April was a busy month for content consumption, with the bi-annual BrightonSEO resulting in a plethora of must-see talks (which have their own section this month), and plenty of stellar content campaigns being released into the wild.
Bar chart races appear to have tailed off almost as quick as they appeared (though a couple did sneak into this issue) and journalists drowned under a torrential downpour of April fool’s themed stunts.
Thanks also to those who sent in content campaigns over the last month or so! I really enjoy seeing what else everyone else in the content field is up to, and makes putting together the newsletter a cakewalk!
Made something you’re proud of? I’d love to see it! Send it over to markprtr@gmail.com 💌
Must-see Content 👀
David Bowie Songs as Old Pulp Fiction Book Covers 👨🎤
These Bowie inspired pulp fiction book covers started off as a side hobby for Todd Alcott, an LA-based screenwriter, but he now has a bustling etsy store where you can grab one of the many awesome designs.
Discovered via Oliver Holmes🕵️
Born Every Minute 👶
This piece looking at the birth rate of 169 countries displays the data in a really clean and aesthetically pleasing way. Some of the countries are pretty surprising, and this design makes it easy to spot those angles.
Colourism in High Fashion 👠
This super interesting and incredibly well designed piece from the folks at The Pudding looks at 19 years worth of Vogue covers, and analyses the skin tones of cover models. I love how they lead with the exact process they used, including links to tools and resources.
People Getting off Planes Get a Lei… 🌺
Reddit is a goldmine for content ideas (which I’ve written about on the Screaming Frog blog before), but Alex Cassidy took this a step further, leveraging the data from an Ask Reddit thread and mapping out the most up-voted answers. It’s a fun piece that ended up going viral on twitter, and a great example of one of the many ways of getting (free!) data out of Reddit.
Discovered via Twitter, made by Alex Cassidy🕵️
The Stages of Relationships, Distributed 💑
This piece from FlowingData uses moving bubbles to visualise how far into a relationship people are when they become romantic, live together and ultimately marry. It’s a great way of visualising the data, and they have tutorials on how to create these which are absolutely worth a look (membership required).
Discovered via Aaron James 🕵️
The Most Popular MLB Teams in U.S. Counties ⚾
This map by Vivid Seats that highlights the most popular MLB team by county is a great example of how to leverage internal data. It’s always worth checking what internal data your clients have knocking around.
Discovered via Stephen Spiewak🕵️
More Great Content…
- 9 Surprising Literal Names of American Cities 🌆
- The 25 year history of phone sales in 15 seconds 📱
- Comparison between the London Tube map and its real geography 🚆
- Auto Accidents 🚗
- Food Hygiene: Know the Score 🥕
- Life expectancy difference between men and women from various countries over time 💀
- M25 Man 👨
- The Evolution 📽️
- Directors with the Highest Number of IMDB Ratings 🎞️
- The income is distributed so unequally in Switzerland 💸
- The Azerbaijan Grand Prix in 60 Seconds 🏎️
- The Anatomy of the World’s Most Popular Sandwiches 🥪
- 8 Floor Plans of Iconic British TV Homes 📺
- Most Googled Artists 2004-2019 🎤
- Sorting Algorithms Revisualized 💽
- Colour Change 👀
PR Stunts
The below campaigns may not have been intentional PR stunts, however they did attract substantial attention from the media.
One of the many, many April Fool’s that we endured this year, however it was well received and attracted widespread media attention. Definitely a touchy subject, but they approached it well.
Co-op Gaming Chair 🕹️
PC Hardware site, Overclockers UK, put together this product listing for a co-op gaming chair. While the idea is niche, it was one of the more unique April Fool’s ideas that I spotted, and did well socially.
Game of Thrones Bean Bag 🐉
I’m a sucker for a linkbait product (and wrote about them many moons ago), and this one is really well done. Decent imagery, witty copy and super relevant to the site. The Hodor review is my favourite.
Must-read Articles ☕
Below are several articles that are absolutely worthy of a read during your coffee break:
- Generating Ideas For Linkable Content: 12 Do’s and Don’ts 🙅
- Mistakes, we’ve drawn a few 🙃
- We Analysed 12 Million Outreach Emails. Here’s What We Learned 📧
- How to Create Content in Boring Industries 😴
- The Elements of Content Strategy (free book!) 📖
BrightonSEO Bonus Round
Rounding up the Frogs and stuffing them into a minibus to Brighton and back is a bi-annual tradition, and this April was no exception. Our very own Oliver Brett (aka LordofTheSERPs) spoke on the topic of linkbait, which you’ll find below, along with several other awesome content focused talks.
- The Art of Content Necromancy: How to Resurrect a Dead Campaign 💀 by Kat Kynes
- How To Make Fake News for Links 📣 by Oliver Brett
- The Content Comeback by Shannon McGuirk 🥊
- The killer outreach email that gets opened, replied to and mainly gains links 🎣 by Hana Bednarova
- Gamification: Link building in a Fortnite by Becky Simms
Must-follow Marketer 👑
Who:Carrie Rose, Senior Campaign Strategist at EDIT
Why: If you work in content or Digital PR, then Carrie is a must follow. She’s very transparent about her work, regularly tweeting new campaign launches and successes, which is great to see. I highly recommend checking out her most recent talk on landing links in top tier press, where she reveals some great tips on coming up with killer ideas (and the mum test!).
To Conclude
Once again thanks to those people who sent over ideas, and if I did forget to give you credit, please feel free to call me out on Twitter.If you’re not yet subscribed, you should probably go ahead and do so, and I’d love to hear any thoughts you have in general on Twitter, or via email: mark.porter@screamingfrog.co.uk.
Cheers,
Mark.