We live in an ever changing world of algorithms. At first glance this doesn’t really seem to be exciting or pertinent, until you consider that the way that Google delivers your search results for “hilarious dance video” is based entirely upon an algorithm.

Image via CrunchBase

Typically, companies who deliver content have developed these algorithms to help decide what content is most relevant to your needs as a user. Take the new Facebook “edgeRank” for instance. EdgeRank is the name for the Facebook algorithm that delivers your content to you. No longer is your newsfeed simply an aggregation of all the content posted by people and pages with whom you are connected. In many cases this would be a massive amount of information and actually degrade the user experience. It’s thought that perhaps as little as 15% of the total amount of content a user is subscribed to might show up in their newsfeed. I say the tricky thing about allowing others to measure your content is that you can never be quite sure just how they do it.

There are three major factors that go into how Facebook decides to deliver your content. The first is ‘affinity’, or how actively you interact with the user who posted the content. If you post on your friends’ walls, like their photos, and comment on each others status, then it’s likely the two of you will share a higher affinity score. The second part of EdgeRank is ‘weight’. Weight is a value judgement on what kind of content is posted. Typically video’s and photo’s will have a higher weight than a text status update. The final piece to the EdgeRank puzzle is something called ‘time decay’. Time decay measures how old the content is. You’re unlikely to care about a Places check-in from several weeks ago suddenly popping up in your newsfeed. Events that are timely will have a higher EdgeRank score that decreases over time.

So with all these new changes impacting how Facebook delivers your content, what can you do to accurately measure and impact your EdgeRank score? Do the same things you should have been doing from the beginning. The underlying factor to all these algorithm  changes is valuing content. If you are creating content that users are interested in, engage with, and amplify on their own, then your content is likely to have a good EdgeRank. Measuring your content’s performance may not give you an exact EdgeRank, but it will absolutely give you a clear indicator of how good your content is and if it’s doing its job with your users.

Raidious is hosting an open call for content correspondents. Our company continues to grow, and we need talented correspondents with broadcast journalism and social media experience.

Can you answer YES to all of these questions?

• Are you able to work independently with care?
• Are you patient and skillful with detail work?
• Fully adhering to well-defined processes to produce high quality results?
• Do you enjoy a steady pace, open environment requiring attention to detail?

If you can, then we have the position for you!

We are Raidious and we are an interactive marketing and communications company. We are purpose-built to produce content and manage dialogue for our clients brands. We have a casual, open work environment.

We have a position to join our team as a Content Correspondent. You will be responsible for delivering high quality content for Raidious clients. This content will be executed on time and on strategy at the direction of the Account Producer and Head of Publishing. This position will work out of our downtown Indianapolis, Indiana office.

Successful candidates will bring the following:

• Bachelor degree
• Minimum 1 year experience
• Strong writing skills
• Proficiency with web publishing tools
• Proficiency with image editing
• Ability to work a flexible schedule
• Ability to work independently
• Attention to detail
• Video editing a plus

Here is what you can expect in return as a Content Correspondent:

• Competitive hourly wage
• Business mileage and business expense reimbursement
• Opportunity to work for a successful, growing, casual company that rewards strong performance

If you are ready for the challenge and reward of our position, please fill out the form below.

Raidious has engaged ADVISA Hiring to identify the top candidates for this position. Per their request, please direct all communications about this position to the address above. As we will be communicating with you through this and other advisausa.com and advisahiring.com e-mail addresses, please be sure to take the necessary steps, such as adding this address to your address book, to avoid having correspondence caught in your e-mail filters.

Let’s face it… you are likely over capacity.

The online landscape has changed and so has the way we all do business today. If you are a marketer, you’re probably getting requests from the executive level DEMANDING that you get your multi-channel strategy together ASAP. To them, this is a reasonable request. But to you, the already stretched thin marketing director with a 3-4 person team, this request has just put a major kink in the marketing strategy you finalized a month ago! How do you scale your team to meet the demand?

The problem with the request is the misunderstanding of what it takes to run a multi-channel campaign. In the eyes of the “boss” it is as simple as setting up a few tools, slapping a logo on it, and letting the masses fill your pages with comments about how they love your brand….but you as a marketer know better. Oh, and by the way, there is no more budget. It’s ok though, because Facebook and Twitter are free… right?

If only it were that simple.

The questions going through your head are most likely

• Who is going to do all of this work?
• When we are at capacity, how will we scale?
• Where am I going to get all of this content?
• When will we find time to tackle this?
• What will our strategy look like?
• What will we write about?

If you are in this spot and feeling completely overwhelmed by this monstrous stack of tasks that have unknowingly been placed on your desk, you are not alone. But don’t fret, there are options. This scenario is the exact reason Raidious exists. In short, we can do all of this work for you.

We are structured and staffed to alleviate the capacity problem for your brand. Today there are many companies out there that can help you identify your strategy but few who will actually do the work for you. It sounds great in theory but it doesn’t solve the problem. You need doers. You need humans. We all know that the only resource for content is PEOPLE. But not just any people. You need professionals who understand how to write content. But it doesn’t stop there. You need people who can write content for the web, in the voice of your brand, in real time, in a way that marries your brand to your consumer, to the world. These people are not interns, junior level marketers, or friends of a friend who is good at Facebook.

It’s not rocket science. It is the simple truth. Employ the right people or partners to just “do the work” and you will look like a rock star to that executive team by growing your audience and bottom line. No sweat, no worries, just proper management…it is just that simple.

There seems to be a common misconception when it comes to the subject of analytics. Many marketers see this as “the boring stuff”. Not nearly as fun or sexy as making content and managing engagement initiatives. Unfortunately this kind of thinking can allow you to lose your audience. It’s a science experiment, folks. You have to experiment and measure results or you’ll never understand how your content is affecting your audience.

I understand that I’m one of  few individuals that actually enjoy spending the majority of my day elbow-deep in charts and graphs and spreadsheets – and as hard as it is for me to accept this, not everybody has their monthly bounce rate metric memorized. For some, analytics reports are confusing and many don’t understand how they connect to business objectives. These folks almost seem to dread analytics discussions (“Is this meeting over yet so I can get back to what I was doing?”). However, it never fails to save the conversation when I explain to them that this data is simply their audience telling them exactly what they think.

Most companies would kill to be able to ask every single customer and potential customer what they want. Analytics is simply a window into that world. Looking at audience data month over month, year over year can paint a rich, detailed picture of what content connects with an audience, when they are most receptive to that content, how much content they want from different sources, and even how long they want to spend reading it. It’s all there.

All web analytics is the study of the effectiveness of content. Let me repeat that a different way:

Every online measurement is a measurement of how effective your content is – not how effective your platform is.

Without content there is no reason to engage, and thus no audience to analyze. However – content without analysis is like driving blind. Sure, you’re moving forward, but wouldn’t it be nice to know where you’re going, and how to get there? And if anyone else is coming along?

Spending just a little time each month with your analytics can allow you to fully grasp the effect of your content on your audience, and to be able to hear what your audience is telling you through their browsers. Despite all the technical jargon, it’s not any more complicated than that. Take a look. Who knows, maybe you’ll get as excited about declining bounce rates as much as I do!

Raidious can help with analytics for social media, email, websites, and more – contact us today and we’ll tell you exactly what your audience wants you to know.

Related articles

• 5 Vanity Metrics to Stop Measuring (And Better Alternatives) (hubspot.com)
• Measuring The Effectiveness Of Content Marketing and SEO (mediapost.com)
• 5 Things You NEED to Know About Your Website Visitors (bloggingtips.com)
• Why Your Audience Is More Important Than SEO (preciseinternetmarketing.com)

It was announced in a Forbes.com article last Friday that the Huffington Post and Patch (an AOL hyperlocal collection of 800 sites) will start recruiting teenagers to blog for the for-profit websites. The article, “Huffpo and Patch Recruiting Bloggers as Young as 13,” by staff writer Jeff Bercovici probes the ethical question of having kids blog on behalf of the for-profit institutions when they get no compensation in return.

Raaahr! Work for me free!

First some context: Huffington Post is gearing up to launch their newest vertical, HuffPost High School. This site will be the only site produced exclusively by minors and will be edited by the 17-year-old political correspondent prodigy Myles Miller.

This news comes amid controversy for HuffPo because a group of bloggers lead by lead plaintiff Jonathan Tasini has filed a $105 million class-action suit against Arianna Huffington because they believe that bloggers should be compensated for their contributions.

I think this highlights a grave issue currently going on with content sourcing on the web. Sites like Huffington Post call on volunteers to contribute and the only compensation that writer receives is exposure. Exposure is worth its weight in gold if you are writer looking for the next great lead, but if you are a writer trying to have some semblance of a life, free work is not going to get you very far. We all know that the traditional content outlets are going by the wayside and online is taking more and more of the users attention making those “free” contributors even more valuable to the online publications. Pretty much all of which are supported by advertising.

I think with the attention the HuffPost High School business model is receiving, and this class-action suit, the time is now to get fair compensation for online writers. I am not saying to give these people 6-figure salaries, but compensation for their time and end product. For the adults, cash always seem to work, but for the kids, maybe school credit would do just fine. Regardless – they are delivering a huge amount of value for these companies – in fact, they are literally delivering the ONLY thing that’s valuable, and the only thing Huffington post profits from: the content. They need to be fairly compensated for that. Content is what drives the success of every single digital marketing tactic, and marketers and publishers should recognize that and compensate these kids.

What’s your opinion on this? See you below in the comments section!

WordPress and Typepad both have their merits.  We at Raidious choose to work with WordPress because it allows us complete control over the design and coding of the platform.  This ensures that we have access to make any changes necessary to allow for scaling and flexibility of the blog.  Another major perk is that the code lives on our server, we own it, and can do anything we like with it.

Typepad is a great option if you don’t need as much control over your blog.  If you just want to pick a design and start writing, then this may be the way to go.

Below, I will go into more detail on some of the key differences between these two platforms.

When comparing these two platforms, the power of crowd-sourced development cannot be ignored. When thousands of minds are all actively helping drive development, you end up with a quality product.  Typepad is great for entry-level bloggers, but when it’s time to step up and build powerful, solid, and secure platform, we recommend WordPress.

It’s now been one month since my sojourn to Austin for South by Southwest Interactive. As I’ve decompressed and looked back on the experience, the importance of content for brands has become even more apparent. As I mentioned before, the most popular panels at SXSWi were all about content. Creating content for brands, journalism for brands, and utilizing online channels to publish and promote that content.

Everywhere I turned at SXSWi I saw evidence of this. Many teams had been deployed for various blogs and sites, the Austin Convention center was constantly crawling with Canon 5Ds, Flip Cameras, iPhones, and other assorted camera gear.

What some people saw as production crews, I saw as modern ENG (electronic news gathering) teams. Raidious is a content company. Owned media is our center, and quality content creation is a key element of that. Many times we deploy ENG teams to gather stories or elements of a content plan.

Wikipedia has a very broad definitely of ENG, but the core is as follows:

“It can mean anything from a lone reporter taking a single camcorder out to get a story, to an entire television crew taking a satellite truck on location to do a live report for a newscast.”

I was most excited to check out NPR’s team at Stubb’s BBQ during SXSW music. The coverage they were providing of the line up on DATE was incredible. Their team featured an entire live production crew, mutliple cameras, live HD switching, social media monitoring and promotion, and on air talent – all being broadcast and interacted with LIVE online.

Raidious has experienced a lot of success in deploying ENG teams for our clients – we’ve produced huge batches of video content to activate trade shows online, and utilitized mobile technology such as iPad to report back on events as they unfold. This can create an incredible synergy of content. This is one of they many ways we help brands shine online.

Static hurts. We’ve all experienced the shock we get when there’s too much of it. We actually had to buy a humidifier over at the Raidious Control because it’s like we’re one big magnetic force every time we move and every time we touch something in our new office. Anyway, without a doubt, static is not good. (Sidenote: We ARE still electric. *winks*)

Well, static electricity is comparable to static websites. We live in an ever-changing, fast-paced society, especially on the web – we’re all forced to go with the flow or get left in the dust. As the web has evolved, it saddens me to see static websites that haven’t. You know, the ones that just sit there and never change. The ones that have the exact same copy on all the same pages as they did in 2007. I mean, does that make you want to keep coming back to their site? My guess is probably not.  Been there, done that.

So, I pose the question…if you and your business are constantly changing, evolving, and growing, then why wouldn’t your content and website follow suit?

Now more than ever, businesses are looking to vertically-focused organizations like Raidious to help them. Content strategy and constant web change isn’t typically something they have time to do, nor are they fully aware of how content really shapes the web landscape. If you don’t have the knowledge or the time to do it, hire someone. But don’t just stay stagnant.  You risk falling behind, or worse yet, falling out.

Avoid the static flow:

If you were just beginning to look into this, the first step would be to go in and really take a look at the content on your site and make sure it is catering to your customer. Take a content audit. Is the content easy to understand? Is it relevant and valuable to the customer? Is it optimized for web searches? (In other words, do you have keywords in your content about your services and are the pages tagged correctly so Google or Bing or any other search engine can properly index them?) Is there too much content? Is there too little?

Create content that is helpful to people, that make customers or prospects want to come to your site to see what’s new and learn about things that can help them. If you’re their trusted resource, then the chances of them going somewhere else are slim. If you’re not giving them information and creating stories they can relate to, someone out there is.  Give your audience what they are looking for.

One of the number one ways to create content is through writing blog posts or articles that your customers can understand and relate to. Give them advice.  Write about life. You’re beyond your business, so this is a place for people to get to know you and your company better. This is a place to highlight, to talk, and to share new stuff on a “not-so-corporate” level.

That’s only the beginning and I hope you are starting to recognize where square one is. Look, this web stuff can be tricky but to Raidious, it’s all we know and all we do. If you have any questions, let us know, but whatever you do, don’t risk the static flow.

Google announced today that it will be investing over $100,000,000 in quality content for YouTube.

As mentioned in an earlier Raidious post featured on SocialMediaToday.com, directly from Matt Cutts at SXSW, Google has admitted time and again that SEO is about one thing – delivering quality, original content. It is the best way to rank your web property, the end – not link building, or other gray-hat SEO tricks that try to game the system. High quality original content always has, does, and always will help you win rank.

That’s what SEO is – it is the optimization of content.

It’s one thing to hear Matt Cutts say this to a room packed full of people at the biggest digital marketing conference on the planet. It is another for Google to back up that statement by investing significantly in its own properties.

Google is making a $100,000,000 dollar bet on high quality, original content, because guess what – Google knows it can’t lose.

One thing that YouTube is that Netflix and Hulu are not is a search engine. In fact, YouTube at one point was the second largest search engine in the world, behind Google, and it is still by far the first-choice destination for any user looking for video on a given topic. The fact that Google is investing like this, in high quality original content, should be the mother of all clues to anyone who wants to rank a website – you should be spending your money on high quality original content. Because that is exactly what Google is doing for its own properties.

Related articles

• YouTube to get more TV-like with channels and $100M worth of original content (venturebeat.com)
• YouTube Drops $100 Million to Add Original Content (techland.time.com)
• Google planning premium YouTube channels (gadgetell.com)
• Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO – Filing a reinclusion request (blogs.sitepoint.com)

Creating content without a sound strategy is about as effective as entering into a feather throwing competition. No matter how hard you try and how sure you are you have the right methodology, everyone will still pretty much end up in the same place. Success and failure will be determined by things outside of your control.

Brands no longer simply have websites: they have an online presence. This is an important realization because at every point of that presence there is content. Even if there isn’t a company blog or a Twitter account, someone is probably writing and tweeting about them. Online, content is your product and how effective it is depends on the strategy.

Jeremy Baldwin breaks down a more holistic definition of content strategy into three parts:

• Editorial Strategy (themes and topics),
• Content Strategy (organizing and managing), and
• Content Marketing (drive conversation and engagement).

These require a cohesive group of people with different skill sets to guide and monitor the message at every point of presence. Think of your content as being the narrative of your brand. There must be a cohesive synergy between all platforms including interacting with people on social channels. There must be a consistent story or message being told at every step.

Janet Aronica has a great write-up on tracking metrics analyzing this narrative, as does our own Matt Chandler regarding Social Center. Feedback from these services will help answer the ultimate question of online content: are you giving the audience what they want? This isn’t a yes or no question. The answer must be to what degree is it effective and what can be done to make it better?

One thing that can greatly affect how far content goes is the medium by which it is presented. People can learn the same information in very different ways. If your posts aren’t seeing the traffic you think they deserve, try getting the message out in a different way. Try a short video or podcast, or turn it into a diagram. Don’t tie the message down to a single distribution method; it has to be free to move and grow through different venues.

It is a good sign that the industry as a whole is seeing how much value and time are lost when content is just thrown aimlessly around, hoping that it magically “goes viral,” and have instead embraced sound content strategy as a workflow. The more quality content being produced the better, and the better strategy there is for following and tracking the more people will learn from the bevy of knowledge being produced. This also means that the time for a comprehensive strategy is now, as more brands are implementing these ideas all the time.