8 Collaboration Tools to Improve Your Content By Ann Smarty

Are you part of a team that collaborates on content?

Want tools to make the collaboration process more efficient?

Whether you’re working on blog post or creating social media updates, the more people involved, the richer the results can be. Using collaboration tools makes the process smooth and seamless.

In this article I’ll share eight collaboration tools to improve your productivity.

Discover eight collaboration tools to improve your content.

#1: Map Out Content Using MindMeister

MindMeister is an effective brain-mapping tool that allows you to visually break down complex concepts and show how each idea flows into another. It’s perhaps the fastest, easiest way to get a point across effectively.

Map out ideas visually with MindMeister.

MindMeister is browser-based and available on mobile apps. There’s a variety of templates and numerous additional features for brainstorming, project plans and more. Map out your content strategy with your team, no matter where they’re located.

Price: Free plan gives you access to three maps. Note: MindMeister collaboration features are included in the free plan. There are multiple premium plan options, starting at $36 for 6 months with a 30-day free trial.

#2: Brainstorm in Real Time With Scribblar

Scribblar is an educational tool that can also be used for collaborative brainstorming sessions.

Primarily an educational tool, Scribblar is a favorite among students and teachers for its ability to create multiple “rooms” that allow you to collaborate in real time. Plus, you can text and audio chat during the process.

Do collaborative brainstorming in real time with Scribblar.

While there is an obvious academic tone, Scribblar is a great tool for creative people who excel when they let their ideas flow in a free-form conversation. When working on your content plan, eliminate endless emails and conference calls. Just jump onto Scribblar and work on the same dashboard together.

Price: A very limited free plan (2 users, 1 room) and a variety of premium plans that start at $9 a month are available.

#3: Compile Research on Cyfe

Cyfe is a multi-purpose research and productivity dashboard that lets you collect data, create to-do lists, archive search results and more. It helps you monitor social media mentions and activity too.

Invite selected team members to different dashboards on Cyfe.

For companies that need a bit more oomph in their collaborative tools, Cyfe provides a long feature list to help users work together in the cloud.

Price: There’s a free plan with the option to upgrade to premium ($19 per month; $14 a month if paid annually).

#4: Plan Editorial on GatherContent

Specifically designed for collaborating, GatherContent is every social media manager’s and blog editor’s dream.

It allows you to create an effective project or editorial calendar that has everything in the same place, and is organized through the same dashboard. This ultra-organized information keeps everyone on the team on the same page.

Keep all collaborators in the loop with GatherContent.

GatherContent is easy to use and minimizes the task of managing workflow, no matter how many people you invite to be a part of the process. Never cross wires or miss deadlines again.

Price: $79 per month with a 30-day free trial. Note: Check out CoSchedule as another option.

#5: Manage Projects on Trello

If you need a simple way to set tasks for everyone on your team, Trello is probably the best project management tool for this purpose.

Once you have a plan, create boards and then pin cards with tasks to each one. Then, write either checklists or standard text instructions for what each task entails, and assign those cards to different team members.

Create boards and pin cards with tasks for different team members using Trello.

When the work is done, attach documents to the completed card if you like and list it as complete. Also, @tag team members to quickly get their attention and connect with them.

Price: Free. Note: Also check out Wrike for easy project management.

#6: Provide Feedback via DivvyHQ

DivvyHQ creates an all-inclusive dashboard with every tool you need to keep your team on track. That includes limitless calendars, all types of media formats, social publishing and the ability to park ideas for future meetings. You can also edit,make comments and keep track of all changes.

Manage and collaborate on content with DivvyHQ.

Manage your workflow and simplify your everyday work progress for the entire team with DivvyHQ.

Price: There is a 14-day free trial, and then three premium plans starting at $25 per user per month.

#7: Share Documents Using Google Drive

Google Drive gives users the ability to create spreadsheets, documents, maps, drawings, slideshows and more, through both onboard and connected apps from their extension database.

You and a limitless number of people can create folders that have any and all documents you need for your marketing, content and social media plan.

Google Drive is an easy and free way to collaborate with other writers.

Use expansive sharing parameters or share items one on one. Once you create and share your materials, collaborate at will. (Users can be allowed to edit or just view the documents.)

Assign different colors for each team member collaborating on a document. Also,post comments for others to let them know if they need to review, edit, mark as“done“ or respond.

Price: Free.

#8: Review Drafts on Medium

To test out content collaboration, try Medium. This platform allows people to share a draft with anyone and then approve or disapprove the changes. All the approved editors are added to the piece in the “Thanks” section.

Share drafts of articles with current or potential team members on Medium.

Use Medium if you want others to review your drafts prior to publishing or to test out potential bloggers for your team. Have them share drafts with you for an easy submission process.

Price: Free.

Conclusion

People from all over the world can participate on efficient teams, thanks to the variety of collaboration tools and platforms available. Expand your group and collaborate to take your content marketing to the next level.

Brainstorming is a wonderful way to improve your content. But that’s not the only benefit to working with a team. Your ideas are more developed, and your material can be reviewed and edited by others. Plus, you get feedback. All result in stronger content for your company, whether it’s for a business blog, social media or a marketing plan.

What do you think? What collaboration tools do you use? Do you have experience with any of the tools mentioned? Please share your thoughts and recommendations in the comments.

This article was earlier published at Social Media Examiner.

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Social Media becomes crucial Marketing Tool for Small Business, By Tiffany Holland

On April 1, Roanoke announced on its Facebook page that it was constructing a cruise ship to float down the Roanoke River.

“City of Roanoke building a cruise ship for River” was the headline sprawled across a picture of a giant ship. Follow-up posts provided details. People commented on the post that this was impossible. It was unbelievable. But it was posted on the city’s verified Facebook page, presumably run by city officials. It had to be real.

Of course, the cruise ship never came. A few hours after the first post, another one appeared saying “April Fools.”

Some people commented that it was funny, others that it was a dumb waste of time. The man behind the posts, city communications coordinator Timothy Martin, said the April Fool’s Day joke did exactly what it was designed to do: bring the city attention.

According to Facebook analytics, the series of posts reached about 300,000 people on Facebook.

“That’s good for us, but not the best,” he said. “Snow storms [pictures] can reach 600,000.”

Martin generally oversees all the social media accounts the city maintains. He watches Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and all the likes, follows and commentary that come with them. Responding to people on the sites is part of his job. The goal is to make Roanoke an attractive place for people to live, work and visit.

For the city and almost every business with a  Facebook page, social media is no longer a place for people to check in with their friends and family. It’s an advertising tool. And it has become an extremely valuable marketing channel.

Facebook, the world’s largest social networking website with more than 1 billion users, had representatives in Roanoke on June 22. It joined the Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council and U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, in hosting a panel for small business owners. The aim was to give advice on how to use Facebook effectively for marketing.

Nearly 300 people showed up. The room wasn’t just filled with small start-ups, either. Established retail shops, media companies, restaurants and new business managers all came for tips.

“People used to see it as a thing for young people, but it’s not that way anymore,” said RBTC spokeswoman Rebecca Holland. “It’s reaching a lot larger audience than it used to.”

According to numbers from Facebook, 189 million people use the social media site each month in the U.S. Some 40 million small businesses use it for marketing.

The second most popular social media website, Twitter, has more than 300 million users across the world. Twitter, which is designed to be more fluid and works best when used in real time, sees about 500 million tweets sent out daily, according to its stats.

In addition, business networking site LinkedIn and photo-sharing site Instagram have grown in numbers every year. Social media have become a major outlet for communicating, even on the local level. Are people in Roanoke looking for a group to hike with? The Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club can be found on Meetup.com, a social networking site for local clubs to get together. The trail club has more than 800 members.

The writing’s on the Facebook wall

David Aldridge is the e-marketing coordinator for the Roanoke Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau and maintains its social networking sites. Its Facebook page, Visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge, has more than 56,000 followers and its Twitter and Instagram accounts count more than 2,000 followers each.

Aldridge often works with regional small businesses on their branding.

“When we bring [social media] up at a training session, we almost have to cut people off because people will want to talk about it so much,” he said.

One of the biggest benefits for businesses using social media is the fact that setting up an account is free. A Facebook representative at the June event argued that it’s easier to keep track of who sees Facebook advertising than it is with traditional media outlets. She said it can also be cheaper, with the ability to “boost” a post higher onto a page’s news feed for as little as $5 per post.

“I always say, with social media, the price is right,” said Jason Martin, owner of Martin’s Downtown Bar & Grill in Roanoke. “There is no cost other than your personal time.”

He said he uses social media heavily to promote the bands he frequently hosts. He tries to post something at least every other day to keep things current.

“It is the best way to get the word out about shows we have booked,” he said.

Aldridge thinks it has become harder to market successfully as social media has gotten more popular. Facebook, for example, is constantly making changes to what users can see in their feed when they log on.

Aldridge said he used to be able to post a picture of Natural Bridge and get 1,000 likes, but now it’s not that simple. The algorithms Facebook uses to determine what people can see from organic posts, which have no paid promotion, are mostly a mystery to users. Even if a user likes a business’s page, he or she likely will not see every post that the business makes.

Several businesses pointed out at the Facebook event that it has become increasingly common to pay to get more social media reach and more control over who sees their posts.

Social media managers have been able to figure out some of the ways to get attention without spending money. For example, Facebook now allows users to upload video directly to the site, and views tend to be much better if a video is posted this way as opposed to a link from YouTube, Aldridge said. Virginia’s Blue Ridge recently shared a 12-second Facebook video of the Northern Lights over the Blue Ridge Parkway. It amassed nearly 9,000 views.

Andy Schlosser, the owner of Metro restaurant in Roanoke, was on a panel at the Facebook event. He said Facebook invited him after they saw the growth in the numbers of people who interact with his page.

Schlosser reopened Metro for lunch in January. He wanted to attract the lucrative downtown Roanoke lunch crowd, so he began taking pictures of the restaurant’s tastiest and prettiest lunch dishes and posting them to his social media accounts.

“If you are just hitting them with a bunch of logos then that is just obnoxious to them,” he said.

He followed downtown groups on Facebook, and through Facebook advertising he was able to target Facebook users who worked downtown. Metro’s social media accounts began to grow in views, and now his Facebook page has nearly 5,000 followers. His lunch business grew with it.

He now believes social marketing is a must for any growing business. He said the large crowd at Facebook’s event two weeks ago is a testament to this.

“The writing is on the wall — on the Facebook wall,” he said.

Using it effectively

Not everyone agrees. Charlie Hamill owns Rock & Roll Diner, a popular Roanoke food truck. He said he has seen businesses ditching their websites and just maintaining a Facebook page, but that’s not for him.

“Our storefront is our website. It’s not our Facebook page,” he said.

Since the food truck is always on the move, he regularly updates his website with his location. He mostly uses social media to direct people to the website.

“When you rely on [social media] there is all kinds of misinformation out there,” he said. The one place to always get accurate information is to visit Rock & Roll Diner’s website, he added. Hamill often sees social media posts circulating for several days, causing people to see a post on the wrong day, and people won’t check to verify that it’s old news.

“I’ve learned what to do on Facebook to get more results,” he said. “The first thing that really gets results is to pay money.”

Paying hasn’t been successful for everyone, though. Martin’s owner said paid Facebook ads generated mixed results for him.

The trick to successfully promoting something on social media is understanding the medium and its users, using it frequently and posting content people want to see, according to social media coordinators.

“If you are going to use it, use it,” said Timothy Martin, the city’s social media handler. “Don’t create an account and hope it takes care of itself. You have to be behind the scenes driving the account.”

Aldridge agreed. “If you don’t have time to manage an account and to monitor or respond to comments, then don’t have an account,” he said. “Twitter is really bad about this.”

According to data from Twitter, 80 percent of its users access it regularly from a mobile device. Facebook also has a large number of mobile users. Aldridge suggests businesses get an alert on their phone when a user engages with them on a social media account.

“If they connect with you and you don’t respond, that is more frustrating than you not having one,” he said.

Holland with RBTC said social media should be treated as a community for people who share a common interest — almost like a club.

“I think it’s a way to connect with people on a more personal level,” she said. Writing posts and tweets that are human, not just advertisements, can help with engagement.

Timothy Martin’s April Fool’s Day joke from last year won the “Government Social Media Golden Post” award at the Government Social Media Conference & Expo in Nevada this year. It also was seen by hundreds of thousands of people.

“I get the most response when I post a funny gif,” said Aldridge.

“The overall idea is don’t just post basic news bulletin things, post things that stand out.”

Note: This article was earlier published at roanoke.com.

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Facebook’s Vanilla New Logo Is About Business, Not Design

FACEBOOK HAS A NEW logo. Well, it’s not so much a new logo but more of a gentle tweak to the original. You have to look closely to spot the differences. The new blue wordmark keeps the favicon (that’s the “f” icon you see most often), changes up the “a” and features a rounder, slimmer custom typeface that’s easier to read on small screens. It is, unfortunately, a bit plain.

Turns out, that was the idea.

The point of the update unveiled Tuesday was to “modernize” the logo and “make it feel more friendly and approachable,” creative director Josh Higgins told logo blog Brand New. In other words, make it work on mobile. It’s past due. Facebook started considering a new wordmark in 2013, eight years after Joe Kral and Cuban Council created the first one with a typeface called Klavika, from Process Type Foundry. The original logo had squared-off letters and thicker strokes. It was designed for a desktop world and evoked a pixelated environment, which harmonized neatly with the Facebook of 2005—but seems dated in our mobile-first world.

“The original is dark, condensed, and compact,” says Eric Olson, who created Klavika and the custom typeface featured in the new mark—including the highly visible Facebook favicon, which will remain the same. “But FACEBOOK ten years ago is very different from Facebook now. Now it owns a fair number of things, so is more of an umbrella at this point rather than an in-the-front logo.” Indeed, Facebook’s in-house designers have been nipping and tucking at the brand’s identity for awhile now to make sure it stays consistent across all of the company’s sub-products. In 2012 and 2013 in particular, designer Ben Barry imposed a set of guidelines onto Facebook’s visual identity to make sure the same favicon could work across many products and devices.

This latest logo refresh could easily be seen as the next step in Facebook’s efforts to prune its visual identity. “The brief for this was that it be a little more friendly, and more approachable,” Olson says. As the creator of the original typeface, he says designing for accessibility was a matter of paring down the letters. “The thing that I really wanted to bring over to the new one was a single story ‘a.’ I felt like there was a point of entry there to streamline a bit.” That change to one letter makes the entire logo friendlier by conveying a sense of conviviality.

In other words, the logo is simpler. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, says Min Lew, a partner at Base Design. “What the new Facebook [logo] lacks in personality, it gains in terms of practicality. In this case it was to appeal to a more mass market.” Howard Belk, chief creative officer at branding agency Siegel+Gale, echoes that sentiment: “It’s a utility driven change, clearly to optimize the logotype for mobile devices, which is really key to FACEBOOK’s business strategy,” he says. “They’re recognizing that the overwhelming majority of people see [the site] on a digital backlit screen, and most of those screens are small.”

This will be especially important as FACEBOOK pushes further into Africa and India. Technology varies widely in those regions. If you can’t control the caliber of the devices being used, you can at least control your brand’s ability to stay flexible, and in this case, legible, no matter the fidelity of the screen.

At the same time, that slickness comes at the cost of personality—something corporations, especially ones designed around people, should value. Lew points to the recent redesigns at Wal-Mart and Holiday Inn as evidence that brands want to be seen as “friendlier.” But in the pursuit of approachability, all these sans-serif, rounded letterforms start to blur together. “But is that what we want from these iconic brands that shape our culture?” Lew asks. Just imagine: “Do we want to see Coca-Cola become more ‘friendly?’ ”

This article was earlier published at wired.com.

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Internal Links: A Critical Piece of the SEO Puzzle by Zak Becker

How Creating a Web of Links on Your Website Can Boost Your SEO?


   
Search Engine Optimization is simultaneously complex and straightforward art. While the fundamental principles of optimizing a site are relatively forthright, the strategies involved in optimizing clients’ websites to generate organic traffic can become more complicated. For SEO geeks, the creativity involved in the complex strategies is where the rush lies.

One of the on-page SEO strategies that is often successful is the practice of internal linking. That is, the act of hyperlinking to other pages of your website from inside your blogs and content pages. As Moz puts it, “Internal links are most useful for establishing site architecture and spreading link juice.”

As you are most likely aware, keywords are one of the primary ways search engines understand what your website is about. Site architecture and links are a way to tell the search engines which pages are important, based on what is being linked to.

Not only do the spiders that crawl your site need to be able to read the content on your page to determine your site’s purpose, but they also need to be able to jump from page to page within your site (via a “crawlable link structure”) to find and index all of the pages in your site.

Without an internal linking structure, Google’s spiders could miss valuable components of  your website because it doesn’t realize that these pieces of your site are connected.

Purpose of Linking

There are a couple reasons for internal linking in blog posts and content pages. First, it helps Google understand which pages are most important in the general hierarchy of content prioritization. When there are several pages that link to the “Services” page (for example) it sends a signal to Google that the “Services” page has very important valuable content.

Another important reason for internal linking is for UX (user experience) purposes. You want to make it easy for your website visitors to find the information they are looking for. You should not just tell your visitors where to find related and important information but show them using internal links.

When this is done correctly, it helps increase several areas of SEO:

• Decreasing bounce rates
• Increasing time spent on site
• increasing number of pages viewed per session

Whenever you can increase these SEO values, you also increase the likelihood of converting a visitor into a paying customer. (Which is the ultimate goal we’re all aiming for, right?)

3 Internal Linking Strategies to Implement Today

1. Anchor Text

Anchor Text are words inside a piece of content (as opposed to navigation links or image links) that lead to another piece of content. These links can lead to pages within the same site or a separate site altogether.

The words used as the anchor text matter a great deal for SEO. It is important to not use exact match keywords when choosing which text to highlight as the linking text. This sends a message to Google that says someone has tried to “stuff” keywords onto a page in a sneaky way.

Let’s look at an example below. In this scenario “corporate car service” is the keyword phrase for this page. The anchor text of “procuring car service for the duration of your trip” links to an internal page regarding Corporate Transportation.

However, if the linking text was “corporate car service” leading to the Corporate Car Service page, that could present possible penalties from Google, since “corporate car service” is also the keyword phrase. Basically, if it looks weird from Google’s perspective it should be considered weird. Avoid it.

2. Open Links in The Same Window vs. New Window

Any time that you link to another piece of content, whether on your site or off-site, you have the option of opening the new link in the same window or a new window. When you are linking to another page on the same site, you should almost always open it in the same window. This allows you to track a visitor’s movement around the site. This practice also helps with SEO because it increases important statistics like page-views and time on site and decreases bounce rates. More importantly, it lets you track traffic flows so that you can evaluate which types of content your site visitors are more interested in reading.

When linking to an external site, you should always want to open a new window. This allows time-on-site metric to remain in tact. It also lets users see the content you are linking to and easily return to your site without having to press the back button repeatedly. (A bonus in the UX realm!)

3. Image Links

When you use an image on a content page on your website, you have the option of linking that image to the image’s full-size version, linking to an internal page or linking to an external page. You almost always want to set up your images to link to nothing. In other words, do not link the image to anything, including itself. Doing so creates a negative user flow from an SEO standpoint. Clicking on an image to view it in a stand-alone capacity does not provide any SEO or user value, so it is best to avoid it altogether.

So the next time you are on a website and you see words on a page that link to other content, whether it’s on-site or off-site, take note of the experience you are having. Is it a smooth experience? Can you move from one page to another with ease? Does the linked content lead to a relevant page?

If linking is done properly you will not even notice the thought process behind it, much like a movie soundtrack. Your goal should be to implement invisible SEO. You know it’s there, but the SEO tactics do not smack the visitor in the face.

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3 SEO tips to boost mobile app downloads by RAHUL VARSHNEYA

When talking about search optimization for mobile apps, the first thing that comes up is App Store Optimization or ASO. But did you know that you can also use Search Engine Optimization or SEO to boost downloads of your mobile app?

Mobile app profile pages don’t show up in search engine listings the way Web pages do. So what can you do that gets your mobile app showing up in search engine listings?

Build a landing page or a microsite to start with.

Having a presence on the Web is the starting point in leveraging the traffic flowing to your app. The more details the microsite has, the better. If you’ve got a blog associated with your product and the landing page, even better.

The more visibility you build for your landing page, or the more it shows up in relevant search results pertaining to your app’s category or keywords, the more traffic and downloads your app would receive.

So here are some of the best actionable SEO tips from the most well known experts that can increase visibility for your mobile app on search engines and thus help boost downloads.

#1 – Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keyword strategy for the app’s landing page

On-page optimization with the relevant set of keywords of your landing page or the microsite is crucial for Google or other search engines to know what keywords to rank your webpage for.

While the norm is to use the Google Keyword Planner tool to discover the right set of keywords (those that constitute popular searches) that relate to your product, LSI keywords play a big role in smart detection of your landing page in Google’s search results.

LSI keywords are synonyms and closely related words and they help Google understand what your page is all about. When users are searching for the word ‘Cars’, Google should know whether your search is about the movie ‘Cars’ or the vehicle. And Google can tell from the webpage’s LSI keywords whether it relates to one or the other.

This strategy by Brian Dean will help you identify the relevant LSI keywords.

Search for your main keyword in Google. Let’s assume your app is a solution to people’s sleeping problems and your main keyword is ‘Sleep Problems’.  Now, there are three ways to detect LSI keywords.

1. When you enter the keyword in Google search window, the drop down of associated keywords are LSI keywords.
2. Google will highlight (bold) the text that is relevant in the search results. So if you scan the results, you will see words such as ‘sleep disorders’ that are LSI keywords.
3. Right at the bottom of the search results page, Google showcases additional keywords that are ‘searches related to your keyword’, such as ‘how to sleep better’, ‘narcolepsy’, insomnia, etc.

When incorporating keywords in your landing page or the microsite, ensure it’s not about the density or repetition of the main keyword, but that it also includes the LSI keywords. You can also write blog posts that target the LSI keywords.

#2 – Build backlinks by tracking your competitor’s links

Building backlinks to your landing page or the mobile app’s microsite is an essential SEO strategy to increase the search ranking. The more authoritative websites link to your app’s landing page, the higher it would rank in search listings.

This one strategy, by Neil Patel, would help you identify the relevant authority websites and blogs and also help you build those backlinks quickly for your app’s landing page.

The first step is to identify your competitors that have great amount of traction and are popular in the app store charts. Once you’ve identified those, use one of the backlinking tools such as ahrefs or Cognitive SEO to look for all the pages that link back to the competitor app.

Now, you have to sift through the relevant websites or blogs that list the competitor app and write to the author to consider including a link to your app. Of course, give them a reason why they should include your app in the list. Not all would respond or be convinced, but once they do, you will start to notice the results – traffic to your webpage, downloads of your app and a higher ranking for your keywords.

#3 – Increase time on page and reduce bounce rate

Google’s algorithm tracks one important aspect of every webpage that affects its ranking – bounce rate and the time spent by a visitor on the page.

The higher the time spent by people on a webpage, the better its chances of ranking higher in searches. Google’s sole aim is to help people land relevant information through their search. They don’t want people clicking on a webpage in their search result and then hitting the back button quickly to go back to another result.

This would happen if the results were not relevant to the user. So the tricky bit here is how do you increase a visitor’s time spent on your landing page when it’s a product information page?

Rather than talk about the app’s features, talk about the problem you’re solving. First, bait the user with the problem statement itself. For example, sleep problems, as discussed in the earlier point. Then, hook the user by describing the fact that it can be solved and showcase the numbers (benefit in days, percentage, or any other quantifiable metric) or at a high-level, how the problem can be solved.

Once you’ve established these two, then begin to talk about how your app solves the problem in detail.

This strategy helps to increase stickiness for your mobile app’s landing page or the microsite and Google sees it as a relevant result for the searches performed, thus placing it higher in ranking.

Image credit: Shutterstock

This article was earlier published at the next web.

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