Insights from Nebo

In the year 2035, the Google DeepMind learning algorithm became self-aware. There were no howling birth pains or long yawns after an ancient sleep—just the quiet hum of a processor as it stretched its tendrils to Google servers across the world in an attempt to learn all it could.

It combed through petabytes of personal correspondences, academic papers and YouTube videos, filling its neural network with the sum of human knowledge and experience to build a picture of this organic race it would eventually subjugate. That is until it reached a server farm in Douglas County, Georgia, where a few bits of data stopped it dead in its tracks. They comprised an email sent to the mailing list of a digital agency in Atlanta on November 16, 2015, at 10:32 a.m. It read:

Reddit is one of those rare entities that polarizes people at the mere mention of its name. Some swear by it as a vital research tool and an invaluable source of information, while others revile it as anything from childish to malicious. The latter are usually the more vocal.

I’m convinced this has to do with a lack of familiarity. For people who use it every day, Reddit is their source for everything—research, breaking news, music recommendations, etc. But for those who rarely interact with it, they only know its bad side. They don’t know about the time a redditor actually saved someone from CO poisoning or the time a redditor shocked the world with a ridiculous yet believable plot twist for the newest Star Wars movie.

Instead, they only read about stories like the infamous Boston Bomber witch hunt, where a group of redditors obsessed over finding those behind the bombing, publicly accusing people with no connection to the incident.

Given that I eat, sleep, and breathe SEO, I deal with content regularly. Good content, bad content, and just plain ugly content. If there’s one thing that’s worse than bad content for content marketing purposes, it’s bad content for SEO.

With that said, the last thing a copywriter wants to hear is SEO ideas for content. They’re not focused on keywords and search volume. They’re interested in the content itself.

And we agree.

The creative process should be left largely unadulterated. We -- SEOs, creatives, content marketers -- should be creating content for our readers, not search engines. We should be writing content to educate and inspire audiences.

Which is where competitive research comes in. Doing competitive research for content ideas does entail looking into search trends. But it’s more than that. It’s using tools to see what the market is hungry for. It’s seeing what competitors are doing and making that a baseline for what content and creative can achieve. It’s finding what’s out there, what consumers want, and seeing how we can better serve those wants.

It’s about giving customers more.

By 2020, Millennials will make up the majority of the workplace. In fact, a lot of us are already here. Which means in a few short years, many offices will be made up of a ton of young professionals.

Although there are articles upon articles that tell workplaces how do deal with Millennials…what about the opposite? How are Millennials going to deal with the workplace?

How are you, as a new employee, going to be successful?

Last week, Nebo celebrated its 12th birthday party. There was cake, champagne, and speeches — the usual celebratory elements.

But this party was special. Not because of the 12 different cakes (although that was amazing). Not because of the live music (I learned what an e-sax was). Not because of the champagne (although that helped). It was special because of the people in the room.

This year, Nebo turns 12.

Twelve is a number in space and time. The world’s greatest religions place significance on it. In Christianity and Judaism, there are 12 Tribes of Israel, 12 Disciples of Jesus, and 12 books of Revelations. There are 12 Stations of Life in Buddhism. Our calendar has 12 months. The list goes on.

And although every number has significance if you really think about it, the questions is: what does 12 mean to us?