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FUFISM EXPLAINED

#FUFISM   or Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media is a marketing philosophy where the social media is used as the primary communication tool  to bind all your marketing both online and offline into one single well managed and properly  integrated marketing effort.

This is no easy task  and requires many different people working in very diverse fields  to co-operate and work together as a team, sharing  a vast amount of data, in a variety of formats, so that those in each separate discipline can understand, interpret,  then make good use of the data supplied by the other disciplines in a manner that improves the many different  #SEOVI  (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) associated with their personal efforts, and allow for these SEOVI to be carried forward to other areas where a search engine may use these variables,  to determine the value of other connected and interrelated SEOVI.

It should be noted here, and remembered further that Google professes to use in excess of 250 different SEOVI when determining their SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) and that each of these many different SEOVI adds some value to your online work in the eyes of a search engine, and every tiny piece of value counts when you are dealing with highly  competitive search terms

Management issues associated with a FUFISM based marketing Strategy

A FUFISM based marketing strategy is no easy task and it requires a great deal of management of many diverse factors as well as a large team of professionals from a  variety of very different backgrounds. These professionals will all need to be re-educated as to the value of SEO and where SEO fits into the current online marketing world.

Many things changed when the Google Hummingbird algorithm was introduced in September / October 2013 and most marketing professionals have not yet been informed of the impact of these changes on the online search industry with most having no clue or very little knowledge of SEMANTIC SEARCH

This lack of knowledge about SEMANTIC search and the Google Hummingbird algorithm is a very big issue and I have personally found a great deal of resistance to the cooperative working environment where large volumes of  information that was previously held in separate *SILOS* by different company departments, now needs to be shared across all company departments in an open and transparent manner.

In the past most departments did their own research and the web site design team was often left out in the cold, doing their own  research into a number of different fields that was duplicated by

• the blogging team
• social media team
• print media team
• radio marketing team
• public relations management team
• product development team

When implementing a FUFISM based marketing Strategy,  the SEO team needs to be involved in all marketing strategies as the most important part of any SEO strategy is the large volume of #OPSEO or Off Page Search Engine Optimisation that takes place through many different channels where the social media is the one that has the highest levels of influence on your SERP's through the link building and associated semantic foot prints as well as the semantic linkages with their associated trust factors

Pinterest and FUFISM

 FUFISM back ground info

#FUFISM or Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media has many facets and covers a large spectrum of different strategies. Each social media platform has its own traits and needs to have its own set of in-house rules that need to be made available to all people working on your marketing team.

This means that your marketing management team need to determine a platform specific policy for each social media platform which your marketing team should have access to.  Each Member of your marketing team actually needs to have a copy of  each separate social media platform's policies and procedures after being work-shopped on the main purpose of using that platform within your total marketing strategy.

To some this may sound like a bit of over kill from managements directives, but if not done,  the results will not be any where near what they should be.  One must remember that the purpose of using social media as a marketing tool is to get the end user or your intended target market to specific pages within your website, where he / she will be expected to follow your call to action statement.

So how does PINTEREST fit into this picture?

Pinterest is a picture / image sharing social media platform that has many unique characteristics and we will focus primarily on the ability to have themed pin boards for pictures in selected categories. If you are not familiar with pinterest then you should take a short detour to www.pinterest.com and have a peep see what all the fuss is about before reading further.

The first step in this process of using pinterest as a marketing tool is to write up the purpose of using pinterest along with a set of aims and objectives as well as an in-house policy document on how the rest of your marketing team should interact with your pinterest profile and boards.  Each specific marketing campaign should have its own separate documentation for your pinterest profile, and share the pin boards that you have in place.

To be able to write up the purpose of using pinterest as a marketing tool one needs to understand what pinterest does and how this is done.  see http://business.pinterest.com/whats-pinterest/ for details

PINTEREST purpose related issues

From a FUFISM perspective pinterest is an image sharing platform that allows your marketing team to use a single  image reference in ALL other social media platforms in a way that it will funnel your intended target market back to the page where that specific image with its associated call to action live, in anticipation, waiting for your intended target audience to be enticed into clicking on your call to action statement.  This means that the original image MUST be enticing,  and clearly depict something that your target audience will relate to, such as your product or a very descriptive image that reflects your service or the idea that you are trying to convey to your intended target audience. see http://www.pinterest.com/pin/100275529177237087/  Remember that once an end user clicks on your pin he / she will be taken back to the original page where the image was first pinned.

Use a URL shortening service and generate a user friendly URL that will help you entice an end user to click on the link to your pin. example http://bit.ly/hashtag-marketing   this link  opens a page discussing hash tag marketing (#hashtagmarketing) in this blog.

Pinterest is a powerful social media platform that is growing into a must have marketing tool, as it adds very large volumes of SEOVI (Search Engine Optimization Value Indicators) to your online work. Pinterest has a large domain authority that spreads an awful lot of SEO value and is instrumental in elevating many web sites higher into the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)  If you can get others to re-pin your pins and share them, then the social signals associated with your pin will add further SEOVI to your pinterest profile, which in turn will boost your other SEO efforts. Pinterest adds true value to your semantic profile within all search engines, and this is of extreme importance within Google with the advent of Google Humming Bird Algorithm which has a very large focus on semantic issues.

IMAGE NAMING and descriptions

Referencing your pinterest pins in posts within other social media platforms adds extra value to your pinterest profile as a whole and the specific pin in particular.  You need to make use of this through using an integrated approach, and ensuring that you mention your pinterest pins in the correct context within your social media posts on all other social media platforms.  This is not such a difficult thing to accomplish when your marketing campaign  is put together from a FUFISM perspective, where the big picture is properly in the central marketing focal area, and your pages where your call to action statements are properly constructed using the image which you will pin within your pinterest profile as a visual hook with the in page assembly, using well thought through

• image file names
• Image descriptions
• image titles
• image alt text
• image key words

PIN BOARD NAMES within pinterest.

This set of target market orientated image expansion tactics needs to be well thought through and be  well documented so that your copy writers who construct your other social media posts can use the same set of key words during their efforts to entice your intended target market to click on the link back to your page. The description of your pin within your pinterest profile should also contain as many of these words in well constructed sentences or partial sentences as you can so that they make clear and meaningful impacts on your intended target market should they read them.  This is also very critical from a semantic perspective as these efforts will add tremendous semantic value to both your pin and the original web page where your image and related call to action statements reside.

You will need to take some time and effort in evaluating the naming process of your different boards within your pinterest profile, and ensure that each individual board is named  and described with your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) tactics in mind. These pin board names and descriptions must fit into the rest of your marketing plan, as they will be associated with your web site, blog and other online marketing avenues.

For more help in setting up your pinterest profile and related in-page SEO issues  contact our friendly staff at pinterst.help@info4u.co.za,  visit our Google plus page or ask your question in a comment on this post.

Where does CONTENT MARKETING fit into the FUFISM picture?

I am often asked where content marketing fits into the FUFISM picture and how is content marketing related to FUFISM. This question is asked so often that I felt the need to write a post covering this, but when I started  to put pen to paper I realized that there were some basic explanations that needed to be defined in the correct context, because the SEOI (Search Engine Optimisation Industry) has been attacked in many strange ways and the statement that SEO is DEAD has been bandied around so often  that many people believe this to be true.

Firstly we need to start with the newest term and explain what is FUFISM, then we need to ensure that you understand the meaning of a few other terms, and that there is no confusion around the meaning of terms that the online marketing world has redfined for their personal consumption to enhance the so called death of SEO,  which is a blatant lie and used to market their own personal interests.

FUFISM is an acronym brought to life by Info4u to help us in our efforts to explain the use of the social media in todays business environment.

FUFISM = Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media. 

The advent of the social media with sites like FACEBOOK, TWITTER, LINKEDIN, PINTEREST and GOOGLE PLUS have changed the way that people communicate in their social environment, and this change has flowed out of the social realm into the workplace, affecting business communications in many strange and mysterious ways.

It has thus become imperative that business understand this very serious change and take the necessary steps to ensure that their business communications methods are adapted, allowing business to find ways to make use of these changes in their  communications policies, and that the use of social media as a communication medium, with its wide variety of different tools is integrated into business communication structures in a more professional, user friendly manner so that both internal communications and communications with the public at large are easily established and well managed from a company public relations perspective.

Business must thus integrate the social media  into all their communication strategies, especially their marketing strategies with the primary focus on connecting with their target market groups for the purposes of marketing, advertising and public relations management issues.

FUFISM is also a philosophy where many things are shared, focusing on the  marketing arena and the Search Engine Optimisation strategies that are used to ensure that a company's online content is located by the intended target market, then tracking the impacts of the various social media marketing strategies, and ensuring that every person within the company's marketing structures understands their role that they fulfill, as well as the results that  their individual efforts have achieved.

One of the primary pillars of the FUFISM philosophy is that each person within the company marketing team understands the complexity of the SEOI (Search Engine Optimisation Industry) and has the tools to visualize each separate component's influence on their own field of expertise, and have some influence on the reporting structure to show others in the marketing team what their own efforts are, with a focus on how their personal efforts may influence the many other sectors in either a positive or negative manner, so that the necessary actions may be implemented to counter any negative impact or capitalize on any positive influence.

FUFISM dictates that each person who is in control of, or manages any online content should attend regular public relations meetings, as well as marketing meetings where the effectiveness of each online environment is discussed, along with the methods and tools used to ensure that the online information made available in that environment is compatible with all other online information and integrated into the company communications plan, as provided for in the directives which have been issued according to minutes of meetings. This is essential for accountability, which is one of the corner stones of  the FUFISM philosophy.

Each person appointed to perform any duties which entail publication of online materials of any nature should be held responsible to ensure that feed back on when (Date and Time) the online publication became effective, so that this can be used to determine the impacts of this information on the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) of any related work which may be referenced or linked to from within the work published. This is an essential part of FUFISM and should not be taken lightly, as there could be unforeseen negative impacts on the SERP's if a search engine decides that this is SPAM and takes action in the form of a censure of some type.

This logging of publication or feed back on publication should help identify the specific post or publication that causes the SERP's to either improve or drop. Without FUFISM management strategies in place these issues would be very difficult to isolate and then  rectify.

WHAT IS ONLINE CONTENT ?

Online content is all the stuff that your entire company puts online for what ever reason. This includes but is not limited to

• your web publications
• your blog publications
• your social media publications
• you online marketing
• your online advertising
• your online news publications and press releases
• your online public relations efforts

The above content and any other online content you may have made available to either the public or your own staff does not happen without a plan of some sort, unless you are playing games and have no clue as to the power of the internet.

Each publication that your company places online should be part of a plan and have 

•  a purpose
• a set of aims
• some objectives 
• a time frame

Deciding on what content to place online is a complex task that should involve your public relations and marketing teams working together as a unit to make a company policy frame work, which would dictate who is responsible to   research the purpose, aims and objectives of having any online content in place from the beginning, then allocate specific persons to formulate content to satisfy the identified purposes, aims and objectives in a co-operative manner, so as to solicit the best input from your public relations team along with the persons that have been appointed to control and manage the environment in which that online content will be made available to the specific target market group that it was intended to reach.

WHAT IS SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a complex affair and covers every strategy that you have in place to ensure that your intended target markets find and follow your proposed online call to action statements for the sub set of information which you would like  that specific target market to experience.

The primary support structure which ensures that Search Engine Optimisation succeeds is target market selection and the subsequent key word research around the information that you would like that specific target market to evaluate and take action on, then ensuring that the specific online page where this information is housed has the necessary IPSEO (In-Page search Engine Optimisation) done by your staff and / or consultants, and that this is then followed up with the necessary OPSEO (Off-Page Search Engine Optimsation) in the social media and through other company approved channels by your staff and / or consultants.

for more on what SEO is see previous posts in our blog at http://4ubrand.blogspot.com

is SEO DEAD 
general description of SEO
Google author and SEO
Off page SEO issues
The value of Social signals and SEO
SEO for start ups in under ten minutes
Understanding search experience from an SEO viewpoint
how much do you spend on SEO and Social media
who is in charge of your SEO and why?
The SEO value of out bound links

WHAT IS MARKETING?

Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling the product or service. Marketing is a critical business function for attracting customers.

Online marketing is thus the online process of communicating with your customers for the purpose of selling your service or product online or through another online avenue.

Now that we have an understanding of the core components listed above we can continue on to discuss CONTENT MARKETING and its place in the FUFISM philosophy.  Using the above information content marketing may be loosely described as follows:

Content marketing is the process of communicating the value of your online information (content) to search engines, content aggregators and other online repositories for the purpose of ensuring that your online information is listed or indexed and placed in their databases then found by your intended target market when they search online for your information and displayed in SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

Online content marketing is using relevant and valuable information to attract potential customers to your online content.Good online content will not only attract, but if done correctly, will engage your target audience and drive profitable action to your business. Learn how to implement a content strategy in your business. see this article for more

Read here to get a few different views on what content marketing is but keep in mind that online content marketing is a subset of Search Engine Optimisation strategies and needs to be treated accordingly. Many other explanations for content marketing ignore the SEO component and treat content marketing as a stand alone issue, which is very bad for your online business efforts.

NOW HOW DOES THIS FIT IN WITH FUFISM?

Once you have an understanding that online content marketing is a subset of Search Engine Optimisation then you can get to grips with the idea that online content marketing must be integrated into your marketing philosophy at an early stage. Content marketing should be integrated into your marketing strategy at the point where you create the content plan and list the purpose, aims and objectives of a specific subject, product or service that you need to bring to the attention of a selected target market through your online content.

Target market selection is a critical component of your content marketing, as the content should be constructed and formulated with a call to action statement in a manner that is recognizable and appreciated as important to your selected target market.

Having great content with an effective call to action statement is the first part of content marketing, the second part, which is putting the In Page SEO component of your content in place, requires careful target market definition with an understanding of the characteristics of this target market , as the third part, off page SEO is defendant of the second part for its strategy.

It is good Good content marketing practice to follow  up with some cross media marketing in the traditional media such as RADIO, NEWS PAPER and / or MAGAZINES to put the key words into your target markets minds so they will search online for more info on the the product or service in question.

This is where FUFISM comes into the picture as these things all need to be coordinated and managed to co-inside with the social media marketing of your online content to ensure  maximum impact and enforcement of the selected key words across many different platforms that each has a small accumulative impact on your SEO and the accompanying SERP's

What is the true purpose of SEO

The true purpose of SEO (search Engine Optimisation) has some how been hidden from plain view, and now seems to be obscured by the technical jargon thrown around by technical SEO experts.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a complex task which involves your entire marketing teams efforts that starts with  the Manipulation of "IN-PAGE DATA" to suit your target markets vocabulary and ends with ensuring that search engines understand the complete "Aboutness of your page" so that they are able to match this to the intent of the searcher who is looking for your information which you want your target market to find.

Put bluntly SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is done to ensure that your web pages and related online information  get visitors. So we can happily say that the purpose of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is to ensure that search engines send visitors to your pages.

Problem is how ever that website owners (you) don't  want large numbers of visitors who will be uninterested and bored with what their web site offers, but want qualified visitors who will be entertained, take some action on their pages call to action statements, and tell their friends about the great experience they had.

Good SEO (Search Engine Optinisation) involves your complete marketing team to ensure

1) that your web sites visitors are entertained and have a great experience at your site. This end user satisfaction is fast becoming a primary concern within many SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms) which was never an issue in the past.

2) your in-page navigation structure is user-friendly and easy for search engines to understand in a way that enhances the SE (Search Engine) ability to link the pages aboutness to a searchers intent. This is also becoming a very contentious issue within the SEI (Search Engine Industry)

3) your web site has a good solid back up within your SME (Social Media Efforts) as social signals are becoming increasingly important within all major search engines metrics that are used within their SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms)

4) the copy writing is linguistically correct for the specified   language in the META TAGS within the head section of your page. Good language and the correct syntax is getting a lot more attention within SEA's (search Engine Algorithms) than it did in the past, as this is assisting the search engine to link your pages aboutness to the users intent. Being linguistically correct involves using slang that is indigenous  to your target market, so be careful how you interpret this.

5) the META TAGS in the HEAD section of your pages has all the right segments for your page type and page style. Is the page
                   a) a news page
                   b) a technical info page
                   c) a shopping or e-commerce page
                   d) an educational page

AS search engines learn  about people behavior and thinking patterns within various communities, they integrate this into their algorithms with devious mathematical tricks on the data they have about your pages to link the aboutness of your pages to the intent of the searcher.

It thus follows that SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is no longer just about the technical in page SEO stuff, but must now include many more metrics. Google technical staff within the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) field say that they use more than 200 individual metrics in their SEA (Search Engine Algorithm) and some of the more important ones are listed below.

1. page title in <HEAD>
2. page description in <HEAD>
3. key words tags in <HEAD>
4. other META TAGs in <HEAD>
5. language
6. user friendlyness
7. navigation structure, internal links and out bound links
8. inbound links from out side sources not under your control.
9. Social media signals associated with page, site and communities
10. in-page HTML use, structure and style (image alt tags, link title tags etc)
11. copy content and relevance to other pages in sub-domain as well as complete domain relevance

Once again the true purpose of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is to get search engines to send visitors to your pages.  I hope that you now understand why SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) must be integrated into your company marketing holistically, and why you need a dedicated SEOM (Search Engine Optimisation Manager.)

Once the marketing manager is up to speed with the true purpose of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) in the new online information age, you should not have any difficulty in ensuring that your company appoints a single dedicated person to manage your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to ensure that SEO  related policies and guidelines are in place and functional.

SEO for startups in under 10 minutes Plus other reading material.

The links below will add some value to this video covering basic SEO - Search Engine Optimisation, and should be read only after you have viewed the video, as the video will still be fresh in your mind, and you will be able to tie the pieces together with a deeper understanding of the many complexities of SEO or Search Engine Optimisation.

This short video discusses the very elementary basics of SEO (search Engine Optimisation) and gives some very good tips to beginners in the SEO business.

What is not discussed is the fact that SEO or Search engine Optimisation starts with defining your target market, and choosing your web site content and the COPY with great care to ensure that your target market group  forms the core base of all visitors to your site.


After all your hard work you dont want a bunch of visitors to your pages who are not interested in what you are discussing, and feel that they were some how tricked into clicking on your link.  So think this through clearly and remember that SEO or Search Engine Optimisation should form an integral part of your complete marketing strategy.


Reading previous posts in this blog http://4uband.blogspot.com will also help in understanding how to integrate SEO into your marketing strategy at the top level and why it is essential to ensure that your SEO manager has a good working relationship with your whole workforce.

what is SEO and who cares

SEO -as described by  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Webmaster academy - tools and tips  

Bing Webmaster Tools Revamped, Better?

BING web master tools

 SEO - best practices

Mobile SEO – Just How Different Is It?

Is SEO dead?

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is not dead, and will never die, as SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the collective work done to ensure that your online information is found by your intended target market . So as long as you have online information of any sort you need to do SEO

The very technical stuff that used to be done by technical SEO experts is taking a bit of strain, and under serious pressure, from Social Media experts, and this may be what some experts are referring to as the death of SEO.

Once again SEO or Search Engine optimisation is a collective effort that needs to be integrated into your entire online marketing strategy. The "Link building" and Social "signals" that are generated when others quote your work are one of the most essential parts of any SEO effort, as this offers the search engines an insight as to just how useful your audience has found your online offerings.

This article - What is SEO and who cares is a very interesting read

This article  Mobile SEO – Just How Different Is It   is also a bit of a surprise, but not entirely new or alien to SEO

Managers need to understand that SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a very big issue and it needs to be integrated into the company marketing policy and managed from the top in a co-ordinated and integrated fashion. SEO is no longer the stand alone department that it used to be, but should now be an integral part of any online  marketing strategy.

Econimic losses due to mismanagment in iSimangaliso Wetland Park

Greater St. Lucia Wetlands Park: Responsibilities of a World Heritage Site Resident...: To live in or adjacent to a World Heritage Site has certain responsibilities. Claiming you are living in a World Heritage Site...

For many years I battled to get support for the idea that St. Lucia was suffering great losses due to the mismanagement of the IWPWHS (iSimangaliso Wetland Park World Heritage Site) by the IWPA (iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority) and became consumed with this issue until I went bankrupt.

Many others followed this route to financial ruin, though most were a lot faster than me. The collapse of the Domestic tourism market along the Elephant Coast of KZN South Africa  is still denied by the IWPA (iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority) and they are due for a wake up call following the incident where a hippo attacked a man in St.Luci recently read more here

This in incident will lead to many other issues being discussed, and hopefully in the right forums where the IWPA (iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority) can be held accountable for their actions that preceded this attack. The hippos feeding grounds have been poisoned with DDT as a MALARIA retardant, sprayed to keep the number of mosquitoes down.

Fences have been erected without  due diligence of EIA (Environmental Impact Assessments) and no PPP (Public Participation Procedures)  have been done as is mandated by the NEMA (National Environmental Management Act) the ICMA (Integrated Coastal Management Act) and many other laws have been blatantly disregarded by the IWPA (iSimanagliso Wetland Park Authority)
The IWPA (iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority) has been making a mockery of the MSA (Municipal Systems Act) and deliberately not taken part in the local municipalities IDP (Integrated Development Plan), which has ensured that the public have never read

• the IWPA ICMP (Isimangaliso Wetland Park Authority Integrated Coastal Management plan)
• The IWPA IMP (iSimangaliso Wetland Park Integrated Management Plan)
• any studies associated with the IWPA MP's Isimangaliso Wetland Park Authorities Management Plans
• Public participation reports associated with these plans.
• Zoning proposals and zoning schedules as specified in the Mtubatuba Municipality's LUMS  (Land Use Management Scheme)
• any other relevant planning documentation specified by a host of laws including the WHA (World Heritage Act)

This has lead to the central government believing, and then informing the world that tourism within the iSimangaliso wetland park is alive and doing well.  Any visitor (read domestic tourist) who has visited St. Lucia recently as well as 9in the past will inform you that this is a load of BS (in English - BULL SHIT)  as it is blatantly obvious with the change in the makeup of shops and tourism activities that this is not true.

Caravan parks and camp sites have closed up shop, Self catering facilities that catered for large groups have closed up shop and been converted to guest houses that cater for up market individuals, the arts and crafts market has disappeared into nothingness, and the total tourism figures for the area have been misrepresented by the IWPA (iSimanagliso Wetland Park Authority)  in ways that have deceived government officials.

True tourism figures are not available for the Elephant Coast, as they have not been done on purpose to hide the IWPA (iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authorities) blatant and purposeful mismanagement efforts. The domestic tourism market within the Greater St. Lucia area has collapsed with more than 20 -000 people losing their jobs according to a study done by KZN Tourism, but no action has been taken to remedy this matter. 

why? Well I believe this has been done in preparation for the mining of Lake St. Lucia and the surrounding coastal sand dunes along the Elephant Coast of KZN South Africa. The 4x4 ban was in my opinion implement to ensure that the collapse of the domestic tourim market along the Elephant Coast of KZN South Africa was realised, so that when mining is eventually offered as a job creation project to alleviate the local poverty there would be no opposition, as the tourism industry  would be non existent.

 recommended reading
 http://bit.ly/IWPA-tourism-report
http://bit.ly/IWPA-seed-report