Google is now letting searchers donate to non-profit organizations directly from search results.

A “Donate” button has been added to Knowledge Graph cards of US-based nonprofits. With a simple tap or click of the button, searchers can easily donate an amount of their choosing.

To trigger this feature just search for the name of a US-based nonprofit, which is standard practice for surfacing Knowledge Graph cards.

Google’s “Donate” button has the potential to be a boon for nonprofits, since it’s now easier than ever for users of the world’s largest search engine to extend their generosity.

This feature has arrived at the perfect time, as Google “nearly 30 percent of all giving happens during the holiday season.”

The amount of people searching for ways to donate to nonprofits is also said to be up during this time of year.

In order for US-based nonprofits to be eligible to display the “Donate” button in search results, they have to first opt in to Google For Nonprofits

My previous post discussed the first pillar of a successful expert content strategy. We used the demand-based approach to craft compelling, relevant and sales-oriented content.

Our subject matter research has brought us a list of semantically grouped topics with keywords. Now how do we involve our experts in content creation in a non-coercive way?

Second Pillar: Separation of Responsibilities

In many companies, Marketing is somewhat isolated from the rest of staff. But that’s not an issue per se. After all, our heart resides separately from the brain and other organs, but there haven’t been any problems with that.

As with our body, the keys to maximum performance are the clear separation of responsibilities, shared goals, and well-established communication. Let’s dive into each of these.

Frictionless Workflow

Except for rare talents, subject matter experts aren’t copywriters, marketers aren’t subject matter experts, and copywriters are neither subject matter experts nor demand-aware strategists.

Asking too much of anyone inevitably leads to frustration and unwillingness to contribute to the creation process.

To establish a viable content marketing pipeline throughout the company, you should separate demand analysis, content outlining and copywriting.

To keep track of things, you might want to set up a workflow system. That can be anything from a shared Google Docs spreadsheet to a Trello board to a full-featured BPM system like Camunda.

Otherwise, you’ll soon find yourself spending all day long coordinating efforts.

Here’s what our internal system looks like:

Separate teams work on various parts of a task, passing results to each other.

But above all, it removes friction.

Don Broekelman of Influence & Co puts it this way:

“If the process runs smoothly, employees can focus on showcasing their expertise without getting bogged down in the process.”

Ask for Advice, Not an Article

We’ve already seen how to come up with a list of demand-based content topics. Generally, that should be done by marketing, as they are the only people who can align content with the overarching strategy.

Now I’m going to share with you our experience on how to involve employees of any department in content creation.

First, let’s think for a moment. Why nine times out of 10 they don’t seem to be very happy about participating in content creation stuff?

For one thing, they aren’t writers. Any employee dreads the possibility of being ridiculed for a clumsy passage.

And even if your colleague considers himself or herself great writer, it’s always better to offload this work to a dedicated copywriter who knows how to deal with SEO requirements, style guides, and such.

So don’t push them outside the comfort zone. Use the right framing to get the most of the in-company expertise while not making the work uncomfortable.

Do not ask them to make a draft of an article.

Instead, give employees a list of keywords we’ve collected before and invite them to provide some advice to a virtual customer. In other words, share their insights and expertise.

Be sure to clarify that their text won’t be used as is, but instead will be skillfully rewritten by a professional copywriter.

Making the Most of an Expert’s Advice

Keywords Are Real Questions

As experts will be “answering” the questions people ask of Google, they should keep in mind that, though looking fragmentary, the keywords are the real questions asked by real customers.

For example, for a “mexico vacations december” keyword the actual question a customer had in mind would be something like “What should I know of about going to Mexico on vacation in December?”.

Keep It Succinct

As a rule, we ask our expert to give 6 to 10 points on every keyword group. It’s more than enough to mold a keywords group into a great article section later. Your mileage may vary based on length of content you’re working with.

It always makes sense to create a set of outline templates to remove the friction for colleagues who just started to contribute to content creation. As Jonathan Blank of NewsCred advises, “Employees should have a template for documenting this in a manner that a brand editor can understand and use.”

No Common Knowledge

Another important thing is to tell the experts that no common knowledge is allowed in points.

It’s tempting to write something like “You can really have some fun in Mexico hotels in December”, but it doesn’t give any value to a customer.

Ask your employees to add details and specifics so that their points become more valuable.

Not Just Text

A great article is not just an endless wall of text (like this one).

To engage a customer, we should sprinkle it with vivid photos, exciting videos, comparison tables and useful lists.

We call them “add-ons” and ask our experts to provide them with the points they create.

Why ask staff members and not copywriters?

As I said before, copywriters are not subject matter experts.

This goes even for finding photos.

Without proper vetting, you may end up having an article about Finland with some Canadian scenery on it.

To avoid that, we always ensure that all the initial information is gathered by experts.

Depending on the length of the content, you might want to add several add-ons to each article.

Among other things, this helps to include your content in Google’s quick answers, and get, to a certain extent, ready for the voice search.

Engaging Experts

What if your colleagues are reluctant to give a written piece of advice?

In addition to possible monetary incentives, we’ve found these two reasons to work wonders:

• An employee will be listed as the article author. As a result, he’ll get credibility and recognition as a trusted authority among customers. For salespeople, we always insert a photo and contact information at least in two places in the article so that a customer doesn’t hesitate whom to contact if he or she needs to buy from us.
• Your colleague will increase his own recognition among industry peers. For some people, that alone may be a compelling reason to start contributing to content creation.

Another benefit of making your experts take part is that they will be much more eager to share “their own” piece of content on social networks.

In many cases, you won’t even have to ask them to share a new article. Because they’ve participated in the content creation, they’ll be happy to broadcast it over all the social accounts they have.

It’s Not About Handing Over, It’s About Working Together

Content marketing is a collective effort. At least, it should be.

So after the article is finished, call on the expert to read it and check for factual errors.

Many times we encountered silly mistakes about our products that are hard to spot for a non-professional but are easily identifiable by an expert.

And, of course, hold all involved employees accountable for their content commitments.

Copywriting

Let’s recap what we have as at this point. We’ve got three main components:

• An outline with several dozen of succinct points produced by a subject matter expert.
• Additional relevant content, such as videos, comparison tables, lists, etc.
• A list of keywords for each section of the outline.

Now is when a copywriter steps up to the plate. He or she needs to unfold the above structure into a full-featured text, embedding right keywords in canvas.

As with any task that implies a separation of responsibilities, the only way to ensure consistent results is a comprehensive guideline. We found that the key points that allowed us to avoid massive rework in our case were:

Strategic & Tactical Goals

Along with a strategic goal for your content, identify tactical goals for every party involved in the creation process.

For instance, a strategic goal for the content might be “Create the readable, comprehensive and very interesting how-to” and a tactical objective for a copywriter might be “Clients should be leaving inquiries after having read this article.”

Style

Depending on your brand, you’ll want to choose between sticking to the first, second, or third person narrative.

This can be quite hard to instill across all the copywriter pool, so watch it carefully for some time until everyone gets used to it.

Before setting it in stone, though, consider the fact that the result will be bylined by staff experts, so the style should match their personal preferences too. Why? Because we need a buy-in to engage our colleagues fully. If the article isn’t what an expert expected, it will be difficult to ask him to participate further.

Another fundamental requirement is the length of your sentences and paragraphs.

This, combined with your narrative style, will have the biggest impact on what your content will look and feel like.

What’s Next?

By now you’ve managed to collect some expert wisdom and translated it into a fantastic article. The only thing left before you start promoting the content is to make sure it’s ready for multi-channel distribution.

We’ll discuss that in the last part of this series, next week.

More Content Marketing Resources Here:

Image Credits
Featured image: Pixabay
Screenshots by Alex Morozov. Taken October, 2017.

Over the past few years, cockatoo video blogging has become popular on YouTube.

I started watching bird videos a few years ago and watched a few cockatoo owners grow their YouTube channels from just a few thousand or less to more than 100,000 subscribers.

What’s interesting is that these cockatoo owners aren’t marketers. They’re just ordinary people who applied time-tested and proven concepts to grow their audience.

I thought it would be fun to take a closer look at how some of YouTube’s most famous cockatoos got to where they were and how content marketers can apply these lessons to achieve their own success.

1. Frequency & Consistency Work Really Well

Max the cockatoo is one of YouTube’s most popular cockatoos and is most well known for the video Cockatoo Finds out He Is Going to the Vet, which has generated more than 15 million views.

Max’s channel has gained more than 65 million views and now hosts over 1,200 videos.

Dan, Max’s owner, posts a video of Max on his YouTube channel at least once a day and sometimes twice a day. He is very consistent with his posting schedule and Max’s channel is popular for bird lovers.

Fans of the channel include other bird owners and people who don’t have the time to care for a cockatoo but enjoy watching Max.

Dan posted his first video of Max on July 28, 2008, which was almost 10 years ago, but the consistent posting schedule started in more recent years. His channel growth has exploded in recent years and Max now has over 148,000 subscribers and growing.

Long form content and focusing on quality have become buzz phrases in content marketing and some bloggers are so focused on creating “quality content” that they don’t post frequently or consistently enough.

Dan doesn’t care about “quality content” and some Max videos don’t really stand out from other cockatoo videos. But fans still love watching them and look forward to getting their daily cockatoo fix.

Real Life Examples

PPC software provider WordStream has done well with their content marketing. They’ve focused on content creation targeting PPC topics and using SEO tactics to rank those articles for important search phrases.

WordStream publishes content once a day consistently, skipping only some holidays. As a result, their articles drive lots of search traffic for people searching for PPC-related information.

SEO software provider HubSpot is another company that publishes frequently and consistently. In fact, HubSpot published some data showing that companies that blog more often get more traffic. Blogs that publish 16+ times per month get on average 3.5x more traffic than blogs that publish 0-2 times per month.

2. Differentiation Can Get Results

While publishing frequently can work well, another effective approach is to focus on standing out instead, even if it means publishing less often.

One of the most entertaining birds on YouTube is Pebble the Crazy Cockatoo. Pebble likes to sing, dance, entertain, and occasionally goes into random swearing fits.

Here are just a few popular videos of Pebble:

Pebble doesn’t post consistently and sometimes a whole month can go by without any new Pebble videos.

However, people still find her old videos and subscribe which has allowed her channel to grow to over 26,000 subscribers and 3 million video views (35 million if you add views from her old channel).

Pebble has even gotten featured on mainstream media a few times.

While there are plenty of cockatoos on YouTube, Pebble definitely stands out with her wacky personality and antics.

Real Life Example

For content marketing, creating content that stands out can be a great way to get attention and gain enthusiastic followers.

One good example that many people who study SEO will be familiar with is Brian Dean’s Skyscraper Technique. Dean doesn’t publish that often but focuses on creating content that stands out. As a result, he says he’s been able to create a seven-figure business from his blog.

3. Results Can Accelerate Over Time

Another important thing to keep in mind is that results with content marketing can accelerate over time.

Blogging can seem like it’s not providing much ROI when you start out, but people that are patient and stick with it see compounding returns.

Gotcha the Cockatoo recently grew past 100,000 subscribers and his owner posted this video on May 2017 to thank Gotcha’s fans.

Gotcha’s first video was posted in December 2014, so it took about two and half years to hit that milestone. But over the past four months, the number of subscribers has grown to over 154,000, which represents a 50 percent increase.

Real Life Example

Content marketing results start slower when you have less content, but can accelerate as you accumulate more content. More people will discover you through search engines, social sharing, word of mouth and other methods.

Dharmesh Shah wrote an article back in 2009 and provided a graph showing HubSpot’s revenue growth. Their revenue grew slower in 2007 but accelerated significantly in the following years.

Many businesses will give up on content marketing because they don’t see results right away. Smart businesses know that content marketing works and stick with it until they see the results.

4. Piggybacking Popular Trends & Topics Can Drive Traffic

Sometimes piggybacking off popular trends and topics can be a good way to drive traffic and get traction with content marketing.

Expanding on a popular idea or going against the flow are two popular ways to do that.

In this video, Jojoe the Cockatoo sings “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor”. The video accumulated over 85,000 views, even though it isn’t a popular YouTube channel, doesn’t appear to have been promoted by the owner, and only has a few videos.

In an older video, an African Grey Parrot sings the same song and generates over 10 million video views.

Real Life Example

Another way to tie into popular trends is to go against the flow and adopt a contrary argument or position. Expert roundups were popular around 2014 and many got featured on Inbound, but after a while, some people got tired of seeing them.

Jacob King wrote this article entitled “Why Expert Roundups Must Die” which got thousands of views and also got a good exposure on Inbound.

Another example of an article that did well by going against a popular trend is Dale Cudmore’s article on the Ahrefs blog about how he tried the Skyscraper technique and it didn’t work for him. (You may also want to read Our Skyscraper Technique Failure & the Lessons We Learned by Olga Mykhoparkina here on SEJ.)

5. Play off Past Successes

Another tactic that marketers should use more often is to play off of past successes.

Sometimes content that has performed well in the past can be used again, rewritten or repurposed to create more content that performs well.

Max the cockatoo’s video about going to the vet has over 15 million views and is his most popular video.

Since then, he’s released a few similar videos that have also done well with his fans. Here are a couple of them:

Real Life Examples

Here are a couple of other examples of playing off of or expanding on past successes.

One of Orbit Media’s most popular pieces of content is their annual blogger survey where they survey over 1,000 bloggers and analyze the data to show trends in blogging. Their annual survey attracts a good amount of social shares, mentions, and links each year.

Their third annual blogger survey in 2016 attracted over 1,000 social shares and the 2017 edition now has over 900 social shares.

Another example of playing off past successes is Moz’s Annual Report, which lets readers know how their business and marketing performed for the year. People love transparency from businesses and seeing data on growth and what’s working, so these reports have been quite popular among Moz fans.

Key Takeaways

Content marketing, like many marketing tactics, is a long-term tactic where results can accelerate over time. Patience and persistence can pay off.

Show some personality and entertain your audience. People are naturally drawn to entertainment, so even if you’re in a non-entertainment niche, like business and marketing, you can draw the attention of your audience by showing some personality and entertaining your readers.

Pay attention to trends and think of ways to utilize them to your advantage. You can also leverage popular content that worked well for you in the past to create more traffic in the future.

There aren’t many set rules for content marketing. If you can figure out a way to differentiate yourself and stand out, then try it. Differentiation can help you get noticed and shared faster, which can allow you to grow your audience more rapidly.

More Content Marketing Resources:

Image Credits
Featured Image: Gilliane/Pixabay.com
In-Post Photo: jelevos /Pixabay.com

On June 2014, Google officially introduced Google My Business (GMB), a free integrated tool that lets businesses and organizations create and manage their online presence across Google properties, including Maps and Search.

GMB replaced Google+ Local and Google Places for Business – both of which were deemed highly confusing by local SEO professionals and business owners alike.

Since then, GMB has enabled SMBs to take control of their online business information with ease and to interact with old and potential customers.

We wanted to know who business owners entrust in running their Google My Business page – so we asked the Search Engine Journal Twitter community through a #SEJSurveySays poll.

Who Runs Your Google My Business Page?

According to SEJ’s Twitter audience, 82 percent said that their SEO team runs their GMB page while only 18 percent answered that their social team handles it.

We also got curious who handles their Google Plus page – another Google platform – so we asked a follow-up question.

How about your Google Plus Page?

Similarly, 57 percent of our  Twitter poll respondents said that their SEO team runs their Google Plus page and 43 percent answered that they let their social team manage it.

Given that Google Plus is still considered by many as a social media platform, it’s quite interesting to find out that most businesses let their SEO team manage their Google Plus page.

Making the Most Out of Google My Business for Local SEO

Google continuously attempts to improve Google My Business. Recently, they have rolled out new features such as:

If you’re looking to boost your local search efforts, make sure to fully optimize your Google My Business listing today.

Also, here are a few more articles from our SEJ contributors that can help you in perfecting your local SEO strategy:

Have Your Say

Who runs your Google My Business and Google+ pages? Tag us on social media and have your say in the next survey by checking out the hashtag #SEJSurveySays on Twitter for future polls and data.

Image Credits
Charts created by Shayne Zalameda