#all your cool design is meaningless if your formatting makes me not want to read it

[glyphwright]

Was looking through some RPG rulebooks recently, and had developed enough opinions on the topic of NPC stat blocks that I had to get them out somewhere. Check below the break for a rant.

I've come to a unilateral and flawless conclusion: if you have a tabletop RPG or a wargame with big squads of people/NPCs, if you can't put the unit's stat block on a Yu-Gi-Oh card with no art and have it be legible, I want no part in it.

Was looking through some systems for a tabletop campaign idea I had, and found one that I won't name but thought I'd really enjoy. And for the most part, I did! I loved so much of the player-facing systems and was gearing up to start really digging into this campaign when I hit a snag with the system.

See, the system is a 2d6-rolling skill-based system. Which is awesome, I want to get away from D&D type stuff and this was a really good path to go. There are 24 skills split up into 3 categories of 8. Really nice way to categorize things. But... All the enemies ALSO had numbers for all 24 skills. Plus the other stuff that's actually important for running mook NPCs in an RPG battle.

The enemy stat blocks felt so bloated, my eyes just kind of glazed over while reading them and all interest in the system dried up. And that kind of disappointed me!

Throwing my mind to wargames and skirmish games for a reference here, I'm reminded of both Battletech and Battletech Alpha Strike, two opposing ends of the unit card spectrum.

Battletech Classic has BIG record sheets, each mech is its own 8.5"x11" piece of printer paper. However, because the system is crunchy and simulationist, all these gubbins and tables are necessary for play, and each player only runs 3-5 of their own mechs, which really limits the overhead on what they need to have in front of them.

On the flip side, you get Alpha Strike. The Alpha Strike rules cut down heavily on the simulation and crunch in order to streamline the game, for an alternative ruleset that plays faster and can also more easily support large amounts of units. Everything fits on basically an index card, and if you cut out the art you can make the card even smaller if you made a custom layout.

Outside of Battletech, I think these unit cards for Warhammer 40k Kill Team are also very readable. This has a lot of empty space, as the unit itself is pretty simple, but it has all the necessary numbers on it without making my eyes glaze over because there's no chaff numbers.

I probably haven't been looking long enough at other systems, but I hope that combat heavy tactical tabletop RPGs start picking up some formatting styles from skirmish games. I feel it would do so much (for me at least) to make things easier and faster to run.

If anybody who took the time to read this knows about any combat-focused TTRPGs with really slick formatting on unit stat blocks, let me know, I wanna check them out.

[dianarothenberg]

Why There Are So Many Bad E-Learning Courses

Like many organizations, we have to take compliance training. And when I heard we had a 3-hour harassment course coming, my first emotional response wasn’t positive. Why do I shudder thinking of taking a 3-hour e-learning course?

We all know why.

I hear all the time that e-learning courses are boring. This isn’t 1995. What’s going on?

We have conferences that teach us how to build better courses. We have an industry full of experts whose whole existence revolves around pointing out boring e-learning and selling their services to de-borify.

I write this blog hoping to combat boring e-learning. We discuss this often in the community and present weekly challenges to instigate thinking about interactive content in different ways. And yet, a lot of e-learning is still boring. Why?

Here are a few observations based on my experience.

Boring E-learning Has Always Existed

Working for a software vendor, I hear all that time that we make boring e-learning possible. The argument is that we’ve equipped too many ignorant people to create “courses.” Apparently, only highly trained instructional designers can build good e-learning. Hog wash! This opinion is both elitist and wrong.

I’ve been in this industry long before the rapid authoring tools were around. E-learning was just as boring then as now. The only difference was that it cost more to make it so there were fewer boring e-learning courses. But trust me, the e-learning courses back then were a lot worse than the ones we have now. And they weren’t created by ignorant people; they were created by instructional designers.

The tools don’t create boring courses, but I will admit that they do make it easier to create a lot of them. But the problem isn’t the authoring tools.

Organizations Get What They Pay For

I’ve been part of hundreds of workshops and talk to people in organization both big and small. And most have a few things in common. The organization buys the software and that’s about it. The developers don’t tend to get much more and must cobble together all sorts of things to build their courses.

But there’s a lot that goes into building great courses.

For many organizations, there’s minimal commitment to ongoing training so that the developers can get more out of the software investment or learn to build better learning experiences. There’s not a lot of commitment to designers who can help craft the right UX designs or graphic designers who can build compelling visuals that support the communication of the content. There’s no multimedia support or access to programmers. Many times, the course developers aren’t even connected to the ones who manage the learning management systems.

Good e-learning requires more than good e-learning software. It requires a commitment to an effective e-learning strategy that helps craft the best learning experiences. I see that many organizations stop at the good software part and let things go from there. And the result is understaffed e-learning developers who operate at the insane speed of business, cranking out content like crazy with little additional support.

That’s a recipe for boring e-learning.

Too Much Focus on Content

When it comes to teaching, we’re very content-centric. Need to know how to change a tire? Go to YouTube. Not sure how to handle this process? Read this PDF. If there’s a need, the gut reaction is to throw more content at it.

Content is fine and obviously part of the learning process. But content isn’t THE learning process. Yet most of the e-learning I see is a lot of content. And it’s often stuff already available in some digital format and then repurposed to look like a course. Add a ten-question quiz and call it good.

Content should be tethered to two things:

meaningful, relevant context

performance-based activity

Courses are boring because the content is completely meaningless to the person taking the course (which is the case for a lot of compliance training). Or it’s not framed in a relevant context that helps them understand the content in their real lives.

And then, the course stops at just sharing content with a quiz. There are no supporting activities to practice using it. There’s no opportunity to make real-world decisions and get feedback.

You want your e-learning courses to not be boring? Make an investment in a team that can build good courses, give them the right resources, and focus on learner-centric activities rather than content dumping.

That’s a step in the right direction.

Download the fully revised, free 63-page ebook: The Insider's Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro 

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.

Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs

Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills

Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.

Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.

Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

  Why There Are So Many Bad E-Learning Courses Original Post at The Rapid E-Learning Blog

[liz-and-the-blue-bird]

2016 Year In Review

Where Kurt talks about literally everything.

Totally not late 👌.

(Recommended Sountrack. You may just want to put it on loop.)

(Alternate soundtrack. This is what I listened to for the majority of writing this.)

Top lists are a sort of fun exercise for me. They present a unique challenge: to sell an idea well but short enough so the full list is reasonable to read in an afternoon. They also allow me to flex my own creative muscles by talking about many topics and concepts all at once. One of my favorite parts about anime is writing and talking about it after all. So top lists let me do that all of that for a bunch of different shows all at once. Also they’re pretty interesting to compare to other critics who are much better than me and like, do this for a living. I find that when I compare top lists to each other, they tend to agree on what each individual show is doing, yet disagree on which is the best. But I digress.

Anyway, if you read last years’ post, thank you—the writing in it sucks compared to how I write now so I don’t blame you if you don’t read it. Secondly, I’m changing the format a bit: I’ll still do a top five list, but I also have a few anime that I’ll just call “notable.” To me they aren’t good enough to put in my top list, but have interesting ideas or execution that is worth talking about (also, some other people may believe that they are worth their top list, which is a discussion topic in and of itself). Then I’ll just list off the rest of the shows I watched this year and give them little cute bite-sized reviews. I’ll also give star ratings out of 5 to everything (2.5 is the “average show,” but I refuse to rate with a fraction). Now then, we have a lot to get through so let’s get cracking.

Top Five New Anime

As always, in airing order.

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! (KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World!)

Jan 14, 2016 to Mar 17, 2016; 10 episodes; Studio DEEN (btw is it Deen or DEEN? I can’t seem to find any consensus on this.)  

So like, think SAO, but not edgy. KonoSuba takes the inherent absurdity of the SAO premise and puts that at the forefront. It opts out of the darker concepts that most of these “stuck in another world” anime tend to take in favor of hilarity. This is mostly done by creating a world that is legitimately wonderful as opposed to fake-difficult. Which means that the ridiculous problems the protagonists have are not at all because the world sucks, it’s because they suck. Each of them are jerks or weirdos in their own way and how they play with each other and the world is a riot. The show also does lots of clever things with its videogame world like: how luck stats affects quest rewards, how one develops their own skill repertoire, how dying works—hell, the first episode uses a literal pause as a method of conveying the protagonist’s thoughts. It feels like a DnD campaign that went off the rails in the best possible way. Even the show’s weakness, the occasional moments of terrible or rushed animation, are leveraged into comedic beats. It’s only 10 episodes (and a fantastic OVA) and a sequel is coming out soon. It’s definitely worth the watch.

★★★★☆

I didn’t expect to ever put a DEEN show on this list.

Mother’s Basement did an OP analysis along with Re:Zero here.

Boku No Hero Academia (My Hero Academia)

Apr 3, 2016 to Jun 26, 2016; 13 episodes; Bones

Many hero shows nowadays are trying to be a dark and intense, discussing themes of loss or the responsibilities of power. My Hero Academia handles hard concepts like that as well (especially in the most recent arc in the manga), but, first and foremost, it absolutely loves heroes. The original writer is a huge fan of old American comics and this show is a shonen recreation of the original Golden Age of superheroes. They explode onto the scene. They smile in the face of overwhelming odds. They always beat the villain and save the day. The best heroes are those that just want to be heroic and this show understands that. It’s world, like the author, loves heroes. The school loves heroes. The main character loves heroes. This incredibly positive view just emanates from the show and can be felt in every aspect. By far it’s biggest weakness is Bones seems a bit afraid to take risks: the fights a bit too true to the manga and the pace afraid of running out of material. But the character writing, the world building, the soundtrack are all top notch. A sequel is in the works and there’s also an OVA story that isn’t in the manga. An easy recommendation.

★★★★☆

One of my favorite critics, Nick Creamer, did a review on ANN. He also reads the manga and talks about it often on his blog, Wrong Every Time.

Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu (Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-)

Apr 4, 2016 to Sep 19, 2016; 25 episodes; White Fox

The opposite of KonoSuba—Re:Zero instead takes the SAO premise and makes it legitimately dark. It does this, not by making a main character whose defining character trait is “I’m cool,” but by crafting a world that is half high fantasy and half intangible, unceasing horror. The show leans on the uncertainty of being thrust into a new world and the agony of respawning again and again while talking to people who killed you as if they weren’t ticking time bombs. However, this story is not built to crush you. It carries heavy elements, not to present meaningless challenges to a blatantly overpowered protagonist (cough), but to push the protagonist to strive harder. In this way, it creates a relatable character. A character who we know is not strong and sometimes doubts himself, just like how we do when we face our own monsters. Then he faces his problems head on, sometimes by himself and sometimes with friends who don’t really understand the depth of his struggle. It says to the audience “this is not the end of your story” in a way that fills us with determination to reach our own happy endings. And that is a story worth telling.

★★★★★

This is probably the best story about being thrown into another world since…KonoSuba. 2016 was pretty good about this premise tbh, especially when you also consider Grimgar was released as well.

Mother’s Basement did an OP analysis along with Kono Suba here.

Flying Witch

Apr 10, 2016 to Jun 26, 2016; 12 episodes; J.C.Staff

Flying Witch doesn’t really have anything important to say. It doesn’t have a deep meaning like “one’s journey to personal peace” or “the intrinsic strength of the human spirit.” It’s just a slice of life story put in a casually magical setting. Like every good slice of life, episodes aren’t super related, and once you know all the characters you can watch it in basically any order. Some episodes don’t even show off any magic. All it does is carry a carefree lighthearted tone for 12 episodes. The show does this by establishing the world with many, many wide environment shots and then dropping so many quirky-cute characters whose interactions are so lovely and so charming that you just have to come back. In many ways, this show is K-on! except the captivating music scenes are replaced with equally stunning magical scenes. And I adore its sound design. Many of the most iconic tracks are reprises of its main theme at different tempos or with different instruments, creating a very cohesive experience throughout the series. In particular, its flying theme is gorgeous. Just like K-on!, it’s one of those shows that you watch on a rainy day and it will be just what you need. Flying Witch has quietly entered my personal favorites.

★★★★★

None of the critics I follow have made long articles about this anime. What this is telling me is I need to find more anime bloggers. Now taking suggestions.

Yuri!!! on Ice

Oct 6, 2016 to Dec 22, 2016; 12 episodes; MAPPA

To say this show was an endeavor would be selling it short. Yuri!!! on Ice tackles something like seven or eight parallel stories and relevant backstories of characters who all have different cultures and goals, and then it also has to explain enough about professional skating for you to actually care and understand the performances the show takes so much time to show and, if that wasn’t enough, it’s also LGBT. You have to give it to MAPPA for trying. The success of each of these aspects is middling, but, at the very least, it handles the stories of Yuuri, Yurio, and Victor fairly well. I’ve already touched on many of the techniques it uses to develop it’s expansive cast, but setting that aside, there is just a lot of show here. In order to communicate the number of ideas it tackles, the show presents everything full of purpose. Most scenes work overtime here and the resulting dialogue pops. Even the commercial break cuts are used effectively: they are foods that are native to the region that the cast is currently in which establishes a sense of place. At the same time, they’re food, so they refer back to the Yuuri’s in-joke about being a pork cutlet bowl and also maintain the lighthearted, happy tone of the show. Yuri!!! on Ice is efficient like that. It’s also one of those rare shows that sneaks into the public eye, so supporting it feels a tiny bit like supporting animation as a medium. But, before all that, it’s a story about a guy who follows his dream. That’s about as grand a story as anyone can tell.

★★★★☆

Notables 

Hai to Gensou no Grimgar (Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash)

Jan 11, 2016 to Mar 28, 2016; 12 episodes; A-1 Pictures

If you read just the premise, this show should suck. It’s just another one of those “stuck in another world” anime that come out every season. However, it has an interesting secondary hook: it’s actually a slice of life. Some of the most interesting portions of SAO and Log Horizon were how the videogame world interacted with the daily lives of the characters, so a show about this should be good, right? Unfortunately for Grimgar, it seems to be in the business of ruining it’s own emotional beats. The first episode is a good example of this: they open with a goblin hunting section that would be high tension, yet the animation struggles to provide the necessary impact. A training sequence occurs, but ends up paying too much attention to the instructor’s fanservice to offer anything meaningful. Then there’s a bit where the main crew gather round the campfire for some casual conversation which also stumbles because their topic of discussion is witch girl’s breasts. In fact, a lot of potential emotional hits snuff themselves out by becoming fanservice beats instead. A real shame. 

★★☆☆☆ 

Flip Flappers

Oct 6, 2016 to Dec 29, 2016; 13 episodes; Studio 3Hz

Well, I’ve already talked about how I feel about this show, but it just keeps popping up. To me, Flip Flappers comes across as trying too hard and losing focus and meaning as it tries to rationalize its own absurd world. It fails to explain bits and pieces, and, once you go down this rabbit hole, you have to hit everything. So we end up with this sort of half-done mess. However, people are still talking about it, so I think your assessment of Flip Flappers is a personal measurement of how much BS you can handle before you reject a plot idea. And the plot really is the “only” thing that grinded me about Flip Flappers. It had interesting characters, clever world building, and its ability to play with its animation style produced lots of great single episodes. It’s not a bad show, but it depends on what kind of person you are to tell if it’s a great show.

★★★☆☆

Short Answer Section

Ok, hopefully this goes by faster. 

Winter 2016

Prince of Stride: Alternative -  Madhouse does sports anime sounds like a good show. Unfortunately, this is less sports anime and more otome game. The parkour/running scenes are well animated (it’s Madhouse), but the character beats don’t work very well. All in all, ok. -  ★★☆☆☆

Musaigen no Phantom World - Flip Flappers but bad. How disappointing. -  ★☆☆☆☆ 

Sekkou Boys - Honestly? Not terrible. It’s a short, so attempting to put any sort of character development is kind of a crazy idea, but at least it was hilarious. -  ★★☆☆☆

ERASED -  2/3rds of a great show. The first 8-ish episodes are tightly written and well directed. The next 4 are…less so. At least for the writing part—the direction is still pretty good. ERASED fails to explain some character developments in ways that really make sense. This is similar to my problem with Flip Flappers, but, as ERASED is a mystery thriller, it is a much larger oversight. In short, the director once again proves himself much better than the works he has been given to adapt. -  ★★★☆☆

Zootopia - Disney does not suck, usually. Zootopia, in fact, is one of their better films. The setting is actually self-explanatory enough to work without too much info dumping, so it uses this kooky setting to tell a story that is relevant to our own world. Being a mystery/detective thriller, the plot is required to be more tight than Disney animated movies usually are and for the most part Zootopia delivers. It’s probably the best animated Disney movie this year. -  ★★★★☆

Spring 2016

Uchuu Patrol Luluco - Trigger at their Trigger-iest. Luluco actually manages to reference (“reference” aka “directly call out”) every single Trigger show in this short mini-series. It’s actually a really fun ride, in the same way that Gurren Lagann is, but because of how much it meanders it loses some of it’s punch. Still, I’d recommend it because honestly, at 13*6=74 minutes total running time, what have you got to lose? -  ★★★★☆ 

Gyakuten Saiban: Sono “Shinjitsu”, Igi Ari! (Ace Attorney) -  Ace Attorney shows us that some things are much better played than watched (like some other shows). But, all in all, it didn’t suck. It’s actually pretty good for people who don’t have the time to play the games. And I did get a lot of notes on that one post… - ★★☆☆☆

Netoge no Yome wa Onnanoko ja Nai to Omotta?  -  For the most part, a generic harem anime except the archetypes are marginally more interesting and the secondary hook is unconventional (videogames as opposed to…super human high school. We live in a world where super human high school is more common than just videogame club). The fanservice is expected. The comedy is ok. Overall it’s just kinda eh.  -  ★★☆☆☆

Sakamoto desu ga? -  This show is actually just one joke repeated for twelve episodes. I mean it’s a pretty good joke; you could call this the slice of life One Punch Man. But I liked One Punch Man—I put it on the top list last year, so what’s wrong with this show? Well the strength of One Punch Man is not actually Saitama (haha), but rather the cast of side characters. Since Saitama is a static character, the development is shipped to everyone else so we get our character beats from them. Then, Saitama is used only for comedic beats. Sakamoto, on the other hand, fails to do this, and instead uses a rotating static character cast, so it has to rely entirely on comedy to compel you to watch. And, like I said, it’s just one joke repeated for twelve episodes. - ★★☆☆☆

Tanaka-kun wa Itsumo Kedaruge -  Like Sakamoto, Tanaka-kun is also just one joke, but it spends a bit more time developing the surrounding cast since that joke isn’t as potent. It’s slow pace reminds me a lot of Flying Witch, but it uses its characters more than its environment for the jokes. In fact, that’s probably the more important difference: there are more jokes. Flying Witch is content to let you stew in the world for a while, but Tanaka-kun feels pressured to hit you with another joke right after another. It’s not a bad show, but it’s a bit clumsy in its execution. - ★★★☆☆

Kiznaiver (2/12) -  I touched on this already, but Kiznaiver is an interesting enough topic to revisit. Often for character shows, a director will take one of two ways to show relationships: 1) understated gestures and close up camera angles on expressive body parts—this is the stance KyoAni and PA Works likes to take—or 2) metaphor as shorthand to character mindsets, anywhere from expressive skating performances to personal demons gone physical. Neither of these is really Trigger’s style, so for their own character story, Kiznaiver, they turn the relationships into an actual physical connection and then use force to move relationships. I still haven’t gotten around to finishing it, but it’s a clever workaround and very Trigger even if it’s not their usual director. I’m excited to see how it’s done. -  ★★★☆☆?

Finding Dory -  I…don’t remember much of it. Usually that means it’s just kind of ok. A “just kind of ok” Disney movie probably means it’s above average so let’s go with that. (I am a serious critic who seriously critiques things with seriousness.)  - ★★★☆☆?

I need to start writing shorter opinions or we’ll be here all day. 

Summer 2016

That scroll bar is getting pretty small…

Love Live! Sunshine!! (3/13) - Of the 3 episodes I’ve watched, this seems very much like “Love Live! 2, Love Liver!!” It still has this weird problem of taking itself too seriously (remember “I love school idols!” ?), but Sunrise is a roll here, given another iteration we might have a very good character comedy. - ★★★☆☆?

New Game! -  Aside from having the most adorable OP of 2016, this show isn’t really notable. Yeah, it’s cute, it’s Doga Kobo. Yeah, it’s funny, it’s Doga Kobo. There’s some fanservice, often leveraged into comedy a la Monogatari, but that’s kind of it. For the most part, this is Shirobako channeling K-on! which sounds amazing but ends up just being pretty ok. I wonder how much better it could be given a two cour season. -  ★★★☆☆

Taboo Tattoo (1/screw it) - I was coerced into watching one episode of this thing. It has like almost an interesting premise but every time they introduced another character I just got more disappointed. Please send help. - ☆☆☆☆☆

Amanchu! (1/12) - J.C.Staff has this weird artistic style that seems to change completely whenever they are making a joke. This works for some anime, but it’s not very subtle. In the case of Amanchu!, I think they needed to deliver it with a more softer style overall, but it’s not a deal breaker. I just haven’t gotten around to watching the rest. -  ★★☆☆☆?

Kono Bijutsubu ni wa Mondai ga Aru! (3/12) - Comedy anime about girls in art club falling in love with a dense otaku and surrounded by other quirky idiots is not a new concept. To be different, Konobi tries to provide more structure to its story, evident just from the first episode. Well, I’m only 3 episodes in but I’ve found the comedy weakens the plot and the plot weakens the comedy. Often with short seasons, it’s better to focus on only one aspect, as dividing your resources like this results in a mediocre show, but I still haven’t gotten that far. I’m hopeful. - ★★☆☆☆?

Fall 2016

WWW.Working!! (6/13) - It basically plays out like Working!! lite. WWW.Working!! was the original “rough draft” for the Working!! manga after all, so it kind of makes sense. It’s alright. Working!! is a stronger show overall and has a rare multi-season full adaptation, so, choosing only one, I’d choose Working!!. That was probably really confusing. - ★★★☆☆?

Shuumatsu no Izetta (2/12) - History drama meets magical girls. You know, maybe we should stop making so many “x + Magical girls” anime. It’s an interesting take and the direction it goes is pretty fun. Instead of following a WW2 titan, you follow a small country that needs the magical girl to keep themselves from getting totally destroyed. I’m not sure I’ll finish it, but if that’s your kind of vibe, Izetta is the show for you. - ★★☆☆☆?

Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku (1/12) - Continuing the theme of “x + Magical girls” anime, this one is Magical Girls meets Battle Royal. At least, that’s what it’s supposed to be. The pace is so incredibly slow that the little premise you read on MAL tells you the story past the first episode already. I don’t think I’ll be coming back to this one. - ★☆☆☆☆?

Cheating Craft (2/12) -  Calling this an Anime is kind of hazy but luckily this post is about more than just anime. The first episode is sort of a flashback type deal that explains the concept and the next episode is the first of what seems to be a series of tests. Instead of the subtle strategic type of show I expected, it’s actually just ok-ish action with poorly defined characters. So it’s been dropped. - ★☆☆☆☆?

Hibike! Euphonium 2 - I’ve talked about this so much you guys probably already know my stance on it. It’s hampered by the nature of adaptation as the Mizore-Nozomi arc could probably be removed. But the Asuka arc shows KyoAni has still got it. One of the best shows of the year. - ★★★★★

KEIJO!!!!!!!! - You know what’s interesting about this show? In story structure, it’s the most generic shonen ever. But the base premise is so absurd and so confident in itself that it carries pretty well. The absurdity even spreads to the title: all caps and eight exclamation points. This show knows what it’s about. - ★★★☆☆

Gi(a)rlish Number (2/12) - Oregairu is well written show. Gi(a)rlish Number is also a well written show. Thanks Wataru Watari. But because of how cynical they are, they’re really hard for me to watch. So I’ve only watched two episodes. Thanks Wataru Watari. I’m sure I’ll have lots of opinions about this so I’ll talk about it at a later time. - ★★★★☆?

Haikyuu!!: Karasuno Koukou VS Shiratorizawa Gakuen Koukou - Carrying from the momentum of the previous season, Haikyuu!! remains good. I think this is the weakest season so far in terms of emotional pay-off (probably because it’s, ya know, 10 episodes), but it’s still my favorite sports anime. Hopefully the next season isn’t too far away. - ★★★★☆

Moana - Compared to Zootopia, this Disney film is more hand-wavy with its plot. It’s not like the world is harder to build, one of them has demi-gods and another has talking animals, the world just isn’t as important for this type of story. On the flip side, it has arguably the best sound design of an animated feature in 2016. I enjoyed it, but all I ever think about with Disney princess films is how cool the Kingdom Hearts world is going to be. -★★★★☆

I’M DONE. 

Holy cow I didn’t realize how much stuff I watched last year. And I didn’t even finish a lot of shows I wanted to. 

Man. I hope one day I get paid to write about this stuff. 

Thanks as always for reading. Let me know if I missed something! 

[valiantruinssweets-blog]

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Are you interested in having a fake ID card? You can avail such cards from the online companies. It generally takes one to three days to deliver these cards. As a mode of payment, cash can be used to buy these fake ID cards. However, you must enquire very well and use such a delivery service so that your money reaches its destination and you can also get informed when the money is received by the company. Cheques are not appropriate option as it might take a week's time to reach to get cleared.

Usually cheap, often faulty cards with very little actual storage (2 GB, 4 GB, rarely more) are used. Labels with authentic look and feel are glued to these cards. New labels carry logos of reputable brands (like Sandisk, Transcend, Panasonic, Kingston etc) and advertise high class, high capacity storage. For example, a 32 GB SDHC card of Class 10. Then reprogramming is performed. The goal is to change bits of data that are available to Operating System and cameras. Digits indicating true storage capacity are replaced with false information. So, when a reprogrammed memory card is inserted into a card reader, operating system (say, Windows) sees it as a 32 GB drive. Operating system has no way to know if the chip inside the card has been reprogrammed.

Selling fakes is even easier than producing them (while the latter isn't any difficult at all, as you see). Online auction sites are favored by dishonest sellers. No matter how strict eBay is about counterfeit items, fake memory cards are sold there in large quantities.

Buyers are attracted by low prices, sure. But even experienced and savvy eBay users get trapped. They look at seller's account to see if it is freshly created or old enough. They scroll through feedback left by other customers to see if anyone got vexed after purchasing similar items. They ask seller and receive reassuring response. All in all, it looks like a deal. Buy fake documents online

The truth is, it is next to impossible to define if SD/SDHC/SDXC/CF card listed for sale is genuine or not. They are sold by sellers from US and UK (and they dispatch items from addresses in US and UK, too!) Customers who received fake memory cards in their mail box very often leave... positive feedback. You might not believe me but the reason is simple: people are unaware of a rip-off. They duly check memory cards in Windows which report false capacity. They format it and start using. No matter how slow card is, no matter how much data is lost from the very first day if use, few owners will suspect they have been sold a fake.

Surprisingly, it is not that easy to find out if memory card is counterfeit. Most software used for testing USB storage devices will only check reading/writing speeds, but not actual storage capacity. buy real and fake documents online

Nevertheless you can run a fast and easy-to-do test to see if your memory card is authentic. Just copy a single large file (preferably over 4 GB) to a card (if you card is FAT32 formatted, then use 2 files 2 GB each). And when copying is complete, copy it back to your hard drive. Then try to play what has been copied to hard drive. Only genuine card with advertised capacity being true will not damage the file. If there pop up any errors during copy process, if the file after being copied twice is not playable (cannot be opened in associated software) then it's evident you are holding a fake memory card in your hands.

A leather passport holder can work both as a beautiful as well as functional accessory. Most people use this trendy accessory in order to protect their travel documents like passports, air tickets and boarding passes.

Being so functional, these accessories can prove to be great gift options for people traveling for business.

If you have a friend, colleague or a relative travelling abroad then a designer leather passport holder can be an ideal for them. A quality passport cover with a unique design can really be a great gift option.

You can avail a good looking passport holder from a leather gift store. Besides this, if you do not have much time to go and shop for it you can buy it from an online store. buy real and fake passport online

Quality matters a lot!

In case you are presenting a travel passport cover to your boss, high level colleague or a client who is travelling abroad on a business trip, then consider presenting him/ her with a top quality passport cover.

A passport cover in leather is always an elegant option. Apart from this, be wary of fake leather accessories. For this, the best way is to opt for designs that aren't very easy to find.

Benefits of a leather passport holder

There are many reasons of leather being considered as the most recommended material for covers and carry bags. Primarily leather is a material that lasts longer and looks better with age.

Most people opt for leather, not just because of its luxury, but also because it's functional and can be used in varied situations. A person will surely look elegant while wearing such an accessory. buy fake ID cards

You can also personalise your passport cover with the recipients' name or initials, which will make it look cool and will add an additional price to it.

Online Assistance

Whether you are looking to gift classic designs or you like the modern ones, the internet can help you find whatever you need. You can visit a variety of websites and browse for different categories to look for the right kind of passport cover you need.

There are many sites that offer you with attractive and quality designs of these products at discounted rates too. But for this, you'll need to perform an effective research.

Travelling is considered as an important part of everyone's life, thus an impressive and beautiful looking passport cover as a gift option will make its recipient delighted.

Functionality no less than that of a regular wallet

The practicality offered by these holders is no less than that of your wallet. Besides this, the passport cover, being made up of real leather and will keep your important documents protected.

You can opt for a soft leather holder in pink, oceanic blue or other mild colours if you want to present this gift to a girl. But when it comes to presenting passport holders to a guy, colours like black and brown are considered as excellent options. Buy fake Driving license online

[yourlittlestarlight-blog]

The Plan - 4 Steps To a Website Brand

The Plan - 4 Steps To a Website Brand

Do you have a plan? Most companies spend a reasonable amount of time, energy, and money planning what to do and how to do it.

Let's say you need a website, so you develop a plan, present it to a bunch of website designers, and get quotes or proposals. You're not going to get caught with your pants down like the last time by some nerdy geek, you know the skinny kid with the scraggly beard, who techno-babble gave you a head, or the bizarre young lady dressed in Gothic chic with the black lipstick and tattoo to match – yikes, no thanks, not this time, this time you got a plan.

Human Motivational Optimization

You read all the blogs on website design, you know all the ins-and-outs of search engine optimization, and Google AdWords. No one is going to pull a fast one on you. You know your business, your market, and your needs. Or do you?

How much do you really know about how real people interact with your website? How much do you really know about what we call Human Motivational Optimization? All the stats, logs, and number crunching analysis that forms the basis of many website development plans does not really give you the visceral understanding of how to connect to an audience, and is not that what you want your website to do?

So maybe your plan is the wrong plan; it's like planning a trip to Home Depot to buy a cabbage; it just does not make sense. So how about a plan that does make sense, something simple, understandable, easy to implement, that is if you hire the right people to do it. But before we tell you the four steps to creating your own Website Branding Plan, let's talk about Don LaFontaine.

Every Company Needs A Movie Trailer

Chances are you do not know who the late Don LaFontaine was, but you've heard his voice many, many times. Don was the most famous and influential voice behind thousands of movie and television trailers. He had a distinct deep, gravely voice, and a writing style that reinvented the entire movie trailer format. But why should you care? Simple. Movie trailers are the ultimate elevator pitch, a short memorable performance that compels you to action, kind of like what a mission statement is suppose to do, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning, or rather, the end.

Branding Starts With Thinking Backwards

Most people like to start a project at the beginning and work their way through until they reach the end. Makes sense, or does it? If you do not start with where you want to end-up, it's illegally you'll ever get where you want to go. Remember our cabin? Planning a shopping to trip to Home Depot because they got cool stuff, does not help if what you want is a cabbage.

Branding is no different. If you do not start with how you want your audience to think about you, they will probably never think about you at all. So now that we got that straight let's start our plan where it makes sense, the end.

The 4 Step Web-Branding Plan

1 The Slogan

Your slogan, you know the thing that sets underneath your logo, that simple little phrase someone in your office came up with that makes you sound important, stuff like "the cool air conditioning company." Most small and medium size companies do not think too hard about this little marketing gem, and as a result they either have something really cheesy, or some meaningless platitude that has no meaningful meaning at all, like "the best people for the best job . "

Just because you're small and do not have millions of dollars to spend on television ads promoting your pithy little motto, does not mean you should not have one. That catchphrase is who you are, and how you want people to remember you, short, memorable, and to the point. I remember my sons arguing over some complicated bit of business when one of them in frustration finally said, "Enough already. Give it to me in one word or less!" a demand to articulate what was important without all the peripheral issues; a lesson all businesses should pay attention to.

2 The Story Line (Logline)

To my mind, mission statements are a totally dysfunctional marketing element, misused and abused by a bean-counter attitude, born out of trying to squeeze every last drop of information into a statement that will not offend anyone. A wise man once said, "If what you're saying does not offend anyone, maybe you're not saying anything" and most mission statements that are full of meaningless platitudes and toned-down adjustments, fall into the category of not saying anything, at least, anything worth hearing.

Okay so let's forget about mission statements, after all this is not the military, and we're not planning the next Desert Storm. Instead let's think loglines, or what you can think of as your brand story line.

You know those short statements you find in TV Guide, or your weekend television insert, prompting you to watch the next episode of 'House,' or 'Desperate Bimbos.' They are a short form text version of a trailer, intended to get you to watch the movie or television show. For our purposes, we want people to go to our website, and stay-tuned long enough to get our core marketing message, and not walk out half way through the presentation. So, how do we do that?

The Six Elements of Effective Web Trailers

In order for us to come up with a compelling statement that prompts people to view our website presentation, we need to refer back to our old pal Don LaFontaine. What if Don LaFontaine wrote our website trailer. How would he do it?

Don had a very distinct style that you've heard a thousand times for a thousand different movies, but they all followed a similar format. Each trailer needs to cover six distinct elements, who, what, where, how, why, and when. All the things businesses should be presenting in their elevator pitch, but with one extra ingredient, personality.

Here's the format used in many movie trailers:

"In a place (where), one man (who) brings stability to chaos (what), in an epic tale that will both amaze and inspire (why)! Coming soon (when) to a theater near you." Sound familiar?

Let's take our air conditioning example, you remember, "the cool air conditioning company." Let's say our fictitious company is called Kool Air Conditioning, their website trailer maybe sound something like this:

"In a town where summer heat melts the cool of the coolest homeowners, one air conditioning company comes to the rescue. masses. The Kool Guys will amaze you with their prompt service and installation know-how. The heat is on. It's coming sooner than you think; it's coming this summer to your town, your neighborhood; your house. Kool, the cool air conditioning company. "

Over-the-top? Maybe, but we've covered all the bases, we know who (Kool), what (air conditioning), when (this summer), where (your house), why (the heat) and how (prompt service and installation know- how). Now that's a mission statement; one with a little style, panache, and personality; one that will get you remembered and prompt your audience to action.

3 The Personality

Movies like businesses all fall into certain genres or categories. There's the action movie format that's suitable for sports related businesses, the chick flick style that's ideal for cosmetic or fashion industry businesses, and the family comedy format suitable for entertainment and recreation based companies, and of course the kids movie version perfect for any business selling things for children. The point is that every company and website has to have a personality.

Many hard nosed business executives scoff at the idea of ​​spending money on such seemingly trivial marketing concepts as company personality, but ignoring your website persona, is a big mistake. You can either invest a little in developing, creating, managing, and promoting this personality or you can let the marketplace decide for itself, or worse, find you completely redundant and irrelevant.

4 The Delivery

You may be asking yourself, this sounds good on paper, but can it really be done, and can it be done for my business, on my website? The answer is damn straight it can. Like most things in life, and in business, it's not saving the concept that so hard, it's implementing it.

With a little investment and a willingness to take some chances, you can be the market leader. But if you thought you could simply take your newly created movie trailer style website elevator pitch and slap it onto your website in text form, you would be mistaken. How you deliver the message is as important, and in many cases more important, than what you say.

Whether you sell lipstick, licorice, or lingerie, you probably have lots of competition, so how you deliver your message is what's going to make the difference.

You want your website presentation to motivate people to email or phone. You want to deliver a compelling performance that is more than a sales pitch, a presentation that uses voice, visuals, words, and music to create a website personality, a lasting impression; one that is going to allow you to stand out from the crowd and give you a competitive advantage.

Nothing will convince better than seeing an actual example, and guess what, we just happened to be able to provide you with one: check out SonicPersonality.com and see what an effective website presentation sounds like. If nothing else, you may get a chuckle or two.

Ata Rehman

[yourabsentgod-blog]

The Plan - 4 Steps To a Website Brand

The Plan - 4 Steps To a Website Brand

Do you have a plan? Most companies spend a reasonable amount of time, energy, and money planning what to do and how to do it.

Let's say you need a website, so you develop a plan, present it to a bunch of website designers, and get quotes or proposals. You're not going to get caught with your pants down like the last time by some nerdy geek, you know the skinny kid with the scraggly beard, who techno-babble gave you a head, or the bizarre young lady dressed in Gothic chic with the black lipstick and tattoo to match – yikes, no thanks, not this time, this time you got a plan.

Human Motivational Optimization

You read all the blogs on website design, you know all the ins-and-outs of search engine optimization, and Google AdWords. No one is going to pull a fast one on you. You know your business, your market, and your needs. Or do you?

How much do you really know about how real people interact with your website? How much do you really know about what we call Human Motivational Optimization? All the stats, logs, and number crunching analysis that forms the basis of many website development plans does not really give you the visceral understanding of how to connect to an audience, and is not that what you want your website to do?

So maybe your plan is the wrong plan; it's like planning a trip to Home Depot to buy a cabbage; it just does not make sense. So how about a plan that does make sense, something simple, understandable, easy to implement, that is if you hire the right people to do it. But before we tell you the four steps to creating your own Website Branding Plan, let's talk about Don LaFontaine.

Every Company Needs A Movie Trailer

Chances are you do not know who the late Don LaFontaine was, but you've heard his voice many, many times. Don was the most famous and influential voice behind thousands of movie and television trailers. He had a distinct deep, gravely voice, and a writing style that reinvented the entire movie trailer format. But why should you care? Simple. Movie trailers are the ultimate elevator pitch, a short memorable performance that compels you to action, kind of like what a mission statement is suppose to do, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning, or rather, the end.

Branding Starts With Thinking Backwards

Most people like to start a project at the beginning and work their way through until they reach the end. Makes sense, or does it? If you do not start with where you want to end-up, it's illegally you'll ever get where you want to go. Remember our cabin? Planning a shopping to trip to Home Depot because they got cool stuff, does not help if what you want is a cabbage.

Branding is no different. If you do not start with how you want your audience to think about you, they will probably never think about you at all. So now that we got that straight let's start our plan where it makes sense, the end.

The 4 Step Web-Branding Plan

1 The Slogan

Your slogan, you know the thing that sets underneath your logo, that simple little phrase someone in your office came up with that makes you sound important, stuff like "the cool air conditioning company." Most small and medium size companies do not think too hard about this little marketing gem, and as a result they either have something really cheesy, or some meaningless platitude that has no meaningful meaning at all, like "the best people for the best job . "

Just because you're small and do not have millions of dollars to spend on television ads promoting your pithy little motto, does not mean you should not have one. That catchphrase is who you are, and how you want people to remember you, short, memorable, and to the point. I remember my sons arguing over some complicated bit of business when one of them in frustration finally said, "Enough already. Give it to me in one word or less!" a demand to articulate what was important without all the peripheral issues; a lesson all businesses should pay attention to.

2 The Story Line (Logline)

To my mind, mission statements are a totally dysfunctional marketing element, misused and abused by a bean-counter attitude, born out of trying to squeeze every last drop of information into a statement that will not offend anyone. A wise man once said, "If what you're saying does not offend anyone, maybe you're not saying anything" and most mission statements that are full of meaningless platitudes and toned-down adjustments, fall into the category of not saying anything, at least, anything worth hearing.

Okay so let's forget about mission statements, after all this is not the military, and we're not planning the next Desert Storm. Instead let's think loglines, or what you can think of as your brand story line.

You know those short statements you find in TV Guide, or your weekend television insert, prompting you to watch the next episode of 'House,' or 'Desperate Bimbos.' They are a short form text version of a trailer, intended to get you to watch the movie or television show. For our purposes, we want people to go to our website, and stay-tuned long enough to get our core marketing message, and not walk out half way through the presentation. So, how do we do that?

The Six Elements of Effective Web Trailers

In order for us to come up with a compelling statement that prompts people to view our website presentation, we need to refer back to our old pal Don LaFontaine. What if Don LaFontaine wrote our website trailer. How would he do it?

Don had a very distinct style that you've heard a thousand times for a thousand different movies, but they all followed a similar format. Each trailer needs to cover six distinct elements, who, what, where, how, why, and when. All the things businesses should be presenting in their elevator pitch, but with one extra ingredient, personality.

Here's the format used in many movie trailers:

"In a place (where), one man (who) brings stability to chaos (what), in an epic tale that will both amaze and inspire (why)! Coming soon (when) to a theater near you." Sound familiar?

Let's take our air conditioning example, you remember, "the cool air conditioning company." Let's say our fictitious company is called Kool Air Conditioning, their website trailer maybe sound something like this:

"In a town where summer heat melts the cool of the coolest homeowners, one air conditioning company comes to the rescue. masses. The Kool Guys will amaze you with their prompt service and installation know-how. The heat is on. It's coming sooner than you think; it's coming this summer to your town, your neighborhood; your house. Kool, the cool air conditioning company. "

Over-the-top? Maybe, but we've covered all the bases, we know who (Kool), what (air conditioning), when (this summer), where (your house), why (the heat) and how (prompt service and installation know- how). Now that's a mission statement; one with a little style, panache, and personality; one that will get you remembered and prompt your audience to action.

3 The Personality

Movies like businesses all fall into certain genres or categories. There's the action movie format that's suitable for sports related businesses, the chick flick style that's ideal for cosmetic or fashion industry businesses, and the family comedy format suitable for entertainment and recreation based companies, and of course the kids movie version perfect for any business selling things for children. The point is that every company and website has to have a personality.

Many hard nosed business executives scoff at the idea of ​​spending money on such seemingly trivial marketing concepts as company personality, but ignoring your website persona, is a big mistake. You can either invest a little in developing, creating, managing, and promoting this personality or you can let the marketplace decide for itself, or worse, find you completely redundant and irrelevant.

4 The Delivery

You may be asking yourself, this sounds good on paper, but can it really be done, and can it be done for my business, on my website? The answer is damn straight it can. Like most things in life, and in business, it's not saving the concept that so hard, it's implementing it.

With a little investment and a willingness to take some chances, you can be the market leader. But if you thought you could simply take your newly created movie trailer style website elevator pitch and slap it onto your website in text form, you would be mistaken. How you deliver the message is as important, and in many cases more important, than what you say.

Whether you sell lipstick, licorice, or lingerie, you probably have lots of competition, so how you deliver your message is what's going to make the difference.

You want your website presentation to motivate people to email or phone. You want to deliver a compelling performance that is more than a sales pitch, a presentation that uses voice, visuals, words, and music to create a website personality, a lasting impression; one that is going to allow you to stand out from the crowd and give you a competitive advantage.

Nothing will convince better than seeing an actual example, and guess what, we just happened to be able to provide you with one: check out SonicPersonality.com and see what an effective website presentation sounds like. If nothing else, you may get a chuckle or two.

Ata Rehman

[identityshine]

Better Alternatives to "Expert Roundup"-Style Content - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

You may be tempted to publish that newest round of answers you've gotten from industry experts, but hold off — there's a better way. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why expert roundups just aren't the best use of your time and effort, and how to pivot your strategy to create similar content that'll make the juice worth the squeeze.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to look at some better alternatives to the expert roundup-style content that's become extremely popular on the web. There are a few reasons why it's popular. So let's talk about why SEOs and content marketers do so many expert roundups, why this became a popular content format.

Why do SEOs and content marketers even use "expert roundups?"

Okay. It turns out if you've got a piece of content that's like "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," maybe you interviewed a bunch of constitutional laws scholars and you put together this article, there's a bunch of nice things that you actually do get from this, which is why people use this format, right? You kind of get automatic outreach, because if you talk to these people, you've had a connection with them. You've built a little bit of a relationship. There's now something of an incentive to share for these folks and the potential for a link. All of those are sort of elements that people are looking for, well, that marketers are looking for from their content. The nice thing is you've got this long cadre of individuals who have contributed, and they create the content, which means you don't have to, saving you a bunch of time and energy. They become your amplifier so you can kind of sit back and relax when it comes time to broadcast it out there. You just tell them it's ready, and they go and push it. They lend your content credibility. So even if you don't have any credibility with your brand or with your website, they deliver it for you. You don't have to do that.

There are a few big problems with this kind of content.

Those are all really nice things. Don't get me wrong. I understand why. But there are some big, big problems with expert roundup-style content.

1. Like many easy-to-replicate tactics, expert roundups become WAY overdone.

First one, like many of the easy to replicate tactics, expert roundup has got spam to hack. They became way, way overdone. I get emails like this. "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write. Do this. Then share. Okay. Bye, Spammy McSpams-A-Lot." Look, Mr. McSpams-A-Lot, I appreciate how often you think of me. I love that every day there are a couple of offers like this in my inbox. I try to contribute to less than one every two or three weeks and only the ones that look super credible and real interesting. But jeez, can you imagine if you are truly an expert, who can lend credibility and create lots of amplification, you're getting overwhelmed with these kinds of requests, and people are probably getting very tired of reading them, especially in certain market segments where they've become way too overdone.

2. It's hard for searchers to get valuable, useful info via this format — and search engines don't like it, either.

But even if it's the case that you can get all these experts to contribute and it's not overdone in your market space, there are two other big problems. One, the content format is awful, awful for trying to get valuable and useful information. It rarely actually satisfies either searchers or engines. If you search for constitutional law cases and you see "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," you might click. But my god, have you gone through those types of content? Have you tried to read a lot of those roundups? They are usually awful, just terrible. You might get a nugget here or there, but there's a bunch of contributions that are multiple paragraphs long and try to include links back to wherever the expert is trying to get their links going. There's a bunch of them that are short and meaningless. Many of them overlap. It's annoying. It's bad. It's not well-curated. It's not well-put together. There are exceptions. Sometimes people put real effort into them and they get good, but most of the time these are real bad things, and you rarely see them in the search results. BuzzSumo did a great analysis of content that gets shares and gets links and gets rankings. Guess what did not fall into it — expert roundups.

3. Roundups don't earn as many links, and the traffic spike from tweets is temporary.

Number three. That's number three. The links that the creators want from these roundups, that they're hoping they're going to get, it doesn't end up there most of the time. What usually happens is you get a short traffic spike, some additional engagement, some additional activity on mostly Twitter, sometimes a little bit Facebook or LinkedIn, but it's almost all social activity, and it's a very brief spike.

5 formats to try instead

So what are some better alternatives? What are some things we can do? Well, I've got five for you.

1. Surveys

First off, if you're going to be creating content that is around a roundup, why not do almost exactly the same process, but rather than asking a single question or a set of questions that people are replying to, ask them to fill out a short survey with a few data points, because then you can create awesome graphs and visuals, which have much stronger link earning potential. It's the same outreach effort, but for much more compelling content that often does a better job of ranking, is often more newsworthy and link worthy. I really, really like surveys, and I think that they can work tremendously well if you can put them together right.

2. Aggregations of public data

Second, let's say you go, "Oh, Rand, that would be great, but I want to survey people about this thing, and they won't give me the information that I'm looking for." Never fear. You can aggregate public data. So a lot of these pieces of information that may be interesting to your audience, that you could use to create cool visuals, the graphs and charts and all that kind of thing and trend lines, are actually available on the web. All you need to do is cite those sources, pull in that data, build it yourself, and then you can outreach to the people who are behind these companies or these organizations or these individuals, and then say, "Hey, I made this based on public data. Can you correct any errors?" Now you've got the outreach, which can lead to the incentive to share and to build a link. Very cool.

3. Experiments and case studies

So this is taking a much smaller group, saying, "I'm only going to work with this one person or these couple of people, or I'm going to do it myself. Here's what Seattle's most influential law firm found when they challenged 10 state laws." Well, there you go. Now I've got an interesting, wholly formed case study. I only had to work with one expert, but chances are good that lots and lots of people will be interested in this. It's also excellent for newsworthiness. It often can get lots of press coverage in whatever industry you're in.

4. Seeking out controversial counter-opinions on a topic

Fourth, if you're going to do a roundup-style thing and you're going to collect multiple opinions, if you can find a few points or a single subject around which multiple experts have different opinions, that could be just two people, it could be four or five, it could be seven or eight, but you're basically trying to create this controversy. You're saying like, "Here are these people on this side of this issue. Here are these people on this side of this issue, Wil Reynolds versus Rand Fishkin on link building." I think we did a presentation like that in Minneapolis last year or a couple years ago. It was super fun. Wil and I got up on stage, and we sort of debated with each other. There were no losers in that debate. It was great. This leverages the emotional response you're seeking of conflict. It creates more engaging content by far, and there's more incentive for the parties who participate to link and share, because they're sort of showing off their opinion and trying to make counterpoints. You can get a lot of good things.

5. Not just text!

Number five. If you've decided, "You know what? None of these formats or any others work. I really, really want to do a roundup. I think it can work for me," okay. But do me a favor and try something that is not just text, not just text. Muzli is a newsletter I subscribe to in the design world that does lots of roundup-style content, but the roundups are all visuals. They're visuals. They're like UI interactions and GIFs and animations and illustrations. I actually really love those. Those get great engagement, and they rank, by the way. They rank quite well. Many of the ones that they link to in the newsletter do well. You can do this with visuals. You can do it with data. You could do it with revenue numbers. You could do it with tools. You could do it with products, whatever it is. I would suggest thinking a little more broadly than, "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write." I think that there's a lot more opportunity outside of the pure expert roundup space, and I hope you'll share your creative ideas with us and the successes you've seen. We look forward to seeing you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care. Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Better Alternatives to "Expert Roundup"-Style Content - Whiteboard Friday posted first on http://ift.tt/2maTWEr

[my-tranhung]

Posted by randfish

You may be tempted to publish that newest round of answers you've gotten from industry experts, but hold off — there's a better way. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why expert roundups just aren't the best use of your time and effort, and how to pivot your strategy to create similar content that'll make the juice worth the squeeze.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to look at some better alternatives to the expert roundup-style content that's become extremely popular on the web. There are a few reasons why it's popular. So let's talk about why SEOs and content marketers do so many expert roundups, why this became a popular content format.

Why do SEOs and content marketers even use "expert roundups?"

Okay. It turns out if you've got a piece of content that's like "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," maybe you interviewed a bunch of constitutional laws scholars and you put together this article, there's a bunch of nice things that you actually do get from this, which is why people use this format, right? You kind of get automatic outreach, because if you talk to these people, you've had a connection with them. You've built a little bit of a relationship. There's now something of an incentive to share for these folks and the potential for a link. All of those are sort of elements that people are looking for, well, that marketers are looking for from their content. The nice thing is you've got this long cadre of individuals who have contributed, and they create the content, which means you don't have to, saving you a bunch of time and energy. They become your amplifier so you can kind of sit back and relax when it comes time to broadcast it out there. You just tell them it's ready, and they go and push it. They lend your content credibility. So even if you don't have any credibility with your brand or with your website, they deliver it for you. You don't have to do that.

There are a few big problems with this kind of content.

Those are all really nice things. Don't get me wrong. I understand why. But there are some big, big problems with expert roundup-style content.

1. Like many easy-to-replicate tactics, expert roundups become WAY overdone.

First one, like many of the easy to replicate tactics, expert roundup has got spam to hack. They became way, way overdone. I get emails like this. "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write. Do this. Then share. Okay. Bye, Spammy McSpams-A-Lot." Look, Mr. McSpams-A-Lot, I appreciate how often you think of me. I love that every day there are a couple of offers like this in my inbox. I try to contribute to less than one every two or three weeks and only the ones that look super credible and real interesting. But jeez, can you imagine if you are truly an expert, who can lend credibility and create lots of amplification, you're getting overwhelmed with these kinds of requests, and people are probably getting very tired of reading them, especially in certain market segments where they've become way too overdone.

2. It's hard for searchers to get valuable, useful info via this format — and search engines don't like it, either.

But even if it's the case that you can get all these experts to contribute and it's not overdone in your market space, there are two other big problems. One, the content format is awful, awful for trying to get valuable and useful information. It rarely actually satisfies either searchers or engines. If you search for constitutional law cases and you see "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," you might click. But my god, have you gone through those types of content? Have you tried to read a lot of those roundups? They are usually awful, just terrible. You might get a nugget here or there, but there's a bunch of contributions that are multiple paragraphs long and try to include links back to wherever the expert is trying to get their links going. There's a bunch of them that are short and meaningless. Many of them overlap. It's annoying. It's bad. It's not well-curated. It's not well-put together. There are exceptions. Sometimes people put real effort into them and they get good, but most of the time these are real bad things, and you rarely see them in the search results. BuzzSumo did a great analysis of content that gets shares and gets links and gets rankings. Guess what did not fall into it — expert roundups.

3. Roundups don't earn as many links, and the traffic spike from tweets is temporary.

Number three. That's number three. The links that the creators want from these roundups, that they're hoping they're going to get, it doesn't end up there most of the time. What usually happens is you get a short traffic spike, some additional engagement, some additional activity on mostly Twitter, sometimes a little bit Facebook or LinkedIn, but it's almost all social activity, and it's a very brief spike.

5 formats to try instead

So what are some better alternatives? What are some things we can do? Well, I've got five for you.

1. Surveys

First off, if you're going to be creating content that is around a roundup, why not do almost exactly the same process, but rather than asking a single question or a set of questions that people are replying to, ask them to fill out a short survey with a few data points, because then you can create awesome graphs and visuals, which have much stronger link earning potential. It's the same outreach effort, but for much more compelling content that often does a better job of ranking, is often more newsworthy and link worthy. I really, really like surveys, and I think that they can work tremendously well if you can put them together right.

2. Aggregations of public data

Second, let's say you go, "Oh, Rand, that would be great, but I want to survey people about this thing, and they won't give me the information that I'm looking for." Never fear. You can aggregate public data. So a lot of these pieces of information that may be interesting to your audience, that you could use to create cool visuals, the graphs and charts and all that kind of thing and trend lines, are actually available on the web. All you need to do is cite those sources, pull in that data, build it yourself, and then you can outreach to the people who are behind these companies or these organizations or these individuals, and then say, "Hey, I made this based on public data. Can you correct any errors?" Now you've got the outreach, which can lead to the incentive to share and to build a link. Very cool.

3. Experiments and case studies

So this is taking a much smaller group, saying, "I'm only going to work with this one person or these couple of people, or I'm going to do it myself. Here's what Seattle's most influential law firm found when they challenged 10 state laws." Well, there you go. Now I've got an interesting, wholly formed case study. I only had to work with one expert, but chances are good that lots and lots of people will be interested in this. It's also excellent for newsworthiness. It often can get lots of press coverage in whatever industry you're in.

4. Seeking out controversial counter-opinions on a topic

Fourth, if you're going to do a roundup-style thing and you're going to collect multiple opinions, if you can find a few points or a single subject around which multiple experts have different opinions, that could be just two people, it could be four or five, it could be seven or eight, but you're basically trying to create this controversy. You're saying like, "Here are these people on this side of this issue. Here are these people on this side of this issue, Wil Reynolds versus Rand Fishkin on link building." I think we did a presentation like that in Minneapolis last year or a couple years ago. It was super fun. Wil and I got up on stage, and we sort of debated with each other. There were no losers in that debate. It was great. This leverages the emotional response you're seeking of conflict. It creates more engaging content by far, and there's more incentive for the parties who participate to link and share, because they're sort of showing off their opinion and trying to make counterpoints. You can get a lot of good things.

5. Not just text!

Number five. If you've decided, "You know what? None of these formats or any others work. I really, really want to do a roundup. I think it can work for me," okay. But do me a favor and try something that is not just text, not just text. Muzli is a newsletter I subscribe to in the design world that does lots of roundup-style content, but the roundups are all visuals. They're visuals. They're like UI interactions and GIFs and animations and illustrations. I actually really love those. Those get great engagement, and they rank, by the way. They rank quite well. Many of the ones that they link to in the newsletter do well. You can do this with visuals. You can do it with data. You could do it with revenue numbers. You could do it with tools. You could do it with products, whatever it is. I would suggest thinking a little more broadly than, "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write." I think that there's a lot more opportunity outside of the pure expert roundup space, and I hope you'll share your creative ideas with us and the successes you've seen. We look forward to seeing you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care. Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[swunlimitednj]

Better Alternatives to "Expert Roundup"-Style Content - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

You may be tempted to publish that newest round of answers you've gotten from industry experts, but hold off — there's a better way. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why expert roundups just aren't the best use of your time and effort, and how to pivot your strategy to create similar content that'll make the juice worth the squeeze.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to look at some better alternatives to the expert roundup-style content that's become extremely popular on the web. There are a few reasons why it's popular. So let's talk about why SEOs and content marketers do so many expert roundups, why this became a popular content format.

Why do SEOs and content marketers even use "expert roundups?"

Okay. It turns out if you've got a piece of content that's like "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," maybe you interviewed a bunch of constitutional laws scholars and you put together this article, there's a bunch of nice things that you actually do get from this, which is why people use this format, right? You kind of get automatic outreach, because if you talk to these people, you've had a connection with them. You've built a little bit of a relationship. There's now something of an incentive to share for these folks and the potential for a link. All of those are sort of elements that people are looking for, well, that marketers are looking for from their content. The nice thing is you've got this long cadre of individuals who have contributed, and they create the content, which means you don't have to, saving you a bunch of time and energy. They become your amplifier so you can kind of sit back and relax when it comes time to broadcast it out there. You just tell them it's ready, and they go and push it. They lend your content credibility. So even if you don't have any credibility with your brand or with your website, they deliver it for you. You don't have to do that.

There are a few big problems with this kind of content.

Those are all really nice things. Don't get me wrong. I understand why. But there are some big, big problems with expert roundup-style content.

1. Like many easy-to-replicate tactics, expert roundups become WAY overdone.

First one, like many of the easy to replicate tactics, expert roundup has got spam to hack. They became way, way overdone. I get emails like this. "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write. Do this. Then share. Okay. Bye, Spammy McSpams-A-Lot." Look, Mr. McSpams-A-Lot, I appreciate how often you think of me. I love that every day there are a couple of offers like this in my inbox. I try to contribute to less than one every two or three weeks and only the ones that look super credible and real interesting. But jeez, can you imagine if you are truly an expert, who can lend credibility and create lots of amplification, you're getting overwhelmed with these kinds of requests, and people are probably getting very tired of reading them, especially in certain market segments where they've become way too overdone.

2. It's hard for searchers to get valuable, useful info via this format — and search engines don't like it, either.

But even if it's the case that you can get all these experts to contribute and it's not overdone in your market space, there are two other big problems. One, the content format is awful, awful for trying to get valuable and useful information. It rarely actually satisfies either searchers or engines. If you search for constitutional law cases and you see "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," you might click. But my god, have you gone through those types of content? Have you tried to read a lot of those roundups? They are usually awful, just terrible. You might get a nugget here or there, but there's a bunch of contributions that are multiple paragraphs long and try to include links back to wherever the expert is trying to get their links going. There's a bunch of them that are short and meaningless. Many of them overlap. It's annoying. It's bad. It's not well-curated. It's not well-put together. There are exceptions. Sometimes people put real effort into them and they get good, but most of the time these are real bad things, and you rarely see them in the search results. BuzzSumo did a great analysis of content that gets shares and gets links and gets rankings. Guess what did not fall into it — expert roundups.

3. Roundups don't earn as many links, and the traffic spike from tweets is temporary.

Number three. That's number three. The links that the creators want from these roundups, that they're hoping they're going to get, it doesn't end up there most of the time. What usually happens is you get a short traffic spike, some additional engagement, some additional activity on mostly Twitter, sometimes a little bit Facebook or LinkedIn, but it's almost all social activity, and it's a very brief spike.

5 formats to try instead

So what are some better alternatives? What are some things we can do? Well, I've got five for you.

1. Surveys

First off, if you're going to be creating content that is around a roundup, why not do almost exactly the same process, but rather than asking a single question or a set of questions that people are replying to, ask them to fill out a short survey with a few data points, because then you can create awesome graphs and visuals, which have much stronger link earning potential. It's the same outreach effort, but for much more compelling content that often does a better job of ranking, is often more newsworthy and link worthy. I really, really like surveys, and I think that they can work tremendously well if you can put them together right.

2. Aggregations of public data

Second, let's say you go, "Oh, Rand, that would be great, but I want to survey people about this thing, and they won't give me the information that I'm looking for." Never fear. You can aggregate public data. So a lot of these pieces of information that may be interesting to your audience, that you could use to create cool visuals, the graphs and charts and all that kind of thing and trend lines, are actually available on the web. All you need to do is cite those sources, pull in that data, build it yourself, and then you can outreach to the people who are behind these companies or these organizations or these individuals, and then say, "Hey, I made this based on public data. Can you correct any errors?" Now you've got the outreach, which can lead to the incentive to share and to build a link. Very cool.

3. Experiments and case studies

So this is taking a much smaller group, saying, "I'm only going to work with this one person or these couple of people, or I'm going to do it myself. Here's what Seattle's most influential law firm found when they challenged 10 state laws." Well, there you go. Now I've got an interesting, wholly formed case study. I only had to work with one expert, but chances are good that lots and lots of people will be interested in this. It's also excellent for newsworthiness. It often can get lots of press coverage in whatever industry you're in.

4. Seeking out controversial counter-opinions on a topic

Fourth, if you're going to do a roundup-style thing and you're going to collect multiple opinions, if you can find a few points or a single subject around which multiple experts have different opinions, that could be just two people, it could be four or five, it could be seven or eight, but you're basically trying to create this controversy. You're saying like, "Here are these people on this side of this issue. Here are these people on this side of this issue, Wil Reynolds versus Rand Fishkin on link building." I think we did a presentation like that in Minneapolis last year or a couple years ago. It was super fun. Wil and I got up on stage, and we sort of debated with each other. There were no losers in that debate. It was great. This leverages the emotional response you're seeking of conflict. It creates more engaging content by far, and there's more incentive for the parties who participate to link and share, because they're sort of showing off their opinion and trying to make counterpoints. You can get a lot of good things.

5. Not just text!

Number five. If you've decided, "You know what? None of these formats or any others work. I really, really want to do a roundup. I think it can work for me," okay. But do me a favor and try something that is not just text, not just text. Muzli is a newsletter I subscribe to in the design world that does lots of roundup-style content, but the roundups are all visuals. They're visuals. They're like UI interactions and GIFs and animations and illustrations. I actually really love those. Those get great engagement, and they rank, by the way. They rank quite well. Many of the ones that they link to in the newsletter do well. You can do this with visuals. You can do it with data. You could do it with revenue numbers. You could do it with tools. You could do it with products, whatever it is. I would suggest thinking a little more broadly than, "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write." I think that there's a lot more opportunity outside of the pure expert roundup space, and I hope you'll share your creative ideas with us and the successes you've seen. We look forward to seeing you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care. Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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[ubizheroes]

Better Alternatives to “Expert Roundup”-Style Content – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

You may be tempted to publish that newest round of answers you’ve gotten from industry experts, but hold off — there’s a better way. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why expert roundups just aren’t the best use of your time and effort, and how to pivot your strategy to create similar content that’ll make the juice worth the squeeze.

http://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/9w7kz7wepj?videoFoam=true

http://fast.wistia.net/assets/external/E-v1.js

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to look at some better alternatives to the expert roundup-style content that’s become extremely popular on the web. There are a few reasons why it’s popular. So let’s talk about why SEOs and content marketers do so many expert roundups, why this became a popular content format.

Why do SEOs and content marketers even use “expert roundups?”

Okay. It turns out if you’ve got a piece of content that’s like “75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases,” maybe you interviewed a bunch of constitutional laws scholars and you put together this article, there’s a bunch of nice things that you actually do get from this, which is why people use this format, right?

You kind of get automatic outreach, because if you talk to these people, you’ve had a connection with them. You’ve built a little bit of a relationship. There’s now something of an incentive to share for these folks and the potential for a link. All of those are sort of elements that people are looking for, well, that marketers are looking for from their content.

The nice thing is you’ve got this long cadre of individuals who have contributed, and they create the content, which means you don’t have to, saving you a bunch of time and energy. They become your amplifier so you can kind of sit back and relax when it comes time to broadcast it out there. You just tell them it’s ready, and they go and push it. They lend your content credibility. So even if you don’t have any credibility with your brand or with your website, they deliver it for you. You don’t have to do that.

There are a few big problems with this kind of content.

Those are all really nice things. Don’t get me wrong. I understand why. But there are some big, big problems with expert roundup-style content.

1. Like many easy-to-replicate tactics, expert roundups become WAY overdone.

First one, like many of the easy to replicate tactics, expert roundup has got spam to hack. They became way, way overdone. I get emails like this. “Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write. Do this. Then share. Okay. Bye, Spammy McSpams-A-Lot.”

Look, Mr. McSpams-A-Lot, I appreciate how often you think of me. I love that every day there are a couple of offers like this in my inbox. I try to contribute to less than one every two or three weeks and only the ones that look super credible and real interesting. But jeez, can you imagine if you are truly an expert, who can lend credibility and create lots of amplification, you’re getting overwhelmed with these kinds of requests, and people are probably getting very tired of reading them, especially in certain market segments where they’ve become way too overdone.

2. It’s hard for searchers to get valuable, useful info via this format — and search engines don’t like it, either.

But even if it’s the case that you can get all these experts to contribute and it’s not overdone in your market space, there are two other big problems. One, the content format is awful, awful for trying to get valuable and useful information. It rarely actually satisfies either searchers or engines.

If you search for constitutional law cases and you see “75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases,” you might click. But my god, have you gone through those types of content? Have you tried to read a lot of those roundups? They are usually awful, just terrible.

You might get a nugget here or there, but there’s a bunch of contributions that are multiple paragraphs long and try to include links back to wherever the expert is trying to get their links going. There’s a bunch of them that are short and meaningless. Many of them overlap.

It’s annoying. It’s bad. It’s not well-curated. It’s not well-put together. There are exceptions. Sometimes people put real effort into them and they get good, but most of the time these are real bad things, and you rarely see them in the search results.

BuzzSumo did a great analysis of content that gets shares and gets links and gets rankings. Guess what did not fall into it — expert roundups.

3. Roundups don’t earn as many links, and the traffic spike from tweets is temporary.

Number three. That’s number three. The links that the creators want from these roundups, that they’re hoping they’re going to get, it doesn’t end up there most of the time. What usually happens is you get a short traffic spike, some additional engagement, some additional activity on mostly Twitter, sometimes a little bit Facebook or LinkedIn, but it’s almost all social activity, and it’s a very brief spike.

5 formats to try instead

So what are some better alternatives? What are some things we can do? Well, I’ve got five for you.

1. Surveys

First off, if you’re going to be creating content that is around a roundup, why not do almost exactly the same process, but rather than asking a single question or a set of questions that people are replying to, ask them to fill out a short survey with a few data points, because then you can create awesome graphs and visuals, which have much stronger link earning potential. It’s the same outreach effort, but for much more compelling content that often does a better job of ranking, is often more newsworthy and link worthy. I really, really like surveys, and I think that they can work tremendously well if you can put them together right.

2. Aggregations of public data

Second, let’s say you go, “Oh, Rand, that would be great, but I want to survey people about this thing, and they won’t give me the information that I’m looking for.” Never fear. You can aggregate public data.

So a lot of these pieces of information that may be interesting to your audience, that you could use to create cool visuals, the graphs and charts and all that kind of thing and trend lines, are actually available on the web. All you need to do is cite those sources, pull in that data, build it yourself, and then you can outreach to the people who are behind these companies or these organizations or these individuals, and then say, “Hey, I made this based on public data. Can you correct any errors?” Now you’ve got the outreach, which can lead to the incentive to share and to build a link. Very cool.

3. Experiments and case studies

So this is taking a much smaller group, saying, “I’m only going to work with this one person or these couple of people, or I’m going to do it myself. Here’s what Seattle’s most influential law firm found when they challenged 10 state laws.” Well, there you go. Now I’ve got an interesting, wholly formed case study. I only had to work with one expert, but chances are good that lots and lots of people will be interested in this. It’s also excellent for newsworthiness. It often can get lots of press coverage in whatever industry you’re in.

4. Seeking out controversial counter-opinions on a topic

Fourth, if you’re going to do a roundup-style thing and you’re going to collect multiple opinions, if you can find a few points or a single subject around which multiple experts have different opinions, that could be just two people, it could be four or five, it could be seven or eight, but you’re basically trying to create this controversy.

You’re saying like, “Here are these people on this side of this issue. Here are these people on this side of this issue, Wil Reynolds versus Rand Fishkin on link building.” I think we did a presentation like that in Minneapolis last year or a couple years ago. It was super fun. Wil and I got up on stage, and we sort of debated with each other. There were no losers in that debate. It was great.

This leverages the emotional response you’re seeking of conflict. It creates more engaging content by far, and there’s more incentive for the parties who participate to link and share, because they’re sort of showing off their opinion and trying to make counterpoints. You can get a lot of good things.

5. Not just text!

Number five. If you’ve decided, “You know what? None of these formats or any others work. I really, really want to do a roundup. I think it can work for me,” okay. But do me a favor and try something that is not just text, not just text.

Muzli is a newsletter I subscribe to in the design world that does lots of roundup-style content, but the roundups are all visuals. They’re visuals. They’re like UI interactions and GIFs and animations and illustrations. I actually really love those. Those get great engagement, and they rank, by the way. They rank quite well. Many of the ones that they link to in the newsletter do well.

You can do this with visuals. You can do it with data. You could do it with revenue numbers. You could do it with tools. You could do it with products, whatever it is.

I would suggest thinking a little more broadly than, “Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write.” I think that there’s a lot more opportunity outside of the pure expert roundup space, and I hope you’ll share your creative ideas with us and the successes you’ve seen.

We look forward to seeing you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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[lawrenceseitz22]

Better Alternatives to "Expert Roundup"-Style Content - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

You may be tempted to publish that newest round of answers you've gotten from industry experts, but hold off — there's a better way. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why expert roundups just aren't the best use of your time and effort, and how to pivot your strategy to create similar content that'll make the juice worth the squeeze.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to look at some better alternatives to the expert roundup-style content that's become extremely popular on the web. There are a few reasons why it's popular. So let's talk about why SEOs and content marketers do so many expert roundups, why this became a popular content format.

Why do SEOs and content marketers even use "expert roundups?"

Okay. It turns out if you've got a piece of content that's like "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," maybe you interviewed a bunch of constitutional laws scholars and you put together this article, there's a bunch of nice things that you actually do get from this, which is why people use this format, right? You kind of get automatic outreach, because if you talk to these people, you've had a connection with them. You've built a little bit of a relationship. There's now something of an incentive to share for these folks and the potential for a link. All of those are sort of elements that people are looking for, well, that marketers are looking for from their content. The nice thing is you've got this long cadre of individuals who have contributed, and they create the content, which means you don't have to, saving you a bunch of time and energy. They become your amplifier so you can kind of sit back and relax when it comes time to broadcast it out there. You just tell them it's ready, and they go and push it. They lend your content credibility. So even if you don't have any credibility with your brand or with your website, they deliver it for you. You don't have to do that.

There are a few big problems with this kind of content.

Those are all really nice things. Don't get me wrong. I understand why. But there are some big, big problems with expert roundup-style content.

1. Like many easy-to-replicate tactics, expert roundups become WAY overdone.

First one, like many of the easy to replicate tactics, expert roundup has got spam to hack. They became way, way overdone. I get emails like this. "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write. Do this. Then share. Okay. Bye, Spammy McSpams-A-Lot." Look, Mr. McSpams-A-Lot, I appreciate how often you think of me. I love that every day there are a couple of offers like this in my inbox. I try to contribute to less than one every two or three weeks and only the ones that look super credible and real interesting. But jeez, can you imagine if you are truly an expert, who can lend credibility and create lots of amplification, you're getting overwhelmed with these kinds of requests, and people are probably getting very tired of reading them, especially in certain market segments where they've become way too overdone.

2. It's hard for searchers to get valuable, useful info via this format — and search engines don't like it, either.

But even if it's the case that you can get all these experts to contribute and it's not overdone in your market space, there are two other big problems. One, the content format is awful, awful for trying to get valuable and useful information. It rarely actually satisfies either searchers or engines. If you search for constitutional law cases and you see "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," you might click. But my god, have you gone through those types of content? Have you tried to read a lot of those roundups? They are usually awful, just terrible. You might get a nugget here or there, but there's a bunch of contributions that are multiple paragraphs long and try to include links back to wherever the expert is trying to get their links going. There's a bunch of them that are short and meaningless. Many of them overlap. It's annoying. It's bad. It's not well-curated. It's not well-put together. There are exceptions. Sometimes people put real effort into them and they get good, but most of the time these are real bad things, and you rarely see them in the search results. BuzzSumo did a great analysis of content that gets shares and gets links and gets rankings. Guess what did not fall into it — expert roundups.

3. Roundups don't earn as many links, and the traffic spike from tweets is temporary.

Number three. That's number three. The links that the creators want from these roundups, that they're hoping they're going to get, it doesn't end up there most of the time. What usually happens is you get a short traffic spike, some additional engagement, some additional activity on mostly Twitter, sometimes a little bit Facebook or LinkedIn, but it's almost all social activity, and it's a very brief spike.

5 formats to try instead

So what are some better alternatives? What are some things we can do? Well, I've got five for you.

1. Surveys

First off, if you're going to be creating content that is around a roundup, why not do almost exactly the same process, but rather than asking a single question or a set of questions that people are replying to, ask them to fill out a short survey with a few data points, because then you can create awesome graphs and visuals, which have much stronger link earning potential. It's the same outreach effort, but for much more compelling content that often does a better job of ranking, is often more newsworthy and link worthy. I really, really like surveys, and I think that they can work tremendously well if you can put them together right.

2. Aggregations of public data

Second, let's say you go, "Oh, Rand, that would be great, but I want to survey people about this thing, and they won't give me the information that I'm looking for." Never fear. You can aggregate public data. So a lot of these pieces of information that may be interesting to your audience, that you could use to create cool visuals, the graphs and charts and all that kind of thing and trend lines, are actually available on the web. All you need to do is cite those sources, pull in that data, build it yourself, and then you can outreach to the people who are behind these companies or these organizations or these individuals, and then say, "Hey, I made this based on public data. Can you correct any errors?" Now you've got the outreach, which can lead to the incentive to share and to build a link. Very cool.

3. Experiments and case studies

So this is taking a much smaller group, saying, "I'm only going to work with this one person or these couple of people, or I'm going to do it myself. Here's what Seattle's most influential law firm found when they challenged 10 state laws." Well, there you go. Now I've got an interesting, wholly formed case study. I only had to work with one expert, but chances are good that lots and lots of people will be interested in this. It's also excellent for newsworthiness. It often can get lots of press coverage in whatever industry you're in.

4. Seeking out controversial counter-opinions on a topic

Fourth, if you're going to do a roundup-style thing and you're going to collect multiple opinions, if you can find a few points or a single subject around which multiple experts have different opinions, that could be just two people, it could be four or five, it could be seven or eight, but you're basically trying to create this controversy. You're saying like, "Here are these people on this side of this issue. Here are these people on this side of this issue, Wil Reynolds versus Rand Fishkin on link building." I think we did a presentation like that in Minneapolis last year or a couple years ago. It was super fun. Wil and I got up on stage, and we sort of debated with each other. There were no losers in that debate. It was great. This leverages the emotional response you're seeking of conflict. It creates more engaging content by far, and there's more incentive for the parties who participate to link and share, because they're sort of showing off their opinion and trying to make counterpoints. You can get a lot of good things.

5. Not just text!

Number five. If you've decided, "You know what? None of these formats or any others work. I really, really want to do a roundup. I think it can work for me," okay. But do me a favor and try something that is not just text, not just text. Muzli is a newsletter I subscribe to in the design world that does lots of roundup-style content, but the roundups are all visuals. They're visuals. They're like UI interactions and GIFs and animations and illustrations. I actually really love those. Those get great engagement, and they rank, by the way. They rank quite well. Many of the ones that they link to in the newsletter do well. You can do this with visuals. You can do it with data. You could do it with revenue numbers. You could do it with tools. You could do it with products, whatever it is. I would suggest thinking a little more broadly than, "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write." I think that there's a lot more opportunity outside of the pure expert roundup space, and I hope you'll share your creative ideas with us and the successes you've seen. We look forward to seeing you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care. Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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[tracisimpson]

Better Alternatives to "Expert Roundup"-Style Content - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

You may be tempted to publish that newest round of answers you've gotten from industry experts, but hold off — there's a better way. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why expert roundups just aren't the best use of your time and effort, and how to pivot your strategy to create similar content that'll make the juice worth the squeeze.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to look at some better alternatives to the expert roundup-style content that's become extremely popular on the web. There are a few reasons why it's popular. So let's talk about why SEOs and content marketers do so many expert roundups, why this became a popular content format.

Why do SEOs and content marketers even use "expert roundups?"

Okay. It turns out if you've got a piece of content that's like "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," maybe you interviewed a bunch of constitutional laws scholars and you put together this article, there's a bunch of nice things that you actually do get from this, which is why people use this format, right? You kind of get automatic outreach, because if you talk to these people, you've had a connection with them. You've built a little bit of a relationship. There's now something of an incentive to share for these folks and the potential for a link. All of those are sort of elements that people are looking for, well, that marketers are looking for from their content. The nice thing is you've got this long cadre of individuals who have contributed, and they create the content, which means you don't have to, saving you a bunch of time and energy. They become your amplifier so you can kind of sit back and relax when it comes time to broadcast it out there. You just tell them it's ready, and they go and push it. They lend your content credibility. So even if you don't have any credibility with your brand or with your website, they deliver it for you. You don't have to do that.

There are a few big problems with this kind of content.

Those are all really nice things. Don't get me wrong. I understand why. But there are some big, big problems with expert roundup-style content.

1. Like many easy-to-replicate tactics, expert roundups become WAY overdone.

First one, like many of the easy to replicate tactics, expert roundup has got spam to hack. They became way, way overdone. I get emails like this. "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write. Do this. Then share. Okay. Bye, Spammy McSpams-A-Lot." Look, Mr. McSpams-A-Lot, I appreciate how often you think of me. I love that every day there are a couple of offers like this in my inbox. I try to contribute to less than one every two or three weeks and only the ones that look super credible and real interesting. But jeez, can you imagine if you are truly an expert, who can lend credibility and create lots of amplification, you're getting overwhelmed with these kinds of requests, and people are probably getting very tired of reading them, especially in certain market segments where they've become way too overdone.

2. It's hard for searchers to get valuable, useful info via this format — and search engines don't like it, either.

But even if it's the case that you can get all these experts to contribute and it's not overdone in your market space, there are two other big problems. One, the content format is awful, awful for trying to get valuable and useful information. It rarely actually satisfies either searchers or engines. If you search for constitutional law cases and you see "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," you might click. But my god, have you gone through those types of content? Have you tried to read a lot of those roundups? They are usually awful, just terrible. You might get a nugget here or there, but there's a bunch of contributions that are multiple paragraphs long and try to include links back to wherever the expert is trying to get their links going. There's a bunch of them that are short and meaningless. Many of them overlap. It's annoying. It's bad. It's not well-curated. It's not well-put together. There are exceptions. Sometimes people put real effort into them and they get good, but most of the time these are real bad things, and you rarely see them in the search results. BuzzSumo did a great analysis of content that gets shares and gets links and gets rankings. Guess what did not fall into it — expert roundups.

3. Roundups don't earn as many links, and the traffic spike from tweets is temporary.

Number three. That's number three. The links that the creators want from these roundups, that they're hoping they're going to get, it doesn't end up there most of the time. What usually happens is you get a short traffic spike, some additional engagement, some additional activity on mostly Twitter, sometimes a little bit Facebook or LinkedIn, but it's almost all social activity, and it's a very brief spike.

5 formats to try instead

So what are some better alternatives? What are some things we can do? Well, I've got five for you.

1. Surveys

First off, if you're going to be creating content that is around a roundup, why not do almost exactly the same process, but rather than asking a single question or a set of questions that people are replying to, ask them to fill out a short survey with a few data points, because then you can create awesome graphs and visuals, which have much stronger link earning potential. It's the same outreach effort, but for much more compelling content that often does a better job of ranking, is often more newsworthy and link worthy. I really, really like surveys, and I think that they can work tremendously well if you can put them together right.

2. Aggregations of public data

Second, let's say you go, "Oh, Rand, that would be great, but I want to survey people about this thing, and they won't give me the information that I'm looking for." Never fear. You can aggregate public data. So a lot of these pieces of information that may be interesting to your audience, that you could use to create cool visuals, the graphs and charts and all that kind of thing and trend lines, are actually available on the web. All you need to do is cite those sources, pull in that data, build it yourself, and then you can outreach to the people who are behind these companies or these organizations or these individuals, and then say, "Hey, I made this based on public data. Can you correct any errors?" Now you've got the outreach, which can lead to the incentive to share and to build a link. Very cool.

3. Experiments and case studies

So this is taking a much smaller group, saying, "I'm only going to work with this one person or these couple of people, or I'm going to do it myself. Here's what Seattle's most influential law firm found when they challenged 10 state laws." Well, there you go. Now I've got an interesting, wholly formed case study. I only had to work with one expert, but chances are good that lots and lots of people will be interested in this. It's also excellent for newsworthiness. It often can get lots of press coverage in whatever industry you're in.

4. Seeking out controversial counter-opinions on a topic

Fourth, if you're going to do a roundup-style thing and you're going to collect multiple opinions, if you can find a few points or a single subject around which multiple experts have different opinions, that could be just two people, it could be four or five, it could be seven or eight, but you're basically trying to create this controversy. You're saying like, "Here are these people on this side of this issue. Here are these people on this side of this issue, Wil Reynolds versus Rand Fishkin on link building." I think we did a presentation like that in Minneapolis last year or a couple years ago. It was super fun. Wil and I got up on stage, and we sort of debated with each other. There were no losers in that debate. It was great. This leverages the emotional response you're seeking of conflict. It creates more engaging content by far, and there's more incentive for the parties who participate to link and share, because they're sort of showing off their opinion and trying to make counterpoints. You can get a lot of good things.

5. Not just text!

Number five. If you've decided, "You know what? None of these formats or any others work. I really, really want to do a roundup. I think it can work for me," okay. But do me a favor and try something that is not just text, not just text. Muzli is a newsletter I subscribe to in the design world that does lots of roundup-style content, but the roundups are all visuals. They're visuals. They're like UI interactions and GIFs and animations and illustrations. I actually really love those. Those get great engagement, and they rank, by the way. They rank quite well. Many of the ones that they link to in the newsletter do well. You can do this with visuals. You can do it with data. You could do it with revenue numbers. You could do it with tools. You could do it with products, whatever it is. I would suggest thinking a little more broadly than, "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write." I think that there's a lot more opportunity outside of the pure expert roundup space, and I hope you'll share your creative ideas with us and the successes you've seen. We look forward to seeing you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care. Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[seocompanysurrey]

Better Alternatives to "Expert Roundup"-Style Content - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

You may be tempted to publish that newest round of answers you've gotten from industry experts, but hold off — there's a better way. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why expert roundups just aren't the best use of your time and effort, and how to pivot your strategy to create similar content that'll make the juice worth the squeeze.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to look at some better alternatives to the expert roundup-style content that's become extremely popular on the web. There are a few reasons why it's popular. So let's talk about why SEOs and content marketers do so many expert roundups, why this became a popular content format.

Why do SEOs and content marketers even use "expert roundups?"

Okay. It turns out if you've got a piece of content that's like "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," maybe you interviewed a bunch of constitutional laws scholars and you put together this article, there's a bunch of nice things that you actually do get from this, which is why people use this format, right? You kind of get automatic outreach, because if you talk to these people, you've had a connection with them. You've built a little bit of a relationship. There's now something of an incentive to share for these folks and the potential for a link. All of those are sort of elements that people are looking for, well, that marketers are looking for from their content. The nice thing is you've got this long cadre of individuals who have contributed, and they create the content, which means you don't have to, saving you a bunch of time and energy. They become your amplifier so you can kind of sit back and relax when it comes time to broadcast it out there. You just tell them it's ready, and they go and push it. They lend your content credibility. So even if you don't have any credibility with your brand or with your website, they deliver it for you. You don't have to do that.

There are a few big problems with this kind of content.

Those are all really nice things. Don't get me wrong. I understand why. But there are some big, big problems with expert roundup-style content.

1. Like many easy-to-replicate tactics, expert roundups become WAY overdone.

First one, like many of the easy to replicate tactics, expert roundup has got spam to hack. They became way, way overdone. I get emails like this. "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write. Do this. Then share. Okay. Bye, Spammy McSpams-A-Lot." Look, Mr. McSpams-A-Lot, I appreciate how often you think of me. I love that every day there are a couple of offers like this in my inbox. I try to contribute to less than one every two or three weeks and only the ones that look super credible and real interesting. But jeez, can you imagine if you are truly an expert, who can lend credibility and create lots of amplification, you're getting overwhelmed with these kinds of requests, and people are probably getting very tired of reading them, especially in certain market segments where they've become way too overdone.

2. It's hard for searchers to get valuable, useful info via this format — and search engines don't like it, either.

But even if it's the case that you can get all these experts to contribute and it's not overdone in your market space, there are two other big problems. One, the content format is awful, awful for trying to get valuable and useful information. It rarely actually satisfies either searchers or engines. If you search for constitutional law cases and you see "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," you might click. But my god, have you gone through those types of content? Have you tried to read a lot of those roundups? They are usually awful, just terrible. You might get a nugget here or there, but there's a bunch of contributions that are multiple paragraphs long and try to include links back to wherever the expert is trying to get their links going. There's a bunch of them that are short and meaningless. Many of them overlap. It's annoying. It's bad. It's not well-curated. It's not well-put together. There are exceptions. Sometimes people put real effort into them and they get good, but most of the time these are real bad things, and you rarely see them in the search results. BuzzSumo did a great analysis of content that gets shares and gets links and gets rankings. Guess what did not fall into it — expert roundups.

3. Roundups don't earn as many links, and the traffic spike from tweets is temporary.

Number three. That's number three. The links that the creators want from these roundups, that they're hoping they're going to get, it doesn't end up there most of the time. What usually happens is you get a short traffic spike, some additional engagement, some additional activity on mostly Twitter, sometimes a little bit Facebook or LinkedIn, but it's almost all social activity, and it's a very brief spike.

5 formats to try instead

So what are some better alternatives? What are some things we can do? Well, I've got five for you.

1. Surveys

First off, if you're going to be creating content that is around a roundup, why not do almost exactly the same process, but rather than asking a single question or a set of questions that people are replying to, ask them to fill out a short survey with a few data points, because then you can create awesome graphs and visuals, which have much stronger link earning potential. It's the same outreach effort, but for much more compelling content that often does a better job of ranking, is often more newsworthy and link worthy. I really, really like surveys, and I think that they can work tremendously well if you can put them together right.

2. Aggregations of public data

Second, let's say you go, "Oh, Rand, that would be great, but I want to survey people about this thing, and they won't give me the information that I'm looking for." Never fear. You can aggregate public data. So a lot of these pieces of information that may be interesting to your audience, that you could use to create cool visuals, the graphs and charts and all that kind of thing and trend lines, are actually available on the web. All you need to do is cite those sources, pull in that data, build it yourself, and then you can outreach to the people who are behind these companies or these organizations or these individuals, and then say, "Hey, I made this based on public data. Can you correct any errors?" Now you've got the outreach, which can lead to the incentive to share and to build a link. Very cool.

3. Experiments and case studies

So this is taking a much smaller group, saying, "I'm only going to work with this one person or these couple of people, or I'm going to do it myself. Here's what Seattle's most influential law firm found when they challenged 10 state laws." Well, there you go. Now I've got an interesting, wholly formed case study. I only had to work with one expert, but chances are good that lots and lots of people will be interested in this. It's also excellent for newsworthiness. It often can get lots of press coverage in whatever industry you're in.

4. Seeking out controversial counter-opinions on a topic

Fourth, if you're going to do a roundup-style thing and you're going to collect multiple opinions, if you can find a few points or a single subject around which multiple experts have different opinions, that could be just two people, it could be four or five, it could be seven or eight, but you're basically trying to create this controversy. You're saying like, "Here are these people on this side of this issue. Here are these people on this side of this issue, Wil Reynolds versus Rand Fishkin on link building." I think we did a presentation like that in Minneapolis last year or a couple years ago. It was super fun. Wil and I got up on stage, and we sort of debated with each other. There were no losers in that debate. It was great. This leverages the emotional response you're seeking of conflict. It creates more engaging content by far, and there's more incentive for the parties who participate to link and share, because they're sort of showing off their opinion and trying to make counterpoints. You can get a lot of good things.

5. Not just text!

Number five. If you've decided, "You know what? None of these formats or any others work. I really, really want to do a roundup. I think it can work for me," okay. But do me a favor and try something that is not just text, not just text. Muzli is a newsletter I subscribe to in the design world that does lots of roundup-style content, but the roundups are all visuals. They're visuals. They're like UI interactions and GIFs and animations and illustrations. I actually really love those. Those get great engagement, and they rank, by the way. They rank quite well. Many of the ones that they link to in the newsletter do well. You can do this with visuals. You can do it with data. You could do it with revenue numbers. You could do it with tools. You could do it with products, whatever it is. I would suggest thinking a little more broadly than, "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write." I think that there's a lot more opportunity outside of the pure expert roundup space, and I hope you'll share your creative ideas with us and the successes you've seen. We look forward to seeing you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care. Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/5483612

[mysticcreatorphantom]

Better Alternatives to “Expert Roundup”-Style Content – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

You may be tempted to publish that newest round of answers you’ve gotten from industry experts, but hold off — there’s a better way. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why expert roundups just aren’t the best use of your time and effort, and how to pivot your strategy to create similar content that’ll make the juice worth the squeeze.

http://ift.tt/2ms5NRA

http://ift.tt/1GaxkYO

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to look at some better alternatives to the expert roundup-style content that’s become extremely popular on the web. There are a few reasons why it’s popular. So let’s talk about why SEOs and content marketers do so many expert roundups, why this became a popular content format.

Why do SEOs and content marketers even use “expert roundups?”

Okay. It turns out if you’ve got a piece of content that’s like “75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases,” maybe you interviewed a bunch of constitutional laws scholars and you put together this article, there’s a bunch of nice things that you actually do get from this, which is why people use this format, right?

You kind of get automatic outreach, because if you talk to these people, you’ve had a connection with them. You’ve built a little bit of a relationship. There’s now something of an incentive to share for these folks and the potential for a link. All of those are sort of elements that people are looking for, well, that marketers are looking for from their content.

The nice thing is you’ve got this long cadre of individuals who have contributed, and they create the content, which means you don’t have to, saving you a bunch of time and energy. They become your amplifier so you can kind of sit back and relax when it comes time to broadcast it out there. You just tell them it’s ready, and they go and push it. They lend your content credibility. So even if you don’t have any credibility with your brand or with your website, they deliver it for you. You don’t have to do that.

There are a few big problems with this kind of content.

Those are all really nice things. Don’t get me wrong. I understand why. But there are some big, big problems with expert roundup-style content.

1. Like many easy-to-replicate tactics, expert roundups become WAY overdone.

First one, like many of the easy to replicate tactics, expert roundup has got spam to hack. They became way, way overdone. I get emails like this. “Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write. Do this. Then share. Okay. Bye, Spammy McSpams-A-Lot.”

Look, Mr. McSpams-A-Lot, I appreciate how often you think of me. I love that every day there are a couple of offers like this in my inbox. I try to contribute to less than one every two or three weeks and only the ones that look super credible and real interesting. But jeez, can you imagine if you are truly an expert, who can lend credibility and create lots of amplification, you’re getting overwhelmed with these kinds of requests, and people are probably getting very tired of reading them, especially in certain market segments where they’ve become way too overdone.

2. It’s hard for searchers to get valuable, useful info via this format — and search engines don’t like it, either.

But even if it’s the case that you can get all these experts to contribute and it’s not overdone in your market space, there are two other big problems. One, the content format is awful, awful for trying to get valuable and useful information. It rarely actually satisfies either searchers or engines.

If you search for constitutional law cases and you see “75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases,” you might click. But my god, have you gone through those types of content? Have you tried to read a lot of those roundups? They are usually awful, just terrible.

You might get a nugget here or there, but there’s a bunch of contributions that are multiple paragraphs long and try to include links back to wherever the expert is trying to get their links going. There’s a bunch of them that are short and meaningless. Many of them overlap.

It’s annoying. It’s bad. It’s not well-curated. It’s not well-put together. There are exceptions. Sometimes people put real effort into them and they get good, but most of the time these are real bad things, and you rarely see them in the search results.

BuzzSumo did a great analysis of content that gets shares and gets links and gets rankings. Guess what did not fall into it — expert roundups.

3. Roundups don’t earn as many links, and the traffic spike from tweets is temporary.

Number three. That’s number three. The links that the creators want from these roundups, that they’re hoping they’re going to get, it doesn’t end up there most of the time. What usually happens is you get a short traffic spike, some additional engagement, some additional activity on mostly Twitter, sometimes a little bit Facebook or LinkedIn, but it’s almost all social activity, and it’s a very brief spike.

5 formats to try instead

So what are some better alternatives? What are some things we can do? Well, I’ve got five for you.

1. Surveys

First off, if you’re going to be creating content that is around a roundup, why not do almost exactly the same process, but rather than asking a single question or a set of questions that people are replying to, ask them to fill out a short survey with a few data points, because then you can create awesome graphs and visuals, which have much stronger link earning potential. It’s the same outreach effort, but for much more compelling content that often does a better job of ranking, is often more newsworthy and link worthy. I really, really like surveys, and I think that they can work tremendously well if you can put them together right.

2. Aggregations of public data

Second, let’s say you go, “Oh, Rand, that would be great, but I want to survey people about this thing, and they won’t give me the information that I’m looking for.” Never fear. You can aggregate public data.

So a lot of these pieces of information that may be interesting to your audience, that you could use to create cool visuals, the graphs and charts and all that kind of thing and trend lines, are actually available on the web. All you need to do is cite those sources, pull in that data, build it yourself, and then you can outreach to the people who are behind these companies or these organizations or these individuals, and then say, “Hey, I made this based on public data. Can you correct any errors?” Now you’ve got the outreach, which can lead to the incentive to share and to build a link. Very cool.

3. Experiments and case studies

So this is taking a much smaller group, saying, “I’m only going to work with this one person or these couple of people, or I’m going to do it myself. Here’s what Seattle’s most influential law firm found when they challenged 10 state laws.” Well, there you go. Now I’ve got an interesting, wholly formed case study. I only had to work with one expert, but chances are good that lots and lots of people will be interested in this. It’s also excellent for newsworthiness. It often can get lots of press coverage in whatever industry you’re in.

4. Seeking out controversial counter-opinions on a topic

Fourth, if you’re going to do a roundup-style thing and you’re going to collect multiple opinions, if you can find a few points or a single subject around which multiple experts have different opinions, that could be just two people, it could be four or five, it could be seven or eight, but you’re basically trying to create this controversy.

You’re saying like, “Here are these people on this side of this issue. Here are these people on this side of this issue, Wil Reynolds versus Rand Fishkin on link building.” I think we did a presentation like that in Minneapolis last year or a couple years ago. It was super fun. Wil and I got up on stage, and we sort of debated with each other. There were no losers in that debate. It was great.

This leverages the emotional response you’re seeking of conflict. It creates more engaging content by far, and there’s more incentive for the parties who participate to link and share, because they’re sort of showing off their opinion and trying to make counterpoints. You can get a lot of good things.

5. Not just text!

Number five. If you’ve decided, “You know what? None of these formats or any others work. I really, really want to do a roundup. I think it can work for me,” okay. But do me a favor and try something that is not just text, not just text.

Muzli is a newsletter I subscribe to in the design world that does lots of roundup-style content, but the roundups are all visuals. They’re visuals. They’re like UI interactions and GIFs and animations and illustrations. I actually really love those. Those get great engagement, and they rank, by the way. They rank quite well. Many of the ones that they link to in the newsletter do well.

You can do this with visuals. You can do it with data. You could do it with revenue numbers. You could do it with tools. You could do it with products, whatever it is.

I would suggest thinking a little more broadly than, “Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write.” I think that there’s a lot more opportunity outside of the pure expert roundup space, and I hope you’ll share your creative ideas with us and the successes you’ve seen.

We look forward to seeing you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Better Alternatives to "Expert Roundup"-Style Content - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

You may be tempted to publish that newest round of answers you've gotten from industry experts, but hold off — there's a better way. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why expert roundups just aren't the best use of your time and effort, and how to pivot your strategy to create similar content that'll make the juice worth the squeeze.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to look at some better alternatives to the expert roundup-style content that's become extremely popular on the web. There are a few reasons why it's popular. So let's talk about why SEOs and content marketers do so many expert roundups, why this became a popular content format.

Why do SEOs and content marketers even use "expert roundups?"

Okay. It turns out if you've got a piece of content that's like "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," maybe you interviewed a bunch of constitutional laws scholars and you put together this article, there's a bunch of nice things that you actually do get from this, which is why people use this format, right? You kind of get automatic outreach, because if you talk to these people, you've had a connection with them. You've built a little bit of a relationship. There's now something of an incentive to share for these folks and the potential for a link. All of those are sort of elements that people are looking for, well, that marketers are looking for from their content. The nice thing is you've got this long cadre of individuals who have contributed, and they create the content, which means you don't have to, saving you a bunch of time and energy. They become your amplifier so you can kind of sit back and relax when it comes time to broadcast it out there. You just tell them it's ready, and they go and push it. They lend your content credibility. So even if you don't have any credibility with your brand or with your website, they deliver it for you. You don't have to do that.

There are a few big problems with this kind of content.

Those are all really nice things. Don't get me wrong. I understand why. But there are some big, big problems with expert roundup-style content.

1. Like many easy-to-replicate tactics, expert roundups become WAY overdone.

First one, like many of the easy to replicate tactics, expert roundup has got spam to hack. They became way, way overdone. I get emails like this. "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write. Do this. Then share. Okay. Bye, Spammy McSpams-A-Lot." Look, Mr. McSpams-A-Lot, I appreciate how often you think of me. I love that every day there are a couple of offers like this in my inbox. I try to contribute to less than one every two or three weeks and only the ones that look super credible and real interesting. But jeez, can you imagine if you are truly an expert, who can lend credibility and create lots of amplification, you're getting overwhelmed with these kinds of requests, and people are probably getting very tired of reading them, especially in certain market segments where they've become way too overdone.

2. It's hard for searchers to get valuable, useful info via this format — and search engines don't like it, either.

But even if it's the case that you can get all these experts to contribute and it's not overdone in your market space, there are two other big problems. One, the content format is awful, awful for trying to get valuable and useful information. It rarely actually satisfies either searchers or engines. If you search for constitutional law cases and you see "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," you might click. But my god, have you gone through those types of content? Have you tried to read a lot of those roundups? They are usually awful, just terrible. You might get a nugget here or there, but there's a bunch of contributions that are multiple paragraphs long and try to include links back to wherever the expert is trying to get their links going. There's a bunch of them that are short and meaningless. Many of them overlap. It's annoying. It's bad. It's not well-curated. It's not well-put together. There are exceptions. Sometimes people put real effort into them and they get good, but most of the time these are real bad things, and you rarely see them in the search results. BuzzSumo did a great analysis of content that gets shares and gets links and gets rankings. Guess what did not fall into it — expert roundups.

3. Roundups don't earn as many links, and the traffic spike from tweets is temporary.

Number three. That's number three. The links that the creators want from these roundups, that they're hoping they're going to get, it doesn't end up there most of the time. What usually happens is you get a short traffic spike, some additional engagement, some additional activity on mostly Twitter, sometimes a little bit Facebook or LinkedIn, but it's almost all social activity, and it's a very brief spike.

5 formats to try instead

So what are some better alternatives? What are some things we can do? Well, I've got five for you.

1. Surveys

First off, if you're going to be creating content that is around a roundup, why not do almost exactly the same process, but rather than asking a single question or a set of questions that people are replying to, ask them to fill out a short survey with a few data points, because then you can create awesome graphs and visuals, which have much stronger link earning potential. It's the same outreach effort, but for much more compelling content that often does a better job of ranking, is often more newsworthy and link worthy. I really, really like surveys, and I think that they can work tremendously well if you can put them together right.

2. Aggregations of public data

Second, let's say you go, "Oh, Rand, that would be great, but I want to survey people about this thing, and they won't give me the information that I'm looking for." Never fear. You can aggregate public data. So a lot of these pieces of information that may be interesting to your audience, that you could use to create cool visuals, the graphs and charts and all that kind of thing and trend lines, are actually available on the web. All you need to do is cite those sources, pull in that data, build it yourself, and then you can outreach to the people who are behind these companies or these organizations or these individuals, and then say, "Hey, I made this based on public data. Can you correct any errors?" Now you've got the outreach, which can lead to the incentive to share and to build a link. Very cool.

3. Experiments and case studies

So this is taking a much smaller group, saying, "I'm only going to work with this one person or these couple of people, or I'm going to do it myself. Here's what Seattle's most influential law firm found when they challenged 10 state laws." Well, there you go. Now I've got an interesting, wholly formed case study. I only had to work with one expert, but chances are good that lots and lots of people will be interested in this. It's also excellent for newsworthiness. It often can get lots of press coverage in whatever industry you're in.

4. Seeking out controversial counter-opinions on a topic

Fourth, if you're going to do a roundup-style thing and you're going to collect multiple opinions, if you can find a few points or a single subject around which multiple experts have different opinions, that could be just two people, it could be four or five, it could be seven or eight, but you're basically trying to create this controversy. You're saying like, "Here are these people on this side of this issue. Here are these people on this side of this issue, Wil Reynolds versus Rand Fishkin on link building." I think we did a presentation like that in Minneapolis last year or a couple years ago. It was super fun. Wil and I got up on stage, and we sort of debated with each other. There were no losers in that debate. It was great. This leverages the emotional response you're seeking of conflict. It creates more engaging content by far, and there's more incentive for the parties who participate to link and share, because they're sort of showing off their opinion and trying to make counterpoints. You can get a lot of good things.

5. Not just text!

Number five. If you've decided, "You know what? None of these formats or any others work. I really, really want to do a roundup. I think it can work for me," okay. But do me a favor and try something that is not just text, not just text. Muzli is a newsletter I subscribe to in the design world that does lots of roundup-style content, but the roundups are all visuals. They're visuals. They're like UI interactions and GIFs and animations and illustrations. I actually really love those. Those get great engagement, and they rank, by the way. They rank quite well. Many of the ones that they link to in the newsletter do well. You can do this with visuals. You can do it with data. You could do it with revenue numbers. You could do it with tools. You could do it with products, whatever it is. I would suggest thinking a little more broadly than, "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write." I think that there's a lot more opportunity outside of the pure expert roundup space, and I hope you'll share your creative ideas with us and the successes you've seen. We look forward to seeing you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care. Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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Better Alternatives to "Expert Roundup"-Style Content - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

You may be tempted to publish that newest round of answers you've gotten from industry experts, but hold off — there's a better way. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains why expert roundups just aren't the best use of your time and effort, and how to pivot your strategy to create similar content that'll make the juice worth the squeeze.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to look at some better alternatives to the expert roundup-style content that's become extremely popular on the web. There are a few reasons why it's popular. So let's talk about why SEOs and content marketers do so many expert roundups, why this became a popular content format.

Why do SEOs and content marketers even use "expert roundups?"

Okay. It turns out if you've got a piece of content that's like "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," maybe you interviewed a bunch of constitutional laws scholars and you put together this article, there's a bunch of nice things that you actually do get from this, which is why people use this format, right? You kind of get automatic outreach, because if you talk to these people, you've had a connection with them. You've built a little bit of a relationship. There's now something of an incentive to share for these folks and the potential for a link. All of those are sort of elements that people are looking for, well, that marketers are looking for from their content. The nice thing is you've got this long cadre of individuals who have contributed, and they create the content, which means you don't have to, saving you a bunch of time and energy. They become your amplifier so you can kind of sit back and relax when it comes time to broadcast it out there. You just tell them it's ready, and they go and push it. They lend your content credibility. So even if you don't have any credibility with your brand or with your website, they deliver it for you. You don't have to do that.

There are a few big problems with this kind of content.

Those are all really nice things. Don't get me wrong. I understand why. But there are some big, big problems with expert roundup-style content.

1. Like many easy-to-replicate tactics, expert roundups become WAY overdone.

First one, like many of the easy to replicate tactics, expert roundup has got spam to hack. They became way, way overdone. I get emails like this. "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write. Do this. Then share. Okay. Bye, Spammy McSpams-A-Lot." Look, Mr. McSpams-A-Lot, I appreciate how often you think of me. I love that every day there are a couple of offers like this in my inbox. I try to contribute to less than one every two or three weeks and only the ones that look super credible and real interesting. But jeez, can you imagine if you are truly an expert, who can lend credibility and create lots of amplification, you're getting overwhelmed with these kinds of requests, and people are probably getting very tired of reading them, especially in certain market segments where they've become way too overdone.

2. It's hard for searchers to get valuable, useful info via this format — and search engines don't like it, either.

But even if it's the case that you can get all these experts to contribute and it's not overdone in your market space, there are two other big problems. One, the content format is awful, awful for trying to get valuable and useful information. It rarely actually satisfies either searchers or engines. If you search for constitutional law cases and you see "75 Experts Share Their Favorite Constitutional Law Cases," you might click. But my god, have you gone through those types of content? Have you tried to read a lot of those roundups? They are usually awful, just terrible. You might get a nugget here or there, but there's a bunch of contributions that are multiple paragraphs long and try to include links back to wherever the expert is trying to get their links going. There's a bunch of them that are short and meaningless. Many of them overlap. It's annoying. It's bad. It's not well-curated. It's not well-put together. There are exceptions. Sometimes people put real effort into them and they get good, but most of the time these are real bad things, and you rarely see them in the search results. BuzzSumo did a great analysis of content that gets shares and gets links and gets rankings. Guess what did not fall into it — expert roundups.

3. Roundups don't earn as many links, and the traffic spike from tweets is temporary.

Number three. That's number three. The links that the creators want from these roundups, that they're hoping they're going to get, it doesn't end up there most of the time. What usually happens is you get a short traffic spike, some additional engagement, some additional activity on mostly Twitter, sometimes a little bit Facebook or LinkedIn, but it's almost all social activity, and it's a very brief spike.

5 formats to try instead

So what are some better alternatives? What are some things we can do? Well, I've got five for you.

1. Surveys

First off, if you're going to be creating content that is around a roundup, why not do almost exactly the same process, but rather than asking a single question or a set of questions that people are replying to, ask them to fill out a short survey with a few data points, because then you can create awesome graphs and visuals, which have much stronger link earning potential. It's the same outreach effort, but for much more compelling content that often does a better job of ranking, is often more newsworthy and link worthy. I really, really like surveys, and I think that they can work tremendously well if you can put them together right.

2. Aggregations of public data

Second, let's say you go, "Oh, Rand, that would be great, but I want to survey people about this thing, and they won't give me the information that I'm looking for." Never fear. You can aggregate public data. So a lot of these pieces of information that may be interesting to your audience, that you could use to create cool visuals, the graphs and charts and all that kind of thing and trend lines, are actually available on the web. All you need to do is cite those sources, pull in that data, build it yourself, and then you can outreach to the people who are behind these companies or these organizations or these individuals, and then say, "Hey, I made this based on public data. Can you correct any errors?" Now you've got the outreach, which can lead to the incentive to share and to build a link. Very cool.

3. Experiments and case studies

So this is taking a much smaller group, saying, "I'm only going to work with this one person or these couple of people, or I'm going to do it myself. Here's what Seattle's most influential law firm found when they challenged 10 state laws." Well, there you go. Now I've got an interesting, wholly formed case study. I only had to work with one expert, but chances are good that lots and lots of people will be interested in this. It's also excellent for newsworthiness. It often can get lots of press coverage in whatever industry you're in.

4. Seeking out controversial counter-opinions on a topic

Fourth, if you're going to do a roundup-style thing and you're going to collect multiple opinions, if you can find a few points or a single subject around which multiple experts have different opinions, that could be just two people, it could be four or five, it could be seven or eight, but you're basically trying to create this controversy. You're saying like, "Here are these people on this side of this issue. Here are these people on this side of this issue, Wil Reynolds versus Rand Fishkin on link building." I think we did a presentation like that in Minneapolis last year or a couple years ago. It was super fun. Wil and I got up on stage, and we sort of debated with each other. There were no losers in that debate. It was great. This leverages the emotional response you're seeking of conflict. It creates more engaging content by far, and there's more incentive for the parties who participate to link and share, because they're sort of showing off their opinion and trying to make counterpoints. You can get a lot of good things.

5. Not just text!

Number five. If you've decided, "You know what? None of these formats or any others work. I really, really want to do a roundup. I think it can work for me," okay. But do me a favor and try something that is not just text, not just text. Muzli is a newsletter I subscribe to in the design world that does lots of roundup-style content, but the roundups are all visuals. They're visuals. They're like UI interactions and GIFs and animations and illustrations. I actually really love those. Those get great engagement, and they rank, by the way. They rank quite well. Many of the ones that they link to in the newsletter do well. You can do this with visuals. You can do it with data. You could do it with revenue numbers. You could do it with tools. You could do it with products, whatever it is. I would suggest thinking a little more broadly than, "Dear Fishkin, I roundup. You write." I think that there's a lot more opportunity outside of the pure expert roundup space, and I hope you'll share your creative ideas with us and the successes you've seen. We look forward to seeing you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care. Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Better Alternatives to "Expert Roundup"-Style Content - Whiteboard Friday