Friday, October 18, 2013

Meetings and record keeping help with FUFISM accountability

The advent of the social media revolution has impacted on many company's communication systems, but few have actually taken time to write new communication policies that accommodate  these changes, and even fewer have adapted their marketing policies to include the drastic changes in the online marketing arena.


This leaves the marketing professionals stuck between a rock and a  very hard place, with the weight of ROI (Return ON Investments) squeezing in on both sides. There are no mechanisms for those lower down the ladder to complain that the marketing management is not doing their jobs properly, or that the main company management is operating and enforcing out dated communication policies that do not accommodate the new  systems which have evolved with the social media revolution.

FUFISM or Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media policies can start the ball rolling down the hill of incompetency, then ask the management to inspect the damage.  This will force management to take some action to rectify the situation.

You are obviously asking how, so an explanation and an example is needed.

The first steps are to get everybody at marketing meetings where FUFISM, SEO, Social media and marketing are discussed.

The main topics on the agenda should be

  1. what is online content 
  2. what is content marketing
  3.  what is Search Engine Optimisation
  4. what is Social media
  5. what is Social Media Optimisation
  6. what is FUFISM
  7. what is the relationship between 
  • content marketing
  • social media optimisation
  • search engine optimisation
  • FUFISM
 This meeting will give the junior marketing staff as well as IT staff, web site development team, blogging team and public relations team an opportunity to explain  a wide variety of issues including but not limited to
  • SERP's (Search engine Results pages) and how the social media is included in many search engine results pages, with many posts within the social media being much higher up in the SERP's for many of the key words and key word phrases than  the company's web pages
  • how the Social media may be used to promote the company web site, the company blog and other online company information in various different platforms.
  • how face book business pages can be manipulated higher into the SERP's by allowing company employees to use Face book.
  • how Google Plus  business pages can be promoted higher into the SERP's by allowing company employees to use G+ as a social platform.
  • Other benefits of using G+ as a social layer internally within the company
  • the company's communication policies, especially the impacts of these policies on the company's marketing efforts
  • Information sharing, focusing on the SERP's and the coloration between social media promotions and  changes in visitor statistics including where these web site visitors came from.
  • the impact of high levels of social signals on organic SERP's for your web site and blog.
This meeting will get many mangers hot under the collar, and many SEO specialists will be in for a  tough time, being stuck in the middle with no answers. The answers need to come from top management, who are actually in the dark about these issues, because they have not been informed of the impacts of the social media on all communication strategies, at all levels. Some serious forethought needs to be put into the agenda, and everybody needs to be given an opportunity to express their views on FUFISM and how putting a FUFISM policy in place will impact on their input to the total marketing plan.

The changes in general community communication patterns as a result of the social media revolution also need to be brought to the attention of top management in a non combative way, explaining why management needs to take note of these changes and how the company can benefit from adopting a user friendly approach to social media, which encourages all company employees to make use of the social media within the work place.

In South Africa where I live, work and play, most company mangers see the social media as a problem which takes up productive time, and so many companies have policies which prohibit the use of social media within the work place. Many South African companies have gone so far as to block / ban all social media sites within their internal online networks through the use of firewall technologies and routing tables. This puts the marketing of online materials in a rather awkward position, as top management is not up to speed with the changes in the communication styles and methods that have been necessitated by the advent of social media.

Top management have also not been briefed about  the changes in Search Engine Optimisation strategies which have been forced upon the marketing industry as a result of the influences of the social media on most search engine algorithms, and because of this lack of knowledge, those involved at top management level  have been making many poor decisions about their communications strategies. This meeting that we recommend, will give the management a heads up to their short falls, and allow them to be brought up to date.

More discussing the advent of The Google Hummingbird Update will be coming soon.in the mean time take a peep see at the Humming bird algo infographic.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Understanding the term FUFISM and its implications for search.

My conversation on Google plus  (with John Kelden) has prompted this post discussing the issues of understanding FUFISM (Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media)

What is Google's view on guest blogging for links?

This is a lot bigger than you think



In recent months the issues around guest blogging have changed considerably, and the advent of the #hummingbirdupdate have made these issues more important to get right.

So lets just explain the Humming bird issue a bit, then you will have a better insight into what I am trying to say.  Open this infographic in a seperate window / browser and go over it briefly.

Note in the sections labeled SOLUTIONS and PRESUMPTIONS the issue of quality and keywords are mentioned and this is of extreme importance, as you want your guest blogger to supply high quality, unique content that is written specifically for your site if you are the site owner.

On the other hand this implies by default that if you are going to be guest blogging for somebody else, your content should be written with the host sites audience in mind, and that you should not be regurgitating stuff that you have plastered all over the web in as many places as you can get your words to be displayed.

These issues are also very relevant to your authorship value and add a great deal of high quality SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators)  to all your related work. The new Humming bird algorithm looks at the author quality and examines other posts and articles that have been written by the same author and looks for rehashed work, or duplicate posts in many different locations.  The big G machine has ways and means of detecting these things, and evaluates your work accordingly. If you write the same old stuff again and again in different platforms Google will begin to see you as a spammer, and if you are not careful your work will begin to be devalued in many different ways, as you will acquire the negative points that go along with spamming.  These negative points may not be very significant at first, but as they slowly begin to accumulate, and the pattern of regurgitating the same work over and over again emerges in multiple cases you will soon find your work dropping out of the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) and you will be scratching your pip and saying to your self "what do I need to do to rank better"

The solution is simple, but you will not get it because you will not be thinking of yourself as a "SPAMMER"  Always consider where else you have written an article on the same subject and try to quote that article in your work instead of rehashing the work. When guest blogging this can be difficult, but the new humming bird algorithm is the issue to consider, as humming bird likes these kinds of referrals, and uses them to build your author value and add the necessary SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) to a variety of areas including for the publisher (rel = publisher) the author (rel = author)  and the content meaning identification factors. So if you are a blog owner and have others posting guest articles consider these factors, and if you are guest blogging for others write them a short email discussing this and asking for the blog owners opinion.

This request for clarity on cross linking and related issues will put you as a guest blogger in a different light with the publisher where your post will be published as a guest post. Some may at first find this offensive as it is counter to the past rules of guest blogging where the blog owner did not want you to link out all over the place as this would perhaps lead the reader astray.   But the SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) associated with this behavior may well be worth it as the impact on the SERP's (Search Engine Optimisation Pages) will be significant.

Like I said in the first line of this post... this is a lot bigger than you think.

With Humming bird in the picture guest blogging is an awful lot more important than it ever was, and the quality of the work is so much more important for your author value.  The SEOVI associated with guest blogging is tremendous, and so is the associated punishment of negative values when you do sloppy work and rehash what you have already written else where.
   

Guest blogging has just got so much more complicated  and we need to get to grips with the true impacts of the humming bird algorithm.  As Google gathers more data and more people realise the value of the HTML 5 meta tags of   rel = me, rel = author and rel = publisher  these things will become clearer and those who take the time to use them will be well rewarded, as those who abuse them will be punished.

My personal opinion is that you had better ensure that you have done the G+ author thing and get to grips with understanding the many issues around G+ pages and publisher rights as viewed by Google.  those who do not do this will soon be slipping up on their marketing when their SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) start to be less impressive than they would like.

See this article by Gina Fiedel for a different perspective.