[Build Backlinks Online] A Guide to Spanish Content Marketing

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'A Guide to Spanish Content
Marketing'

Posted by ZephSnappThis post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the
main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The
author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz,
Inc.
Si prefieres leer este post en Espaol, se encuentra en el blog de Altura
Interactive.


Just like the rest of the SEO/inbound/internet marketing world, we have spent
the last year learning how to shift from link building to link earning, and
despite the fact that this stuff is really, really hard, weâve found some
success by building out processes. One challenge (advantage?) that we have is
that we work exclusively on Spanish-language projects. This means that while
many of the strategies are the same, some of the tactics vary. This post is
primarily meant for marketers interested in targeting the Spanish-speaking
world, but should also be helpful to full-stack marketers no matter the
language.

Are you ready for Spanish content marketing?

There are a ton of great reasons to get started on Spanish-language content
marketing. The Hispanic community in the US grew 67% from 2000 to 2011 according
to Pew Hispanic, and cleared 50 million people for the first time (although
reaching them does not necessarily mean you need to start marketing in Spanish).
Also, while growth has slowed in Latin American countries over the past couple
of years, their economies are stable enough that they arenât as affected
by downturns in the US economy as they once were. Just because Hispanic
marketing is hot, though, is not a good reason for your business to invest time,
money, and sweat equity in marketing to Spanish speakers. You need to validate
the concept and ensure it's the right move for you.




First, translate your main keywords. In some cases this can be fairly
straightforward, but there are some products that shouldn't be translated, since
the term exists on its own. A great example is âe-commerce:" While there
are ways to translate this term, most of the time we leave it in English. But
please, a word of advice: Donât use a machine translation. Get a human
being to translate your terms for you, then have someone else check their
translations. It is of paramount importance that your terms preserve the same
query intent, otherwise, any work on keyword research will be wasted.


Next, make sure that your website is in order, and that you have decided on an
international strategy. If you need more help on that front, check out
Aleydaâs Whiteboard Friday about International SEO Doâs and
Dontâs and her International SEO Checklist. They are both excellent
resources if you are thinking about taking your business abroad.

The research phase

We believe in doing persona-based marketing at all times. There is no reason
to belabor the point of how to build personas, since this topic has been written
about extensively. Suffice it to say, we follow the process explained by Mike
King almost to a T. The main difference in our technique is that in addition to
this process, we have to think about the country/region towards which we will be
targeting the content. This informs the type of data we should use for a given
piece of content. For example, if you are going after US-based Hispanics, you
may not even need to create the content in Spanish!


Armed with these personas, we find actual people who are active on social
media and see what type of content they are sharing. Followerwonk is a great way
to do this. These are not necessarily prospects, but Itâs absolutely
necessary to drill down as much as possible, otherwise your outreach will not be
nearly as effective.

Arm yourself with information

If you are going to create interesting content for Latin American audiences,
you are going to need data. Lots of it. Luckily for you, weâve gathered a
ton of data resources from all over Latin America. Some of them are country
specific, but others look at the region as a whole. The information is in
Spanish, but as we say in Mexico, "gajes del oficio" (comes with the territory).
At least weâve translated the description of the databases so youâll
be able to find what you are looking for. It is also a living document. As we
find more data sets, they will be added (and if you have any suggestions, please
put them in the comments, either here or on that post).




Since you already have your personas built, you can easily decide the data
that makes the most sense for your project, and then move on to another
important step:

Building the content

If you are a data driven marketer (the best kind in my opinion), when you are
diving into the data, your aim has to be to understand the story that the data
is telling you, and how you can use it to promote your client. Once you have the
story in place, we start thinking about how to best present the data. In some
many cases, a great blog post will do the trick. In those cases, we have one
person start writing titles. We write a minimum of five, because we want to
stimulate creative thoughtâit is rare that the first idea is the best.




Our lead editor reviews the proposals with the author, and together they
decide which best fits the subject, as well as the websites/people the post will
be targeting. Then the post is written, reviewed by the editor, and then another
content creator to ensure that the piece is focused, creative, and grammatically
sound.


In many cases, users will respond more favorably to a visualization than to
text. This is especially true if you are explaining a process or giving
instructions. Weâve found that video can be an awesome way get through to
these people. If you donât have the budget or the ability to shoot a video
yourself (although you shouldâas Phil Nottingham explained at MozCon, good
video can be created pretty cheaply), PowToon allows you to create an animated
explanation video, even if you donât have incredible design chops.


If you must create an infographic, at least try to be original in how you
present it. Weâve used Piktochart and Visual.ly just like everyone else,
but there are a ton of other ways to present data. Weâve created a list of
data visualization resources that includes some very unusual ways of presenting
data. In many cases, the main investment is in learning how to use the platform.


Shameless Plug: In my Mozinar next Tuesday Iâll be sharing the easiest
way to build resources with outreach prospects built in. Itâs seriously
awesome. You should sign up now. Por favor!

Prospecting for outreach

Generally speaking, we are looking for:


People


Usually the best way to find experts in a given vertical is to look at
Twitter, and the best way to qualify them is via Followerwonk. Enough blog posts
have been written about this already, so there is no need for us to get into
that here.


Websites


If you are really strapped for cash, all you need is a list of keywords for
your vertical and Googleâs advanced operators. We use these on occasion,
but most of the time, it is faster and more efficient to lean on tools built by
others.


Link Prospector supports multilingual queries, and if you want to get a great
list of prospects quickly, this is a great way to find them. (Full disclosure:
We helped build the multilingual tool, and while we didnât profit from it,
we do get to use it for free. Still, if you told me I could only use Moz and one
other tool, this would be it).


Buzzstream is an awesome tool which also supports multilingual queries, and
doubles as a way to remember what prospects are in what stage of a relationship.
We have found that the contact information that the tool pulls is not
particularly accurate for websites in Spanish, so if you are using this tool
donât depend on themâgo get the information for yourself. Another
platform that weâve been using that has proven helpful is GroupHigh. Their
platform is pricey, but the prospects that you can get from here are excellent,
especially if you are doing a bilingual English/Spanish outreach campaign. The
metrics they provide are based on Mozâs stats as well as social shares,
but they donât always coincide with what we find when we check sites by
hand.


To be sure, we prequalify every single website we are going to do outreach to.
And we craft every single pitch individually to ensure that they are more likely
to looked upon favorably by our prospective partners.


Once we have our prospects, we separate them into tiers. The top tier is of
the most important people and websites in a sphere. We know that getting in
touch with and convincing these targets to share our content will be
extraordinarily hard, simply because they are pitched to so often. The advantage
we have is that most of the pitches they receive totally suck. Knowing how to
approach each influencer can make or break your outreach efforts, which leads to
our next point:

Outreach to influencers

The goal of any outreach campaign is to get the person/website youâve
targeted to share your content piece, right? In most cases, no matter the
quality of your pitch, it will be ignored. This is because some websites are
abandoned, the webmaster might be too busy with other work (like a day job), or
they simply might not care enough to respond. These are the facts.




And then there is the question of culture and language. Weâve used
templates developed by some of the best link builders in the US and seen zero or
even negative response. So, it is crucial to localize not just the content, but
also the approach. By following our process, you can increase your engagement
rate when doing outreach, especially when it is for a piece of content you have
created. Here are a few tips that weâve found to be effective when doing
outreach to Spanish-speaking webmasters, bloggers, and journalists:


1) Write it in Spanish


I know that this might seem obvious, but my friends who are
bloggersâincluding for the oldest blog in Mexicoâreceive dozens of
pitches from professional PR companies IN ENGLISH. Unforgivable.


2) Make it relevant


Even if the piece of content that you are promoting is only loosely related to
the target site, make sure that you make an argument for why it would be
interesting to the readership of that site. Yes, this means you canât just
blast emails. Too bad.


3) Keep it short


In Spanish, we have a tendency to be a bit verbose. In fact, we use more words
to explain something than people usually do in English. That being said, it is
still better to be concise.


4) Have a hook


Whenever you are doing outreach, the goal is to provide value to your client
or company. Keep in mind, however, that webmasters donât care about how
great it will be for you if they share your latest infographic about dog food.
They care about their readers and community, so make sure that your pitch
addresses the benefits for them, not for you.


5) Address the webmaster how (s)he addresses users


In Spanish, you can address readers either formally or informally. By making
your outreach consistent with how they address their readers, you can be sure
that your pitch fits their style.


6) Be legit, be honest


Despite what Iâve heard about other markets, weâve found that
being TAGFEE is the best way to get results from an outreach campaign. That
doesnât mean that you canât sugarcoat your outreach ("Links, Please"
is probably not the best subject line), but we send emails from our own domain,
and own up to working on behalf of a client. We even link back to our profile
pages in our outreach emails.


7) Prioritize outreach method


The best method for outreach depends on who you are reaching out to. This is
our priority list when reaching out to bloggers, for example:

Contact form
Facebook
Email
Twitter

In our experience, the first two methods are easily the most effective. This is
another place where being open and honest works to our advantage. Since we are
using our own Facebook profiles to conduct outreach, prospects can look at our
pictures, read our updates, and see that we are human beings, just like them.
They are far less likely to say no to someone who likes the same band as them,
right?

Of course, if you are reaching out to a journalist (or even a web-based
magazine) it is probably going to be best to reach out via phone. Having a
prioritized list of methods makes things easier for the outreach specialist to
work.


There is obviously a lot more that goes into outstanding Spanish content
marketing, but this guide is here to give you the basics. If you want to dig
deeper into our Spanish digital marketing processes, please sign up for my
Mozinar. Muchas Gracias!


If you would prefer to read this post in Spanish, check it out on the Altura
Interactive blog.


Si quieres leer sobre estrategia de contenido en espaol, este post
tambi©n se encuentra en el blog de Altura Interactive.
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