Content Thought

Hi, I'm Tracey. This is my tumblog dedicated to digital content creation, content strategy, copywriting, user experience, information architecture, and social media.

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1. YouTube (@YouTube, 41,528,723 followers)

2. Instagram (@instagram, 32,150,479)

3. Twitter (@twitter, 30,053,480)

4. CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk, 16,186,527 )

5. Twitter en español (@twitter_es, 13,836,536)

6. Facebook (@Facebook, 13,662,102)

7. CNN (@cnn, 12,627,196)

8. The New York Times (@nytimes, 11,661,002)

9. FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona, 11,516,100)

10. UberSocial (@UberSoc, 11,372,089)

11. Real Madrid F.C. (@realmadrid, 10,813,988)

12. MTV (@MTV, 10,624,583)

13. NBA (@NBA, 9,920,264)

14. BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking, 9,580,799)

15. TwitPic (@twitpic, 9,001,324)

16. Vine (@vineapp, 8,969,014)

17. ESPN (@espn, 8,963,433)

18. Ramalan Indonesia (@TweetRAMALAN, 8,284,330)

19. Samsung Mobile (@SamsungMobile, 8,265,189)

20. A Googler (@google, 8,111,711)

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Content marketing ideas: 5 key tools

Content marketing idea generators and tools, including: Portent, Hubspot, Soolve, etc. 

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How to Write a Winning Headline

Put some serious time, energy and TLC into your headlines. Don’t settle for the first idea that comes to mind. Write as many as you can think of and attempt to put yourself in the mindset of the reader when you evaluate your options.

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Since users 'probably' scan and don’t read as much as copywriters would probably like, then using imagery, video and applications is critical in grabbing their attention. They are also useful in bringing some further dimensions to your content.

James Carson, “Five core elements of audience building content strategy”

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Style Guide Basics

If your site doesn’t have a style guide, get one. Inconsistency makes it confusing for both users and writing teams. This should include basic rules like:

Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs.

One idea per paragraph.

Break things up with lists and images.

Subtitle using h2 or h3 elements, not bold.

Source: James Carson, "Five core elements of audience building content strategy"

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5 rules for writing headlines:

Try to get self-interest into every headline – is the headline applicable to the user and does it prompt them to read more?

If you have news, get that into your headline (of course, news is a the bread and butter of much web content).

Avoid headlines that provoke curiosity alone. Curiosity needs to be combined with other headlines. 

Avoid negativity – be cheerful. (Although this earlier post might say otherwise). 

Try to suggest there is a quick and easy way for the reader to get what they want. 

Furthermore, due to SEO, proper nouns need to be used in full whenever they are used. No nicknames (magazine favourites such as K-Pez, Ri-Ri, R-Patz) are ever allowed.

Mail Online headlines are so long and keyword filled they have basically become sell line. There is nothing wrong with that if they get the reader to engage further.

Source: James Carson, "Five core elements of audience building content strategy"

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The number of very well written pieces I have come across, that have lost out on SEO and engagement due to weak headlining is vast. It happens that many content creators want to be tricky and clever in headlines – sometimes it can work in print, it almost never works online.

James Carson, "Five core elements of audience building content strategy"

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Many content strategies go nowhere because they contain elements that are either too vague or too complex.

James Carson, "Five core elements of audience building content strategy"

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Funny and useful. 

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Source: The 24 ingredients for a delicious content strategy

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SEO Onpage

Are titles keyword rich and well optimised?

Are there inline links to other relevant content?

Are images optimised through keyword rich filenames and alt text?

Are there subtitles, using keywords?

Another good way to do this is to simply look at a sample of content and set yourself the task of understanding what it’s about in 10 seconds. It’s commonly true for content where SEO is an afterthought that it’s difficult to know what it’s about unless you are a regular user of the site (like an editor).

Source: The 24 ingredients for a delicious content strategy

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Why is Ford's Social Media Strategy So Good?

How does a 110 year old car manufacturer, the fifth largest in the world, remain relevant, engaging and remotely approachable in the digital age?

A really great summary of Ford's social media strategy on Vine, Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Surprisingly good stuff.

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The “Side-Boob” Problem

Excerpt from "Traffic is a good thing for media companies to pay attention to — except when it isn’t": 

For me personally, while it’s fascinating and often instructive to track how readers are responding to what you wrote, it’s also extremely easy to get sucked into the real-time crack habit created by a tool like Chartbeat — so easy that I can understand why outlets like The Verge try to keep such tools away from their writers as much as possible. BuzzFeed founder and viral-content expert Jonah Peretti argued that this can lead to what he called the “side-boob” problem:

“If you are a slave to the numbers, then you start creating more stuff like that and more stuff like that and more stuff like that, and pretty soon you will have a site full of trash and salacious garbage.”

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We are drowning in data about readers and attention, but which metrics really matter? You won't like the answer

There are more ways than ever to measure traffic, readership, attention and engagement with our content. But all that means is there are even more things to distract us from the important questions about who we are trying to reach and how.

What we choose to measure defines what we aspire to. It is thus unsurprising that when a newsroom prioritizes a measure of link performance, that newsroom learns how to optimize links, but not content. Instead of metrics teaching the primacy of good content, we get clickbait and slideshows.

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24 Beautifully-Designed Web Dashboards

Dashboard design is a tricky business. The challenge is to communicate the key numbers in a straightforward way, while allowing users to drill down into the specifics. It is about avoiding clutter, about catering for personalisation, and about the prioritisation of the right metrics. It's difficult to get right, but I think many of these examples have lots of good things going for them. 

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What is Responsive Design and Do You Really Need It?

TLDR: Yes, you do. :)

From a user perspective, a site built using responsive design offers a high quality experience. Sites not optimised for mobile devices often display content that is difficult to navigate or too small to read. 

From the point of view of the site owner, a site that uses responsive design only needs to be built once - you don't need to build a web version, a mobile version and a tablet version separately - so this usually saves time and money. 

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Content development is not a solitary act; it is an ongoing process that usually involves a lot of people. To make an accurate plan, you need to completely understand each process, how many times they will have to perform that process, and how long each iteration takes.

Richard Sheffield, The Web Content Strategist's Bible