Brighton SEO, the place where digital masters and SEO newbies alike come together to share their love of all things online, was once again a big hit with the team here at Adido in September 2015.
At the crack of dawn, myself and Tom Crewe, headed to Brighton on Thursday 17th September to soak up the knowledge of Founder and MD of Zazzle Media Simon Penson. With notepads at the ready the two of them prepared to furiously scribble down any nuggets of gold Simon had to share.
Simon gave a workshop on Content Marketing and provided an insight into some of the tactics and techniques they use at Zazzle Media. The workshop included an overview of the wider content process and practical hands on experience building a campaign plan.
“Content Strategy Sits At The Heart Of Good Content Marketing”
Taking us through the Zazzle Media content marketing process, Simon highlighted the importance of ‘brand immersion’ and ‘audience insight’. You need to know your brand inside out first of all which will help you understand the objectives of your content. Combine that with a comprehensive understanding of your audience and you will discover how, where, when and what content you should be creating. There are plenty of tools online to help you discover more about your audience, including a free tool called YouGuv Profiles.
“Aim To Become The Market Leading Magazine In Your Space”
It’s important to understand that there is an abundance of content online and you need to keep your objectives realistic. Aiming to become ‘the market leading magazine in your space’ is about being the best content producer in your industry, getting to the front of the magazine rack and being the one your audience turns to. To do this, you need ideas.
Simon took us through his ‘ideation process’ which covers all areas of forming an idea, from the mission statement to the audience, content types and distribution channels. Simon urged us to think beyond a simple content piece and analyse whether there are any additional opportunities within the content, such as current trends, long tail opportunities, evergreen content and so on. Once you have your ‘big bang’ idea, you need to think of ideas off the back of it in order to fully promote the content.
“70% Of The Total Budget Should Go On Distribution – Through Resource And Spend”
Having amazing content is one thing, but if you don’t promote it properly no one is going to see it! You need to have your distribution plan in place, utilising your owned properties, paid media, social platforms and earned media. Finally, keeping track of it all in a distribution plan will help you to measure your success and monitor the conversation.
Day 2 of Brighton SEO saw the main conference get into full swing. With the doors opening at 9.00am, our two SEO enthusiasts Tom and Steve burst through the doors ready to soak up as much knowledge as possible.
Although there was no way to see every speaker at the conference, we certainly chose some of the best! Sticking with the content theme, Stacey MacNaught of Tecmark kicked the day off with a brilliant talks entitled ‘Your Content Is Awesome, Now What?’ Stacey talked about an inventive way of generating 108 ideas in 30 minutes using ‘The 6-3-5 Brainwriting Method’.
For the 6-3-5 Brainwriting Method to work, you need 6 people for 30 minutes. Write a clear problem statement and the 6 people then have 5 minutes to write down 3 ideas each which meet the problem statement. After 5 minutes everyone passes their ideas to the person on their left. You now use the 3 new ideas in front of you to inspire 3 more ideas which you write down next to them. Carry this on for 6 rounds and at the end you have 108 ideas!
There were several other notable speakers, including Gary Illyes of Google who discussed the future of Mobile, including the new ‘Google Now On Tap’ for Android and the importance of App Indexing. Greg Gifford of DealerOn gave a very interesting talk on local SEO and how you can give your website a 10 minute local SEO audit, what Google is looking for and how to properly carry out Barnacle SEO.
At the end of the day Tom and Steve both left with a tonne of knowledge stuffed into their brains, ready to share with the rest of the team.
Until next time, Brighton SEO…
