Blog dedicated to Social Justice and Health and Wellbeing Activism
June 23, 2013
Coaching Tips: How To Use Evergreen Content Strategically In Blog Posts for SEO
Photo Credit: Independent Fashion Bloggers
When I coach clients in the health space a good deal of our time is spent developing a content or as I call it story journey for their business. Everything you see online is content - the written word, the images, podcasts, video and so on. Content can amuse and educate but it is also a powerful tool for capturing the search engines and the people who are looking for whatever you do. One of the best ways to improve your SEO is through blogging. Google loves blogs because they are updated regularly with new information relevant to its search customers.
It is important to cover the different types of content to reach new customers and raise brand awareness when planning your social media strategy and much of this starts with your blog.
You will need to master four types of content: evergreen, identity, people and what I call bread and butter content. In this four part series we will look at all types of content. Today we examine evergreen content.
Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is always relevant and useful. This type of content is rarely out of date because it addresses core issues. For example, a health blogger might post about a green smoothie a day detox - a 28 day programme. This post would be relevant for years. Or another example, tips on how and when to exercise when you are time poor.
Your blog will need a tool box of evergreen content. This content will get ranked by the search engines and bring new visitors to your blog. Well-written evergreen content has a greater chance of achieving and retaining a first page search ranking because of its relevance and comprehensive review of the subject.
Tip: Plan to focus your efforts on say 24 evergreen content posts for your blog when you set it up. Publish these posts evenly throughout the year. As a general guide examine your customers most frequently asked questions to determine what type of evergreen posts will be most useful to your audience.
The Power Of The Patients Voice In The Care Process
This week we being a feature series on best practice comunication in HealthCare: Today we take a look at the Mayo Clinic. They run an excellent inresidence series on social media for healthcare practitioners and attract participants from all over the world. Dr Farris Timimi shares his insights into the power of social media for healthcare practitioners in the above video.
The Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, is a first-of-its-kind social media center focused on health care, it builds on Mayo Clinic’s leadership among health care providers in adopting social media tools, which began with podcasting in 2005.
Mayo has also used social media tools for internal communications, beginning in 2008 with a blog to promote employee conversations relating to the organization’s strategic plan, and including innovative use of video and a hybrid “insider” newsletter/blog. This employee engagement contributes to Mayo Clinic being recognized among Fortune magazine’s “Best Places to Work.”
The center will accelerate adoption of social media for health-related purposes, starting at Mayo and then within health care more broadly. Through this work, Mayo Clinic looks to help improve health literacy, health care delivery and population health worldwide.
It starts with business strategy and then flows into YOUR Story - are you on target?
Digital Media Storytelling (aka Social Media) -Use storytelling to pitch better, sell faster and win more business using the storytiser methodology
Your actual ‘Brand YOU’ story is something you might not realize you’re missing. When you first started your business, you probably had a long checklist. Things like: Build a website. Find more clients. Secure speaking gigs. Establish your expertise. And set yourself up on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN and more.If you’re still struggling to describe what you do and who you serve, you’re probably overlooking some aspect of your story. When someone can see themselves in your story — the need to persuade, convince, or sell them disappears.
Everything depends on your story. If your story is not clear to you and to your clients, your business will not thrive. When your story gets aligned with your mojo (finding the magic in what you do), you’ll automatically start playing on a bigger platform. It leads to more sales, better speaking engagements, and a growing pipeline of opportunities.
Telling your Digtal story matters today more than ever. When people Google you, or visit your website – they go straight for the story. If you’re an entrepreneur – your perceived value is directly linked to that personal story. Especially when you’re an expert professional — blogger, author, speaker, coach, consultant, designer, etc. Getting paid what you’re really worth comes down to sharing how you see the world. Remember, people are you buying your ideas and opinions (i.e. your story of how things work).
Get a Coach The most efficient way to move from dead brand walking to a powerful Brand YOU story is to get a coach who will help you succinctly refine your strategy and identify what story you have to tell. You'll learn to wrap facts up with emotions as stories (human beings are actually biologically hardwired to remember stories), share case studies as stories that people remember and how to tell a compelling story that your customers that compels action.
Learn how to use digital storytelling to pitch better, sell faster and win more business.
"Every great leader is a great story teller," says Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner.
Storytelling relates to every industry and business today. All successful stories have five basic components: the PASSION with which the story is told, a HERO who leads us through the story and allows us to see it through his or her eyes, an ANTAGONIST or obstacle that the hero must overcome, a moment of AWARENESS that allows the hero to prevail, and the TRANSFORMATION in the hero and in the world that naturally results.
The importance and relevance of storytelling in the twenty-first century is demonstrated by the research of individuals such as Donald Norman, Mark Turner and Daniel Pink. Memory is preserved and the dissemination of information enriched through the application. Research, including high-tech real time brain scans, is now showing that emotions, triggered in the limbic area of the brain - also known as the mammalian brain - lock a story in memory.
This is particularly important in a sales story. I will go so far as to say the days of static brochures are dead. Customers want t engage with your business, to hear the stories of your business.
Take for example how your company started? A story usually most employees know and one that is often told and retold to others. Imagine if you could harness those great stories within your business to gain customers, build rapport and turn them into evangelists for your stories too! The viral nature of a story is a compelling argument to learn how to do it.
I've helped businesses tell stories for over 25 years, be that a unique USP, a story of how a certain company offers a product that enhances a customer experience, health promotion even the importance of going green indoors to clean air and aide workplace productivity.
People often confuse story telling with the elevator pitch. A good corporate story is just that, a story that follows the formula of PASSION, HERO, ANTAGONIST, AWARENESS and ultimately TRANSFORMATION. It compels the listener to embed the story to memory.
Photo courtesy of langwitches.org - Silvia Tolisano
Storytelling is undergoing a renaissance globally as thought leaders and corporate entities realise that communication and creativity both in education and the workplace relies on more than just the transmission of information. Storytelling lends itself to teaching languages, social sciences and the arts. Yet, in fields such as business, marketing, engineering and science the art of storytelling can be utilised to inspire, promote an idea and emphasise the human element of a subject. It allows the organisation to collaborate, communicate and connect with the audience in an engaging manner and builds rapport.
Storytelling can give life to a presentation and a lecture. Forget boring powerpoints! Storytelling can be utilised to add the human element to a dataset and a report.
Storytelling can gain the attention of the audience and inspire others to share their stories.
Social Media allows the extension of the corporate story to be told through a range of digital media that can be employed to inspire the individual and enrich the imagination and so set the stage for the telling and re-telling of stories via a digital medium. There are a variety of online tools and desktop applications including Posterous, Comic Life, Picasa, Audacity and VoiceThread that can be used to tell the corporate story in innovative and creative ways.
The rise of corporate storytelling as a compelling USP tool
"It is my simple mission: to help everyone in our company understand the power of a single relationship and how to grow relationships to support our business. In almost every account we have ever lost, if we look back it is due to somewhere along the way we lost touch with the relationship."
These words were written by a social media coaching client of mine, Jane, She is a senior product manager with a major multi-national and her words resonate with the truth of experience both within internal corporate culture and with key customers. Jane is a warrior who loves to move into the trenches with her people and get up close and personal when helping them solve problems.
Jane is focused on the outcome she is seeking and builds relationships not because she is nice, kind, and compassionate. She actually is all of those things. She builds and nurtures relationships because she uses her brain. Jane is a pragmatic warrior who has been through countless battles with competitors, clients and upper management. Her philosophy of relationship building is based on what works. Her strategy will beat out more aggressive, brutish approaches over the long haul every time. But why does her strategy work?
She understands the value of networks, relationships and stories both in the online world and offline world. She knows that telling real human stories and embedding those with her stakeholders will win every time. And she is authentic, she uses story telling in a compelling real manner to boost the product she is responsible for into the mindset of her stakeholders. In short she allows them to participate in her story and that is what works. In this three part series we will explore the power of corporate story telling as a compelling tool and look at whose using it well.
But first let's look at the science of all of this, receent brain research suggests that the human brain is not so much a “thinking brain” but a relationship making brain. Dr. Gerald Huther, who leads the Dept. of Neurobiology at the Psychiatric Clinic of Gottingen, Germany, says “Until quite recently, it was held to be self-evident that human beings have a big brain to make it possible for them to think. However, the research results of the last years have made it clear that the structure and function of the human brain is especially optimized for building relationships. Our brain is thus much more a social organ than it is a thinking organ.”
Our brain has evolved over millions of years and our closest ancestors, the great apes, have much to teach us. Apes will fight and even kill members of other tribes who try to invade their territory. However, when scientists observe these animals in the wild they report that for the majority of time these animals spend much more time cooperating then fighting. Great apes have learned that building relationships increases the chance of success for all members of the community. By cooperating and specializing on essential tasks like food gathering, rearing the young and watching for dangerous invaders, they all benefit.
Jane is using her brain when she pays attention to building these interpersonal networks and she reminds her team that relationships take constant attention. She knows that especially in times of stress, building and strengthening relationships will win out over blame and arrogant behavior every time.
I'd like to give credit for much of this post,to a wonderful book which is well worth the read - The Elements of Persuasion Using Storytelling to Pitch Better. It's available on Amazon.
When was the last time you sat down with your troops and cascaded powerful stories of your USP related to your business into a warm human story? Have you integrated this into your business both offline and online, particularly social media?
Does your company leadership ‘get the business case’ for digital word of mouth (aka social media)?
Social Media Workshops
According to futurist Dr James Canton the top 10 workforce trends necessitate employees commit to continuous learning particularly up skilling their technological skills if they are to attract the cream of the crop positions in a global workforce.
As the global war for talent heats up, new key skills will be required of the C Suite. ‘Smart Talent’ has been identified as the top driver of competitive advantage. Highly educated, skilled and experienced employees will be in demand.
Finding, training and retaining high-tech skilled employees from a global talent pool will be the greatest challenge for every organization. And that is the dilemma; many C Suites are failing to embrace the fundamental shift in stakeholder collaboration that has dramatically turned our customers into our collaborators with the rise of Web 2. We no longer communicate outside our office walls with linear messages and just the ‘old media’ as the commentator. Our customers are now commentating on our every corporate move, many with powerful followings who can literally make or break a product such as a bad review that can in a split second resonate with their followers and go massively viral.
Learning this lesson the hard way has cost some companies dearly while some savvy CEO’s have identified the business shift that is not an option but, an imperative holistically within the organisation similar to the days when the first PC’s were introduced to all employees desks adding the benefit to the bottom line of improved productivity and labour cost controls.
That same paradigm shift is now once again required of business.
Just as businesses in 2010 are having to adapt to a rapidly changing world and are embedding innovation into the organizational DNA as a key driver of future competitive advantage, so too is the imperative upon organizations to commit to employee development, continual education and training in the social media arena, returning to the organisation new skills and new competencies.
The philosophy is very simple, if your customers are in this new social media space and populate it with ever increasing daily time habits, then why too aren’t you?
This business process transformation can’t be delegated to low level functional roles if the company is to reap the true benefit of active engagement with your customers and stakeholders. It must be owned at leadership level. Social media affects the entire business, and should be looked at Board Room and CEO level.
So what exactly is this ‘thing’ called social media? Firstly I like to refer to social media as digital word of mouth. It is easier for C Suites to get their head around that definition and takes away from the often confused recreational image of Facebook and other social networks.
Fact is many C Suites are missing the point entirely about social media and are lagging far behind many innovative small businesses and competitors. I will go as far as saying many of the larger enterprise organisations don’t even allow employees to access their emails using Smart phones. Only yesterday I heard of the frustrations of one young savvy product manager who was frustrated with her organisation’s leadership and understanding of where and how their customers are ‘hanging out’ as she said to me rightly about the 18-35 market. “They are online, not listening to drive time radio.”
To ‘get it’, you must understand, social media is NOT just a marketing activity, it is a fundamental shift in almost every purchase or conversion process. It is the next generation of business engagement. Whether consumer facing, B2B, for profit or non profit, people are turning to people like themselves for the information they need to make smart choices and are talking about products, causes and activities BEFORE they will even consider the purchase process. They form opinions, talk with their communities, share news and more.
The advent of Web 2.0 and the social web is clearly a game changer, on numerous fronts. It is most effective when it is applied in a holistic manner – take the Zappos case study as an example a company growing from Zero - $1.2 billion using social media strategically rather than simply operationally. To illustrate this let’s take a look at the role of Chief Operating Officer which of course differs from industry to industry and from organisation to organisation. However in most cases the COO is responsible for the daily operations of the company.
As we know many COO’s have worked their way through the company holding different positions of responsibility and are now being groomed to take over the CEO position.
Key functions of the COO often include:
1. Organise resources as set by the CEO with the aim of creating maximum value for the company’s stakeholders
2.Lead by developing and cascading the organisational strategy and mission statement and aligning personnel with company goals
3.Plan by prioritising customer, employee and organisational requirements
4.Maintain and monitor staffing levels and key knowledge requirements that align the organisational goals
5.Drive performance indicators for the measurement of the organisations results.
Need convincing then consider the following hypothetical meeting.
Here are some thought provokers:
CEO – Is this a PR function OR whole of organisation function? What’s the business case, what are our competitors doing?
CFO –Will this strategy increase revenues and what about costs?
CIO –Network security will be an issue.... all these desktop social applications downloaded by every employee is a nightmare to manage.
Legal – Our risk exposure could be huge. We’ll need to consider procedures, standards, workplace law requirements around social media. Definitely a social media policy is needed.
CSO – Is this going to generate sales leads or is it just about customer service. Do I need to involve the call centre for customer complaints resolution. How are we going to monitor this?
What are your views? Do you think social media discussions need to take place in the boardroom and with company leadership?
"It is my simple mission: to help everyone in our company understand the power of a single relationship and how to grow relationships to support our business. In almost every account we have ever lost, if we look back it is due to somewhere along the way we lost touch with the relationship."
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