[MUSIC] In the last lesson, I spoke about the disconnect between social sharing and links and what types of content is likely to get both. In this lesson, we'll discuss anchor content, the content that makes up the foundation of a strong content marketing program. So, first of all, what is anchor content? Well, its content where in a single piece you can drive significant changes in reputation and visibility. Sounds like a great thing to have, doesn't it? So let's dig into what it might be. Well, as we talked about in the last lesson, could be data-driven studies and, as I mentioned a few times throughout this course, something that my company does a lot of because we believe very strongly in this as an approach. So, for example, here's a piece that we did that got 3,100 social shares. Okay, that's pretty good. But what's important from an SEO perspective, it's got a lot of links too. So this is data that I've pulled from Majestic SEO, 208 linking domains and nearly 2,800 different links. That's pretty good. And one of these, as I've mentioned earlier in this course, is pretty good link from The Wall Street Journal. This was awesome. So what makes up anchor content? Well, it's more about authority than emotion, because that's what's most likely to get you both shares and links. It's often comprehensive on a topic. It has to be materially better than preexisting resources other people have published on the same topic on the Web. It's dependent on the credibility of the author and the publisher, and effective promotion is also key. That's why, in earlier modules in this course, we talked about social media marketing influencers for so much time. And what do you get out of anchor content? Well, it's really the key to getting over sort of the hump, where your content tends to get more and more engagement more easily. And you've got to have to understand that this is going to take some time. Even if you start producing great content initially and have anchor content that you're putting out two weeks after you get started, you might not have the author credibility yet. So you do have to plan for this to take a long time. Sometimes content marketing campaigns take 18 months to reach critical mass. But once you get there, it's really powerful. So crossing critical mass happens when your reputation crosses the threshold. Those critical piece of content or anchor content is a big key, but a big visibility boost can help with it, too. You need to sustain the publishing of anchor content. And once you've done that, now, even more mundane content of yours is likely to get some level of high engagement and maybe even some links, even though it may not by itself be anchored content. But whatever you do, you have to keep the anchor content coming, new pieces. You have to continue to support the campaign, but this is a very important place to get in your overall content marketing strategy. So what I tried to do in this lesson was really established this concept of anchor content and the characteristics of what makes up that content. The authority necessary and the visibility that it gives you once you get there. In the next lesson, my plan is to walk you through different types of content that you can use and their various attributes and overall value to a content marketing campaign.
