Shake Hands with SEO and SEM. But Embrace Aggregated Reach.

Increasing your Google ranking for specific keywords is a tangible goal – so tangible that upper management now gets it. They are now strategizing and spending a lot of money on SEO and SEM.

Recalibrate your approach to traffic

There is value in SEO and SEM as part of a larger strategy to drive the right traffic to high-quality content. But if these last two components are left as afterthoughts in a “traffic strategy,” then you are wasting your efforts. Quality trumps quantity on the web today.

Now is the time to recalibrate your approach and ultimately ween upper management off the corporate traffic goals and onto effective conversion rates. These rates will be reached by focusing your efforts, instead, on distributing quality content to your niche audience.

Make nice with amateur influencers

Who are the people you need to focus on attracting? A good place to start is with the amateur influencers in your domain. Amateur influencers are people passionate about stuff related to your product or service. They are self-reported experts in an industry, and they actively blog, share, and converse with your audience. Some examples are Panini Happy, Coffee Geek, and GPS Insight.

There are hundreds, even thousands, of passionate individuals you must embrace and engage (if not hug and kiss).

Every industry is full of amateur influencers. Find out who they are and what they write about, and build a relationship with them through your content. Start creating content designed to speak to their audiences. When you enable amateur influencers to share and recontextualize your content, it ripples out across the web.

Increase your conversion rates

Since amateur influencers are trusted and have a focused, opt-in audience, it is no surprise that their sites enjoy astounding conversion rates. People will buy what someone they trust tells them is good.

For example, Panini Happy reaches only about 15,000 people a month. However, for Panini presses, this audience delivers a 60 or 70% conversion rate when they click through. That means if I build a relationship with Panini Happy and they pick up my content, I am going to sell more Panini presses.

Make ripples with aggregated reach

Content picked up by an amateur influencer is far more credible than the original post on your site. They can add their stamp of approval and increase your reach.

Let’s say your website reaches 100,000 people month. Let’s assume the amateur influencer reaches 10,000 people a month. Your aggregated reach for that single blog post is actually 110,000 people.

But if most of your 100,000 are being pushed into your site blindly by SEO and SEM, what’s going to keep them there? At least with the 10,000 who are following the amateur influencer, you know that the audience is engaged. It is a high-quality interaction.

And what if you manage to get content picked up by 10 more amateur influencers with 10,000 followers each? Then your aggregated reach is 200,000. Your ‘traffic’ has doubled, yes, but your engagement levels have way more than doubled. By selectively reaching beyond your dotcom, you have grown your conversion rates exponentially.

Get social

And in today’s social web, the reach doesn’t stop there. Because each of those 100,000 new people has a personal sphere of influence. If your content is presented by a trusted source and, say, 50,000 happen to absolutely love it, perhaps they’ll each share it with 5 of their friends (who probably have other friends as well).

This qualitative approach may not be as easy to fit into a box, but it sure will make your executives a lot happier when they unwrap it.

Takeaway

Concentrate on driving quality traffic through increasing the quality of your aggregated reach.

Questions

What are some of your favorite amateur influencers? What kinds of success have you had with reaching quality customers through your content marketing?

About the author

Andrew Davis -

In 2002, Andrew founded Tippingpoint Labs with journalist James Cosco. Since then, he's spent countless hours exploring the online universe and building a methodological approach to developing digital strategies that drive revenue or reduce costs.

Andrew's always asking big questions and analyzing data to understand markets, online forces and even business models. Andrew's research has resulted in the creation of innovative online metrics including Online Brand Value and Category Brand Value, eye-opening graphical representations of website evolution through the New Media Life Cycle and even using online data to predict offline revenue.

When he's not surfing the web, Andrew's traveling the globe speaking to a wide-variety of audiences about everything from social media to the future of print. Andrew is a frequent contributor to the Tippingpoint Labs website and has been creating valuable content since the early 1990s for The Jim Henson Company, CNN, The Today Show and MTV.

He's contributed to a book of short stories, called The Way Things Were and produced and co-wrote Roadside Ambition a documentary film about one small town with two huge balls.

"In a world where content is consumed as rapidly as it's created, companies need to develop a sound strategy to creating valuable online experiences that can, and should, be leveraged enterprise-wide. There is a content solution to every business challenge."