Archives for December 2012

 Fun, interesting, controversial, original, infographicy, newsy content ideas to help earn you links

In this episode I talk to Woj Kwasi from Kwasi Studios for the second time. If you haven’t already, I suggest you check out our first chat in episode 19 where we discussed the basics of link earning before listening to this episode where we go into some examples and case studies of specific types of content that you can learn from and draw ideas for your own content.

Link earning case studies / examples;

1. Wife Insurance – fun, interesting, controversial idea to promote a life insurance business
2. CSS styles as pizza toppings – a new idea that Woj hasn’t developed yet but came up with using the “Random Affinities” concept
3. Tech Acquisition infographic – an infographic showing 6 interesting tech acquisition from 2012 illustrated in a Pacman maze. A creative and visual way of illustrating some interesting information.
4. How to rank PDF documents – article with original research to produce some unique and useful content
5. Industry News: How to stop people pinning your content on Pinterest & Google Website Optimiser officially ending – get known as a source of news in your industry and people will keep coming back to you to find out the latest news. If you get on top of a story early, your article may also become a source for other people’s articles which could mean lots of juicy links

Links / mentions;

• Talk on Creativity by John Cleese
• Random affinities concept
• “Reverse” Google image search (search by image)
• Research is important! Ask your audience what kind of content they would like then give it to them
• Woj on Twitter: @wojkwasi
• Kwasi Studios Website: www.kwasistudios.com

 

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Nick: Welcome back to episode 20 of the Web Marketing Adelaide Podcast. I’m your host Nick Morris and this week we are talking again with Woj Kwasi from Kwasi Studios. Now, if you haven’t heard it already, I suggest you go back to last week’s Episode, that’s Episode 19, which is the first episode, where we talked to Woj. The topic is Link Earning, so it’s really in the same vein we’ve been talking about the last few weeks of the show, where we are talking about content marketing and the content marketing strategy and this link earning topic is really about how content marketing relates to SEO specifically and trying to get links, which is an important part of SEO.

So, certainly go check out that, the first part of the interview with Woj, which would give you, sort of a base and then come along to this Episode where we’re talking about specific examples and some case studies of a different types of content that have been able to earn links or types of contents that can earn links to give you some ideas a bit more of a grounding, so you know sort of, what sort of stuff that you could be building yourself to try and get links. Let’s go to that interview now.

Nick: I’m back here talking with Woj Kwasi from Kwasi Studios, about link earning. Welcome back to the show Woj.

Woj Kwasi: Hi Nick, thanks for having me.

Nick: No worries. This Episode, we’re still on the Content Marketing link earning stuff and we’re talking about a few different case studies that Woj is, we’re going to discuss and perhaps give you a better idea of what we’re talking about and what sorts of things that you could be doing within your business to be taking advantage of this link and content marketing and stuff. So, take it away.

Woj Kwasi: Sure. So, the first example I’ve got is quite an interesting one. It’s very, quite creative. It was when I was working at Sydney, it’s probably, one of the last ideas I had for this particular client, so, there are one of the strategies best life insurance brokers and come up with compelling ideas for life insurance is quite a daunting task at best. So, one day, I just have this idea you know life insurance sound like wife insurance you know, hang on a second, it might just work.

The thing is, you really need to sort of have business owners buying and someone on board, so, luckily they’re good clients to work with and they said, yeah, that sounds pretty cool, but I have to pitch the idea, I guess and sort of, commit some of my work and the idea behind it was let’s create a website, called wifeinsurance.com.au, so you can check it out, it’s actually live. I think they are doing a Christmas theme at the moment. So, the premise was make this sort of fictitious site with a whole bunch of policies that pertain to your wife, now at dish washing insurance and all these kind of like play on words. Basically, you go online as a male or maybe even as a female, you fill out this policy, against your, again, that sounds a bit harsh, before your wife, and then it says you submit the form, they send you through a certificate and on the thank you page, it says, something like thanks for your inquiry, this has also been copied and sent to your wife. You may like to consider life insurance.

Nick: Good punch line.

Woj Kwasi: Yeah, but I guess that sort of larger scale example but it is quite successful because it was kind of a controversial idea a little bit sexist. They used 1950’s imagery, so that kind of helped tone down that kind of sexist, you know problem.

Nick: Yeah.

Woj Kwasi: But it was, yeah, it was really interesting, got some coverage in the UK, got some here, still getting links. People are still finding out you know it’s not a direct link to Life Broker, the client Life Broker. It still helps because there is a link on that site to Life Brokers so kind of like a tertiary link.

Nick: Right. I guess it’s really not that difficult to set up once you have the idea. I mean, it’s a fairly simple website and it’s really had that creative idea and that’s sort of an example of something that’s not really directly related, I mean it’s obviously insurance and the words are related but it’s not a real thing, it’s a fun idea and these sorts of ideas can also work for getting that links and also just more promotion and media coverage like you mentioned?

Woj Kwasi: Absolutely. I’ll also like to mention they are doing like a Christmas kind of revamp of it, so, that should be interesting. I’m not sure because I don’t work for the agency producing it but it was like an idea I left behind. It’s really cool to say that I execute. I’ve seen the analytics data and it’s fairly successful just one thing I mentioned there in the first episode, think outside the box and what you may think is maybe a little bit sort of tongue in cheek or might be a bad idea, it might actually work. Don’t sort of rule things out. Yeah.

Nick: Yeah I think I have some tips on this but, I think I was reading something recently about brainstorming and creative stuff. Actually, there’s a really [Inaudible 00:06:27] it’s John Clase giving a talk about creativity. It’s like 40 minutes long. Anything by John Clase is entertaining but it had some great content in there as well and I was also reading something recently about brainstorming. I think the idea of just pulling down like any idea you have on the page and then later coming back and figuring out of what’s good would be a way of avoiding, you know, the thing is, it might not be good, when I actually could have some possibilities for it.

Woj Kwasi: Brainstorming should be an open forum for your mind really, like, every idea is good. You shouldn’t criticize the ideas as they’re dumb, because you might think something is bad but it might generate another idea and another process in your mind that I mean you sort of, join a couple of things together and that makes me think of the second example but before I jump into that. It’s funny that you should mention John Clase because his parents were insurance brokers.

Nick: Really? Wow!

Woj Kwasi: You’ve done your research.

Nick: Definitely, I knew from that example, yeah but before we move on to the second example, there is also on that point you mentioned there just talking about brainstorming. If you are in an office setting and you’re doing it with your team or with your employees another, I think this is from John Clase’s talk I just mentioned, you should never criticize someone else’s ideas because you don’t want to dissuade them from being creative and open about any ideas. You should always been encouraging them.

Woj Kwasi: It blocks their cognitive flow and you know, so just keep a note pad around and just write stuff down as they pop up into your mind. You might be a plumber and you might think of, I don’t know. There’s a new movie coming out called Record Raft, so you might think, oh you know, might make a little mini game on my site and that’s a bit abstract, even that, people do get into the habit of closing their own ideas. I almost did it then, but that might lead into another idea, which would be good.

Nick: Yeah so, could have keep a notepad with you perhaps or you could put it in your iphone or on your phone and write down any ideas that you have and then you’ve got some stuff there that you can work with, you can have your team look over and come up with ideas for content. Alright, let’s move on to the second example.

Woj Kwasi: So, this second example, it’s not like something that we developed but based on, I guess Ann Lorey from Portland has sort of talked about coming up with random affinities, so two things that are completely unrelated to one another in the real world that they share an audience. So, it could be like a particular maker, you know it could be siflus but like a particular tv show, so it will create content that will cater for that similar audience. You might find that you know, people who buy computers like game of thrones, so you might produce some content about computing and game of thrones. They’re fairly related but you can get quite abstract like cyclist like I don’t know, maybe they like Sex In The City or something, pretty bizarre things but you know that maybe some female cyclists that you can…

Nick: What kind of content do you think would work in that?

Woj Kwasi: To point and illustrate a better example, the one that we’re going to produce, so we thought, well, we were talking about pizza and css and what way css cascade in styles and shapes in web development and what, they’re kind of random and these sets work together. So, maybe we’ll produce an article that describes css classes and styles as pizza toppings and pizzas so you know, a class could be a supreme pizza, where as the individual styles could be the actual toppings themselves. So, that’s one example of having these random affinities that could kinda work.

Nick: Yeah, right! So, it kinda sounds like I was like that kind of an article would probably be useful for anyone who’s interested in either topic, perhaps maybe not so much pizza but certainly some of these issues but if you find someone who is interested in both, they’re going to be more likely sort of to get into it and maybe sharing it or linking to it, stuff like that.

Woj Kwasi: Yeah exactly! Yeah so I mean like for a graphic design sites that would be a really good article because you know, most people like pizza right? I think I’ve mentioned it too many times during this interview but it’s sounds good. It must be dinner time. So, the next example is we produced, I did a bit of analysis of some popular tech acquisitions recently and I thought I will, once again it’s kind of similar with random affinities thing, tech acquisitions and I thought with Pac man, used to sort of nom, nom, nom the ghost. So, it’s kinda like a company acquiring another company, so decided to produce like a especially just be a graphic of the Pac man maze which has all these different seralta. I think it was six interesting acquisitions and I had Pacmans On The Maze but if kind of turned into a bit of info graphic and yeah I got some shares and got a lot of links to it.

What’s interesting is, it got a lot of links from Spanish websites which, once I sort of look through various back link profiles, I notice that one Spanish influencer is linked to it and then have it linked to his site. So, basically I got a lot of links from Spanish websites and I investigated it a little bit and I noticed, because we can do like a Google image like reverse search. So, you can basically put in your image and just see where it’s appeared around the net and so I found this info graphic on the Spanish site and I looked up the site and just like 30 tweets and like hey hang on a second. You know, I’m not getting any justice from this, so I said you know can you least put a link on your site? So, you know that’s a good way to do things, so, even if it’s not an info graphic, even having photos on your website or and searching for where they have been added, you can get a link, including the source.

Nick: Right yeah. So, info graphic is typically something, which is information in graphical form and have been really popular the last year or two on the web and oftentimes people will take them and put them on their own site with a link back but obviously in this case you found that it had been taken but not given a link back. So, that’s probably a good reason or a good idea for people to keep on top of it, things like it they have images appropriate images within their content, you can do this Google image search.

Woj Kwasi: Here’ a tip for you, so, if you’ve got images, lots of images on your site or a few, you can search for them find some sites for the nick your image so excuse the time, and yeah basically sort of contact them and say hey you know, this is my image, be nice about it because it is cool like having your content shared around the net regardless but yeah there is no reason why you shouldn’t ask for a link.

Nick: Yeah exactly! The important thing is, don’t ask them to take it down, ask them to just give you a link because it’s gonna be more valuable for you to get that link.

Woj Kwasi: Yeah exactly!

Nick: Than it would be just to have the image, unless it is something really important that perhaps you know, if you’re a photographer and you sell your photography, you might you know, you might not want people taking it but a link’s always gonna be good.

Woj Kwasi: Yep. Another example is, so we did this article about how to rank PDF documents and the reason, I guess for the document was because I want to know how to do it and I did a bit of research and I couldn’t find any decent article about the topic, so I thought, well, I’m just gonna, as I go, I’m gonna make this article.

Nick: So, that’s a good point for people with, have some sort of question within their industry that perhaps they don’t know too much about then, that can be an idea for content.

Woj Kwasi: Exactly. An FAQs, you should make maybe the top 20 questions that you get asked by your clients, maybe a handful of these questions, maybe there’s a question in there that you don’t know exactly what the answer is but as you’re sort of looking it up, you can build back content on your site. So, yes, we sort of ran a couple of interesting experiments on that PDF because I really wanted to see how it would work and it’s changed again since I put up that article.

So, I really need to update it but I grabbed a couple of bank products, closure, statements, various different things and I played around changing the titles and the descriptions in the middle of the PDF document of and I think there is a IKEA kitchen guide and I started to rank for those terms and when I look into the Google web master tools, I’m getting a lot of searches for bank related terms and I get IKEA kitchen planner. So, it’s not really what I was after but it’s just interesting to you know, to run those sorts of experiments.

Nick: Yeah, yeah. So, experiments, tests any kind of original research you can do. That’s obviously not too expensive to do that on a small scale and but it’s you know, unique data you can get, which could be interesting to your audience or other people in your industry, all the contents stuff.

Woj Kwasi: Like accounting for example. If you can put up some tax calculators or basically answer any of the questions people may have about how to, what does this field mean in [Inaudible 00:17:04] I mean, you can do a whole guide, because I don’t if you’ve ever been to the ATI website but it’s not very user friendly. There’s a lot of information and I’m not sure an accountant, it’s kinda hard to absorb.

Nick: I think government website is a general something like that.

Woj Kwasi: And it kind of goes back to that thing you were saying on the first episode where people they tend to just, they look out content as text, just maybe some images. They can actually be quite interactive in the way you do things and you can make things, sort of pop out a bit more and have rollovers to explain things like, there are few different sites out there that do that quite well. If I think of some examples, I’ll send you some links and finally, one more example on our side, that we did.

So, newsworthy stuff, done this a couple of times. Pinterest basically is an image sharing site. We can pin content easier on the internet and they release something where you can stop people from pinning stuff on your website, those little meta-tags and stuff. It’s kind of cool and newsworthy. Not many people were reporting on it and yeah, produce some content around that. I think when Google website optimizer got merchant analytics, I did an article about that because you know industry announcements, there’s heaps.

Nick: Yeah, so they can be a, become known as a service source of news within your industry and that will also bring lots of regular viewers and you can become a, you know, if another news site or another site writes about it, you can become the source, particularly for them, so there can be a link and that can be quite a powerful link for you.

Woj Kwasi: There are different types of content you can create that you should turn your links, finding people in your, even industry peers or interviewing them, other blogs, asking people what content they want, even. You can approach bloggers in your industry and say what content do you want or there something that you would like us to cover? I mean, that’s gold because you’re actually asking them and saying hey, what do you want and it will be like, I want this and when you produce it, they’re like, that is what I wanted, I’m going to come and visit you. I want to tell everyone about it.

Nick: Fantastic! So, research is important, which sort of goes back to our first episode, where we’re talking about audience, finding out what the audience wants.

Woj Kwasi: Yep!

Nick: Great! Well, that’s some fantastic examples there that hopefully will give people a good idea of the kind of things we are talking about. We are talking about content and trying to get links from them and people you could probably look out in their own industry and see what sort of content’s out there, what’s been popular, what’s got lots of tweets and likes and shares and if I have the software I could look up links as well, see how many links I’ve got.

Thanks very much for coming on the show again. It’s been fantastic having you again.

Woj Kwasi: It was always my pleasure. It’s great to go to a giants cave and…

Nick: Yeah, yeah. It was definitely a giant’s cave here in Moralta Falls in the Foot Hills of Adelaide Hills and I think the sun will be setting soon but still a nice view for now.

Woj Kwasi: I think this will be the setting of many an interview.

Nick: Yeah, the acoustics in this cave as you predicted are quite good.

Woj Kwasi: Yep, good times.

Nick: Great! Well if anyone wants to find out more about you, your website’s kwasistudios.com and they can find you on twitter as well? What’s your handle again?

Woj Kwasi: Waj kwasi .

Nick: Great and we will have those links in the show notes for all the various things we’ve talked about during this episode and also last episode so you can come check that out and have to look at some of those articles and examples we’ve been talking about.

Nick: I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. As I said the end day you can go to our website which is www.webmarketingadelaide.com.au to get links to all the stuff we talked about in this show and of course there’s show notes after all of our shows up there, so you can get links and information for each of our shows and I’ll see you next week in episode 21. 

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