A photo posted by Ben & Jerry’s (@benandjerrys) on
(It’s fine – we understand. Go ahead, leave us and grab that tub, come back to snatch a spoon and carry on scrolling.)
More Instagram-ming. Hey, you didn’t realize Levis has a new design out. Wonder when the sales are on? And on you scroll.
See what Instagram does there? They pave the way for possibly the most non-intrusive ads we’ve ever come across.
There they sit, right in your feed, not flashing out at you from a sidebar.
You can click on the image and go straight to the brand’s profile, share the ad, like it… just the way you would for your friend’s photos. This has got to be the most open and engaging platform for advertising yet.
What Are Instagram Ads?
Instagram ads are your typical Instagram photos or videos. The company took the decision to keep the Home browsing experience completely undisturbed for users. What distinguishes the ads from other photos is the “sponsored” mark just above the top right corner of the image.
Why Would Anyone Want to Advertise on Instagram?
Check out this infographic with an analysis of Instagram users. The report shows that the platform is extremely attractive to advertisers. This is thanks to the platform’s young, relatively affluent user base. A user base that keeps on growing.
In fact, Instagram has revealed that their active user base has reached the 200 million mark, making it one of the fastest growing social sites on the planet. With numbers like this, it’s little wonder advertising on Instagram has snow balled.
Who Can Advertise on Instagram?
There was a time when now just any brand could appear in Home feeds, only those with an existing and successful following. There’s good news: Instagram ads are now open to all businesses, all around the world. No matter the size. It has been working to open up ads to more types of businesses on an easy self-serve basis. So now any size of business can run a campaign on Instagram. Best of all, ads have been opened up to over 30 new countries, including India, South Korea, Italy, Spain and Mexico.
By the end of this month, ads will launch in markets around the globe. Using technology that leverages the very best of Facebook’s ad infrastructure, advertisers can now effortlessly target their messages effectively, reaching people based on what they’re following and what they’re interested in, be it food, cars, fashion or sports.
Advertisers are also able to access new ad formats that will help with achieving various objectives and allowing people to learn more about something of interest or shop for something – right from the site. So now businesses of any shape and size can test their capabilities.
Tests that have already been conducted have yielded positive results with areas like travel, e-commerce, entertainment and retail seeing significant demand.
Using Ads to Drive Objectives
People browse Instagram for visual inspiration. Advertising in this incredibly impactful platform has the power to inspire and touch people. Just look at the figures: 97% of measured campaignson the platform have spawned weighty lifts in ad recall. By adding new formats, marketers have started achieving a variety of objectives, from mobile app installs to website clicks. For example, Gilt Groupe made use of the site to recruit customers. The company ran an ad campaign that saw an astounding 85% increase in app installations. Made.com, a designer furniture retailer, saw their ads yield a 10% order value increase.
4 Ways to Do More With Instagram
Thousands of businesses worldwide are using Instagram as their showcase. The platform is making it easier for them to do more, too. Here’s how you can boost your business with Instagram.
1. Add videos. Businesses can now add up to 30 seconds worth of video ads to engage in much richer storytelling.
2. Landscape videos and photos. These help unlock creative opportunities and gives followers a cinematic feel.
3. Delivery and optimization tools. These help to manage and drive the best performance of campaigns on the site.
4. A new product from Instagram, it helps drive mass awareness while expanding a brand’s reach in a very short time-frame. It’s perfect for product launches or movie premieres.
The Cost of Advertising on Instagram
One of the unique things Instagram offers is the ability to measure ad recall. Businesses can do this by leveraging Nielsen technology.
The goal here is to grab a user’s attention with concept-driven creatives that are tasteful and relevant. Initial beta testing partners have been buying on a CPM (cost per thousand) basis.
Larger scale budgets have been seeing a CPM of around $20. Smaller CPMs are coming in at $13. To date, CPCs have not yet been discussed but will be made available as more objective based campaigns start using Instagram.
The Top 4 Instagram Ads
It’s really tough to choose the best Instagram ads so our list is by no means exhaustive.
The affluent vehicle brand uses Twitter ads to highlight and showcase their existing campaigns. One campaign that stands out is the #LexusLens campaign where the brand took photos of various vehicle models on road trips across the nation. It set the benchmark for future brands to hashtag campaigns and grow their likes and followers. Lexus was actually the only brand of the first businesses to advertise that used location tagging.
The king of donuts has a much bigger following on Instagram than it does on YouTube or Vine.
One of their most popular ads is their recent Instavid of a trip around the world with the #TravelBuddy. The video had an estimated 15,000 likes and 46,000 views, making it clear that fans are loving creative video ads.
A photo posted by Jack in the Box (@jackinthebox) on
Regularly showing up on best Instagram lists, Jack-in-the-Box seems to have carved out a rather special niche in today’s fast-food world. Thanks to rather quirky marketing. In July the brand generated about 10,000 viewers for its various Instavids. It’s a slightly lower count that what they got on YouTube uploads and Facebook videos, but the brand keeps on taking risks with their micro-video content that seriously encourages engagement from Instagram fans.
GoPro in general is a genius initiative to use footage created by users of the products. The videos the brand uploads range from documenting some extreme sport action to capturing insane stunts and filming all that is weird and wacky in this world. The brand has an astonishing 6.3 million followers on Instagram, so it’s no surprise that any video content the company uploads generates views in the hundreds of thousands. In July 2015, the combined Instagram video uploads generates a staggering 200,000 views per video. The brand’s celebration of user-generated content makes for a diversity of uploads, such as the clip of Didga, the Australian cat that skateboards:
When Will Your Ad Show Up on Instagram?
Instagram has to be the most engaging and non-intrusive way to reach out to your target market. So get on there, have fun with it and start engaging with your followers. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to #follow us @expwriters, for fun stuff like this:
For people who want a simple, elegant blogging platform that doesn’t require them to sell their souls or become wasted apparitions of what they once were – Ghost might be for you. (Just kidding with the deathly references there.)
What is Ghost All About?
John O’Nolan – a designer, world-class developer and a former head of WordPress’s UX team, developed ghost in 2012.
The concept was for an elegant, simple, original blogging platform that allowed users to create everything from blogs to weekly newspapers. He called the platform Ghost and it quickly made ripples across the WordPress community and the web at large.
The platform was touted as a “WordPress Killer” and, in the months following the development of the idea, O’Nolan and his team took to Kickstarter to make it a reality. The campaign raised upwards of $250,000 and the platform was born. Although the buzz over the new platform had begun to die out during its development, Ghost began to rock the boat once more when people began calling it things like “the new direction of blogging” and “the first exciting thing to happen to blogging in years.”
Although those were large shoes to fill, Ghost seems to have done it in many ways. When O’Nolan developed the concept for Ghost, the idea was to provide users with a user-friendly interface that, unlike WordPress, focused on blogging as a priority. Like many, O’Nolan was frustrated by clunky blogging platforms filled with difficult-to-use widgets that weren’t exactly applicable to the everyday blogger so, he decided to change the tides.
Although WordPress is currently the largest blog provider on the web, it’s not difficult to imagine that changing in the near future. It bears mentioning that, of the $250K that O’Nolan raised during his Kickstarter campaign, a large portion of that was provided by frustrated former WordPress users. So, supposedly, this is where Ghost comes in – to fill some pretty big shoes, I must say.
Testing The Ghost Out: The Pros and Cons
To test this new “blogging platform” out, I set up an account. It took me roughly all of 10 seconds. Enter username, password, email. I picked a name for my blog, and it showed me the URL I would have: copywriting.ghost.io . But, as soon as I got to my dashboard, I saw a big “Trial Account – Upgrade Now”.
As it turns out, the free Ghost platform is very limited. As a free user, you technically have no active subscription through the service. You can, however, download the Ghost software and install it to your own web server without passing over any cash. This requires you to manage all of your own codes and updates, although you do have access to the community support discussions in the Ghost forums, in case you get confused managing it all on your own.
If you want a little less DIY and a little more built-in convenience, however, you can upgrade to Ghost Pro, which offer a variety of different account options. The “Personal” account, for example, is $10 a month and offers hosting for one blog and up to 25,000 views each month. The “Advanced” plan is $30 a month and provides hosting for three blogs and up to 100,000 views a month. From there it goes to the “Team” plan ($100 per month, 10 blogs and 350,000 views a month) and “Business” ($250 each month, unlimited blogs and a million views a month).
Obviously, Ghost is unlike many other blogging platforms that don’t charge for their services and, as such, many bloggers are wondering what the heck Ghost is charging for. The answer, it turns out, is a little complex. Depending upon which version of Ghost Pro you update to, you’re paying for unlimited storage and transfer options, automatic updates and content backups, unlimited theme and app choices, security protection or priority support and migration options, although the latter two are only available on Ghost Pro’s two most expensive options – “Team” and “Business.”
In the future, Ghost Pro plans to offer perks like 3rd party apps, analytics and tools for developers to its paying users. Although the platform offers blogger-focused facilities, it also makes would-be bloggers jump through quite a few hoops to gain access to the same services that other blogging platforms offer for free.
The Pros of Ghost
1. Ghost Is Only For Blogging. (This could be a pro, or not.) The most obvious difference between Ghost and WordPress is that Ghost is dedicated only to blogging. No web operating systems, no CMS….just blogging. In addition, Ghost uses an MIT open source license, which, in their words “Our mission is to create the best open source tools for independent journalists and writers across the world, and have a real impact on the future of online media.” WordPress, on the other hand, uses a GNU open-source license. This license has caused some friction within the WordPress community and as a general rule, people don’t like it.
2. Ghost Is Set In Simpler Code. Another difference between WordPress and Ghost is that WordPress was written in PHP. While many tout this coding language as being a great one to use for hacking or prototyping, it’s difficult to use on a blogging platform due to it’s propensity toward change and copious semantic errors. Because O’Nolan had been involved with WordPress, he understood this frustration and set out to make Ghost different, which he did by writing the site in Node.js.
3. UX Is Different Than Wordpress. When it comes to user experience, there are some unique differences between Ghost and WordPress. While WordPress’s admin center can be excessively difficult for new users, advanced users love it and tout it as being a great platform to develop high-level blogs and websites. Ghost, on the other hand, sought to remove the bells and whistles and incorporate important blogging functions like social sharing and SEO into the core of the blogging platform. This means that users of Ghost have total control over content creation but may not have as much control over SEO and social sharing as WordPress users. Ghost may also make the actual act of creating content a bit easier for users. By offering a split-screen format, Ghost offers a seamless writing experience that, once more, places the focus back on blogging.
The Verdict: Ghost vs. WordPress
In the end, both platforms have their definitive strengths and weaknesses. Although Ghost touts itself as being a platform dedicated specifically to blogging, it’s obvious that it isn’t as built-in and convenient as it would have new users believe. In order to access important site features, like analytics and additional blog options, users need to pay the price. This, however, is not true for other blogging platforms such as WordPress. Although writers have the option to upgrade to WordPress.org hosting if they want more freedom, it’s not required to use the platform. That being said, it seems like users who want a simplified blogging experience may not opt for Ghost after all.
And, most importantly, Ghost makes users pay for the things may other sites offer for free. So the platform doesn’t seem to focus on “freedom to blog” nearly as much as it would claim. All in all, I don’t see it growing hugely unless it focuses on offering more value at lower or no costs—if it wants to rival Wordpress or the like.
Anyone who is familiar with Google’s algorithm updates knows that they are extensive, frequent and often vague in terms of detail.
Although Google’s most recent update, Google Panda 4.2, was released in July of 2015, many SEOs believe that the rolling-out process of the newest major Panda update isn’t actually done rolling out.
Read on to learn more.
Looking At the Current Panda 4.2 Update
When Panda 4.2 was introduced in July of this year, its express purpose was to reward quality content and down rate scraped, duplicate or low-quality content. From the get-go, it was clear that this Panda was a little slower moving than the others, but, even as the weeks began to wear on, very few SEOs expected so much time to pass before admins started to notice changes in their sites. Sites that were hit by Panda 4.1 have had to wait 10 months to redeem themselves and, due to the fact that 4.2 is also painfully slow to roll out, it’s unclear whether the changes made by those previously affected sites have actually been effective. Needless to say, this is a source of frustration in the SEO community.
In addition to being amazingly slow to implement, Panda 4.2 is also impressively extensive. When Google released Panda 4.2, it stated that 2-3% of Google’s search queries would be affected but, when you take into account that Google gets billions of daily searches, 2-3% equates to roughly 36 million affected queries. This makes it the broadest update in quite some time due to the fact that, between 2011 and May of 2014, no individual Google update affected more than 2.4% of search queries. Even though SEOs know that Panda 4.2 will affect millions of searches, the entire process has been so slow to roll out that nobody knows how, exactly, those millions of searches will be eventually be affected.
In the light of all of that ambiguity, it’s tough to make any solid statements about Panda 4.2. The one thing that SEOs do know for sure about this Panda update is that, as usual, quality content is the only safe place to be. This means avoiding things like keyword stuffing, ugly sites or exploitative SEO practices. Because Google has dedicated itself to rewarding high-class content and down-ranking sub-par content, sites that publish well-written, original content are less likely to be negatively affected by the mysterious new Panda updates.
While nobody quite knows just yet what Panda 4.2 will reward or punish, most SEOs believe that creating great content and avoiding bad SEO practices is a safe place to sit and wait for the changes to begin showing themselves.
Questions Regarding Panda 4.2’s Status
The main question people have about Panda 4.2 is “is it here?” The answer is “Yes – but only kind of.” Panda 4.2 was instated around July 18th, 2015, at which point Google said the changes would take place over “several months.” Obviously, that’s vague at best and absolutely unclear at worst. What we do know is that Google waited 10 months after Panda 4.1 to release its next update and that a large portion of that was due to technical glitches and complicated system issues.
Additionally, while it’s not uncommon for a Google algorithm change to take a number of months to go into full effect, it’s clear that this one is going extra-slowly. This is actually the slowest Panda roll out to date and, as such, many SEOs are concerned that the new changes are so complex that they can’t easily be instated in a matter of days.
Google, however, says this isn’t true. During numerous interviews, the company has stated that the new Panda roll out isn’t going slowly purposely to confuse SEOs or to make life more difficult. Instead, the company says that this slow Panda roll-out is a preview of coming attractions: a time when Panda will be one, large, continuously rolling and changing system that is incorporated into the company’s most fundamental algorithms. While the company acknowledges that they’re not there, yet, it seems as if this ultra-slow Panda roll out is the first step in that direction.
Additionally, the company has assured SEOs that, while Google Panda 4.2 is a site-wide action, it is unlikely to affect each of a site’s pages in the same way, which is why many SEO’s have yet to see any real or definitive changes. Sites that are bound to be dinged by Panda 4.2 may not actually know it until the entire roll out is complete – some time in the distant future. At that point, affected sites will need to wait until Google releases its next update in order to revamp their pages.
The Verdict: The Newest Panda In the Works May Not Hit Us Before 2016
Considering the fact that there were 10 long months between Panda 4.1 and Panda 4.2, it seems unlikely that the next update will happen any time before 2016.
For now, the best Google has to offer is that site owners should keep an eye on their analytics. By isolating organic traffic driven by Google and closely analyzing any large dips or boosts, site owners can begin to get an idea about whether the big Panda is here and, furthermore, whether it has begun to affect their sites or not.
What You Can do to Stay Sane During the Slow Roll Out
Although many SEOs feel a bit helpless during this time of Google ambiguity, there are a few things you can do to mitigate the uncertainty and ascertain whether Panda 4.2 has affected your site:
1. Frequent Site Audits. The first is that you can keep checking your site for any positive or negative impacts that seem different from the norm. This is likely to be a strong indicator of the fact that Panda 4.2 was there. Unfortunately, however, once the changes are instated, it’s too late to do anything about your site and, if you have content that is going to be punished by Google, it will be punished no matter what you do.
2. Stay Informed. With that in mind, it’s wise to continue keeping an eye on your site and visiting popular Google hangouts for any definitive news about Panda 4.2.
In the meantime, be extra aware of web spam and crappy content and avoid both like the plague. While the new Panda may be more mysterious than all of the others, SEOs need to take comfort in the fact that there will eventually be some answers.
While Google Panda 4.2 is officially here, it’s tough to know exactly how it’s going to affect sites just yet. While it’s not all that different than previous updates, Panda 4.2 promises to be increasingly tough on content mills, web spam and poorly written pieces.
Conclusion
In light of this, the solution is the same as it ever was: cling to high-quality, original content and avoid bad SEO.
That way, when the big, bad Panda does decide to show its face, your site stands a better chance of being prepared.
Social Media Week (SMW) is actually a platform—a global one that aims to connect content, people and conversation around the latest trends in social and mobile media. It also is the main sponsor of the annual #SMW event.
We wish you, we wish you.. a happy #socialmediaweek!
Every year, SMW brings hundreds of thousands of people together through social and mobile media. It provides numerous learning experiences that aim to advance our understanding of the role social media plays in today’s society.
Held for the first time in February 2009 in New York City, SMW was originally launched as a distributed conference with event being held throughout the city. More than 2,500 people attended and thousands participated online.
How We’re Celebrating
We’ve started our very own Instagram, @expwriters. We only set it up two weeks ago with this post and we’re just in awe of the traction we’ve already started getting. Instagram has astounded us. We’ve had nearly 40 likes on a single post, something we’ve never got in over 3 years on Facebook.
1. Local Business Gets Our Thumbs Up
At Express Writers we pride ourselves with keeping on top of the latest trends, having an incredible international workforce and supporting local business.
So for starters, we’re kicking off #socialmediaweek by featuring a #localbusiness. We’ve already started with this post.
Being pretty mobile, we love heading out to local places here in Austin to work for the morning or just catch a break from staring at a screen for a while.
Keen to find out who the featured local business is? Stay tuned to our Instagram page to see who it will be.
Don’t have an Instagram account yourself? Here’s how to set one up really quickly and start following us.
2. #virtualworkforceculture
Hashtag what, you’re asking?
We have amazing team members from all corners of the globe, so we’ve decided to start a weekly hashtag photo session. With #virtualworkforceculture, we will be featuring one of our team members each week.
What better way to celebrate social media week than featuring our very first #virtualworkforceculture?
Our aim is to bring our entirely remote team together through the powers of Instagram.
Below is one of our busiest full-time writers, Ashley A, featured in our #virtualworkforceculture hashtag:
A photo posted by Express Writers (@expwriters) on
Now, let’s go into studying Instagram—why it’s so powerful, and how to successfully use it!
Why is Instagram so Powerful?
Ian Irving via SlideShare
Instagram is quite literally the Twitter of pictures. It lets people post photos, have followers and follow other people to see their photos.
The site was one of the most successful startups with an explosion in traffic shortly after the app was developed.
So why did Instagram smash it so quickly?
For starters, if you want to develop an incredibly successful website, or even business, you need to target people’s most important psychological needs.
Instagram has many valuable uses, but the main reason for its rise to stardom is that it targeted two essential human needs: the desire to feel important and the desire to show off.
It’s Human Nature to Want to Be a Show Off
Photo credit digitalinformationworld.com
When was the last time someone said you were boasting?
When last were you told you’re showing off?
While a lot of humans won’t admit it, we all want to show off in one way or another. But since many do it subtly, others learn to criticize those who blatantly show off.
So why would anyone post a photo on Instagram? To show off how good he or she is.
Every picture carries a hidden message. I have beautiful friends. I look gorgeous today. My car rocks. Hey, I’m having a fancy dinner.
If we didn’t have the desire to show off, Instagram would never have got off the starting block.
Satisfying the Ego
Who doesn’t want to feel important?
The chance to have followers is arguably one of the most brilliant ideas that helps people satisfy their egos. People want to see their followers increasing so they become addicted to sites built on this system.
7 Steps to Instagram Success
Have we got you fired up about Instagram? Check out these 7 steps to making it on the platform.
1. Create a Profile
The first step is to pick a clear, attractive avatar.
Use the same username as your Twitter handle so people can tag you easily.
Use keywords in your bio for the sake of searchability.
Change the URL in the bio to reflect what you are doing.
Let BITLY help you track your traffic and customize it.
2. #Strategy
Instagram lets you use up to 30 hashtags per post. So stick a few in the original post and add more in the comments.
Be consistent with the hashtags.
Take time to build a hashtag strategy to be consistent.
Create hashtags that will build a hub for your content.
3. Build a Posting Strategy
Create fun videos.
Use a report app to share other posts.
Add quote graphics.
4. Encourage Engagement
Create real relationships with your followers.
Give shout outs to friends and thought leaders.
Delete spammy comments.
Tag people in photos so that they get notifications.
Make it easy for people to find you.
Double tap a post to like it.
Make sure your account is public if you want to connect with new people.
5. Use Call to Actions
A CTA is important no matter what you’re doing these days. Add one in your comments to tell people what you want them to do next.
A few examples include:
Contact me to learn more
Click the link in my bio for more
Like what you see? Connect to learn more
Check out the link for a preview of my new course
6. Use Direct Messages to Connect
You can add value to followers by sharing tips with them via direct messages.
For those who don’t know, “content syndication” is the act of publishing a piece of writing multiple times in multiple locations. Keep in mind, however, that good content syndication does not mean copying and pasting the same article for use over and over again without any attribution or precautions. Google recognizes the latter as duplicate content and will happily ding your site for this.
Instead, syndicating your own work is essentially the same as creating re-runs of your greatest hits and, for writers who publish a lot of blog posts or articles, it can be a great way to get the most bang for your metaphorical buck. Additionally, good syndication practices have the potential to earn you more shares and afford your content a much wider reach. When syndication is done well, it allows a variety of online sources to find and feature your original work, which is a win-win for everyone involved.
“But how,” you might ask, “do I syndicate correctly?”
While there are many myths about syndicated content flying around, making sure that you are syndicating correctly is an important piece of the syndication process because, as we mentioned earlier, duplicate content is a big no-no in the world of SEO. Let’s find out more about this.
What is Content Syndication?
As we’ve established, content syndication is when a publisher or writer re-purposes an already-published piece of writing for use on a different platform. It’s a tricky business though, because Google hates duplicate content (as it has made explicitly clear with its recent updates) and will happily ding sites that copy a blog from one platform to another.
The reason Google is so tough on duplicate content is easy to understand: the Internet is an information-delivering machine and nobody wants to encounter the same post on every site they visit. Duplicate content doesn’t benefit readers nearly as much as high-quality, original content and, when Google users enter search queries, they expect to see a few million similar but different results pop up, which is impossible in a world of copy-and-paste content.
Although it’s not fair to say that content syndication is so risky and ill-advised that it shouldn’t be attempted at all, it is fair to say that it should be undertaken cautiously and with a broad knowledge of how to syndicate safely. These tactics will keep you in Google’s good graces while also allowing you to reap the benefits of re-purposed content:
1. Write a Recap
One of the easiest ways to syndicate content correctly is to write a recap. Start a blog post by introducing the post you’ve already written as well as the platform on which it was published. Add a few more words, a nice image, a compelling call-to action, a link to the piece and you’re done.
This form of syndication is great because it’s simple, amazingly time-efficient, and easy to do. Additionally, linking to the site that features your blog has the potential to boost your SEO ranking and also provides your readers with the opportunity to visit a blog they’re unfamiliar with, thus expanding their horizons as well.
Photo credit seoinc.com
2. Add A rel-canonical Tag
If you’re syndicating your own content to a different portal, consider adding a useful little rel-canonical tag to the page that will feature your new article. Keep in mind that the tag in question should always point back to your site’s original article.
By doing this, you give Google a way to interpret your syndicated content correctly and help search engines realize that the article is a copy and that you are its original publisher. This prevents you from slipping into the dark world of duplicate content and saves your site from costly SEO dings by the Google Gods. Additionally, all of the subsequent links to your syndicated copy will point back to your original copy, which is good for your site and your visibility.
3. Opt for NoIndex
If the rel-canonical tag isn’t up your alley, try the No-Index option. When you syndicate your own content, simply insert a No-Index tag in the article copy. Doing this tells Google that it needs to exclude the syndicated copy from its index but allows linking between the two articles. Keep in mind that this is not the same process as No-Follow, which is an entirely different practice among bloggers.
4. Ensure Balance
Once your content marketing strategy begins to tip heavily toward all syndicated content, all the time, you’re in trouble. When Google’s Panda 4.0 was introduced, many sites that favor syndicated content saw a 60% decrease in their organic traffic. That said, it’s wise to ensure that if you are using syndicated content, you’re balancing it well with high-quality, original content.
Opt for a 60/40 split, with 60% of your content being original pieces that are updated often. Ensure you’re utilizing proper linking techniques and that your content is garnering good shares. This, combined with other preventative syndication measures, should be enough to keep you in Google’s good graces.
5. Beef Up Syndicated Pieces
One of the worst things you can do in pursuit of syndication is copy and paste third-party pieces without adding value to the content. Generally, good writers know that constructing a blog built entirely around third-party pieces that are taken from other sources is a dangerous game. There is, however, a way to do it correctly.
By utilizing third party pieces to quote from or to draw fragments from, writers can build authority and synthesize new content. To do this, ensure that the pieces you choose to syndicate were published by a high-quality site and that they are written with flow and comprehension in mind. Additionally, be sure that you are adding some quality to syndicated third-party pieces. Insert your own commentary or pull pieces of the third-party article to beef up your own content, but whatever you do, do not pull third party pieces from around the web, slap them on your site and call it a blog.
Good Syndication: Ask Yourself The Where, When and Why Questions
With all of those warnings in place, the fact remains that syndication can actually be great for bloggers, providing it’s done properly. According to Google, duplicate content is “substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.”
It’s important to note, however, that Google goes on to say that most duplicate content isn’t trying to be sneaky and can be attributed to news publications, product descriptions or discussion forums. That being said, Google doesn’t love syndicated content and it urges writers to be careful when they choose to do it.
In order to avoid getting dinged, it’s important to ensure that any website that features syndicated content offers a hyperlink to the website that features the original article. Additionally, it is generally wise to use No-Index tags on sites that syndicate content in order to avoid appearing as duplicate content.
Where?
We’re going for quality over quantity here and it’s always wise to avoid slapping syndicated content all over the Internet. Instead, focus on correctly syndicating content on a small number platforms and then promoting it well. This will garner you all the benefits of content syndication without the high probability of running into associated risks.
When?
Again, it’s unwise to rely entirely upon syndicated content and you don’t want to syndicate every piece of content you write. That said, it’s important to choose which content to syndicate wisely. A great general rule is to syndicate only those pieces which are of most interest to your audience. Don’t syndicate something that is off-beat or somewhat inconsequential. When it comes time to re-use your own content, it’s wise to pick the very best stuff you write.
Additionally, you’ll want to ensure that, while you are syndicating your highest-quality articles, you’re also not syndicating some of your highest quality articles. Maintaining well-written, high-quality content that is unique to your site will boost your site’s rankings and help you build your reputation of authority, not to mention the positive force it exerts on reader interest. A good deal of when you choose to syndicate content will also depend on your status as a blogger. High-profile bloggers might be a bit pickier about their syndication opportunities than bloggers who are just getting started.
Why?
Letting a third-party website feature your content is one of the best ways to build authority in your domain. Although it sounds counterintuitive, it’s true and this is why content syndication is so popular among writers. Publishers want high-quality, original content are more than willing to take what writers give them and feature it on their sites. This is a win-win for many reasons: first of all, the publisher gets unique, intelligent, interesting writing that they may not have the time or skill to produce in-house; secondly, the writer gets to share their content with a broader audience and gain new readers and followers, which can help boost authority and visibility in the blogging world.
For bloggers that are just getting started, content syndication can be an effective strategy to boost authority, gain new readers and make a name for themselves in the blogging world. More established writers love content syndication for the same reasons. When both writers and publishers syndicate content correctly, every party involved stands to enjoy large benefits.
The Case for Content Syndication
By now, it’s obvious that there is a large and distinct difference between duplicate content and content syndication, although the methods by which that distinction takes place might seem somewhat blurry. Content syndication is a great way for publishers to gain plenty of high-quality content and for writers to enjoy increased visibility, but it must be done carefully.
If you’re going to syndicate content, be sure that you are syndicating correctly. Employ precautions like writing recaps, asking publishers to use No-Index meta tags, implementing rel-canonical tags or simply creating two distinct categories of content, one for your personal site and one for content distribution allies. No matter what you choose to do, it’s obvious that avoiding the dreaded cloud of duplicate content is amazingly important for bloggers everywhere.
Whether you’re syndicating your own content or syndicating content from a third-party site, the risks and the benefits must be weighed equally. When done incorrectly, syndicated content quickly becomes duplicate content and bloggers begin to test the strength of Google’s iron will. Publishers that rely entirely upon syndicated content or fly in the face of duplicate content, creating it anyway and just waiting to be caught, will eventually be caught and the penalties can be huge. It’s not fun to lose organic traffic and, fortunately, it’s avoidable. When you syndicate content correctly, it’s easy to reap the benefits of increased visibility and high-quality content without falling prey to the wrath of the Google’s Panda.
Conclusion
Although there are obviously risks involved with content syndication, it’s up to each individual blogger to determine whether or not content syndication is right for them.
For many bloggers, content syndication’s benefits far outweigh its drawbacks. These bloggers choose to syndicate content carefully and, often, they experience a solid increase in traffic because of it.
For example, I’ve syndicated content to SocialMediaToday (not every blog I write, just some) and the syndicated content has been shared hundreds of times—far more traction on social than I would have received without the syndication.
Once you look (and understand) at the big picture with syndication, you can easily decide if it’s right for you.
And remember, the quality of your content will determine how well it does when it’s syndicated – so always keep your standards high.
