We live in an age where you can't just do one thing. You can't live in a stovepipe if you want to be effective and your want your work to survive the test of time
Text is what drives social discovery on Google, but text is also what drives search engines on media platforms like YouTube, Slideshare, Flickr, Instagram, Soundcloud etc.
Beyond creating descriptive titles and tagging your content correctly, you can stand out try using Listicles.
Lists account for 30% of the web’s content. Great list titles are a hook. List posts get more shares and views than other forms of posts.
Lists appeals to the human mind. We filter and skim lists.
Write your titles imagining that people are going to read/share based on the title alone. How you title your content titles and sub-titles will determine your success.
Are you familiar with 1:9:90 (the 1% Rule). If not go and research it.
The internet is the biggest overheard conversation you've ever imagined. You need to think about this in everything you do. You should always be speaking (or willing to be overheard by) the lurker.
"Lurker" used to have negative connotations, but today, people apply the term to themselves. "I'm just lurking" is a frequently heard expression.
If our job to entice lurkers out into the open to participate.
Your efforts online are justified by the 90% that can be tipped into the 9% and then into the 1%.
You can't see them or hear them, but you need to know they are there - listening.
Your content and your actions are what will entice them the engage.
You need to get curious online and off. Attend Twitter Chats, attend business networking events. Keep asking questions to tap into the psyche of your target customer persona.
Listening is how you find ideas. All you often need is one new word or the validation of a reworked expression. The right phrase can unlock a whole new niche of prospects.
Find out what words people use to describe their problem. Listen between the lines. Don’t force fit what you hear to what you offer. Perhaps its new words, new features, new business models or new products that you need to ignite the fire.
Words and listening will get you where you need to be.
Get out and meet people and share and engage. Listen and learn. That’s how you unmask the lurkers and your engagement formula.
There are many ways you can re-use your best work.
Think about being useful and helping people find you. Bundles are easy for you to share and to not forget the assets you've already built.
How we read, find, share and publish content has changed
Often we perform Content Audits to gather our assets, these assets can be resused and recombined into multiple different bundles that can then be embedded on your owned media (your blog)
Here’s some examples I use:
Sharing bundles that aren’t embedded is not smart. You are failing to accumulate links and shares to your owned media (part of POEM). Driving people to anywhere but owned media should not be a strategy.
Bundling and reuse is made simpler if you design for reuse/embeddability.
Create your content in small reusable components eg
Each of these platforms are search engines in their own right. They are free from Google’s control and influence, but your content is still Google indexed. They also make it easy for people to embed and share your ideas.
See also
So you are doubling or tripling your chance of social discovery.
Let paid, owned, earned and shared media be your yardstick.
If are not aware of POEM, you need to go explore and investigate.
Engagement will always trump views (because its harder, but there is an undeniable lure to focus on views.
Views are easy. They feed your ego, but tipping people to act and engage will always drive better results.
Engagement is one step closer to revenue.
Engagement tips people from being a lurkers into being a participant or a contributor. This act connects people to your brand and lets others see their commitment.
If your content is not changing its decaying and becoming less useful over time.
If you are not involving our audience you are being too controlling and nobody is going to care.
Let go and make it the audience’s duty to point out omissions and suggests corrections. Leave gaps and seek out human engagement.
You own culture on your owned media site(s). So lead by example. If what you do is smart people will follow.
So find ways to refresh your body of work and grow its value over time. Find Ways to let our audience help.
This is easily done with Listly, but here are many ways to make content evolution a viable option.
Move beyond comments and integrate feedback into you published content.
