We all want the low-hanging fruit, but let’s be honest – the low-hanging fruit is rotten, bruised, and covered with the grubby fingerprints of all the other spoiled brats pawing at it. There’s a time for easy wins, but easy only gets you so far. Sadly, I see too many SEOs putting days or weeks of effort into crafting the perfect low-value scheme, when that same time could’ve easily gone into content that has real staying power and drives sales.
I’m obsessed with “Big Content” lately – resources that go beyond our narrow bins of blog posts, videos, and infographics. I’m going to show you how that obsession is paying off, and why building real content is easier than you think.
I. What Is Big Content?
First, let me apologize for introducing another important-sounding but vague and probably useless term. I’m only calling it “Big Content” because the examples I’m thinking of defy any single definition. I want this to be actionable, so let me try to pin down what I’m taking about…
1. Big Content Takes Effort
If you want easy, then stop reading (this article is pretty long, and that sandwich won’t eat itself). The #1 attribute of big content is that it takes time and effort – it doesn’t have to be expensive, but you have to invest something into it (and, as they say, time is money). The problem with easy is that what’s easy for you is easy for everyone else, too. If anyone can do it, a tactic quickly loses impact. You can’t build a lasting competitive advantage with easy.
Here’s what most people don’t get, though – once you get good at big, big gets easier. You learn how to be efficient, tap outside resources, and manage risks. The more you create big content, the more you see opportunities that weren’t there before. You have to put in the effort and make the mistakes – if you’re stuck on easy, big will always be out of your reach.
2. Big Content Breaks Molds
I don’t think “big” content fits any particular format, but what I have noticed is that the examples that fit my idea of big all seem to break the format mold – they’re either hybrids or somehow more than just the sum of their parts. I think examples speak louder than explanations here, so let’s look at a couple.
Here’s a great concept put together by SimplyBusiness - a WordPress Guide for Small Business. At first glance, you might think it’s “just” a flowchart:
Click on “NO” under any section, though, and you get a custom resource to answer the question. Some of these are links out, but others are videos created specifically for this project:
Flowchart + links + video = something bigger. Here’s another recent example by the folks at Seer Interactive, an interactive content piece called “How Do They Make Money”:
At first glance, it looks like an infographic, but click on any company logo and you’ll see the real content in action:
Again, if you want to over-simplify, it’s just icons + pop-ups, but the whole effect is a useful and professional piece that really engages people. Both of these examples also clearly have a lot of research and effort behind them.
3. Big Content Can Be Small
Big content needs big concepts, but it doesn’t have to be lengthy. One of my first introductions to big content was a 1-page PDF I created back in February of 2009, a 25-point usability checklist. What was big about it? Well, even though it was only a single page, it represented not only years of client experience, but 30-40 hours of work just to create the list itself. I distilled a ton of usability texts and much longer checklists and combined that with my own experiences to create something that I really felt represented a lot of knowledge in a small space.
This was also my introduction to just how successful big content can be. The piece not only attracted traffic and links, but it ended up in books and classes and introduced me to dozens of respected members of my industry. What’s more, this content had real staying power – even though I wrote it over 3-1/2 years ago and have barely touched my consultancy blog this year, here are the 2012 traffic stats for just that one piece:
While this content took a lot of up-front effort, I’ve spent almost no time on it in 2012, and yet it drove almost 50K unique pageviews and over half the entrances to my site. It’s an investment that’s paid itself off a hundred times over.
II. Benefits of Big Content
Now that you have some idea of what I mean by “big content”, let’s dive right into the tangible benefits. Sure, big content drives traffic and links, but so does any successful content. I want you to understand what sets big apart, and why it’s more than just quantity…
1. Big Content Has Longevity
People come back to big content, as my experience with the usability checklist illustrates. If you put enough effort and research into a piece and make it truly unique, it’s almost naturally “evergreen”, even long after publication. There’s a step even beyond evergreen, though – big content has a way of creating audience or at least being in the right place at the right time when that audience is ready for it.
Let me give you an example. Another big content piece I’ve been deeply involved in is the Google Algorithm History here on SEOmoz – not only is it a big piece in scope, but we’ve actively updated it since launch, making it somewhat unique in the realm of historical posts. I intended it to be a “living” document.
While the Algo History has been popular, it started out a lot like any other piece of content – it had an initial spike that then settled into a steady hum. This is the first two months:
While the initial spike was respectable (just over 9K pageviews), this is a pretty typical pattern for our blog posts – a big opening day that levels off in a few days. Admittedly, the Algo History did keep on producing traffic, but the rest of 2011 was a steady trickle (in the realm of 200-400 pageviews/day). Overall 2011 traffic to the page was about 63K unique pageviews.
This pattern continued for the first couple of months of 2012 – there was some slow build-up, but nothing earth-shaking. Then, along came April:
On April 25th, traffic to the page spiked. Recognize that date? It’s the day after Penguin, and the start of a newfound interest in the algorithm. Remarkably, that interest has stayed steady, even months after the initial Penguin update, and the page has topped 200K unique pageviews for the first 9 months of 2012.
Long story short, the Algo History isn’t just “evergreen” – it’s sprouted an entire forest. Big content is positioned to be ready when your industry changes – it has the trust and authority to capitalize on the moment, whenever that moment arrives.
2. Big Content Is A Barrier to Entry
Remember what I said about easy not giving you a competitive advantage? Easy is easy to copy, but big builds barriers. The Algo History wasn’t the first piece of its kind, so we knew we had to do it bigger and better – once we were done, we raised the bar for everyone after us. I’m not conceited enough to think that no one can ever write about the topic again or that someone won’t do it better someday, but expectations are higher now, and that makes the competition’s job tougher. In search, these barriers even become self-building – big content that gets links and social mentions climbs the rankings, getting more links, and on and on. It builds traffic, it builds brand, and it builds walls that people who are stuck on easy will never be able to climb.
3. Big Content Drives Big Ideas
Easy is an assembly line process – it creates more of the same and is ultimately a numbers game. Big fosters innovation and can change the process. When we were researching the Algo History, I was left with a nagging feeling – we just didn’t know much about the Google algorithm. So, I started thinking about ways we could measure how much Google changes day-to-day, and months later MozCast was born:
That was just the beginning, though. MozCast wasn’t just big content – it was an engine to generate and analyze data that very few people had. In August, I scored an SEOmoz first (for me) – we scooped the big news sites and spotted the 7-result SERP launch. Not only that, we were able to show how widespread those SERPs were – my post and data were picked up by SEL, SER, and even The Guardian. Since then, MozCast data has helped power a handful of other popular posts on the SEOmoz blog
Sorry, I’m not trying to rewrite my resume here, but I want to hammer in a point. What started with one piece of big content (the Algo History) turned into a new tool (and public website), a new data set, a handful of content, and an entire new direction for me. I had actually built content that generated data that generated new content. Put simply, my content was creating content. That’s pretty amazing, if I do say so myself.
III. Managing Risks & Costs
So, I know what you’re thinking – sure, you guys just got $18M worth of funding. What about the rest of us? This is the #1 myth I want to dispel – big content takes effort, but it doesn’t have to cost a fortune, and there are ways to manage the risks. Here are three tactics that have made all the difference for me and made every piece of big content I’ve built possible…
1. Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Sometimes, you just don’t know if something is going to work until you try it. MozCast started out as a concept, a couple of equations, and a 50-keyword crawler (built in PHP and MySQL). I built the back-end myself – including the current version – and I only got the team involved when I had proven to myself and them that the data was interesting. This kept our risk and investment very low, and when I finally had something worth building, the team was happy to get involved.
There’s always risk, of course, but the idea of an MVP goes far beyond just products. A big blog post can start with an outline, a video can start with a storyboard, an infographic can start with a back-of-the-napkin sketch. Build enough that you can get the idea in front of people and in motion, and see if it takes on a life of its own. If it does, you’ve got something. If not, you aren’t out much time and money.
2. Don’t Bet the Farm on One Idea
Once you’re comfortable with Minimum Viable Products, you start to get more comfortable with failure, because failing is no longer catastrophic. A lot of my content is built on data, for example, and so I almost always have 2-3 experiments going on. In other words, I’m collecting data for 2-3 ideas. About two out of three of those either don’t work or just aren’t interesting. So what? The one that does work is usually more than enough to make up for the failures. The real risk isn’t that one of my ideas will fail – the real risk is only having one idea in play.
3. Find Your Big Evangelists
One of the tricks of big content is that someone has to really own it – it’s going to take time, organization, and follow-through. You don’t need a big agency, though, or the industry’s foremost expert – you just need someone who’s motivated.
One of the first big content pieces that really caught my eye was an epic guide to linkbait created by Distilled. It’s a wealth of information, including original and curated content that clearly took a lot of effort. Here’s the kicker, though – this project was created during a two-week internship by Ed Fry, who was only 16 years old at the time. Obviously, it was a team effort, and I’m not trying to say that Ed is just your typical intern – he’s a bright guy with a bright future – but he’s not a seasoned industry veteran and he doesn’t have an office on Madison Avenue. What he had was the motivation to see a big project through, and Distilled was smart enough to tap into that passion. Sometimes, “big” is just about finding someone with the drive to follow through.
Now, It’s Your Turn
I hope I’ve convinced at least a few of you to stop thinking small. The truth is that, until you produce something big, you won’t really understand the benefits and the momentum that come out of it. I’m just now beginning to see how the Algo History has opened up all new areas for me and for the content I’ll create next. At the same time, I’ve got systems running daily collecting new data to build tomorrow’s content. My only regret is not investing in big ideas sooner, because the interest is compounding every day.
In-short Big content=Big Idea+ Big Effort
It’s worth reading another great piece of content (Big content).
well and if that BIG idea is worked out then BIG RETURNS!!
Well, Nice explanation that how you can make the long plain text in to an interesting, interactive and useful " Big Content" ..! Thanks for sharing it with us.
I'm a bit surprised we're not seeing more love for this amazing post. Because it's beyond AWESOME.
Because Dr. Pete is giving us the keys to the kingdom, here.
For example, publish just one infographic each month (and promote it the right way), and you're never going to cry about Google slaps again.
That's what I do... In fact I just released this "stat candy" earlier today:
https://visual.ly/most-expensive-keywords-google-updates-october-2012
Update: I took these tips (below) and created an entire guide to infographic design (FREE) here:
https://www.fetch123.com/SEM/how-to-design-infographics
There's a lot going on with my infographic above - lessons I learned the hard way. Surprisingly, I've yet to find a guide on how to design infographics the right way to get maximum viral benefit. So through trial and error (and lots of mistakes), I've come up with these infographic-design tips:
Set your infographic EXACTLY 587 pixels - This is the sweet spot for the width of your graphic. Sizing an infographic any wider slashes the amount of shared embeds - it's too wide for most blogger's theme templates and overlaps the side bar area.
It's interesting to note that the popular Visual.ly infographic submission site automatically resizes to 587 pixels wide - that tells me 587 is the perfect width.
You can go as long as you desire (although I aim to keep my infographics no longer than 1,500 pixels - anything longer tends to overwhelm a webpage).
Focus on the preview square - Some infographic submission sites offer a preview of the actual-sized graphic. Usually, it's a square "preview crop" of the top, center area of your submission. (Visual.ly lets you choose this area). Unfortunately, this area isn't exactly big. In fact, it's quite small (as tiny as 200 pixels square).
I keep this in mind when designing my infographics. I arrange my headline and some "stat candy" to show up next to each other. This way, the preview gives a hint of what I'm revealing as well as a few statistics to "reel 'em in" and get 'em to open my actual-sized infographic.
Tease a call to action - Just about every infographic is brimming with great, compelling stats. Most get virally distributed. BUT, these same infographics fail to lead the visitor to an action (i.e. visit a website). Because the call to action is either buried in small type (or missing altogether).
In my infographics, I invest a lot of time working on stating why the visitor should go to my blog ASAP. For example, in my infographic above, I let it be known that I've got an updated list of over 250 of the most expensive keywords in Google AdWords... just go visit my blog URL to see it.
I think of my infographic as the headline and subhead. And in order to get the "rest of the story", they have to visit my URL. This is VERY effective.
Use your own short URL - speaking of website addresses, it's crucial to keep the number of characters as low as possible. Unlike a webpage, an infographic requires the visitor to type in the URL. And if one letter is mistyped, the page is not found. That would be a FAIL.
While it's tempting to use a URL shortener like bit.ly, I instead create my own website shortener. I can't tell you how many times a URL shortening service has either gone out of business or deleted one of my shortened links (because they didn't agree with the "controversial" content of my webpage)...
... Instead, I make my own short URL codes right on my site using PHP. It takes less than 60 seconds to pull off. And you don't have to be a code junkie, either. Three steps is all you need:
Step #1: Log into your website via FTP
Step #2: Create a redirect folder. For example, I'll go with "marketinggeek"
Step #3: Create a file named index.php and populate it with something like this:
[?php header ('Location: https://fetch123.com/SEM/swipe-file'); ?]
(I couldn't use less than or greater than symbols in this comment... so replace the [ with a < and the ] with a >)
Finally, save the file, upload it within your new folder and bam - you've got a cool redirect on your own site - it looks like this:
https://www.fetch123.com/marketinggeek
(See how it redirects to one of the most popular posts on my blog?)
Add a QR code - it's a cinch to do. QR codes (those funky square barcodes popping up all over the place) visually attracts your visitors eyeballs into your infographic. It even makes your site look more professional (so I'm told). But even more important, when your visitor scans this code with their smartphone, they're instantly whisked to any website URL embedded in the QR code.
There are TONS of QR code generators. Almost all of them are free to use. I keep finding better and better ones... click here to see my favorite free QR code generator as of this very moment.
Markus -- You tend to have pretty insightful or passionate comments, but it's sort of annoying that you often place them as a reply to the first comment when it's not really a reply to the first comment... especially when you're linking to your own stuff like you are here. This is totally my own opinion, though I thought I'd share with you.
Hello anonymous Jeff Baker (of AvePoint).
Look, I know it's frustrating that you follow a lot of SEO sites, yet can't get any traffic:
https://siteanalytics.compete.com/avepoint.com/
But please don't take your frustrations out on me. (You're picking on the wrong person.)
Maybe instead of complaining about the position of my comments, you might take the gold nuggets staring at you and actually put them into action.
This is totally my own opinion, though I thought I'd share with you.
I agree with Jeff. It's hard to tell if your comments are sincere or just self promoting. Your reply also seems a little malicious. In regard to your tips, I'm not sure what service putting a QR code in online content serves. If I'm already online, just give me a link. I think QR has a lot of potential, but I've found they work best to get customers engaging with printed content
Actually, my comment to Jeff Baker was meant to be a LOT malicious.
About my comment being sincere or just self promoting. What's interesting is that exact same advice is hiding behind my paywall on my site. My buyers paid to see that same advice.
About the QR code - infographic directories do not provide hyperlinking. Instead, we're relying on type-in traffic... and people taking scans with their smartphones of the webscreen to visit a site. It's not a lot of traffic, but I'll take any traffic I can get.
This is the problem with comments and guest posting and forum posting and all of the rest of it. Since it's free, it has little or no perceived value.
Heck, Rand even did a post and video about comment marketing - how there's nothing wrong with adding value and adding a link back to your site at the same time. Of course Rand went more into detail, but that's the idea.
I see nothing wrong with getting rewarded with a link in exchange for providing FREE methods and techniques. There's a link tool here. It's here to add a link.
I never ever understood why people have a problem with self promotion. If what you offer is valuable, please let me know about it. After all, the biggest brands we all use (Google, Apple, etc.) are the MASTERS of self promotion.
And I don't remember seeing any rules published here about posting comments. If Rand said don't self promote, I'd honor that. After all, it's his house... his rules.
But the good news is some people get it... here's what Wil Reynolds said about a similar comment I made on his blog:
@Markus Allen - you know what I really should look more into the pixel thing, smart! Thanks for that feedback. Good to know about the smart quotes too, THANK YOU!! I have gotten so much feedback on how to improve, I think I gotta get my next one ready soon :)
There are a lot of similarities with evergreen content. Big content is in my view an extention of evergreen content. Evergreen content was explained earlier on SEOmozhttps://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-true-power-of-evergreen-content-a-case-studyI find big content very interesting and think I'm going to apply some parts of it for my websites.
You're on right position. Something true is in your thoughts...
Yeah, I really liked Nick's post on evergreen content, and it's a great complementary article to anyone interested in content marketing.
Careful Dr. Pete, you're revealing all my best tactics! :)
Dr Pete: just out of curiosity .. how long dose it take you to write a post like this ? (including research and everything)
It's always a bit tough to say, because this was one of those posts where the examples kind of collected themselves over time until they formed a post in my head. Writing it was 3-4 hours, I'd guess. I find a research intensive post can be 10-20 hours, including data collection. My average e-book has taken about 20-40 hours (I tracked a couple of those). The Algo History and MozCast took longer than that, all told.
"once you get good at big, big gets easier."
I completely agree with you on that one. Once you break out of your own mold it's amazing what other opportunities pop up, simply because you've learned to recognize them. Just like anything else, the more time you put into it the better you get at it.
The thing I find the funniest about big content is that generally it is something that I am curious about anyways. I start tracking things for no discernible reason other than I am interested and only later find out it is interesting to other people too. I have to add that your one in three things amounting to anything is right, but I have also found that OTHER people only find about one in three of the the things that I publish are interesting too (based on them visiting the page). Great info! Thanks
Oh, absolutely. I built the Algo History because I really wanted to bring my own knowledge up to speed, and then I conceived MozCast because the first project made me realize how many gaps there were in our knowledge. Now, I'm basically obsessed. Bad for my wife, good for content marketing ;)
Hey Pete, I don't like this post. I love this post. This is another example of the value I receive from the SEOmoz community. Just the fact that the company is TAGFEE is enough, but everyone involved is also TAGFEE. This is an example of something you could keep to yourself and continue to achieve big wins, but because you and SEOmoz love the community and want to share and be open you are giving it to us. Since becoming active in the community (July 2012), versus joining (November 2007), I've just felt myself spurred on to do great things in my own career. I really wish I had been more active back in 2007!
I really like the section about the long term benefits. I've had content about "How to remove Adware" on an IT Club blog for years that continues to get visitors each and every day.
Thanks for this post.
You know what the sad truth is? I could reveal, step-by-step, how I researched, wrote, and even coded some of these projects, and I'd still lose no competitive advantage. The reason - because it would still be hard to do the work, and most people aren't up to it. I firmly believe we all could do it (I don't think my having a Ph.D., etc. makes me uniquely qualified), but very few people will. Actually, that was something my department chair said the first day of grad school - "All of you in this room are smart enough to finish, but less than half of you will." It's not about education, years of experience, or even your network - it's about being willing to keep at it and do the work.
nailing it on the head here -- the *work* is the aspect most want to avoid
So very true. And honestly, not many people will even start.
I've learned a lot this past summer about "doing" and most of it has been learned from this community. It's because I know you will see results when you "do" that I drove 10 hours round-trip to attend Mozcation yesterday. I just had to "do" to be part of Mozcation and I did and in turn was able to learn a lot from the presentations and network with many people I would not have met otherwise.
Not a fan of coining another term, "Big Content" but definitely a fan of this post.
Strong salient points on barriers to entry, evergreen value (if you do something timeless), and thought leadership. Bravo!
That's why I apologized for the term right at the beginning :) Seriously, "big data" has kind of run amock lately, so I don't want to coin another phrase that goes off the rails.
I love this!
Now what we need are posts with ideas for how small websites can promote content like this. If SEOMoz produces awesome content it easily gets shared like crazy. But what about the small business website that gets 100 visitors per day and has a small Facebook and Twitter following?
I find I can create great stuff (even if takes weeks of hard work) but getting it noticed is the hard thing!
That's one reason I wanted to include the checklist example from my own blog - at the time, my audience was very small and I was just starting to get a base of subscribers. For me, the key was participation. I commented on a lot of blogs, was active in forums, promoted other people's work, etc. Here's the key, though - I didn't do any of that for the links. I did it to build relationships. I focused on relatively small blogs where I could get to know the authors. The links came later, and when they did, they came naturally.
It does take time - a lot of time, sometimes, and the thing about big content is that it's often not "viral", in the typical sense. It can build up over months. The Algo History grew because we continued to add to it until people saw it as a resource that was different from previous histories (mostly blog posts and infographics). The toughest part of this is patience and persistence.
Great points Dr. Pete (and kudos to you for being able to answer comments in Q&A when your baby is only a few days old!)
I find the strategy that you are talking about is working well for me. I'm making relationships in the SEO world and getting to know other SEO writers.
This is good for getting *my* content noticed. However, what about SEOs with a bunch of clients? If you've got, say, 10 small businesses that you are doing SEO for, does that mean getting active in 10 niches and making relationships with people in those niches? That's a huge task!
Perhaps the answer is to get the client involved in the online relationship making? Or perhaps it is best for an SEO to stick to one niche so that those relationships can benefit many sites.
To be fair, that is incredibly difficult, and I can't say I've found the perfect recipe. I think it does mean getting them involved - they're the experts in their own niches and can drive the big ideas. It does take the right kind of client and expectations, though, and it's very tough with SMBs. You have to sell them on doing the legwork themselves, and I've found that's hit or miss. Some get it and some don't. Best advice I have to consultants - work with the ones who get it. This isn't something that every company is going to do - history shows us that. That's also why there's a competitive advantage.
I think that more SEOs need to "point their clients to the SERPs" and tell them something like this....
"If you want to rank on that SERP you need to beat the websites that are already there. Look at all of the great content that they have. Are you up to writing that information about all of your products and making videos to demonstrate? Are you willing to pay an expert who knows WTF he is talking about to prepare it for you? If you are not up to that then you don't have what it takes to compete.
I think that potential clients will drop like flies if you tell them that but the ones who step up to the plate will be great to work with.
I'm thinking more and more now that the SEOs of the future will be more like coaches rather than SEOs that simply do all of the work. My thought is that as an SEO I can teach a small business owner how to network, how to create content and how to promote that content in a way that gets links.
I agree....
SEOs and their staff have no business writing content, blog commenting or guest posting for my company. They don't understand the business.
However, SEO can provide valuable guidance on how to develop and market the site. Business owners who don't have the time or the desire to produce a good website should not be shown in the SERPs.
EGOL -
I couldn't agree more with your sentiment on pointing your clients at the SERP's and having a very frank conversation with them on their level of commitment to having one of the 10 best websites. This exact train of thought inspired a post on taking an objective look at your website/content and asking yourself if you deserve to rank on the first page.
That's a great article, Nick.
Nice Work!
I like the analysis of the bicycle SERPs.
You bring a valid point here. The companies that get it are in the game for the duration and they are putting in nonstop effort. The clients that are unfortunately short changing their effort with you, are probably short changing their effort elsewhere.
Love this post Pete - particularly the 'barrier to entry' competitive angle - it's not something I've seen many speak about but it's definitely a core benefit :)
Hey Pete,
I'm new here so make some noise...
(* cricket sound)
Making me sign-up to Seomoz and leave a comment is something only a big wicked content like this could do. I am The Content Guy in my company, and this post summed-up everything that I've been fighting for. I recently made a long post in my blog (Decoding Panda using the SEO Periodic Table), and was a bit reluctant because I was told long posts bore the audience away.
Gut feeling told me to do it anyway and the results baffled me. That particular post surpassed all my expectations in terms of visits. I was smiling reading your post because yes, THE RISK IS INDEED WORTH IT.
I want to add that personality is very important in order to stand up from the rest of the crowd. When I read these lines - We all want the low-hanging fruit, but let’s be honest – the low-hanging fruit is rotten, bruised, and covered with the grubby fingerprints of all the other spoiled brats pawing at it - I know I'm up for a ride. I've even signed-up just to appease the excitement I was experiencing (and Dr Pete, you have a new stalker; your writing is wicked).
Thanks a bunch!
Excellent post. Everybody is talking up the infographic approach.
I think especially in the Internet Marketing arena there is an ever latent scamming tendency in the dominating focus on Easy. To make millions you have to have big quantity with a content that does not convey any integrity. Bad business moral. So your post is most welcome. I'll try to get the ideas for Big.
Inspiring piece indeed. When someone is doubting the value of going big, I think this article is pretty much the "evergreen" for changing such opinion. Platitudes aside, what do you think is the best way to start creating big? I mean, what would be the first thing to consider? Hiring a super creative designer? Researching what has been done and doing the opposite?
Superb article. I think there is definitely something there for everyone in the industry to look at. Very well broken down too.
I think people have to break out the habit of churning out content and going for the low hanging fruit, as you so put it. You're right, big does get easy and is often more efficient and more effective then just smashing through the same old content techniques.
I especially like the wordpress example and is something that can be great on a few websites that I know of.
Great article Pete! Sometimes it only takes that one "big content" article to go viral, so you've just got to keep working on it. Just wanted to say thanks for the wordpress example too...it is brilliant! As an avid Wordpress developer, for me it is one of the best examples of linkbait I've seen. It's got my creative juices flowing that's for sure!
I think google would gladly +1 this post, since this is how the internet should look like. Unfortunately almost half of the web is full of junky wordpress blogs who were designed solely for linking to ones customer.
Very thorough article on content that thinks outside of the box. Great examples and case studies on how "Big Content" works and is effective.
How would you justify spending 40 hours on a project to the boss of a small business? Is there a way to approach this in a way that is relatable instead of, like you said, "introducing another important-sounding but vague and probably useless term"?
It's not easy. I think being in-house or working with a large client, you can at least take some risks and invest against future profit/growth/contracts. I've worked a lot with SMBs, and you have to have buy-in. You can't always invest 40 hours in something with no return, so it's important to find and attract the kind of clients that already believe in content. A couple other alternatives, though:
(1) Consider projects that might fit more than one client, conceptually - invest enough to get a proof-of-concept, and then pitch it to clients one by one until someone bites. Keep it flexible enough that it might serve more than one audience.
(2) Think about projects that could benefit you internally or might produce valuable data. This is what happened with MozCast - it turns out the data has been beneficial for some aspects of our product development and engineering. If the content aspect had failed, we'd still have a platform and data that had some value. So, think multi-purpose.
Love the post Dr Pete.
We've found that ONLY creating big content is also risky. To mitigate the risk we look to our "content pyramid", whereby:
too funny... I found this after just completing a 45 page e-book!
Great post. Dr. Pete, made me sign into my account to post a comment. I agree 100% that big content can be a big win. Unfortunately often I've found that companies capable of doing the big content lose faith early on in the process and elect for cheaper more repeatable content. I think this might be a problem with the decision maker being a non-marketer or lack of proper marketing budget controls.
Even worse is that I frequently see in some industries where the low hanging fruit literally has no content, and when you point it out they want to go for the big content instead. Each client / business is different and each one should evaluate the ROI for low hanging fruit and big content separately to decide which one is right for them. For example Payday Loan. Mortgage company, or tech company? Go big or go home. Local dentist office or restaurant? I bet there's some low hanging fruit you can tackle to get up the confidence to go big.
Motivated to create BIG CONTENTS :) Happy to spend a few minutes on this blogpost :)
Hi Dr. Pete, I would like to know do really long contents help now a days? Do our targeted audience keep so long patience to read the whole lot of lines?
Waiting to hear.
Big Content doesn't mean about Long Text or Thousands of Words. As a Marketer we should have a sense that Big Content means Great Content, whether it's have long text or short text. The way you showed your content to get the intense of the visitor always tells about the content is Great or not.
I have to agree with everyone, this was a fantastic read and reassuring to know the majority opinion is really great content can be the tipping point. Aside from leading by example, do you offer any suggestions on how to inspire your clients to improve their blogs and press releases?
Great insights on big content. Do you think that making big content evergreen can have an effect as well?
Yep, bore your readers. With so many updates and B&W animals in fashion, the trend now is writing big essays and presidential speeches to say that 2+2=4 and the sky is blue, all with the eagerness to fulfill the orders of Google and do everything what Matt Cutts says... seriously, that's boring, Internet is getting boring thanks to the Google whims.
I fear you've completely missed the point of the post. "Big" content isn't about word count. It's about big concept and big effort. That's all about what your audience wants. If someone is just adding paragraphs to please Google, then they're not creating Big Content.
DR Pete in total what do you really prefer Big Content or Shortly written Content i believe that big content can convert more them short content + big content is more descriptive like you said too its written with a complete research + Big content can target keywords for you that can give you searches too on search engines without doing keyword stuffing so what i still vote for is big content and need to know what you will prefer MOST!?
WOW! nice read this blog. Thanks
Here's a few examples I think fit your definition of "big content" - do you agree?
Definitely - great examples. Hadn't seen a couple of those and love the cool stuff people are doing with HTML 5. I think you have to find your niches. I'm not a designer, so for me it's code and data.
Love the Verge piece because, while it's not as visually impressive as the Lost Guide or Fracking piece, it's just a great hybrid. A lot of pieces go together carefully to make something bigger than just videos and reviews.
You're right, it's easy to point out design examples, but not a necessary requirement.
(Lucky for us, because I don't have the design chops either!)
Wow. Yay. "Content creating content," is a great point. And great content can be done at a reasonable price even for small business. It just takes understanding what the specific client wants or needs and delivering that in a clever and energetic way. Small business can always get freelancers to bid on the art and writing or video. Will be reposting this all over. Thanks Dr. Pete!
"BIG Content"... is it the next BIG Thing? lol Having great content takes time and effort and like you so perfectly said "what’s easy for you is easy for everyone else, too"
Thanks Pete! I've been looking for some ideas to present a chunk of content on my website, this has really helped blow the box out for me... I want and need to make my content stand out in a very cluttered and competitive industry (real estate) and you've given me lots of fodder to proceed. Thanks so much!
And I agree with you...I freely share with every Realtor I get into a conversation with, 98% of the people I talk to will not do the work, so I'm not afraid to share my ideas and even my methods.
Hey Doc' - I love you guys man!
Your post always seems to parallel issues I am dealing with the most.
One of them being - CONTENT!
I just requested from my clients a HEALTHY article on some of their views and opinions on the debate and political issues - just to keep the URL's fresh and in the cross hairs with high trending keywords.
You can imagine - most came back and said - great idea as always - but no thanks - and end up just sending me 200-300 words of thin - useless garbage.
I LOVE THIS POST - and LOVE it took 2 cups of coffee before I finished ;o)
"the low-hanging fruit is rotten, bruised, and covered with the grubby fingerprints of all the other spoiled brats pawing at it" <- Totally using this next time I'm in a content war.
Your pal,
Chenzo
Excellent post, I think my takeaway is that "Big Content" is really about big value. We're all talking about excitement which is essential if you want your passion to come through to your audience but I've found that there's a difference between a lot of what SEOMoz posts on their blogs (high value) and what other lesser blogs post. Just because there are a lot of words hyping you up doesn't necessarily mean it will hold traction in the long-term. The posts/content that people save, share, and reference are ones that hold a lot of actionable, valuable content and that type of content takes time and effort to craft. I could sit down and write a 1000 blog post in a half hour but what you're talking about here needs the research to give it staying power. It's hard work, but that's what's going to win you the audience and authority in the long run.
Absolutely, and therein lies the problem. Someone is reading this right now thinking "How many words is 'big' content?" and they've already missed the point. Many SEO mistakes come from confusing quantity with quality. There's a place for quantity, no doubt, but the devil is in the details.
This post has got me fired up to start thinking about creating killer content. It really is an exciting time for internet marketing and it is evolving into something which is a lot more creative than a few years ago. I use Evernote on my phone to jot down any ideas I have for content creation when I'm out and about. Thank you for an inspirational post.
Parabéns Sr Pete,o seu artigo está abordando muito bem a importância de se criar conteúdo de qualidade, além de atrair bons links, é uma maneira de como prender a atenção do usuário. Muito bom, sensacional, já estou com minhas idéias depois de ler esse artigo.Grande abraço
I concur with the idea of investing huge time into a content and at last it pays off. The point is how the big content is then optimized and the keyword positioning and usage in it. Recently Google is pushing not to even use the exact targeting keywords into your content as the search algorithm will aggregate the all the keywords in your content and sort them according to relevancy as regards to your content.
Good for SEO copywriters!
Great post...and if there are any doubts about big content working, look at the Q & A Forum right here at SEOMoz. It's mind-boggling how much content must be there.
As for my own experience, about 18 months ago my company presented a live Webinar in conjunction with the brand PreSonus. We flew out their VP, and presented a two hour long "How to Use a StudioLive Mixer" webinar targeted towards church tech leaders. It took months of writing, planning, coordination, setting up equipment, making sure we had bandwidth, etc. What resulted was awesome sales, great position in Google, great inbound links and over 100K views of the Webinar sections on our YouTube channel.
The boost lasted about a year, then the effect started to wane....so...we are doing a brand new one this October. This time we are actually streaming it live from a church with a great praise band in Baton Rouge, LA.
It's a lot of work to pull these things together. But it's definitely worth it. 100 blog posts wouldn't add up to the benefit of this one big piece of content.
Thanks Dr. Pete for a great read. Inspirational as always!
That's a great breakdown there Dr. Pete and i'm sure many can learn a thing or two from this.
Novel ideas always make it big, always drives links and social attention to itself.. Evergreen content is also like that, it's timeless.
Nice Blog and Thanks for appropriate examples.
Really its a great post.....But one has to keep in mind that quality is important than the quantity.......if quality is good automatically everything will be in your hand.
Great post! Particularly on how Big Contents drives big ideas. I like how you give us an idea on how it really works. It's a matter of how you put your time on it so that you can get what you want.
Great post as usual mate. Here are a few more inspirational Big content posts
Time to go and think on how to go fwd with my own " big content " ^_^
Love Ben the Bodyguard. Way beyond my design skills, but that's part of what's cool about big content - there are a lot of different angles and always something that fits your own niche, if you're willing to put the time and though into it.
I know I'm not adding much to this discussion but I wish you would have expanded more on the '
Build a Minimum Viable Product' section. You said 'you just need somehow who’s motivated.' how about some tips on how to get them motivated. Incentive based pay?
You said 'This kept our risk and investment very low.' How did just you working on an idea keep your risk investment low? Because it was only 1 person working on it? because you drew up an outline, storyboard etc? Was that your point?
I think that section could use its own post entirely.
It probably could - MVP is a phrase you hear a lot in the start-up community, but usually in the context of product development. It's hard to dig in deep in this particular case, because the "MVP" for any given form of content could be very different. It really boils down to scaling what you're creating to something large enough to get useful feedback on but small enough that it's not requiring a big investment. For MozCast, that meant building a small crawler and data structure and testing the back-end. Once the back-end was churning out useful data at scale, we were able to justify ramping it up and building the front-end.
The motivated individual is a lot tougher. I don't think it comes down to just pay - the best fit is people who already care about the subject. I think big content is really tough to do for clients, as someone said in the comments - it's more a process of tapping into their expertise and interests, but they have to buy into the process. Without buy-in, it's a hard thing to force or do for someone.
This is the most sensible article I've read in a long time and will be recommended reading for all clients. I think "big" is a great way to define it and I think you did a great job of explaining yourself. Just such a very, very good post overall. Thanks!
(Found a typo in first paragraph, last line of "Find your big evangelists" - somehow is probably supposed to be someone.)
Oops - thanks. Corrected that one.
" The truth is that, until you produce something big, you won’t really understand the benefits and the momentum that come out of it."
I came to the exact same conclusion as you after having executing one spectacular big content effort. Obviously we knew it was important but couldn't quantify exactly *how important* it was until after. Now I'm hooked to Big Content.
Nice work! Thanks for the cool examples too!
Great post Dr. Pete about the big content because as the previous post dohertyjf analysis the what kind of content getting more links. Over there he defined in chart that big content gets more link. I like this sentence "Big content needs big concepts, but it doesn’t have to be lengthy". Thanks for sharing such a great post about the big content. Lets see how many people will agree with this.