Author of the award-winning book Accelerate! and co-author of Content Marketing Works, Arnie Kuenn, is back by popular demand to lead his Content Marketing Intensified workshop at Content Marketing Conference 2016.
Arnie is the Founder and CEO of content marketing and SEO agency Vertical Measures and the Founder of Arizona Interactive Marketing Association (AZIMA). He’s also an instructor with Content Marketing Institute, a renowned workshop leader, and expert speaker. This May, you have the opportunity to learn from him and get your content marketing certification at his half day workshop and breakout session Forget Keywords: What’s Next with Content Optimization at CMC16. (Follow Arnie on Twitter)
Content Marketing Intensified Workshop at CMC16
Arnie’s Content Marketing Intensified workshop is centered on his proven 8-step formula, refined over years at the Vertical Measures SEO agency as they work with their clients.
The formula covers content marketing strategy, content ideation, developing the actual content, optimizing it, content promotion (letting people know it’s out there), distributing your content, following the leads and the whole lead nurture process once the content generates leads, then finally measuring and refining your plan.
I’ve been a student in his workshop a few times and each time I learn something new.
I asked Arnie about some of the key takeaways this year and learned the workshop will go a little deeper into the ideation aspect of the content marketing workflow.
In Arnie’s experience, people tend to struggle with ideation more than some of the other aspects. “[Someone] might have their first ten ideas of content they want to create because of the pent-up demand for this content…. But after they’ve done that, they struggle with ‘what else am I going to write about?’ or ‘what else am I going to shoot video about?’”
Attendees will also spend a decent amount of time on SEO and content optimization because, as Arnie says, “If you are going to take all the time to create the content, make sure people find it by taking a few more minutes to optimize it correctly.”
Who Should Attend
When asked who Arnie’s ideal student is, their level of proficiency or team size, Arnie replied “the workshop is geared towards people who are actually on the marketing team somewhere.” This includes organizations of every size from Fortune 50 down to mom and pop shops.
But super small business (less than 10 employees) take heed, you may get a little overwhelmed. “There is no shortcut to content marketing. Don’t come to the workshop if you think ‘I am going to learn the one thing that is going to make this super simple to do’.” He continued, “What this [workshop] does is lay out the entire process that has to be done by your organization or outsourced to an agency, or some combination. There is no shortcut to creating really good, engaging, useful content.”
But take some comfort knowing that you will leave with a clear understanding of the work ahead of you.
For the larger companies, Arnie will spend time talking about how to break down the silos within the business, how to get on the same page, and how to get everyone talking the same language.
How to Create Content People Are Actually Searching For
If you’ve been in the SEO field for more than a few years you’ve been trained keywords. And while that might still work, Google and Bing and the other search engines have become so smart that they now understand semantics, intent, and full-on questions.
I asked Arnie what this means for the future of content marketing. He says we actually have to go back to the fundamentals; “You’ve got to create content people are actually searching for”.
It takes time to create content people are actually searching for, but it is worth the effort. Especially if you feel like you aren’t seeing the ROI you hoped.
“If you feel that you really haven’t been successful at content marketing for 12 months in a row, my recommendation is to think about this fundamental – are you creating content that prospects are actually searching for?” He continued, “Too often we fall back into talking about ourselves… and there is a place for that. But for most of the content you create, can you actually picture someone going to google and almost typing in the title of the content? Are they searching for it?”
If you can picture someone searching for your content, then produce and publish it and gradually you will get enough traction. Once you start to get some ROI then you can look at doing more creative things like interactive content or really cool videos or infographics
It seems boring. And it is slow. You start to build your momentum, it’s almost subtle. But this is the quickest way to content to success.
You can learn more about how to create content people are actually searching for at Arnie’s CMC breakout session Forget Keywords: What’s Next with Content Optimization.
Forget Keywords: What’s Next with Content Optimization
At Arnie’s SEO agency Vertical Measures they rarely do any traditional keyword research for clients from a content perspective. They start by thinking through what their prospects are searching for to learn about whatever it is they do, sell, or provide
SEO today is about the right topics more than keywords. Arnie says “I don’t care about the keywords or even the search volume any more. I just want to be helpful. It’s about phrases and intent today.”
Here’s Arnie’s steps for harvesting topic ideas:
- Visit Google, Bing, and Youtube
- Think about the question, start to type that in, and watch what Google suggest provides 5 suggestions. Then write those answers down
- If you don’t come up with enough ideas that way use tools like Buzzsumo, spyfu, keywordtool.io
Arnie’s Topic Harvesting Pro Tip: If you have live chat on your website, mine the database of questions that your prospects are asking your people all of the time for things that people are asking about very specifically about you and your website.
How to Create Content That Stands Out
We’ve all heard that the internet is overwhelmed with content. But Arnie advices not to worry about it. “We’ve been overwhelmed with content forever, from everywhere, whether we realize it’s content or not. You don’t have any choice other than to produce content. And the best content throughout history has always risen to the top.”
So what’s the secret to rising to the top? If you are not on the first page of Google for a search result and you want to be, Arnie says you need to “study the content that is in the first 3-4 positions and really understand it and then try to create something that is 10X better.”
Arnie is a fan of Rand Fishkin’s Whiteboard Friday on 10x content, Why Good Unique Content Needs to Die. Instead of creating good unique content, your need to create create 10x content – content that is ten times better than the first few search results for the phrase you want to rank for.
The elements of 10x content:
- Lots of text
- Well optimized images
- Video
- All on the same page
Because these days, if you are going to be specific and know that you want to show up for a specific search result, that is the kind of effort it is going to take
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If you want to talk further about content marketing strategy, production, or bringing Arnie’s workshop to your team, visit verticalmeasures.com or reach our to Arnie directly [email protected]. Better yet, meet him at Content Marketing Conference this May 17-19.
Learn more about why you should attend CMC.
