A big thanks to everyone who attended this year’s outREACH conference! We had a great day, and were humbled by the quality of speakers from across the industry.
outREACH conferences are designed to give first hand insight into the professional elements that make up outreach, and we’re pleased to report that we learnt a lot from the great talks throughout the day. We are lucky to work in an industry where everyone is open to sharing their ideas, processes and experiences.
“By being personal, you’re not showing weakness, you show strength.”
Jack Murray from All good tales kicked off the day by showing us the difference between churning out content and telling truly engaging stories. In a talk which managed to connect on an emotional level with an entire auditorium, Jack set a new standard for how marketers should engage with their audiences.
For evidence of his storytelling power, you don’t need to look any further than Twitter:
“Only psychopaths put all their information in a 12mb attachment”
As an editor from the BBC,Richard Fishermade every outreach and PR professional in the audience sit up a little straighter by giving his dos and don’ts for approaching journalists. Richard shed some light on what makes a story, and also how often men bite dogs (I think you had to be there).
Richard also pointed out the importance of timing when approaching journalists, explaining that a particular story or topic will grow, and finally peak before ending up in the ‘bathtub of death’. The areas of outreach opportunity are therefore ideally before the peak, or potentially after the topic re-emerges later down the line.
“Be kind. The great and silly ideas have come about with the help of a team of people. If things get tough, keep going and encourage one another to not lose heart.”
Lexi Mills from Shift6 taught everyone how playful ideas can tip the scale between an okay PR campaign and an unforgettable one. From an entire bathroom made of sweets to a solid gold mobile, Lexi showed us why she isn’t afraid to pursue big ideas.
Finally, a big takeaway for those in client-facing positions is Lexi’s suggestion; “Don’t ask for yes. Ask for consideration”.
Q: “Do you include a press release when you contact journalists?”
Alex: “I try and keep everything that would be in a press release in the email body when sending outreach emails.”
Next we welcomed a panel of experienced outreach professionals to the stage, who showed us how different agencies master the art of getting links. With a shower of questions from the audience, Shannon McGuirk from Aira.net, Bobbi Brant from Kaizen and Verve’s very own Alex Cassidy gave first hand advice on email approaches, tools, angles and emojis.
A good question from the audience was to ask how outreach professionals should handle exclusives. Should you offer them to journalists? And if so, when? The consensus was to be careful with this, but that offering it to publications particularly important to the client can be worthwhile.
As Alex noted however, these offers have to have an expiry date, so if you don’t hear back soon enough then you can always retract!
“Look for multiple angles. Target your prospecting. Leverage relationships. Contextualise your emails. Maintain flexibility.”
Stephen Panico from BuzzStream followed the panel, digging a bit deeper into the data behind open rates, explaining the reoccurring traits of successful campaigns. With an average BuzzStream customer reply rate of 12%, we learnt what top performers were doing differently to achieve 40%. Targeted approaches and ‘chunking’ as never before, Stephen underlined the importance of building out ideas to increase email reply rates.
“If your asset stops generating links as soon as outreach and promo stops, did you really even build a linkable asset?”
Stacey MacNaught set the tone for creating valuable campaigns which will continue to be linkable long after active outreach has finished. Stacey’s research underlined how many industry professionals are too quick to forget about campaigns once designated outreach time is complete; and that revisiting these campaigns is key to long-term success. If a piece is well researched, why not optimise your content and become a source of information. In her own words, “people who don’t link to their sources are bastards”.
“Go into deep details on link metrics and also bring a human element into reporting. SEO needs to be a hybrid as we’re trying please people and robots.”
Engaging in an industry-wide debate on how best to measure the value of a link, James Finlayson introduced Verve’s Linkscore tool. James illustrated how we should be reporting on the quality rather than the quantity of links, explaining why domain authority alone was not enough on it’s own to measure success. By applying a range metrics which are most valuable to the client, James showed us how we can more precisely target publications and build the right links. It’s fair to say that following its launch there was quite a lot of buzz and chatter around the tool which we hope will shape the way the SEO industry measure success.
“Help people be more of who they are”
Our CEO Lisa Myers showed us the importance of your team when it comes to getting the outcomes you want; “take care of people and people will take care of results”.
Running through the ups and downs of getting a campaign launched, Lisa explained how grit, collaboration and believing can get teams past many obstacles.
Resonating with many on our team (and beyond!), Lisa emphasised how you should champion individual’s talents rather than looking for specific digital experience. The take home: a well connected team who feel they belong will nurture ongoing success.
“People aren’t against you – they’re for themselves.”
As our keynote speaker, James Ãlvarez changed the pace of the conference with insights into the world of hostage negotiation. James illustrated common themes that make up a hostage situation, in turn showing us how we deal with conflict in our daily lives.
Boiling down to a human level, James told us that in order to handle others, in hostage situations or otherwise, we would need to understand what the other person truly wants. It is only then that we might be about to influence their behaviour. It was a fascinating talk to end off the day with, with many of us feeling reassured in our *somewhat* improved chances should we ever find ourselves in a similar position!
That’s it folks! Thank you for another great conference, and we look forward to seeing you next year. Full videos of our talks will be available soon, and the pictures from the event and after-party are here.
Thank you for attending outREACH!
Wales, Poland, The Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, Germany, The USA, and Pakistan… these are just a few countries our conference attendees travelled from to spend a day at outREACH.
Our aim was to put on a conference which was totally unique, full of useful advice and straight to the point. No bull sh*t. We wanted to go through the steps and processes everyone goes through from coming up with a GOOD idea, having the balls to execute the idea and not letting rules stop you, and then having the RIGHT mindset to outreach it.
The panel take the stage
We introduced an expert panel who shared examples of their perfectly crafted (and less than perfectly crafted) emails to give examples of what worked for them, and what hasn’t.
Our speakers also included Paul May, from BuzzStream, who analysed over 30,000 emails and told us what was working and wasn’t. Mike King, took the floor to advise on how to utilise machine learning to help speed up your processes.
We have been overwhelmed by the lovely tweets you have been sending us, here are just a few of our favourites..
Congratulations to @VerveSearch for an incredible @OutREACHconf . Inspiring and educational talks. Highly recommend for next year. ????????????????????
We also have videos of all the sessions, these are free to access for attendees, and £75 (plus VAT) for non attendees. These videos will be available early next week.
We had a fantastic time and are truly blessed to be working in such a awesome industry where we are willing to share and develop together. Thank YOU!
How to Outreach Journalists in the Age of “Churnalism”
‘Churnalism is a form of journalism in which press releases, stories provided by news agencies, and other forms of pre-packaged material, instead of reported news, are used to create articles in newspapers and other news media.’
Churnalism is a reality for many editorial teams in 2017. They no longer have the luxury of spending hours writing lyrical longform tomes on a subject of their choosing. Instead they are expected to produce 5-10 pieces of highly shareable content a day that will keep readers, and advertisers, coming back to the site.
As a result journalists need to not only know what’s happening now, they also need to know what’s coming next. The pressure is on them to deliver something that stands out in the hyper-competitive wormhole of the content marketplace.
So how do we effectively deliver content to such a pressured, busy group of people? What are the myths that need dispelling and what methods can we detail to ensure that we are doing everything within our power to ensure coverage from these websites?
Give Them Everything
There’s a time and a place for suspense, but your outreach email isn’t it. You’re not Raymond Chandler, so include everything that a journalist needs to write an article in the first email.
The highest praise, and in many ways the ultimate goal, is to make it so that the journalist can practically copy and paste what you’ve said into their CMS, hit publish and move on to their next post.
The media landscape is geared towards one key factor: speed. If you can’t get there first, at least get there early. The early bird may get the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.
By adapting your outreach to this mind-set and not making your email a riddle, you’ve already done 90% of the journalist’s job for them, increasing your chances of gaining coverage.
Follow Up Follow Up Follow Up!
Not wanting to sound too dramatic, but outreach can sometimes feel like you’re shouting into the void. Despite multiple subject lines, constant tinkering and casting a wide net – replies don’t always come as thick and fast as you’d like.
But don’t let the silence stall your motivation. As Roman philosopher Seneca said ‘luck is when preparation meets opportunity’. The opportunities for coverage don’t end after the first email. Put simply: follow-ups are fundamental, so make sure to keep communication up at your end.
I can count over a dozen recent instances where a journalist has enthusiastically covered a campaign without ever sending me back a reply. So firstly make sure to check to see if it’s been covered before you follow-up. As a start: search for the campaign (or set up alerts), check Majestic and monitor Google analytics. You may well find out about the coverage by reading about it online.
But when do you stop? I tend to keep it to two maximum, after all, they may well not be replying because the campaign isn’t good enough, it’s not their beat, or what you’ve written hasn’t sold it to them. But it’s important to let them make that decision themselves, and by stopping at the first hurdle, you’re making it for them.
Multiple People Same Publication
Don’t be afraid to email the same piece of content to multiple journalists at the same publication.
Yes, it’s important to keep emails personalised, but as we have already established, journalists are very busy people, and they understand that you need to cast a wide net to get the coverage. They’re not going to take it personally, simply because they don’t have the time.
It’s not worth only sending an email to an editor in the hope they will delegate it to a writer, or just sending it to a writer in the hope they will pitch it to their editor. It’s not a two birds one stone scenario – you want to hit as many birds with as many stones and, repeatedly, when necessary.
Ultimately it’s worth remembering that in 2017 you are not only competing with the swathes of other link-builders, outreach people and PR professionals, but also with the journalist’s time. If you respect that, and adapt to their reality instead of trying to force your own, you will have a lot more success, and potentially make some reliable contacts for the future.
Want to know more? We are hosting our very own conference 100% dedicated to outreach! Click the outREACH Conference logo for more information.
BrightonSEO 2017: A Long Way From A Room Above A Pub
Last Friday, 3,500 SEOs descended on Brighton for the UK’s biggest search marketing conference. BrightonSEO has come a long way since its inception in a pub, and five of us headed down from Verve Headquarters for a day of learning, listening, meeting people, and enjoying the good weather.
The day kicked off with a series of talks on the future of search in the main auditorium. Bing’s Purna Virji presented some interesting examples of how the internet – and the way we search – will have an increasingly visual component in the future. This included a video about the analytics of micro expressions which felt like something out of a dystopian science fiction novel, but maybe that’s just me.
A packed crowd assembled for Charlotte Davis and Sam Orams’ practical talk on making online videos from an agency perspective. This was followed by Sam Watts’s introduction to VR and 360°, a medium which offers some exciting opportunities for content marketers right now – provided it’s done right. Marshmallow Laser Feast’s In The Eyes of the Animalis a nice example.
But the highlight was Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland delivering an entertaining keynote on what it means to optimise taking inspiration from nature.
Sutherland argued that we can learn a lot from the way bees optimise processes in their natural environment. When a nearby source of pollen is found, most of the bees go out to collect it, while a small percentage are permitted to “go rogue” and look for alternative sources of nectar. 99% of the time, these rogue bees come back empty-handed, but when they do find something, they usually hit pay dirt.
As an industry, we should make time for experimentation, challenging the status quo, and looking at things from new perspectives – despite our tendency to optimise processes as well as websites.
I caught up with the team at Verve to get their main takeaways from the conference:
Sean
Some of the talks touched upon the increasing importance of brand mentions as well as links. Although the speakers stressed the continued importance of links for increasing rankings, they suggested a more explicit mention of branding and building a brand’s entity around certain keywords may play a greater role in keeping clients up there in the future.
Jonas
Personally, what stood out the most for me was keynote speaker Rory Sutherland’s view on reality vs. perception. I especially liked his quote, “Don’t always change the reality, change the perceptionâ€, drawing parallels between some of the most innovative companies of today. I also really enjoyed Raj Nijjer’s talk on the future of search.
Jonathan
My takeaway from the conference is that you can sometimes find patterns and mathematical beauty in nature itself – and this can also be applied to SEO. To optimise, we should sometimes learn to take risks, as it is often the risk-takers that can leap frog the business. Work on good ideas but remember to also put some of the eggs in the high-risk categories. There is opportunity in the data, you just need to find it.
A small lesson on semiotics from BrightonSEO
How do you create successful content?
This is a perpetually hot topic and many speakers at BrightonSEO focused on this. Unhappily, from time to time content campaigns fail to achieve the results expected and we’re left with the question, what went wrong?
To try to answer this was the aim of Verve Search’s, Hannah Smith. In her talk she asserted that the main challenge is around creating content that resonates with people. To understand what means something to people we need to be able to look beyond the literal meanings of the messages we create.
The mystery of the success of the beer map
Successful content is something that makes people ‘feel’. Sometimes it can be surprising what content evokes feelings. A good example of this is this campaign, let’s call it the Beer Map that received coverage from over 500 sites.
The piece itself is very simple. It’s a non-stylised map of the world and on top of each country is the logo of its most popular beer.
In Hannah’s view, the reason for its success wasn’t the obvious interpretation that many people like beer, but that it had a deeper meaning. The associations of the beer map took people back to their holidays where they had tasted the local beers, as well as unveiling the true drinking habits of each nation.
And the semiotics!
The concept of looking beyond literal meaning took me back to university and the lectures I attended about semiotics. Those who wish to understand the deeper meanings of a piece of content, might find Roland Barthes’ account of sign’s denotation and connotation useful. I never thought I would bring it up in this kind of context, but now I will!
Denotation is the literal meaning of a sign. Connotation, on the other hand, is the associative, second-level meaning that is culture and context dependent. For example, a picture of a lightning literally means a lightning but if you move it to a streetlamp it means risk of electric shock. In a different context lightning could have another meaning e.g. in comic books’ speech bubble it may mean that the character is angry.
If we use the same framework for the beer map, we see that the beer map was literally just a map of the world with some beer logos but it evoked positive connotations in people. In peoples’ minds it wasn’t a beer map anymore but a re-visit to past holidays and taste experiences.
The distinction between the denotation and connotation, literal and associative meanings, can be a good framework for analysing the success of any content.
Successful content doesn’t only make people feel, it makes people feel the right emotions, and to predict this understanding, connotations can help.
#TheInbounder 2016 – Go Big or Go Home
I have just come home from The Inbounder conference in Valencia – what a fantastic conference. Really well organised and planned – great speakers, lovely food, and brilliant entertainment and networking. I have been asked for my slides quite a few time so thought I would put up a quick post with the slides and links.
My presentation was titled “Go Big or Go Home – successful content marketing for SEO”. Please find my slides below – I have also included links to campaigns shown in the presentation
In this presentation I also focused on the importance of the right mindset and the importance of starting with “WHY” not “What” or “How” (The Golden Circle). I recommend you watch this Ted Talk by Simon Sinek
Stephen Panico from BuzzStream followed the panel, digging a bit deeper into the data behind open rates, explaining the reoccurring traits of successful campaigns. With an average BuzzStream customer reply rate of 12%, we learnt what top performers were doing differently to achieve 40%. Targeted approaches and ‘chunking’ as never before, Stephen underlined the importance of building out ideas to increase email reply rates.
“People aren’t against you – they’re for themselves.”
Churnalism is a reality for many editorial teams in 2017. They no longer have the luxury of spending hours writing lyrical longform tomes on a subject of their choosing. Instead they are expected to produce 5-10 pieces of highly shareable content a day that will keep readers, and advertisers, coming back to the site.
I can count over a dozen recent instances where a journalist has enthusiastically covered a campaign without ever sending me back a reply. So firstly make sure to check to see if it’s been covered before you follow-up. As a start: search for the campaign (or set up alerts), check Majestic and monitor Google analytics. You may well find out about the coverage by reading about it online.
Ultimately it’s worth remembering that in 2017 you are not only competing with the swathes of other link-builders, outreach people and PR professionals, but also with the journalist’s time. If you respect that, and adapt to their reality instead of trying to force your own, you will have a lot more success, and potentially make some reliable contacts for the future.
