clients, colleagues, executives, etc., let’s keep things simple. If we focus on the two concepts that are the easiest to explain we will get better understanding and more buy-in for the work we do (it also happens that these two factors are the biggest drivers of success).

So go out, shout it from the rooftops — CONTENT AND LINKS — and let’s continue to do the work that will drive positive results for our websites and help secure SEOs rightful seat at the marketing table.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Source: Moz Blog

9 Reports Every SEO Needs: Introducing Custom Report Templates in Moz Pro

Posted by rachelgooodmanmoore

Reporting is central to our jobs as SEOs and helps us to communicate the value of our work to stakeholders and clients alike. Without good reporting, it can be a challenge to illustrate our success in search. We know how important it is — but it can also be painful and clunky.

Am I the only one who moderately dreads what we might call “reporting season?” The timing of that season might vary — based on who you work for, what a reporting cycle looks like, and other factors — but ultimately it’s the time of year when we have to get our ducks in a row and report to our stakeholders: not only on the SEO progress that we’ve made, but what that progress equates to in terms of real-world implications.

For me, one of the biggest time-black-holes when building reports is the fact that I’m reaching to collect data from disparate sources to paint a full picture of my SEO work. I find myself grabbing screenshots from various tools, pulling them into a template that I’ve built, and wishing I had a streamlined process for it all ... then, repeating the exact same data-wild-goose-chase-and-template-building-acrobatics for each site I track. Ugh.

A solution (which I admit I’m a totally biased fan of) has launched in Moz Pro this week. Within a Campaign’s custom reports, we’ve introduced nine custom report templates to help you report on what matters to your stakeholders. Just select a template and dive into the insights.

These templates are rooted in workflows that are popular within the Moz Pro app. Our team also conducted tons of customer interviews to identify what kinds of templates we needed to build. While you can edit templates to suit your individual needs, they come pre-loaded with descriptive insights and data that stands on its own to tell a story. If you have a Medium-level plan or higher, you’ve already got instant access to these templates.

Get started with your templates

Use one of Moz's new report templates to pull together the data you need—depending on exactly what your reader needs to know. Choose from one of our nine most popular templates to tell your SEO story. Here’s what we’ve got:

1. Competitive Analysis Overview Report

The Competitive Analysis Overview Report provides a brief overview of how your site compares to your competitors. It highlights competitive metrics like search visibility and compares your site’s featured snippets, link profiles, and tracked keywords to your competitors. As an overview report, it will help quickly show stakeholders how your site compares to your competitors.

2. Full Competitive Analysis Report

The Full Competitive Analysis Report gives a complete and thorough view of how your site stacks up against the competition. More in-depth and detailed than the aforementioned overview report, this one is perfect for stakeholders who want to know all the details about your SEO competition. It highlights competitive metrics, as well as in-depth comparisons across links, keyword performance, Domain Authority, and more.

3. Campaign Overview Report

The Campaign Overview Report is perfect to provide to any team members or clients who want exactly that—an overview of your site’s Campaign. The report includes a view of your Campaign dashboard, Search Visibility, and a look at site health, link data, and traffic.

4. Link Analysis Report

The Link Analysis Report is ideal to pass along to any stakeholder who is particularly interested in link data. It provides an in-depth look at your own site’s links, as well as how your site stacks up against its competitors when it comes to link profiles. This report includes many important link metrics, including discovered & lost links, linking domains, anchor text, Domain Authority, and more.

5. Rankings Analysis Report

The Rankings Analysis Report will be great for anyone who is curious about your site’s ranking performance, especially when it comes to top keywords. The report highlights a high-level overview of keyword performance, and then digs in to best- and worst-performing keywords, Search Visibility, traffic, and keyword opportunities.

6. Ranking Opportunities Report

The Ranking Opportunities Report is ideal for the stakeholder in your life who wants to know what the next steps might be for your keyword strategy. This report identifies some of the top keyword opportunities pulled in from Keyword Explorer and your Campaign, based on your site’s current performance. By highlighting keywords your site is already ranking for that you aren’t tracking, and opportunities to rank for new keywords, this is an easy report to pass along for consideration around future keyword strategy.

7. Full Site Audit Report

The Full Site Audit Report provides a very thorough, in-depth look at your site’s health. This report is ideal for any stakeholder or client who wants to know precisely how the site is doing and what outstanding work still needs to be done. Based on your site crawl in Moz Pro, this highlights actionable insights such as new and critical issues, crawler warnings, redirect issues, and metadata/content issues.

8. Quick Site Audit Report

The Quick Site Audit Report is a briefer version of the aforementioned Full Site Audit Report. This report is easily digestible for any stakeholders who just want a high-level view of your site’s health and link profile. It highlights top-level crawl metrics, new site crawl issues, and quick link metrics.

9. Search Visibility Report



The Search Visibility Report is ideal for a client or boss who just wants to know the answer to the age-old question: “How visible is my site?” This report provides a quick overview of your Moz Campaign before diving into trending search visibility and a comparison against competitors. Provide a clear answer to the question of how visible your site is with this concise report.

Try custom report templates now!

Feeling ready to jump into year-end reporting? We’re looking forward to your feedback. How do the new templates fit into your reporting workflows? Got other ideas on how we can continue to improve your reporting? Please feel free to share in the comments!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Source: Moz Blog

The Content Distribution Playbook - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by rosssimmonds

If you're one of the many marketers that shares your content on Facebook, Twitter, and Linked before calling it good and moving on, this Whiteboard Friday is for you. In a super actionable follow-up to his MozCon 2019 presentation, Ross Simmonds reveals how to go beyond the mediocre when it comes to your content distribution plan, reaching new audiences in just the right place at the right time.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

What's going on, Whiteboard Friday fans? My name is Ross Simmonds from Foundation Marketing, and today we're going to be talking about how to develop a content distribution playbook that will drive meaningful and measurable results for your business. 

What is content distribution and why does it matter?

First and foremost, content distribution is the thing that you need to be thinking about if you want to combat the fact that it is becoming harder and harder than ever before to stand out as a content marketer, as a storyteller, and as a content creator in today's landscape. It's getting more and more difficult to rank for content. It's getting more and more difficult to get organic reach through our social media channels, and that is why content distribution is so important.

You are facing a time when organic reach on social continues to drop more and more, where the ability to rank is becoming even more difficult because you're competing against more ad space. You're competing against more featured snippets. You're competing against more companies. Because content marketers have screamed at the top of their lungs that content is king and the world has listened, it is becoming more and more difficult to stand out amongst the noise.

Most marketers have embraced this idea because for years we screamed, "Content is king, create more content,"and that is what the world has done. Most marketers start by just creating content, hoping that traffic will come, hoping that reach will come, and hoping that as a result of them creating content that profits will follow. In reality, the profits never come because they miss a significant piece of the puzzle, which is content distribution.

In today's video, we're going to be talking about how you can distribute your content more effectively across a few different channels, a few different strategies, and how you can take your content to the next level. 

There are two things that you can spend when it comes to content distribution: 

1. You can spend time, 
2. or you can spend money. 

In today's video, we're going to talk about exactly how you can distribute your content so when you write that blog post, you write that landing page, when you create that e-book, you create that infographic, whatever resource you've developed, you can ensure that that content is reaching the right people on the right channel at the right time.

◷: Owned channels

So how can you do it? We all have heard of owned channels. Owned channels are things that you own as a business, as a brand, as an organization. These are things that you can do without question probably today. 

Email marketing

For example, email marketing, it's very likely that you have an email list of some sort. You can distribute your content to those people. 

In-app notifications

Let's say you have a website that offers people a solution or a service directly inside of the site. Say it's software as a service or something of that nature. If people are logging in on a regular basis to access your product, you can use in-app notifications to let those people know that you've launched a blog post. Or better yet, if you have a mobile app of any sort, you can do the same thing. You can use your app to let people know that you just launched a new piece of content.

Social channels

You have social media channels. Let's say you have Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. Share that content to your heart's desire on those channels as well. 

On-site banner

If you have a website, you can update an on-site banner, at the top or in the bottom right, that is letting people know who visit your site that you have a new piece of content. Let them know. They want to know that you're creating new content. So why not advise them that you have done such?

Sales outreach

If you have a sales team of any sort, let's say you're in B2B and you have a sales team, one of the most effective ways is to empower your sales team, to communicate to your sales team that you have developed a new piece of content so they can follow up with leads, they can nurture those existing relationships and even existing customers to let them know that a new piece of content has gone live. That one-to-one connection can be huge. 

◷: Social media / other channels

So when you've done all of that, what else can you do? You can go into social media. You can go into other channels. Again, you can spend time distributing your content into these places where your audience is spending time as well. 

Social channels and groups

So if you have a Twitter account, you can send out tweets. If you have a Facebook page, of course you can put up status updates.

If you have a LinkedIn page, you can put up a status update as well. These three things are typically what most organizations do in that Phase 2, but that's not where it ends. You can go deeper. You can do more. You can go into Facebook groups, whether as a page or as a human, and share your content into these communities as well. You can let them know that you've published a new piece of research and you would love for them to check it out.

Or you're in these groups and you're looking and waiting and looking for somebody to ask a question that your blog post, your research has answered, and then you respond to that question with the content that you've developed. Or you do the same exact thing in a LinkedIn group. LinkedIn groups are an awesome opportunity for you to go in and start seeding your content as well.

Medium

Or you go to Medium.com. You repurpose the content that you've developed. You launch it on Medium.com as well. There's an import function on Medium where you can import your content, get a canonical link directly to your site, and you can share that on Medium as well. Medium.com is a great distribution channel, because you can seed that content to publications as well.

When your content is going to these publications, they already have existing subscribers, and those subscribers get notified that there's a new piece being submitted by you. When they see it, that's a new audience that you wouldn't have reached before using any of those owned channels, because these are people who you wouldn't have had access to before. So you want to take advantage of that as well.

Keep in mind you don't always have to upload even the full article. You can upload a snippet and then have a CTA at the bottom, a call to action driving people to the article on your website. 

LinkedIn video

You can use LinkedIn video to do the same thing. Very similar concept. Imagine you have a LinkedIn video. You look into the camera and you say to your connections, "Hey, everyone, we just launched a new research piece that is breaking down X, Y, and Z, ABC. I would love for you to check it out. Check the link below."

If you created that video and you shared it on your LinkedIn, your connections are going to see this video, and it's going to break their pattern of what they typically see on LinkedIn. So when they see it, they're going to engage, they're going to watch that video, they're going to click the link, and you're going to get more reach for the content that you developed in the past. 

Slack communities

Slack communities are another great place to distribute your content. Slack isn't just a great channel to build internal culture and communicate as an internal team.

There are actual communities, people who are passionate about photography, people who are passionate about e-commerce, people who are passionate about SEO. There are Slack communities today where these people are gathering to talk about their passions and their interests, and you can do the same thing that you would do in Facebook groups or LinkedIn groups in these various Slack communities. 

Instagram / Facebook stories

Instagram stories and Facebook stories, awesome, great channel for you to also distribute your content. You can add a link to these stories that you're uploading, and you can simply say, "Swipe up if you want to get access to our latest research." Or you can design a graphic that will say, "Swipe up to get our latest post." People who are following you on these channels will swipe up. They'll land on your article, they'll land on your research, and they'll consume that content as well. 

LinkedIn Pulse

LinkedIn Pulse, you have the opportunity now to upload an article directly to LinkedIn, press Publish, and again let it soar. You can use the same strategies that I talked about around Medium.com on LinkedIn, and you can drive results. 

Quora

Quora, it's like a question-and-answer site, like Yahoo Answers back in the day, except with a way better design. You can go into Quora, and you can share just a native link and tag it with relevant content, relevant topics, and things of that nature. Or you can find a few questions that are related to the topic that you've covered in your post, in your research, whatever asset you developed, and you can add value to that person who asked that question, and within that value you make a reference to the link and the article that you developed in the past as well.

SlideShare

SlideShare, one of OGs of B2B marketing. You can go to SlideShare, upload a presentation version of the content that you've already developed. Let's say you've written a long blog post. Why not take the assets within that blog post, turn them into a PDF, a SlideShare presentation, upload them there, and then distribute it through that network as well? Once you have those SlideShare presentations put together, what's great about it is you can take those graphics and you can share them on Twitter, you can share them on Facebook, LinkedIn, you can put them into Medium.com, and distribute them further there as well.

Forums

You can go into forums. Let's think about it. If your audience is spending time in a forum communicating about something, why not go into these communities and into these forums and connect with them on a one-to-one basis as well? There's a huge opportunity in forums and communities that exist online, where you can build trust and you can seed your content into these communities where your audience is spending time.

A lot of people think forums are dead. They could never be more alive. If you type in your audience, your industry forums, I promise you you'll probably come across something that will surprise you as an opportunity to seed your content. 

Reddit communities

Reddit communities, a lot of marketers get the heebie-jeebies when I talk about Reddit. They're all like, "Marketers on Reddit? That doesn't work. Reddit hates marketing." I get it.

I understand what you're thinking. But what they actually hate is the fact that marketers don't get Reddit. Marketers don't get the fact that Redditors just want value. If you can deliver value to people using Reddit, whether it's through a post or in the comments, they will meet you with happiness and joy. They will be grateful of the fact that you've added value to their communities, to their subreddits, and they will reward you with upvotes, with traffic and clicks, and maybe even a few leads or a customer or two in the process.

Do not ignore Reddit as being the site that you can't embrace. Whether you're B2B or B2C, Redditors can like your content. Redditors will like your content if you go in with value first. 

Imgur

Sites like Imgur, another great distribution channel. Take some of those slides that you developed in the past, upload them to Imgur, and let them sing there as well.

There are way more distribution channels and distribution techniques that you can use that go beyond even what I've described here. But these just a few examples that show you that the power of distribution doesn't exist just in a couple posts. It exists in actually spending the time, taking the time to distribute your stories and distribute your content across a wide variety of different channels.

$: Paid marketing

That's spending time. You can also spend money through paid marketing. Paid marketing is also an opportunity for any brand to distribute their stories. 

Remarketing

First and foremost, you can use remarketing. Let's talk about that email list that you've already developed. If you take that email list and you run remarketing ads to those people on Facebook, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, you can reach those people and get them engaged with new content that you've developed.

Let's say somebody is already visiting your page. People are visiting your website. They're visiting your content. Why not run remarketing ads to those people who already demonstrate some type of interest to get them back on your site, back engaged with your content, and tell your story to them as well? Another great opportunity is if you've leveraged video in any way, you can do remarketing ads on Facebook to people who have watched 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 20 seconds, whatever it may be to your content as well.

Quora ads

Then one of the opportunities that is definitely underrated is the fact that Quora now offers advertising as well. You can run ads on Quora to people who are asking or looking at questions related to your industry, related to the content that you've developed, and get your content in front of them as well. 

Influencer marketing

Then influencers, you can do sponsored content. You can reach out to these influencers and have them talk about your stories, talk about your content, and have them share it as well on behalf of the fact that you've developed something new and something that is interesting.

Think differently & rise above mediocrity

When I talk about influencer marketing, I talk about Reddit, I talk about SlideShare, I talk about LinkedIn video, I talk about Slack communities, a lot of marketers will quickly say, "I don't think this is for me. I think this is too much. I think that this is too much manual work. I think this is too many niche communities. I think this is a little bit too much for my brand."

I get that. I understand your mindset, but this is what you need to recognize. Most marketers are going through this process. If you think that by distributing your content into the communities that your audience is spending time is just a little bit off brand or it doesn't really suit you, that's what most marketers already think. Most marketers already think that Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn is all they need to do to share their stories, get their content out there, and call it a day.

If you want to be like most marketers, you're going to get what most marketers receive as a result, which is mediocre results. So I push you to think differently. I push you to push yourself to not be like most marketers, not to go down the path of mediocrity, and instead start looking for ways that you can either invest time or money into channels, into opportunities, and into communities where you can spread your content with value first and ultimately generate results for your business at the end of all of it.

So I hope that you can use this to uncover for yourself a content distribution playbook that works for your brand. Whether you're in B2C or you're in B2B, it doesn't matter. You have to understand where your audience is spending time, understand how you can seed your content into these different spaces and unlock the power of content distribution. My name is Ross Simmonds.

I really hope you enjoyed this video. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out on Twitter, at TheCoolestCool, or hit me up any other way. I'm on every other channel. Of course I am. I love social. I love digital. I'm everywhere that you could find me, so feel free to reach out.

I hope you enjoyed this video and you can use it to give your content more reach and ultimately drive meaningful and measurable results for your business. Thank you so much.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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If Ross's Whiteboard Friday left you feeling energized and inspired to try new things with your content marketing, you'll love his full MozCon 2019 talk — Keywords Aren't Enough: How to Uncover Content Ideas Worth Chasing — available in our recently released video bundle. Learn how to use many of these same distribution channels as idea factories for your content, plus access 26 additional future-focused SEO topics from our top-notch speakers:

Grab the sessions now!

And don't be shy — share the learnings with your whole team, preferably with snacks. It's what video was made for!

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How I Lived Off ProBlogger for 2 Years and Made $50,000+ in 3 Months

The post How I Lived Off ProBlogger for 2 Years and Made $50,000+ in 3 Months appeared first on ProBlogger.

The last three years have been full of memorable events, both personal and professional.

While I’ve been in the content creation field for a while, I’ve only be doing it full-time since 2016.

That was the year I started taking on jobs from the ProBlogger job board. And since then I’ve been using it for landing gigs almost exclusively.

Between 2016 and 2019 I earned six figures from jobs I landed on ProBlogger alone. And during a three-month period in 2018 I made $58,000 from just one client.

This is how I did it, and how you can replicate my success.

Getting Lost and Gaining My Freedom

I started working in my late teens, managing a small hospitality outfit my late parents had established. Later I worked in customer service in a large telecom company in West Africa. And then I moved to Nairobi, Kenya and became a charity volunteer.

So I’m used to holding a regular job.

But I was about to become completely lost.

Lost in New York

No, I’m not talking about the movie (although I was home alone).

I managed to secure a fairly lucrative job as a due diligence researcher in New York City, working on projects for the likes of IBM, Microsoft, Shell, Deloitte, AT&T and others.

Life was good.

Then I received a letter stating I’d unintentionally violated some company policy and had to leave.

But I had nowhere to go.

A couple of years earlier a friend of mine had suggested starting a side hustle and writing for websites. Before the NYC job I’d conducted interviews and written content for Blueprint Entrepreneur Mag, a magazine based in Australia.

At the time I thought, “Why create stress for myself?”, and ignored his advice.

But as I stood on that New York City street feeling cold and broken, his words came flooding back.

It was time to take that advice.

Finding My Freedom

Luckily, I joined a mastermind my friend started a few months before I lost my job. So I quickly brushed up on creating content, pitching clients and landing gigs.

I set up my website, email address and PayPal account, and then published a few articles on my blog.

Next, I started pitching to media platforms that accepted contributions. I wanted to write for free to get my name out there.

I was lucky. Arianna Huffington had just left The Huffington Post and was launching her new venture, Thrive Global. So I got her email address and pitched to her directly.

And she replied.

After writing my first article for Thrive Global I got an author login, which meant I could contribute to the platform at any time.

Things were beginning to add up.

But there was still one place things weren’t adding up – my wallet.

Break the Rules Intelligently and Succeed Eventually

Needing to earn money fast, I set myself a goal to replace my income in a month.

I had to break a few rules to do it. But I also made three critical decisions:

1. Pro-level from day one: I made sure I delivered pro-level work (and charged pro-level rates) from the word go.
2. Not niching so fast: I broadened my scope, and wrote for three to five niches I knew well. And then I chose the niche that brought me the most clients – and the most pay.
3. Pitching daily: I pitched to potential clients every day – even when I had enough clients to earn a steady income.

As for proof of my writing ability, I used the work I’d done for Blueprint Entrepreneur and TopTenz.net. These were a bit dated, but they got the ball rolling. And then I created new articles for my site and published them on Thrive Global.

I was good to fly. And fly I did.

My Mistakes and Fixing Them

But it wasn’t all butterflies and rainbows. I made my fair share of mistakes, such as…

Payment Punishment

I once lost a client because he felt misled on who was getting paid for the work.

Without asking for permission or giving prior warning, I switched my known PayPal email address to a friend’s PayPal account. I was away for the summer, and wanted my friend to receive payments on my behalf so I could get the money quickly.

So the client paid to my usual PayPal email address. But the confirmation email included some Chinese characters because my friend lived in China.

The client didn’t find it funny.

I tried to explain what had happened to my client. But he wouldn’t have any of it and stopped working with me, saying it would affect his tax reporting.

And my $800 a week income stream became a dried-up creek bed.

Lesson: Tell your clients about any changes that might affect them (directly or indirectly) before it happens.

The Video Interview Gaffe

Confidence is good. But overconfidence can kill.

And I once died from it.

A potential client was thrilled with my work, and set up a video appointment with me. He also emailed some documents in preparation for the video session.

But when they arrived I just skimmed through them without paying much attention to the details.

We started talking, and he began making references to the documents he’d sent me. Or at least I think he was, because it soon became clear I wasn’t following.

I realised I was far from ready for our online meeting. And I’m sure the client realised it too, because he never got back to me.

When I emailed him about the work a few weeks later, he replied with, “We’ve filled the role, thanks”.

Ouch!

Lesson: Be ready, and pay attention to everything. It will work either for or against you.

Don’t Just Beat Deadlines

It was the first article I wrote for my new client. Unfortunately, it was also the last.

I pitched the topic, and he liked it. I gave him an outline, and he liked that too.

So as far as I was concerned it was a done deal. I just had to write the piece so I could get paid and move onto my next assignment.

But everything ended at “write the piece”.

In a rush to beat the deadline I’d set with the client, I submitted the article without checking it for errors. That’s right. No grammar checks. No Flesch readability checks. Just the intuitive belief that everything would be okay as long as I beat the deadline.

But I woke up the next day to find this heartbreaker in my inbox: “I’m sorry, but this isn’t what we’re looking for”.

I never got paid, and never got another assignment from him.

Lesson: Delivering error-free posts is just as important as beating deadlines.

Other Mistakes That Hurt Writers

Despite all my mistakes, I count myself lucky. I learned from them quickly, didn’t make too many of them, and seldom repeated my mistakes.

But many writers have killed their careers on an altar of errors such as:

• missing deadlines
• not learning about AP Style early enough
• over-promising and under-delivering
• being a writer and nothing else.

Let’s talk a little about the last point.

Writing isn’t the only thing clients pay for when they hire you. They’re paying for your knowledge, your skills, your experiences, and whatever else you can bring to the table.

So go out and do things you haven’t done much. Learn about:

• SEO
• pay-per-click campaigns
• social media marketing
• infographics
• photography
• accounting
• WordPress
• Joomla
• WooCommerce
• HTML
• anything else you can use to increase the value you bring.

And if you established a professional career path before becoming a writer, that’s another value-add you can offer.

Making $58,000 in Three Months

July 28, 2018. A Saturday, and a day I won’t forget in a hurry.

Without much to do on the weekend, I searched for open jobs on the ProBlogger job board. In no time, I found a posting that matched my abilities and experience.

And I applied.

Little did I know that I’d just signed up to receive tens of thousands of dollars over the next three months.

Fast forward to November 26, 2018. I’d completed the project, and earned $58,000.

Here’s how it happened.

The Job Posting

The job had been up less than 24 hours when I turned in my application. So I knew my timing was relatively good on this one.

Job advertisers are usually pretty specific about what they expect from your application. So I read the job description carefully.

And then I crafted my pitch to address the criteria on the job post.

My Pitch

The request was almost unbelievable. I assumed the client was going to pay pennies for the work, so I was slightly hesitant to apply.

But I had a simple rule for job applications. “Don’t make unfounded assumptions. Apply anyway.”

So I did.

In my application, I wanted to show this client that I knew my stuff. So I provided eight examples of my published work.

Some advertisers specify how many examples they want to see. But this one didn’t ask for a specific number.

So I provided as many examples as possible. I wanted this advertiser to say, “Yes, this candidate knows what I want”.

Next, I introduced myself and showed in my cover letter that I had all the qualities this client wanted. I also pointed out my other desirable qualities that he might appreciate.

My cover letter showed that I had:

• had two years of writing experience
• extensive WordPress experience
• demonstrated knowledge of SaaS products
• experience and competency in SEO techniques.

I used a premium grammar checker to proofread my application to keep it error-free, and closed the pitch with my desired rate per word.

And I also demonstrated that I’d beat their deadlines, and responded to their follow-up enquiries and emails as soon as they hit my inbox.

The Deal

A couple of days later, I got the first follow-up email. I replied. We exchanged a couple more messages and then finally reached the contract stage.

At this point, their choice of payment channel was almost a deal-breaker. They wanted to pay me via cryptocurrencies. (I’d only used PayPal and direct bank deposits up to this point.)

I felt that cryptocurrencies were too volatile, and that it was too early for me to consider being paid that way.

(I’m not sure why I thought it was too early, or even what I thought “too early” meant. I guess it was just fear.)

I’d typed out an email to call off the job, and was ready to send it when I had second thoughts and deleted it instead.

I took the job, then opened a Blockchain.com account and created a bitcoin wallet to receive the payments.

The Result

By the time the contract was over I’d earned $58,000 from writing 290 articles at $200 each.

 

My payments came in bitcoin. But as you know, bitcoin fluctuates. At the time, a bitcoin was worth about $6,000 to $7,000 apiece.

And at the end of the project, the client said he’d keep my WordPress account open on his website for other projects to come later in 2019.

My Biggest Takeaways

It’s been a pleasant journey for me, albeit one fraught with challenges. And I’ve learned some valuable lessons that I’d now like to share them with you.

Pitch daily

That’s right. Every day. Even when you have clients beating paths to your door.

Okay, maybe not every day. But don’t miss it two days in a row.

Pitch relevant targets

Pitch only to relevant prospects. Shooting everyone an email won’t get you clients, and may even discourage you.

Don ‘t have enough relevant experience or published work? Write more on the topics you’ve noticed are in high demand, and post them on your blog.

Clients come and go

Do your best work, and do your best to keep your clients happy. But don’t expect the romance to last forever.

Everything that has a beginning has an end. And things don’t always end well.

Learn from unpleasant experiences, and appreciate and enjoy the pleasant ones. They’re all part of the journey.

Observe and take notes

Make notes from the ProBlogger job board and use them to raise the amount of value you can offer clients.

Job posts can show you new ways to improve your value offering. For example, a job posting that asks for published work with significant social shares should inspire you to promote some of your posts and get them shared on social media.

A lot of social shares can be a massive plus to your work. They add to your credibility, and tell potential clients that your work resonates with readers.

Develop a pitch template

Your pitch template is like your resumé. By using one you’ll always show the value you can provide potential employers.

Having a pitching template means:

• you’ll never forget an element of your pitch
• your pitching time will fall
• the number of pitches you send will rise
• you’ll never have to worry about what you’re going to say
• your pitches will have a clean structure.

Keep tweaking your pitch template

As your experience and value offering grows, update your pitching template to reflect this growth.

Write for free

Writing for free can be worth it, providing it has value. Appearing on high-traffic websites can give you and your work credibility and exposure.

Find websites in your niche, or with significant media authority, and write for them. Fast Company and other media outlets have guest contributor guidelines if you’d like to write for them.

Writing for small blogs can also be an excellent addition if you’re just starting out.

Pitch to websites with a domain authority of 20 or less and write for them so your work appears on other platforms as well as your blog.

Write a resumé

Some clients ask for it. So have one ready.

Rewrite your resumé often

As you gain more experience and your portfolio of work grows, make sure you update your resumé accordingly.

Let your author bio sell you

When someone has enjoyed reading your work, where will they go next?

Chances are they’ll want to know who wrote the piece they just read. So use the author bio to tell them about yourself and what you can offer.

Now, what will you do differently today?

My advice is to start pitching every day. It’s the first and possibly most crucial step to take. Everything else stems from there.

The post How I Lived Off ProBlogger for 2 Years and Made $50,000+ in 3 Months appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

Source: ProBlogger

Building a Local Marketing Strategy for Franchises [Guide Sneak Peek]

Posted by MiriamEllis

A roller is a good tool for painting a house in big, broad strokes. But creating a masterpiece of art requires finer brushes.

Franchises face a unique challenge here: they know how to market at the national level, but often lack the detailed tools for reaching their local customers at a granular level. Google has stated that localization of search results is the greatest form of personalization they currently engage in. For franchises, where local sensitivity is lacking in the marketing plan, opportunity is being lost.

Don’t settle for this. Know that less-motivated competitors are losing this opportunity, too. This creates a large, blank canvas for a franchise you’re marketing to paint a new picture which takes state, regional and community nuances into account.

One famous example of localized marketing is McDonald’s offering SPAM in Hawaii and green chile cheeseburgers in New Mexico. For your franchise, it could revolve around customizing content for regional language differences (sub sandwich vs. po’ boy), or knowing when to promote seasonal merchandise at which locations (California vs. North Dakota weather).

What you need is marketing plan capable of scaling from national priorities to hyperlocal customers. Want the complete strategy now?

Get The Practical Guide to Franchise Marketing

From paint roller to sumi-e brush: A franchise marketing plan

Today, we’ll explore the basics of getting to know your local customers, so that your national franchise can customize how you serve them. Build a strategy around the following:

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Your step-by-step guide to how to create a local marketing strategy

Finding your target audience

First, you need to understand who your customers are. If you have an existing franchise, you can do this fairly easily by simply observing or asking them. You might run an online survey, or you might do some quick spot interviews right in your place of business. What you want to work out is:

• Demographics: What are the common ages, genders, income levels, and other relevant characteristics of your customers.
  
• Psychographics: How do your customers think? What are their attitudes, behaviors and beliefs as they relate to your franchise?
  
• Pain points: What problems do your customers have that you could potentially solve? Maybe they want to eat healthy but have no time. Maybe they want a gym that will help them become better athletes.
  
• Consumption habits: How do your customers decide where to buy? Are they online? Do they have smartphones? Do they prioritize reviews/recommendations? Do they like video, or podcasts? Which social platforms do they frequent? What events do they attend?

Understanding the customer’s journey

Marketers spend a lot of time thinking about what we call the “customer journey.” This is just another way of saying we want to understand what happens between us and customers before they know our brand exist, after they discover it, up until they buy, and then beyond.

The best way to do this is to divide that experience into steps, understanding that some people will drop out of the process at every stage. Most corporate franchisers will recognize this as the “sales funnel.”

Here’s a simplified version of a sales funnel. Take the time to determine what happens at each stage in your own customers’ experience, and you’ll be a long way toward understanding how you can influence and help customers from one step to the next. 

Mapping a sales funnel



1. Awareness
   This is where a customer first discovers you exist and starts to form an opinion about you based on what they see. Often, this is managed by the activities being conducted by corporate franchisors (like a national TV ad campaign). But, it can also happen through franchisee-generated references and referrals (like a searcher discovering you via a Google Maps search on their phone).
   
2. Discovery
   This is where a customer has already absorbed information about you and your product and begins to actively try to learn more about it. This stage often encompasses online research. It local word-of-mouth queries between potential customers and their friends and family.
   
3. Evaluation
   This is where a customer has decided to probably purchase something similar to what you offer, but is trying to decide where to buy. They might stop by your business in this stage, or they may give you a call. They might visit your online website or listings to look at your hours, or menu or price list. This stage is influenced by both franchisor and franchisee activity.
   
4. Intent
   Now the customer has decided to buy from you — which means they are your customer to lose. Franchisors can lose them at this stage through misinformation in the brand’s local business listings — like incorrect hours or bad directions that lead customers to the wrong place and cause them to give up. Franchisees could lose the business through poor on-premises experiences — like uncleanliness, long wait times, low inventory, pricing, or poor customer service.
   
5. Purchase
   This is where the transaction takes place, and is generally entirely within the control of the franchisee.
6. Loyalty
   This stage determines whether the customer will return to buy again, and whether or not they will become an advocate for your business, give you good reviews, or rate you poorly. Again, this is typically within the control of the franchisee unless the issue is a decision made at the franchisor level, such as product/menu, pricing or policy.

Sometimes this whole funnel can take place in the time it takes to spot a sign for ice cream and purchase a double scoop sundae. Sometimes it may take weeks, as your customers labor over the right financial advisor to choose.

Understanding how your customer is thinking and what goes into making the decision to use you is important and will guide decision-making and sales activity at both the franchisor and franchisee levels.

Scoping out the competition

Most brands have already worked out their positioning with regard to other national brands, so this one is mainly for franchisees. Take some time to figure out who your direct competitors are in your local market. They might be other big brands, but there will also probably be local SMBs that are not on the corporate franchisor’s radar.

Understand:

• Where they are stronger or weaker, compared to you
• Who they attract, compared to you
• How they are marketing their business
  

Having this information should help you to position yourself to win a bigger piece of the local pie. Is your competitor a gym that has better weight training and machines than you? Are they marketing mainly to younger men and athletes? Are they advertising on local radio? Perhaps you should double down on your cardio and yoga classes and try to attract more women or older clientele. Maybe adding some nutrition classes will encourage people trying to lose weight. And so on.

Building your authority

Once you’ve figured out who your customers are, how they buy, and how you plan to position your franchise in the local market, it’s time to put that plan into action by creating some content to support it.

For franchisors at corporate this means putting in the time to create an informative, interesting brand website with dynamic, engaging content. Your content should aim to educate, inform and/or entertain, rather than only sell. The more points of engagement your website offers to customers, the more reason they have to read, share, and link to your content, building authority. Your most valuable content will, of course, be the elements or pages that directly convert visitors into customers.

The content you put out over social media should follow this same precept, and lead back to your site as often as possible. Experts suggest that “60% of your posts you create should be engaging, timely content, 30% should be shared content, and only 10% should be promoting your products & services.” (Medium)

Invest some time in link building, in order to show Google’s algorithm how influential your site is and boost your authority and ranking.

Here are a few tips:

• Use Moz’s “Find Opportunities” feature to locate sites which are linking to your competitors and not you (yet).
• Look for people who are already referencing your site and ask them to hyperlink to you.
• Do a little PR or news-making and ask articles to link to your site. (This is something local franchisees can excel at.)
• Ask for links from local trade organizations, community organizations or commerce groups.
• Sponsor events and ask for a link.
• Start a scholarship and post it on local .edu sites.

Find out more about link building and unstructured citation and how to increase them in The Guide to Building Linked Unstructured Citations for Local SEO. 

Managing channels and budgets efficiently

Armed with good, authoritative content and an effective website, you’ll want to focus on how you manage all the channels available to you. This also includes managing your budget effectively. Most franchisor budgets are focused on the brand, and many franchisees don’t have a lot left over for local marketing, but here are some things to think about.

• Listings first: Your listings aren’t expensive to manage, but they give your marketing it’s biggest overall value — in some cases literally guiding people to your registers. Make great local business listings your top priority.
  
• Claim everything: Franchisors, be sure you are the one in control of your directory listings and social profiles. Complete your Google My Business profile and establish a presence on key social media and review platforms like Facebook and Yelp.
  
• Budget wisely: Do the strategy work to understand who your customers are and how best to reach them before you allocate your franchisor or franchisee marketing dollars.

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Pointillism for franchises

Adept franchise marketing requires the eye of Seurat: the ability to see life in hundreds of tiny points, making up a masterpiece. For you, franchise pointillism includes:

• Points representing each customer
• Points for the customer’s community, as a whole
• Points representing your locations on the map
• Points across the web where engagement happens
• Points offline where engagement happens
• Points of resource at all levels of the franchise, from franchisor to franchisee

Ready for expert help from Moz in seeing the finer points? Download your copy:

The Practical Guide to Franchise Marketing

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Source: Moz Blog