“With its powerful combination of visionary leadership, innovative technology, extensive writer network, and blue-chip customer successes, the company is poised for explosive growth as agencies, brand marketers and media companies increasingly look for ways to use quality, original content to reach and connect with consumers in a digital era,” Cox Media Group VP Shereta Williams said in the release.

Whether it is live events that answer questions or longer-lasting seed content used to increase engagement, streamlining trends are making it easier than ever for marketers to pick information and send it out online. Skyword offers marketers a streamlined platform from which to launch their content marketing campaigns. In addition, its staff offers SEO optimization for high search ranking and content promotion across the major social channels.

The more that marketers can streamline content leading up to delivery — particularly traditionally time-intensive content, such as articles and in-depth blogging — the more effective their efforts will prove. Skyword, with its base of professional writers and customizable editing options, seeks to take care of as many aspects of the creation process as it can while still giving marketers necessary control.

The company’s content approach combines automation and optimization technologies that ensure content is primed for marketing impact before being released into the wild. Real-time search engine referral supplies an ever-updated list of trends that companies use to choose new keywords, and content promotion is streamlined to move through all major social channels easily.

The growth of platforms like Skyword also underlines the necessity of detail-oriented, well-crafted work. As the latest technology continues to amp up delivery, the quality of information will grow more important than ever for helping projects stand out from the growing crowd.

“We are in the midst of a perfect storm in the digital information era,” adds Skyword founder and CEO Tom Gerace in the same press release, “Today’s converged media landscape and the evolving relationship between brands and consumers are driving marketers and publishers to rethink their tried-and-true strategies and invest in new technology solutions to better connect with customers.”

The post Skyword Raises $6.7 Million: Content Grows More Efficient appeared first on The Content Standard by Tyler Lacoma.

A couple of the changes he addressed involved more “sophisticated” link analysis in the next generation of Penguin (referred to as Penguin 2.0). The link analysis Google utilizes is known as PageRank, an algorithm that calculates the importance of websites by seeing how links appearing on their pages relate to the rest of the content. The new upgrade will provide more comprehensive targeting of black hat SEO.

Black hat SEO is an unethical practice that uses spammy links to try to fool Google into ranking a website higher in search results. Now, black hat links will be denied value in the Google search algorithm. As a result, marketers may see a boost in their website’s rank in search results, provided they are offering genuine content. Marketers utilizing SEO reseller programs should review their services to ensure there is no black hat SEO involved.

Additionally, brands or blogs that include advertorials in their website copy should have “clear and conspicuous” disclaimers denoting compensated promotional content. While Cutts notes that there is nothing wrong with advertorials, he emphasizes that Google’s quality guidelines are violated when a website’s PageRank is increased by “passing” the credibility of the one site to another via paid links. Consequences include a hit to the site’s actual PageRank and lower visibility in search results. According to a Tweet Cutts posted following the video, Google has already begun taking action against violators this week.

One update Cutts briefly touched on may be the most important for SEO marketers, particularly those in smaller businesses, since it will help thought leaders grow their audiences. Google’s new algorithm will have an improved focus on the authority of a brand or company in specific fields. The new algorithm will attempt to rank these websites more highly to bring users better quality results. This should give incentive to brands to strive for greatness with their websites, developing a solid resource and destination rather than a place where readers just stop by. A good idea to help boost rankings is to have content creators link their work to their Google+ profile, as Google+ authorship gives the content credibility and sends signals about a site’s authority to the search engine.

While Google continues to iron out future plans for the next update, Cutts emphasized that the most imperative thing for webmasters and SEO marketers to focus on is building a great website with genuine, valuable content that attracts loyal readers who enjoy and share, and that those who are following best practices in an ethical manner should have no problem with the upcoming changes.

“We try to make sure that if that’s your goal, we’re aligned with that goal, and therefore, as long as you’re working hard for users, we’re working hard to try to show your high-quality content to users as well,” Cutts says in the video.

Photo: Flickr

The post Google Search Algorithm Changes Content Marketers Should Know appeared first on The Content Standard by Kristen Ciccolini.

Previously, users could only send pins directly to other users via email, a cumbersome process in today’s social media climate that values streamlined and efficient user experiences. With the new feature, users can send directly to their Facebook friends, email contacts or fellow pinners, assuming the two users follow each other. A message also can be included with the pin.

After a pin is sent, notifications are sent back to the original user if the pin is commented on, liked, or repinned. The feature is not available for all users yet, but will be rolling out over the next few weeks, according to the company.

Pinterest’s Busy Week

This isn’t the only feature the social network delivered this week. On Wednesday the company revealed a new feature that lets users know if they’ve previously pinned an item that they are attempting to pin. More importantly, on Tuesday the company unveiled updates to both its iOS and Android mobile apps. Users will now receive the aforementioned notifications on their phones, something previously delivered to the web only. Other features allow mobile users to mention friends and search more easily.

Thinking About the Future

To content marketers, these updates may seem, on face value, relatively unimportant. However, they show a company that is consistently interested in improving its user experience and making its platform more attractive to both consumers and marketers.

Last year, the service was easily the fastest growing social network, with users logging a 6,000 percent increase in minutes spent on the site in 2012 from time spent in 2011. The service now has about 25 million members. To keep growth up, the company has had to cater to users, and points out in the blog post announcing the “already pinned” feature that this addition comes in response to user feedback.

But it appears that the company wants to bring marketers into the loop, as well. Though the site is a great place to build a community, it has never been known as a revenue producer. While that hasn’t changed, the introduction of Pinterest Analytics in March allows businesses to better understand the community they’ve built on the service, and to form content strategy for the site that can lead back to increased revenue elsewhere.

Image Source: Facebook

The post Pinterest Now Allows You to Send Pins to Friends appeared first on The Content Standard by David Rogers.

The partnership between Yahoo and Twitter aims to “seamlessly include relevant and personalized tweets alongside stories for Yahoo! and our other sources,” Mayer says in her post. Analytics will apparently be helping smooth the transition, since the Tweets will appear “personalized to their interests and preferences.”

Yahoo will not be tapping into any general tweets or even tweets based solely on popularity. Instead, the company will bring specific companies on board noted for their expertise in general fields like music, sports, news and entertainment. In news, for example, the company has partnered with ABC World News, showing tweets from its account with accompanying hashtags and links.

The integration between Yahoo and Twitter will hit all platforms within a few days from the May 16 announcement, but the change will also open up the possibility of other news feeds taking a similar stance regarding Twitter. After all, if agencies like ABC are treating Twitter as a serious channel to spread their journalism, other affiliated news organizations and sites are likely to take advantage of it, as well. The move lends even more legitimacy to the increasingly respected Twitter, which has been hard at work in 2013 updating its Twitter Cards for businesses and finding new sources of revenue.

From a purely content-based perspective, incorporating tweets also has several advantages for news feeds like Yahoo. As Mayer mentioned, they can direct specific types of content to viewers based on their preferences. Twitter analytics for companies improve when users follow their links, inspiring agencies to show greater quality in their tweets in hopes they can also form partnerships with news feeds, as ABC has. Exposure to hashtags will also rise, causing social media users to employ them more frequently, amplifying the results of Twitter studies for all marketers. Finally, tweets can be updated more regularly than average news articles, giving viewers an extra reason to check back in to see if anything has changed or been added.

Even small businesses can benefit from the general trend by starting to update Twitter with more diverse amounts of content. Those looking for inspiration can head over to the Twitter blog for suggestions. One of the most recent posts explained how fashion and clothing companies are using the network to spread the latest news.

Photo Source: Flickr

The post Yahoo and Twitter Join Forces to Bring Tweets to Yahoo News appeared first on The Content Standard by Tyler Lacoma.

The post The Content Standard Weekly Podcast for May 17, 2013 appeared first on The Content Standard by Andrea Wasik.

Google used its I/O developer’s conference to announce a plethora of new items for products across the spectrum of the company’s offerings. A complete redesign of the network is included in the 41 new features for Google+. One of the most talked about of features is Auto Awesome, a suite of tools that attempts to automatically make Google+ photos, well, more awesome.

For example, the HDR (High Dynamic Range) combines three photos to solve exposure problems of each. When a user uploads three photos at different exposures (low, medium and high), HDR will automatically merge the images together to “achieve a greater range of shadows and light,” the company said.

The Pano feature stitches together overlapping landscape views automatically into one photo, and Smile merges similar group photos, choosing the best shots of each person from the range of photos. The Motion feature automatically turns at least five photos taken in succession into an animated GIF.

Auto Awesome is just one of the new photo enhancement updates Google announced at I/O. Others includes Highlights, which takes large groups of uploaded images to the service and curates the “best” images that will actually be shared to those in your groups. Auto Enhance adjusts factors like brightness, contrast, and saturation on pictures.

While all of these new features may be helpful to many, and at the very least will be interesting to explore, the big news here is that Google is making a concerted effort to make Google+ part of the suite of its products that many use every day.

For example, not only is the company providing tools to theoretically make your photos better, it is combining all its online cloud storage availability, meaning consumers have the same storage for Gmail messages and attachments, Drive documents, and Google+ Photos. Total storage is now 15 GB shared across all three services, and up to 30 GB for Google Apps customers.

Despite all this consolidation and integration, Google+ still has a long way to go to be as influential over content as Facebook. According to Global Web Index, the latter has about twice as many active users as Google+, and reaches about half of global internet users. But Google+ has already proven itself useful in local internet marketing, and a recent report shows that B2B users feel that Google+ will be the most important social network throughout the next year.

In terms of content, it may not matter how big Google+ as much as how it differentiates itself from other platforms. New features like Auto Awesome may have a big impact on this.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

The post Auto Awesome Feature Revealed for Google+ at I/O Conference appeared first on The Content Standard by David Rogers.

To make use of the new function, people must use Wallet and have a Gmail account. If the Wallet account has a linked bank account or a balance of its own, users can send cash through Gmail free of charge. A flat fee of 2.9 percent is necessary for sending money using a credit or debit card, but receiving the money is completely free of charge. Some limits apply. According to the Google Wallet rules, people cannot send more than $10,000 to someone else within a five-day period. This makes the upgrade perfect for casual, peer-to-peer money trades in just moments.

While friends can effortlessly pay each other back instead of waiting until they have some cash, the Gmail integration also holds future potential for small businesses and online stores. Google’s announced many commerce-changing technology updates at I/O 2013 in which integration is the name of the game. Another new Google Wallet feature allows businesses to sell through new app content that provides customers with an Instant Buy function to increase conversion.

Google also offered conferences on cutting-edge technology like indoor mapping, which is a future Google Maps projects that will do for buildings what Maps did for streets, giving marketers a whole new field of indoor location-based content to offer as customers navigate the aisles.

Beyond the mobile world, Google is also offering new tools for web publishers. I/O 2013 saw updates and conferences for Google Plus, showing companies how to create buttons to help viewers share business posts and utilize badges to help customers link up with businesses or brands on Google’s social network. On a developer level, Google also tackles the latest Web Components, including custom elements, auto hashtagging, and Shadow DOM, focusing on making websites cleaner and more focused on the real content instead of just the menus or links.

With multiple events on new tools for making apps, websites, cloud functions, Android ads, and even YouTube videos, I/O fans have no excuse for not coming up with new marketing ideas. The challenge is in the sheer amount of information available. When companies can branch out in so many directions, the possibilities can overwhelm. Strategy meetings to pick a few primary projects are highly recommended after the I/O flood.

Photo Source: Flickr

The post Google Wallet and Much More Receive Upgrades at I/O 2013 appeared first on The Content Standard by Tyler Lacoma.

Users Hold the Cards

Now that the sections update has gone live on a global scale, brands leveraging social apps as content marketing tools have an opportunity to expand visibility beyond the news feed. But while the opportunities are there, it is the user who will ultimately determine the marketing value of these improvements. A TechCrunch article points out that the update will only live up to its potential if users start putting the sections to use and, most importantly, properly use them to curate content from those apps. If users view the enhancement as a convenient way to discover new apps and content, it could mean huge growth opportunities for savvy brands and developers.

Insights From the Main Source

Early results appear to suggest that entertainment is the sweet spot for sections-based marketing strategies. Facebook said people have added over 17 billion songs to their new music sections, a feat that has been fueled by apps such as Spotify and Deezer, that let users quickly click on and play songs that their friends like. There also appear to be golden opportunities for game developers and publishers, as well. The games section allows users to display and customize the games they play, all without additional coding on the app’s back end.

Facebook has hinted that some of the biggest opportunities lie in the creation of custom sections in apps by users. Developers have the ability to expand on the core functionality of their applications. For example, creative minds could incorporate features that enable users to share location data, images of products and other content they might want to publish to the timeline. In listing its best practices for creating custom app sections, Facebook recommended paying close attention to quality, matching up content with the right templates and providing an easy way for users to add custom sections to their timelines. The latter point stands out as a key aspect that will be vital in driving user adoption.

The new sections will cause content marketers to approach their strategies from a couple of new angles, including number crunching. Realizing this, Facebook tweaked its App Insights tool to deliver metrics that track activity across the recently rolled out sections. The tool only offers basic insights, but the ability to measure impressions and referral clicks for multiple devices makes it handy for tracking user engagement.

According to analytics firm Flurry, 80 percent of mobile users in the United States spend their time with apps. Flurry’s data shows that 127 of the 158 minutes people spend every day on a mobile device is devoted to an app, with games accounting for 32 percent of their time. With Facebook taking a more active approach in application distribution, enhancements such as the sections update could start demanding more attention from the app-centric content marketing community.

Photo Source: Flickr

The post Facebook Announces Completion of Sections and New Timeline Features appeared first on The Content Standard by Contel Bradford.

All this growth is also expected to have an impact on the U.S. economy at the consumer end. Output to the economy was $139 billion in 2012. MMA forecasts a total of $400 billion in 2015, with 85 percent of sales impact taking place in “off-line” locations, namely physical storefronts. The study encompassed mobile advertising, mobile direct response, enhanced traditional media and mobile CRM. While 16 industries were examined, the three biggest mobile spenders were finance, retail and manufacturing.

“Mobile has sparked a ‘mobile-enhanced economy’ in which mobile converts every object into a medium and every place into an opportunity for a message. By empowering the ‘always on, always on the go’ consumer, mobile has transformed people into interactive, creative, and responsive partners in the marketing process,” said the MMA announcement on the research center’s website.

While MMA mentioned that mobile marketing could be subject to overregulation in future years, which has the potential to lower forecasted spending, current trends have mobile content growing to stake out a key place in all marketing strategies. At the creative level alone, this promises a lot more innovative marketing content in the future, since mobile comes with several unique tools for companies to use.

Location-based services, for example, promise to link customers with nearby solutions and can potentially even guide them around stores or point out nearby kiosks with particular promotions. Voice-command advertising or services are another mobile-only branch for marketers to explore. Scanning, currently bound up in the QR code phase, could be replaced by near-field communication (NFC) technologies that allow customers to interact with nearby ads or objects, what MMA calls the “proximity and recognition” field.

The most successful paths will be determined by consumers and what mobile content they prove willing to engage with. While MMA is betting on heavy increases for in-store mobile marketing that prevent showrooming and give customers something to do with their phones while they shop, customers could also become more accustomed to purchasing directly from their phones. Marketers may eventually need to make a choice between value-adding mobile campaigns and mobile advertising that seeks direct sales — unless businesses think they can tackle both at once.

Photo Source: Flickr

The post MMA Report: Mobile Marketing Impact to Grow Sky-High in Coming Years appeared first on The Content Standard by Tyler Lacoma.

Previously, users tagging Instagram photos had to type their friends’ user names into the image’s caption. The newest version allows users to tag people right in the photos, just like Facebook.

“We have always sought to give you simple and expressive ways to bring the stories behind your photos to life,” says an Instagram blog post. “Your captions and hashtags capture the ‘what?’ and your Photo Map answers the ‘where?’ but until today we’ve never quite been able to answer the ‘who?’.”

Users can tag any other Instagram account, including brands, opening doors for social media marketers to create more engaging campaigns through the social networking site. All users, including company profiles, will have a Photos of You section displaying all images in which an account is tagged; privacy settings offer the option to either automatically allow tags or wait for your approval.

According to Mashable user @mentions, specific accounts that were previously tagged will not be included in the Photos of You section, but users do have the ability to tag older photos.

Users can begin tagging Instagram photos in both new and previously uploaded items now. This section of the profile will be visible to others on May 16, allowing users time to acclimate to the new functionality.

With this feature, marketers will be able to mold their brand’s image on the photo-sharing network and pursue new opportunities for engagement. This new way to use Instagram adds value to tools providing analytics, including the Statigram app on HootSuite, which offers new data that can potentially aid in creating future campaigns.

Photo: Flickr

The post Tagging Instagram Photos Now Available appeared first on The Content Standard by Kristen Ciccolini.