It doesn’t matter whether you’re an on-site SEO consultant, a link-building specialist or an all-round ‘internet marketer’, content creation should be particularly high on your list of priorities. We’ve been hearing the phrase ‘content is king’ for years now, but given Google’s recent de-indexation of low-quality blog networks, the Panda updates and the new algorithm burning across the horizon, it seems it’s never been more true than in 2012.
It’s not difficult to understand the importance of high quality, unique and relevant content in the modern SEO industry; content of this type published on your own site can do wonders when it comes to link magnetism and social media metrics and similarly, can help you obtain extremely powerful links from high authority domains that might otherwise be out of your reach. But creating this content is easier said than done, particularly if you’re trying to compete in a crowded industry. Sure, if you’re working on behalf of a client in a fairly dull field it can be relatively easy to produce content that will attract attention, but competing in content-heavy industries like SEO, gaming and entertainment (for example) can be very, very difficult.
So how can you make creating high quality, shareable content easier? What processes can you follow to minimise the time you spend researching and thinking and maximise the time you spend creating and sharing your content?
To try and answer these questions I’ve put together the following article and infographic (a large chunk of my time working for Designbysoap is spent designing infographics) that aims to give you a structure for content creation, as well as some useful tips and tools. I hope you enjoy it and, more importantly, I hope it helps when it comes to creating high quality content for your own campaigns.
Click for a full size version if you'd like to print it.
Research
Typically, this is often the most time-intensive element of content creation, whilst annoyingly yielding the fewest results. I’ve spent numerous hours reading posts and analysing data that ultimately comes to nothing. Sure, it can be enjoyable and often rewarding in terms of learning about an industry, but it’s not always permissible to spend huge chunks of your time (or a clients’ for that matter) reading and searching only to end up with nothing to show for it.
Having said that, the research portion of your content creation process can often be one of the most important – delivering content based on flawed, incorrect, irrelevant or (perhaps worst of all) boring information will get you nowhere and will essentially nullify all your efforts in the latter stages.
Ultimately, you need to find out what’s popular in the area you’re working in. Your research needs to be around a topic that’s current, relevant to your industry, popular and, most importantly, likely to gain traction (whether that be via social media platforms, inbound links or attention from high profile sites).
To help you identify this kind of content, there are several excellent tools at your disposal;
Google News – helps you highlight areas of interest and current news
Google Trends – helps you hone into specific topics in any given area of interest
Google Insights – helps you discover what people are searching for around an area of interest. Great if you’re writing blog posts
Digg, Twitter, Reddit – helps you find out what’s popular with the readers, what kinds of topics are receiving the highest level of sharing
These are the platforms I turn to first, but there are plenty of others (Cracked, AllThingsNow, Bing News, Fark, etc.), all of which will add to your level of insight around any given topic. Now, these can certainly help you find up to date, reliable and current information and can be invaluable when it comes to highlighting the most popular topics, but they don’t solve the problem of minimising the time you’re spending on research.
This is where a phenomenal tool from SEOGadget comes in, that makes ingenious use of Excel and Google Docs. I hugely recommend you follow the link and save a copy of the document to your own Google Docs (when you’ve finished reading this post of course), as it will save you a massive amount of time and effort during the research stage. The tool allows you to add a search query within the excel document, after which it will pull in invaluable data from Google News, Google Insights, Twitter, Bing News, Digg and numerous other platforms. You can not only quickly and easily find out what’s hot, but you can see the most popular topics on a range of social media platforms and highlight the top and rising searches around any given topic. There’s a fair bit more to it, but I’ll leave you to discover all it has to offer - suffice it to say it’s a perfect tool for the content creation research stage.
Ideas
Once you’ve got a solid set of data and a firm grip on the type of information likely to be shared, you need to start brainstorming some ideas on how you’re going to present the information.
The first thing you need to decide is the angle from which you’re going to approach the information. It’s no good just re-formatting a post or piece of content that already exists (you see this a huge amount when it comes to content creation, particularly in the SEO industry), you need to add something new or interesting to what you’ve already got. Can you come at the information in a new way? Or add something new to the story? Can you produce something unique to the industry?
Essentially, you’re looking at how you’re going to present the information you’ve gathered (an in-depth blog post, a video, a static infographic, an interactive infographic, etc), how you’re going to approach the subject (informative, analytical, satirical, etc) and how you’re going to add something beneficial or attractive to the target audience (drawing new conclusions, bringing together lots of pieces of information, attempting to shock, informing, entertaining, etc).
An excellent example is SEOmoz's own Google Algorithm Change History; all of this information is available elsewhere on the internet, but by pulling it all together and keeping it up to date, they've provided a piece of content that makes life easier for readers (bringing all the information together in one place), keeps them up to date (by displaying the latest information) and provides new insight (by viewing the complete history of algorithm updates, you can see the progression Google has taken, which offers far more insight and value than a post discussing just the most recent change).
Sometimes, it’s enough to simply be first – as long as the content you’re producing is high quality. A great example from a different industry is the Angry Birds Space infographic (section included below). This was the first quality infographic to be published on the latest Angry Birds installment; a game that saw a huge amount of buzz across news platforms for reaching 10 million downloads in just three days. The infographic is not only very nicely designed, but gained a decent amount of traction. Only two days after being published, the infographic has seen over 1,000 Facebook likes:
Infographic section via PlayVille
You can also gain a decent amount of traction by focusing your content around an upcoming event - a great example is the F1 2012 Season infographic (a section of which is included below). The infographic doesn't necessarily offer anything new, but took advantage of the excitement surrounding the start of the new Formula 1 season, resulting in a very high placement for the infographic.
Ladbrokes via Infographic section on Autoblog
Another excellent idea is to try your best to involve other people in the idea (or even the research) stage; specifically, people you know have an influence in the industry you’re working in.
Let’s say you’re producing an infographic on console gaming – why not email some people from Destructoid, G4TV, Gamespot, IGN, etc. and ask them what they’d like to see in an infographic. Or give them a collection of your ideas and ask them which they think is the best – not only does this involve influencers in the early stages of your content creation, but it can help massively when it comes to placement and promotion.
If these people give you valuable insights or information, then include them in your content (in the sources section of an infographic, or via a credit link in a blog post) – you’d be amazed how much more willing people are to share things when they’re credited with a hand in the research or production.
Placement
Once you’ve gathered your information and you have an idea of the type of content you’re going to produce, you need to try and identify where the content is going to be placed.
Obviously if the content is going on your own website, then this is less of an issue, but if it’s a link-building exercise then having an idea of the kind of site you’ll be aiming for can make a big difference to how you approach the creation stage.
It can be a good idea to start your outreach before you approach the actual creation of your content, as confirming a placement beforehand will make your life much easier in terms of considering the target audience. If you know where the content is going to be placed, then you can tweak the language, style and tone you adopt throughout the piece in order to maximise your chances of appealing to their readers.
Conversely, you don’t necessarily need to have confirmed the placement location before you start work on the production stage. Often you may find it easier to convince sites to place your work once they’ve actually got something to look at, rather than trying to tempt them with just the concept. If you’re planning on completing your outreach once you’ve finished the content creation stage, then you should at least have an idea of the sort of website you’re going to be targeting. Don’t specifically aim content at one website before you contact them, as if they turn it down you may struggle to place it somewhere else.
When it comes to contacting specific websites, your best bet is to write a concise and polite email to the most relevant person at the organisation, then follow this up with a call a day or two later. Don’t be disheartened if you don’t hear back from your preferred placement, it’s still worth giving them a call just to check they’ve received your email and even if they turn it down, you’ve got a contact you can use for future pieces.
Creation
So you’ve done your research, you’ve got your content and you’ve got an idea of where you’re going to place the piece – now it’s time to actually create your content.
Giving you advice on the creation stage is a little tricky, as it will depend on what type of content you’re putting together. To overcome this, I’ll quickly cover the two most popular content types; blog posts and infographics.
Infographics
Having produced around 100 infographics personally over the last 18 months (and overseen scores more), I consider them to be one of my main areas of expertise. One of my major pet hates when it comes to infographics is people telling me that there are ‘rules’ to infographic production – there aren’t. An infographic doesn’t have to tell a story, it doesn’t have to avoid using text at all costs, in fact it doesn’t have to do anything other than display information that is either complimented by, or portrayed via graphics. So don’t get too caught up in the non-existent infographic ‘rules’ and just focus on producing something that is engaging to your target audience.
Some topics will require more text than others, particularly if the data is qualitative rather than quantitative. A lot of people will use phrases like ‘don’t make me read’ when they’re looking at infographics, but you should give your audience more credit – people don’t mind reading, as long as the information you’re including is concise and adds something to the visuals. If you can visualise it (i.e. statistical information), then do, if you can’t then don’t worry too much about it, people will forgive you.
Try and create an immediate impact with the visuals and draw readers into your infographic as early as possible, the most obvious place to do this is with the title. It’s amazing how many people are happy to just type the title in a nice big font and then move on to the rest of the content. But if you look at some of the best infographic designers (and the most popular infographics online), you’ll see that the title is a fantastic opportunity to grab the reader with a strong, relevant visual. I’ve included a few examples below to show you what I’m talking about (please note these are just a part of the original graphic -- there is a lot more to see when you click on the link underneath each image!):
Infographic section via the Designbysoap blog
Infographic section via Volvo
Infographic section via HotelshopUK
Infographic section via Geekosystem
When it comes to visualising the data you’ve got, try and keep a consistent theme throughout the infographic, whether that’s through your choice of visualisation methods, the colours used or the style of design. If you can help it, try and avoid using too many infographic ‘cliches’ – a good example of this is using a line of six person icons to visualise a statistic like ‘60% of people use people icons in their infographics’.
Just try and be as creative as you can (which I realise isn’t really all that helpful, as it’s like saying ‘be more musically gifted’), and don’t take the lazy approach just because you’d like to get it finished.
My last point is on orientation – generally speaking, if you’re going to be placing the infographic online then you’re probably better off opting for a portrait infographic, rather than a landscape one. This is because it’s far easier to use online and usually allows you to use a longer file (people will always prefer to scroll up and down as opposed to left and right, if the web page even allows it).
Blog Posts
It seems like an obvious thing to say, but in-depth blog posts are far more likely to encourage sharing than a quick post that just skims over a topic. Long blog posts are great as long as they’re adding value to a topic – you should be informing, educating or entertaining your readers as much as you possibly can.
Include relevant, quality outbound links that are useful to your readers – if you find a good tool during your research phase, link to it. If you find a post that offers an alternative argument to what you’re saying, or adds additional information, link to it. Too many people are hesitant to link out from their blog posts, worried that it will give readers a reason to leave their page. Trust me, if you’re producing high quality content, they will come back (for example, when I’m reading blog posts and I come across a link I want to follow, I tend to open it in a new tab and then continue reading).
Again, it seems obvious, but pay attention to grammar and punctuation – it’s hard to come across as authoritative if your content is full of spelling mistakes, misplaced commas and missing capitalisations. It might sound strange, but grammatical errors can also put off people from sharing your content and you want to do everything possible to increase the likelihood of shares and links. If writing isn’t your strong point, then get someone else to proof read your articles before publishing, particularly if you’re sending them out as guest posts.
Another good tip is to try and engage your readers as early as possible in the post – the best places to do this are the title, the sub-title and the opening paragraph. There are many different ways to do this; provocation, humour, questioning, etc. just make sure you grab people as early as you can. Bear in mind it’s the title that will encourage click-through rates when it comes to blog front pages and aggregation networks such as Inbound.org. Having said this, don’t be deliberately misleading with your titles – sure it can increase click-through rates and traffic to have a title that draws attention, but if it’s erroneous then you’re far more likely to piss people off than you are to encourage sharing.
You should also try and help your readers as much as possible; something that often means not assuming knowledge on their part. Unless you’re writing for particularly high level, technical websites, it’s best not to over-use entropic language without clearly explaining yourself. If you’re writing a post full of tips, explain things to your readers – rather than just saying do this, tell them how to do it.
Another valuable tip is to try and break up the copy in particularly long articles – use sub-headings and paragraph breaks to make the article look less dense and more accessible to readers. You should also make sure you’re using images in your posts, not only do they break up long sections of text nicely, but they can often be extremely helpful, particularly in tutorials and ‘how-to’ articles (screenshots can be especially useful). When it comes to sourcing images, you should either be creating them yourself or using an online platform such as Shutterstock or Creative Commons, rather than just stealing them from other websites. Having said this, the latter is permissible in some situations, just be sure to include credit links to avoid upsetting other webmasters, and check the copyright laws in your country. Don’t forget to properly name and alt tag your images either – it’s amazing how often you see people missing this potentially valuable ranking signal.
Publish
So you’ve spent hours putting together a high quality piece of content, now it’s time to get it live. Hopefully you’ll have started your outreach before putting the content together, but if you didn’t, now’s the time to start sending some emails.
I would always advocate aiming as high as you possibly can (as long as the quality of the content is good enough), as it never hurts to try. When we’re advising our link-building engineers on gaining high profile placements, we get them to put a list of five or six potential placements together, in order of domain authority, traffic or level of engagement via social media (depending on the post content and what we’re trying to achieve). From there you can start at the top and work your way down, until someone agrees to place your content.
Once a placement has been confirmed, make sure you’ve got an idea of when it will be published, so you can start sharing as soon as possible. You should also keep up a level of etiquette when you’ve posted on someone else’s website – push the content as much as you can, link to it from other posts and send as much traffic and social media engagement as humanly possible. This not only makes the link more valuable, but will encourage the administrator to publish your posts in the future. You should also keep an eye on the comments and reply to as many as you can; keep up the level of engagement and discussion and be involved.
Promote
It’s amazing how many times we see people produce fantastic content, and then just leave it to either reach a large audience or, more often, fall flat on its face. If you’ve gone through all the effort of researching and producing a high quality piece of content, then you should continue that effort through to the post-publishing stage.
It’s true that if your content is good enough and it’s published on a high profile platform, then it will likely achieve a high level of social media traction and natural inbound links, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do your best to push it as best you can.
You should aim to utilise as many avenues as you can to promote your content, including social media, news aggregators, infographic publication sites and inbound links from other domains (particularly applicable if you or your team writes lots of related guest posts). I could include a massive list of sites you can use, but honestly it depends on the vertical in which you’re working. Instead, check out this awesome link building strategies post, this list of infographic distribution sites, this post on finding the perfect content promotion platform and this handy list of social bookmarking websites.
You should also try to reach out to influencers in the industry you’re working in, whether that be via phone, email or social media platforms. The success of this practise will depend on a variety of factors (including the content itself, the domain it’s published on, the author, the way you choose to make contact and the area of discussion), but it never hurts to try. If you made the effort of reaching out to people during your research and ideas phase as suggested, then you may find you get some great traction via some very influential people.
So that’s about it for my guide to creating good content – did I miss anything? Disagree with anything I said? Let me know in the comments below.
Post by John Pring from Designbysoap Ltd.
Words. Escape. Me.
Great post. I'd promote it to the main blog :)
Thanks very much Ben, glad you like it.
Haha, let's hope so! ; )
I'm so glad it did get promoted to the main blog! That's where I found it and I loved it!
Thank you Mary! : )
Brilliant stuff!
Thank you Matt!
Excellent information!
I completely agree with the research portion. I drives me crazy when I see infographs with wrong information like the work was farmed out to someone that didn't have the skills or just didn't care.
Thanks for the comment Stuart!
Yeah that's one of my pet hates too - it seems really stupid spending hours of work on an infographic when the data is wrong! We do all ours in-house and only use reputable, high authority sources, that way you can't go wrong!
Thanks again Stuart, glad you like the post : )
That always kills me when I see an infographic with data is clearly wrong. Why go through all the work? Seriously, why bother when it will just reflect poorly on you?
Great work John.
One question - how much time would you normally allow (e.g. in total manhours) for all 6 steps (research thru promotion) for content such as this blog post?
Hi Ewan,
Thanks for the comment, glad you enjoyed the post!
To be honest it depends on the subject matter, for example I did a gaming infographic a little while ago that took about two weeks to research and design as it was massive, but we usually allow 5-10 days for research, design and revisions.
This post took me about 5-6 hours to complete, maybe slightly longer with the infographic - quite enjoyed the process though!
Thanks for the great information, John.
If infographics are a regular part of a particular SEO campaign, would you recommend having them professionally designed everytime by a company such as yours, or would a "homemade" instructo-graphic or micrographic work just as effectively? Some clients may benefit from this, but may not have the budget for pro graphics.
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your comment! Glad you enjoyed the post : )
To be honest I would generally recommend getting them designed professionally, unless someone in-house happens to be particularly good at them. You see a lot of infographics nowadays, and many of them simply aren't very good and don't have much of an impact, making them a little bit pointless. Plus, with so many infographics being produced, you want to do as much as possible to help them rise above the competition, and this usually means a high quality design, thorough research and a dedicated and effective promotion campaign.
I certainly think you could gain some links from a 'homemade' infographic, but unless the designer was talented and the team capable of properly promoting the infographic, they will never be as effective as a professional approach.
I understand the budget constraints are a particular issue for smaller businesses, but given the number of links you can gain with a pro design and promotion campaign, it seems like it's a very worthwhile activity. Some companies (including us) may also offer discounts for multiple commissions, so it's always worth enquiring (I'd recommend getting a quote from a few providers - just make sure you look at their previous work) and seeing what's available.
good article for seo. thanks.
No worries at all, thanks for the comment!
Fantastic post! Now if only I could find more time to write... :P
Haha, tell me about it!
Thanks for the comment Tim, really glad you like it : )
Love this post - especially the part about promoting your published content, that's so often overlooked. We've created a new form of brand experience marketing called Content Rippling. Similarly, we use a customizable strategy to produce engaging content and ripple it through various communication channels. Head here to read more about Content Rippling: https://contentrippling.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/ronin1903-partnership-creates-content-rippling/
Again, thank you for posting - love the infographic!
Hi there,
Thanks for the comment - really pleased you like the post! That sounds like an interesting concept, have opened the article in a new tab for reading this evening : )
Thanks again!
Hi Sir
Excellent Work ...... Keep it up.
Thank you for the kind comment - glad you enjoyed the post!
Brilliant John, thank you for sharing your process of creating content. My ways were a bit outdated and not as creative as this.
Thank you for the kind comment! No problem at all, it was a pleasure to write, hopefully it will give you a few more ideas on creating some high quality, unique content : )
Thanks for the headsup on infographics and the lists.
No problem Bill, you're more than welcome.
Thanks for the comment!
that is a great article. I'm glad you added "promote" to that list. It's PROBABLLY the hardest (and most overlooked) step in creating an infographic.
I completely agree, it's such a shame when you see people create beautiful and useful infographics, that then barely get seen by anyone because they don't know how to promote them properly.
Thanks for the great comment!
Fantastic article, thanks for sharing these great tips!
You're more than welcome! Thanks for the kind comment, really pleased you enjoyed it
great post also first real great use of infographics ive seen on seomoz :)
Hi Andy,
Thank you! Really glad you like the article and thank you for your kind words : )
Fantastic post John! Bookmarked!
Having not had much experience in this area, your post has given me many great ideas on creating better content! Thank you!
Hi Matthew,
Excellent! Really glad I could help and I'm pleased you like the post. Thanks for the comment!
really useful info!
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it : )
Great post! Thanks for sharing. Amazing info graphic designs...
Hi there,
Really glad you liked the post! Thanks for the comment : )
Nice post! Definitely deserves to be in the main blog very in depth information about content creation.
your post has given me many great ideas on content creation.thanks a ton for sharing this valuable article.
Thanks for the comment, pleased you like it! I'm glad it's given you some ideas and hopefully you'll enjoy my next post, which is on getting the most links for your infographic, which should be published this week : )
Great Post! I loved the first inforgraphic! Very high quality stuff! :)
Thank you! I put that infographic together myself so very pleased you like it
First time at this page and read this post, great work, def will be coming back.
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the comment, glad you enjoyed the post and hope it was of some use to you!
Hi,John Pring, though I came late here, but this is such a great article! It’s refreshingly straight-forward and applicable.
I especially like your section on offering levels of engagement. It’s the element of my business that I’ve been working most to develop recently — I’m convinced its the secret to having a successful business online.
Thanks for your thoughts.
[link removed by editor]
Thank you so much for this article!
However, could you please offer some clarification to a newcomer of embeddable content linkbuilding ... I understand why you would want to place your infographic on a site that is authoritative and has a relevant and active audience. But this confuses me. Wouldn't all links generated to your piece of content end up being given to the site that it is placed? And in the end you only recieve the one link from the site that is placing it. Forgive me for sounding naive.
I appreciate any response!
Hi Jessica,
Thanks for the comment, really pleased you enjoyed the article : )
I'm just about to reply to your message with a longer answer to your question (apologies for missing your comment), but generally the answer is 'not necessarily'. You'll still find that people will link back to your site even if they've found the content on a third party site, you just need to make sure it's properly credited to your target site on the high profile placement.
Thanks again Jessica!
Designbysoap, this is a masterpiece and must have taken you hours of careful work. Congrats on being upgraded to the main blog, and well deserved.
Hi there,
Thank you so much for the kind words, really glad you like the post! It did indeed take quite a while, and thanks for the congratulations : )
I've got another one coming to the YouMoz blog next week, so fingers crossed that will be promoted too!
Oh, if only creating sweet content was as simple as 6 steps! lol thanks for the infographics!
Indeed! But it can't hurt to have a guideline to help you and your team produce the best content possible.
Thanks for the comment!
Really great post. Brainstorming and content creation is a time consuming and difficult process for a lot of people. I was recently involved in helping launch a site that helps shorten that process. It's a store that offers unique pre-written content. It's called Content Row. If someone has a deadline or is struggling to think up good ideas, they're are some great articles available there. And once one is downloaded, it's removed from the store so that there are no duplicate content issues. It's a great resource for SEOs offering content packages to their clients. Thought you might like to check it out.
Hi Chase, Thanks for the comment, glad you like the post.
Not a bad idea with the content row - I suppose the only downside is it doesn't necessarily help with very current or breaking news, but generally it's a clever concept, like it!
Awesome post. Thanks for sharing!
No problem, glad you like it!
Very detailed information about content creation expecting more articles from you similar to this...
Hi Shaam, Thanks for the comment - yep I've got another article on the way, should be ready to be submitted in the next few days and hopefully published within a couple of weeks : )
Thanks for the insightful post John. How do you feel about freelance writers and where they fit into the process? From my experience a lot of firms have a hard time producing high volumes of quality content.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the comment! At Designbysoap Ltd we have in-house copywriters, which makes things a little easier, but I certainly think freelance writers can fit into the process; whether that's writing all the copy (either for a post or an infographic) or just to proof-read and tweak content.
If you're trying to produce a high volume of content and you don't have the time or skills available (either personally or in the company) then I think hiring a freelance writer would be a great idea. Just make sure it's someone reputable and knowledgeable, i.e. capable of writing in your niche you're working in.
"... in-depth blog posts are far more likely to encourage sharing than a quick post that just skims over a topic."
- Priceless
Hi Tony,
Thanks for the comment - the above seems like an obvious statement but you'd be surprised how often people write a quick post, publish and then wonder why no-one is sharing it! : )
Exceptionally thorough!
Thank you - did take a fair amount of research and effort!
Excellent work! I saw those attention-baiting words "with infographic" and knew it would be a winner! ;)
Haha, yeah always a good thing to include in a title! : )
Thanks for the comment, really pleased you like it
Good work done,
most of people do not put creativity in infographic and that lead them to nothing. we must understand that putting a little extra effort in Infographic can boost popularity over web.
Thanks again
Thanks for your comment Rathee - completely agree, if you're going to do something, you should make the effort to do it properly.
Glad you like the post!
Fantastic post! The examples you have given fabulous and proves itself that how much hardwork you have done!
Thanks for the kind comment! I did indeed put a lot of hard work into it, glad you like it!
Good. Inforgraphics is becoming an important part of any marketing strategies.
I completely agree, they're a great way to build links and portray information.
Thanks Etienne!
And they are fun!
Infographics look great and are good for getting links. But implying that infographics are an "important part of any marketing strategie" is silly!
Hi there, I think he actually said they're becoming an important part of any marketing strategy - and they really can be. Obviously they're not necessary but why would you ignore such a potentially valuable avenue?
On behalf of our clients we've built hundreds of links with one infographic over and over again, a ROI you would struggle to get with many other link-building techniques. They're also great for lead generation and increasing brand awareness, something we've seen consistently.
Thanks for the comment - always great to get a discussion going! : ) Hope you enjoyed the post.
The texts were very informative. The infographics looked good, but were not as informative as they could have been in my opinion.
Overall, good job!
Hi Rick, thanks for your feedback, fair point! I personally loved some of the infographics in the post, the F1 one particularly - have you had a look at the whole thing? Obviously there are just screenshots of sections of them.
Thanks for the comment!
Fantastic post John.
Love the examples you presents and the tips about content promotion.
And really wish you to have your post promoted to the main blog, as it shows where businesses and marketers should focus their budgets to, instead of thinking to other easy solutions.
Thank you, really pleased you like it, spent quite a while on it!
Yeah there are some fantastic infographics out there, I could spend all day pulling out brilliant examples.
Thanks again! And be sure to check out that SEOGadget tool, it's really useful : )
Hey John,
What a great post! Definitely deserves to be in the main blog but definitely great to see you writing again.
No matter how many infographics you've made, content curation is certainly a unique and very essential skilll. I've found the process breakdown very useful and hope to see your posts more regularly :).
Cheers mate!
Really pleased you like it, I'll definitely try and get a few more up here. Hope to see some more of yours too, the last three were nothing short of superb : )
Thanks again buddy, looking forward to working with you on some of this content curation lark again soon!
Great Post John.. Very well researched
Thank you very much, pleased you like it!
What a superb post - an exemplar of high quality, authoritative, engaging content if ever there was one! Thanks
Keith
Thanks so much for your kind comment Keith, really happy that you like it : )
Awesome post. Sent you an email!
Hi Kester,
Thanks for the comment - really pleased you like the post! Got your email, will drop you a reply in the next hour or so : )
Thanks for this nice article.
It's new and unique idea to create content with Infographic.
No worries, glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the comment!
Brilliant post! Seriously, it had it all! Infographics, tons of useful information, great examples. Thank you so much for the time and effort you put into this post. :)
Hi Mary,
Thank you! I did indeed put a lot of effort into the post, more than worth it though when you know it's going to be placed in front of a community of people like yourself who will appreciate that : )
Excellent Stuff and very well researched, thanks for sharing, i'll promote it.
Thanks for the kind comment and for promoting the post, always appreciated!
Great information! The content deserve to be in the main blog of seo-moz. It gave us great value and am going to share it on our social media sites. The best part of the article is it's infographics that was very appealing and attractive.
Thank you! I have to admit I was very pleased to see it promoted to the main blog : )
Yeah I love some of the infographics in this post - the F1 one I thought was particularly good, illustrating all of those cars can't have been easy!
Thank you for sharing the post and for the kind comment.
Great Post! This is a great post it has all the relevant information about how to write an effective nd appealing content. Thanks for offering such an informative article . The best thing I liked most about this content is if worthiness to information.
Thank you for the comment, really pleased you like it! The community here is great, I'm honored that so many of you find the content useful : )
As much as anything else, an object lesson in how to reply to every comment received with enthusiasm and courtesy - well done.
Thank you! I always try my best to keep up with comments, if someone's taken time out to read the post and leave a comment (especially a positive one), I feel the least I can do is reply to them. And hey, courtesy costs nothing! : )
Thanks for the kind comment!
Excellent post! Content is king and publishing great content consistently is tough. It takes a lot of time, effort and research. But that is why marketing agencies are in business right! Keep up the great work.
Thanks for the kind comment, glad you like it! It can be really tough to research, produce and promote good content (especially if you're in an industry that's considered quite dull or dry). but the benefits gained when you produce something really good makes all that effort worthwhile : )
You have got to love a good infographic and these are some great examples! A very well researched piece, vert inspiring!
Thanks David! I totally agree, you see so many poorly research or designed infographics it's great finding a quality piece that's actually interesting!
Really pleased you enjoyed the post : )
Awesome one, Simply explained steps of killer content creation(I guess good amount of research done as well for creating this one!). Hats off!
Thanks for the kind comment! Glad you enjoyed it.
It did indeed take a fair amount of research and a good few hours of writing, always worth it though when you know the content is going to be appreciated : )
This recent surge in infographics is great, I love to read text but even I am a sucker for good graphics.
One of the best benefits of inforgraphic popularity for me personally is I know that it's making graphic designers busy again. The last couple years I know a lot of underpaid or enemployed graphic designers due to an overabundance of designers.
I've talked to a few of them lately, and they're busier than ever... with infographics. I love it.
Hi Jeremy,
That's a really interesting point - I bet there's a huge number of designers who have found a new niche for themselves on the back of infographics. They seem to have reached a real tipping point - we've noticed a distinct increase in enquiries for infographic design, whereas they used to be all from agencies and internet marketers, we get a lot more from businesses now looking to improve their content, it seems as though they've really filtered into the mainstream.
And I agree, I too am a sucker for a well designed graphic! Thanks for the comment Jeremy : )
"You should aim to utilise as many avenues as you can to promote your content,"
Definitely agree! You can't count on your audiene to do all the heavy lifting for you. Yes, great content is likely to get shared but you have to get the ball rolling. You don't know where you need to be or who needs to see your content to really get it off the ground, so get it everywhere.
Hi Nick,
Thanks for the comment! You're completely right - just creating the content isn't enough, even if it's incredibly well put together. Ultimately you need to do your all to get it in front of people.
Cheers Nick!
We do a lot of emailing for clients, and we do a lot of content curations for their newsletters. Our engine scrapes the web (all the data from that google doc you mentioned, and then some) and spits out a list of articles we can use that have the most shares socially. We then email out to about 1 million or more people, and depending on which articles get the most clicks and shares helps us come up with the clients future content creation.
That's certainly one way of doing it! Anything that helps you get a good idea of what's popular has to be a good idea for content creation, as long as you're not annoying people via email with content that's not relevant to them! ; )
Thanks for the comment - you should certainly check out that tool from SEOGadget, it's really well thought out and gives a huge amount of return for very little effort.
Thanks Matt, It will be help to create my website content.
Not sure who Matt is, but you're more than welcome ; )