Message Lab

We won! Message Lab has been named Agency of the Year at the 2024 Content Marketing Awards! 🏆🎉 This prestigious award highlights agencies that lead the industry through innovative, multi-platform publishing. It’s a reflection of our team’s dedication, our culture of innovation, and our commitment to excellence — but none of this would have been possible without our clients. Our clients push us to think bigger and bolder, and this award is a testament to their partnership and trust. In addition to Agency of the Year, we’re proud to have been named Winners in 7 other categories, including Best Digital Publication, Best Feature Article, and Best Overall Design. We were also Finalists in 14 other categories. Check out the full list of winners here: https://lnkd.in/efwUykSh A huge thank you to the Content Marketing Institute, our clients, and the entire Message Lab team for making this possible. Here’s to what we’ll accomplish together next! #ContentMarketingAwards #ClientSuccess #ContentMarketing #Innovation #Teamwork

The algorithms Google uses to rank search results have always been shrouded in mystery. But earlier this summer, thousands of classified ranking factors leaked – and the search optimization world got a peak behind the curtain.  For our Director of Growth Marketing Jeffrey Jensen, we call that an early birthday present. To help you make sense of it all, he’s sifted through the data and put together actionable tactics to help you optimize your content for Google’s algorithm. Here’s three: 1️⃣Google is attempting to understand authors, so clarify yours. One of the nodes in the leaked documents is “author,” which means Google is attempting to understand the author of a page. The key word there is “attempting.” Google is a complex algorithm, but can be surprisingly simple at times. When articles reference multiple people without clear signals about the author, Google is left to guess which of the many names cited is the actual author. And Google sometimes guesses incorrectly. Make the algorithm your friend and always put an “author” schema on every article where there is one. 2️⃣Create engaging content and you’ll be rewarded. From the documentation (and Google’s recent antitrust testimony) “successful clicks” is a ranking factor — perhaps the most impactful one. Getting a click from a user and then keeping that user engaged is one of the most effective ways to improve and maintain your ranking position. 3️⃣ Pay attention to your word counts. Beyond a certain, unspecified content length, there’s no SEO benefit to making content longer. We at Message Lab have the benefit of both our analytics investigations into engagement with long-form content and prior SEO experimentation to set our own guardrails. Anything longer than 2,200 is probably better suited for multiple articles or a hub-and-spoke model. For more of Jeff’s tips and to learn about the Great Google Algorithm Leak of 2024, read our full article below. https://lnkd.in/dXXZAKvC #seo #contentmarketing #insights

We are thrilled to congratulate Message Lab's clients for their outstanding achievements at the 2024 Content Marketing Awards! These awards honor the best in cutting-edge projects, standout results, and exceptional experiences in content marketing. Winners: 🔹Google: Highest Growth Response, Best Digital Publication 🔹SoftBank: Best Overall Design, Best Publication Design 🔹Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Best Interview or Profile, Best Feature Article, Best Series of Articles 🔹ServiceNow: Workflow Quarterly - Best B2B Publication We also want to celebrate the clients who were named finalists in various categories: 🔹Google: Best Content Marketing Program, Best Content Driven Website, Best B2C Publication 🔹SoftBank: Best Content Marketing Program, Best Content Marketing Program in Technology, Best Content Driven Website, Best Overall Editorial, Best B2B Publication, Best Digital Publication, Best Feature Article (Lenskart), Best Feature Article (SambaNova) 🔹NEA : Best series of articles 🔹ServiceNow: Best Agency/Client Partnership, Best Use of a Whitepaper, Best Special Topic Issue (Put AI to Work), Best Use of Original Research (Put AI to Work), Best Content Marketing Program in Technology We are proud to be a partner and look forward to continuing our collaboration in creating impactful content.  Read the full list on [Content Marketing Institute]: https://lnkd.in/dkjE8Hhr

Way to go team!

Workflow, ServiceNow's thought-leadership program, has won so many awards over the years that it's hard to keep count sometimes. Now you can add to that tally the Content Marketing Award for "Best B2B publication." It was a finalist for many more, including "Best content marketing program in technology," "Best whitepaper," and "Best use of original research." Congratulations Richard McGill Murphy, Tim Catts, Stuart Luman and the rest of the Workflow team!

The best way to make people stop and read is to show them something beautiful. Victoria Columb Modrick and the SoftBank Vision Fund team have made that a core principle of their work, which is why it's so great to see their Sozo content program win the Content Marketing Awards for "Best overall design" and "Best publication design." They were finalists for 8(!) other awards, too, including "Best Content Marketing Program," "Best overall editorial," "Best Digital Publication," and "Best Feature Article" (twice on that last one). Congratulations! https://lnkd.in/gfhnTYWk

Google Store's Ideas + Info content hub has helped millions of people better understand how to get the most out of Google products. And that work has now been recognized by the Content Marketing Awards. Congratulations to Taruna Sood, Brea Salim, Shama Diegnan, Sia-Linda Lebbie, Ayah Saleh and the Google Store team for winning "Highest Growth Response" and "Best Digital Publication." Google Store was also a finalist for "Best Content Marketing Program," "Best Content Driven Website," and "Best B2C Publication." https://lnkd.in/gFy4dqpw

In today’s messy media landscape, content lives and dies fast. Most articles get 80% of their lifetime pageviews in the first week after they’ve been published, research shows. But at Message Lab, that’s not good enough. Here are three tips from Content Strategist Eric Xu to extend the lifetime value of content. ⭐ Understand what makes content valuable  We frequently see publishers over-index on metrics like pageviews and bounce rates. The classical suite of publishing KPIs is important. But numbers that aren’t tied to behaviors are just numbers. They represent value, but are not inherently valuable. Instead, focus on metrics like engagement time, newsletter signups, or return visitors. Content that drives action like this is the best way to foster affinity with a brand. 💪 Make your content more effective You can’t just publish any content and expect crowds to magically appear on your site, engage with your content, share it with their networks, and sign up for your newsletter. To make this happen, focus on accessibility by creating clear pathways to and from stories and promoting them intentionally and often, across all your channels. Plus, set up infrastructure to monitor and measure the performance of your stories. When a topic starts to fade, find a new angle to capture attention. 🔍 Leverage search as a fountain of youth:  Content can only drive value when it’s seen. Search can give you access to the entire world of readers who might be interested in your content and its themes — regardless of their familiarity with your brand. If your story is good and useful, and you rank for the right keywords in search, it can show up indefinitely. That opens potentially limitless opportunities to spread ideas, encourage behaviors and influence readers. Learn more about how Message Lab defeats content decay in our latest R&D investigation. Plus, shoutout to Stephanie Cuenca-Lazo for her beautiful design work. https://lnkd.in/eBvQYA_D #content #metrics #engagement

"The people who study AI most closely expect it to be as transformational as the internet was 25 to 30 years ago,” says our CEO Ben Worthen. Listen in to the full panel of Orchestra experts to separate fact from fiction in the AI hype.

Did you know that LinkedIn's algorithm has changed? Well, no worries because our experts, Isaac Sultan and Laurel Schwartz, have got you covered. Swipe through to learn how to adapt your content strategy and navigate these changes while keeping your brand ahead of the curve. #LinkedInAlgorithm