Creating A Content Publishing Calendar

Content marketing is one of the best ways to attract customers to your brand and demonstrate value.

It is also one of the most difficult for people to maintain over the long haul.

Many businesses look to SEO to boost visibility to customers.

But without fresh and relevant content, SEO hasn’t got a prayer of making a long-term difference.

How to solve the problem of content? Things on my checklist would be: define the target audience, find the voice of the brand, target platforms for publishing, assign someone to create and publish content, and write a content publishing calendar. Each one of these deserves a closer look; today we are analyzing getting a content publishing schedule in place.

Things To Know Beforehand

Knowing your target audience helps determine the platforms you would be publishing to and types of content you want to devote time to. The main content mediums are writing / blogging, videos, podcasting, and graphics / photography. Platforms that you could target for publishing campaigns would be your own website, social media, iTunes, YouTube, Vimeo, or even something old school like print.

Your website should be the central hub of your publishing efforts. You own and control the content on your website. On social media or platforms like Medium, you don’t have ownership of your content, and your posts can be completely buried, as Facebook is doing. Email marketing is also part of driving people towards your content.

Types Of Content

Blogging is one of the best ways to publish on the web. Search engines still primarily index text, and blogs and news aggregators have taken the place of newspapers and magazines in modern culture.

Video is very effective. YouTube and Vimeo are exploding in growth, and people can easily share and embed videos. Pinterest and Instagram let you share videos as well as pictures, and platforms like Vine let users create short videos. YouTube is an interesting place to publish, as it actively encourages video creators to publish and form a community. Almost every top channel on YouTube has a set publishing schedule. They have taught their audiences to anticipate content, and they treat their videos almost like a television show — scheduled to show up on set days. Aiming for viral videos is like playing the lottery: it happens to a handful of people, but it’s not a real game plan. It is better to build for consistent growth.

Podcasting is a great way to inform and entertain. Many people listen to business podcasts during work, on their commute, or at the gym. Another advantage of podcasts is people do not need to be looking at a screen to take them in. iTunes, Soundcloud, and Spreaker are just a few of the platforms where audio content can be published.

Photos and Graphics work particularly well with the visual nature of the web. Images can be stand-alone content (like an infographic) or a component of another piece of content. Portfolio blogs, infographics, blog photos, Instagram, Pinterest, and Flickr are all places where graphics can be published.

Blogs, YouTube, and podcasts should have regular schedules, but social platforms should also have some sort of publishing schedule. Plan unique content for each platform, and tailor the message to the medium. Apps such as Buffer can help you publish to social platforms such as Twitter or Facebook at set times each day. WordPress websites allow you to schedule blog posts at a certain time and simultaneously share the link on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and LinkedIn. Publishing when your audience is awake and watching their feeds helps you maximize visibility and sharing.

Establishing A Content Schedule

So now you have established what type of content you are publishing and for whom, and what platforms you are publishing to. You should also estimate how much time content creation will take each week. From there you can get a clear idea of how much content you can publish on a weekly basis. For example, let’s say you’ve decided to publish two blog posts, one YouTube video, one Pinterest post, two Instagram pictures, and five Facebook Page posts each week. That might look something like this.

  • Sunday: Publish Instagram photo.
  • Monday: Publish blog post, Facebook story.
  • Tuesday: Publish YouTube video, Facebook story.
  • Wednesday: Publish Facebook story, Pinterest Pin.
  • Thursday: Publish blog post, Facebook story.
  • Friday: Publish Instagram photo, Facebook story.
  • Saturday: Day off.

A huge part of making your content calendar work is scheduling time to create and edit the material. Videos and podcasts may take more time than you realize to edit. Blog posts turn out better if they go through an editing process, and graphics can also take substantial time to create. Be aware of how long each takes and plan accordingly. A personal tip for videos is to film them in bulk! Filming footage for several videos does not much more time than it takes to do one, but setting up always takes the same amount of time.

Don’t Make Excuses

Most people fail by abandoning their efforts if they don’t see results after the first month or two. Creating useful content is the most effective way to position your business as knowledgeable, and establish trust with your customer base.

Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. Stay the course.

It blows my mind how many times I have heard potential clients ask about Pay Per Click, AdWords, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, etc. — but feel reluctant to devote energy to something that adds permanent benefits to their marketing. Businesses don’t blink an eye at extraneous ad spend, but show reluctance to try something that will cost them only some time.

Content lives forever; ads are ephemeral, and vanish in the wind.

Part of the problem has to do with misconceiving what SEO and marketing are and what they are not. SEO is not a magic bullet — it cannot make a site with sparse content rank #1 in Google overnight. Search engines need something to index.

Google notices sites that regularly publish fresh content, and sees them as relevant. A website that hasn’t been updated in months — not as relevant. Marketing is about showing value in a service or product; advertising is the penalty for not investing in content marketing.

Summary

Great content takes a time commitment, but it pays dividends in brand awareness and loyalty. It also drives discovery and SEO. Google prefers fresh content and people gravitate towards brands that actively publish on social media. Content marketing is not too difficult, it is just sharing your insight and expertise. Publishing consistently takes discipline and planning, but it is well worth the effort.

Yelp Not Recommended Reviews: Understanding the Yelp Review Filter

We’re often asked, why does Yelp filter reviews?, or why are some of my Yelp reviews not showing? Understanding how the Yelp review filter works is the first step towards getting more reviews to stick.

First, let’s look at why this is so important.

Search results for your business often include your Yelp listing. Your Yelp rating — how many reviews you have, and your cumulative score — is also a factor in local SEO. So maintaining a favorable rating is important.

In order to combat spam and fake reviews, Yelp uses an algorithm to “recommend” certain reviews and hide others in the overall ranking.

While this eliminates many inaccurate reviews, some businesses have had their positive reviews hidden by the recommendation algorithm. A difference of one star rating can impact a business’ revenue from 5 to 9%. Making sure that any positive reviews are included in your shop’s recommended reviews is vital.

To see why Yelp filters reviews, we have to look at consumer behavior the way Yelp does. Namely, what behavior looks legitimate and what behavior looks suspicious.

Watch The Video of this Article

Filtering User Signals

Yelp has stated on several occasions that their recommendation algorithm is their most valuable asset. While the exact calculations it makes are a mystery, certain patterns do emerge.

User Activity is a Big Factor

Ex-employees of Yelp have commented on Reddit before that user activity is the #1 factor in determining whether a user review is going to stick.

Reddit user ehenningl had this to say:

As a former employee of Yelp, I was very intrigued by this posting and read through the entire study and while there was some truth to the research they missed some major factors that go into the review filter. First off, Yelp’s review filter is smarter than they think, I don’t know how it exactly works, but it just f***ing works. While working at Yelp, I was unable to write reviews for obvious conflict of interest reasons, but wrote many before and after my employment with them.

Most of my reviews would stick because my USER ACTIVITY was frequent on their site and consistently used the site and mobile app to find businesses. The research paper points out; “For example, longer reviews, or reviews by users with a larger review count are less likely to be filtered.” Which is partly correct, but from what I know (they never let us know much about the filter when I worked there) USER ACTIVITY is the #1 factor that goes into the review filter, not the frequency of reviews. Which makes perfect sense because someone who frequents the site would understand the value of the reviews.

The second flaw in their study is “A limitation of our work is that we cannot control for filtering biases in attributes that we do not observe, such as the IP address of a reviewer”, which is probably has the 2nd most weight in the review filter. IP address is everything, especially when you claim that most of these reviews are coming from overseas. For example Yelp knows where my user activity is coming from. If I were to write a review for a random business in Seattle, but I’ve never searched for a business while actually being in the state of Washington, it would most likely be filtered because there hasn’t been any USER ACTIVITY from an IP ADDRESS with in the Seattle area.

The third area that the research didn’t address is the relationship of the reviewer to the business owner. All of my reviews have stuck on Yelp, except one. The one I wrote for a family friends business that I frequent. So how the did Yelp know that I know them personally and filter the review, Facebook. Both my account and the business owners account were linked through Facebook, which we are friends on….boom…filtered.

Now I’m not claiming that 100% of reviews on Yelp are legitimate, but I’m sure as sh*t 20% are not fake. This study is flawed in so many ways because they didn’t have the proper data set to really understand what goes into the review filter which happens to be Yelp’s greatest proprietary asset.

What can we deduce from this?

If a customer signs up for Yelp strictly for the purpose of leaving you a review, chances are that review will be filtered out.

The Yelp algorithm looks at how much user activity a profile has. This means do they look up stuff on the app? Do they make recommendations or leave reviews often? Do they check in or take photos of businesses?

People who are already actively using Yelp are far more likely to have their reviews stick. Whenever possible, these are the people you should ask for a Yelp review.

The Yelp Elite

Yelp is most likely to trust reviews from their power users, known as the Yelp Elite. These users are very active on Yelp, have numerous friends on Yelp, and leave customer reviews on a regular basis.

The Yelp Elite are invited into the program on a year by year basis. Especially in the restaurant and hospitality sector, their reviews can have enormous sway over an establishment’s ratings.

Is this fair? Perhaps not, but these are the people that need to be on your radar.

Non-Active Profiles

Users with a blank profile are more likely to have their reviews hidden. If a customer hasn’t filled out their profile with a photo and additional details, the review algorithm sees that profile as less credible. Reviews from these users are more likely to be filtered out by Yelp. If a user only has one or two reviews, it is also more likely their reviews will be filtered.

The reason these profiles are less likely to have reviews that stick is their information isn’t easily verifiable.

Is the Yelp Account Connected to a Facebook Account?

Yelp looks to see if a user has a Facebook account connected to their Yelp account. Users with a wide variety of reviews, not just five stars and one star, seem to be natural looking. Users with an established history of activity also seem to be favored.

If a Yelp user has connected their Yelp profile to their Facebook profile, the chances that their reviews will be unfiltered increases dramatically. Yelp uses the information from Facebook to both confirm they are a real person, and to identify possible conflicts of interest.

Facebook has an overwhelming amount of data on it’s users, and can tell if you are connected to someone as a family member or employee. It is likely that Yelp uses this data to makes connections, and filter out conflict of interest reviews.

IP Tracking as a Yelp Filter Mechanism

Yelp uses IP address tracking along with geolocation to filter some reviews. If Yelp sees customers filling out reviews from your IP address, then they may think you are offering them an incentive for a good review. There are businesses that try to bend the rules to their advantage, so this is why you should avoid this practice.

A better idea is to send customers home with a flier on how to fill out a review on Yelp (and other sites, like Google+). If you have a way to collect email addresses from customers, you can send them a follow-up email asking for a review.

Can You Set Up an iPad in Your Customer Lobby for Collecting Yelp Reviews?

I understand why businesses would do this, but it’s a bad idea.

Yelp uses IP addresses and geolocation as part of their filtering algorithm. By setting up a computer to collect Yelp reviews in your customer lobby, you are setting yourself up for lots of filtered reviews.

The algorithm will see lots of reviews coming from your building, and is likely to filter most of them to the invisible bucket. Yelp does this because many business owners want to incentivize reviews, which is a big no-no for Yelp, Google, and most review platforms.

Don’t Incentivize Yelp Reviews

Giving customers a discount if they write a five-star review, or giving them any reward in return for a review is incentivizing a review.

Essentially, you are trying to buy a good review. That’s strictly against Yelp’s Terms of Service, so please don’t put offers like that on your website or anywhere else.

This is why you don’t want to set up a computer in your lobby for collecting Yelp reviews. Yelp figures that you are telling customers verbally that you will give them a discount for a good review. That’s the whole reason you want customers to leave a Yelp review offsite. Your lobby computer or their phones will show they are on your premises when they left a review.

Other Big No-Nos to Avoid with Yelp Reviews

Under no circumstances should you ever outright ask for a positive review or verbally prompt customers to review your business. Yelp frowns on this practice, and will penalize you if they find out.

Buying fake Yelp reviews will earn you a prominent warning label on your listing that you’ve been caught trying to cheat the system and your business is devoid of morals.

Other Odd Tendencies in the Yelp Algorithm

Many SEOs believe if a customer’s first review is negative, subsequent reviews they make are likely to stick. If a customer᾿s first review is five stars, that can trigger a flag in Yelp’s algorithm. Directly asking users to fill out a review on your business premises will not help you either, as we mentioned previously.

Oddly enough, if you get a positive review, the Yelp protocol dictates that you thank them via private message and not publicly. If you receive a negative review, then you are encouraged to leave a public reply and diffuse the situation. Whenever you get a scathing review, keep your professionalism about you and show that you are attentive to customer service. Thank the customer for their review and do your best to make things right with them. Other customers will see your efforts are sincere.

Controversy Over Advertising

While some business owners have alleged that Yelp salespeople have hinted that buying advertising will “unlock” positive reviews that have been hidden, Yelp employees have denied this numerous times, stating that no sales team member has the power to override the recommendation engine.

Getting More Positive Reviews

So how do you get more organic Yelp reviews? Use visual cues to remind customers to write a review. You can print out “Find Us On Yelp” graphics from Yelp’s Flickr page. You can also display print outs of previous Yelp reviews near the entrance or register. Yelpers that are already in the habit of writing reviews will be reminded to review your establishment as well.

You can also add coupons to your Yelp Business page that can be unlocked when customers review your business on the Yelp app.

Customer service seems to the biggest factor in getting positive reviews. Be courteous to customers both offline and online. Businesses that earn at least a 3.5 rating average receive window stickers that read “People Love Us On Yelp” once a year.

Escaping Review Purgatory

It is possible for positive reviews that are being filtered to eventually become recommended. It may take time for users to become more active and established on Yelp. If you only have reviews from people you are connected to on Facebook and other social networks, work on getting more reviews from total strangers. Running a successful small business is no easy feat. Improve your customer experience as much as possible, and good things will follow.

Content First Web Design

Perhaps the most underestimated component of a website is its content.

Like print, radio, and television before it, the internet is a unique information-sharing technology with its own advantages and challenges.

Yet many web studios inadvertently teach their clients that the presentation matters a lot, and what is being presented matters far less.

I believe a content first web design methodology is more effective than a container first design methodology.

Matching the type, format, voice, and tone of content to the design structure supporting it is what takes a website from merely functional to exceptional.

While many clients (and even many designers) speak as though a web designer’s job is to design the container, our job is actually to design the content.

Going back to our list of broadcasting technologies, simply imagine the following people making these statements.

  • Book Publisher: “Just go ahead and design the book cover, we’ll worry about what goes inside later.”
  • Radio Producer: “Go ahead and set up the bumper music and sound effects, we’ll worry about the voice-over script later.”
  • TV Producer: “Just go ahead and build the set for the show. We’ll worry about what the program is about and who’s in the cast later.”

I hope you see where I’m going with this.

What Is This Content You Speak Of?

Content on the web can mean a whole range of things. Common forms of content are articles or text, images, video, audio, PDFs and other documents, or anything other form of media that can be shared or accessed on the web.

p>There are three major ingredients in an effective website: visual layout, web development, and content management. While most clients and agencies focus the bulk of their attention on design and code, the most important element, the content, is often an afterthought. This practice needs to end.

Visual imagery and modern design styles can be very pleasing, but without a focused message, they are sound and fury signifying nothing.

If visual design is the sizzle, content is the steak. Content driven web design will always outperform visual driven design. Users come to a site for information or content, not just the presentation.

How Content Is Overlooked

Web design is often seen as a process of beautification. Designers themselves often reinforce this idea. Aesthetics are part of design, but the imagery on a website must persuade users to take particular actions. Design must have defined goals.

In a typical design process, the client and design team start by focusing on the container, and then try to figure out what content they are going to fit into it. Unfortunately, planning the goals that users are intended to take gets postponed until the tail end of the process.

My design process starts with establishing the goals of the website. Why does the site exist? What is the goal for the site? What actions are users intended to take when they come to the site?

The content needs to support the goals of the site. Each image and sentence should be in place to lead users to completing those goals. Having content for the site at the beginning of the project ensures that effective design can occur.

Why Content Is More Important Than Ever

The rise of mobile is another reason that content driven web design must take place. Mobile-friendly design forces the designer to decide what elements are the most important. Screen space on mobile devices is limited. Taking inventory of and prioritizing the site content has to take place at the beginning of the design process, not at the end, so these decisions can be made right away.

Where Visual First Design Fails

Seeing what content is going to be used on a site, and how clients are going to use it on a daily basis is also important. Crafting visual design before having real content in place can lead to unnecessary troubleshooting later.

Example #1. Seeing the real content will often lead to design decisions that would not be made otherwise. Keeping a uniform tone and voice throughout the site requires real content for effective design. If visual design is made before the content is supplied, the wrong decisions for the project can be made. The designer’s craft is leading users through the content, not the container.

Example #2. Many times, visual design in Photoshop uses placeholder content with optimized text and photos. In a Photoshop mockup, nothing is too big or too small—it is all just right.

However, clients will not always create content in ways that you anticipate. Layouts can break when page titles are extremely long — or photos are too small or large. Working with real content is essential for creating bulletproof design.

A More Focused Design Process

Content is the main attraction of your website. Optimal design considers the message, the tone, and voice and builds a structure around that. Everything from the choice of fonts, the imagery, color scheme, and page layout is chosen because they best support that central content and those brand messages.

A solid first step in the web design process is to have some of the content ready to go. Before worrying about the packaging, instead start by focusing on what you are trying to say, and who you are trying to say it to. What do you believe in, what do you do? Why does your company exist?

If you have already constructed viable pieces of information that help answer these questions, it provides a much clearer idea of what the website should look and feel like. You can have a target audience in mind, but they won’t know about you at first. How do you reach them? Your audience comes from the content you create, not the other way around. Content might be the most neglected piece of many websites, but the only part that people are showing up for.

Sites like Craigslist and Reddit are not the prettiest, but are still two of the biggest sites in the world because the content inside is valuable to other people. All social networks are built on sharing content, but take different design approaches depending on the type of content they feature. (Compare Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube). Article sites like Huffington Post, Medium, Yahoo, and Bleacher Report draw millions of views daily because they focus on content first. Knowing what type of content is going to be featured, and knowing what to expect from future content enables the most appropriate design plan to emerge.

Troubleshooting Content First Design

It is nearly impossible to get an idea of design constraints and presentation style without having real content. Proposed layouts can be rendered useless if we discover our visual ideas don’t match the way the content will be created and used

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A good designer gathers clues about design direction from the style of the content.

I observe what the real content looks like and try to find answers to questions. Is future content going to be mostly written, photographic, video, audio, images, or a combination of the above?
Is there going to be enough content to build what we need? Is there so much content that we split the pages up? How can we improve the storytelling on each page?

Designing without content or just lorem ipsum placeholder text is tough and oftentimes mismatched. Designing for edge cases is often necessary. What if the titles are twenty words long? What if the blog posts are one sentence long? What is the optimal size for photos in a slider? What happens if clients cut and paste different formats from Microsoft Word and hit Publish?

These are real situations that require early troubleshooting. Knowing everything possible about how my clients will create content helps me design for their needs.

The Client’s Role in Content Creation

I like clients who have already prepared some content before they contact me. It shows me they are fully invested in designing a great website, and it isn’t just an afterthought. It shows me that they have thought long and hard about their brand and what they want to say. It tells me their business is so important to them that they spend time writing down their thoughts and insights about it. If a client can use their content to reach and teach me, I know they’ll be highly successful reaching their customers with that content as well.

Humans are built to love stories. Web content is just storytelling for the modern era. The best content can inspire, educate, motivate, and enlighten people. Great web design seeks to frame that content in the right manner, pushing those stories to the forefront of consciousness, and becoming part of the overall experience.

Conclusion

Although many designers create generic containers for content, very few build from the content out. The designer must effectively lead users to the desired goals, and show users what they want them to see. Knowing what content is going into the site allows the designer to organize site architecture, page hierarchy, navigation, and page information. The designer’s job is to lead users to take action, and give them a specific impression about the company or brand when they visit the website.

How To Add A Facebook Like Box To Your Website

Update, May 2015: The old Like Box is no longer being supported as of June 23rd, 2015. You can read more about the new instructions for the Page Plugin on the Facebook website.

Today’s tutorial is all about how to add a Facebook Like Box to your website. This presumes you have a Facebook Page already set up, and that you have Administrator privileges to manage the Page.

Step one is log into https://developers.facebook.com. Go Apps > Create A New App.

Fill out the info for Display Name, Contact Email, and select Category > Apps For Pages. The Namespace field is optional.

Facebook Like Box App

Go to https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/like-box-for-pages/. Fill in the URL of your specific Facebook Page. Add height and width, and select either light or dark color scheme. The minimum width is 292 pixels.

Facebook Like Box For Your Website

Grab the code, both the JavaScript and embed code. Use the App ID for the app you just created. Add these two pieces of code to your site. Facebook will tell you to put the JavaScript near the top of the page, but you can safely put it in the footer.

Facebook Like Box Code

On the Status and Review page, set your App status to Public. Congratulations, you have added a Facebook Like Box to your site.

Facebook: Make Your App Public

Troubleshooting

If you want to manually add settings to the embed code, the HTML5 data API is on the Like Box page. You can add, subtract, or adjust these settings in the embed code where you want your Like Box to appear.

Facebook Like Box API

Sometimes Facebook Posts do not appear on your Like Box due to settings on your Facebook Page.

Facebook Page Edit Settings

To fix this, make sure you have the following settings: Country Restrictions > visible to everyone and Post Visibility > Posts to Page appear on page Timeline.

Facebook Page Settings