Monday, November 30, 2015

It's Here! The MozCon Local 2016 Agenda

Posted by EricaMcGillivray

*drumroll* The MozCon Local 2016 agenda is here! For all your local marketing and SEO needs, we're pleased to present a fabulous lineup of speakers and topics for your enjoyment. MozCon Local is Thursday and Friday, February 18–19 2016 in Seattle. On Thursday, our friends LocalU will present a half-day of intensive workshops, and on Friday we'll be having an entire day of keynote-style conference fun. (You do need to purchase the workshop ticket separately from the conference ticket.)

If you've just remembered that you need to purchase your ticket, do so now:

Buy your MozCon Local 2016 ticket!

Otherwise, let's dig into that agenda!

MozCon Local 2016


Thursday workshops

12:00–12:30pm
Registration


12:30–12:35pm
Introduction and Housekeeping


David Mihm12:35–12:55pm
The State of Local Search with David Mihm

Already one of the most complex areas in all of search marketing, local has never been more fragmented than it is today. Following a brief summary of the Local Search Ranking Factors, David will give you his perspective on which strategies and tactics are worth paying attention to, and which ones are simply "nice to have."

David Mihm is one of the world’s leading practitioners of local search engine marketing. He has created and promoted search-friendly websites for clients of all sizes since the early 2000s. David co-founded GetListed.org, which he sold to Moz in November 2012.


12:55–1:35pm
Local Search Processes with Aaron Weiche, Darren Shaw, Mike Ramsey, and Paula Keller

Darren Shaw, Mike Ramsey, Aaron Weiche, and Paula Keller

Panel discussion and Q&A on the best processes to use in marketing local businesses online.


1:35–2:35pm
How to do Competitive Analysis for Local Search with Aaron Weiche, Darren Shaw, David Mihm, Ed Reese, Mary Bowling, Mike Ramsey

Each panelist will demonstrate their methods and the tools they use to audit a specific area of the online presence of a single local business. The end result will be a complete picture of how a thorough competitive analysis for a local business can be done.


2:35–2:50pm
Break


During this time period, each attendee will choose any three 30-minute workshops to attend. Some workshops are offered in all time slots, while others are only offered at specific times. Present your challenges, discuss solutions, and get your burning questions answered in these small groups.

LocalU Workshops

2:50–3:20pm
  • Tracking and Conversions with Ed Reese
  • Solving Problems at Google My Business with Willys DeVoll and Mary Bowling
  • Ask Me Anything About Local Search with David Mihm
  • Local Targeting of Paid Advertising with Paula Keller
  • Using Reviews to Build Your Business with Aaron Weiche
  • Local Links with Mike Ramsey
  • Citations: Everything You Need to Know with Darren Shaw
3:20–3:50pm
  • Tracking and Conversions with Ed Reese
  • Solving Problems at Google My Business with Willys DeVoll and Mary Bowling
  • Ask Me Anything About Local Search with David Mihm
  • Local Targeting of Paid Advertising with Paula Keller
  • Using Reviews to Build Your Business with Aaron Weiche
  • Agency Issues with Mike Ramsey
  • Local Links with Darren Shaw
3:50–4:20pm
  • Tracking and Conversions with Ed Reese
  • Solving Problems at Google My Business with Willys DeVoll and Mary Bowling
  • Ask Me Anything About Local Search with David Mihm
  • Local Targeting of Paid Advertising with Paula Keller
  • Using Reviews to Build Your Business with Aaron Weiche
  • Local Links with Mike Ramsey
  • Citations: Everything You Need to Know with Darren Shaw

4:20–5:00pm
Live Site Reviews

The group will come back together for live site reviews!


5:00–6:00pm
Happy Hour!


Friday conference

Mary Bowling talks to the local crowd

8:00–9:00am

Breakfast


David Mihm9:00–9:05am
Welcome to MozCon Local 2016! with David Mihm

David Mihm is one of the world’s leading practitioners of Local search engine marketing. He has created and promoted search-friendly websites for clients of all sizes since the early 2000s. David co-founded GetListed.org, which he sold to Moz in November 2012.


Mary Bowling9:05–9:35am
Feeding the Beast: Local Content for RankBrain with Mary Bowling

We now know searcher behavior and continual testing via machine learning indeed affects Google rankings and algorithm refinements. Learn how to create local content to satisfy both Google and our human visitors.

Mary Bowling's been in SEO since 2003 and has specialized in local SEO since 2006. When she's not writing about, teaching, consulting, and doing internet marketing, you'll find her rafting, biking, and skiing/snowboarding in the mountains and deserts of Colorado and Utah.


Mike Ramsey9:35–10:05am
Local Links: Tests, Tools, and Tactics with Mike Ramsey

Going beyond the map pack, links can bring you qualified traffic, organic rankings, penalties, or filters. Mike will walk through lessons, examples, and ideas for you to utilize to your heart's content.

Mike Ramsey is the president of Nifty Marketing and a founding faculty member of Local University. He is a lover of search and social with a heavy focus in local marketing and enjoys the chess game of entrepreneurship and business management. Mike loves to travel and loves his home state of Idaho.


Darren Shaw10:05–10:35am
Citation Investigation! with Darren Shaw

Darren investigates how citations travel across the web and shares new insights into how to better utilize the local search ecosystem for your brands.

Darren Shaw is the president and founder of Whitespark, a company that builds software and provides services to help businesses with local search. He's widely regarded in the local SEO community as an innovator, one whose years of experience working with massive local data sets have given him uncommon insights into the inner workings of the world of citation-building and local search marketing. Darren has been working on the web for over 16 years and loves everything about local SEO.


10:35–10:55am
AM Break


Lindsay Wassell10:55–11:20am
Technical Site Audits for Local SEO with
Lindsay Wassell

Onsite SEO success lies in the technical details, but extensive SEO audits can be too expensive and impractical. Lindsay shows you the most important onsite elements for local search optimization and outlines an efficient path for improved performance.

Lindsay Wassell's been herding bots and wrangling SERPs since 2001. She has a zeal for helping small businesses grow with improved digital presence. Lindsay is the CEO and founder of Keyphraseology.


Justine Jordan11:20–11:45am
Optimizing and Hacking Email for Mobile with Justine Jordan

Email may be an old dog, but it has learned some new mobile tricks. From device-a-palooza and preview text to tables and triggers, Justine will break down the subscriber experience so you (and your audience) get the most from your next campaign.

In addition to being an email critic, cat lover, and explain-a-holic, Justine Jordan also heads up marketing for Litmus, an email testing and analytics platform. She’s strangely passionate about email, hates being called a spammer, and still codes like it's 1999.


Emily Grossman11:45am–12:10pm
Understanding App-Web Convergence and the Impending App Tsunami with Emily Grossman

People no longer distinguish between app and web content; both compete for the same space in local search results. Learn how to keep your local brand presence afloat as apps and deep links flood into the top of search results.

Emily Grossman is a Mobile Marketing Specialist at MobileMoxie, and she has been working with mobile apps since the early days of the app stores in 2010. She specializes in app search marketing, with a focus on strategic deep linking, app indexing, app launch strategy, and app store optimization (ASO).


Robi Ganguly12:10–12:35pm
Building Customer Love and Loyalty in a Mobile World with Robi Ganguly

How the best companies in the world relate to customers, create a personal touch, and foster customer loyalty at scale.

Robi Ganguly is the co-founder and CEO of Apptentive, the easiest way for every company to communicate with their mobile app customers. A native Seattleite, Robi enjoys building relationships, running, reading, and cooking.


12:35–1:35pm
Lunch



Luther Lowe and Willys Devol1:35–2:05pm
The Past, Present, and Future of Local Listings with Luther Lowe and Willys Devol

Two of the biggest kids on the local search block, Google and Yelp, share their views on the changing world of local listings, their place in the broader world of local search, and what you can do to keep up, in this Q&A moderated by David Mihm.

Luther Lowe is VP of Public Policy at Yelp.

Willys Devol is the content strategist for Google My Business, and he spends his time designing and writing online content to help business owners enhance their presence online. He's also a major proponent of broccoli and gorillas.


Paula Keller2:05–2:35pm
Fake It Til You Make It: Brand Building for Local Businesses with Paula Keller

Explore real-world examples of how your local business can establish a brand that both customers and Google will recognize and reward.

As Director of Account Management at Search Influence, Paula Keller strategizes with businesses on improving their search, social, and online ads results, and she works to scale those tactics for her team's 800+ local business clients. Paula views online marketing the same way she views cooking (her favorite way to spend her free time): trends come and go, but classic tactics are always the foundation of success!


Dana DiTomaso2:35–3:05pm
Your Marketing Team is Larger Than You Think with Dana DiTomaso

Imagine doing such a great job with your branding that you become a part of your customer's life. They trust your brand as part of their community. This magic doesn't happen by dictating the corporate voice from a head office, but from empowering your locations to build customer community.

Whether at a conference, on the radio, or in a meeting, Dana DiTomaso likes to impart wisdom to help you turn a lot of marketing bullshit into real strategies to grow your business. After 10+ years, she's (almost) seen it all. It's true, Dana will meet with you and teach you the ways of the digital world, but she is also a fan of the random fact. Kick Point often celebrates "Watershed Wednesday" because of Dana's diverse work and education background. In her spare time, Dana drinks tea and yells at the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.


3:05–3:25pm
PM Break


Cori Shirk3:25–3:55pm
Mo' Listings, Mo' Problems: Managing Enterprise-Level Local Search with Cori Shirk

Listings are everyone's favorite local search task...not. Cori takes you through how to tackle them at large scale, keep up, and not burn out.

Cori Shirk is a member of the SEO team at Seer Interactive, where she specializes in managing enterprise local search accounts and guiding strategy across all of Seer's local search clients. When she's not sitting in front of a computer, you can usually find her out at a concert enjoying a local craft beer.


Matthew Moore3:55–4:10pm
The Enterprise Perspective on Local Search with Matthew Moore

Learn how the person responsible for local visibility across a portfolio of nearly 1,000 locations tackles this space on a daily basis. Matthew from Sears Home Services shares his experiences and advice in this Q&A moderated by David Mihm.

Matthew Moore is Senior Director, Marketing Analytics at Sears Holdings Corporation.


Adria Saracino4:10–4:40pm
How to Approach Social Media Like Big Brands with Adria Saracino

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, Periscope...the seemingly never-ending world of social media can leave even the most seasoned marketer flailing among too many tasks and not enough results. Adria will help you cut through the noise and share actionable secrets that big brands use to succeed with social media.

Adria Saracino is a digital strategist whose marketing experience spans mid-stage startups, agency life, and speaking engagements at conferences like SearchLove and Lavacon. When not marketing things, you can see her cooking elaborate meals and posting them on her Instagram, @emeraldpalate.


Rand Fishkin4:40–5:10pm
Analytics for Local Marketers: The Big Picture and the Right Details with Rand Fishkin

Are your marketing efforts taking your organization where it needs to go, or are they just boosting your vanity metrics? Rand explains how to avoid being misled by the wrong metrics and how to focus on the ones that will keep you moving forward. Learn how to determine what to measure, as well as how to tie it to objectives with clear, concise, and useful data points.

Rand Fishkin uses the ludicrous title "Wizard of Moz." He’s the founder and former CEO of Moz, co-author of a pair of books on SEO, and co-founder of Inbound.org.


6:00–10:00pm
MozCon Local Networking Afterparty, location TBA

Join your fellow attendees and Moz and LocalU staff for a networking party after the conference. Light appetizers and drinks included. See you there!

Buy your MozCon Local 2016 ticket!


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!

It's Here! The MozCon Local 2016 Agenda

Posted by EricaMcGillivray

*drumroll* The MozCon Local 2016 agenda is here! For all your local marketing and SEO needs, we're pleased to present a fabulous lineup of speakers and topics for your enjoyment. MozCon Local is Thursday and Friday, February 18–19 2016 in Seattle. On Thursday, our friends LocalU will present a half-day of intensive workshops, and on Friday we'll be having an entire day of keynote-style conference fun. (You do need to purchase the workshop ticket separately from the conference ticket.)

If you've just remembered that you need to purchase your ticket, do so now:

Buy your MozCon Local 2016 ticket!

Otherwise, let's dig into that agenda!

MozCon Local 2016


Thursday workshops

12:00–12:30pm
Registration


12:30–12:35pm
Introduction and Housekeeping


David Mihm12:35–12:55pm
The State of Local Search with David Mihm

Already one of the most complex areas in all of search marketing, local has never been more fragmented than it is today. Following a brief summary of the Local Search Ranking Factors, David will give you his perspective on which strategies and tactics are worth paying attention to, and which ones are simply "nice to have."

David Mihm is one of the world’s leading practitioners of local search engine marketing. He has created and promoted search-friendly websites for clients of all sizes since the early 2000s. David co-founded GetListed.org, which he sold to Moz in November 2012.


12:55–1:35pm
Local Search Processes with Aaron Weiche, Darren Shaw, Mike Ramsey, and Paula Keller

Darren Shaw, Mike Ramsey, Aaron Weiche, and Paula Keller

Panel discussion and Q&A on the best processes to use in marketing local businesses online.


1:35–2:35pm
How to do Competitive Analysis for Local Search with Aaron Weiche, Darren Shaw, David Mihm, Ed Reese, Mary Bowling, Mike Ramsey

Each panelist will demonstrate their methods and the tools they use to audit a specific area of the online presence of a single local business. The end result will be a complete picture of how a thorough competitive analysis for a local business can be done.


2:35–2:50pm
Break


During this time period, each attendee will choose any three 30-minute workshops to attend. Some workshops are offered in all time slots, while others are only offered at specific times. Present your challenges, discuss solutions, and get your burning questions answered in these small groups.

LocalU Workshops

2:50–3:20pm
  • Tracking and Conversions with Ed Reese
  • Solving Problems at Google My Business with Willys DeVoll and Mary Bowling
  • Ask Me Anything About Local Search with David Mihm
  • Local Targeting of Paid Advertising with Paula Keller
  • Using Reviews to Build Your Business with Aaron Weiche
  • Local Links with Mike Ramsey
  • Citations: Everything You Need to Know with Darren Shaw
3:20–3:50pm
  • Tracking and Conversions with Ed Reese
  • Solving Problems at Google My Business with Willys DeVoll and Mary Bowling
  • Ask Me Anything About Local Search with David Mihm
  • Local Targeting of Paid Advertising with Paula Keller
  • Using Reviews to Build Your Business with Aaron Weiche
  • Agency Issues with Mike Ramsey
  • Local Links with Darren Shaw
3:50–4:20pm
  • Tracking and Conversions with Ed Reese
  • Solving Problems at Google My Business with Willys DeVoll and Mary Bowling
  • Ask Me Anything About Local Search with David Mihm
  • Local Targeting of Paid Advertising with Paula Keller
  • Using Reviews to Build Your Business with Aaron Weiche
  • Local Links with Mike Ramsey
  • Citations: Everything You Need to Know with Darren Shaw

4:20–5:00pm
Live Site Reviews

The group will come back together for live site reviews!


5:00–6:00pm
Happy Hour!


Friday conference

Mary Bowling talks to the local crowd

8:00–9:00am

Breakfast


David Mihm9:00–9:05am
Welcome to MozCon Local 2016! with David Mihm

David Mihm is one of the world’s leading practitioners of Local search engine marketing. He has created and promoted search-friendly websites for clients of all sizes since the early 2000s. David co-founded GetListed.org, which he sold to Moz in November 2012.


Mary Bowling9:05–9:35am
Feeding the Beast: Local Content for RankBrain with Mary Bowling

We now know searcher behavior and continual testing via machine learning indeed affects Google rankings and algorithm refinements. Learn how to create local content to satisfy both Google and our human visitors.

Mary Bowling's been in SEO since 2003 and has specialized in local SEO since 2006. When she's not writing about, teaching, consulting, and doing internet marketing, you'll find her rafting, biking, and skiing/snowboarding in the mountains and deserts of Colorado and Utah.


Mike Ramsey9:35–10:05am
Local Links: Tests, Tools, and Tactics with Mike Ramsey

Going beyond the map pack, links can bring you qualified traffic, organic rankings, penalties, or filters. Mike will walk through lessons, examples, and ideas for you to utilize to your heart's content.

Mike Ramsey is the president of Nifty Marketing and a founding faculty member of Local University. He is a lover of search and social with a heavy focus in local marketing and enjoys the chess game of entrepreneurship and business management. Mike loves to travel and loves his home state of Idaho.


Darren Shaw10:05–10:35am
Citation Investigation! with Darren Shaw

Darren investigates how citations travel across the web and shares new insights into how to better utilize the local search ecosystem for your brands.

Darren Shaw is the president and founder of Whitespark, a company that builds software and provides services to help businesses with local search. He's widely regarded in the local SEO community as an innovator, one whose years of experience working with massive local data sets have given him uncommon insights into the inner workings of the world of citation-building and local search marketing. Darren has been working on the web for over 16 years and loves everything about local SEO.


10:35–10:55am
AM Break


Lindsay Wassell10:55–11:20am
Technical Site Audits for Local SEO with
Lindsay Wassell

Onsite SEO success lies in the technical details, but extensive SEO audits can be too expensive and impractical. Lindsay shows you the most important onsite elements for local search optimization and outlines an efficient path for improved performance.

Lindsay Wassell's been herding bots and wrangling SERPs since 2001. She has a zeal for helping small businesses grow with improved digital presence. Lindsay is the CEO and founder of Keyphraseology.


Justine Jordan11:20–11:45am
Optimizing and Hacking Email for Mobile with Justine Jordan

Email may be an old dog, but it has learned some new mobile tricks. From device-a-palooza and preview text to tables and triggers, Justine will break down the subscriber experience so you (and your audience) get the most from your next campaign.

In addition to being an email critic, cat lover, and explain-a-holic, Justine Jordan also heads up marketing for Litmus, an email testing and analytics platform. She’s strangely passionate about email, hates being called a spammer, and still codes like it's 1999.


Emily Grossman11:45am–12:10pm
Understanding App-Web Convergence and the Impending App Tsunami with Emily Grossman

People no longer distinguish between app and web content; both compete for the same space in local search results. Learn how to keep your local brand presence afloat as apps and deep links flood into the top of search results.

Emily Grossman is a Mobile Marketing Specialist at MobileMoxie, and she has been working with mobile apps since the early days of the app stores in 2010. She specializes in app search marketing, with a focus on strategic deep linking, app indexing, app launch strategy, and app store optimization (ASO).


Robi Ganguly12:10–12:35pm
Building Customer Love and Loyalty in a Mobile World with Robi Ganguly

How the best companies in the world relate to customers, create a personal touch, and foster customer loyalty at scale.

Robi Ganguly is the co-founder and CEO of Apptentive, the easiest way for every company to communicate with their mobile app customers. A native Seattleite, Robi enjoys building relationships, running, reading, and cooking.


12:35–1:35pm
Lunch



Luther Lowe and Willys Devol1:35–2:05pm
The Past, Present, and Future of Local Listings with Luther Lowe and Willys Devol

Two of the biggest kids on the local search block, Google and Yelp, share their views on the changing world of local listings, their place in the broader world of local search, and what you can do to keep up, in this Q&A moderated by David Mihm.

Luther Lowe is VP of Public Policy at Yelp.

Willys Devol is the content strategist for Google My Business, and he spends his time designing and writing online content to help business owners enhance their presence online. He's also a major proponent of broccoli and gorillas.


Paula Keller2:05–2:35pm
Fake It Til You Make It: Brand Building for Local Businesses with Paula Keller

Explore real-world examples of how your local business can establish a brand that both customers and Google will recognize and reward.

As Director of Account Management at Search Influence, Paula Keller strategizes with businesses on improving their search, social, and online ads results, and she works to scale those tactics for her team's 800+ local business clients. Paula views online marketing the same way she views cooking (her favorite way to spend her free time): trends come and go, but classic tactics are always the foundation of success!


Dana DiTomaso2:35–3:05pm
Your Marketing Team is Larger Than You Think with Dana DiTomaso

Imagine doing such a great job with your branding that you become a part of your customer's life. They trust your brand as part of their community. This magic doesn't happen by dictating the corporate voice from a head office, but from empowering your locations to build customer community.

Whether at a conference, on the radio, or in a meeting, Dana DiTomaso likes to impart wisdom to help you turn a lot of marketing bullshit into real strategies to grow your business. After 10+ years, she's (almost) seen it all. It's true, Dana will meet with you and teach you the ways of the digital world, but she is also a fan of the random fact. Kick Point often celebrates "Watershed Wednesday" because of Dana's diverse work and education background. In her spare time, Dana drinks tea and yells at the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.


3:05–3:25pm
PM Break


Cori Shirk3:25–3:55pm
Mo' Listings, Mo' Problems: Managing Enterprise-Level Local Search with Cori Shirk

Listings are everyone's favorite local search task...not. Cori takes you through how to tackle them at large scale, keep up, and not burn out.

Cori Shirk is a member of the SEO team at Seer Interactive, where she specializes in managing enterprise local search accounts and guiding strategy across all of Seer's local search clients. When she's not sitting in front of a computer, you can usually find her out at a concert enjoying a local craft beer.


Matthew Moore3:55–4:10pm
The Enterprise Perspective on Local Search with Matthew Moore

Learn how the person responsible for local visibility across a portfolio of nearly 1,000 locations tackles this space on a daily basis. Matthew from Sears Home Services shares his experiences and advice in this Q&A moderated by David Mihm.

Matthew Moore is Senior Director, Marketing Analytics at Sears Holdings Corporation.


Adria Saracino4:10–4:40pm
How to Approach Social Media Like Big Brands with Adria Saracino

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, Periscope...the seemingly never-ending world of social media can leave even the most seasoned marketer flailing among too many tasks and not enough results. Adria will help you cut through the noise and share actionable secrets that big brands use to succeed with social media.

Adria Saracino is a digital strategist whose marketing experience spans mid-stage startups, agency life, and speaking engagements at conferences like SearchLove and Lavacon. When not marketing things, you can see her cooking elaborate meals and posting them on her Instagram, @emeraldpalate.


Rand Fishkin4:40–5:10pm
Analytics for Local Marketers: The Big Picture and the Right Details with Rand Fishkin

Are your marketing efforts taking your organization where it needs to go, or are they just boosting your vanity metrics? Rand explains how to avoid being misled by the wrong metrics and how to focus on the ones that will keep you moving forward. Learn how to determine what to measure, as well as how to tie it to objectives with clear, concise, and useful data points.

Rand Fishkin uses the ludicrous title "Wizard of Moz." He’s the founder and former CEO of Moz, co-author of a pair of books on SEO, and co-founder of Inbound.org.


6:00–10:00pm
MozCon Local Networking Afterparty, location TBA

Join your fellow attendees and Moz and LocalU staff for a networking party after the conference. Light appetizers and drinks included. See you there!

Buy your MozCon Local 2016 ticket!


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!

Persona Research in Under 5 Minutes

Posted by CraigBradford

Well-researched personas can be a useful tool for marketers, but to do it correctly takes time. But what if you don’t have extra time? Using a mix of Followerwonk, Twitter, and the AIchemy language API, it’s possible to do top-level persona research very quickly. I’ve built a Python script that can help you answer two important questions about your target audience:

  1. What are the most common domains that my audience visits and spend time on? (Where should I be trying to get mentions/links/PR)
  2. What topics are they interested in or reading on those sites? (What content should I potentially create for these people)

You can get the script on Github: Twitter persona research

Once the script runs, the output is two CSV files. One is a list of the most commonly-shared domains by the group, the other is a list of the topics that the audience is interested in.

A quick introduction to Watson and the Alchemy API

The Alchemy API has been around a while, and they were recently acquired by the IBM Watson group. The language tool has 15 functions. I've used it in the past for language detection, sentiment analysis, and topic analysis. For this personas tool, I’ve used the Concepts feature. You can upload a block of text or ask it to fetch a URL for analysis. The output is then a list of concepts that are relevant to the page. For example, if I put the Distilled homepage into the tool, the concepts are:

Notice there are some strange things like Arianna Huffington listed, but running this tool over thousands of URLs and counting the occurrences takes care of any strange results. This highlights one of the interesting features of the tool: Alchemy isn’t just doing a keyword extraction task. Arianna Huffington isn’t mentioned anywhere on the Distilled homepage.

Alchemy has found the mention of Huffington Post and expanded on that concept. Notice that neither search engine optimization or Internet marketing are mentioned on the homepage, but have been listed as the two most relevant concepts. Pretty clever. The Alchemy site sums it up nicely:

"AlchemyAPI employs sophisticated text analysis techniques to concept tag documents in a manner similar to how humans would identify concepts. The concept tagging API is capable of making high-level abstractions by understanding how concepts relate, and can identify concepts that aren't necessarily directly referenced in the text.”

My thinking for this script is simple: If I get a list of all the links that certain people share and pass the URLs through the Alchemy tool, I should be able to extract the main concepts that the audience is interested in.

To use an example, let’s assume I want to know what topics the SEO community is interested in and what sites are most important in that community. My process is this:

  1. Find people that mention “SEO” in their Twitter bio using Followerwonk
  2. Get a sample of their most recent tweets using the Twitter API
  3. Pull out the most common domains that those people share
  4. Use the Alchemy Concepts API to summarize what the pages they share are about
  5. Output all of the above to a spreadsheet

Follow the steps below. Sorry, but the instructions below are for Mac only; the script will work for PCs, but I’m not sure of the terminal set up.

How to use the script

Step 1 – Finding people interested in SEO

Searching Followerwonk is the only manual part of the process. I might build it into the the script in future, but honestly, it’s too easy to just download the usernames from the interface.

Go into the "Search Bios" tab and enter the job title in quotes. In this case, that's "SEO." More common jobs will return a lot of results; I recommend setting some filters to avoid bots. For example, you might want to only include accounts with a certain number of followers, or accounts with less than a reasonable number of tweets. You can download these users in a CSV as shown in the bottom-right of the image below:

Everything else can be done automatically using the script.

Step 2 – Downloading the script from GitHub

Download the script from Github here: Twitter API using Python. Use the Download Zip link on the right hand side as shown below:

Step 3 – Sign up for Twitter and Alchemy API keys:

It’s easy to sign up using the links below:

Once you have the API keys, you need to install a couple of extra requirements for the script to work.

The easiest way to do that is to download Pip here: https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py — save the page as “get-pip.py". Create a folder on your desktop and save the Git download and the “get-pip.py” file in it. You then need to open your terminal and navigate into that folder. You can read my previous post on how to use the command line here: The Beginner's Guide to the Command Line.

The steps below should get you there:

Open up the terminal and type:

“cd Desktop/”

“cd [foldername]”

You should now be in the folder with the get-pip.py file and the folder you downloaded from Github. Go back to the terminal and type:

“sudo python get-pip.py”

“sudo pip install -r requirements.txt”

Create two more files:

  1. usernames.txt – This is where you will add all of the Twitter handles you want to research
  2. api_keys.py – The file with your API keys for Alchemy and Twitter

In the api_keys file, paste the following and add the respective details:

watson_api_key = "[INSERT ALCHEMY KEY]"

twitter_ckey = "[INSERT TWITTER CKEY]"

twitter_csecret = "[INSERT CSECRET]"

twitter_atoken = "[INSERT TOKEN]"

twitter_asecret = "[INSERT ASECRET]"

Save and close the file.

Step 4 – Run the script

At this stage you should:

  1. Have a username.txt file with the Twitter handles you want to research
  2. Have downloaded the script from Github
  3. Have a file named api_keys.py with your details for Alchemy and Twitter
  4. Installed Pip and the requirements file

The main code of the script can be found in the “get_tweets.py” file.

To run the script, go into your terminal, navigate to the folder that you saved the script to (you should still be in the correct directory if you followed the steps above. Use “pwd” to print the directory you’re in). Once you are in the folder, run the script by going to the terminal and typing: “python get_tweets.py”. Depending on the number of usernames you entered, it should take a couple of minutes to run. I recommend starting with one or two to check that everything is working.

Once the script finishes running, it will have created two csv files in the folder you created:

  1. “domain + timestamp” – This includes all the domains that people tweeted and the count of each
  2. “concepts + timestamp” – This includes all the concepts that were extracted from the links that were shared

I did this process using “SEO” as the search term in Followerwonk. I used 50 or so profiles, which created the following results:

Top 30 domains shared:

Top 40 concepts

For the most part, I think the domains and topics are representative of the SEO community. The output above seems obvious to us, but try it for a topic that you’re not familiar with and it’s really helpful. The bigger the sample size, the better the results should be, but this is restricted by the API limitations.

Although it looks like a lot of steps, once you have this set up, it’s very easy to repeat — all you need to change is the usernames file. Using this tool can get you some top-level persona information in a very short amount of time.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.


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Persona Research in Under 5 Minutes

Posted by CraigBradford

Well-researched personas can be a useful tool for marketers, but to do it correctly takes time. But what if you don’t have extra time? Using a mix of Followerwonk, Twitter, and the AIchemy language API, it’s possible to do top-level persona research very quickly. I’ve built a Python script that can help you answer two important questions about your target audience:

  1. What are the most common domains that my audience visits and spend time on? (Where should I be trying to get mentions/links/PR)
  2. What topics are they interested in or reading on those sites? (What content should I potentially create for these people)

You can get the script on Github: Twitter persona research

Once the script runs, the output is two CSV files. One is a list of the most commonly-shared domains by the group, the other is a list of the topics that the audience is interested in.

A quick introduction to Watson and the Alchemy API

The Alchemy API has been around a while, and they were recently acquired by the IBM Watson group. The language tool has 15 functions. I've used it in the past for language detection, sentiment analysis, and topic analysis. For this personas tool, I’ve used the Concepts feature. You can upload a block of text or ask it to fetch a URL for analysis. The output is then a list of concepts that are relevant to the page. For example, if I put the Distilled homepage into the tool, the concepts are:

Notice there are some strange things like Arianna Huffington listed, but running this tool over thousands of URLs and counting the occurrences takes care of any strange results. This highlights one of the interesting features of the tool: Alchemy isn’t just doing a keyword extraction task. Arianna Huffington isn’t mentioned anywhere on the Distilled homepage.

Alchemy has found the mention of Huffington Post and expanded on that concept. Notice that neither search engine optimization or Internet marketing are mentioned on the homepage, but have been listed as the two most relevant concepts. Pretty clever. The Alchemy site sums it up nicely:

"AlchemyAPI employs sophisticated text analysis techniques to concept tag documents in a manner similar to how humans would identify concepts. The concept tagging API is capable of making high-level abstractions by understanding how concepts relate, and can identify concepts that aren't necessarily directly referenced in the text.”

My thinking for this script is simple: If I get a list of all the links that certain people share and pass the URLs through the Alchemy tool, I should be able to extract the main concepts that the audience is interested in.

To use an example, let’s assume I want to know what topics the SEO community is interested in and what sites are most important in that community. My process is this:

  1. Find people that mention “SEO” in their Twitter bio using Followerwonk
  2. Get a sample of their most recent tweets using the Twitter API
  3. Pull out the most common domains that those people share
  4. Use the Alchemy Concepts API to summarize what the pages they share are about
  5. Output all of the above to a spreadsheet

Follow the steps below. Sorry, but the instructions below are for Mac only; the script will work for PCs, but I’m not sure of the terminal set up.

How to use the script

Step 1 – Finding people interested in SEO

Searching Followerwonk is the only manual part of the process. I might build it into the the script in future, but honestly, it’s too easy to just download the usernames from the interface.

Go into the "Search Bios" tab and enter the job title in quotes. In this case, that's "SEO." More common jobs will return a lot of results; I recommend setting some filters to avoid bots. For example, you might want to only include accounts with a certain number of followers, or accounts with less than a reasonable number of tweets. You can download these users in a CSV as shown in the bottom-right of the image below:

Everything else can be done automatically using the script.

Step 2 – Downloading the script from GitHub

Download the script from Github here: Twitter API using Python. Use the Download Zip link on the right hand side as shown below:

Step 3 – Sign up for Twitter and Alchemy API keys:

It’s easy to sign up using the links below:

Once you have the API keys, you need to install a couple of extra requirements for the script to work.

The easiest way to do that is to download Pip here: https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py — save the page as “get-pip.py". Create a folder on your desktop and save the Git download and the “get-pip.py” file in it. You then need to open your terminal and navigate into that folder. You can read my previous post on how to use the command line here: The Beginner's Guide to the Command Line.

The steps below should get you there:

Open up the terminal and type:

“cd Desktop/”

“cd [foldername]”

You should now be in the folder with the get-pip.py file and the folder you downloaded from Github. Go back to the terminal and type:

“sudo python get-pip.py”

“sudo pip install -r requirements.txt”

Create two more files:

  1. usernames.txt – This is where you will add all of the Twitter handles you want to research
  2. api_keys.py – The file with your API keys for Alchemy and Twitter

In the api_keys file, paste the following and add the respective details:

watson_api_key = "[INSERT ALCHEMY KEY]"

twitter_ckey = "[INSERT TWITTER CKEY]"

twitter_csecret = "[INSERT CSECRET]"

twitter_atoken = "[INSERT TOKEN]"

twitter_asecret = "[INSERT ASECRET]"

Save and close the file.

Step 4 – Run the script

At this stage you should:

  1. Have a username.txt file with the Twitter handles you want to research
  2. Have downloaded the script from Github
  3. Have a file named api_keys.py with your details for Alchemy and Twitter
  4. Installed Pip and the requirements file

The main code of the script can be found in the “get_tweets.py” file.

To run the script, go into your terminal, navigate to the folder that you saved the script to (you should still be in the correct directory if you followed the steps above. Use “pwd” to print the directory you’re in). Once you are in the folder, run the script by going to the terminal and typing: “python get_tweets.py”. Depending on the number of usernames you entered, it should take a couple of minutes to run. I recommend starting with one or two to check that everything is working.

Once the script finishes running, it will have created two csv files in the folder you created:

  1. “domain + timestamp” – This includes all the domains that people tweeted and the count of each
  2. “concepts + timestamp” – This includes all the concepts that were extracted from the links that were shared

I did this process using “SEO” as the search term in Followerwonk. I used 50 or so profiles, which created the following results:

Top 30 domains shared:

Top 40 concepts

For the most part, I think the domains and topics are representative of the SEO community. The output above seems obvious to us, but try it for a topic that you’re not familiar with and it’s really helpful. The bigger the sample size, the better the results should be, but this is restricted by the API limitations.

Although it looks like a lot of steps, once you have this set up, it’s very easy to repeat — all you need to change is the usernames file. Using this tool can get you some top-level persona information in a very short amount of time.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.


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!