Content Archives - Michael Dillon

June 5, 2017January 26, 2018

Why are Content Blocking Sites Shooting Themselves in the Foot?

Like many of you, I do much of my business and pleasure news-reading online. Thanks to Pocket, my queue of articles to read has exploded: I try to read 20 – 25 articles a week.

I said, try.

Because of my voracious appetite for knowledge, my favorite Chrome extension, next to Buffer, is AdBlock. It has truly been a Godsend: as I referenced in a post a few years ago, because of all the ads and pop-ups and other annoying pushy sales messages, news sites were almost unreadable. I was ready to give up until AdBlock became part of my toolkit; I am now able to read 95% online than I used to.

However, that 5% is still hanging out there unread and it’s because of messages like this:

The Easy Guide to Creating Expert Roundup Articles

Expert roundup articles are my absolute favorite link building strategy.

You ask a question. Experts, peers and influencers provide their answers. You piece it all together and have a piece of content that’s naturally designed to be sharable.

What’s not to like?

Well, maybe it isn’t quite so easy. A good expert roundup can take a lot of time and effort to produce.Also, this type of content is hardly new. Some would even argue it’s overdone , with some going so far as to call for the death of expert roundups .Although there’s no guarantee you’ll achieve spectacular results, using this guide to creating expert roundup articles will help increase your chances of success. Step 1: Ask a Question The first (and most important) decision you’ll need to make is what question or topic your expert roundup article is going to cover. Be warned: This will make or break your article.There are […]

3 questions to have front of mind when refreshing your website copy

Don’t overlook the words in your digital overhaul.

A website migration or refresh is a great opportunity to practise some digital feng shui – to rethink your goals, refocus your user journeys, archive all the content you don’t need any more, and ensure your content is aligned with your up-to-date proposition.

But done well, a migration is an opportunity to refresh and review not just the structure and design and look-and-feel of your digital presence – but the words too. What’s the point of spending all that time and effort and resource on a shiny new UX, a super-smart, contemporary new look and a cutting-edge CMS, only to pour back in all the tired words from your old site? And yet this happens, of course, and depressingly often.

So to make sure your website refresh is also a copy refresh, here are three key questions to have front of mind as you […]

7 Content Types That Gain the Most Engagement & Links

What type of content should you create?

Answering this question can, at times, be stupefyingly difficult.

The world of content today is crazy, with volume (literally) growing by the second.

The content opportunities are numerous – blogs, articles, ebooks, infographics, social media updates, to name a few. Which should you be doing first or next, and how do you create these content types most effectively?Fortunately, deciding which types of content to invest in is as simple as evaluating your company’s goals and knowing a little bit about what kinds of material will best support them. Why Invest in Content Today? First things first, why invest in content?The answer to this one is easy: because creating organic, brand-enriching content is the only way to get noticed online today.In a world where ad blockers make it exceedingly difficult to buy attention (83 percent of people today wish they could filter out obnoxious ads) and […]

Benefits of event-based content marketing

Many marketers can agree that events are powerful tactics that can help increase sales, drive engagement and deepen relationships. However, did you know that the content surrounding events is equally valuable?

Think of this event content as all of the data and information surrounding an event — not just the event name, date and description — but also things like metadata, images and RSVPs. Most of these elements are not currently published, collected or tracked. However, rich event content provides gives a detailed view of your events, and brings your audience much closer to attending.

For marketers, the benefits of event content stretch across the event lifecycle, from search engine optimization leading to increased traffic and attendance to post-event analytics, which will help inform future efforts. Imagine a world where you have all of this content for not only each event, but for the dozens, hundreds or even thousands of events […]

New eBook: 30 Essential Ingredients to Stock Your Content Marketing Kitchen

My mother was the chief cook in our household. It was a thankless job. Her customers were three kids with radically different ideas about what was edible and what was, like, totally grody.

When we asked what was for dinner—one of her least favorite questions—she would frequently answer, “Well, we could make peanut butter sandwiches, if we had any bread. Or any peanut butter.”

In other words, regardless of what your diners are craving, you can only make what you have the ingredients to make.

Mom’s little proverb holds true for content marketing, too. We have finnicky readers to please, people who won’t settle for filet mignon when they really want a classic PB&J. They’re increasingly demanding a more personalized menu: Research shows that over 200 million people use ad blockers to cut out content that isn’t to their taste. To make a crowd-pleasing recipe, you have to stock the right ingredients.For […]

You Can Use 404s to Boost Your SEO. Here’s How.

The dreaded 404 error page.

We’ve all encountered it at some point.

And in my opinion, there’s no bigger buzzkill than getting hit with a 404 error when browsing a site.

You’re right in the middle of exploring interesting content, and all of a sudden, you’re thrown a curveball.If you’re not sure what a 404 page is, let’s look at a formal definition. According to Google , A 404 page is what a user sees when they try to reach a non-existent page on your site (because they’ve clicked on a broken link, the page has been deleted or they’ve mistyped a URL). Here’s what an ugly, generic 404 looks like: Not too flattering, huh?But you can pretty them up, like I did on Quick Sprout: You’ve seen 404s. You’ve cursed 404s. And your site might even have 404s. The problem with 404s What’s the big deal with 404s? Are they really […]

5 Popular Blog Post Topics That Everyone Loves to Share

If you’re a content marketer of any type, you know how crucial it is for your blog posts to make a splash.

If you were to look over my shoulder any day of the week, you’d see me checking my social sharing metrics.

Just this morning, I logged in to Buzzsumo to take a look at these numbers: (This image shows the social sharing metrics for QuickSprout.com over the past year. These are the four pieces of content that received the most social shares.)

Why? Because social sharing matters! This isn’t some sort of narcissistic kick. This is a data-driven way to see who’s sharing my content, how many shares I’m getting, what platform those shares are on, and why the articles are being shared.Obviously, it doesn’t matter how much content you’re putting out if nobody’s reading it.If nobody’s reading it, nobody’s sharing it.Ultimately, your content must be shared if you want […]

How To Choose the Best CMS for Your Business Needs

When deciding to build a new website, many businesses’ first question is: what CMS should I choose? But picking a CMS isn’t about choosing whatever the best CMS in the market is. Every company’s needs are different and, accordingly, different CMS platforms will be best for different companies.

Many companies also get stuck in the idea of whether to choose a proprietary or an open source solution, or to find a platform that is specifically catered to their industry. Although these can be helpful things to think about, they can also be counterproductive if they take away from choosing the best CMS platform for you . In fact, going for a platform that isn’t an obvious choice for your industry may lead to great ideas you hadn’t considered.

The key when it comes to choosing a CMS is to understand your unique requirements and those of your customers and to pick […]

High Traffic Does Not Equal Good Customer Experience

High website traffic is not necessarily a sign of a positive customer experience Just because a webpage is popular doesn’t mean that it’s useful. In fact, it could be getting in the way of a more useful page.

“We’ve recently decided to remove Basic rights at work, the most visited advice page on our website,” Hannah Horton from the UK’s Citizen Advice recently wrote. “It gets 70,000 visits a month and is in the top results for lots of queries about work problems on Google.”

If an organization was judging web success based on volume of traffic they would certainly not remove their most popular page. However, Citizen’s Advice does not measure success that way. It measures success based on how successful people are at solving problems.

The page wasn’t working. Firstly, the data told them that people were not searching for this page but were rather searching for much more specific […]