Posted by jennita

One aspect of the Moz Community that doesn’t get mentioned enough is the individual community members who were here in the early days of SEOmoz. The folks who stuck around when our tools were brand new, when Rand was “just another SEO guy,” and when our community was really just a bunch of folks talking about SEO.

One of those early members was Dana Lookadoo. She joined Moz in April 2007, and has been a supporter, trainer, and mentor to many others ever since. Whether it’s the blog posts she’s written, the thoughtful comments she’s left, or the presentations she’s given at MozCon and in webinars, she’s provided for this community like few others have.

Last year, Dana took a
horrible fall when she was on a bike ride (she’s an avid cyclist), and broke her neck and back. She’s had many ups and downs since the accident, and hasn’t been able to work full-time. Dana now suffers intense burning from neuropathy and muscle spacicity that has spread from head to toe, and she has burning and spasms covering approximately 75% of her body. Her mobility and function is greatly limited and she suffers a lot of pain each day.

She splits her time between the wheelchair, the bed, and some in the walker. Unfortunately, over the last few days she’s had so much pain and spasms that she isn’t walking as much. It is also quite difficult for Dana to deal with bright lights, and she can’t spend much time on her phone or computer.

Dana has given so much to the Moz community, and to our industry as a whole. Her knowledge and generosity has helped marketers for many years, and now it’s our turn to return the favor. She’s in need of part-time caregivers, which cost $4,125 per month. That’s almost
$50k for a year (…and that’s only part-time!). This doesn’t include paying for the multiple hospital stays, visits to the ER, physical therapy, occupational therapy, neuropathy treatment, and so on.

I’m asking you to help one of our amazing community members by donating to her medical fund. Every little bit helps, and you can even set up a monthly payment (I’m doing $25 per month). If you don’t have the means, please help us spread the word. It’s our turn to give back to Dana.

I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight some of Dana’s amazing work she’s done for the Moz Community, as so much of it remains great advice to marketers.

Stress-free Website Redesign for Search and Social

Download a PDF of the presentation

In September 2013, just two months before her accident, Dana presented an excellent webinar with us about how to make sure your search and social efforts don’t go to waste when you redesign a website. The full webinar is a little over an hour, but believe me, it’s worth the watch.

Rock Your SEO with Structured Social Sharing

At MozCon 2012, Dana was one of our very first Community Speakers to rock the stage. After seeing how well these presentations were received, we decided to continue the program each year. We’ve always been grateful to Dana for helping to make this so successful. In her presentation she discusses how to make your SEO even better by ensuring your social sharing is set up correctly. Give it a watch!

And if you’d like to just check out the slide deck, you can view that below:

I could honestly go on and on, as she’s been such an integral piece of the greater online marketing community. 

Donations needed

Please take a few moments and donate what you can. Every little bit helps! If you don’t have the means, we understand that as well, and hope you’ll share the post and fund using the methods below.

Please help share

Let’s get the word out! Here are some easy ways to help make a difference for Dana:

Embed a widget on your site:

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="258" height="338" title="Click Here to donate!" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="movie" value="http://funds.gofundme.com/Widgetflex.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="flashvars" value="page=danalookadoo&template=11" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><embed allowScriptAccess="always" src="http://funds.gofundme.com/Widgetflex.swf" quality="high" flashVars="page=danalookadoo&template=11" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="258" height="338"></embed></object>

Share this image on Twitter: 

If you have other ideas on how to get the word out and help our fellow community member, let’s hear it. Thank you all for your support and assistance.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Posted by jennita

One aspect of the Moz Community that doesn’t get mentioned enough is the individual community members who were here in the early days of SEOmoz. The folks who stuck around when our tools were brand new, when Rand was “just another SEO guy,” and when our community was really just a bunch of folks talking about SEO.

One of those early members was Dana Lookadoo. She joined Moz in April 2007, and has been a supporter, trainer, and mentor to many others ever since. Whether it’s the blog posts she’s written, the thoughtful comments she’s left, or the presentations she’s given at MozCon and in webinars, she’s provided for this community like few others have.

Last year, Dana took a
horrible fall when she was on a bike ride (she’s an avid cyclist), and broke her neck and back. She’s had many ups and downs since the accident, and hasn’t been able to work full-time. Dana now suffers intense burning from neuropathy and muscle spacicity that has spread from head to toe, and she has burning and spasms covering approximately 75% of her body. Her mobility and function is greatly limited and she suffers a lot of pain each day.

She splits her time between the wheelchair, the bed, and some in the walker. Unfortunately, over the last few days she’s had so much pain and spasms that she isn’t walking as much. It is also quite difficult for Dana to deal with bright lights, and she can’t spend much time on her phone or computer.

Dana has given so much to the Moz community, and to our industry as a whole. Her knowledge and generosity has helped marketers for many years, and now it’s our turn to return the favor. She’s in need of part-time caregivers, which cost $4,125 per month. That’s almost
$50k for a year (…and that’s only part-time!). This doesn’t include paying for the multiple hospital stays, visits to the ER, physical therapy, occupational therapy, neuropathy treatment, and so on.

I’m asking you to help one of our amazing community members by donating to her medical fund. Every little bit helps, and you can even set up a monthly payment (I’m doing $25 per month). If you don’t have the means, please help us spread the word. It’s our turn to give back to Dana.

I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight some of Dana’s amazing work she’s done for the Moz Community, as so much of it remains great advice to marketers.

Stress-free Website Redesign for Search and Social

Download a PDF of the presentation

In September 2013, just two months before her accident, Dana presented an excellent webinar with us about how to make sure your search and social efforts don’t go to waste when you redesign a website. The full webinar is a little over an hour, but believe me, it’s worth the watch.

Rock Your SEO with Structured Social Sharing

At MozCon 2012, Dana was one of our very first Community Speakers to rock the stage. After seeing how well these presentations were received, we decided to continue the program each year. We’ve always been grateful to Dana for helping to make this so successful. In her presentation she discusses how to make your SEO even better by ensuring your social sharing is set up correctly. Give it a watch!

And if you’d like to just check out the slide deck, you can view that below:

I could honestly go on and on, as she’s been such an integral piece of the greater online marketing community. 

Donations needed

Please take a few moments and donate what you can. Every little bit helps! If you don’t have the means, we understand that as well, and hope you’ll share the post and fund using the methods below.

Please help share

Let’s get the word out! Here are some easy ways to help make a difference for Dana:

Embed a widget on your site:

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="258" height="338" title="Click Here to donate!" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="movie" value="http://funds.gofundme.com/Widgetflex.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="flashvars" value="page=danalookadoo&template=11" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><embed allowScriptAccess="always" src="http://funds.gofundme.com/Widgetflex.swf" quality="high" flashVars="page=danalookadoo&template=11" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="258" height="338"></embed></object>

Share this image on Twitter: 

If you have other ideas on how to get the word out and help our fellow community member, let’s hear it. Thank you all for your support and assistance.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Posted by Isla_McKetta

“Picture it.”

If you’re of a certain generation, those two words can only conjure images of tiny, white-haired Sophia from the Golden Girls about to tell one of her engaging (if somewhat long and irrelevant) stories as she holds her elderly roommates hostage in the kitchen or living room of their pastel-hued Miami home.

Even if you have no idea what I’m talking about, those words should become your writing mantra, because what readers do with your words is take all those letters and turn them into mind pictures. And as the writer, you have control over what those pictures look like and how long your readers mull them over.

According to
Reading in the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene, reading involves a rich back and forth between the language areas and visual areas of our brains. Although the full extent of that connectivity is not yet known, it’s easy to imagine that the more sensory (interesting) information we can include in our writing, the more fully we can engage our readers.

So if you’re a writer or content marketer you should be harnessing the illustrative power of words to occupy your readers’ minds and keep them interested until they’re ready to convert. Here’s how to make your words
work for you.

Kill clichés

I could have titled this piece “Painting a Picture with Words” but you’ve heard it. Over and over and over. And I’m going to propose that every time you use a cliché, a puppy dies. 

While that’s a bit extreme (at least I hope so because that’s a lot of dead puppies and Rocky’s having second thoughts about his choice of parents), I hope it will remind you to read over what you’ve written and see where your attention starts to wander (wandering attention=cliché=one more tragic, senseless death) you get bored. Chances are it’s right in the middle of a tired bit of language that used to be a wonderful word picture but has been used and abused to the point that we readers can’t even summon the image anymore.

Make up metaphors (and similes)

Did you know that most clichés used to be metaphors? And that we overused them because metaphors are possibly the most powerful tool we have at our disposal for creating word pictures (and, thus, engaging content)? You do now.

By making unexpected comparisons, metaphors and similes force words to perform like a stage mom on a reality show. These comparisons shake our brains awake and force us to pay attention. So apply a whip to your language. Make it dance like a ballerina in a little pink tutu. Give our brains something interesting to sink our teeth into (poor Rocky!), gnaw on, and share with out friends.

Engage the senses

If the goal of all this attention to language is to turn reading into a full brain experience, why not make it a little easier by including sensory information in whatever you’re writing? Here are a few examples:

• These tickets are selling so fast we can smell the burning rubber.
• Next to a crumbling cement pillar, our interview subject sits typing on his pristine MacBook Air.
• In a sea of (yelp!) never ending horde of black and gray umbrellas, this red cowboy hat will show the world you own your look.
• Black hat tactics left your SERPs stinking as bad as a garbage strike in late August? Let us help you clear the air by cleaning up those results.

See how those images and experiences continue to unfold and develop in your mind? You have the power to affect your readers the same way—to create an image so powerful it stays with them throughout their busy days. One note of caution, though, sensory information is so strong that you want to be careful when creating potentially negative associations (like that garbage strike stench in the final example).

Leverage superlatives (wisely) and ditch hyperbole

SUPERLATIVES ARE THE MOST EFFECTIVEST TOOL YOU CAN USE EVER (until you wear your reader out or lose their trust). Superlatives (think “best,” “worst,” “hairiest” – any form of the adjective or adverb that is the most exaggerated form of the word) are one of the main problems with clickbait headlines (the other being the failure to deliver on those huge promises).

Speaking of exaggeration, be careful with it in all of its forms. You don’t actually have to stop using it, but think of your reader’s credence in your copy as a grasshopper handed over by a child. They think it’s super special and they want you to as well. If you mistreat that grasshopper by piling exaggerated fact after exaggerated fact on top of it, the grasshopper will be crushed and your reader will not easily forgive you.

So how do you stand out in a crowded field of over-used superlatives and hyperbolic claims? Find the places your products honestly excel and tout those. At Moz we don’t have the largest link index in the world. Instead, we have a really high quality link index. I could have obfuscated there and said we have “the best” link index, but by being specific about what we’re actually awesome at, we end up attracting customers who want better results instead of more results (and they’re happier for it).

Unearth the mystery

One of the keys to piquing your audience’s interest is to tap into (poor puppy!) create or find the mystery in what you’re writing. I’m not saying your product description will suddenly feature PIs in fedoras (I can dream, though), but figure out what’s intriguing or new about what you’re talking about. Here are some examples:

• Remember when shortcuts meant a few extra minutes to yourself after school? How will you spend the 15-30 minutes our email management system will save you? We won’t tell…
• You don’t need to understand how this toilet saves water while flushing so quietly it won’t wake the baby, just enjoy a restful night’s sleep (and lower water bills)
• Check out this interactive to see what makes our work boots more comfortable than all the rest.

Secrets, surprises, and inside information make readers hunger for more knowledge. Use that power to get your audience excited about the story you’re about to tell them.

Don’t forget the words around your imagery

Notice how some of these suggestions aren’t about the word picture itself, they’re about the frame around the picture? I firmly believe that a reader comes to a post with a certain amount of energy. You can waste that energy by soothing them to sleep with boring imagery and clichés, while they try to find something to be interested in. Or you can give them energy by giving them word pictures they can get excited about.

So picture it. You’ve captured your reader’s attention with imagery so engaging they’ll remember you after they put down their phone, read their social streams (again), and check their email. They’ll come back to your site to read your content again or to share that story they just can’t shake.

Good writing isn’t easy or fast, but it’s worth the time and effort.

Let me help you make word pictures

Editing writing to make it better is actually one of my great pleasures in life, so I’m going to make you an offer here. Leave a sentence or two in the comments that you’re having trouble activating, and I’ll see what I can do to offer you some suggestions. Pick a cliché you can’t get out of your head or a metaphor that needs a little refresh. Give me a little context for the best possible results.

I’ll do my best to help the first 50 questions or so (I have to stop somewhere or I’ll never write the next blog post in this series), so ask away. I promise no puppies will get hurt in the process. In fact, Rocky’s quite happy to be the poster boy for this post—it’s the first time we’ve let him have beach day, ferry day, and all the other spoilings all at once.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Posted by Isla_McKetta

“Picture it.”

If you’re of a certain generation, those two words can only conjure images of tiny, white-haired Sophia from the Golden Girls about to tell one of her engaging (if somewhat long and irrelevant) stories as she holds her elderly roommates hostage in the kitchen or living room of their pastel-hued Miami home.

Even if you have no idea what I’m talking about, those words should become your writing mantra, because what readers do with your words is take all those letters and turn them into mind pictures. And as the writer, you have control over what those pictures look like and how long your readers mull them over.

According to
Reading in the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene, reading involves a rich back and forth between the language areas and visual areas of our brains. Although the full extent of that connectivity is not yet known, it’s easy to imagine that the more sensory (interesting) information we can include in our writing, the more fully we can engage our readers.

So if you’re a writer or content marketer you should be harnessing the illustrative power of words to occupy your readers’ minds and keep them interested until they’re ready to convert. Here’s how to make your words
work for you.

Kill clichés

I could have titled this piece “Painting a Picture with Words” but you’ve heard it. Over and over and over. And I’m going to propose that every time you use a cliché, a puppy dies. 

While that’s a bit extreme (at least I hope so because that’s a lot of dead puppies and Rocky’s having second thoughts about his choice of parents), I hope it will remind you to read over what you’ve written and see where your attention starts to wander (wandering attention=cliché=one more tragic, senseless death) you get bored. Chances are it’s right in the middle of a tired bit of language that used to be a wonderful word picture but has been used and abused to the point that we readers can’t even summon the image anymore.

Make up metaphors (and similes)

Did you know that most clichés used to be metaphors? And that we overused them because metaphors are possibly the most powerful tool we have at our disposal for creating word pictures (and, thus, engaging content)? You do now.

By making unexpected comparisons, metaphors and similes force words to perform like a stage mom on a reality show. These comparisons shake our brains awake and force us to pay attention. So apply a whip to your language. Make it dance like a ballerina in a little pink tutu. Give our brains something interesting to sink our teeth into (poor Rocky!), gnaw on, and share with out friends.

Engage the senses

If the goal of all this attention to language is to turn reading into a full brain experience, why not make it a little easier by including sensory information in whatever you’re writing? Here are a few examples:

• These tickets are selling so fast we can smell the burning rubber.
• Next to a crumbling cement pillar, our interview subject sits typing on his pristine MacBook Air.
• In a sea of (yelp!) never ending horde of black and gray umbrellas, this red cowboy hat will show the world you own your look.
• Black hat tactics left your SERPs stinking as bad as a garbage strike in late August? Let us help you clear the air by cleaning up those results.

See how those images and experiences continue to unfold and develop in your mind? You have the power to affect your readers the same way—to create an image so powerful it stays with them throughout their busy days. One note of caution, though, sensory information is so strong that you want to be careful when creating potentially negative associations (like that garbage strike stench in the final example).

Leverage superlatives (wisely) and ditch hyperbole

SUPERLATIVES ARE THE MOST EFFECTIVEST TOOL YOU CAN USE EVER (until you wear your reader out or lose their trust). Superlatives (think “best,” “worst,” “hairiest” – any form of the adjective or adverb that is the most exaggerated form of the word) are one of the main problems with clickbait headlines (the other being the failure to deliver on those huge promises).

Speaking of exaggeration, be careful with it in all of its forms. You don’t actually have to stop using it, but think of your reader’s credence in your copy as a grasshopper handed over by a child. They think it’s super special and they want you to as well. If you mistreat that grasshopper by piling exaggerated fact after exaggerated fact on top of it, the grasshopper will be crushed and your reader will not easily forgive you.

So how do you stand out in a crowded field of over-used superlatives and hyperbolic claims? Find the places your products honestly excel and tout those. At Moz we don’t have the largest link index in the world. Instead, we have a really high quality link index. I could have obfuscated there and said we have “the best” link index, but by being specific about what we’re actually awesome at, we end up attracting customers who want better results instead of more results (and they’re happier for it).

Unearth the mystery

One of the keys to piquing your audience’s interest is to tap into (poor puppy!) create or find the mystery in what you’re writing. I’m not saying your product description will suddenly feature PIs in fedoras (I can dream, though), but figure out what’s intriguing or new about what you’re talking about. Here are some examples:

• Remember when shortcuts meant a few extra minutes to yourself after school? How will you spend the 15-30 minutes our email management system will save you? We won’t tell…
• You don’t need to understand how this toilet saves water while flushing so quietly it won’t wake the baby, just enjoy a restful night’s sleep (and lower water bills)
• Check out this interactive to see what makes our work boots more comfortable than all the rest.

Secrets, surprises, and inside information make readers hunger for more knowledge. Use that power to get your audience excited about the story you’re about to tell them.

Don’t forget the words around your imagery

Notice how some of these suggestions aren’t about the word picture itself, they’re about the frame around the picture? I firmly believe that a reader comes to a post with a certain amount of energy. You can waste that energy by soothing them to sleep with boring imagery and clichés, while they try to find something to be interested in. Or you can give them energy by giving them word pictures they can get excited about.

So picture it. You’ve captured your reader’s attention with imagery so engaging they’ll remember you after they put down their phone, read their social streams (again), and check their email. They’ll come back to your site to read your content again or to share that story they just can’t shake.

Good writing isn’t easy or fast, but it’s worth the time and effort.

Let me help you make word pictures

Editing writing to make it better is actually one of my great pleasures in life, so I’m going to make you an offer here. Leave a sentence or two in the comments that you’re having trouble activating, and I’ll see what I can do to offer you some suggestions. Pick a cliché you can’t get out of your head or a metaphor that needs a little refresh. Give me a little context for the best possible results.

I’ll do my best to help the first 50 questions or so (I have to stop somewhere or I’ll never write the next blog post in this series), so ask away. I promise no puppies will get hurt in the process. In fact, Rocky’s quite happy to be the poster boy for this post—it’s the first time we’ve let him have beach day, ferry day, and all the other spoilings all at once.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

You may have heard it said that understanding your audience on social media is one of the keys to success with social media marketing. (We may have even said it ourselves a time or two!)

Makes a lot of sense. The more you know about your audience, the better you’ll be able to deliver the kind of helpful content and updates they’re interested in.

So what might be the simplest, most efficient ways of understanding an audience?

This is the part where I often …

The post Get to Know Your Audience: 18 Incredibly Useful Market Research Tools appeared first on Social.