#A Mel who uses her power and influence to change things for the better in ways that even the strongest warriors and smartest scientists

[cawsket]

I'm not as into meljayvik as I was before, tbh. I think it's interesting as a thought experiment of sorts, to see if it COULD work, I like all three characters involved, and I like other people's content of it, but unlike jayvik I don't know if I'll ever write any myself.

Some of it is just because I've been thinking about ship dynamics for a while but another part is I just really don't know how the hell to fit mel in there after season 2. I'm also just not a fan of her character in s2 in general (no hate, more like less enthusiasm than before; I just feel like her as a mage is a character choice that underutilises more important aspects of her character) and while I'm not a big fan of the many choices they made with Viktor either, they at least did put their whole pussy into those scenes and give him some sort of resolution.

With Mel I feel like her story was a bit lukewarm: just her in a pit for a while, then she shows up last minute, and then the rest of her story is tbc in Noxus. It feels disconnected right 'til the end, and very much like her story is her continuing on without Jayvik, without their resolution - so I'm inclined to let her sail away.

[lullabyes22-blog]

hope I’m not bothering you with this ask but I was curious about your opinion on jinx’s possible ‘redemption’ arc with the ekko/firelights team up being confirmed and how that might affect her connection to Silco since I’ve seen some theorize the thing she’s leaving behind is her past with him (?)

No bother at all 💗

imo Jinx does not in any way need a 'redemption' arc. Arcane is very good at flipping perspectives and showing different facets of the same dilemma from various characters' POVs.

The genius is that, in doing so, it actually boots morality out the window and focuses instead on each character's journey thru the lens of cause and effect, ex. The Day of Ash leads to mass generational trauma in the Undercity, and Vander, Silco, Vi and Powder respond to the trauma in different ways; Jayce and Viktor unleash the wonder of Hextech upon Piltover, and inadvertantly carve the sweet, sweet scars of hubris (and neoliberalism!) upon both their better selves and those closest to them; Mel longs for her family's acceptance and her mother's approval and is willing to go to manipulative extremes to put Piltover on the map, only to end up with a powderkeg Undercity beneath her feet.

Etc.

The point being, Arcane is not a story about right and wrong. It is a story of high-stakes consequences that come from playing with forces you cannot control - be it magic, love, power or supernatural PCP-coded drugs. The crux of the debate is less about who is the hero/villain in the show, and more about how the characters can evolve as more cohesive people who see the world from a broader perspective - and seize the agency to change their social circumstances for the better, in healthier, more inclusive and empowering ways.

With that in mind - no, I do not think Jinx will 'team up' with the Firelights at the expense of rejecting her connection with Silco. More likely, she'll accept that both Ekko and Silco are a part of her past and her present identity, and hopefully use these relationships as building blocks to connect with other people (and reconcile wwith her sister), because it's her self-loathing and fear of 'jinxing' things that keeps her isolated more than any insidious influence Silco may have wrought upon her mind.

Also keep in mind that at the end of the day, Ekko, Jinx, Vi, Vander and Silco were all underclassmen struggling their way out from under an oppressive and brutal class system that profited from pitting them against each other. The differences in how they chose to fight back against said system are each a result of their trauma, and how it shapes them towards paths of extremism, pacifism, civic engagement and anarchy.

But, again, they are all in the same boat - and that boat is on fire, sinking and has nitoglycerin in the cargo hold.

And 'Progress' is holding the matches.

tldr: Arcane is not a show about good and bad characters and redemption should, ideally, have little bearing on character arcs.

The series is, however, a wonderful showcasing of the different motivations that drive passionate people to do extreme things to heal a personal wound - and the effect of those choices on both a personal and societal level, depending on how much power the characters wield.

[teleportationmagic]

The main reason why I want Mel Medarda to live is because she is my fave, and because I love her.

The secondary reason why I want Mel to live is because the Undercity - and with it, Piltover - blowing up is first and foremost, her fault.

Our introduction with Mel starts by Elora telling us that she's the wealthiest person in Piltover, and we can see the influence of that - through her political and social power. While there are a variety of seats on the Council, it's made very clear that Mel holds more cards here. It's her who we see making moves to get people on her side, it's her who does notable alliance and coalition building, and it's her who the other council leaders follow. We see a few notable votes throughout the show - to pull Jayce into the council, to eject Heimdinger from it, and to vote for Zaun's independence, and in each of those votes Mel's either the one to prompt it, or Jayce is and the rest of the council members follow after she votes. When we speak of the council as a political entity, you have to speak of Mel Medarda. It's through convincing her that Jayce can ultimately bring the council on his side.

And so, the council failing Zaun is her failure. The council ignoring Zaun is her ignorance. The council allowing for the oppression of this people is her allowing for the oppression of these people. Not through malice, but simply because nobody is moved to make things better - because the status quo has enriched her, and the council, and Piltover, and why make changes if it's getting you what you want? The only other person who has something close to her power is Jayce, and he's largely coming into politics as a newcomer. She actually has the ability to do something, and she hasn't. Especially across the years bridging the time skip - it's clear that it's her who fashioned Jayce into being the kind of celebrity that he's becomes, and it's very likely that her political capital would've risen with his technology. And yet, she's done nothing.

Ambessa herself makes that point - that she's let the problem of the Undercity fester for too long. And to Mel's credit, she does look. Once the Undercity starts eating Piltover, she starts, finally, giving concessions. Once it rises to a moral point that she does understand, that balancing act between peace and violence, she finally makes the right choice. Only, its far too late, because she confused peace for goodness, for okayness, when really all that meant was that the violence was away from her eyes. She should have to confront that failure head on - that for all her diplomacy, she missed the place where she actually could have done the most good, because she was too busy lining her own pockets. For all her dread at becoming her mother, in many ways she already embodies her, just draped in gold.

She should have to confront that, the enormity of it. She should have to try to make it right.

[gachagon]

I haven't made a post on it yet so here is one about how Mel's ending has an air of hope and opportunity in it, even though she ends up "with nothing" in the end. In the opening for the show, we see that Mel and Ambessa swap places on this very same lounge chair, foreshadowing that she'd eventually take her mother's place as head of the Medarda's personal army.

In Noxian society, strength comes before anything else but "Strength" isn't just "whoever has the most muscle/power" it can mean many things, in fact in the League of Legends lore Noxus has three core pillars of strength.

"Vision, Might, and Guile"

Essentially, there's more than one way to be strong in Noxus outside of being physically overpowering to others, or having the most influence. Mel fits right in with the rest of the Noxus characters even though she may not think it herself, because she's constantly referred to as "The Fox" or "clever", alluding to the idea that her strength comes in the form of "Guile". Being clever and outsmarting your opponents.

Mel's strength is different from Ambessa's overt physical prowess, and now that Mel is essentially a general of her own war band, she has a chance to lead said war band in a way that's different from Ambessa.

Ambessa used the Medarda war band to protect her family via securing more power for the Medarda's as a whole, but Mel now has a chance to use said war band for a totally different reason and cause, one that suits her needs and not her mothers. Since the next show for Arcane will definitely take place in Noxus, it makes me wonder if Mel will potentially use her families war band to help other people, rather than for subjugation and to colonize more places for Noxian control.

In the games lore, Noxus is this all powerful nation that has slow going plans to invade and eventually take over the world, by making every nation Noxus. And the most recent place is Ionia, which is a nation full of nothing BUT magic.

And Mel herself is very magical, so I just feel like even though her ending was sad because she had lost her mother and is now by herself, an opportunity has arisen for her where she's now got more power than she ever did before. She may not be the "ruler" of Noxus (no one is really, not even Leblanc...) but she can go and help other people, she has more political sway, she can finally be involved in the Noxian military without her mother's direct input.

In Season 1, Mel wants to spare that girl who was supposedly a princess of a fallen court that was now under Noxian rule, but Ambessa murdered her anyways because keeping her alive was too much of a liability.

Mel is always looking for ways to compromise the violent acts the Noxian army commits, and now she literally can call the shots of her own army to, do things her way. I think that's a very hopeful ending for her, because she has always been someone who wanted to prove herself and to make change, and now she has that, even though it cost her a great amount of strife and pain.

It's also worth noting that her story wasn't just about her mother accepting her as strong, but about accepting the way she used her strength. Mel wasn't strong in the way Ambessa was, and because of this Ambessa believed her to be weak, too weak to really be the head of the Medarda war band. She sent Mel to Piltover specifically because she believed Mel's strengths would be better there, in a place that wasn't a battlefield (per Ambessa's Champion story on the league website) And because she had already lost her son to battle, she took on this burden of being the strongest Medarda she possibly could for her family.

Learning to accept the different pillars of strength was what Ambessa had to learn, she had forgotten that there isn't just "Might" but also "Guile" and "Vision", a way to be strong without overpowering others physically. And I think many Noxian characters also forget this aspect, which gives Mel a new purpose to show the "Guile" part of Noxian society, where you don't have to murder everyone in your path in order to be seen as strong.

Granted, this does make Mel an even more morally grey character, because she's still essentially apart of a murderous colonizing regime T_T but the idea that she can bring compromise to a nation that almost forgets what that is at times is important to me.

That, and Ionia is also a nation about "balance" and how you can't really have too much of one aspect of nature. Violence and Peace has to have a balance in order for things to stay chill, and this disagreement is why the Ionian invasion is such a bloody war to begin with. But that's a whole other story you can read on the league website.

[ihatethiswebsite77]

Cartman, Authority and shitty Parenting.

Obviously he is lacking a authoritative father figure, something that plays a big part in who he becomes since he usually tends to idolize and replicate the behavior of adult male characters who present themselves as a powerful figures with authority, those usually tend to be shitty people. To name a few: Mel Gibson, the fat guy from the Butt Out episode, Michael Jackson (tho here it's less about authority and more about just having an "hey son let's play catch" type of parent, ironically Mr. Jackson presents some of the same issues when it comes to parenting as Cartman's mother does in "Tsst"), members of Nambla (there is a reason why Cartman is seeking out older male friends while also exhibiting a wish to be the "mature" one himself). Except for Chef (probably the only adult male character who had a positive relationship and influence on Cartman, after whose death you can also see a shift in his character), every adult male characters Cartman comes in contact with is a shitty person in one way or another

A prime example of this is in one early Halloween episode where Cartman's mom makes him a h*tler costume (Why? Not sure, but in the earlier seasons Cartman's mom was more outwardly implied to be an intolerant christian from what I remember, she Is also the one that took him to see "Passion of Christ" multiple times). In the same Halloween episode Principal Victoria shows him an educational video about the bad mustache guy but instead of seeing the video for what it is Cartman is instead drawn to the mustache mans "authority". (Cartman has a thing for Authority, for what I hope now are obvious reasons )

In the forementioned episode "Tsst", it is revealed that Cartman is 100% capable of change, and that what is preventing that is his mother's god awful parenting. See Liane's and Cartman's relationship is somewhat bordering on emotional incest, where Liane, the parent, seeks out a bond with Cartman, her son, that she should be seeking with other adults her age. Basically she treats him like a friend instead of a son. In the episode, she gains authority over him (notice a pattern) and once she does his behavior and personality both start shifting. She is able to do this because she finds a bond with the guy helping her be a better parent, she gains an actual adult friend. But once the guy leaves she reverts to her old ways of spoiling and treating cartman as a vessel for her own emotional needs, and with her so does Cartman.

So basically Cartman is put in this position where he is simultaneously seeking out a father figure, while also wishing to BE an adult male authority figure. And when you pair this with the fact that in his home, he is simultaneously supposed to be the kid (someone who wants a father figure) , while also being treated like the emotional crutch in place of an actual adult man by his mother (something that would make him feel like HE is SUPPOSED TO BE that authoritative adult male figure). A not so pretty picture starts to paint itself, giving us an insight as to why Cartman came to idolise and try and replicate the behavior and attitude of adult men he recognizes as "having authority".

[q8qwertyuiop8p]

What is with people automatically assuming seeing Mel as a villian or disliking her makes you racist, misogynistic, etc.

I don't dislike her because she is a black woman. I dislike her because she manipulates Jayce and others without a worry about the effect it has on them or Piltover for incredibly selfish reasons. She manipulates to gain more power and wealth just to outdo her mother. She herself complains something along the lines of

"I'm the richest in Piltover yet I remain the poorest Medarda."

She is the richest person in this city of wealth and an influential counselor. She could try to make things better for Zaun, or at the very least Piltover, but instead she only cares about herself.

She manipulates Jayce, and puts him in a position of power he isn't ready for. The stress and pressure this places on him? The problems a leader who doesn't know what he is doing will cause for Piltover? Doesn't matter to her, as long as she can take advantage of his trust in her to influence him into doing what she wants so she has even more power.

She isn't all bad by any means, as she does grow to care for Jayce and ultimately votes for peace in both seasons. But her greed and corruption and selfishness, especially when she had the power to change things while an entire city is relying on scraps and crime just to get by? I just can't enjoy that.

And honestly the way some Mel fans can be so annoying has tainted the character for me, too. The people like this, who can't accept people having different opinions than them and resort to crying wolf, making it harder for genuine cases of racism and sexism to be taken seriously. The people who can't accept anyone who thinks Mel is manipulative and are trapped in a fantasy where Mel is a perfect angel capable of no wrong. Or the people who use Mel's race, gender, or even her status as a politician to excuse her evil actions. It would be much easier for me to like Mel if her fans were more mature.

Edit: Wow in the same hour. Exactly what I'm talking about. Saying Mel is manipulative = white & racist, regardless of your race 🙄

okay okay okay before I got on a rant, I just want to say I don't care that straight people like gay or queer media that's fine it's just when they spin it around and try to make it about THEM

straight men saying vi doesn't look sexy enough even tho she's a lesbian

straight women shitting on the gay ships especially jayvik because they keep yelling at queer people that Jayce is totally straight

also every misspelling names just annoys tf out of me

ALSO!!! what's with people automatically seeing Mel and painting her as the villain? what? because she's morally grey and a strong, cool and sexy black woman? tf???

also the straight men like, fetishizing the lesbian sex scene with caitvi, shut UP!!!!!

.

[alistonjdrake]

Of Rust and Gold: Season Three

*Or the likely very long intro to my third series of world building and character posts that all have to do with the second to last book in The Saints Song series. 

The other ones are here: 

Season one:  1 2  3  4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Season two:  1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Or can be found via OBS’ wip introduction post here:

heyo

Below you’ll find a run down of the prominent cast and a summary of what they’re all about so let’s get to it.

OBS, the third book in the series, showcases the Escana Empire on the verge of crumbling as a murdered king and a divided government threaten to tear the country apart. As some grapple for power and wealth, others decide to jump ship.

Prince Argus: After escaping the war in Codua and his sorta not-friend with whom he cheated on his husband with, Argus returns to Graza only to find his favorite brother dead and everyone else being a dick. In making an alliance to his father’s old enemy Argus hopes to gain a higher position in the council or in the empire overall as a dead king with infant children usually only means one thing. But y’know, he also has hopes to fix his relationship with Leo and to stop being manipulated by all the sharks swimming around him.

Queen Liliana: Problem in Graza #1. The council is almost evenly divided between her authority and Prince Leonides’, pushing them into a bitter rivalry that was toxic way before King Cidro was murdered. She’s reasonably unhappy.

Prince Leonides: Problem in Graza #2 and it was his idea to keep Cidro’s murder hush, hush until they’re in a better position to handle it. Whatever that means. As the appearance of old enemies and the disappearance of his own allies loosens his usual chokehold on the Escana government, for once Leonides finds himself at a disadvantage and there are many (likely a lot on this list alone) waiting to finally push him from his pedestal.

Lord Barraza: Partnered with Argus and ready to take advantage of the bad blood between Leonides and Liliana. His youngest son is missing after being implicated, arrested, and released from the last attempt at King Cidro’s life. Lord Barraza is pretty stern on maintaining his family’s innocence and that all he wants is peace between the Harvers and Barrazas.

Princess Damaris: Has been kicked out of the Order of the Knights (that international police force type beat) and now has blood on her hands but is currently in protection from the law on account of being a princess y’know. She’s really torn up about it. 

Princess Zurina: In a bit of a twist she’s now kinda close to Leo due to the whole “Damaris killed someone” debacle. As well as slowly learning to exert her own influence while her siblings and the rest of Graza fight with one another. 

Prince Orland: Eleven months older than Zurina and her right hand man. Kinda weird, but so is the whole family tbh.

Chancellor Harver: Bitter as ever. Argus’ involvement in Codua and Damaris’ murder has made Escan’s relationship to the holy capital really strained and has put him in an awkward position. Also, again, technically no longer a prince. 

Prince Aayden Ponsonby: Still cleaning up the conflict in Codua and recovering from whatever happened between him and Argus. His anger problems might have momentarily gotten worse and the precarious health of his father and changing attitudes back home has made his own position as Crown Prince of Oskya a bit tense so he’s often too distracted to be mean. 

Princess Hadley ek Ponsonby | Niężckna Hajnalka lik Villumsen: (I just like writing her whole name). Aayden’s wife. A bit on the wild side, might find herself in Graza because her husband as a (valid) reason to not want to be around Argus and also to keep her safe and away from what’s happening in Oskya. 

Reverend Mother Ulrike: Mother of all Santivian nuns. While she instigated the war in Codua she’s not pleased with some of the outcomes. She has a very anti-Justice Zisa campaign going that she initially was aligned with Chancellor Harver on but then his cousin killed her surrogate son so now things are kinda awkward. 

Hartanti Telak: Also currently missing. Still amazing and stunning though. She was last seen criticizing a nobleman for talking to her at a party. 

Lady Cordinia ana’Gustavo Carvallo: Now not the only Dowager Queen/Empress in the Escana Empire. In charge of the royal nursery and Queen Liliana’s closest “friend” if she can even be called that. 

Lord Enyo an’Tomas Serafin: Last seen throwing wine in Argus’ face. The highlight of his year. Totally not Lord Barraza’s sugar baby now. 

Ambassador Ulmer: Probably going to quit soon. The in between for Escana and Oskyan relations. He’s trying to flatter as many people as possible and keep the peace.

Ambassador Oprinchuk: The expert on Ardunese and Oskyan relations. An ally of Justice Zisa’s and a woman feared by many. Hadley admires her. 

Maltoq Zamen: Prisoner. Took a vow of silence and hasn’t spoken more than like 4 words a while back. 

Leo Dianglo: Has honestly been spiraling since he and Argus had their secret wedding. If he got his way, he and everyone he cares about would be leaving Graza immediately. He overheard some unfortunate things, was arrested for a crime he didn’t commit, and has another kid to take care of. He’s just having a rough time. 

Mel: Surprisingly, being forced to join the knights and then kidnapped by pirates trying to use him for purposes he can’t understand did nothing but made him an even more angst-riddled teenager. 

Mung: All things considered, unwilling knighthood hasn’t been so bad for him as he’s getting proper medical training and is no longer considered pirate orphan #2. Just don’t ask him how things are between him and Mel. 

Officer Gerwin: Commander of the Escana Knights. The one good day he’s had was firing Damaris. 

Sir Erasmus: Knight elected to keep watch on Leo and his pirate orphans. Although he hasn’t really been doing that lately. In fact, where has he been? 

Catalina: Marcel’s daughter. Leo’s daughter. She’s a kid and she’s around. 

Sister Rosalie Pélissier: Kellish nun who ditched the Kallenbachs and the Oskyan war camp to join Duchess Benedetta. But she wants to make friends with Argus. She also seems to know things she shouldn’t. 

Lord Gaius Kallenbach: Boy needs a break. He’s almost died like twice and no one seems to care. 

Lady Philomené Kallenbach: Gaius’ older sister and was (still is?) Sister Rosalie’s girlfriend. She also ditched the Oskyan war camp to hang out with Duchess Benedetta. 

Duchess Benedetta Onesta Cassiopeia de ave Astorino: The warring Duchess has secured a few more victories but might be willing to surrender to the Oskyans and the Escana Empire if they can all come to a beneficial deal. After revealing that she’s not working with her uncle and has her own qualms with the holy capital, she’s made herself a glowing potential ally but still a very dangerous adversary. 

Justice Zisa: The ambitions and unlikable leader of the Santivian world. He’s not a huge fan of Escan or Oskya at the moment. 

Princess Wiara Mirecka: The girl Leo found marooned on a beach turned out to be a missing princess of Gegra, fleeing her home after her mentor was accused of witchcraft and she’s been causing problems (and plotting kidnappings) since.

Tamune: The living god in the cells deep within Alda.

Captain Mercy Dunham: The island of Ruiz and his fleet are gone but he’s still out there somewhere.

Master Asli: Arrested and in Alda. 

Valera de Martí: As Graza and the Escana Empire struggles to stay strong after losing two kings in a so few years, some take the opportunity to reignite old whispers of rebellions and exiled fugitives may come crawling back to take advantage of the weakened government 

[radiantresplendence]

Chamrand’ded (2018-) Season 1

So, I’ve been familiar with the Charmed series, probably since the early 2000s. I’ve even read some of the comics which are set after the series finale of the TV show. It was a show that my mother enjoyed and I, and my younger sister wound up picking the fandom up, at least to a degree. I’ve probably watched the entirety of the original series’ eight season run at least six times, likely more. In terms of fandoms that I’m a part of, it’s among the earliest in my repertoire, alongside the likes of Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!

Consequently, I was mildly skeptical of the reboot, but told myself that I’d watch it in its entirety out of respect for the original, no matter the quality. For the most part, I think the reboot is a mixed bag. There’s some things that it does that I like, and other choices that it makes that I really do not. The show tends to give off a feeling like the writing staff was constantly at war with itself for the duration of the season. 

I’ll start off explaining the premise, and then I’ll dip into spoilers. 

The show is set in 2010s US, specifically a college town in Michigan called Hilltowne. The show tends to utilize the local college as a hub for a lot of the episodes. This works decently well for the most part, but has a habit of tending to shrink the world instead of expanding it. Essentially the majority of stuff of import happens to revolve around this college. 

This is a modern fantasy setting, with the main cast of three being revealed as the chosen “Charmed Ones” after their mother is killed under mysterious circumstances. They’re each granted magical powers and begin to study witchcraft, under the guidance of a guardian angel called a “whitelighter”.

The main characters are as follows:

Macy Vaughn- The oldest sister, an estranged half-sibling who is separated from the family and was raised by her father without knowledge of her mother. Upon learning of the death of the women she suspected to be her mother, she makes contact with her siblings. She’s a bit awkward, nerdy and headstrong. A lot of the time she stays more independent than her siblings. Her power is telekinesis. Of the cast, I think she’s one of the stronger performers and generally tends to have fairly strong plots. 

Mel Vera- The middle sister, who despite living most of her life as the elder sibling, fits neatly into the role of the defiant middle child. An outspoken lesbian feminist with a tendency to make rash decisions. She’s the staunchest defender of personal lives away from magic in the group and tends to dislike authority. A lot of her personal plotlines tend to revolve around her romance interests with mixed effectiveness; despite this, I think her plots tend to have the most intrigue as a whole. She has the power to control time. I find her to be very derivative of Piper from the original series, without the same kind of character development that Piper had to reach the comparable mindset. She has a very genuine, close platonic relationship with the sister’s whitelighter, Harry, that develops quite organically over the course of the season, despite originally being openly hostile to him. I like this relationship a lot, despite Mel being my least favorite member of the main cast. 

Maggie Vera- The youngest sister, an empath who tends to be the glue that holds the group together. She’s more bubbly and outgoing than her siblings and is a freshman in college, unsure about what she wants in life. She’s reminiscent of Phoebe from the original series, but isn’t nearly as derivative as Mel is in regards to Piper. She’s portrayed as generally capable and quite stable, yet naive. Her plots tend to revolve around a sorority at the college, and honestly they get old quite quickly as it’s quite apparent from the onset that she won’t officially join the Greek system. Her better plots tend to involve her “bad boy” significant other, Parker. 

Harry Greenwood- The sister’s guardian angel, assigned by the powers that be to guide the sisters. A resurrected British man from the mid 1900s. He develops a genuine relationship with each of the sisters as a friend and confidant. He often plays the role of the comic relief and the all-knowing cast member. He winds up living in the sister’s house for the majority of the season. He’s honestly the most complicated member of the cast, despite being rather upstanding. He follows the rules, but personally isn’t infallible. He has baggage and relationships with characters in the world. Despite being sometimes played for comedy, he’s never portrayed as incompetent. I did a longer breakdown of the character in the middle of the season. His powers include, age resistance, teleportation, healing, memory manipulation, limited clairvoyance, limited illusions, limited telekinesis and self healing. My second favorite member of the cast. 

Minor characters include: 

Parker- Maggie’s half-demon “bad boy” boyfriend. Believed to be the host of the Source of All Evil. Actually does almost nothing wrong all season but is often discriminated against by much of the cast, both good and evil. Reminiscent of Cole from the original series. 

Niko- One of Mel’s romance interests. A police officer who’s presence tends to cause a lot of issues tangential to magic. Reminiscent of Andy from the original series. 

Jada- Another of Mel’s romance interests. The forbidden child of a witch and whitelighter pairing who’s affiliated with an organization called the Sarcana. A character who I quite like. 

Galvin- Macy’s romance interest. A geneticist who works with her, has a family background associated with the occult. 

Charity- An Elder with a history that includes Harry. Somewhat untrustworthy, but competent. 

Alastair- A powerful demon who wants to bring about the apocalypse. Often portrayed as the main villain of the first season. 

Spoilers from here on out. 

Generally speaking the first season revolves around the sisters coming into their powers and forming a bond, particularly revolving around Macy’s relationship with her sisters. The main plot points revolve around the Sarcana coven and the assassination of Marisol Vera, the sister’s mother, Parker and the Source, and Harry and Charity’s involvement in the loss of Charity’s sister, Fiona, a powerful witch known as the Keeper of the Sacred Flame. 

Generally speaking, the plot is at it’s most powerful, when pushing the third narrative, as it is the most distinctive and intriguing of the three main plots. It gets wrapped up in the second plot when Alastair needs the Sacred Flame as a pawn in order to evoke the Source of All Evil. The first plot is largely resolved in the first half of the season upon it being revealed that Charity was responsible for Marisol’s death. It begins to bleed into the third plot when the Sarcana saves Fiona from her banishment. 

It is revealed that Maggie and Macy are full sisters, not half, and that Mel is the one with a different father. It is also revealed that Macy is the product of necromancy and has the potential to develop a demonic power called the evil sight at the cost of her humanity. 

Parker’s full-demon brother, Hunter acts as a recurring villain over the course of the series. The brother’s father is Alastair, who also owns the lab that Macy works for. 

The strengths:

The season really shines in its ability to keep things interconnected. Parker’s parents are affiliated with Macy’s work, Niko is investigating the Sarcana, the Sarcana save Fiona, Fiona is needed to summon the Source, etc. 

Additionally the character interactions tend to be fairly strong. I really believe the interactions between the members of the main cast, particularly Harry and Macy’s. 

The reality warping that changes the timeline in order to save Niko might not have been the easiest, or obvious solution, but it was the most interesting. 

There’s an episode with Harry and Mel where they go to the UK that really cements their relationship. It’s incredibly sweet and really shows how much Harry means to the Veras and the degree to which they trust him. It ends strikingly bittersweet and is likely one of the most well-written episodes of the season. 

The reveal that the Sacred Flame and the Source are ultimately the same force that seeks an ideal host is very well done. 

The last two episodes of the season are extremely strong and subvert expectations, particularly the penultimate episode. Macy takes on the Source, kills Alastair, prevents the apocalypse and essentially becomes a god with the power to massively manipulate reality at will. Maggie and Mel have to rely on the bond they formed with Macy over the course of the entire season to get their sister out of the corrupting influence of absolute power. 

The weaknesses:

The show has a bad habit of flip-flopping on character relationships. Harry and Charity are on and off, Mel and Niko and Jada have a back and forth relationship all season. Maggie’s pilot boyfriend is on and off. Maggie and Parker are on and off. Macy and Galvin are also on and off. I just kind of wish that the series would portray a stable relationship. 

The powers of whitelighters are somewhat inconsistent. They manage to be stronger than their original series counterparts, but also weaker. Essentially it creates a situation where I wonder why the Elders don’t create an army of immortal whitelighters to support do-gooders. They make more righteous dead people every day after all. 

The show has a bad habit of taking back decisions on an episode to episode basis. It’s bad enough where there are episodes where it feels like you miss an episode in-between despite watching episodes back to back. It really feels like writers conflicting over what they want on an episode-to-episode basis. 

The sorority plot is stupid. I like Maggie well enough, but Lucy should have shown up consistently in the first half of the season and like twice afterward. 

I feel like a lot of the “demon of the week” episodes were wasted airtime because of the pace that the series has been taking. The original series could do that in the first season because the build up to the source took almost two seasons and happened in the middle of the series. The reboot pushed the Source as the big narrative that the first season is trying to overcome. It needed every second of the airtime it had to properly build that up, and I feel like it squandered a lot of it. The finale could have been pretty incredible if they focused more on the lead up to that the entire season. 

The Conclusion: 

Charmed 2018 isn’t necessarily for fans of the original; it’s for people who watch the CW. There are some cute nods to the original series that you can tell were snuck in by clever writers. 

Honestly, I find a lot of problems with it. The show is certainly a little more rough around the edges than the original series. Despite this, I enjoyed almost every episode. It nods to the original, but tries not to copy it and explore its own ideas that branch off from the concept. 

I honestly think that if make an effort to take more risks in the second season and branch away from college setting, they can recapture some of the magic of the original. 

It’s a seven out of ten from me, but it has potential, especially if they’re willing to commit in the same way that they did in the last few episodes. I’d be all too happy to see more. 

[diguerra-moved]

* getting  to  know  the  mun :

name :   melissa nickname :  mel faceclaim : that depends but when I use ooc icons they're usually adora from she-ra and the princesses of power pronouns :  she/her  height :   165cm birthday :   november 12 aesthetic :  grey days, warm fluffy blankets, black cats, piles of books, videogames, changing hair color as often as possible, biting nails, the scent of rain (idk I just made a list of things I like lol) last  song  you  listened  to : The Man - Taylor Swift favorite  muse (s)  you’ve  written : Myrcella tbh but Tyrande is v close... Actually I can't pick bc Alleria and Ashara too I love all of my children I’m just more attached to Myrcella probably

* getting  to  know  the  account :

what  inspired  you  to  take  on  this  muse :   (I'll do this for Myrcella) so I read the asoiaf books and fell in love with her immediately. few times have I ever felt so strongly that I really wanted to write a muse, still, I hesitated about making a blog for her because I was very afraid of jumping into a new fandom (and one that seemed very different from the ones I had been in at that point) so I waited for a while but she was persistent lol. so I gave up and made a blog eventually and here we are now. it literally just happened like that: I read the books and Myrcella stuck with me and never left :v

what  are  your  favorite  aspects  of  your  current  muse :  she's admittedly a very minor character and open to different interpretations (which is part of why I love writing her! because there's not much canon to bind me lol). nevertheless, I think the little we see of her makes it clear Myrcella is very strong, stronger than most people think, and immensely clever. she's more than just good. she's very observant, she's charming and capable of using it in her favor, and of course, she's brave and outspoken too and I don’t know I love everything about her, even the tragedy of the suggestion she would play the game well and be a better queen than either of her brothers but that we will never truly see this being developed because she’ll die as prophecy demands aksdjfnaksjdfn

what’s  your  biggest  inspiration  when  it  comes  to  writing : the canon material mostly, but other than that I like theories and character analysis (good ones give me life and often help me get muse for her, but bad ones fuel my writing out of spite lol). more than anything, how I feel in the fandom I’m writing in influences my muse heavily (for all my muses tbh), so the people I write with play a big part where inspiration is concerned. when it comes to myrcella, you @wclfcrown, but also @wineinthewidow and @agirlofwinterfell who aren't as active atm (neither am I with asoiaf muses tbh aksnfjksdnaf) but I love always

favorite  types  of  threads :  I love suffering so angst and drama are my favorites but tbh I love fluff and cute nice stuff too and honestly I can go from 4+ paragraphs of serious threads full of feels to crack posts so uh yeah anything  

biggest  struggle  in  regards  to  your  current  muse : I'm insecure in general lol I don't think she's difficult to write but I struggle with muse sometimes because of anxiety and insecurity for the most part because it makes me feel replaceable and Not Good™ . the lack of muse because of how I feel in the fandom can make it harder too. but I can’t really think of anything specifically about Myrcella, she never required me any sort of mood or thought process to write her. I guess this would count: she comes to me very easily when I have muse but if I don’t she won’t come at all no matter how hard I try to write her.

tagged by: @wclfcrown thanks dj <3

tagging: if you read all of my bullshit up to here consider yourself tagged I mean it go do the thing rn

[maddyperiez]

ROBYNNNNNNNNN

my main biiiitch!!!!

full name: robyn clementine argent.

gender and pronouns: cis female, she/her.

sexuality: bisexual.

ethnicity/species: white, human (but not any common human ;))

birthplace and birthdate: she was born while her parents were living in san diego, on august 2nd, 2002 (the story’s set in 2018 btw).

guilty pleasures: she’s pretty confident in what she likes to have a guilty pleasure, but i’d say, having stuffed toys. for some reason she doesn’t like everyone knowing about them, it’s like her own special thing. they’re all over her room and bed, and her favorite one is an old one, a duck that she named Bird. that’s what i can think of rn.

phobias: robyn is terrified of getting electrocuted. she always has been and it’s just an irrational fear with no reason. ▬ she also HATES bugs, especially slimey ones. ▬ her family and friends being in danger ▬ she’s scared of punches? it’s a very weird fear she has. i mean, no one wants to be punched, but robyn just hates to think about how getting punched feels lmao. ▬ drowning. ▬ nightmares in general.

what they would be famous for: her style, so she’d be like, a digital influencer.

what they would get arrested for: underage drinking ▬ breaking and entering ▬ honestly, she spends 6 seasons fighting the supernatural, it’s a looong list.

oc you ship them with: it’s a brotp, but mel ( ceruleanmusings  ). they’re total soulmates!

oc most likely to murder them: ahshs maybe your esme? she’d definitely think about it a lot, tho ahshhs.

favorite movie/book genre: adventure movies and fantasy books!

least favorite movie/book cliche: idk if it’s a cliche but she hates books where slut-shaming is treated like normal and acceptable. with movies she’s more chill abt cliches ‘cause they’re shorter so 🤷🏻‍♀️.

talents and/or powers: she’s a good writer ▬ and is also good at skating (especially on ice), tho she’s not a professional ▬ she has a good eye for fashion too! ▬ as for powers, i won’t be saying much besides that 1. seeing people glowing is a side effect of this power, and there’s a reason why not everyone glows & 2. it’s more of a “passive” power.

why someone might love them: she’s very caring and loyal ▬  and being her friend feels secure because she’d never betray you, if someone doesn’t trust her friendship, it’s probably something wrong with them, likes trust issues and stuff ▬ she’s also very kind ▬ she treats people well despite their “social status” ▬ she donates to a dog shelter online ▬ robyn stands up for herself and people who need it ▬ and she’s also up to do a lot of things, it’s very fun to be around her.

why someone might hate them: once again, she stands up for what she believes in, and some people don’t like that ▬ she can be very bitchy and petty ▬ sometimes brutally honest ▬ she’s also very self righteous and has strong morals, tending to always think she’s right and to be very judgy ▬ robyn is not as “correct” as she may seem. she just has enough common sense to know that it’s rude and mean to say stuff like “your body type matches stripes better than polka dots” “you’re too tall to wear heels”, but she’s definitely thinking it (sometimes she even says what she’s thinking to a friend). robyn feels guilty and works really hard on changing this bc she knows this mindset is something she got from society and that it isn’t right.

how they change: at first, robyn doesn’t want to learn how to fight. it’s messy and painful and tiring. but as the seasons go on, she wants to feel in less need of protection and be more able to help, so she starts training ▬ she does become less judging ▬ she works on beating her drinking problem ▬ she becomes tougher in general ▬ learns to use her abilities to be more helpful (that’s how she ends up bonding with lydia) ▬ she starts to put more effort into school (but just a little).

why you love them: she’s so special to me bc like, she’s my first “real” oc? i write from her pov and she’s the one i’ve the most of, so i’m attached. i like that she’s a good person, and popular but also has some “bitchy” traits. and she’s so confident, lmao. also, i gave her my love of dogs bc i feel like us dog lovers aren’t represented well enough!!! and also her story lets me give some more depth to teen wolf and some characters so uwu.

[bookenders]

11/11/11 Tag Game: Rounds 14 and 15! (I think. I’m bad at math.)

Back at it again, folks! Thank you @ofvisitorsthefairest and @fictionshewrote for the tags!

I think I’m gonna stop counting them after these. I can’t keep the numbers straight.

Rules: Answer the 11 questions from whoever tagged you, then made up 11 of your own questions and tag 11 people.

Bilbo Taggins: @starlitesymphony​, @hannahs-creations​, @toboldlywrite​, @quilloftheclouds​, @myreidola​, @minusfractions​, @inexorableblob​,  @ink-flavored​, @misfitgirlwrites​, @writinginslowmotion​, @aurumni-writes​

If you like these questions, by all means, answer them! And tag me so I can see!

My Questions:

Make a Mary Sue in your story’s world! What powers do they have, if any? How are they better than everyone else? What is their tortured past that is a blessing but also a curse? What kind of unusual eyes do they have? Which member of nobility/royalty/god/vampire/demon is their parent?

Which would your OCs choose: Legolas or Aragorn? Which would you choose?

What’s your favorite trick to pull on readers?

If you were to teach a creative writing class, what books would be on your syllabus?

What’s your opinion on semicolons?

What’s your favorite movie, based on its story?

What’s the dumbest thing your character(s) have ever done? What’s the dumbest thing they could do?

What one item could you introduce to your story to completely derail the plot? Where would it go from there?

What’s your favorite MacGuffin?

How do you name your characters and locations? 

How have your hobbies and passions influenced your writing/how you write?

My answers under the cut!

@ofvisitorsthefairest‘s Questions:

1. Does music inspire you to write?

Not unless I’m doing songfics as a warm-up or something. I usually use it as a tone/mood guard rail as I’m writing. That’s why I make story/character playlists! They keep me on track, especially if I’m revisiting a scene I haven’t thought about in a while.

2. Which WIP did you learn the most from writing?

My Romanian story, for sure. I had the help of my thesis director/mentor with that one, thank God. I learned how to establish a scene quickly, how to do flashbacks like other people do them, how to incorporate languages without messing up the pace or losing the reader, and how to write historical things. 

I learned a whole lot about what not to do from my Story That Shall Not Be Named Because It Bad, too. 

3. Is there something your OC should be afraid of that they aren’t?

I think Gemma should be more afraid of being found out than she is. I mean, she’s technically a witch (an unregistered magic practitioner, because of her potion-making which is classified as pseudo-magic) who has no social security number, lives in secret, and does illegal internet things. She could get into some serious trouble. There are even more nasty consequences that I can’t reveal because spoilers, but let’s just say she has no idea they could happen and they ain’t pretty.

4. Is there something they don’t need to fear, yet do? Irrational phobias?

Yep! It’s one of the cores of her character. She’s afraid of being left alone, abandoned, kept out of her found family. Being used for her skills and ignored as a person. I don’t think they’re irrational, but she has never listened when people tell her not to be afraid of those things.

5. Do you prefer reading physical books or e-books?

Physical books, by far. E-books for my college student wallet, though. They saved me when I didn’t have time to order books, too. I have a crazy good “where in the physical book did this event happen” memory. Like, I can name an event and flip to the page very quickly based on how far into the book it was. Very handy for citations. And I love the feel/smell of a book in my hands and all the contorting I do when I read one (seriously, I almost always end up upside down or completely sideways in a chair).

6. What’s some details of your world building that you like?

All the little things! Academic internet piracy network to help witches, how magic interacts with daily life, tweaking folklore to fit story lore, 

7. Have you ever created a magic system? What was it like?

Oh, boy! Yes, I have made several. My favorite might be the one from my TV show where the only magic is healing/life manipulation magic. The way it works is that when healers do their thing, they physically take on their patient’s injuries. If you have a broken arm, now the healer has a broken arm. Works with diseases, too. Here’s the snippet from the Show Deck about it:

In the darkest corners and dingiest alleys, magic pulses through the veins of the downtrodden. Seen as evil and taboo, magic operates by the law of an eye for an eye, a life for a life. Sacrifice fuels these dark arts, and those who manipulate them are covered in scars and never-healed wounds. Healers operate in the shadows and lead short lives, field medics are scarce, and the king has two sorcerers by his side at all times, bound by a blood contract to give their lives in his name.

Here’s a link to some posts about my magic system in my current WIP, Heart to Heart! I made magic types based on different sciences and artistic disciplines! 

We’ve got astronomy/astrology, carving/linguistics/physical art/symbology, politics/making powerful friends/handshakes/marketing/political science, geology/archaeology/product design. Also some secret types that involve psychology, sound design/sound engineering, and water treatment/environmental science/architecture.

There are also pseudo-magical professions that blend with tech and science, like potion making!

Here’s a decent explanation of how magic works in the world of H2H.

Here’s a joke I made about my magic system.

Here’s the Magical Aptitude quiz I made that tells you more about the magic types in H2H.

/end ramble

8. What was your first favorite book?

I’m 90% sure it was the American Revolution Magic Tree House book. Or one of those books. They were the best.

9. What time of day are you most motivated to write?

7pm-4am. Yep, I hate it. I’m trying to push it closer to 2pm-9pm but it’s tough.

10. If you could step into the shoes of one of your characters for a day, which one would you pick?

If we’re talkin’ H2H characters, I honestly would not have a preference. Everyone in that story is pretty dang chill. If I had to choose, I’d go with Jill or Treena. They’re both artists and artisans who have cool houses and great friends.

11. What are some little quirks you like to give characters? Ex: a lot of mine have freckles Just Because.

There are Many. A lot of my characters have curly hair because I have curly hair. Many of them are left handed (especially my sword-wielding ones). A bunch of them have scars. A lot of them know curse words in other languages. 

@fictionshewrote‘s Questions:

1. What do you want to see more of in the book world? (more rep, more of a specific genre, etc)

I have a rant about this, but to sum up: fewer straight white men dominating publishing, more open acceptance for new voices and ideas, less focus on easy-sell formulaic stories, less prejudice against certain genres... the list goes on. Also, in the publishing world, fewer submission fees and more journals that pay.

2. What time of day are you most productive writing-wise?

Answered above! Evenings and nights. It’s starting to shift to late afternon to late evening though, which is a nice change.

3. Do you have a designated space where you write?

Nope! I usually use my laptop wherever I can sit down or stand without my back screaming at me. I hate writing on my phone, though. Too small, too many typos.

4. What kind of platforms/programs/tools do you use to write? (Word, notebooks, Google Docs, Scrivener, etc)

Scrivener! It’s so helpful for my disorganized ass. I only use Word for academic papers now. When I’m having trouble getting ideas out of my brain, I write by hand in a hard back spiral notebook. I can’t stand writing in journals without spirals. 

5. Hardcover or paperback?

I like both. When I read, I sit weird and hardcovers prevent the pages from bending, but paperbacks are good for traveling with. And they’re cheaper. But hardcovers are so pretty... 

6. What’s your favorite story trope? Are you using it in your wip(s)?

There are a lot of tropes and I can never pick just one. I like friends to lovers, almost everything in LoTR and all those high fantasy things, complicated political/family dynamics, etc. I don’t typically like to write the same things I like to read, though. I have trouble naming them sometimes, but I know I use a bunch of them. 

7. If you had to send your favorite OC on a blind date with a character from someone else’s book, who would that character be and why?

Oh boy. I’m watching the Lord of the Rings extended editions right now, but I’ll try not to be biased.

If I were trying to be funny, I’d set Fred up with Aziraphale from Good Omens. I feel like they could have some good weird conversations.

Gemma and Nicholas Flamel from The Alchemist would be fun, too. Or Oz and Boromir. 

8. Do you write scenes in order or out of order?

I like writing them in order, but sometimes that doesn’t work out like I want it to. Now it really depends on the story. I wrote the first part of AOPC out of order and it messed with my head a little, so I’m trying not to do it for my longer projects. My short stories are always written one and done, in chronological order, usually. Especially the ones under 2k words. WYSiOaD was written in order, then switched around to fix the flow and plot.

9. If your favorite OC was a superhero, what would their superpower be? (assuming, of course, they aren’t a superhero to begin with!)

I do have superhero/villain characters! Here’s some others, though:

Gemma - Empathy / Transferable Rapid Healing and/or Regeneration

Oz - Truesight / Invulnerability

Mel - Animal Friendship or Shapeshifting / Conditional Foresight

Fred - Domino’s luck power but backwards and framed like happy accidents that always seem to work in his favor. So... Mr. Magoo.

Teva - Earth sculpting or something like earthbending

10. Describe your ideal writing session.

I sit and I write a whole short story in one hit. Then I wait and edit another day. 

I am a simple bean.

11. What do you think would turn your protagonist into a villain?

Seeing what was lost and having it torn away forever before she gets to claim it again.

[camerasieunhovn]

How to Turn One Piece of Content into Multiple for SEO

Posted by liambbarnes

As most SEO specialists have learned, you must create quality content to grow organically. The same thing can be said for businesses that are building a social media presence or a new newsletter following.

But as people consume more and more content each day, they become less receptive to basic content that doesn't provide a new perspective. To counter this issue, you must make sure that your content is native to each platform you publish on.

However, that doesn’t mean that you need to start from scratch. There's a way to take one content idea and turn it into multiple, which can scale across multiple platforms and improve your brand awareness.

It takes time to write a brand-new blog article every day, especially when you're an in-house team with a low number of resources and budget. The biggest challenge here is building a content strategy at scale.

So, how do you create a lot of great content?

You start with video.

If you have a video on a relevant topic, it can be repurposed into various individual pieces of content and distributed over a period of time across the right channels. Let’s walk through the process.

Using video to scale content

Did you know that the average person types at 41 words per minute (WPM), but the average person speaks at about 150 WPM? That is about 3.5 times faster speaking rather than typing. 

In fact, this article was transcribed.

For every article you write about, you must do extensive research, write out your first draft, edit, make changes, and more. It can consume an entire workday.

An easier way to do this? Record yourself on Loom or another video software, save it, and send the video file to an audio/video transcription service. There are so many tools, like Rev.com or TranscribeMe, that do this for relatively cheap. Of course, even if you're relying on text-to-speech, there's still editing time to take into account, and some would argue it will take MORE time to edit a text-to-speech transcription. There isn’t a “best way” to create content, however, for those who aren't strong writers but are strong speakers, transcription will be a powerful way to move at a quicker pace.

The step-by-step process 

Once you write out your content, how do you ensure that people read it?

Like any other content strategy, make sure that the process of planning, creating, and executing is written down (most likely digitally in a spreadsheet or tracking tool) and followed.

Let’s break down how to get the most out of your content.

1. Grab attention with your topic

Sometimes, content ideation can be the most challenging part of the process. Depending on the purpose of your content, there are various starting points.

For example, if you're writing a top-of-funnel blog article where the goal is to drive high amounts of organic traffic, start by performing keyword research to craft your topic. Why? You need to understand what your audience searches for and how to ensure you’re in the mix of search results. 

If you're creating a breakdown of your product or service, you may want to start by interviewing a subject matter expert (SME) to gain real-life details on the product/service and the solutions it provides to your target audience. Why? Note what they’re saying are the most important aspects or if there is a new feature/addition for the audience. These points can be tied into a topic that might pique the target reader's interest.

2. Create an outline for the blog

When you're building out your blog structure, record a video similar to how you would write a blog article.

In this case, by creating an outline for the article with the questions that you ask yourself, it'll be easier to format the transcription and the blog after you record.

3. Pick your poison (distribution strategy)

Now that you're ready to begin recording your video, decide where your content will be distributed.

The way you'll distribute your content heavily influences the way you record your video, especially if you're going to be utilizing the video as the content itself (Hello, YouTube!).

For example, if you run a business consultancy, the videos that you record should be more professional than if you run an e-commerce surf lifestyle brand. Or, if you know you’re going to be breaking the video up, leave time for natural “breaks” for easy editing later on.

By planning ahead of time, you give yourself a better idea of where the content will go, and how it will get there.

4. Your time to shine

There are numerous free video recording software available, including Zoom and Loom.

With Zoom, you can record the video of yourself speaking into your camera, and you will get an audio file after you hang up your call.

With Loom, you can use the chrome extension, which allows you to record yourself in video form while sharing your screen. If you have additional content, like a Powerpoint presentation or a walk-through, this might be the tool for you.

Regardless of the way that you record, you need an audio file to transcribe and transform into other content formats later on.

5. Transcribe your video

The average writer transcribes one hour of audio in around four hours, but some of the best transcribers can do it in as little as two hours.

To put that into perspective, the average one-hour audio file is about 7,800 words, which would take the average writer around three and a half hours to write.

Additionally, you have to add research time, internal linking, and many other factors to this, so on average it'll take around an hour to write 1,000 words of a high-quality blog post.

Transcription shortens the length of this process.

When looking to transcribe your audio, you can send files out to transcription tools including Rev or TranscribeMe. Once you send them the audio file, you'll typically receive the audio file back in a few hours (depending on the demand).

6. Alter transcription into blog format

You'll receive the transcribed content via email, broken out by speaker. This makes it much easier to format post-transcription.

If you properly outlined the blog prior to recording, then this editing process should be simple. Copy and paste each section into the desired area for your blog and add your photos, keywords, and links as desired.

7. Chop your video into digestible parts

Here’s where things get interesting.

If you're using your video for social media posts, shorten the video into multiple parts to be distributed across each platform (and make sure they’re built to match each platform's guidelines).

Additionally, quotes from the video can be used to create text graphics, text-based social posts, or entire articles themselves.

Think of the watering holes that your target audience consumes information on the internet:

Google

LinkedIn

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

YouTube

Each platform requires creating a different experience that involves new, native content. But that doesn’t mean you have to start at zero.

If you have a 10-minute-long video, it can be transcribed into a 2,500-word blog that takes about 10-15 minutes to read.

Boom. You have another resource to share, which can also include proper keywords so it ranks higher on the SERP.

Let’s say you end up editing the video down to about five minutes. From here, you can make:

A five minute video to post on YouTube and your blog

Ten 30-second videos to post across several social media platforms

Twenty 100-word posts on LinkedIn

Thirty 50 to 60-word posts on Twitter

Woah.

Not to mention there are other platforms like Reddit and Quora, as well as email marketing, that you can also distribute your content with. (Turn one of the 100-word LinkedIn posts into the opening in your latest newsletter, and attach the full video for those who want to learn more!)

By starting off with an all-encompassing video, you extend your content capabilities from a regular blog article into 50+ pieces of content across multiple social media platforms and search engines.

For example, Lewis Howes (and many other brands and marketers) are famous for utilizing this method.

As you can see below, Howes had an interview for his podcast with Mel Robbins, which is scaled across YouTube and podcast platforms, but he took a quote from her in the interview and scaled it across Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

When you build out your content calendar, simply copy and paste certain sections into an excel spreadsheet, and organize them based on date and platform. Make sure they make sense on the platform, add an extra line or two if you need to, and work your magic.

This will save you hours of time in your planning process.

8. Distribute

Now that you have created your various forms of content, it’s time to make sure it appears before the right eyes.

Having a consistent flow of relevant content on your website and social media platforms is a crucial part of empowering your brand, building credibility, and showing that you’re worth trusting as a potential partner.

As you repurpose older content as well, you can repeat this process and pull together another 50+ pieces of content from a previously successful article.

Improving organic search visibility

"Discoverability" is a popular term in marketing. Another way to say it is "organic search visibility". Your brand’s search visibility is the percentage of clicks that your website gets in comparison to the total number of clicks for that particular keyword or group of keywords.

Normally, you can improve your visibility through writing a piece of content that reflects a target keyword the best and build links to that page, which improves your rankings for that keyword and long-tail variations of that keyword.

However, as you begin to grow your business, you may begin heavily relying on branded search traffic.

In fact, one of the biggest drivers of organic traffic is branded traffic. If you don't have an authoritative brand, it's challenging to receive backlinks naturally, and therefore more difficult to rank organically.

One of the biggest drivers of brand awareness is through social media. More than 4.5 billion people are using the internet and 3.8 billion are using social media.

If you want more people to search for your brand, push relevant social media campaigns that do just that.

But even further than that, we are seeing more and more social media platforms such as Pinterest, YouTube, and Twitter showing up as search results and snippets. For example, below is the SERP for the keyword “how to make cookies”, where a series of YouTube videos show up:

And this SERP for the keyword “Moz“ has the most recent Tweets from Moz's Twitter.

Writing content that ranks will continue to be important — but as Google keeps integrating other forms of social media into the SERPs, make time to post on every social media platform to improve search visibility and make your brand discoverable. 

But, duplicate content?

Duplicate content can be defined as the same content used across multiple URLs, and can be detrimental to your website’s health. However, from what we have seen through multiple conversations with marketers in the SEO world, there is no indication that websites are getting penalized for duplicate content when reposting said content on social media platforms.

Conclusion

Say goodbye to the time drain of creating one piece of content at a time. The most effective way to create a successful content marketing strategy is to share thought-provoking and data-driven content. Take advantage of this process to maximize your output and visibility.

Here are some final tips to take away to successfully launch a content marketing strategy, using this method:

Consistently analyze your results and double down on what works.

Don’t be afraid to try new tactics to see what your audience is interested in (Check out a real-world content strategy I helped get results for here).

Analyze the response from your audience. They'll tell you what is good and what is not!

Have other ideas? Let me know in the comments! 

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!

[epackingvietnam]

How to Turn One Piece of Content into Multiple for SEO

Posted by liambbarnes

As most SEO specialists have learned, you must create quality content to grow organically. The same thing can be said for businesses that are building a social media presence or a new newsletter following.

But as people consume more and more content each day, they become less receptive to basic content that doesn't provide a new perspective. To counter this issue, you must make sure that your content is native to each platform you publish on.

However, that doesn’t mean that you need to start from scratch. There's a way to take one content idea and turn it into multiple, which can scale across multiple platforms and improve your brand awareness.

It takes time to write a brand-new blog article every day, especially when you're an in-house team with a low number of resources and budget. The biggest challenge here is building a content strategy at scale.

So, how do you create a lot of great content?

You start with video.

If you have a video on a relevant topic, it can be repurposed into various individual pieces of content and distributed over a period of time across the right channels. Let’s walk through the process.

Using video to scale content

Did you know that the average person types at 41 words per minute (WPM), but the average person speaks at about 150 WPM? That is about 3.5 times faster speaking rather than typing. 

In fact, this article was transcribed.

For every article you write about, you must do extensive research, write out your first draft, edit, make changes, and more. It can consume an entire workday.

An easier way to do this? Record yourself on Loom or another video software, save it, and send the video file to an audio/video transcription service. There are so many tools, like Rev.com or TranscribeMe, that do this for relatively cheap. Of course, even if you're relying on text-to-speech, there's still editing time to take into account, and some would argue it will take MORE time to edit a text-to-speech transcription. There isn’t a “best way” to create content, however, for those who aren't strong writers but are strong speakers, transcription will be a powerful way to move at a quicker pace.

The step-by-step process 

Once you write out your content, how do you ensure that people read it?

Like any other content strategy, make sure that the process of planning, creating, and executing is written down (most likely digitally in a spreadsheet or tracking tool) and followed.

Let’s break down how to get the most out of your content.

1. Grab attention with your topic

Sometimes, content ideation can be the most challenging part of the process. Depending on the purpose of your content, there are various starting points.

For example, if you're writing a top-of-funnel blog article where the goal is to drive high amounts of organic traffic, start by performing keyword research to craft your topic. Why? You need to understand what your audience searches for and how to ensure you’re in the mix of search results. 

If you're creating a breakdown of your product or service, you may want to start by interviewing a subject matter expert (SME) to gain real-life details on the product/service and the solutions it provides to your target audience. Why? Note what they’re saying are the most important aspects or if there is a new feature/addition for the audience. These points can be tied into a topic that might pique the target reader's interest.

2. Create an outline for the blog

When you're building out your blog structure, record a video similar to how you would write a blog article.

In this case, by creating an outline for the article with the questions that you ask yourself, it'll be easier to format the transcription and the blog after you record.

3. Pick your poison (distribution strategy)

Now that you're ready to begin recording your video, decide where your content will be distributed.

The way you'll distribute your content heavily influences the way you record your video, especially if you're going to be utilizing the video as the content itself (Hello, YouTube!).

For example, if you run a business consultancy, the videos that you record should be more professional than if you run an e-commerce surf lifestyle brand. Or, if you know you’re going to be breaking the video up, leave time for natural “breaks” for easy editing later on.

By planning ahead of time, you give yourself a better idea of where the content will go, and how it will get there.

4. Your time to shine

There are numerous free video recording software available, including Zoom and Loom.

With Zoom, you can record the video of yourself speaking into your camera, and you will get an audio file after you hang up your call.

With Loom, you can use the chrome extension, which allows you to record yourself in video form while sharing your screen. If you have additional content, like a Powerpoint presentation or a walk-through, this might be the tool for you.

Regardless of the way that you record, you need an audio file to transcribe and transform into other content formats later on.

5. Transcribe your video

The average writer transcribes one hour of audio in around four hours, but some of the best transcribers can do it in as little as two hours.

To put that into perspective, the average one-hour audio file is about 7,800 words, which would take the average writer around three and a half hours to write.

Additionally, you have to add research time, internal linking, and many other factors to this, so on average it'll take around an hour to write 1,000 words of a high-quality blog post.

Transcription shortens the length of this process.

When looking to transcribe your audio, you can send files out to transcription tools including Rev or TranscribeMe. Once you send them the audio file, you'll typically receive the audio file back in a few hours (depending on the demand).

6. Alter transcription into blog format

You'll receive the transcribed content via email, broken out by speaker. This makes it much easier to format post-transcription.

If you properly outlined the blog prior to recording, then this editing process should be simple. Copy and paste each section into the desired area for your blog and add your photos, keywords, and links as desired.

7. Chop your video into digestible parts

Here’s where things get interesting.

If you're using your video for social media posts, shorten the video into multiple parts to be distributed across each platform (and make sure they’re built to match each platform's guidelines).

Additionally, quotes from the video can be used to create text graphics, text-based social posts, or entire articles themselves.

Think of the watering holes that your target audience consumes information on the internet:

Google

LinkedIn

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

YouTube

Each platform requires creating a different experience that involves new, native content. But that doesn’t mean you have to start at zero.

If you have a 10-minute-long video, it can be transcribed into a 2,500-word blog that takes about 10-15 minutes to read.

Boom. You have another resource to share, which can also include proper keywords so it ranks higher on the SERP.

Let’s say you end up editing the video down to about five minutes. From here, you can make:

A five minute video to post on YouTube and your blog

Ten 30-second videos to post across several social media platforms

Twenty 100-word posts on LinkedIn

Thirty 50 to 60-word posts on Twitter

Woah.

Not to mention there are other platforms like Reddit and Quora, as well as email marketing, that you can also distribute your content with. (Turn one of the 100-word LinkedIn posts into the opening in your latest newsletter, and attach the full video for those who want to learn more!)

By starting off with an all-encompassing video, you extend your content capabilities from a regular blog article into 50+ pieces of content across multiple social media platforms and search engines.

For example, Lewis Howes (and many other brands and marketers) are famous for utilizing this method.

As you can see below, Howes had an interview for his podcast with Mel Robbins, which is scaled across YouTube and podcast platforms, but he took a quote from her in the interview and scaled it across Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

When you build out your content calendar, simply copy and paste certain sections into an excel spreadsheet, and organize them based on date and platform. Make sure they make sense on the platform, add an extra line or two if you need to, and work your magic.

This will save you hours of time in your planning process.

8. Distribute

Now that you have created your various forms of content, it’s time to make sure it appears before the right eyes.

Having a consistent flow of relevant content on your website and social media platforms is a crucial part of empowering your brand, building credibility, and showing that you’re worth trusting as a potential partner.

As you repurpose older content as well, you can repeat this process and pull together another 50+ pieces of content from a previously successful article.

Improving organic search visibility

"Discoverability" is a popular term in marketing. Another way to say it is "organic search visibility". Your brand’s search visibility is the percentage of clicks that your website gets in comparison to the total number of clicks for that particular keyword or group of keywords.

Normally, you can improve your visibility through writing a piece of content that reflects a target keyword the best and build links to that page, which improves your rankings for that keyword and long-tail variations of that keyword.

However, as you begin to grow your business, you may begin heavily relying on branded search traffic.

In fact, one of the biggest drivers of organic traffic is branded traffic. If you don't have an authoritative brand, it's challenging to receive backlinks naturally, and therefore more difficult to rank organically.

One of the biggest drivers of brand awareness is through social media. More than 4.5 billion people are using the internet and 3.8 billion are using social media.

If you want more people to search for your brand, push relevant social media campaigns that do just that.

But even further than that, we are seeing more and more social media platforms such as Pinterest, YouTube, and Twitter showing up as search results and snippets. For example, below is the SERP for the keyword “how to make cookies”, where a series of YouTube videos show up:

And this SERP for the keyword “Moz“ has the most recent Tweets from Moz's Twitter.

Writing content that ranks will continue to be important — but as Google keeps integrating other forms of social media into the SERPs, make time to post on every social media platform to improve search visibility and make your brand discoverable. 

But, duplicate content?

Duplicate content can be defined as the same content used across multiple URLs, and can be detrimental to your website’s health. However, from what we have seen through multiple conversations with marketers in the SEO world, there is no indication that websites are getting penalized for duplicate content when reposting said content on social media platforms.

Conclusion

Say goodbye to the time drain of creating one piece of content at a time. The most effective way to create a successful content marketing strategy is to share thought-provoking and data-driven content. Take advantage of this process to maximize your output and visibility.

Here are some final tips to take away to successfully launch a content marketing strategy, using this method:

Consistently analyze your results and double down on what works.

Don’t be afraid to try new tactics to see what your audience is interested in (Check out a real-world content strategy I helped get results for here).

Analyze the response from your audience. They'll tell you what is good and what is not!

Have other ideas? Let me know in the comments! 

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!

#túi_giấy_epacking_việt_nam #túi_giấy_epacking #in_túi_giấy_giá_rẻ #in_túi_giấy #epackingvietnam #tuigiayepacking

[bfxenon]

How to Turn One Piece of Content into Multiple for SEO

Posted by liambbarnes

As most SEO specialists have learned, you must create quality content to grow organically. The same thing can be said for businesses that are building a social media presence or a new newsletter following.

But as people consume more and more content each day, they become less receptive to basic content that doesn't provide a new perspective. To counter this issue, you must make sure that your content is native to each platform you publish on.

However, that doesn’t mean that you need to start from scratch. There's a way to take one content idea and turn it into multiple, which can scale across multiple platforms and improve your brand awareness.

It takes time to write a brand-new blog article every day, especially when you're an in-house team with a low number of resources and budget. The biggest challenge here is building a content strategy at scale.

So, how do you create a lot of great content?

You start with video.

If you have a video on a relevant topic, it can be repurposed into various individual pieces of content and distributed over a period of time across the right channels. Let’s walk through the process.

Using video to scale content

Did you know that the average person types at 41 words per minute (WPM), but the average person speaks at about 150 WPM? That is about 3.5 times faster speaking rather than typing. 

In fact, this article was transcribed.

For every article you write about, you must do extensive research, write out your first draft, edit, make changes, and more. It can consume an entire workday.

An easier way to do this? Record yourself on Loom or another video software, save it, and send the video file to an audio/video transcription service. There are so many tools, like Rev.com or TranscribeMe, that do this for relatively cheap. Of course, even if you're relying on text-to-speech, there's still editing time to take into account, and some would argue it will take MORE time to edit a text-to-speech transcription. There isn’t a “best way” to create content, however, for those who aren't strong writers but are strong speakers, transcription will be a powerful way to move at a quicker pace.

The step-by-step process 

Once you write out your content, how do you ensure that people read it?

Like any other content strategy, make sure that the process of planning, creating, and executing is written down (most likely digitally in a spreadsheet or tracking tool) and followed.

Let’s break down how to get the most out of your content.

1. Grab attention with your topic

Sometimes, content ideation can be the most challenging part of the process. Depending on the purpose of your content, there are various starting points.

For example, if you're writing a top-of-funnel blog article where the goal is to drive high amounts of organic traffic, start by performing keyword research to craft your topic. Why? You need to understand what your audience searches for and how to ensure you’re in the mix of search results. 

If you're creating a breakdown of your product or service, you may want to start by interviewing a subject matter expert (SME) to gain real-life details on the product/service and the solutions it provides to your target audience. Why? Note what they’re saying are the most important aspects or if there is a new feature/addition for the audience. These points can be tied into a topic that might pique the target reader's interest.

2. Create an outline for the blog

When you're building out your blog structure, record a video similar to how you would write a blog article.

In this case, by creating an outline for the article with the questions that you ask yourself, it'll be easier to format the transcription and the blog after you record.

3. Pick your poison (distribution strategy)

Now that you're ready to begin recording your video, decide where your content will be distributed.

The way you'll distribute your content heavily influences the way you record your video, especially if you're going to be utilizing the video as the content itself (Hello, YouTube!).

For example, if you run a business consultancy, the videos that you record should be more professional than if you run an e-commerce surf lifestyle brand. Or, if you know you’re going to be breaking the video up, leave time for natural “breaks” for easy editing later on.

By planning ahead of time, you give yourself a better idea of where the content will go, and how it will get there.

4. Your time to shine

There are numerous free video recording software available, including Zoom and Loom.

With Zoom, you can record the video of yourself speaking into your camera, and you will get an audio file after you hang up your call.

With Loom, you can use the chrome extension, which allows you to record yourself in video form while sharing your screen. If you have additional content, like a Powerpoint presentation or a walk-through, this might be the tool for you.

Regardless of the way that you record, you need an audio file to transcribe and transform into other content formats later on.

5. Transcribe your video

The average writer transcribes one hour of audio in around four hours, but some of the best transcribers can do it in as little as two hours.

To put that into perspective, the average one-hour audio file is about 7,800 words, which would take the average writer around three and a half hours to write.

Additionally, you have to add research time, internal linking, and many other factors to this, so on average it'll take around an hour to write 1,000 words of a high-quality blog post.

Transcription shortens the length of this process.

When looking to transcribe your audio, you can send files out to transcription tools including Rev or TranscribeMe. Once you send them the audio file, you'll typically receive the audio file back in a few hours (depending on the demand).

6. Alter transcription into blog format

You'll receive the transcribed content via email, broken out by speaker. This makes it much easier to format post-transcription.

If you properly outlined the blog prior to recording, then this editing process should be simple. Copy and paste each section into the desired area for your blog and add your photos, keywords, and links as desired.

7. Chop your video into digestible parts

Here’s where things get interesting.

If you're using your video for social media posts, shorten the video into multiple parts to be distributed across each platform (and make sure they’re built to match each platform's guidelines).

Additionally, quotes from the video can be used to create text graphics, text-based social posts, or entire articles themselves.

Think of the watering holes that your target audience consumes information on the internet:

Google

LinkedIn

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

YouTube

Each platform requires creating a different experience that involves new, native content. But that doesn’t mean you have to start at zero.

If you have a 10-minute-long video, it can be transcribed into a 2,500-word blog that takes about 10-15 minutes to read.

Boom. You have another resource to share, which can also include proper keywords so it ranks higher on the SERP.

Let’s say you end up editing the video down to about five minutes. From here, you can make:

A five minute video to post on YouTube and your blog

Ten 30-second videos to post across several social media platforms

Twenty 100-word posts on LinkedIn

Thirty 50 to 60-word posts on Twitter

Woah.

Not to mention there are other platforms like Reddit and Quora, as well as email marketing, that you can also distribute your content with. (Turn one of the 100-word LinkedIn posts into the opening in your latest newsletter, and attach the full video for those who want to learn more!)

By starting off with an all-encompassing video, you extend your content capabilities from a regular blog article into 50+ pieces of content across multiple social media platforms and search engines.

For example, Lewis Howes (and many other brands and marketers) are famous for utilizing this method.

As you can see below, Howes had an interview for his podcast with Mel Robbins, which is scaled across YouTube and podcast platforms, but he took a quote from her in the interview and scaled it across Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

When you build out your content calendar, simply copy and paste certain sections into an excel spreadsheet, and organize them based on date and platform. Make sure they make sense on the platform, add an extra line or two if you need to, and work your magic.

This will save you hours of time in your planning process.

8. Distribute

Now that you have created your various forms of content, it’s time to make sure it appears before the right eyes.

Having a consistent flow of relevant content on your website and social media platforms is a crucial part of empowering your brand, building credibility, and showing that you’re worth trusting as a potential partner.

As you repurpose older content as well, you can repeat this process and pull together another 50+ pieces of content from a previously successful article.

Improving organic search visibility

"Discoverability" is a popular term in marketing. Another way to say it is "organic search visibility". Your brand’s search visibility is the percentage of clicks that your website gets in comparison to the total number of clicks for that particular keyword or group of keywords.

Normally, you can improve your visibility through writing a piece of content that reflects a target keyword the best and build links to that page, which improves your rankings for that keyword and long-tail variations of that keyword.

However, as you begin to grow your business, you may begin heavily relying on branded search traffic.

In fact, one of the biggest drivers of organic traffic is branded traffic. If you don't have an authoritative brand, it's challenging to receive backlinks naturally, and therefore more difficult to rank organically.

One of the biggest drivers of brand awareness is through social media. More than 4.5 billion people are using the internet and 3.8 billion are using social media.

If you want more people to search for your brand, push relevant social media campaigns that do just that.

But even further than that, we are seeing more and more social media platforms such as Pinterest, YouTube, and Twitter showing up as search results and snippets. For example, below is the SERP for the keyword “how to make cookies”, where a series of YouTube videos show up:

And this SERP for the keyword “Moz“ has the most recent Tweets from Moz's Twitter.

Writing content that ranks will continue to be important — but as Google keeps integrating other forms of social media into the SERPs, make time to post on every social media platform to improve search visibility and make your brand discoverable. 

But, duplicate content?

Duplicate content can be defined as the same content used across multiple URLs, and can be detrimental to your website’s health. However, from what we have seen through multiple conversations with marketers in the SEO world, there is no indication that websites are getting penalized for duplicate content when reposting said content on social media platforms.

Conclusion

Say goodbye to the time drain of creating one piece of content at a time. The most effective way to create a successful content marketing strategy is to share thought-provoking and data-driven content. Take advantage of this process to maximize your output and visibility.

Here are some final tips to take away to successfully launch a content marketing strategy, using this method:

Consistently analyze your results and double down on what works.

Don’t be afraid to try new tactics to see what your audience is interested in (Check out a real-world content strategy I helped get results for here).

Analyze the response from your audience. They'll tell you what is good and what is not!

Have other ideas? Let me know in the comments! 

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!

[nutrifami]

How to Turn One Piece of Content into Multiple for SEO

Posted by liambbarnes

As most SEO specialists have learned, you must create quality content to grow organically. The same thing can be said for businesses that are building a social media presence or a new newsletter following.

But as people consume more and more content each day, they become less receptive to basic content that doesn't provide a new perspective. To counter this issue, you must make sure that your content is native to each platform you publish on.

However, that doesn’t mean that you need to start from scratch. There's a way to take one content idea and turn it into multiple, which can scale across multiple platforms and improve your brand awareness.

It takes time to write a brand-new blog article every day, especially when you're an in-house team with a low number of resources and budget. The biggest challenge here is building a content strategy at scale.

So, how do you create a lot of great content?

You start with video.

If you have a video on a relevant topic, it can be repurposed into various individual pieces of content and distributed over a period of time across the right channels. Let’s walk through the process.

Using video to scale content

Did you know that the average person types at 41 words per minute (WPM), but the average person speaks at about 150 WPM? That is about 3.5 times faster speaking rather than typing. 

In fact, this article was transcribed.

For every article you write about, you must do extensive research, write out your first draft, edit, make changes, and more. It can consume an entire workday.

An easier way to do this? Record yourself on Loom or another video software, save it, and send the video file to an audio/video transcription service. There are so many tools, like Rev.com or TranscribeMe, that do this for relatively cheap. Of course, even if you're relying on text-to-speech, there's still editing time to take into account, and some would argue it will take MORE time to edit a text-to-speech transcription. There isn’t a “best way” to create content, however, for those who aren't strong writers but are strong speakers, transcription will be a powerful way to move at a quicker pace.

The step-by-step process 

Once you write out your content, how do you ensure that people read it?

Like any other content strategy, make sure that the process of planning, creating, and executing is written down (most likely digitally in a spreadsheet or tracking tool) and followed.

Let’s break down how to get the most out of your content.

1. Grab attention with your topic

Sometimes, content ideation can be the most challenging part of the process. Depending on the purpose of your content, there are various starting points.

For example, if you're writing a top-of-funnel blog article where the goal is to drive high amounts of organic traffic, start by performing keyword research to craft your topic. Why? You need to understand what your audience searches for and how to ensure you’re in the mix of search results. 

If you're creating a breakdown of your product or service, you may want to start by interviewing a subject matter expert (SME) to gain real-life details on the product/service and the solutions it provides to your target audience. Why? Note what they’re saying are the most important aspects or if there is a new feature/addition for the audience. These points can be tied into a topic that might pique the target reader's interest.

2. Create an outline for the blog

When you're building out your blog structure, record a video similar to how you would write a blog article.

In this case, by creating an outline for the article with the questions that you ask yourself, it'll be easier to format the transcription and the blog after you record.

3. Pick your poison (distribution strategy)

Now that you're ready to begin recording your video, decide where your content will be distributed.

The way you'll distribute your content heavily influences the way you record your video, especially if you're going to be utilizing the video as the content itself (Hello, YouTube!).

For example, if you run a business consultancy, the videos that you record should be more professional than if you run an e-commerce surf lifestyle brand. Or, if you know you’re going to be breaking the video up, leave time for natural “breaks” for easy editing later on.

By planning ahead of time, you give yourself a better idea of where the content will go, and how it will get there.

4. Your time to shine

There are numerous free video recording software available, including Zoom and Loom.

With Zoom, you can record the video of yourself speaking into your camera, and you will get an audio file after you hang up your call.

With Loom, you can use the chrome extension, which allows you to record yourself in video form while sharing your screen. If you have additional content, like a Powerpoint presentation or a walk-through, this might be the tool for you.

Regardless of the way that you record, you need an audio file to transcribe and transform into other content formats later on.

5. Transcribe your video

The average writer transcribes one hour of audio in around four hours, but some of the best transcribers can do it in as little as two hours.

To put that into perspective, the average one-hour audio file is about 7,800 words, which would take the average writer around three and a half hours to write.

Additionally, you have to add research time, internal linking, and many other factors to this, so on average it'll take around an hour to write 1,000 words of a high-quality blog post.

Transcription shortens the length of this process.

When looking to transcribe your audio, you can send files out to transcription tools including Rev or TranscribeMe. Once you send them the audio file, you'll typically receive the audio file back in a few hours (depending on the demand).

6. Alter transcription into blog format

You'll receive the transcribed content via email, broken out by speaker. This makes it much easier to format post-transcription.

If you properly outlined the blog prior to recording, then this editing process should be simple. Copy and paste each section into the desired area for your blog and add your photos, keywords, and links as desired.

7. Chop your video into digestible parts

Here’s where things get interesting.

If you're using your video for social media posts, shorten the video into multiple parts to be distributed across each platform (and make sure they’re built to match each platform's guidelines).

Additionally, quotes from the video can be used to create text graphics, text-based social posts, or entire articles themselves.

Think of the watering holes that your target audience consumes information on the internet:

Google

LinkedIn

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

YouTube

Each platform requires creating a different experience that involves new, native content. But that doesn’t mean you have to start at zero.

If you have a 10-minute-long video, it can be transcribed into a 2,500-word blog that takes about 10-15 minutes to read.

Boom. You have another resource to share, which can also include proper keywords so it ranks higher on the SERP.

Let’s say you end up editing the video down to about five minutes. From here, you can make:

A five minute video to post on YouTube and your blog

Ten 30-second videos to post across several social media platforms

Twenty 100-word posts on LinkedIn

Thirty 50 to 60-word posts on Twitter

Woah.

Not to mention there are other platforms like Reddit and Quora, as well as email marketing, that you can also distribute your content with. (Turn one of the 100-word LinkedIn posts into the opening in your latest newsletter, and attach the full video for those who want to learn more!)

By starting off with an all-encompassing video, you extend your content capabilities from a regular blog article into 50+ pieces of content across multiple social media platforms and search engines.

For example, Lewis Howes (and many other brands and marketers) are famous for utilizing this method.

As you can see below, Howes had an interview for his podcast with Mel Robbins, which is scaled across YouTube and podcast platforms, but he took a quote from her in the interview and scaled it across Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

When you build out your content calendar, simply copy and paste certain sections into an excel spreadsheet, and organize them based on date and platform. Make sure they make sense on the platform, add an extra line or two if you need to, and work your magic.

This will save you hours of time in your planning process.

8. Distribute

Now that you have created your various forms of content, it’s time to make sure it appears before the right eyes.

Having a consistent flow of relevant content on your website and social media platforms is a crucial part of empowering your brand, building credibility, and showing that you’re worth trusting as a potential partner.

As you repurpose older content as well, you can repeat this process and pull together another 50+ pieces of content from a previously successful article.

Improving organic search visibility

"Discoverability" is a popular term in marketing. Another way to say it is "organic search visibility". Your brand’s search visibility is the percentage of clicks that your website gets in comparison to the total number of clicks for that particular keyword or group of keywords.

Normally, you can improve your visibility through writing a piece of content that reflects a target keyword the best and build links to that page, which improves your rankings for that keyword and long-tail variations of that keyword.

However, as you begin to grow your business, you may begin heavily relying on branded search traffic.

In fact, one of the biggest drivers of organic traffic is branded traffic. If you don't have an authoritative brand, it's challenging to receive backlinks naturally, and therefore more difficult to rank organically.

One of the biggest drivers of brand awareness is through social media. More than 4.5 billion people are using the internet and 3.8 billion are using social media.

If you want more people to search for your brand, push relevant social media campaigns that do just that.

But even further than that, we are seeing more and more social media platforms such as Pinterest, YouTube, and Twitter showing up as search results and snippets. For example, below is the SERP for the keyword “how to make cookies”, where a series of YouTube videos show up:

And this SERP for the keyword “Moz“ has the most recent Tweets from Moz's Twitter.

Writing content that ranks will continue to be important — but as Google keeps integrating other forms of social media into the SERPs, make time to post on every social media platform to improve search visibility and make your brand discoverable. 

But, duplicate content?

Duplicate content can be defined as the same content used across multiple URLs, and can be detrimental to your website’s health. However, from what we have seen through multiple conversations with marketers in the SEO world, there is no indication that websites are getting penalized for duplicate content when reposting said content on social media platforms.

Conclusion

Say goodbye to the time drain of creating one piece of content at a time. The most effective way to create a successful content marketing strategy is to share thought-provoking and data-driven content. Take advantage of this process to maximize your output and visibility.

Here are some final tips to take away to successfully launch a content marketing strategy, using this method:

Consistently analyze your results and double down on what works.

Don’t be afraid to try new tactics to see what your audience is interested in (Check out a real-world content strategy I helped get results for here).

Analyze the response from your audience. They'll tell you what is good and what is not!

Have other ideas? Let me know in the comments! 

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!

[localwebmgmt]

How to Turn One Piece of Content into Multiple for SEO

Posted by liambbarnes

As most SEO specialists have learned, you must create quality content to grow organically. The same thing can be said for businesses that are building a social media presence or a new newsletter following.

But as people consume more and more content each day, they become less receptive to basic content that doesn't provide a new perspective. To counter this issue, you must make sure that your content is native to each platform you publish on.

However, that doesn’t mean that you need to start from scratch. There's a way to take one content idea and turn it into multiple, which can scale across multiple platforms and improve your brand awareness.

It takes time to write a brand-new blog article every day, especially when you're an in-house team with a low number of resources and budget. The biggest challenge here is building a content strategy at scale.

So, how do you create a lot of great content?

You start with video.

If you have a video on a relevant topic, it can be repurposed into various individual pieces of content and distributed over a period of time across the right channels. Let’s walk through the process.

Using video to scale content

Did you know that the average person types at 41 words per minute (WPM), but the average person speaks at about 150 WPM? That is about 3.5 times faster speaking rather than typing. 

In fact, this article was transcribed.

For every article you write about, you must do extensive research, write out your first draft, edit, make changes, and more. It can consume an entire workday.

An easier way to do this? Record yourself on Loom or another video software, save it, and send the video file to an audio/video transcription service. There are so many tools, like Rev.com or TranscribeMe, that do this for relatively cheap. Of course, even if you're relying on text-to-speech, there's still editing time to take into account, and some would argue it will take MORE time to edit a text-to-speech transcription. There isn’t a “best way” to create content, however, for those who aren't strong writers but are strong speakers, transcription will be a powerful way to move at a quicker pace.

The step-by-step process 

Once you write out your content, how do you ensure that people read it?

Like any other content strategy, make sure that the process of planning, creating, and executing is written down (most likely digitally in a spreadsheet or tracking tool) and followed.

Let’s break down how to get the most out of your content.

1. Grab attention with your topic

Sometimes, content ideation can be the most challenging part of the process. Depending on the purpose of your content, there are various starting points.

For example, if you're writing a top-of-funnel blog article where the goal is to drive high amounts of organic traffic, start by performing keyword research to craft your topic. Why? You need to understand what your audience searches for and how to ensure you’re in the mix of search results. 

If you're creating a breakdown of your product or service, you may want to start by interviewing a subject matter expert (SME) to gain real-life details on the product/service and the solutions it provides to your target audience. Why? Note what they’re saying are the most important aspects or if there is a new feature/addition for the audience. These points can be tied into a topic that might pique the target reader's interest.

2. Create an outline for the blog

When you're building out your blog structure, record a video similar to how you would write a blog article.

In this case, by creating an outline for the article with the questions that you ask yourself, it'll be easier to format the transcription and the blog after you record.

3. Pick your poison (distribution strategy)

Now that you're ready to begin recording your video, decide where your content will be distributed.

The way you'll distribute your content heavily influences the way you record your video, especially if you're going to be utilizing the video as the content itself (Hello, YouTube!).

For example, if you run a business consultancy, the videos that you record should be more professional than if you run an e-commerce surf lifestyle brand. Or, if you know you’re going to be breaking the video up, leave time for natural “breaks” for easy editing later on.

By planning ahead of time, you give yourself a better idea of where the content will go, and how it will get there.

4. Your time to shine

There are numerous free video recording software available, including Zoom and Loom.

With Zoom, you can record the video of yourself speaking into your camera, and you will get an audio file after you hang up your call.

With Loom, you can use the chrome extension, which allows you to record yourself in video form while sharing your screen. If you have additional content, like a Powerpoint presentation or a walk-through, this might be the tool for you.

Regardless of the way that you record, you need an audio file to transcribe and transform into other content formats later on.

5. Transcribe your video

The average writer transcribes one hour of audio in around four hours, but some of the best transcribers can do it in as little as two hours.

To put that into perspective, the average one-hour audio file is about 7,800 words, which would take the average writer around three and a half hours to write.

Additionally, you have to add research time, internal linking, and many other factors to this, so on average it'll take around an hour to write 1,000 words of a high-quality blog post.

Transcription shortens the length of this process.

When looking to transcribe your audio, you can send files out to transcription tools including Rev or TranscribeMe. Once you send them the audio file, you'll typically receive the audio file back in a few hours (depending on the demand).

6. Alter transcription into blog format

You'll receive the transcribed content via email, broken out by speaker. This makes it much easier to format post-transcription.

If you properly outlined the blog prior to recording, then this editing process should be simple. Copy and paste each section into the desired area for your blog and add your photos, keywords, and links as desired.

7. Chop your video into digestible parts

Here’s where things get interesting.

If you're using your video for social media posts, shorten the video into multiple parts to be distributed across each platform (and make sure they’re built to match each platform's guidelines).

Additionally, quotes from the video can be used to create text graphics, text-based social posts, or entire articles themselves.

Think of the watering holes that your target audience consumes information on the internet:

Google

LinkedIn

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

YouTube

Each platform requires creating a different experience that involves new, native content. But that doesn’t mean you have to start at zero.

If you have a 10-minute-long video, it can be transcribed into a 2,500-word blog that takes about 10-15 minutes to read.

Boom. You have another resource to share, which can also include proper keywords so it ranks higher on the SERP.

Let’s say you end up editing the video down to about five minutes. From here, you can make:

A five minute video to post on YouTube and your blog

Ten 30-second videos to post across several social media platforms

Twenty 100-word posts on LinkedIn

Thirty 50 to 60-word posts on Twitter

Woah.

Not to mention there are other platforms like Reddit and Quora, as well as email marketing, that you can also distribute your content with. (Turn one of the 100-word LinkedIn posts into the opening in your latest newsletter, and attach the full video for those who want to learn more!)

By starting off with an all-encompassing video, you extend your content capabilities from a regular blog article into 50+ pieces of content across multiple social media platforms and search engines.

For example, Lewis Howes (and many other brands and marketers) are famous for utilizing this method.

As you can see below, Howes had an interview for his podcast with Mel Robbins, which is scaled across YouTube and podcast platforms, but he took a quote from her in the interview and scaled it across Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

When you build out your content calendar, simply copy and paste certain sections into an excel spreadsheet, and organize them based on date and platform. Make sure they make sense on the platform, add an extra line or two if you need to, and work your magic.

This will save you hours of time in your planning process.

8. Distribute

Now that you have created your various forms of content, it’s time to make sure it appears before the right eyes.

Having a consistent flow of relevant content on your website and social media platforms is a crucial part of empowering your brand, building credibility, and showing that you’re worth trusting as a potential partner.

As you repurpose older content as well, you can repeat this process and pull together another 50+ pieces of content from a previously successful article.

Improving organic search visibility

"Discoverability" is a popular term in marketing. Another way to say it is "organic search visibility". Your brand’s search visibility is the percentage of clicks that your website gets in comparison to the total number of clicks for that particular keyword or group of keywords.

Normally, you can improve your visibility through writing a piece of content that reflects a target keyword the best and build links to that page, which improves your rankings for that keyword and long-tail variations of that keyword.

However, as you begin to grow your business, you may begin heavily relying on branded search traffic.

In fact, one of the biggest drivers of organic traffic is branded traffic. If you don't have an authoritative brand, it's challenging to receive backlinks naturally, and therefore more difficult to rank organically.

One of the biggest drivers of brand awareness is through social media. More than 4.5 billion people are using the internet and 3.8 billion are using social media.

If you want more people to search for your brand, push relevant social media campaigns that do just that.

But even further than that, we are seeing more and more social media platforms such as Pinterest, YouTube, and Twitter showing up as search results and snippets. For example, below is the SERP for the keyword “how to make cookies”, where a series of YouTube videos show up:

And this SERP for the keyword “Moz“ has the most recent Tweets from Moz's Twitter.

Writing content that ranks will continue to be important — but as Google keeps integrating other forms of social media into the SERPs, make time to post on every social media platform to improve search visibility and make your brand discoverable. 

But, duplicate content?

Duplicate content can be defined as the same content used across multiple URLs, and can be detrimental to your website’s health. However, from what we have seen through multiple conversations with marketers in the SEO world, there is no indication that websites are getting penalized for duplicate content when reposting said content on social media platforms.

Conclusion

Say goodbye to the time drain of creating one piece of content at a time. The most effective way to create a successful content marketing strategy is to share thought-provoking and data-driven content. Take advantage of this process to maximize your output and visibility.

Here are some final tips to take away to successfully launch a content marketing strategy, using this method:

Consistently analyze your results and double down on what works.

Don’t be afraid to try new tactics to see what your audience is interested in (Check out a real-world content strategy I helped get results for here).

Analyze the response from your audience. They'll tell you what is good and what is not!

Have other ideas? Let me know in the comments! 

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!