the power of authors in digital marketing

The Power of Authors.

Ricardo Carreira

SEO Manager at [email protected]!skype: ricardocarreira !

+RicardoCarreiraPT

AGENDA.

1.  The Power of Authors!2.  Influence Marketing!

#authors

Guest Posting.!

Guest posting is a method of link building that seems to have been done to death over the past year. I've seen endless articles that discuss the latest advanced

search operator that will help us find new guest posting opportunities.!

Guest Posting.!The typical approach to guest posting is as follows:!!

1.  Use an advanced search query (footprint) to find a list of websites that take on guest bloggers.!

2.  Scrape the results and organize them in a manageable format, for example, an Excel spreadsheet.!

3.  Gather extra domain/webpage statistics on the list of websites to find how authoritative they are (i.e., Domain Authority, Page

Authority, CitationFlow, TrustFlow, etc.).!4.  Filter through results to identify the high-quality targets based on a set of criteria.!

5.  Gather contact information for the major targets.!

6.  Build a content pitch for each of the targets and begin an outreach campaign.!

7.  Follow up on responses and get content writers to write articles for the successful pitches.!

8.  Send over the content to the link targets that have approved your guest post request.!9.  Earn a backlink from within the article's author bio.!

10. Repeat.!

Guest Posting.!

We are not saying that this process doesn't work. In fact we have done this several times and earn a lot of links from this procedure.!

!

But when we think about it, there are thousands of SEO companies, webmasters, and bloggers that are all running the same kinds of queries within Google. This

means that the competition we're facing to actually gain a guest post opportunity (never mind finding one) is insanely high.!

Guest Posting.!

“Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging

out with really bad company.”!!

Matt Cutts said in January 20th 2014 in his blog!

Authors instead of websites.!

If we look through the process above, it's all focused around looking for websites that will publish content that we provide them with. Once this transaction has taken place, it's time to

move on to the next website.!

!What we propose is that we approach this from a different angle. !

!

!

LET’S TRY STARTING WITH AUTHORS!!!

Authors instead of websites.!

Influential authors and bloggers have the ability to not only write great content, but they have access to channels that they can distribute the content through. Additionally, these authors will

often have lots of existing relationships with big industry publications that can be taken

advantage of, giving us a competitive advantage.!!

Considering this, it makes much more sense to building relationships with authors instead of webmasters, especially when it comes to scaling high-quality link building.!

The Author Outreach Process.!

1.  Find good quality content relevant to our niche that has been shared heavily.!2.  Find the creators of the content and the sites that they've posted on.!

3.  Gather extra stats on the authors to find out how authoritative they are (e.g., social influence, contributor list, etc.)!4.  Filter through the list to identify major targets.!

5.  Reach out to the list of authors and build relationships with them.!6.  Work with them to create quality content assets.!

7.  Utilize their distribution routes and contacts to build links and social signals to the assets.!

Finding popular content & content creators.

This is a crucial stage where we are going to collect a lot of information to further analysis. !!

In this stage we should first look for what type of content !

seems to perform well within our niche. Then second have an idea of who the top authors !are and third see the websites that are benefitting from working !

with top-quality authors. !


To find the types of content that are performing well, we call in the help of a few different

tools:

-  BuzzSumo

-  Followerwonk

-  Circle Count

-  Traackr

-  LittleBird

!-  Linkdex!-  Peerindex!

-  Keyhole!-  Topsy!

-  SocialBro

!


In this particular case we used BuzzSumo, Followerwonk and Keyhole. All of them are very good tools that can help in the search for influenceurs. We must have in mind that most of this tools only work in English keyword search which will close a lot the range of

search but as most of the sales department of this tools answer us all of them are working in opening this to non-English terms.!

!


Keyhole


Followerwonk


Buzzsumo


The next two tools in our armory are Social Crawlytics and Screaming Frog. They are another free tools that gives us an incredible amount of data on top-performing content as well as the authors behind it.!

!

This is where we then go back to our content spreadsheet and pick out a few of the domains that seem to be regularly appearing as top content producers. We will then run a couple of reports within Social Crawlytics

and Screaming Frog to get some more stats about the authors.!

Gathering author stats.

After gathering a large amount of data about the different content that's popular within our niche as well as all the influential authors, it's important that we have some metrics to

understand the relative importance of each author. !

!Likewise, we need to get information on their social media profiles, websites, etc.!


For this task we use a excel spreadsheet where we start complete all the details that are relevant to us. We tend to start with Twitter. If we only have a name of an author, then we

find that getting their Twitter account is the easiest thing to do.!

!After that we try to get their website or any website where they are contributor.!

Once we have pulled in the website listed within the Twitter profile, it's time to call on BuzzStream.!

!

!!


Using BuzzStream is a huge time-saver within this stage and can often result in us gathering most of the required info. In particular, it's good for gathering email addresses.!


After this we go to Google Plus account. We can just scrape their websites or author profile and look for it or just make a search in Google Plus for their names. After finding

their profile we should scrape for some more relevant data:!

-  Bio!-  Contributor sites!

-  Relevant sites!-  Circles!


To finalize our scrape job we use CircleCount, Followerwonk and Vibrante AuthorRank to find their social authority. !

!

- The CircleRank of someone relates to their authority within Google+. !- The "social authority" metric from Followerwonk focuses on a user's authority within Twitter. !

- Virante recently developed a handy little tool that measures the "AuthorRank" of an author online. !!

One thing to note here is that Virante's AuthorRank has nothing at all to do with Google's pending AgentRank update.!


CircleCount


Followerwonk


Vibrante Author Rank


After all this steps we should have a spreadsheet full of details like this one!

#influence marketing

Building relationships with the authors.

The next stage is to form relationships with the authors/influencers about whom we've gathered information.!

!

The relationships that we build can have many different motivations behind them and offer a lot of different benefits. The main thing that we're looking at here is building links; however, having

influential writers on board can mean that alongside building good-quality links, we can be generating traffic, collecting lots of social signals, and increasing the value of each link over time.!


The first thing that we need to establish when forming a relationship with an influencer is their incentive.!

!

What will motivate them to work with us, and what will they expect?!!

If we don't have a whole lot to offer them, then the answer to this question will likely

revolve around money. This is often the case, but that isn't really a bad thing.!

Building relationships with the authors. one author VS several authors!

We can choose to work with one writer that does all the job in content creation !or !

set amount of the marketing budget for working with influencers!

!I believe that we get much more value from placing our funds into the hands of influential authors.!

If we pay an influential author to write a content piece for us, we don't just get a piece of content; we have a powerful distribution route as well.!

!


Remember that writers want as much exposure as possible, we should so use this to our advantage when negotiating with them. !

Here are a few ideas on what we can offer:!!

•  A link back to the author's personal site within each post!•  A featured section recommending their services on your website!

•  Bonus payments if they reach X social shares on a post or X views/visits!

•  Free use of your services !•  Free/discounted products.!

•  Offer to share the other content from the author to your mailing lists and social following!

!

Use authors' distribution routes and get links.

In this stage we should have some influential authors on board and an idea of how we want to work in them. !!

We can use two ways:!!

•  Publishing in our site – with this option, you'll really want to utilize the social media channels of your authors and maybe even their personal connections within the industry to drum up some engagement. As

a result of this, we get nice spikes in traffic from social sources each time my writers share the post. We

also believe that influential writers are great for getting content picked up and featured on bigger news sites or industry-leading blogs.!

Use authors' distribution routes and get links.

In the opposite way we can go for:!!

•  Publishing outside of our website – from all the scrape that we did in the beginning we should have an idea of all the places where our authors are contributors. Using this information we can make a list of

what we benefit most from their connections. We are not saying that all authors will accept to write an article for you and publish in one of the website where they are contributors. But after a certain brand

starts being publicity in their social networks, newsletters, and then picked-up by other identities it might

be easier for this authors to link you back in industry-leading publications to which they have access.!

The Power of Authors.

From my experience, doing “guest blogging” can lead to less focus placed on content and quality of it.!!

Content is the key for quality, and to get great results from link building techniques, we should have this in mind every

time we do a campaign. In the end of the day is our brand that is talked about.!

!

Working along side with influential authors it’s not only about link building; it’s about creating content, identities and relationships that will help us build a better, stronger, and profitable brand.!

!

We should spend a large amount of our time building relationships with influential authors and industry influencers.

SEO should have this as a major task is their techniques for building reputation and getting relevance. !

!Don't underestimate the power of an author!!