SEO
Social Media Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide
As 4.62 billion people worldwide (54% of the world’s population) spend more time on social media in 2022, it’s no wonder that businesses are spending more time selling and promoting their products or services as well.
Wouldn’t it be fitting to seize every opportunity social media holds for you as a business owner? Social media users have grown to 424 million between January 2021 to January 2022.
If you want more eyeballs for your brand, there is so much to gain from adding social media marketing to your strategy. Acknowledge that social platforms are your odds-on-favorite in acquiring more leads for your business.
Check out our all-inclusive post about social media marketing.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing as another digital marketing method where you can build your brand, increase sales, and drive more site traffic by connecting with your audience on social media.
There are so many reasons why social media marketing can help your business. Some benefits you will get from social media marketing:
It helps increase your brand awareness.
Social media is one most effective marketing channels you can make use of to increase your audience’s awareness of your brand.
With millions of social media users in 2022, it’s no question you can get more eyeballs from your target audience there.
Essentially, what social media does is it organically drives engagement in the form of likes, comments, reposts, and shares.
These types of social engagement help increase your brand awareness.
If there is some social engagement going on between your brand and your audience already, it’ll only be a matter of time before your number of social media followers puffs up.
It generates leads and boosts conversions.
If you haven’t gotten a clue how powerful social engagement is, keep reading.
When you do social engagement and all that jazz, the next thing that will happen is you’ll get more likes and more shares from your followers.
And when you get more content shares, that’s when you could potentially generate more leads.
Yet, we all know that business isn’t just about getting more leads. You need ROI and sales so you need to convert these leads as well.
Here are some ways you can generate leads and boost conversions on social media:
1. Integrate video with your promotions.
If you’re still on the fence about whether short-form or stop-motion videos will work for you or not, stop right there.
Why do Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are the most popular social media platforms for both small businesses and big brands?
Because nowadays, videos are a thing.
If you’re looking to target Millennials and Gen Zs, then it’s high time you include creating video content for your products or service promotions.
In a statistics done by Wyzowl, they surveyed 582 unique respondents and found that:
- 87% of marketers credit video increasing their (website) traffic.
- Video has helped 94% of marketers better explain their product or service.
- 86% of marketers say video helped them generate leads.
- 81% of marketers say video helped them directly increase sales.
- 93% of marketers say video increased brand awareness.
Meanwhile, on the consumers’ side, here’s what Wyzowl found:
- 96% of customers watched an explainer video to learn more about the product or service.
- 88% of people said they were convinced to buy a product or service after watching a brand’s video.
- 78% of consumers say watching a brand’s video convinced them to download an app or software.
Interestingly, 73% of the respondents say they’d prefer to watch a short video when they want to learn more about a product or service.
I hope these numbers will encourage you to start doing short video promotions as early as now. It’s never too late to start.
2. Make compelling calls to action
Over the years, people have become more conscious and savvy when it comes to calls to action (CTA). Unfortunately, hard selling doesn’t work on social media.
Don’t add to the noise by making small changes to your social media profile and captions. Adding a bit of personality to your captions won’t hurt. In fact, it can encourage more engagement with your audiences.
Take a look at one of Melissa’s Instagram image captions. See how they manage to stay relevant with the summer season.
It only goes to show that Melissa values engagement with their followers more than pushing to sell their footwear on the spot.
3. Make your landing page mobile-friendly
With 5.31 billion unique mobile phone users around the world (and still growing at 1.8% every year), it’s in your best interest to create a seamless experience for your customers. To do this, your social landing page must be at the storefront of your social media account.
Let’s take a look at Lander’s Facebook page:
When you click on “Shop on Website” button, it will take you directly to Lander’s site landing page.
As you can see, the featured items on sale above the fold are mostly focused on healthy food. At the same time, you can instantly see the name of the items and prices when you scroll down to its page.
Also, it didn’t take long for the webpage to load. The site speed wasn’t bad as well. Landers made sure that their customers have easy access to their website for smooth checkout.
I also took Google’s mobile-friendly test for Landers to see if they’re mobile-optimized already. Here it is:
If you want to boost conversions for your business, you can use Google’s mobile-friendly test as your benchmark.
To pass the test, you need to make sure that your social landing page or your webpage is optimized for site speed and loading time. When you have both of these important factors, you surely create a seamless experience for your customers.
If you want to increase your sales, nothing is as powerful as using your customers’ photos as your social proof.
In this day and age, people give more prominence to authenticity. They can identify outright if the brand makes enough effort to engage with the customers.
While some brands have wisened up with their marketing strategies, some still need work.
To do this, you may use a short video or a photo taken by your customer with your product in use.
Here’s one great social proof example from Rob and Mara’s Instagram account:
There is not much more evidence you need to know that Rob and Mara appreciate the photos taken from their clients than this.
My two cents? Try to get as much social proof from your customers as you can and use it to gain more leads and boost your sales.
It helps you with an almost instantaneous customer service
As more brands jump into the social media bandwagon, people have begun setting their expectations in getting almost immediate customer feedback and interaction. And you can’t blame customers. They want to make sure that they’re getting the value for what they’re paying.
Some businesses still don’t know that customer service can build meaningful relationships between brands and their customers. In fact, 71% of people who have had a positive experience with a brand on a social media platform are more likely to recommend it to their friends.
Helps build relationships with your customers
When you connect or engage with your social media followers, you’re likely building relationships with them. When you reply with their comments or questions or put the effort into helping your customers in any way that you can, these are ways you’re nurturing them.
The good thing about fostering relationships with your customers is that it’s easier to ask questions about your product or know their challenges that were solved by your product.
Also, if you want to foster loyalty from your customers, you might want to consider a giveaway on occasion to gain their trust.
It helps you understand your competitors
Because most brands and businesses use social media, chances are your competitors are there, too. And with that in mind, social media allows you to check out and understand how your competitor do their marketing strategy or campaigns, interact with their customers and find which product they’re promoting.
Knowing how your competitor moves provide you the opportunity to create a more effective marketing strategy for your brand.
There are 5 pillars that will help make your social media marketing work. These are:
Strategy
You will not be able to do social media marketing right without a sound strategy in place. You need a strategy to identify which goal you need to prioritize, which content resonates with your customers and your brand, and when you should implement your marketing campaigns.
Furthermore, a well-thought-out social media marketing strategy can help you identify which social media channels you might want to focus more of your energy on.
The biggest mistake most brands make is that they try to be present on every social media platform they could get their hands on. This strategy might seem like a good way to find out which platform gets the most engagement, but analyzing the data won’t be easy.
It’s best that you focus on a maximum of 3 social media platforms and put all your efforts to engage with your customers there. If you want to know where most of your customers are, do your research and create your customer avatar or marketing persona.
Creating a marketing persona or customer avatar will also help you choose which content gets the most engagement.
If you want to reach your goals, creating a social media marketing strategy is a must. A social media marketing strategy provides clarity on why you want to reach your goals. I’ll discuss more of this in a while.
Planning and Publishing
Planning saves you time and effort in coming up with ideas for which content gets the most engagement from your audience and figuring out when is the right time to post content. You can avoid adding to the social media noise when you plan your content ahead of time.
You can organize your content schedule by creating a social media content calendar. A social media calendar helps you schedule which content is ideal for your audience, and be consistent in publishing content.
Ideally, you can post content on your social platforms 3-4 times a week for consistency and grow your online presence.
Learn how you can grow your social media presence in 12 steps.
Listening and Engagement
The best way to understand your customers better is through listening and engagement.
A growing following and a business entail conversations with customers. This is when social monitoring and social listening come to your aid.
Social monitoring is a reactive way of keeping track of what your customers say about your brand. You do this by responding to your customers’ feedback, queries, and comments in real-time.
This approach gives you better insight into what your customers say about your product or service. In addition, this provides you the opportunity to engage more with your audience.
Analytics and Report
You can’t measure what you don’t track, so it’s crucial to keep tabs on how your social media marketing performs.
Unlike social monitoring, social listening is proactive. It’s almost similar to social monitoring in the sense that you still do gather feedback and comments from your audience.
Yet for listening, every data gathered is used for analysis to improve your social media marketing strategy.
To do this, you will need social listening tools to help you gather data.
Gathering data can help you gain insight and pick up what’s trending in your industry, and finetune your marketing campaigns to outperform your competitors.
Advertising
Any digital marketing campaign at some point needs a boost that involves both organic and paid advertising. Social media marketing is no exception.
The majority of social media channels offer free sign-ups to users, and for them to provide a better user experience, they offered paid promotions to advertisers.
Don’t get me wrong but paid social media advertising is good in the sense that it helps you get a wider audience reach, apart from your organic social media followers.
If you want to find your target audience, social media advertising platforms can help you precisely identify who they are based on their behavior, demographics, and which electronic device they use.
If you want to build brand loyalty and recognition or increase conversion, invest in social media advertising.
Your social media marketing strategy must provide how you’re going to achieve your social media marketing goals.
Essentially, your strategy will serve as your roadmap so you can get to your destination with success.
To give you a context on how you will create your social media strategy, here are some steps needed:
If you want to reach your goal, you need to answer your “why”.
For your social media strategy to work, you need to have specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals. Without SMART goals, you can’t track your progress.
Make at least three social media marketing goals to make them more achievable first.
Learn about your audience by doing research
Nothing can be truer than this quote “If you sell to everyone, you’re selling to no one.”
Don’t fall into the trap of marketing your product or service to everyone. Create your audience persona from the get-go to save you time, effort, and money in running campaigns.
If you don’t know how to create your persona, think about the audience you’re trying to reach and figure out why you’re targeting them for your product or service.
What pain points or problems do they have that you want to solve?
Get to know your followers or customers to a deeper level so you can easily engage with them on your content posts.
Don’t overwhelm yourself by setting up an account on every social media platform you can find.
To get a head start, choose which social media platform you will often post your content.
But, when you do this, make sure you have done your research already and identify which network is best for engaging with your customers, promoting your company culture, customer feedback, and user-generated content.
To track your progress, focus on metrics that provide real value for your business like engagement, reach, conversion rates, hashtag performance, and click-through rates.
Identify what works and what doesn’t, which network the majority of your audience use and how are they using it, and how does your competitor fare with their online presence.
Doing an audit and identifying your most important KPIs will help you focus on your social media marketing goals.
Get to know your industry competitor
When you keep your competitor close, you gain insight into their social media strategy. You can gauge which social media platform is their weakness, and which one is their strength. You can do this with a competitive analysis.
A competitive analysis allows you to determine who your competitor is and what they’re doing well or wrong. With competitive analysis, you can easily identify opportunities to outsmart them.
While it’s not bad to compete for head to head with your brand rival, it’s going to be an uphill battle. If you want to make your social media marketing strategy work, focus on your competitor’s weakness instead.
A social media marketing strategy without a social media content calendar won’t do you good.
Your strategy always comes with a plan. Without a plan, you won’t get to your destination. A social media content calendar serves as your planning tool so you can easily prepare images or videos, and write captions or short content ahead of time.
If you prepare your content ahead of time, you will be able to create posts designed to engage your audience.
Once you’re done creating content, it’s time to schedule these accordingly. See which time of day you receive the most engagement with your content posts and stick to that schedule going forward.
Create engaging and compelling content
A good mix of educational and entertaining content works on almost every social media platform. When you have both of these elements in your content, you’re creating engaging and compelling content.
In addition, if you want to keep your audience engaged with your social media platform, you need to align your posts with what purpose your social media channels serve.
For example, if your goal for LinkedIn is to share your company culture and values, your content must be aligned with it.
If you’re using Facebook for your giveaways, be consistent in creating Facebook Live video content.
Get creative. Create content that is both suited to your audience and to your brand’s purpose.
Also read: 10 Types of Digital Marketing Channels to Try [in 2022]
Now that we’ve covered almost everything you need to know about social media marketing, you might ask:
Which social media platform will get me more leads and increase conversions?
As I mentioned earlier, it entirely depends on your goal.
However, I want to help you choose which social media platform will help you achieve success with your social media marketing.
So, here are the most popular social media platforms in January 2022 including their statistics and their uses:
Users: 2.9 billion monthly active users
Top 3 dominant age groups: 25-34, 18-24, 35-44
Best for: business to consumers, direct to consumers, brand awareness, advertising
Facebook places first in the most active social media platform rankings to this day, in spite of the so-called “adpocalypse”, and surrounding controversies with the platform. 43.4% of Facebook’s advertising audience is female, and 56.6% is men.
YouTube
Users: 2 billion monthly active users
Top 3 dominant age groups: 15-25, 26-35, 36-45
Best for: business to business, business to consumer, how-to videos, brand awareness, long-form edutainment videos
Because YouTube is the second most popular platform, the majority of marketers find it easy to build a community here. In addition, because YouTube is also popular among young demographics, it continues to innovate in terms of content video forms.
Its short-form videos mostly cater to the younger demographic, while long-form videos appeal to a variety of audiences.
Users: 1.4 billion monthly active users
Top 3 dominant age groups: 25-34, 18-24, 35-44
Best for: business to consumer, (emerging) business to business, user-generated content, advertising, high-quality videos and images
Instagram ranks 4th’s most active social media platform in the world. When Instagram launched in 2010, it only took them 3 years to double its user base to 2 billion.
Because Instagram is a visually compelling content social platform, many brands and influencers have successfully promoted their products here, making it a potential e-commerce hub even to this day.
TikTok
Users: 1 billion monthly active users
Top 3 dominant age groups: 10-19, 20-29, 30-39
Best for: business to consumer, (emerging business to business) short-form creative videos, user-generated content, brand awareness
TikTok disrupted the social media world as it has become the most downloaded short-form video platform since its inception.
It became even more popular in 2020. Brands and influencers have jumped on the short-form video bandwagon, and so marketers found TikTok’s potential in building community within their audiences here as well.
Users: 217 million monthly active users
Dominant age groups: 18-29, 30-49
Best for: business to business, business to consumer, customer service, community building, public relations
Surprisingly, Twitter remained consistent every year, although its platform was majorly used by the younger demographics nowadays. This platform became a prime place to discuss events, what’s trending, and breaking news.
On the other hand, Twitter has expanded and offers Spaces, a new audio tool that could potentially breathe life into the platform.
LinkedIn
Users: 810 million monthly active users
Dominant age groups: 25-34, 35-54
Best for: business to business, social selling, business development
LinkedIn is almost similar to Facebook as it’s a social network – for professionals. This platform demographic is mostly B2B professionals and is the marketer’s perfect haven for generating leads.
If you’re seeking new opportunities or simply looking to network with like-minded professionals, this will be your go-to platform.
Key Takeaway
Billions of people are on social media today. If you’re looking to prioritize social media marketing for your business, you’ve made a good choice.
What sets social media marketing apart from other digital marketing types is that it enables you to connect with people instantaneously, in real-time.
There are virtually endless opportunities with this type of marketing. However, determining your business’ course of action can be daunting.
To avoid overwhelm, read more and understand the trends in social media marketing.
Invest the time and effort into researching available resources like this post to gain a deeper understanding of how social media marketing can boost awareness, conversions, and engagement for your business.
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SEO
SEO Experts Gather for a Candid Chat About Search [Podcast]
![SEO Experts Gather for a Candid Chat About Search [Podcast]](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/SEO-Experts-Gather-for-a-Candid-Chat-About-Search-Podcast.png "SEO Experts Gather for a Candid Chat About Search [Podcast]")
Wix just celebrated their 100th podcast episode! Congrats, Wix. To quote Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Brand at Wix; “we talk a lot.”
You sure do! It’s a good thing you have a lot of interesting stuff to say.
The 100th episode of “SERPs Up” was full of awesome guests. Here’s a summary of the action.
Apart from the usual faces, Oberstein and Crystal Carter, Head Of SEO Communications, it was a powerhouse guestlist:
- Chima Mmeje.
- Darren Shaw.
- Joy Hawkins.
- Eli Schwartz.
- Kevin Indig.
- Barry Schwartz.
Just How Broken Are The SERPs?
The first guest was Chima Mmeje from Moz. She dove into the frustrations that many SEOs have been feeling and spoke plainly about the flaws in Google’s updates.
Mordy Oberstein: “Is the SERP broken?”
Chima Mmeje: “The helpful content update, and I’m saying this here, live, is a farce. There was nothing helpful about that update. … Yes, the SERP is 1,000% broken. … How does anybody even use Google in the U.S.? … I don’t think they are going to release any update that will fix these issues.”
Mordy Oberstein: “There’s no update. … Plopping Reddit all over the SERP was because they saw the content trends … and they said ‘we don’t have any so we’re just going to throw Reddit there’.”
Chima Mmeje: “It was lazy to have Reddit there … Nobody uses their real names. Anybody can go on Reddit and answer questions and then you see these answers populating in People Also Ask, populating in featured snippets, populating all over the SERPs as correct information. It is dangerous, at worst.”
Crystal Carter: “Do you think that one of the reasons why we’ve seen so much upheaval and so much so volatility in the SERPs, which I certainly agree with in the last year … is lots and lots of variables, like lots of new features coming in, so the alignment with Reddit, the AI overviews, the SGE … Do you think it is just too many things being thrown in at the same time and it messing up lots of SERPs as a result? Or do you think it’s something else?”
Chima Mmeje: ” … releasing too many features that they did not test properly. Features that were rushed SGE [testing] did not even last a year and now they brought in Google AI Overviews. I still don’t understand why we have AI Overviews and featured snippets on the same SERP. I feel like it’s like pick one, make a choice.”
Mordy Oberstein’s next question was about what we can do. “As an SEO, how are you supposed to do this? I’ve heard things from people … Yeah, I don’t know what to do. I can’t produce the kind of results that I’ve always wanted to. Can you still be effective as an SEO in an environment like this?”
Chima Mmeje: “I’m going to be honest, we are suffering … It feels like we are trying our best with what we are seeing … because there is no clear guidance. And to be honest, a lot of us are playing a guessing game right now and that is the best that we can do. It’s all a guessing game based on what we’ve seen one or two variables work. And this is not a long-term strategy. If we’re going to be realistic, it’s not going to work in the long-term. I honestly, I don’t know what the answer is … you’re fighting against Reddit. How do you compete against Reddit? Nobody has figured that out yet.”
Crystal Carter: “Thanks for saying it out loud, Chima.” Crystal was reflecting the sentiment of the commenters, who appreciated her candor and willingness to say: we don’t know, but we’re trying our best.
Mordy Oberstein: “The most honest take I’ve heard on that in quite a long time.”
Mmeje also recounted examples of small website owners and small businesses that have had to shut down. She also talked about the pervasive feeling in the SEO community that there is no rhyme or reason to how the algorithms handle websites and content.
What’s Going On In Local SEO?
The next guests were Darren Shaw from Whitespark and Joy Hawkins, owner of Sterling Sky for a segment called “It’s New.” They talked about new developments in local SEO.
Hawkins talked about a new feature in Google Business Profile.
Joy Hawkins: “… There’s a little services section inside the Google business profile dashboard that’s easy to miss, but you can add anything you want in there. … We’ve done a lot of testing on it and they do impact ranking, but I should clarify, it’s like a small impact. So usually we see it for longer-tailed queries that maybe don’t match a category or things that are not super competitive. … So it is a small ranking factor, but still one that is worth filling out.”
Darren Shaw: “ .. this is the question that a lot of people ask. We know that if you go into the services section of your Google business profile, Google will suggest predefined services … And so Joy’s original research was focused on those predefined ones and it definitely identified that when you do put those on your profile, you now rank better for those terms depending on how competitive they’re, as Joy had mentioned. … There is a place where you can add your own custom services. Have you done any testing around that? Will you rank better with the custom services?”
Joy Hawkins: “Yes. They both work. In custom services … I’m trying to remember the keyword that Colin tested it on. It was something super niche like vampire facials. I was Googling, what the hell is that? … Really, really niche … But he just wanted to know if there was any impact whatsoever and there was. [Custom services fields are a] good way to go after longer tail keywords that don’t have crazy high search volume or aren’t super competitive.”
Darren Shaw: “You want to make sure that you’re telling Google what you do … that’s basically what the services section provides. And it’s not a huge ranking factor, but it’s just another step in the local optimization process. … a tip for custom services because custom services often get pulled into the local results as justifications. It’ll say this business provides vampire facials, right? Well, did you know there’s a vampire emoji? So if you put the vampire emoji in the title … Then in the local results you’ll see a whole panel of businesses that all provide that service, but yours has that little vampire emoji which will draw people in.”
There was tons more in this section, including questions from the audiences and some great jokes.
The Obligatory AI Section.
Eli Schwartz And Kevin indig were next up to talk about AI. Oberstein, professional rabble rouser, tried to get them to argue, but despite their very different posting habits, they found a lot to agree on about AI.
Mordy Oberstein: “It wouldn’t be an SEO podcast if we didn’t talk about AI. Where do we currently stand with AI? What can it do? What can’t it do?”
Kevin Indig: “… We’re at a stage where AI basically has the capability to create content, analyze some basic data. It still hallucinates here and there and it still makes mistakes. … If you compare that to when this AI hype started in November, 2022, so it’s almost two years now and we’ve come a really long way, these models are getting exponentially better. … It means different things based on whether you look at it as a tool for yourself to make your work more efficient. And of course, what does it mean from an SEO perspective? How does it change search, not just Google, but also how people search. And I think these are all different questions that are exciting to dive into. … So there is a lot of objective data that indicates efficiencies and benefits from AI. There’s also a lot of hype that promises a little too much about what AI can do. And so I’m generally AI bullish, but I’m not in the camp of AI is going to replace us all the next two years.”
Mordy Oberstein: “I’m setting the stage here a little bit because while your LinkedIn pros are generally like pro ai, a lot of Eli’s posts are a little more skeptical about AI. So Eli, what do you think about what Kevin just said? By the way, I’m like, for those who are listening or watching this, I’m pitting them against each other. They’re friends and they do a podcast together. So it’s cool.”
Eli Schwartz: I think AI is great. I think that there’s a lot of great things you can get out of AI. You can, again, like Kevin said, it can be your thought partner. … I’m anti AI in the way people are using it. And I don’t think people have necessarily changed their behaviors because before … they outsource [content] on Fiverr and Upwork and they bought very cheap content and now they’re getting very free content. So then that’s coming from AI. That behavior hasn’t really changed. The challenge is that now there are more people that think they can copy them.
So I talk to CMOs all the time who are like, well, I just go of my SEO team. A big company reached out to me recently. They wanted to gut check themselves after they already fired their SEO team. So I can’t really help there, but they’re like, AI can do everything. … Well, I’ll see them in a year from now when they have whatever sort of penalty. AI is a very powerful tool. Any tool we have a drill is a very powerful tool. But if you just hold it in the air and just let it go, it’s going to make holes. But if you use it appropriately, it does the thing it’s supposed to do. … We’re humans and we buy stuff and it has to come to a point where humans are talking to humans.
Crystal Carter: “… Most of the gains are coming from productivity. The stuff like Kevin was talking about with being able to write product descriptions more quickly, being able to write lots of posts more quickly and being able to finish your things more quickly, brainstorm, et cetera, in terms of the quality, the quality is still not there. It’s getting there rapidly, but it’s still not there.”
There was lots more AI talk, so you should listen to the whole episode if you want to hear the full range of opinions.
Snappy News About The Google August Update
“The Snappy News” segment featured Barry Schwartz, Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land. It also featured the dreaded SEO phrase “it depends.”
Mordy Oberstein: So the article of the day is from Search Engine Land, basically written by Barry that the core update, the August 2024 core update is done. It is complete. … The issue with Google folks who are trying to figure out, will they see a reversal of their fortunes from the 2023 helpful content update, the September, 2023 helpful content update. It’s a mouthful, to be honest with you. And my question for you, since you’re here, did that happen? Was the August updated reversal?
Barry Schwartz: “It depends on the site. I think the number, I don’t have the exact data, obviously I don’t think anybody does, but I’ve seen examples of some very few sites see complete reversals. … There are a number of sites that saw maybe a 20% bump, a 30% bump, maybe a 5% bump. But very few sites saw a complete reversal, if you want to even call it that. … I’ve been through a lot of Google updates over the years, and it’s sometimes sad to see the stories, but at the same time, if you keep at it and you are true to the content, your audience, generally, you’ll do well in the long run. Not every site, there’s plenty of sites that have been hit, went out of business, and they couldn’t come back. That’s business in general. And things change, like seasonalities and times change. You’re writing about the railroad business a hundred years ago and you keep writing about it today. There’s not many people investing a lot of money in railroads these days. So I dunno, it’s, it’s hard to read those stories, but not everybody deserves to go back to where they were. And then at the same time, Google’s not perfect either, which is why they keep on releasing new updates.”
That’s a wrap!
If you haven’t experienced a SERPs Up episode before, you should absolutely take a listen to experience the full effect of Mordy and Crystal’s banter.
The SERP’s Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio.
SEO
OpenAI Claims New “o1” Model Can Reason Like A Human
OpenAI has unveiled its latest language model, “o1,” touting advancements in complex reasoning capabilities.
In an announcement, the company claimed its new o1 model can match human performance on math, programming, and scientific knowledge tests.
However, the true impact remains speculative.
Extraordinary Claims
According to OpenAI, o1 can score in the 89th percentile on competitive programming challenges hosted by Codeforces.
The company insists its model can perform at a level that would place it among the top 500 students nationally on the elite American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME).
Further, OpenAI states that o1 exceeds the average performance of human subject matter experts holding PhD credentials on a combined physics, chemistry, and biology benchmark exam.
These are extraordinary claims, and it’s important to remain skeptical until we see open scrutiny and real-world testing.
Reinforcement Learning
The purported breakthrough is o1’s reinforcement learning process, designed to teach the model to break down complex problems using an approach called the “chain of thought.”
By simulating human-like step-by-step logic, correcting mistakes, and adjusting strategies before outputting a final answer, OpenAI contends that o1 has developed superior reasoning skills compared to standard language models.
Implications
It’s unclear how o1’s claimed reasoning could enhance understanding of queries—or generation of responses—across math, coding, science, and other technical topics.
From an SEO perspective, anything that improves content interpretation and the ability to answer queries directly could be impactful. However, it’s wise to be cautious until we see objective third-party testing.
OpenAI must move beyond benchmark browbeating and provide objective, reproducible evidence to support its claims. Adding o1’s capabilities to ChatGPT in planned real-world pilots should help showcase realistic use cases.
Featured Image: JarTee/Shutterstock
SEO
How to Build a Fandom by Talent-Scouting Great Content
At a time when anyone can create content, the real challenge—and opportunity—is in saying something new.
I think content curation can help with that.
Curation is all about finding undiscovered stories and repackaging ideas in ways your audience really respond to.
In this article, you’ll learn why content curation is great for growth, and how to talent scout quality underground or left-field content.
Gathering and sharing content is a popular social media tactic, but content curation extends to mediums and channels far beyond social.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
| Example | Type | What is it? |
|---|---|---|
| The Pudding | Article | A data journalism publication that curates a range of rich media (e.g. social comments, headline snippets, literature reviews) to tell compelling visual stories – like this one. |
| Ahrefs’ digest | Newsletter | Our Senior Content Marketing Manager, Si Quan Ong (SQ), curates key SEO/marketing news, accompanied by snappy annotations. |
| Near Media Memo | Podcast | Conversations at the intersection of search, social, and commerce. Hosts curate and discuss the latest industry content. |
| KFC’s “Bucket Bangers” Spotify Playlist | Playlist | A playlist curated by KFC as part of a PR campaign, containing 46 tracks that name drop the brand. |
| Campaign Inspiration | Image carousel | This LinkedIn page curates visual examples of existing PR campaigns to inspire marketers. |
Newsletters, in particular, have become the go-to platform for curation, since they’re fairly cheap to run and easy to set up.
The numbers back this up. A quick look at Site Explorer shows newsletter platform Substack experiencing a 373% leap in organic traffic from September 5th, 2023 to September 5th, 2024.
You can see some great examples of curated SEO newsletters here: I Subscribed to 72 SEO Newsletters. Here Are My 11 Favorites.
Now you know about content curation in all its forms and guises, let me tell you what’s so great about it…
From saving money, to building traffic, and cementing your authority, content curation comes with plenty of benefits.
1. Content curation saves time and money
At Ahrefs, we follow The Pareto Principle: the idea that 80% of the reward comes from 20% of the effort.
If you want to improve your effort:reward ratio, curation is a great option.
I asked SQ about the benefits of content curation, and he had this to say:
“One benefit is that I don’t have to write an essay from scratch each week (which is what most newsletters are).”
While content curation has the potential to save you time, resources, and money, I do want to add two important caveats:
- Curating niche, underground content examples can still take time – especially when you’re first finding your sources.
- If you’re doing deep-dive investigations into those examples, you may spend just as long curating as you would creating.
2. Curation helps you build links, traffic, and engagement
Marketing Examples is a goldmine of curated marketing snippets.
Founder, Harry Dry, doesn’t just gather content — he dissects real-world marketing copy, name drops the creator, and breaks down their winning formulas, making it easy for readers to replicate that success.
As a result, his site has earned fairly consistent links and traffic over time, growing organically by 88% in the last two years.
Curating content is an example of what I call “awareness you prepared earlier”. Your chances of driving traction are vastly improved when you crowdsource ideas.
Not only do your audience consume your curated content, they publicize it to their own network via social posts or reciprocal links when they get featured.
Some refer to this as “ego bait”. Obviously there’s an element of flattery involved, but in my experience, the top curators prioritize content that genuinely helped or inspired them, rather than chasing big names with the widest reach.
3. Curating content is great for EEAT
Few people have direct experience with every topic they’ve ever written about.
But, since 2022, first-hand experience has become a prerequisite for ranking in Google.
Curating others’ lived experiences and knowledge in your content is a powerful way to build your EEAT and improve your rankings.
4. You become credible by association
We tend to categorize people according to their social group memberships – this is known as social categorization.
If you’re regularly associating yourself with respected thought leaders, your audience is more likely to group you with them, and hold you in higher regard as a result.
Mixing in your own content and opinion is important for building credibility, but be careful not to overdo the self-promotion.
Back to SQ:
“I don’t tend to include all of the blog posts we publish on our blog.“
5. You get closer to your customers and community
When you curate, you consume content holistically –like your customers– and stop being so introspective.
If you’re only consuming content from your brand or brand “friends”, there’s a limit to the value you can bring to your audience.
Content curators turn to their community to source content, so curating bridges the gap in two ways: by helping them consume like their customers, and by giving them a reason to connect.
6. When you curate, your content gets better
To create is to curate. All ideas are shaped and borrowed from somewhere – that’s how knowledge is acquired.
If I don’t curate, I tend to find my own content stagnates.
Curation introduces me to new ideas, reminds me of the things I have forgotten, allows me to build deeper, more informed arguments, and ultimately helps me produce better content – with a lot more in the way of information gain.
For instance, this blog started out as a simple list of content curation benefits, thunk up by yours truly.
But as I came across cool examples of novel content curation, it evolved into a more comprehensive (and hopefully, more interesting) guide.
“Another benefit of content curation is that I get to keep abreast of anything new in SEO and marketing, which informs my own work”
7. You build your personal “brand”
Curation gives you the chance to platform your own expertise and assert yourself as a thought leader.
Take a look at the search volume for one of the most prolific curators in SEO: Aleyda Solis.
Aleyda curates SEO news and insights across her newsletter, SEOFOMO, her podcast, Crawling Mondays, her owned social media channels, and industry talks.
As a result, her name now drives ~600 monthly organic searches, according to Site Explorer.
And over 19K “in content” mentions, according to Content Explorer.
Curation is about piecing together unrelated content to reveal new ideas and information.
You’re giving someone else’s content another shot at engagement – sometimes after a “failure” to launch.
“The same core information can be made more or less valuable by changing its format. Great ideas are sometimes locked away in places that render them inaccessible to people that would benefit from them.”
Here are 9 ways you can “talent scout” novel content, and carve out your own curation USP.
1. Pay attention to lesser-known voices
In every industry there are sources that audiences defer to for information and ideas.
Look beyond them.
Scout for “rising stars” and underground sources to give your curation exclusivity.
Mark Williams-Cook, Director at Candour and Founder of AlsoAsked, does just this when curating his newsletter: Core Updates.
“I’ve made a conscious effort not just to follow the ‘big names’, as there are some truly excellent SEOs that are very quiet on social media. I’d always recommend following someone if you see them putting out solid advice, even if you’ve never heard of them. I’ve made some good friends and excellent connections that way!”
This is probably something you’ll have to do manually at first.
I try to pay close attention to people leaving savvy comments on social media posts and industry communities.
2. Build an X list of “ones to watch”
Once you’ve found the right “ones to watch”, you can start building a list to refer back to whenever it’s time to curate.
SQ uses X lists and subscribes to others’ Substacks:
“I have my own Twitter list of marketers (getting poorer these days sadly) and follow other people’s substacks/newsletters and see if there are any links they recommend.”
3. Mine niche and atypical sources of information
Nicole DeLeon, Ed Zitron, Marie Haynes and other tech curators recently mined Google’s DoJ trial documentation to investigate “buried” information on how the search engine ranks content.
Search Engine Roundtable founder, Barry Schwartz, is always extracting content from Google rep social comments, Google developer docs, and Google’s Office Hours video series to curate hot-off-the-press news.
Techemails mines leaked tech company emails from court filings and curates them across social media and their website (p.s. they are preeetty eye-opening).
Finding and teasing out obscure information is a great skill to have when it comes to content curation.
Here are some more ways you can do that:
- Track updates in company documentation (e.g. brand Ts & Cs, Google Developer Docs, Anthropic Release Notes)
- Mine Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request databases
- Monitor government data via fact finding bodies (e.g. Indeed curates content from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to inform content in their Hiring Lab)
- Study public datasets released by research institutions (e.g. Harvard Dataverse)
- Mine “hidden” or ephemeral content (e.g. podcasts, webinars, industry talks, seminars etc.) to curate quotes and promote relatively unheard information
- Monitor public announcements and press releases from organizations
4. Track down new and trending content
Be the first to break and curate news in your industry. Start by searching for industry-specific keywords in Content Explorer.
Then add filters to make sure you’re seeing the freshest and highest quality content.
In my experience, I find that:
- Adding a minimum Referring Domain of “30”
- Adding a minimum word count of “300”
- Sorting by “Date: newest first”
…shows me the newest and best SEO related content, but you should play around until you find what works in your industry.
Tip
When it comes to filtering, don’t get too prescriptive about it – remember, you want to find novel content that usually flies under the radar, so avoid being overly strict with minimum thresholds.
This next part is really important. Once you’re happy with your configuration, hit “Save filters” so that you can repeat this analysis for the next instalment of your newsletter, podcast, social post, article, or whatever else you might be curating.
With the Content Explorer, you’re searching for instances of a keyword in the title, content, URL or all of the above.
But relevant content won’t always contain the exact keywords or topics you’re searching for.
In which case, try searching for keywords in the anchor text linking to that content.
There’s a preconfigured search for this in Ahrefs’ Web Explorer. Just hit the “examples” tab, and select “Most quoted newly published pages about ChatGPT”:
This will load a full report of the most linked to pages about the topic “ChatGPT” over the last week. Then all you need to do is update the report with your chosen topic, and adjust any filters.
And hit “Save report”.
Another tip for breaking news was recently disclosed by SEO expert and founder of SEO blog Detailed, Glen Allsopp, on the Ahrefs Podcast (it’s a great episode – I highly recommend a full listen!)
He spoke about a technique that he refers to as the “iPhone Link Building” method.
“The reason I call it this, because it doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter how old your website is, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been around. If you have a photo of the iPhone 16 before anyone else and you put that on [your site], the whole tech world is going to talk about it, right? You’re going to get links from every tech website on the planet. Doesn’t matter that [your site] has nothing to do with tech and gadgets. You’ve got the first iPhone link. People are going to talk about it. So I refer to it as the iPhone link building.“
To carry out “iPhone link building”, Glen sets up an alert using Visual Ping. This sends him a notification as soon as there’s an update on one of the webpages he’s tracking. If something new or interesting has changed, he’ll work this into his next piece of content.
5. Ask your network
Turning to your social network for examples of existing content is a great way to curate.
Here’s Chris Haines, Ahrefs’ Senior SEO Specialist, doing just this on LinkedIn…
And here I am posting in Women In Tech SEO (my #1 community) for contributions to my article: So You’ve Been Asked To Humanize AI Content
Often, Slack communities will dedicate a channel to self-promotion. This is another handy way to find new content to curate.
“In the Women in Tech SEO Slack group, we have a hashtag channel (#wts-amplify-me) that serves as a space for members to promote their work, and it’s wholesome to see lots of our members use it to highlight the work of others! This channel helps me curate content for our weekly WTSNewsletter. As newsletter creators, we are responsible for amplifying diverse voices, which was the driving force behind starting WTSNewsletter. The lack of diversity in industry newsletters motivated me to create our very own weekly newsletter that showcases the brilliant work of underrepresented individuals.”
Community content sourcing doesn’t begin and end with LinkedIn or Slack. Check out other pockets of the internet, including niche forums, Subreddits, Facebook groups, and Mastodon instances.
6. Bookmark everything
Some of my best articles have been inspired by the posts I’ve bookmarked.
Here are my top tips for bookmarking curated content:
Use web highlighters
Use a web highlighter plugin to bookmark interesting content for future curation.
Organize examples in a note taking app
Use a note taking app like Notion or Obsidian to organize your content examples.
Bookmark your saved social media content
You’ll undoubtedly have banked some great content on social media over the years, but navigating back to those archives can be a bit of a faff.
I bookmark mine to my browser so I can easily jump back in (e.g. LinkedIn “Saved”, X bookmarks, X advanced searches, TikTok saved, Instagram saved etc.)
7. Set up author notifications
Follow creators and journalists that inspire you. Subscribe to their channel, turn on notification bells on LinkedIn and X, and set up RSS feeds to get alerted whenever they push out new content.
Tip
When you’re searching for new content in the Content Explorer, check out the Authors tab for ideas on which thought leaders to follow in your industry.
8. Set up keyword alerts
Get notified as soon as on-topic content is published, with Ahrefs “Mention” alerts.
9. Use AI to extract and annotate content
AI broadly summarizes outdated content, and has a habit of forgoing (or entirely fabricating) references. In other words, it’s pretty terrible for curating unique content.
Instead, use it to extract, summarize, and investigate the content you’ve selectively curated.
Extract nuggets from “hidden” content
I used AI to extract quotes and insights from webinars, interviews, and YouTube videos. The post I wrote for SpinSucks was inspired by content mined from interview transcripts and bookmarked social media content, using Claude AI.
Reverse-engineer successful content formulas
I fed ChatGPT examples of top-performing blogs to understand patterns of success, and inform my opinion of what “good” content looks like, while updating the post: 6 Simple Blog Post Templates (Download & Edit Along.
We’ve covered a lot of ground, but there are a few extra details worth mentioning before you jump into curation.
Make sure you have a clear theme
Curation isn’t just about sourcing and presenting the most unique content you can find.
Value also comes from carefully selecting content that fits a central concept or theme.
“[Content curation] helps build my taste, which in my opinion, is the hardest part of curation, because most people don’t seem to understand the concept of “curation”, i.e. selecting the best, or what fits a theme. They just seem to shoehorn every article on the internet.”
Build your exclude list
Be discerning about the content you create. Set out rules as to the content or people you will/won’t include, using your brand guidelines for inspiration.
Repurpose your knowledge
Content curation is usually cheaper and easier to produce, but don’t treat it as a “one and done” activity. Repurpose the things you learn both internally and externally.
“We actually use the news – that Jack (Chambers-Ward) and I curate for the Core Updates newsletter – internally at Candour during one of our weekly meetings when we are discussing changes in the industry. So it’s been a helpful task to make sure the agency is always up to date!”
Final thoughts
Content curation isn’t a “set it and forget it” tactic. It’s an ongoing process that demands a reasonable amount of effort, but the payoff is worth it. That’s because:
- It’s a traffic magnet: Curated content can outperform original content in terms of organic traffic, because you’re cherry-picking the best ideas.
- It builds your E-E-A-T: By sharing valuable experiences, you’re signaling to users and search engines that you know your stuff. This can boost your rankings across the board.
- It’s a networking opportunity: When you share others’ content, they notice. We’ve built relationships with industry giants simply by featuring their work on our blog or weekly digest.
Great curation is about adding value. You can just reshare content verbatim, but you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity to add your own insight, and explain why the content you’ve painstakingly curated matters to your audience.
In a world where 70 million blog posts are published every month, skilled curators stand out. They don’t just share content – they build communities, spark discussions, and become go-to resources in their niches.
If you’re giving content curation a try, experiment with different formats and track what resonates (our Content Explorer can help with that too), then watch your influence grow.
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