SEO
Why Bulk Content Creating For Social Media Saves You Time
What is bulk content creation?
I like to think that bulk content creation will be the new term used by many social media marketers, so fingers crossed it’ll catch on.
Simply put, the process of bulk content production is when you come up with a range of ideas for your social media platforms and produce the content, captions, hashtags, and scheduling for a period of time.
I often find that if you create four to six weeks’ worth of content in advance of them going out on socials, then that would be a good example of this process.
But, here’s the thing: It is a process, and sometimes social media marketing doesn’t completely allow for a linear construct. The world is an unpredictable place and there are trends appearing left, right, and center, so you have to allow for this.
What I am suggesting in this article is that bulk content creation allows you to be productive and plan in advance for your business (or your client’s businesses).
What Purpose Does Bulk Content Creation Have When It Comes To Social Media Marketing?
I have already touched on the purpose above, but I’d like to expand my thinking here.
I always advise people – whether it’s my team, clients, or partners – that sending` out social media posts for the sake of it isn’t going to cut it.
Remember that the key to social media is to be social; interacting with your audience has to take place to build relationships, and mustn’t be forgotten about.
However, if your social media strategy is to provide your audience with thought leadership, or to incentivize them to buy your products/services, then bulk content creation will certainly help you plan ahead.
Thinking about seasonality in your business is important too, so knowing that the holidays are coming up gives you enough time to plan ahead as to what your messaging or campaign will be.
How Bulk Content Creation Can Save You Time
In order for this process to work effectively, you need to have the right tools in place to do it.
I have always used a version of Hootsuite’s Social Media Content Calendar, which I have adapted over time.
This is Infinity Digital’s social media content calendar from a week in September this year. As you can see, it allows you to clearly view:
- The week.
- Date of publication.
- Time of publication.
- Platform output.
- Topic or series.
- Content to create.
- Caption including hashtags.
- Status of the post.
When it comes back around to me planning the next few weeks of our content, I am able to input the dates and times of publication, which are derived from the performance of my last set of posts.
Screenshot from Infinity Digital on Hootsuite, October 2022This is just an example of our Facebook page, and the best time to post for extending reach.
We can then move on to deciding on the topic, series, or campaign, and which content output would be best to achieve our goals.
After that, we can then create a prompt to understand what content it is we need to create.
Having a status column at the end is super important, as it visually shows you where you’re at with the week or month that you are on.
It’s also worth noting that this template won’t work for every business or brand.
And, importantly: Quality is everything. Whilst this is demonstrating another approach and process, you must still think about the quality of your content and its impact on your audience.
What we don’t want is a bunch of posts that are being published for the sake of it, without adding any value to the audience. Think: Will my followers and prospective followers gain anything from this post?
Sometimes it is a good idea to add different channels into the mix – such as your website’s blog – as that will allow you to pair up the social posts that go with promoting this piece of content.
An Example Of When Bulk Content Production Has Saved My Agency Time
I’ve explained how it has saved me time in organizing my own agency’s social media marketing, but I’d like to talk about how it’s helped my team with our client delivery.
As I said above, the content calendar can come in many different forms, so we’re constantly adapting them for our clients.
One of our clients, AA Salt Services Ltd, has recently come on board with us to manage their social media after working with us over the last 12 months on pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.
In our strategy meeting, it was decided that bulk-creating content over the winter period would be advantageous as we can pre-plan messaging for certain weeks and days.
Also, we are able to keep slots in the calendar free for what I like to refer to as “off-the-cuff” posts – such as weather changes in the local area (if I use this client as an example).
Tools To Use When Bulk Content Creating
I have already talked about the content calendar template, which is derived from Hootsuite, but I’d like to show you what tools myself and my team use to create content in bulk.
The first tool, which I think is a particular favorite, is Canva.
Good ol’ Canva has come a long way since I first started using it. Not only do you have the ability to adapt templates to create content, but with Canva’s Pro version, you can resize graphics and videos to suit other formats.
Screenshot of Canva, October 2022I would use this to resize to other social platforms and, with a bit of jiggery-pokery (posh marketing speak for moving and reorganizing assets), I have a full set of graphics and videos for all of my chosen social media platforms.
We’ve also been experimenting with other social media management tools at my agency, so it’s been interesting to see which ones work the best for us and our clients.
Hootsuite’s bulk content uploading has been a saving grace in the past, as it allows you to use a spreadsheet like the one above, and add all of your content to be scheduled in just a few clicks!
However, I know that Later.com also has this feature, with the ability to connect to cloud storage such as Google Drive and Dropbox, where you can pull approved content directly. This is very useful for sharing with other stakeholders!
Screenshot from Later, Oct 2022.Summary
To summarize my first article on SEJ, I’ll leave you with a broken-down process of how I approach bulk content creation for social media marketing:
- Create a list of ideas that aims to deliver on your social media strategy.
- Develop your social media content calendar, breaking it down by platform and channel.
- Decide on the time period you’d like to work towards.
- Use tools such as Canva and CapCut with their templates to create your content.
- Bulk upload using a social media management tool such as Hootsuite or Later.com.
- Analyze your post performance over time to adjust the time you publish to ensure the best exposure for reach, engagement, or traffic.
More resources:
Featured Image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock
SEO
Measuring Content Impact Across The Customer Journey
Understanding the impact of your content at every touchpoint of the customer journey is essential – but that’s easier said than done. From attracting potential leads to nurturing them into loyal customers, there are many touchpoints to look into.
So how do you identify and take advantage of these opportunities for growth?
Watch this on-demand webinar and learn a comprehensive approach for measuring the value of your content initiatives, so you can optimize resource allocation for maximum impact.
You’ll learn:
- Fresh methods for measuring your content’s impact.
- Fascinating insights using first-touch attribution, and how it differs from the usual last-touch perspective.
- Ways to persuade decision-makers to invest in more content by showcasing its value convincingly.
With Bill Franklin and Oliver Tani of DAC Group, we unravel the nuances of attribution modeling, emphasizing the significance of layering first-touch and last-touch attribution within your measurement strategy.
Check out these insights to help you craft compelling content tailored to each stage, using an approach rooted in first-hand experience to ensure your content resonates.
Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or new to content measurement, this webinar promises valuable insights and actionable tactics to elevate your SEO game and optimize your content initiatives for success.
View the slides below or check out the full webinar for all the details.
SEO
How to Find and Use Competitor Keywords
Competitor keywords are the keywords your rivals rank for in Google’s search results. They may rank organically or pay for Google Ads to rank in the paid results.
Knowing your competitors’ keywords is the easiest form of keyword research. If your competitors rank for or target particular keywords, it might be worth it for you to target them, too.
There is no way to see your competitors’ keywords without a tool like Ahrefs, which has a database of keywords and the sites that rank for them. As far as we know, Ahrefs has the biggest database of these keywords.
How to find all the keywords your competitor ranks for
- Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
- Enter your competitor’s domain
- Go to the Organic keywords report
The report is sorted by traffic to show you the keywords sending your competitor the most visits. For example, Mailchimp gets most of its organic traffic from the keyword “mailchimp.”
Since you’re unlikely to rank for your competitor’s brand, you might want to exclude branded keywords from the report. You can do this by adding a Keyword > Doesn’t contain filter. In this example, we’ll filter out keywords containing “mailchimp” or any potential misspellings:
If you’re a new brand competing with one that’s established, you might also want to look for popular low-difficulty keywords. You can do this by setting the Volume filter to a minimum of 500 and the KD filter to a maximum of 10.
How to find keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t
- Go to Competitive Analysis
- Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
- Enter your competitor’s domain in the But these competitors do section
Hit “Show keyword opportunities,” and you’ll see all the keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t.
You can also add a Volume and KD filter to find popular, low-difficulty keywords in this report.
How to find keywords multiple competitors rank for, but you don’t
- Go to Competitive Analysis
- Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
- Enter the domains of multiple competitors in the But these competitors do section
You’ll see all the keywords that at least one of these competitors ranks for, but you don’t.
You can also narrow the list down to keywords that all competitors rank for. Click on the Competitors’ positions filter and choose All 3 competitors:
- Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
- Enter your competitor’s domain
- Go to the Paid keywords report
This report shows you the keywords your competitors are targeting via Google Ads.
Since your competitor is paying for traffic from these keywords, it may indicate that they’re profitable for them—and could be for you, too.
You know what keywords your competitors are ranking for or bidding on. But what do you do with them? There are basically three options.
1. Create pages to target these keywords
You can only rank for keywords if you have content about them. So, the most straightforward thing you can do for competitors’ keywords you want to rank for is to create pages to target them.
However, before you do this, it’s worth clustering your competitor’s keywords by Parent Topic. This will group keywords that mean the same or similar things so you can target them all with one page.
Here’s how to do that:
- Export your competitor’s keywords, either from the Organic Keywords or Content Gap report
- Paste them into Keywords Explorer
- Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
For example, MailChimp ranks for keywords like “what is digital marketing” and “digital marketing definition.” These and many others get clustered under the Parent Topic of “digital marketing” because people searching for them are all looking for the same thing: a definition of digital marketing. You only need to create one page to potentially rank for all these keywords.
2. Optimize existing content by filling subtopics
You don’t always need to create new content to rank for competitors’ keywords. Sometimes, you can optimize the content you already have to rank for them.
How do you know which keywords you can do this for? Try this:
- Export your competitor’s keywords
- Paste them into Keywords Explorer
- Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
- Look for Parent Topics you already have content about
For example, if we analyze our competitor, we can see that seven keywords they rank for fall under the Parent Topic of “press release template.”
If we search our site, we see that we already have a page about this topic.
If we click the caret and check the keywords in the cluster, we see keywords like “press release example” and “press release format.”
To rank for the keywords in the cluster, we can probably optimize the page we already have by adding sections about the subtopics of “press release examples” and “press release format.”
3. Target these keywords with Google Ads
Paid keywords are the simplest—look through the report and see if there are any relevant keywords you might want to target, too.
For example, Mailchimp is bidding for the keyword “how to create a newsletter.”
If you’re ConvertKit, you may also want to target this keyword since it’s relevant.
If you decide to target the same keyword via Google Ads, you can hover over the magnifying glass to see the ads your competitor is using.
You can also see the landing page your competitor directs ad traffic to under the URL column.
Learn more
Check out more tutorials on how to do competitor keyword analysis:
SEO
Google Confirms Links Are Not That Important
Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed at a recent search marketing conference that Google needs very few links, adding to the growing body of evidence that publishers need to focus on other factors. Gary tweeted confirmation that he indeed say those words.
Background Of Links For Ranking
Links were discovered in the late 1990’s to be a good signal for search engines to use for validating how authoritative a website is and then Google discovered soon after that anchor text could be used to provide semantic signals about what a webpage was about.
One of the most important research papers was Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment by Jon M. Kleinberg, published around 1998 (link to research paper at the end of the article). The main discovery of this research paper is that there is too many web pages and there was no objective way to filter search results for quality in order to rank web pages for a subjective idea of relevance.
The author of the research paper discovered that links could be used as an objective filter for authoritativeness.
Kleinberg wrote:
“To provide effective search methods under these conditions, one needs a way to filter, from among a huge collection of relevant pages, a small set of the most “authoritative” or ‘definitive’ ones.”
This is the most influential research paper on links because it kick-started more research on ways to use links beyond as an authority metric but as a subjective metric for relevance.
Objective is something factual. Subjective is something that’s closer to an opinion. The founders of Google discovered how to use the subjective opinions of the Internet as a relevance metric for what to rank in the search results.
What Larry Page and Sergey Brin discovered and shared in their research paper (The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine – link at end of this article) was that it was possible to harness the power of anchor text to determine the subjective opinion of relevance from actual humans. It was essentially crowdsourcing the opinions of millions of website expressed through the link structure between each webpage.
What Did Gary Illyes Say About Links In 2024?
At a recent search conference in Bulgaria, Google’s Gary Illyes made a comment about how Google doesn’t really need that many links and how Google has made links less important.
Patrick Stox tweeted about what he heard at the search conference:
” ‘We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.’ @methode #serpconf2024″
Google’s Gary Illyes tweeted a confirmation of that statement:
“I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that”
Why Links Matter Less
The initial state of anchor text when Google first used links for ranking purposes was absolutely non-spammy, which is why it was so useful. Hyperlinks were primarily used as a way to send traffic from one website to another website.
But by 2004 or 2005 Google was using statistical analysis to detect manipulated links, then around 2004 “powered-by” links in website footers stopped passing anchor text value, and by 2006 links close to the words “advertising” stopped passing link value, links from directories stopped passing ranking value and by 2012 Google deployed a massive link algorithm called Penguin that destroyed the rankings of likely millions of websites, many of which were using guest posting.
The link signal eventually became so bad that Google decided in 2019 to selectively use nofollow links for ranking purposes. Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed that the change to nofollow was made because of the link signal.
Google Explicitly Confirms That Links Matter Less
In 2023 Google’s Gary Illyes shared at a PubCon Austin that links were not even in the top 3 of ranking factors. Then in March 2024, coinciding with the March 2024 Core Algorithm Update, Google updated their spam policies documentation to downplay the importance of links for ranking purposes.
The documentation previously said:
“Google uses links as an important factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.”
The update to the documentation that mentioned links was updated to remove the word important.
Links are not just listed as just another factor:
“Google uses links as a factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.”
At the beginning of April Google’s John Mueller advised that there are more useful SEO activities to engage on than links.
Mueller explained:
“There are more important things for websites nowadays, and over-focusing on links will often result in you wasting your time doing things that don’t make your website better overall”
Finally, Gary Illyes explicitly said that Google needs very few links to rank webpages and confirmed it.
I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (so official, trust me) (@methode) April 19, 2024
Why Google Doesn’t Need Links
The reason why Google doesn’t need many links is likely because of the extent of AI and natural language undertanding that Google uses in their algorithms. Google must be highly confident in its algorithm to be able to explicitly say that they don’t need it.
Way back when Google implemented the nofollow into the algorithm there were many link builders who sold comment spam links who continued to lie that comment spam still worked. As someone who started link building at the very beginning of modern SEO (I was the moderator of the link building forum at the #1 SEO forum of that time), I can say with confidence that links have stopped playing much of a role in rankings beginning several years ago, which is why I stopped about five or six years ago.
Read the research papers
Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment – Jon M. Kleinberg (PDF)
The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine
Featured Image by Shutterstock/RYO Alexandre
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