of approaching the same conversation is what an average home looks like in X place at X price.


How to Make Newsworthy Content: Part 2 — Amanda Milligan

So if you're taking those increased prices and you can show examples of what a home looks like,


I've seen projects like this before, you probably have too, but it's a different way of illustrating


the same useful point, which is where could I actually see myself living, right? That's what


makes it serviceable. You're giving them information that they can actually act on later. So those are


some serviceable angles. Contextualizing. So there's a lot to unpack in this stat, and I


believe this was a Forbes article I was reading and they go into a little bit of detail about


some of the context, but there are other ways to dive into the context. And even without reading


the story, what I was thinking about was, what is the average down payment now? So if the home


prices are increasing, presumably the down payment costs are increasing. And what I remember the


article saying was that that's always the biggest hurdle, or not always, most of the time the biggest


hurdle, especially for first time home buyers, is the down payment. It's a big sum of money, right?


So how much is that increasing? And what does that look like for the average person? What does that


amount of money equate to in the rest of your life? How long would it take to save that amount


of money, right? These are all contextualizing details that make it feel a little bit more


relevant to you. And then I said, how does this compare to the average student loan debt per


person? So just telling a more, a greater financial, like personal finance story, the way


the team at Stacker thinks about contextualizing is you're comparing it to similar things. So


things maybe historically is the quickest way to do it, like how has this been in the past,


but also different things that are still relevant, right? And that's where, you know, home or student


loans come in. It's not just in a vacuum, right? Like your financial situation is impacted by


multiple elements, and it's good to get a full picture of that. Finally, localizing. So how have


prices changed? So this is the average in general, but have they changed in different states at a


different rate? Which states has the price increased more? Which states maybe have stayed


the same or maybe have dropped? That's not being illustrated by a national statistic, right? And


what local programs exist for first-time buyers? This is a great combo of serviceable and localized.


So if you are a first-time buyer, a home buyer, and you're thinking, I have no idea how I'm going


to do this now because COVID happened, I don't know, I'm going to afford a house, an article that


shows them all of their options, tells them what localized programs there are for first-time home


buyers, is extremely relevant and serviceable and local. And that is where you get the sweet spot


of newsworthy content where publishers are just, they're really going to want that information.


So consider these as potential angles to brainstorm when you're coming up with content


ideas. Also consider what I talked about last time, which is data. We're all about data.


If you can use original data in your story or take existing data and tell new, draw new


conclusions and tell new stories with it, that's gold. Uh, emotion does have an emotional impact,


uh, an impact, meaning how many people does it affect? All of these things are great, great lenses


to come up with fantastic newsworthy content. Thank you so much for listening to this and


taking the time. If you have any questions, uh, feel free to reach me on Twitter, I'm at


Powerful Brands Have Communities [MozCon 2017] — Tara Reed

Many of you are laser focused on growing your business.


And I know how that goes.


So you're thinking about user acquisition through advertising.


You're thinking about finding new customers with great SEO.


And you're thinking about building phenomenal content that wows.


And meanwhile, you're neglecting a huge goldmine of existing customers


who if you could just engage with them in a more robust way,


just engage with them in a more sophisticated way,


would help you hit a lot of your marketing metrics and goals on their own.


They would help you increase revenue, increase the time spent on your site,


decrease your customer support costs, your customer acquisition costs,


and a bunch of other things.


But let's face it, most marketers have no idea how to truly engage with customers


who have already bought from us or customers who have not yet bought from us


and are just sitting on our email list and in our user databases not converting.


So today I want to talk to you about how to use communities, gamification,


and membership content to take those existing customers that you already have


and reactivate them, reengage them, and use that engagement to hit your marketing goals.


Because powerful brands have communities,


and they use those communities to hit their most important marketing objectives.


Now we're all solving problems for our companies.


And so if you're solving a problem for your customer,


you can be 100% sure that those customers are online this week, today, this month,


interacting with other customers, other people who have similar problems to them.


This is particularly true in the digital age


where there are LinkedIn conversations happening about everything.


There are Facebook groups for everything.


There are Quora-like channels and conversations, Q&A is happening on any topic.


And there are Reddit conversations.


Here are a bunch of people talking about SEO.


Your customers are invariably going online, they're asking questions,


and they're finding communities of people who can answer those questions for them.


Your customers are going to find communities and form communities with or without you.


And so how do you take that natural activity that your customers are doing online,


take a little bit of control over it, and use it to hit your marketing goals?


So that's what I want to talk to you about today,


because it's a particularly tricky territory to navigate as a brand.


So I want to start by debunking a couple myths,


because there are a couple things I hear consistently that people say and companies say


about why they're not focused on building a community.


So the first thing I hear people say is, you know, companies in my industry,


we don't need communities. It's just not a thing that we do.


If you look online, there's not a lot of communities for my industry.


It's just not a thing.


And so today we're going to look at a bunch of case studies from cosmetic companies


all the way to healthcare companies,


and I'll show you how they're creating really phenomenal, powerful communities.


Another thing I hear people say is, you know, we're focused on ROI.


ROI is our focus right now, so we're not really doing a lot of community building.


It's just not a priority.


And so I'm going to show you some phenomenal numbers and metrics,


true revenue increases that companies are seeing as a result of building


and fostering communities around their brand.


One other thing I hear people say is, you know, my company is small,


we're a service-based company, or we're an agency,


so it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to have a community.


There's not even that many people who could be even part of the community.


It's not even a set number of clients that we take on or who are small business.


And so I'm actually going to show you a really crazy experiment


that my own company ran.


We were a small service-based company,


and we did a crazy five-day experiment from idea to actually getting people


in the community five days,


and I'm going to share with you all the data and the results that we saw from that.


And the final thing I hear people say is our company is too large for a community.


There's too many people.


There's a lot of users.


We're going to have to manage them all.


It's just too much.


Now, a lot of us have heard of a $4 billion company called Sephora,


and in 2010, Sephora launched an online community called Beauty Talk.


And so the way that Beauty Talk works is anyone can come on,


whether you're a customer of Sephora or not,


anyone can log onto their site and become an instant beauty insider.


So you create an account,


and then you can go into the community and ask questions.


What do you think about these two products together?


You think these products work well together?


Or how does this lipstick look on me?


Right?


And then people are going in and answering questions.


This is a bustling community.


There's a lot going on here and a lot of people talking back and forth.


It's very active.


And so Sephora has found some really interesting things


and done a lot of really interesting experiments here.


For example, they take all of their user profiles,


and they link them to external social sites.


So they're able to get data that correlates interest on social media,


Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook,


and how it correlates to purchase patterns on their shopping page


for community members in the Beauty Talk community.


They also link all of the user accounts in the community to Sephora loyalty cards.


So they're also able to incentivize their community members


to continue making purchases for them and build it into the community system.


So Sephora has over 400 different engagement metrics that they track


just for this community alone.


And they've been able to find some really interesting results.


For example, they found that when customers joined the community,


they spent 2.5 times longer on the e-commerce shopping pages of Sephora.


So not just spending longer time in the community,


they're actually spending longer time on the actual shopping pages,


which for Sephora directly correlates into revenue for them,


the longer people are on their shopping pages, the higher their conversion rates.


And they found that the top percent of most active community members


spent 10 times longer on the e-commerce shopping pages.


So this is an example of a big company that's doing this really well


and having a lot of success.


And so what would it look like for you if you created a community,


a go-to place for your customers and for your clients?


What would it look like for you to engage them in a certain kind of way there


and use that engagement to hit some of your marketing goals?


So if you're thinking about building a community,


there are really four questions for you to consider,


and I want to walk through these different considerations.


And the first question you should ask is should our community be public or private?


So the Sephora example that I showed you, that was a public community.


Anyone can come and join.


You don't need to be a customer necessarily to do that.


But I want to show you another example of a private community,


and this will be particularly interesting to any of you who have service-based businesses.


So 500 Startups is a startup accelerator program,


and what they do is they train new startups and they help them raise money.


And they have built a private community for their clients.


And so I want to point out a couple of the core features here in this community.


So the core section is the discussion section,


and what's most popular here is the job board.


So companies that are clients of 500 Startups are able to come on and post,


hey, we're hiring for this role, does anyone know someone who would be a good fit?


And other people can say, yeah, I know someone who would be a good fit,


let me refer them to you.


This is the most popular section in their community,


and this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the service


that 500 Startups offers its clients,


but the customers and clients are doing this engagement with themselves.


There's also an events section so clients can post interesting events they have coming up


that they want to share with other clients in the network.


There's a database of people and companies that are part of the network,


and also very interestingly, 500 Startups has a perks section,


so they've negotiated discounts on popular software tools and services


that their customers use, and they get them discounts on it


and there's a huge database of all the discounts they've negotiated.


So you might be thinking, all right, well, if you're a service-based company,


my customers, they really love the service that I offer them,


won't it decrease the value of my service if I'm just letting them talk amongst themselves?


And the answer is actually no.


So 500 Startups finds consistently year over year that when they survey their customers,


one of the top things that people say in terms of why they stay around


and why they continue to be engaged with the company


is because they have access to this community.


It really enhances, it's a huge selling point for getting clients,


and it enhances the continued engagement for their existing clients.


So in the past year, 500 Startups has had over 100,000 company-to-company interactions


happening on this platform, and they've also had 8,000 peer-to-peer help sessions.


That is a company representative from a company getting on a phone call


or a video chat with another company in the client pool and just helping each other out.


So the second thing I want you to think about when you're considering building a community


is can our community be low-tech?


Does it have to be super-duper fancy, and we have to get all the developers rallied around this and on board?


So I want to show you an example of a super low-tech community


that a company called Udemy, you may be familiar, is using.


So Udemy is an online platform that allows people to buy and sell courses.


So if you have some sort of expertise in something, you can go to Udemy's website,


you can record a series of videos and classes about your expertise, and then you can sell that course.


And Udemy has an entire team of people that are dedicated to making sure that new instructors


complete the onboarding process, right? So they sign up and they actually get their course completed


and loaded up and ready to go on the site because that's how Udemy makes its money.


The course has to be done in order to sell.


And so what's really interesting is that Udemy has built this on Facebook.


They've built a community for instructors on Facebook. It's just a Facebook group.


And this Facebook group has 47,000 members.


Now, what Udemy has found is that people who are part of this Facebook group,


when instructors join the Facebook group, they're far more likely to actually get their courses submitted and completed.


So the average course instructor on the Udemy platform makes $8,000.


They've got 47,000 members in this community, which means that this Facebook group for them


represents $367 million of revenue for them.


And they know that when they get someone in the Facebook group, they have a higher chance of completing their course


and actually fulfilling and getting this revenue in the door for them.


So that's an example of a super low-tech Facebook group with real ROI.


I want to show you this other example. This is the community that my team and I built in five days.


We did this fun experiment. I just want to point out some of the features that we have in here.


There's a general post section. People are talking to each other. They're posting videos, photos, text posts, et cetera.


There's a leaderboard, so people get points and incentives for doing different things.


And then we have prizes every month at the top of the leaderboard.


There are challenges and Q&As, so we do exclusive content, exclusive lessons for our clients and Q&A sessions,


and they can access them in here. And there's also a fun toolkit so people can rate and review different software tools


that they're using and say how they like them.


So that platform that you just saw was built using a software tool called Bubble. Bubble.is is their website.


It was built entirely by marketers, that tool that I just showed you. We had no developers involved.


And we used this platform called Bubble, which allows us to build fully functioning apps, web apps, mobile apps,


without writing any code. So again, another low tech example built by marketers in five days.


Another thing that you really can think about, this third thing, is should our community be social first or content first?


And I want to show you a couple examples of the distinction. So this is Coachella's community.


Coachella is a music and arts festival that happens every year. They have 200,000 attendees.


And so Coachella has a social first community that they've built. There are forums and conversation threads happening


about the lineup. Who's going to play? Who's going to be a music performer?


There's fan clubs joining around all the different music performers. They have different social clubs around lodging


and accommodations, people collaborating on those sorts of things. There are chat bots and chat experiences going back and forth.


This is primarily a social community. The main thing you do here is talk to other people.


Now contrast that to Moz's community, which is a content first community.


So when you come to the page, you see Mozinars and Q&As and events that are coming up.


And while yes, people are communicating with each other, they're talking back and forth, all of that communication


is centered around content that either a Moz community members create or Moz the company creates themselves.


It's a content first platform. Here's another example of a content first community.


So Shopify has this project called E-commerce University and they use it as the centerpiece of their community.


So they've got all sorts of lessons and tutorials and downloads for their community.


They've got the ultimate guide to drop shipping and SEO for e-commerce, all sorts of things like that.


And so you can download these learning packages, these PDFs, these lessons.


And while underneath the lessons, people are talking to each other, they are communicating. This is a content first community.


So you may be thinking, all right, I get it. I'm interested in this concept of building a community for my brand,


but I don't have a ton of resources to get this done. And so I want to point you to a couple really awesome


software tools that you can use to instantly build a powerful community.


So if you're thinking about building a content first community, I recommend you check out two tools.


One is called Memberful and one is called MemberSpace. Memberful is a WordPress plugin.


So you put all the content that you want on your WordPress site and then you use the Memberful plugin to layer on top


and create a gated login system where people need to be members in order to access the content.


MemberSpace does the same exact thing, but it's for Squarespace.


If you're thinking about building a social first community, there are another two tools I would recommend you look for.


So Zendesk community software is a really good one for this.


People can create different conversation threads, ask different questions of each other, answer each other's questions.


And you can also integrate it with your customer support.


So your customer support teams can come in and do formal answers to questions.


Although I do recommend that you let your community members talk to each other because that's really what fosters community.


And then if you want your community to have a little bit more of a consumer fun feel to it, I recommend you check out Mighty Networks.


Mighty Networks is a really awesome way to create community powered brands and engagement.


You can create an app, a mobile app, a web app, et cetera.


And so every user that you invite into the community gets their own profile page, community members can follow each other, unfollow each other, direct message each other.


There's a feed of information going on. There are polls, Q&A, events, all those things.


You can have a completely white labeled app for a community using Mighty Networks.


So the last thing I really want you to think through is should your community be gamified?


So I want to show you some of the results that we had from this crazy five day experiment we ran just for our own clients.


So what we did was we created a private community for about 170 of our most recent clients.


And we had a couple objectives. So our first objective was to increase engagement amongst our customers and clients.


And our second objective was to increase the upsell rate for new packages or for upgrades.


So people were currently in an existing package as a client. We wanted them to upgrade to the next one.


And we wanted to do a lot of this through gamification incentives.


So what we did was we started by writing down a list of the most important actions we needed all of our clients and customers to take.


So, for example, for us to work with our clients, we need to first have them upload certain documents.


So we wrote that down and assigned certain points to that. That gets four points. That gets five points.


We also needed our customers to hit certain milestones. And so we wrote that down and assigned different points to all the different milestones.


And then finally we wanted our customers to communicate with each other. And so we put different points on that as well.


So we incentivized the most important actions. And what we found was when we added the gamification piece,


we saw 3.2 times the engagement of people in the community talking to each other, busying and active.


And very interestingly, we saw a 40 percent increase in upgrades to the next package.


Our customers were just there more. They were around more. They were super, super engaged on a different kind of level.


And so we were top of mind for them when they thought about the next service that they needed.


I want to show you one more example of a company that's using gamification in a really interesting way.


So Fitbit, when they first launched, introduced challenges. They still have challenges. There are a couple more.


They've changed them a little bit. But when they first launched, there were about three challenges.


There was the weekend hustle challenge. You compete against your friends for who's done the most number of steps over the weekend.


Same thing for daily. You can compete with your friends on who's gotten the most number of steps in physical activity in the day.


And so they've got all these challenges and you get points for completing the challenges.


There's a leaderboard and badges and all sorts of fun things that you get to do to compete with your friends.


And so there's this community you kind of create with Fitbit. You create your own community. You bring your friends in to participate into your group and community.


But you can also see everybody on the leaderboard. And so what Fitbit found was that when users did the challenge,


they were 84 percent more active with their friends. In other words, they were saying, hey, buddy, I'm doing this thing.


Come do it with me. We should get you a Fitbit, too. And it directly increased and boosted their sales because this challenge, this fun game, requires you to bring in your own community.


And so what Fitbit is doing is creating these small micro communities of friends and families inside of a larger community.


Here's one final example of a company that's doing gamification really well. So on the Moz community, there's something called Moz Points.


And you get points for doing different things. Primarily, you get points for creating content in the community.


So you might get one point for every thumbs up. If you write a guest blog post or a guest piece of content, all the thumbs up you get, you get a point for that.


And you get four points for doing some other activities on the site, all sorts of different things. You get 30 points if your post is good enough to get posted on the Moz blog.


And then there are prizes for each benchmark of points that you get, right? So ranging from you get a free T-shirt to you get a free month of Moz Pro to you get a free ticket to MozCon.


So they're playing these games and incentives inside of their community. And how Moz uses it is in order to get new content generated on their site.


So users are now creating blog posters, positioning themselves as experts. It's creating content and it hits a lot of their marketing objectives and goals for them.


They've got new content on the site, helps with SEO, and there's a lot of social sharing that's happening as well.


So people are seeing articles that they like, sharing it on social media, finding their friends and bringing them back into the community.


So I just want to do a recap because we covered a lot of stuff here. Number one, your customers are forming and finding communities with or without you.


And so I hope this talk helps you start to think about the ways that you can start to take a little bit of control around that natural activity that your customers are doing and leverage it to your benefit.


You know, a lot of times I hear people say companies in my industry, we don't do communities, that's not a thing we do. I cross that out, it's just not true. And if they're not, you should be the first.


And there are four things that you should really be thinking about when you're thinking about building a community. First of all, should it be public or private?


We looked at two different examples. That Sephora example is a public community anyone could join. The 500 Startups community or the Apps Without Code community that you saw.


Private communities only available to existing clients by invitation. Does the community need to be high tech or low tech? Does that really matter?


We looked at examples that were high tech and low tech. Low tech being Facebook groups or custom apps that were built without any code with drag drop, point click editors that have robust logic in the back end.


Should our community be social first or content first? We looked at a bunch of different examples there and also I gave you some software tools you should check out. So on the content first side, Memberful and Member Space.


On the social side, Mighty Networks and Zendesk Community Software. And finally I pointed out that communities should be gamified. You get lots of really, really great engagement when you incentivize the right actions.


This talk is about building communities but above all else it's about rolling up your sleeves and finding low hanging fruit for you to engage your existing customers and use them to hit your most important marketing metrics.


All About App Search: Indexing, Ranking Factors, Universal Links, and More - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, and welcome to another British Whiteboard Friday. I'm Tom Anthony, head of the R&D department


here at Distilled. This is Will Critchlow, founder and CEO. Today we're going to be talking


about App Search. App Search is really, really important at the moment because research shows


that the average user is spending 85% of their time in apps on their mobile phone. Will,


tell us a bit about App Search.


When we say App Search we could potentially mean three things. The first is App Store


Optimisation, or ASO, which is not what we're going to be talking about today. It's an important


area and it's got its own quirks and intricacies, but it's pretty far down the funnel. Most


of the searches in App Stores are either branded or high-level category searches. What we want


to spend more of our time on today is App Indexing. This is right at the top of the


funnel typically, and it's taking over the opportunities to rank in long-tail search.


So this gives you the opportunity to acquire new users via search, really for the first


time in app marketing. And the third element that we'll touch on later is the Personal


Corpus, which is the idea that right down the bottom of the funnel it's about retaining


the users once you have them.


So the critical thing is App Indexing, that's what we want to spend most of our time on.


What are the basics, Tom? What are the prerequisites for App Indexing?


The first thing, the most important thing to understand is deep links. People sometimes


struggle to understand deep links, but it's a very simple concept. It's a parallel of


what a URL is, a normal URL for a web page. A URL takes you to a specific web page rather


than a website. Deep links allow you to open a specific screen in an app. So you might


click a deep link, it's just a form of a URL that might be on a web page, it might be in


another app, and it can open you to a specific point in an app, for example, the app distilled


page in the Twitter app.


There's been various competing standards for how deep links should work on different platforms,


but what's important to understand is that everyone's converging on one format. So don't


bother trying to learn all the intricacies of it. The important format is what we call


universal links. Will, tell us a bit about them.


Universal links, this is actually Apple's terminology, but it is, as Tom said, spreading


everywhere, which is the idea that you can take a URL, just like we used to, a regular


HTTP or HTTPS URL, and this URL would normally open up the web page on the desktop. Now,


if instead we were on a mobile device and we brought our mobile whiteboard, again, to


demonstrate this concept, then if you clicked on this same link on your mobile device, same


URL, it would open up the view, the deep view within the app, like Tom mentioned. So the


critical thing about the universal link is that the form of this link is the same, and


it's shared across those different devices and platforms.


Now, before that was the case, in the world where we had different kinds of links, different


kinds of link formats for the different devices and platforms, it was important that we mapped


our web pages to those mobile URLs. And there were various ways of doing that. So you could


use schema.org markup on your web pages, you could use JSON-LD, you could match them all


up in your robots.txt, or you could use rel="alternate-links".


And this is much like how you would have done the same thing for the mobile version of a


desktop web page.


Right. If you had a different mobile website, an m. website, for example, you would use


rel="alternate-links", to match those two together. And in the old world of deep links, where


there was the application-specific links, you could use this rel="alternate-links",


to map them together.


If you're using universal links, it's not so much about this mapping anymore, it's not


about saying, you know, it's over there, but it's about advertising the fact that there


is an app, that you have an app that can open this particular view or web page. And that's


kind of important, obviously, to get that indexed and to get that app ranking.


And then Google and Co are encouraging you to have parity at the moment between your


app, and so you've got your desktop site, your mobile site, and then you've got the


same screen in the mobile application.


Absolutely. And they'd like that all to be on these universal URLs. Now, all of this,


so far, is pretty familiar to us as search marketers. We understand the concept of having


these URLs, having them crawled, having them indexed. But in the app world, there's more


opportunity than just crawling, because both Google and Apple and iOS have opened up APIs,


which mean that you can push information to the search engine about how the app is actually


being used, which opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities.


Absolutely. So the first one is new types of ranking factor, the big one being engagement.


So Apple have already confirmed that they're going to use engagement as a ranking factor.


We anticipate that Google will do the same thing. And so this is the idea that users


opening your app, using your app, spending time in your app is a clue of the value of


the app. So it's more likely to appear in search results. There's two layers to this.


The first is appearing in personalized search results. So if I use a specific app a lot,


then I'll expect to see that more. And then there's the second level, which is the aggregated


user statistics, which is where they see that most people like this app for this thing.


So other people will see that in the search results. The second point is taking us back


to what Will mentioned at the start, the idea of the personal corpus. This is the idea where


you get search results specific to yourself coming from your data. So you might run a


search and you'll see things such as your messages, entries in your calendar, photos


from your gallery. So I'd see different results to Will. And I'd see them all in the same


interfaces where I'd see the public search results. So I might do a search for a restaurant,


I might see a link to the restaurant's website in the public search results. But I might


also see that Will sent me a message about going for dinner at that restaurant and there


might be an entry in my calendar, which other people wouldn't see. It's a really interesting


way that we might start to appear in search results in a new format. And then the third


interesting thing here is the idea of app only indexing. With Universal Links, we talked


about needing parity between the desktop site, the mobile site, the app. With app only indexing,


we could be looking at a model where there's screens in apps that don't have a web equivalent


and so we might start to see search results where there's no possibility of a website


actually appearing for that. And that's also a fascinating new model. Apple already do


this, Google have confirmed that they're going to be doing this, so it's definitely coming.


And then further out into the future, one of the important things is going to be app


streaming. So Will, are you going to tell us a bit about that? Right, so app streaming,


this is another thing that Google has announced and it's kind of available in limited trials,


but we think it's going to be a bigger thing because they're trying to attack this core


problem which is that to use an app and for an app to appear in search results, if you


haven't already got it, you have to download it, you have to install it. And that's both


a slow process and a data hungry process. And if you're just kicking the tires, if this


is an app you've never seen before, it's a little bit too much to ask you to do this


multi-megabyte download and then install this app just to try it out. So what they're trying


with app streaming is saying, you know, we can simplify that process, this is an app


you've not used before, let's preview it for you. And so you can use it, you can see it,


you can certainly check out the public areas of the app and then install it if it's useful


to you. The current setup is a little bit of a kind of kludge, they're running in a


virtual machine in the cloud and streaming it, it's all very weird. We think the details


are going to change, but fundamentally they're going to figure out a way to make this streamlined


and smooth and it will become much easier to use apps for the first time, making it


possible to expose them in a much broader array of search results. And then, yeah, there's


all kinds of other things that stuff can be in the future. So I mean, Tom's passionate


about the personal assistant opportunity. Yeah, so the intelligent personal assistant


thing is really, really exciting to me. So by intelligent personal assistant, I mean


things like Siri, Cortana, Google Now, and the up and coming ones, Facebook M and SoundHound's


Hound app. So what's fascinating about personal assistants is that when you do a search, you


do a search for weather in Siri, for example, you just get a card about the weather for


where you are. You don't get taken to a list of results and taken elsewhere. You just get


a direct answer. Most of the personal assistants are already able to answer a lot of search


queries using this direct answer methodology. But what we think is exciting about apps is


that we anticipate a future where you can store an app and it allows the personal assistants


to tap into that app's data to answer queries directly. So you can imagine I could do a


search for are the trains running on time and Siri taps into my train app, pulls that


data and just lets me know right there. So no longer am I opening the app. What's important


is the app is actually sort of a gateway through to a data source in the backend. We start


to get all of this data pulled into a central place. It's fascinating. You mentioned a whole


bunch of different tools, companies, platforms coming up there. And the final thing that


we want to point out is that this is a really interesting space because Google's had a lock


on web search for what feels like forever. But app search is a whole new area and obviously


Google has some advantages just through the fact that the Android devices and they've


got the apps installed in so many places and it's part of people's habits. But there are


certainly opportunities. The first crack is the first change in that armour that means


that maybe there are some upcoming players who will be interesting to watch and interesting


for us as marketers to pay attention to. So thank you for joining us here in Distilled


MozCon 2014 - 04 - Richard Millington - How to Use Social Science to Build Addictive Communities

Good morning, MozCon. How's everyone doing? Good? How's this side of the room doing? Good?


And this side of the room? No one cares about the rest of you. It's interesting, I was watching


the talks of the MozCon speakers last year. And what I found is that when the speakers


came on stage, they typically said one of two things. First, they would come on stage


and say, can everybody hear me? Which is kind of an ironic question to ask, I think. And


the second thing they would say is, I am so excited to be speaking here today. And I'm


in that latter group. I am incredibly excited to be speaking on the first day of MozCon.


But largely because it's the first day of MozCon. How many of you have ever given a


public talk or anything like that? About half of you? So you know generally you want to


be speaking as early as possible and there are two reasons for that. The first reason


is that if you speak very early on, everyone knows who you are. And the second reason,


which is even more important, is that if it's a multi‑day event, like MozCon is, then


you can really enjoy the after parties. And from what I've heard, MozCon has really amazing


after parties. Last year they had a rock band in a museum, which sounds kind of amazing.


But did anyone ask why does Moz have a rock band in a museum? Or more importantly, why


do all these organizations spend so much time and so much money having these really amazing


after parties? And the answer, as most of us know, is that after parties are this incredible


place where we can connect with one another. We can drink some alcohol, we can have shared


experiences, perhaps not so good on the dance floor, but we can really enjoy ourselves.


And it has a business benefit as well. This year I hosted my first conference in London.


It was the third year the event has been going. This was my first year doing it. And what


I found is that 87% of the people that attended the after party last year attended the event


this year. 87%. That compares to around 50 to 60% on average. But what's even more interesting


is not just that these people attended, it's that the majority of this 87% signed up the


day we announced the event. They signed up before we had announced the venue or the speakers


or anything like that. They signed up before we had or they had any idea what they were


signing up for. And why were they doing that? I think the answer is because they were attending


that event because it's part of their community. They were paying to be part of that community.


It's funny, I was warned about speaking at Moz, actually. I was warned about all of you


guys here. I was warned that because the background of Moz is in SEO, that a lot of you guys wouldn't


be building online communities. How many of you are not building an online community at


the moment? Quick show of hands. How many of you are building an online community at


the moment? How many of you just don't like being asked to put your hand up? There's a


big secret about online communities that we don't tend to talk much about. And I've been


working in online communities for ten years and I've been studying the return on investment


of maybe 50 to 60 online communities. And there's this big secret. And that big secret


is that most online communities are a waste of time and they're a waste of money. Most


online communities, especially those started by organizations, don't succeed. Most online


communities don't reach that critical mass point. Most online communities don't deliver


a positive return on investment for their organization. Unless they have one specific


thing. And if they have this one specific thing, what you tend to find is that the community


is not only more likely to succeed, it also generates a very positive return on investment


for an organization. What happens if you have this one specific thing? You find it's far


easier to get that community off this ground. And what you find is that if you have this


one thing, it's a lot easier. And for my business, it made it a lot easier to build communities


for our clients. Five years ago, we had a success rate of around 65%. That was considered


high for the sector that we work in. Today it's 95%. And it's 95% because we apply this


one specific thing. And that's a sense of community. A sense of community clarified


by these two men here. A sense of community is a combination of four specific things that


you can drop into any particular group to build a powerful sense of community. And it's


a sense of community that correlates strongly with every positive benefit that we want from


a community. It's a sense of community that leads to customers that are more loyal, that


purchase more from us, that have higher retention rates. It's a sense of community that leads


to customers advocating more on our behalf. They feel a sense of community with that particular


group. It's a sense of community where you have higher levels of people that are exchanging


information with one another. It's a sense of community where you have higher levels


of productivity from your employees. And it's a sense of community that has higher levels


of employee retention as well. And I'm not making this up. I have references. And it's


also the sense of community where the members inside them are happier, they're healthier,


and they're wealthier. So it stands to reason if we can build a powerful sense of community


among any of the groups that we're in, we should generate a lot of benefits as a result


of that. And what I think is that every single one of us, every person in this room right


now is a part of a group that would benefit from having a much stronger sense of community.


And so today I'm not going to talk to you so much how to build an online community.


I think that's important and you can apply a lot of things to that. I'm going to tell


you instead how to take any group of people in your life, any group of people that you


might meet in the future and develop a powerful sense of community among them. Now, doesn't


that sound like much more fun? Yes? Yes? I'm so glad you said yes or the next 25 minutes


are really awkward. So the first thing you need is a boundary. You need membership. You


need people to know who is in that community and who isn't. And it's that boundary that


separates insiders from outsiders. You simply cannot have insiders unless you have outsiders.


And the higher the boundary, the more difficult it is to get into that community, to be accepted


as a member of that group, the stronger the sense of community that people have with one


another. And we very much want to be part of groups where we feel a powerful sense of


community with the other people in that group. A friend of mine was recently disappointed


that he was accepted into MENSA, which as I'm sure a lot of us know, it's a society


for the people that score in the top two percentile in an IQ test. And he was disappointed because


he wanted to be accepted into the triple nine society, which is for the top 0.1% of people


and has around 1200 members. And I bet there are people in the triple nine society that


wish they were in the Prometheus society, which is for the top 0.03% of people and has


around 120 members. And I bet there are people in the Prometheus society that wish they were


in the mega society, which is for the top 0.001% and has around 26 members. And this


goes all the way up to the Terra Society, which is for the top 0.0000001% of people.


It's a society that's so exclusive, it has no members. Even the founder can't get


into that community. And we see this happening in so many other situations as well. If you


want to join the most exclusive club in London, the most exclusive private members club, you


have to be nominated by two of their existing members, which basically means being nominated


by two billionaires and pay them 10,000 pounds a month, just to pay them more money in the


future. We want to be part of exclusive groups of our peers. We see this happening in organizations


as well. In 2011, Fortune Magazine reported that Apple had a top 100 group. Every year,


Steve Jobs and the gang would take the top 100 employees, not the people at the most


senior level, but the people that had the most potential in their future career prospects


at Apple. They would take them away to Camel Saddle Ranch or somewhere and build a powerful


sense of community among them. They would show them the latest products and the latest


services. They would build a powerful sense of community among that group. And we see


it happening on the Internet as well. Last year, we launched a community just for the


top community professionals in the world. And what we found is that when we launched


a community for the top community professionals in the world, all the top community professionals


in the world wanted to join it. And the easiest way, actually, to get a community off the


ground today is to create these exclusive groups. People want to be a part of exclusive


groups. No one doesn't want not to be accepted into that exclusive group. So what we want


to be doing to create this powerful sense of community is to understand what our existing


topic is and then create a group within that. Because we cannot have insiders without outsiders.


And that means we need a set of rules or a boundary. We need to create that boundary.


And that boundary is usually based upon our demographics, our habits, or our psychographics.


That means our demographics, who we are, age, gender, location. Our habits, what we've done,


what we can do. And our psychographics, what we like, what we don't like, and our personality


appeals. Let's try an experiment. Raise your hand if you have more than ten years of experience


in SEO. Okay. Raise your hand if you have more than 12 years of experience. Okay. So


if I was going to create a powerful sense of community amongst you guys right now, and


by the way, I think Moz has an incredibly strong sense of community. What I would do,


I would take all those who just put their hands up, I would take them into this imaginary


room over there, and I would say, listen, guys, we're going to create an exclusive group


just for the experts in this space. Just for the people that have the most experience in


that space. There are too many newcomers that are coming in right now that don't really


know what they're talking about. And then I would come back into this room and I would


say, let's do this. Raise your hand if you have less than five years of experience in


SEO. Less than three years. Okay. So I take all you guys into this imaginary room over


here. And I would say, hey, at the moment we're going to create an exclusive group just


for the people that are new into the space. Just for the people that can breathe fresh


ideas and fresh life into that sector. At the moment we have too many old timers that


are selling their ways and we want some fresh blood here. Now, what have I done? Beside


being a manipulative bastard, what have I done? Well, what I've done is I've created


two separate groups. Each of those groups has a strong boundary. They know what it takes


to be accepted as a member of that group. And most importantly, what I've done is I've


created a common enemy as well. And you can repeat that trick so many times. People based


in New York, San Francisco, whatever. But we want to be creating groups with two qualifiers.


A community for X who do Y. A community for SEO professionals that live in Seattle with


more than ten years of experience. And the higher that boundary, the more difficult it


is to be accepted as a member, the easier it is to get that community off the ground.


And what we've seen a lot of, especially in the communities that fell, is that the organization


will try and have a really big launch. They'll do a big marketing push, a promotional push,


they'll do press releases, they'll tell everybody join our online community. And it turns out


that this fails. Every big online community begins as a small online community. Every


big online community that we see today began quite small. And how small, you ask? Supposedly.


How small is that we found that you can build a community with around 15 friends in that


sector. That means 15 active friends. And another question that comes up next. Well,


Rich, I don't have 15 friends in this sector. Make 15 friends in that sector. And I mean


that. Before you launch a community, before you try and get people connected, go out there


and make those 15 friends within that sector. Because if you can't make friends with them,


how are you going to get them to participate in that community? So you want to launch small


with people that are actively your friends and are actively participating within that


community as well. And then we want to look at rituals and traditions. Because we know


that every strong group ever has a lot of rituals and traditions. In northern Spain,


you have mums that hold down their kids so they can't escape. While men dressed as the


devil jump over them. You can look this up. I'm not making this up. And that sounds like


kind of an extreme ritual, right? But not quite as extreme as wearing the gloves of


bullet ants for ten minutes without making a sound. Do you guys know what a bullet ant


is? It's supposedly the insect with the most painful sting in the world. So they have to


do this without making a sound. And then they have to do it another 19 times. This is an


extreme ritual, so I wouldn't recommend that for your groups. What I would recommend instead


is that you try and think what ritual and tradition can we bring in with the groups


that we have? So, for example, we often work with communities of profession. And one of


the rituals that we've seen work incredibly well is to ask people when they join the group,


what is the biggest mistake that you've ever made in your career? What is the most humiliating


thing that's happened to you in your career? Because the ritual is supposed to be a little


bit hard, a little bit difficult. But what a question like that also does, and the reason


why it works so well, is that it makes us just a little bit vulnerable to that group.


It makes us just a little bit open to being emotionally open towards that particular group.


We've had stories where a lady hit her boss's car on her first day of work, which is really,


really funny. I mean, bad for her, but really, really funny. And it's so much easier to do


that than have an introduce yourself area of the community. So, we want to have strong


rituals and traditions within that community. We want to be actively introducing them. We


also want to have a common place. There's a lot of research that exists that says that


if people meet in the same place all the time, that their familiarity with that place transfers


onto the people that they're meeting in that place. And what that means, if you meet in


the same place all the time, you can build a much stronger sense of community with the


people in your life. Now, you can go elsewhere after you meet them, but if you meet in the


same place, it has a much stronger effect. And for many of you, that would be an online


place. We know in the age of WhatsApp and all the other technologies that are out there


right now, it's easier than ever, easier than ever to build a powerful sense of community


to find that common place where people can come and interact with each other. So, you


need to have a shared place. And that place is going to be an incredibly important place.


It needs to be a common place where people can identify a place with that particular


community. And we also find it's important to have a common narrative for that community.


Most people here know the history of Moz, right? Most people here know, you know, Moz


started by the blog and the consultancy by Rand and then it expanded into SEO tools and


inbound marketing. And because people know that history, pretty much everyone I've met


here knows that history, they can identify their own place within that history. They


can identify where they fit into that place in that history. And that's an incredibly


powerful thing. When people know the history of the group, they can see how they personally


can contribute to that group. They see where they fit into the history of that particular


group. So, we want to have a common narrative and a narrative that's interesting as well.


What are the biggest successes of your group? What are the biggest failures of your group?


Who are the top members? Who are the people that have really made a difference in that


particular group? And we want to make sure that when a newcomer joins that group, that


they learn that history. If it's an online community, you can have an epic community


history. If it's an offline community history, you can talk to these people. You can find


an opportunity where you can tell them a little bit about the history of that group. The more


people that know the history of a group, the stronger the sense of community they have


with one another. So, we have our members. Next, we want to create a powerful and a shared


emotional connection between them. We want them to feel that they have a strong emotional


connection to one another. What that means is that they oscillate at the same emotional


frequency, which means that they're happy and they're sad and they're angry about the


same things at the same time. Back in 2008, I was working in New York from September until


November. This was the election cycle in New York. And it got to election night. And my


friend Josh dragged me out to Times Square. I'm from the U.K. so it doesn't affect me


that much either way, to be honest. But I found that I began getting caught up in that


crowd. I remember when Obama won Ohio, I'm like, yes, Obama's won Ohio. And then that


moment when Obama is announced as the president‑elect, I find myself going, yeah, yes, we can. Yes,


we did. It makes no difference to me. But I get that because we get caught up in the


emotional connection of that crowd. And when we feel that shared emotional connection,


as everyone that was in Times Square did that night, we have a much stronger bond with one


another. And we can create and we can to a certain extent manipulate that emotional connection


that people within our particular groups have. One of the easiest ways to do that is to have


a unique shared experience. So by unique shared experience, we need something that's completely


unique to that particular group. If you're wondering what this picture is, it's from


a sport called chess boxing. What is chess boxing? Excellent question. Chess boxing is


a sport where you have to beat your opponent either on the chess board or in the ring.


So when I moved to London back in 2000 and whenever, I noticed that there were the chess


boxing world championships, yeah, the chess boxing world championships were taking place


in London. So I reached out to a couple of people that were in the community space and


I asked them, do you want to go to the chess boxing world championships? And we went there


and it was ridiculous because it's chess boxing. But what we found is that afterwards we had


these in jokes that formed within our particular group. We began keeping each other updated


on the latest chess boxing news. And as dumb and as frivolous as this sounds, and believe


me, I know how dumb it sounds, especially when I say it to a group of 1300 individuals,


but as dumb as that sounds, it creates an incredibly strong sense of community. We have


in jokes, we have that history. When a newcomer joins our group and says, how do you guys


know each other? We can say, well, from chess boxing. So we want to be creating those unique


shared experiences. You can have common things that you want your group to solve, common


issues that you want to tackle within your particular group. There's not a group that


exists today that can't have at least some sort of unique shared experience. And if you


can't find anything, then find small victories that you can turn into big things. Are there


any cricket fans in the room today? You guys might want to leave because I'm about to be


really offensive about cricket. So you guys might not know that there is a


tournament between England and Australia called the Ashes. It's a two‑team event. And back


in 2005, something amazing happened. England won. For the first time in 26 years. Now,


there might be some nations on the planet that might think that winning a two‑team


tournament for the first time in 26 years isn't something you want to draw a lot of


attention to. That's not how we roll. We have a massive celebration about it. We


give the captain a knighthood of the realm, because that's what we do. And it sounds quite


dumb now. But if you think of the context at the time in 2005, it was after the London


bombings had just occurred, and we needed something to feel good about. And we took


this relatively small thing, unless you're a cricket fan, in which case I apologize,


but this ridiculously small thing and turn it into a big victory. And we can do that


within any particular group. There will always be people in your group that are getting married,


they're having kids, they're changing jobs, they're launching major projects, they've


published books. There will always be things within your group that you can let the rest


of the group know about. And what you find when you do that is that they feel a sense


of ownership and connection with one another. And it doesn't just have to be good things.


We've also found that emotional connection works on the vulnerability scale. So a friend


of mine runs a community for people that are affected by cancer. And what she found with


this community was that even though people were talking about things that were quite


emotive, they weren't really getting much value because they were holding back and talking


about things that they'd really get value from. And what we recommended that she do


was to push it all the way to the edge, increase that emotional safety from here all the way


to here, to talk about things that are the hardest things to talk about for that particular


group, perhaps end of life planning or hygiene issues or the loneliness about it. And what


she found when she did that, when she pushed it from here to here, is that not everyone


wanted to talk about the things over here, but what they did want to do is talk about


things that are greater and greater depth. They saw those sorts of discussions. And as


a result, they felt a stronger sense of connection with one another. They felt open and they


felt comfortable pushing that level. And people get far more value out of those sorts of discussions


within a particular group. And this works in other sectors as well. In


any group, when you can push that, when you can push those discussions all the way to


the edge, some things that are the geekiest or the most hardcore things possible, you'll


find that increases the emotional safety of that group. I have absolutely no idea what


current detection with an Allegro ACS756 on an ATmega328 means. No idea. But if I was


an electrical engineer, if I was on the element 14 site and I saw this, I think I get this.


This is a community for me. This is a community that I understand, that I can see those sorts


of discussions and realize I can talk about the most geekiest things I can possibly talk


about. There are only so many places in the world where social care workers can complain


about a decision that a government has made. And this community is one of them.


Now, again, from the perspective of conveying information with each other, of valuable knowledge


exchange, a discussion like this has absolutely no value whatsoever. But from the perspective


of bonding people into a strong group, from making them feel that they're feeling the


same emotions at the same time as one another, a discussion like this is incredibly powerful.


They get to share their emotional connection with one another.


A quick show of hands, how many of you have seen the Star Trek film, Into Darkness? How


many of you have been to the Wikipedia page of Star Trek, Into Darkness? Really? How many


of you have been to the talk section of the Wikipedia page for Star Trek, Into Darkness?


That's so sad. But if you haven't, then you guys have missed out, because you would have


missed out on a 40,000-word discussion about where to capitalize the eye of the Star Trek


film, Into Darkness. 40,000 words. These Wikipedia editors, they had a 40,000-word discussion


about. Now, for most of us saying normal human beings that didn't put your hand up at the


last point, that's insane. But for the Wikipedia editors, if you love


arguing about grammar and syntax and all that stuff, this is exactly the sort of discussion


that bonds you into a powerful group, right? This is exactly the sort of discussion that


you want people to be participating in. What they decided, by the way, is that they were


right and the people that made the film were wrong. What we also see is that self-disclosure


discussions are the most powerful discussions to build people into a strong peer group,


to build those connections. Can everyone close their eyes for a minute?


It's cool. I'm not going to do anything weird, I swear. Okay. Now, think of a moment when


you reveal something intimate about you guys have your eyes open. Now, think of a moment


when you reveal something intimate about yourself to someone else, a friend, a lover, a colleague,


or anything. I'm betting that what happened is that you felt a stronger sense of connection


to that person afterwards. You can open your eyes now. I told you I wouldn't do anything


weird. What happens is that when you reveal something intimate about yourself, you feel


a stronger sense of connection to someone else. If you look at how friendships and relationships


develop, what you find is that first two people meet around a common topic or common interest


they have and they start to interact but they're just polite. And what you have to do is put


through that politeness phase a little bit. So you start revealing something about yourself,


what you think about on a particular topic. And when you do that, when that happens in


a big group, you feel a much stronger sense of connection to that entire group. That's


why sites like PostSecret and their community is so interesting. When you read someone's


biggest secret, you feel a much stronger sense of connection to them.


And we find that the best discussions, the discussions that you want to be initiating,


highlighting and encouraging in your particular communities aren't those where people reveal


the best information. They're those that bond people into a group. They're those that build


a strong sense of community amongst that group. And those are usually based upon our demographics,


so what we've done, who we are, our habits, you know, the things that we like to do, our


site or our psychographics, so what we like, what we don't like, the types of personalities


we are. When you initiate these discussions, you start


to build that sense of community at a far greater level than you otherwise would do.


And if you still can't think of a discussion, you can distill them. You can go on to any


online community that exists. You can go to any other meetup group that exists and you


can go to the forum or the community page or whatever and you can click on the area


where you can list the discussions by the number of replies or the number of views.


And what you'll find is that this gives you the list of the most popular discussions that


have ever taken place in that community. So you can find the things that people love


to talk about. So we're using this site, the student doctor site, as an example. What you


find is that the most popular discussion that has ever taken place in this community is


if you could do it again, would you? If you knew everything that you knew now, would you


go through medical school again? Now, think about that. From a self-disclosure perspective,


that's an incredibly powerful discussion. Where people get to know each other, get to


bond and connect, that's an incredibly powerful discussion. It's these types of discussions


that bond people into a group. So you can take those discussions and apply it to almost


any sector. If you knew what you knew now, would you become a lawyer or an accountant


again? Or quick show of hands, if you knew what you knew now, would you become an inbound


marketer again? Really? No one? Wow. That's really awkward. I'm so glad you guys are here.


So that sounds a bit dark, stealing discussions. Not quite as dark as the reasons why people


tend to participate in a community. There are thousands of community organizers in America


today that are banging on doors trying to get people to come to their local meeting


to discuss the future of that community or to improve that community. There are hundreds


of organizations in America every year that launch an online community where people can


connect and can share information. But only a few dozen of these will actually succeed.


And the ones that succeed realize something incredibly important. They realize that although


there are communities that succeed for the altruistic motivations that people have, generally


the reasons why we participate in a community is because we want to achieve a positive distinctiveness


amongst those we consider our peers. We want more power, more influence amongst those we


consider our peers. And we tend to do that in one of two ways. First, we copy what someone


else in our peer group has already done. And you see this happening a lot. Second, we find


our particular niche or niche if you're American. Happy Fourth of July, by the way. You find


your particular niche and then you use whatever skills and experience you think you have to


help build your positive distinctiveness. And if you're trying to build a group, then


there are lots of things you can do. One of the most important things you can do is try


and get people to reveal what makes them interesting. But the problem with that is if you ask someone


what makes themselves interesting, they tend to really struggle with that.


When we hosted our event this year, I remember I thought I had this amazing idea that would


kick start a ton of conversations of. I asked everyone just to write one interesting fact


on their name tag, just one interesting fact about themselves. And what I found is that


people freaked out. They absolutely freaked out, oh, my God, I have to think of an interesting


fact. We had a line of people that couldn't think of an interesting fact about themselves.


I saw four people at that event whose interesting fact was, I can't think of anything interesting


about myself. But you understand that. You have to walk that fine line between bragging


about yourself and not being dull. So what you can do instead is ask people about their


experience and their expertise. Everyone can talk about their experience and expertise.


And once you know that, you can help them apply it to their particular group.


In fact, one of the best ways to get people to participate in a community is when they


join that group, put there on the registration form or whatever else, what can you offer


this community? And the reason why that is so powerful is that this question makes people


think what can they offer that community. It psychologically primes them to participate


in that community, not just to consume information. And if you can't do that, you can use labeling


theory, which is the idea that people can't become the labels that we put on them.


So for example, if I went to this half of the room and I said, I notice that you guys


are enjoying this talk, you guys seem to be way more interested than the other half of


the room. I can see that you're really engaged, you love the speaker, you love his accent,


you're really enjoying this. And then I went over to this half of the room and said, you


guys don't really seem that engaged in my talk. You guys are below average here. You're


not really paying that much attention. It's not really going well.


What would happen by the end of this talk is that you would see that this half of the


room would actually become more engaged and this half of the room would become less engaged.


I was going through this talk with my friend Natalie yesterday and she warned me that just


putting these labels on in this situation was a dangerous thing to do because some people


might actually become more or less engaged. So please, just an experiment. You can still


give me great ratings on that half of the room.


So once you know what makes someone unique, once you know what their skills and experience


and expertise is, you can find ways where they can apply it to that particular group.


If you have a friend, for example, that is an expert on wine or whatever and you're meeting


up with a group of friends, you can ask them is there any way you would recommend? Is there


any place that has great wine? Then immediately they feel like they can influence that group.


Eventually they feel like there is something they can contribute to that particular group.


So you want to be creating these opportunities where we can be positively seeing amongst


our peers. You want to be asking in your community, does


anyone have experience in X that could do Y? Because a discussion like this encourages


everyone that has experience in whatever X is to do whatever it will take to make them


help out in that particular group, to help someone else out in that group. So we want


to be creating lots of these opportunities. And when we do create those opportunities,


we want to give a lot of recognition. We want to give a lot of efficacy to the person that


does it. We want to make sure they stand out. That's why asking people to show off what


they have done is a very powerful thing. It's a kind of discussion that works out in every


particular group. Everyone can show off what makes them unique within their peers. Or asking


people or having a member of the month or asking people interview questions, interviewing


people that have used their experience and expertise in some particular way is an incredibly


powerful thing. And I truly believe that every single person in every single group has something,


some unique experience or expertise that they can apply to that group. If you've been living


in your mom and dad's basement for 20 years, you have a lot of expertise in what it's like


to live in your mom and dad's basement for 20 years and how that is relevant to your


group. If you were to initiate a discussion about


how introverts get started in a group or in this topic, then someone like that might be


someone you want in that community. And the only people that ever participate in a community


are those that feel like they can influence that group. And the moment we don't feel we


can influence that particular group, we stop participating.


So what have we done so far? First, we created that group within a group. We created that


powerful peer group where people can connect with one another. Second, we had rituals and


traditions. We created these simple rituals that newcomers have to go through when they


become a member of that group. Something that's very fun and interesting to participate. And


third, we created that common story for that group, that narrative, that history of that


group. So every single person knows where they fit into that history and how they can


have experience and expertise. Then we had that useful knowledge exchange. We had these


unique shared experiences that people can participate in. Next, we had those groups


that were pushing, that we were pushing towards having those self-disclosure discussions,


discussions where we reveal something about ourselves, something that's really interesting


about ourselves. We can talk about the things that we can only talk about in that particular


group. And finally, we made sure that every single person in the groups that we're involved


with makes and is very sure that they can use their experience and expertise, the things


that we think make us unique, and we can apply them to our specific group. And I swear to


you, if you do this, you'll build communities that aren't just a group of people interacting


online or offline. You'll build communities of people who are a genuine sense of community.


And that has an incredible, powerful benefit for organizations, and it absolutely changes


the world for people that are in those communities as well. And that's why I do the work that


I do, because I think it has incredible benefits to everyone involved, and that's why I hope


that some of you will do it as well. Thank you very much. It's been an amazing speech,


you guys.


Thank you. Thank you.


Okay. So 15 people is what you said would be a great place to start with building your


community. Invite 15 people. Is that right?


Yeah.


So what happens when you get a larger community, Moz has a very big community, when do you


know that it's time to create another one or a subset within that community, or is that


even a good idea?


Sure. So what you don't want to do is have the organization that are where different


groups in the organization are competing with each other for the same members. You


want to have the same audience in any one particular group. So what we're trying to


find is what in the demographics or habits or the psychographics of that group makes


them feel unique. So if you were to go to anyone and ask them, who do you feel are your


peers? Who do you feel a strong sense of connection with? Who do you look up to? You would find


out who they consider in their particular group, and then I build groups around that.


What you want to do as a community grows is build a lot of smaller subgroups, and that's


how you keep activity high. The biggest mistake that a lot of very large organizations make


is that they don't break it down into smaller subgroups. In a very large group, not everyone


feels like they can have influence in that group, right? But if you break it down into


smaller subgroups by common interest or by the demographics or the habits or the psychographics


they have, it's a lot easier for everyone to feel that they can influence whatever smaller


group they're in.


Cool. Let's take a question. Right over here. Oh, got the mic on.


So first, happy Fourth of July to you too.


Oh, sorry. I can't hear you.


I said first, happy Fourth of July to you too. Second, I'm a director of search optimization


for an addiction company. We have treatment facilities all throughout the country, but


within our facility and our space, addiction is a very sensitive issue. So as you build


out an alumni community, you have two sets of people, those that are very proud of being


alumni and overcoming their addiction and you have those that like to remain anonymous.


So as you build out the community, I ask, I guess my question would be, how do you track


that behavior from those that wish to remain anonymous and then move into that community


of those that are now proud of their sobriety and how do you in general just track that


space in between within your community?


If I understood correctly, it's very hard to hear up here. I'm sorry. Two different


communities, very different groups. One's very proud. One wants to remain anonymous.


How do you track those two in tandem and with different goals for those communities?


That sounds like a very unique group. What we tend to find with the groups that we work


with, are you talking about their own goals, like the unique goals that each group has?


So yeah, you would have unique goals for those that remain anonymous and those that have


unique goals for those that are very proud about their sobriety, but mainly that behavior


in between of going from being anonymous to being very proud and tracking that behavior


in between and creating that sector of community, I guess, going from one to the next.


Two goals, yeah, basically what you were saying, two different communities with very different


goals.


So the question is how do you track and measure that?


How do you track what the goals of that of each community is? Well, the easiest way is


just to ask them, right, to ask them what they hope to get out of that community. One


of the things we find works incredibly well is that on the registration form itself or


whatever process people have to go through to join, is not only to ask what can you offer


this group, but also what do you want to get from that group as well.


And what that tells you over a period of time is how those goals change, what people want


when they join that group. And we find that surveying technique that is representative


of the group as well works incredibly well. With the organizations we work with, we tend


to do a survey once every six months or so, and we ask them a bunch of questions, like


also how to measure the sense of community we have a process we use for that. And we


try and ask them a bunch of questions of what they hope to get out of that group and we


identify what common clusters tend to emerge from that. I hope that answers the question.


Rand. Hey, buddy.


Rand Fisken. Hey, Rich.


Hey, Rand. You did a great job, man.


Thank you. I'm sorry that I didn't recognize you yesterday.


Oh, no, that's fine. It's really awkward.


The mustache hides the whole face. Yeah, it was the mustache.


So you can't tell who I am. I'm curious about your thoughts on Haterade,


the liquid modeling of hate on the Internet. So in particular, and this might be somewhat


specific, but over the years, right, in our early days as Moz as a community, we tended


to be very transparent and publish commentary on our blog or in our forums, regardless of


the positive or negativity of those comments. And over the years we've grown to be more


‑‑ sort of have more of a code of conduct and say, like, hey, if you're just flat out


insulting someone, we're going to remove your content. We don't want it. But I'm actually


kind of curious about the psychological principles and biases and effects that you've seen. Because


I have gotten the sense recently that when I see an emerging community start to have


haters and detractors, that it almost brings the rest of that community together. Is that


something you've observed as well? What I've seen from your work especially in


talking with some members of your team is that what you've done, and I think you've


done a terrific job. Can we get a round of applause for Rand, actually?


What I've seen is that there's different ways to build a community. If you build a community


based upon things that people like and they tend to respond the same way. If you make


it an open, transparent thing, you tend to attract people that want that. But over a


period of time, what's going to happen in any particular group is that the sheer size


of that group is going to attract people on the fringes or have negative personality types


that are going to want to cause trouble. And there's no real way of getting around that.


You can have hurdles that they have to jump through, but after a certain size, you're


going to start attracting those sorts of people that join the group. What I have seen is that


if you talk about things that you hate or if you're ever in a situation where you're


projecting hate onto any particular group, here a common enemy is fine, but I'm not saying


you should go out and hate them in any particular way. But if you're projecting hate, you are


essentially have a hand grenade that you're taking the pin off and just throwing out into


the audience. That's a visual for you guys. And it's hard to know where that's going to


end up. And I mean, there's two extreme ends. You have like the 4chan side who let absolutely


anything go ever, ever, ever. Then you have maybe a Stack Exchange over here that have


incredibly tight restrictive rules. And the community and the personality tends to reflect


the people that you tend to attract. That makes sense. So Reddit attracts people with


a particular personality type. 4chan attracts people with a particular personality type.


So for you, I just keep doing what you're doing because I think you're doing an amazing


job.


Okay. So let me be a little more specific because I have one. Okay. My wife runs a travel


blog. She started getting haters for the first time ever in the last couple of months, and


she's been publishing the comments and I keep telling her you should just delete them. Yeah.


And I'm curious about your thoughts in terms of from a community building standpoint. Do


you tend to bias people in early community building efforts to say, hey, be transparent,


let people be open with this stuff. It will build and engender more trust and more, you


know, following. Or do you say get rid of that stuff that has no place?


It depends a little bit upon what your goals are. What I would say in that situation is


that these are the rules. We don't want people that are going to do that. And you're not


a good fit for that community. What a lot of people tend to do in the community space


is that they spend an incredible amount of time going through first warning, second warning,


third warning to remove someone from a group. But that doesn't make sense. To me, if someone


is not a good fit for that community, they might not be an awful human being, but if


they're not a good fit for that group, then my focus is on what's best for that community,


not on that individual. So I'm more than happy just to remove them. We generally want to


spend as little time as possible on the negative parts of that group, if that makes sense.


Because there's an opportunity cost to it all the time. So it's far better to spend


that time focusing on the things that will improve the community in the future, having


content or interviews with amazing people, writing great content, inviting ten amazing


people to join the community. That's all going to be a better use of time. Does that answer


the question?


#WhiteboardFriday: Content Authority: Potential Measures of Authoritative Content

Hey folks, this is Russ Jones here with another Whiteboard Friday, and today we're going


to have fun.


Well, at least fun for me, because this is completely speculative.


We're going to be talking about this concept of content authority and just some ideas around


ways in which we might be able to measure it.


Maybe Google uses these ways to measure it, maybe not, but at the same time, hopefully


what we'll be able to do is come up with a better concept of metrics we can use to get


at content authority.


Now, we know there's a lot of controversy around this.


Google has said quite clearly that expertise, authority, and trustworthiness are very important


parts of their quality rater guidelines, but the information has been pretty flimsy on


exactly what part of the algorithm helps determine exactly this type of content.


We do know that they aren't using the quality rater data to train the algo, but they are


using it to reject algorithm changes that don't actually meet these standards.


So how can we go about measuring content authority?


Ultimately, any kind of idea that we talk about in search engine optimization has to


boil down in some way, shape, or form to a set of measurements that are being made and


in somehow shape or form being used to rank one page over another.


Now, sometimes it makes sense just to kind of feel it.


If you're writing for humans, be a human, but authoritative content is a little bit


more difficult than that.


It's a little harder to just off the top of your head know that this content is authoritative


and this isn't.


In fact, the quality rater guidelines are really clear in some of the examples of what


would be considered really highly authoritative content.


For example, in the news section, they mention that it's written by a Pulitzer Prize winning


author.


Well, I don't know how many of you have Pulitzer Prize winning authors on your staff or whose


clients have Pulitzer Prize winning authors.


So I don't exactly see how that's particularly helpful to individuals like ourselves who


are trying to produce authoritative content from a position of not being an award winning


writer.


So today I want to just go through a whole bunch of ideas that have been running through


my head with the help of people from the community who have given me some ideas and balanced


things off that we might be able to use to do a better job of understanding authoritative


content.


All right, so these are what I would consider some of the potential measures of authoritative


The first one, and this is just going to open up a whole rat's nest I'm sure, but okay,


Albert.


We've talked about the use of BERT for understanding language by Google.


Well, Albert, which stands for a lighter BERT, is a similar model used by Google and it's


actually been trained in specific circumstances for the goal of answering questions.


Now that might not seem like a particularly big deal, okay?


We've been doing question answering for a whole long time, featured snippets are exactly


that, but Albert has jumped on the scene in such a dominant fashion as to have eclipsed


anything we've really seen in this kind of NLP problem.


So if you were to go to the SQuAD dataset competition, which is Stanford's question


and answering competition where they've got these giant set of questions and giant set


of documents and then they had humans go in and find the answers in the documents and


say which documents don't have answers and which do, and then all sorts of different


organizations have produced models to try and automatically find the answers.


Well, this competition has just been going back and forth and back and forth for a really


long time between a bunch of heavy hitters like Google, Baidu, multiple Microsoft teams.


I mean, we're talking the smartest people in the world, the Allen Institute, all fighting


back and forth.


Well, right now Albert, or variations thereof, have the top five positions and nine of the


top ten positions and all of them perform better than humans.


That is dominance.


So we've got right here this incredible technology for answering questions.


Well, what does this have to do with content authority?


I mean, why in the world would this matter?


Well, if you think about a document, any kind of piece of content that we produce, the intention


is that we're going to be answering the questions that our customers want answered.


So any topic we start with, let's say the topic we started with was data science.


Well, there are probably a lot of questions people want to know about that topic.


They might want to know what is data scientist?


How much money do they make?


What kind of things do you need to know to be a data scientist?


Well, this is where something like Albert could come in and be extremely valuable for


measuring the authoritativeness of the content.


You see, what if one of the measures of the authoritative content is how well that content


answers all of the related questions to the topic?


So you could imagine Google looking at all of the pages that rank for data science, and


they know the top 10 questions that are asked about it, and then seeing which piece of content


answers those 10 questions best.


If they were able to do that, that would be a pretty awesome metric for determining how


thorough and how significant and valuable and useful and authoritative that content


is.


So I think this one, the Albert algorithm, really has a lot of potential.


But let's move on from that.


There are all sorts of other things that might have to do with content authority.


One that I really like is this idea of information density.


So a lot of times when we're writing content, especially when we're not familiar with the


topic, we end up right in a lot of fluff.


We kind of are just putting words in there to meet the word length that is expected by


the contract, even though we know deep down that the number of words on the page really


don't determine whether or not it's going to rank.


So one of the ways that you can get it, whether a piece of content is actually valuable or


not, or at least is providing important information, is using natural language programs to extract


information.


Well, the probably most popular NLP open source, or at least openly available technology, started


as a project called Reverb and now is merged into the Open IE project.


But essentially, you can give it a piece of content and it will extract out all of the


factual claims made by that content.


So if I gave it a paragraph that said, you know, tennis is a sport that's played with


a racket and a ball, and today I'm having a lot of fun, you know, something of that


sort, it would be able to identify the factual claim of what tennis is, that it's a sport


played with a racket and a ball, but it would ignore the claim that I'm having a lot of


fun today, because that's not really a piece of information, a factual claim that we're


making.


So the concept of information density would be the number of facts that can be extracted


from a document versus the total number of words.


All right.


If we had that measurement, then we could pretty easily sift through content that is


just written for length versus content that is really information rich.


I mean, just imagine a Wikipedia article, how dense the information is in there relative


to the type of content that most of us produce.


So what are some other things?


Let's talk about content style.


This would be a really easy metric.


I mean, we could talk about the use of inline citations, which Wikipedia does, and which


after stating a fact, they then link to the bottom of the page where it shows you the


citation, just like you would do if you were writing a paper in college or a thesis, something


that would be authoritative, or the use of fact lists or tables of contents like Wikipedia


does or using date lines accurately or AP style formatting.


These are all really simple metrics that if you think about it, the types of sites that


are more trustworthy more often use.


And if that's the case, then they might be hints to Google that the content that you're


producing is authoritative.


So those aren't the only easy ones that we could look at.


There are a lot of other ones that are pretty straightforward, like dealing with writing


quality.


I mean, how easy is it to make sure you're using correct spelling and correct grammar?


But have you ever looked at the reading level?


I mean, has it ever occurred to you to make sure that the content that you're writing


isn't written at a level so difficult that no one can understand it or is written at


a level so low as to be certainly not thorough and not authoritative?


If your content is written at a third-grade level and the page is about some health issue,


I imagine Google could use that metric pretty quickly to exclude your site.


There's also things like sentence length, which deals with readability, the uniqueness


of the content, and also the word usage.


I mean, this is a pretty straightforward one.


Imagine that, once again, we're looking at data science, and Google looks at the words


you use on your page, and then maybe instead of looking at all sites that mention data


science, Google only looks at EDU sites, or Google only looks at published papers, and


then compares the language usage there.


That would be a pretty easy way for Google to identify a piece of content that's meant


for consumers that is authoritative versus one that's meant for consumers and isn't.


Another thing we can look at are media styles.


This is something that is a little bit more difficult to understand how Google might actually


be able to take advantage of, but at the same time, I think that these are measurable and


easy for search engine optimizers like ourselves to use.


One would be annotated graphs.


I think we should move away from graph images and move more towards using open source graphing


libraries that way the actual factual information, the numbers, can be provided to Google in


the source code.


Unique imagery is obviously something that we would care about.


In fact, it's actually listed in the quality rater guidelines.


Then finally, accessibility matters.


I know that accessibility doesn't make content authoritative, but it does say something about


the degree to which a person has cared about the details of the site and of the page.


There's a really famous story about, and I can't remember what the band's name was, but


they wrote into their contracts that for every concert, they needed to have a bowl of M&Ms


with all the brown M&Ms removed waiting for them in the room.


It wasn't because they had a problem with the brown M&Ms or they really liked M&Ms or


anything of that sort.


It was just to make sure that they read the contract.


Accessibility is kind of one of those things of where they can tell if you sweat the details


or not.


Now, finally, there are a couple others that I think are interesting and really have to


be talked about.


The first is clickbait titles.


This is explicitly identified as something that Google looks at, or at least the quality


raters look at, in order to determine that content is not authoritative.


Make your titles say what they mean, not try to exaggerate to get a click.


Another thing they say specifically is do you mention your author qualifications?


Sure, you don't have a Pulitzer Prize writer, but your writer has some sort of qualifications,


at least hopefully, and those qualifications are going to be important for Google in assessing


whether or not the author actually knows what they're talking about.


Another thing that I think we really ought to start looking at is Google Scholar.


How much money do you think Google makes off of Google Scholar?


Probably not very much.


What's the point of having a giant database of academic information when you don't run


ads on any of the pages?


Well, maybe that academic information can be mined in a way so that they can judge the


content that is made for consumers as whether or not it is in line with whether we're talking


about facts or language or authoritativeness with what academia is saying about that same


topic.


Now, of course, all of these ideas are just ideas.


I've got a giant question mark sitting out there about exactly how Google gets at content


authority.


But that doesn't mean we should ignore it.


So hopefully these ideas will help you come up with some ideas to improve your own content,


and maybe you could give me some more ideas in the comments section.


That'd be great, and we could talk more about how those might be measured.


I'm looking forward to it.


Factors that Affect the Local Algorithm that Don't Impact Organic - Presented by Joy Hawkins

Hi everyone. It's great to be here. Like Marie yesterday, I am so stoked to be on this stage.


For those of you that may not know much about me, I am the proud mother to three very small


children ages seven, five, and two. You're going to learn a bit about them.


Today, during my talk, I'm going to be talking about these two algorithms. I often think


about these two algorithms, the local algorithm and the organic algorithm. I feel like people


often view them like my daughters are displayed here. People usually think, okay, if I optimize


for one, I optimize for the other because they generally get along and they kind of


work together. Those of you that are parents may see where I'm going here. I often feel


like the local algorithm is often like the younger sibling in this equation. She is younger.


She often gets underestimated and she most definitely has a mind of her own.


To be clear about what I'm talking about here, when I talk about the local algorithm, I'm


talking about this three pack that we traditionally see for searches like plumber or doctor near


me. They're also called Google My Business listings, Google Maps listings. They used


to be called Google Plus listings. Google likes to change it up every few years just


to confuse us all, but that is all fueled by the local algorithm. Then organic, when


you hear me talking about that, that's like everything else that the rest of you deal


with.


We have noticed a shift here. Traditionally, we used to see that these two overlapped quite