Anita Malik is vice president of content operations for ClearVoice, where she leads a team of more than 20 in-house journalists and hundreds of freelance subject-matter experts, bridging the technology and editorial vision for the platform. In this Q-and-A, Malik explains the ClearVoice platform and the role of authorship, authority and influence in social, content and search.
What is authorship and what is its value?
In the simplest terms, authorship is a writer’s collected body of written work published under his or her byline. Bylines tie content to authors, thereby helping authors to establish authority in their areas of expertise. In digital publishing, when the byline is coupled with a digital signature — primarily the Twitter “creator” tag — authorship is further established through search and social.
Why does it matter?
Building authorship in a particular vertical or niche amplifies a writer’s authority. By identifying writers who produce shareable, trending content, brands or publishers can tap into a writer’s authority and following.
How does this affect the relationship between content, search and social?
Social influence is only part of the influence equation. While social metrics are imperative in tracking shares and engagement, they don’t speak to the authority of the person who created the content. When we are able to collect and analyze all the content created by an individual because it is digitally signed, we finally have transparency into how the content itself reacts socially.
So who writes content that has a high probability, based on past metrics, of gaining social traction? With the search and score functionally of ClearVoice we can now answer that question.
What is the ClearVoice platform?
ClearVoice features a robust writer search functionality delivering up subject matter experts in any vertical. Currently, as of early September, our search has indexed over 47 million posts online and includes more than 175,000 writers. But ClearVoice is much more than this.
The complete ClearVoice platform, which rolls out later this year, enables content marketers to plan, recruit, produce and measure in a single channel. Brands and publishers can schedule content, develop strategy, collaborate with internal and external team members, source freelancers and refine and distribute content all within one area. In addition to the platform, we are also rolling out a marketplace, the ClearVoice Assignment Desk, for sourcing subject matter experts.
Who is ClearVoice designed for and what are the benefits of using it?
ClearVoice is designed for brands, publishers and writers. We connect communities and offer world-class workflow tools to streamline content creation. The benefit is in the scalable processes and technologies we’ve used, tested and refined for years to produce high quality content. Additionally, our ability to understand a content creator’s authority and subject matter expertise gives our marketplace depth not available elsewhere. With ClearVoice’s proprietary technology, there is no guesswork when sourcing experts, and the transaction for creating custom content is seamless.
In light of the end of Google Authorship, how is ClearVoice responding to the change?
We use authoritative authors to maximize user, search and social media engagement and the end of Google Authorship does not change this. Authorship on its own still stands, whether it is linked to a Google product or not, is not relevant. While Google has publicly stated that it has abandoned Authorship markup, that doesn’t mean they still aren’t taking into account the “who” associated with indexed content.
As a side note, of the 47 million posts we’ve indexed as of today, 70% used Twitter markup. We continue to endorse the usage of Twitter metadata and authorship and are ongoing advocates of semantic search and social media.
Remember, this is about authority not rankings in Google. Still, the latter will likely be a byproduct of the former. The work of authoritative authors is more trusted and so there is a higher likelihood that third parties will link to it as an authoritative source, and when their works are digitally signed search engines take note.
Why does content authority matter on the Web?
Authoritative authors are proven subject matter experts, therefore the content they produce will be more relevant and timely. It bodes a better reader experience. Further, when an authoritative writer shares content it resonates with more people and in more relevant circles.
Interested in authority and its role in social, content and search? Connect with Anita on Twitter @AnitaMalik and discover more about ClearVoice at www.ClearVoice.com. Don’t forget to follow ClearVoice on Twitter @CVContent.
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