Wil Reynolds, Reddit, Content Over-Creation, and More: #StateofSearch 2014 Day Two Recap by @wonderwall7
Day Two at the Dallas-Ft. Worth Search Engine Marketing Associations State of Searchconference was just as great as Day One:Sessions on social media, SEO, marketing, and PPC, plus a morning keynote by Wil Reynolds, Founder of SEER Interactive and a closing keynote by Duane Forrester.Below is a brief round-up of some of the sessions I had the opportunity to attend today.
Wil is the founder of SEER Interactive and is a compelling speaker. The main topics he covered were focusing on the bare bones old school concepts of advertising and marketing from as far back as the 1800-1900s. He recommended a book published back then (1907) called Scientific Advertising (link is to PDF of full text) that has principles that still hold true today, especially because they didnt have an algorithm to trick.
Some of Wils other main points included connecting with your customers instead of trying to appease Google. He recommends connecting with people on a very real level, instead of trying to trick or dissect things. He asked the audience, If I dont understand you as a person, how can I connect with you as a customer?
The bottom line is: If your content was removed from the web, would anyone miss it?
Wil then asked the audience two questions: Would your content withstand the test of time? and Would you rather build a brand or a link?You need your employees and your customers to be impressed with your content even if Google didnt exist. This means building content that isnt always created to solely make money. He pointed out that executives that obsess about being #5 in SERP when they used to be #3 arent the ones you are successful. Instead of making money or focusing on clicks, you should be focused on branding.
One example of content that isnt successful or focused on branding (or what the company stands for) is posts from eBay and Comcast. They each have tens of thousands of employees, yet only have about 10-12 shares on each of their pieces of content. What does it say about you when even your own employees arent sharing your content?
SEJs Chief Social Media Strategist Brent Csutoras presented on Reddit, giving a primer on how a grassroots individual could start building their Reddit profile in an honest way to eventually begin sharing their own links and content. He cautioned the audience on gaming Reddit at first, saying its a bad idea and its users are usually vehemently opposed to any type of marketing or salesy content, so this should be avoided.
His other high-level tips included:
Brent recommended a plethora of resources for researching comments and Reddit content. These included:
Finally, Brent recommended some additional tips to get ahead on Reddit when it comes to building your profile. Its important to build your Reddit presence in order to be a valued member of the community, instead of attempting to sell or push something immediately. You should be commenting regularly on upcoming stories: go to Rising on front page. Brent recommends a ratio of writing ten comments to one submission. Focus on writing comments that start a useful dialogue.