Best content strategy links of the week, November 8

This week: a closer look at the travel industry, what semantic search means for content strategy, BIG CONTENT and lots of these ######.

Six ways travel brands are using social for content strategy All travel brands aim to give their potential customers a taste of the experience they could have – and this approach is perfectly demonstrated in this choice list of current examples. My favourite is the lion…

Are travel brands making it easy for mobile users to contact them? Did you know that ‘More than half of the UK’s top 50 travel brands don’t have a mobile optimised site, according to research published last week by the IAB.’ Econsultancy’s David Moth explores why…

The Content Strategy Knowledge Gap I love Rick Allen’s approach to content strategy here with this really simple content check list. He lists a series of questions you should definitely ask yourself before any major content project.

Hummingbird for Content Strategists Another fantastic post from James Gunter, this time about the impact of Google’s latest update.  Knocks the nail right on the head!

Hummingbird represents a truly fundamental change in the way that Google searches and classifies the internet–one that does not rely as heavily on keywords or links as it has in the past. Instead, it focuses on serving high-quality, semantically relevant search results, sometimes regardless of on-site keyword matches or high numbers of links.

Pinterest Is Now The Fastest Growing Content-Sharing Platform Ok, this might be a US report but no less significant in the UK. Worth reconsidering Pinterest as a valid platform for your content marketing?

Making Meaning in Content and Design (Margot Bloomstein at HOW) Referencing case studies from her great book ‘Content Strategy at Work’, Margot Bloomstein looks at the role of the content strategist within the design framework.

Making Meaning in Content and Design (Bloomstein at HOW) from Margot Bloomstein

Colleen Jones on “Essentials for Evaluating your Client’s Content” Of course, I had to include the Gather Content webinar which I blogged. Something tells me that ‘content evaluation’ is going to become very big in 2014.

Making Content Strategy Work: An Interview with Steven Wilson-Beales I agree entirely with everything this guy says. FACT.

Rand Fishkin Talks New Approach to Link Building, Content Marketing & Contextual Search

A great interview with Moz’s Rand Fishkin. I’ve included this quote in full because it is so significant:

“There’s a great blog post from Dr. Pete on the Moz Blog all about big content. Why to invest in big content, the returns compared to sort of smaller pieces. I think it’s the seminal work on the topic. He basically analyzes a bunch of big content pieces that he’s done, compares them to all the blog posts he’s ever written, and sort of the time and effort distributions and comes to the conclusion that huge content that takes a ton of time and effort that is – would seem massively non-scalable, tends to outperform even the hundred little pieces of content you would have made with the same time, money, and energy. So I think that’s how it’s going to be – for smart marketers, they’re going to need to stand out from the content marketing crowd by having the ‘go-to’ reference resource on the topic.”

The Role of #Hashtags in Social Media and Search Rebecca Murtagh discusses best practice when it comes to hashtags – an includes some #epicfails.

And, still on the topic of hashtags – I’m sure you’ve all seen this. A great reminder that I need to use these less. #omg #contentstrategydilemma101 #ohscrewit

I’d love to hear your views on any of the content strategy links above so please get involved in the comments below!

#contentmarketing #semanticsearch #seo #socialmedia