Blog Archives

8 tips to improve your social media content as a business

Here at Re:signal, we really love social media. It’s enabled us to grow our agency, expand our network and showcase what we do every day to the wider public. However, during this modern era of regular, fast change, there are plenty of ways to improve the content that’s published on social media and the ways it can be reached. That’s why we’ve spent time researching effective tips on how to improve our social media content, and we want to share these with you too.

1) Boost your credibility

By posting content that illustrates your successes, achievements and press-worthiness, it enables you to boost your brand’s credibility online and helps to establish the brand as thought, service, or product leaders within a specific industry to the public on social media.

Accompanied by a related hashtag, this content gets recognised by other industry professionals, who may then also join in the engagement.

We do this regularly here at Re:signal, and this receives engagement and comments of congratulations, which we always love to see!

Ultimate guide to securing Google answer boxes

Want to increase the click-through rate to your site by 100%? Not a bad proposition right?

This is why you should be thinking about featured snippets for EVERY piece of content you write.

Featured snippets have been a hot topic this year, but this post will give you a:

Business case and proposition to put to higher management
Checklist process to pass directly to your in-house content team / outsourced agency
The process to help you identify SERPs and keywords to target

All of this helping you to be more efficient when taking your content strategy to the next level.

Why optimise your content for featured snippets?

Is virtual reality (VR) the future of content marketing?

I have a confession. Until recently I hadn’t really given virtual reality too much thought…

Sure it looks like a lot of fun for gamers, but for marketers? Surely not!

The novelty will wear off and it will never catch on for a mainstream audience…

vr-pucon-robert-scoble

Then I saw Robert Scoble talk about virtual reality (VR) at Pubcon last month, which for me was a real eye-opener.

This really got me thinking about what virtual reality means for the future of content marketing…

I asked Robert a few questions after his talk, which provided hugely valuable insight into how VR can have an impact to everyone, and what marketers need to do in order to take advantage of this.

Don’t worry, I’m sharing all of the key points with you:

1) Microsoft is betting the company on HoloLens

Definitely watch this video, it’s very cool to see what VR will be able to do. It feels a bit like Minority Report to me, but it’s no longer a futuristic sci-fi movie!

84 things we learned at Pubcon

Last week, Chelsea, Irma, Sam, Raphael, Nicole, Marion and I, headed to Las Vegas for Pubcon:

Re:signal at Pubcon 2016

We’re always keen to keep ahead of the game, and I’ve always found US conferences a really useful way of keeping up-to-date with all things SEO and content marketing. For this reason, it was great to be able to go back to Pubcon with a bigger team, as it’s hugely important for our team to keep learning, innovating, networking and improving…

30 ways to make your content marketing REALLY work

We all know that content marketing is hugely competitive, and that we’re always fighting a battle to stand out from the crowd.

I’ve listed 30 tips and ideas that I’ve found help when it comes to making your content marketing really get results:

1) Define what content marketing success looks like

For example:

You have a strategy aligned with your business goals, with a clear plan on how to achieve them…
You produce creative content which your audience loves and attracts more of the ‘right kind’ of prospects (those who buy!)
You earn outstanding coverage from publishers, media and social influencers
You continually increase online revenue via organic search and other channels, to acquire new customers and retain existing ones

You need to understand where you are, where to go &

I run an agency but spend less than 10% of my time on marketing

“Kev, how can you still consider yourself an MARKETER?

When was the last time you actually did any MARKETING for your own agency?”

I get questions like this a lot…and they bother me each time.

And here’s the rub…

I’m the one asking them…of myself.

You see, I’ve run digital marketing agencies since 2006. I’ve spent a lot of time experimenting, hacking, growing, learning (and everything in between). I’ve written hundreds of blog posts, given media interviews and presented at a ton of conferences. To be honest, I (pretty much) loved every minute of it…and the ends always justified the means.

“Organic” marketing has always been my main way of generating new business, with prospects coming purely via referral, reputation, search or our own content. I loved spending most of my time in “the trenches” and this allowed us to keep growing and working with some leading companies in the world.

kevin-gibbons-ses-london-speaking

(Here I am speaking at an SES London event from a couple of years ago)

However…

…

Re:signal ski trip: winter summit review

Last week, our London and Zurich teams headed to Switzerland for the BlueGlass Winter Summit 2016. It was a chance to catch up with our continental counterparts and celebrate the success of an amazing year. More importantly, it was an opportunity to share what we’d learned and thought ahead to the many exciting projects coming up this year.

We explored the delights of Zurich and Lucerne before heading to the hills and thrilling slopes of Engelberg.

The team gets ready The adventure started early for the London team: a bleary-eyed, 6am rendezvous at London City Airport. Many of us had never skied before, while others were veterans of the slopes –

The "can’t miss" content marketing strategy

Can't Miss Marketing John Romero

Content marketing is hard.

Actually, let me clarify that a bit…GREAT content marketing is hard!

One of the biggest reasons why it’s so hard nowadays is that there are just SO many choices. Every single day, I see blog posts, columns, tweets and updates telling me the million different things that I HAVE TO BE DOING…

“156 Content Marketing Strategies for 2016”
“315 Content Marketing Goals You Should Be Measuring”
“17,001 Content Marketing Tools You Need to Try”

Enough already!

How “The Art of War” made me a better content marketer

The Art of War is believed to have been written around 2,500 years ago by Sun Tzu, a high-ranking Chinese military general. A concise bible for military strategy, its thirteen chapters designate key concepts and challenges that must be understood to achieve ultimate military victory, quickly and efficiently.

The guidance in The Art of War may hail from a time before smart technology, content marketing or even basic sanitation, but Sun Tzu had a sound understanding of strategy – and the wisdom that has sustained his work across millennia simply buzzes with relevance for anyone working in marketing and management. It has been heralded by CEOs and top publications alike –

Was Michelangelo the greatest content marketer of all time?

I recently spent a long weekend in Rome. While I was there, I was surrounded by art, by masterpieces. Creativity was everywhere.

From the painters I walked by in the promenade, to the Sistine Chapel and Coliseum, to the artful way dishes are put together. You could tell everything was created with such passion, precision, and focus.

We don’t have time anymore to produce work of that quality.

(image via Flickr)

We live in such a fast-paced world of meetings, emails, notifications and various other tasks that we simply can’t find the time to sit down and really focus. All these tools designed to help us work, actually do everything but.

On top of this, there’s other day-to-day pressures. You’re below targets, your boss is unhappy, they wanted results yesterday, and so on, and so on…

At least that’s the perception. What we say as an excuse.

But those painters in the promenade, they sit in a crowded area and are able to focus on nothing but their work. No people watching, no phone checking, no incoming emails.

It’s still possible to create a masterpiece. It just requires patience and focus a lot of us don’t want to deal with.

Michelangelo didn’t finish Pope Julius II’s tomb until 40 years after he started, needing to start over or pivot several times. He worked on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling for 3 years, enduring numerous difficulties and grueling day-to-day work.

That kind of dedication doesn’t mesh with today’s content culture, where there are 1,400 new blog posts published each minute.

But in order to create masterpiece content, you need to work like a master.

Michelangelo: world-class content marketer

The works Michelangelo produced were truly world-class masterpieces. The level of detail put into the Sistine Chapel is unbelievable.

“The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.” –

Category: Blog