Welcome to Monday. Got some fresh content strategy stuff for ya.
Last week was a pretty great one for Overthink Group. I turned 29, which means I have one year left to make Forbes’ 30-under-30 list. Or any 30-under-30 list for that matter. Heck, if I don’t get my act together, I won’t even make the Overthink
Group 30-under-30.
Time, you cheeky devil.
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Keywords just ain’t what they used to be Keywords aren’t dead (I still use keyword research tools every day), but they don’t play the same role in SEO research as they did back in 2012.
The Hummingbird update in 2013 gave Google a great leap forward in its ability to determine the questions behind the keywords (a.k.a. "Search intent"). Ever since, it has become less and less useful to target one
specific long-tail keyword in each blog post.
But why is that?
Why would keywords play a smaller (still important) role in how your articles rank?
Here’s a jargon-free breakdown on why this specific aspect of SEO research is changing, and will continue to change. If you can understand this, you’ll save your content team a ton of time—and you’ll protect yourself from SEO agencies who want to sell you services that just don’t work anymore.
BONUS: you’ll get to see my first (and worst) SEO success story, involving this clever, clever Tolkien/Martin/pedestrianism mashup:
Kids these days and their lack of Facebooks If you’re a content marketer, you’ve probably heard someone adamantly say one of the following sentences:
"Everyone’s on Facebook."
"Nobody’s on Facebook."
Neither is true (of course), but one statement will feel a lot truer than the other based on whom you’re trying to market to in 2018.
Of course, Emarketer cites Snapchat and the FB-owned
Instagram as the communities where younger people will congregate to superimpose bunny ears on their heads without judgment from curmudgeons like me. (I guess.)
What does this mean?
You need to be aware of what demographics are on different social networks. But it doesn’t mean there are zero college students on Facebook, or that all of them are on Snapchat.
The smart takeaway from this is to use targeted messaging and ad spend on social media. Facebook’s advertising engine (which includes Instagram) is far too sophisticated for you to waste on treating each network like a standalone audience.
You want to reach young people on Facebook? Use Facebook’s ad manager to target them. You want to reach older folks on Instagram? (They’re not all 19, you know.) Use Facebook’s ad manager to target them.
Help: I hired a journalist to do content marketing! It’s not uncommon for companies to hire journalists to their content marketing teams. After all, these folks write for a living, and quickly. Surely with some marketing guidance, they’ll make ideal content creators, right?
It’s a good read, one marketing leaders should check out.
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Coming up next from Overthink Group:
We’re tearing down Stash Invest’s content marketing strategy. The robo-advisor gained a million users in their first three
years—we’ll look at how their content helps them do this.
We’re also looking into one of my content marketing inspirations: CB Insights. Super excited about this one.
The more research I do in the B2B SEO space, the more I find an emerging opportunity/danger for bootstrapped and lightly-funded startups.I’ll be writing about that soon, too.
I think you’re great. =)
Jeffrey Kranz Co-founder, Overthink Group Jeffrey@OverthinkGroup.com
