Five things worth sharing from the last week or so, brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Joe.
1. A timely piece of (excellent) content marketing.
With the incessant banging of the content marketing drum, most sites are churning out content these days. If you have ever spoken to us, you will know how much importance we place on excellent content and the objective of earning the attention of your target audience, so we are guilty of adding fuel to the fire.
The problem is… a lot of content you read is utter dross. Too many organisations panic when they understand the demands of content generation and turn to Fiverr to outsource the activity and end up with shockingly bad content.
I was therefore really pleased to stumble across 20 ways to brighten up your Autumn this week. I think it is excellent. Obviously very timely and whilst is blatantly going for the well proven link bait tactic of having a list, there is something for everyone in their suggestions and it manages to make you smile.
A very good effort from Moneysupermarket.com.
2. A lot of anger about coffee
I enjoyed reading https://inbound.org/discuss/nobody-gives-a-st-how-many-cups-of-coffee-your-agency-drinks this week. A fairly valid point to be honest, but the comments are a good read as it does raise the issue of how to inject a bit of personality into your website without sounding wanky. I know that we thought fairly hard about our own about us page, as we wanted to be human, but specifically resisted the urge to mention anything to do with coffee. We are guilty of mentioning the dog though…
There must be something in the air, as I also read the slightly more aggressively titled Fuck You Startup World post earlier in the month. Again, I have to admit that I do agree with a lot of the sentiment. Have a look at our homepage and you will see our ‘without the bullsh#t’ strapline – it is something that is important to us all at Browser Media and interesting to see other people talking about it this month.
3. RIP Vine
I have spent more time than I would like reinstalling apps on my phone recently, having lived through the Samsung Note 7 phone debacle (a true disaster as it was, hands down, the best phone I have ever had) and rediscovered Vine.
It got me thinking. I used to like it and, whilst I hardly made any Vines myself, I did enjoy watching the format and we spent some time thinking about ways to harness it from a branding perspective. I also realised that it has died a death, despite the usual hype when it was first launched.
Vine is closing. As part of an overall attempt to rescue itself, Twitter has decided to get rid of Vine altogether. Whilst it isn’t really that surprising, it does still feel slightly sad as I think that Vine was responsible for a lot of the short form video that we see today.
I would be hypocritical if I mourned its death too much, but I would like to say thank you for many 6 seconds of amusement. #RIPVine
4. The SEO geek is back in town
I have discussed the whole ‘seo is dead’ issue on many occasions and don’t wish to revisit the debate today, but suffice to say that I do not think SEO is dead. Some aspects of it are, but largely those aspects that should never have existed in the first place.
An absolutely vital piece of the SEO jigsaw is the technical piece and I was very pleased to read the really very good post by Michael King on Moz which discusses the renaissance of technical SEO.
It is a fairly epic read and a lot of it will go over most people’s heads, but it is an excellent read and proves how important it is to consider the technical aspects of a website from an SEO perspective.
Probably one to print off, read several times and then discuss with your nearest SEO geek.
5. Spider v Mouse
We tend to end our My Five posts with a cute picture of a cat. Today, my friends, I am going to break with the tradition and end on a video of a massive spider carrying a mouse!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCQon8GntpA