FUFISM, SEO and your social media marketing strategy: content marketing

Showing posts with label content marketing. Show all posts

Thursday, January 07, 2016

Content marketing, the social media and SEO

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating, distributing and maintaining valuable, relevant, and consistent online content to attract and retain a clearly-defined target market audience — and, ultimately, to drive predictable, well managed end user reactions, through careful management of conversion funnels and associated calls to action statements, that resonate with your intended target market audience, in a manner that this marketing adds value to the SEO efforts, so that your intended target market audience finds your original online content in search

Most content marketing falls within the Off Page Search Engine Optimization space, and Social media marketing forms the bulk of these efforts

Off Page Search Engine Optimization or OPSEO is a powerful set of tools that allow search engines to improve their understanding of the context and semantics of your content through a variety of different techniques. The semantic linkages between the different subsets of online information and the various creators, distributors and consumers of information allows search engines to develop algorithms that interrogate ultra large sets of data and extract trust factors as well as networked connections between different digital entities with a focus on specific elements within any individual online content, and then match these specific elements with individual search queries in ways that make sense to the individual who initiated the search query.

Off Page Search Engine Optimization is a vital element within the search industry, which allows search engines to better understand the specific purpose, aims, objectives and intentions of all online content. Once the intentions and purpose of any online content is understood by a search engine then it has the ability to match that purpose and intent of your content to the purpose and intent of a search query.

IPSEO or In Page Search engine Optimisation is a very complex issue that allows for the application of many different tactics, and and a wide range of different criteria to be implemented within any single piece of online content, be it in a web site, a blog or any other online resource, with the primary aim to improve the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) associated with that online content.

Nearly every item of IPSEO is reflected in the HTML code of a page, where some tactics remain in the <HEAD> section and others remain in the <BODY> section of a page. Many of these different sections are pre-coded as widgets that the web page / blog design team include with ease and little actual coding is needed by most online content creators these days.

Many web design packages these days allow for easy insertion of specially designed widgets that add a wide variety of specialist coding , such as the latest specialist mark up of SCHEMA for specific types of data.

Your IPSEO starts with product / service research, then flows through to target market research and associated topic and keyword research. Your copywriter takes care of the textual and visual layout of the page, while a host of other specialists each contribute in various ways to the hidden aspects of the in-page content, such as the meta data and EXIF data embedded in images, video or audio files, and the extra info added to hyperlinks which include things like the REL = AUTHOR and REL = PUBLISHER tags which are inserted into the code of the hyperlink in question.

Many other issues are hidden in scripts that perform specific tasks such as including interactive spreadsheets, forms and clickable buttons that add value to the viewer experience. these items all need to be understood by the OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation) team so that they may be exploited during the social media and cross media marketing efforts of the rest of the marketing team.

These scripts and related coding issues need to be put together with your SEO in mind, where variable names and related filing and naming issues need to be adjusted or changed to reflect the keywords and topic selection processes that were conducted at the beginning of the SEO process. By using the selected keywords as variables within scripts and code, an added layer of SEO can be sneakily introduced, but this takes a deeper understanding of SEO and the implications of using file names, coding variables and related naming procedures to manage this. It also requires that those who are doing the coding attend marketing meetings where SEO and the integration of SEO into the bigger marketing picture is discussed.

These issues need to be brought to the attention of your social media marketing team so that the IPSEO (In Page Search Engine Optimization) issues which are in place, can be expanded on, within the Off Page Search Engine Optimization space, focusing on the social media, through careful and well managed use of the In Page Search Engine optimization tactics that have been implemented, by making use of the research data and related decisions, including but not limited to the following information

EXIF data for embedded

images
videos
audio files
text files

alt text and related image titles, image descriptions as well as other image related info
any specialized SCHEMA MARK UP along with notes on the implementation of this schema markup along with any research done to establish
all keyword and topic research notes along with decisions of what to exclude and what to include
all target market research notes, as well as decisions made by other marketing personnel based on this information.
the purpose, aims, objectives and intentions of the original online content which is being marketed in the social media.

All this information needs to accompany the marketing brief that the social media marketing team are issued, which should include a document discussing the purpose, aims, objectives and intent of the social media marketing campaign, showing how this content marketing effort will interact with the SEO process, and how its impact will be managed.

Content marketers thus need to be well informed of all the sneaky and devious tricks used within the in page search engine optimization process, so that they may make use of these elements, by specifically referring to them within their social media posts.

Here we are talking of things such as prices which may have been added to product information within the page by making use of SCHEMA MARK UP, so that the social media post uses the same format and actual in-page price including the specific currency used within the SCHEMA MARK UP these exact match textual issues will add real strong SEMANTIC TRUST FACTORS to your content, both within the social media platform as well as the original on;line content in your blog or web page.

It thus follows the content marketing within the social media space can be used to improve a host of different Search Engine Optimization Value Indicators in very powerful ways, provided that your marketing team work together and follow a #FUFISM based marketing strategy, where the power of the social media is understood and managed through careful use of selected keywords that appear in the <HEAD> section of your web page or blog post.

Many online marketers do not understand the semantic reach of the <HEAD> section of your web page or blog post, and this is because they have been hearing the rumors that these items have no value for a number of years and most marketing folks do not even know that the <HEAD> section of all online content exists.

the meta tag - page title
the meta tag page description
the meta tag keywords
other devious and sneaky stuff inserted in the <HEAD> section of your page by the web site or blog design team

The issues relating to the <HEAD> section of your web page or blog post are seldom discussed, but this is one of the main reasons that bloggers make use of their own custom domains instead of using the free services such as blogspot.com. Unfortunately there are many hidden costs involved in hosting your own domain, and having your blog on a sub domain or subweb within your primary web site.

having your own domain and hosting your own online content instead of using a free service has many strange and powerful advantages within the SEO industry, but these all come at a price. Out sourcing your hoisting is an issue that needs careful attention, and unless you are a very large business that has the necessary security staff who are able to perform the necessary network security functions, you should out source your web site hosting. this needs careful attention and you do need to discuss this with a number of different folks to get their views, and take a decision based on your needs and resources available

Having your own domain gives you many advantages within the SEO industry, and most of them are new trust factors where semantic trust is the most important issue. You also need to remember to link to deeper pages and specific blog posts, as well as specific ever green pages in both your blog and your web site. This is a vital part of content marketing, where you need to remember to perform cross platform marketing, where your would mention your Facebook post in a tweet, and your twitter profile in your Facebook posts. Performing this action in other social media platforms and mentioning your other social media profiles should be done at least once every two weeks, and if you have a busy blog or web site, your should consider doing this more often, even once a day.

If your blog or web site gets fewer than 1 000 visitors every day, then keep your cross platform posting to once or twice a month. Always remember to document all your social media posts, with a time line and other relevant data in a spreadsheet so that you can evaluate the impact of your social media posts on your SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) and your web site / blog traffic flow stats.

You should make a habit of keep records of all your content marketing efforts in a spread sheet, with time lines and other relaxant data . this will allow for better management and control of any traffic flow audits that you may perform.

Remember that Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach, and that this is not a stand alone strategy.

Content marketing is a subset of your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and those who tell you different need to explain very clearly how and why content marketing is excluded from the SEO stable.

Understanding what SEO is and how the different sections of your SEO strategy interact with each other is not an easy task. the three SEO sections are

IPSEO or In Page SEO
OPSEO or Off Page SEO
OLSEO or Off Line SEO

Online Content marketing allows you to integrate your IPSEO (In Page stuff) with your OPSEO (Off Page stuff) through your social media posts, where link building is the primary SEO feature, that binds your social media posts to the content that is being marketed with a hyperlink.

Off Line Content marketing allows you to introduce your selected keywords and related semantic terminology to your target market audience. Here we are talking of using TV, Radio, news papers, magazines, flyers, bill boards and other adverting or marketing to get your intended target market audience to talk about your product, service, company, web site, blog or other online content.

If done right, both your off line content marketing and your online content marketing will use your In Page Search Engine Optimization notes and data research conclusions to construct the required information flow patterns within your intended target market audience.

This should l result in your intended target market audience using a search engine to locate more information about your business, using the keywords and semantically linked words, within their search query. This use of your selected keywords and semantically related linked terminology will result in better SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages.

#IPSEO #OPSEO #OLSEO #FUFISM #CONTENTMARKETING #SEO

Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Content Marketing Essentials

Content marketing is a complicated business that is mistakenly separated from the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) component of your online marketing strategy, which is a big mistake.

Content marketing is a division of your SEO

Once you realise that Content Marketing is one of the primary components of your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and take this very seriously, then you are onto the right track and will begin to understand the essential components of content marketing. The biggest issue is to define your intended target market audience, and determine how best to write for this group in a manner that best suits your intended purpose of the content that you wish to put in front of their eyes.

Those who tell you that content marketing is not a sub division of your SEO need to be treated with caution.

Many SEO experts will try to convince you that content marketing does not fall under the management umbrella of your Search Engine Optimisation manager, but these people are very mistaken, and in my personal opinion need to be shown the way to your back door, then asked to leave very quietly, and told to never set foot in your office again. Take a minute or two and think about content marketing and the purpose that you as an individual would want to do any content marketing. Next do the same for SEO and write down (document these issues clearly) the similarities and differences. compare this then evaluate your decision to separate SEO and Content marketing or keep them connected.

Usually the purpose of content marketing is to ensure that your content gets better traction with your target audience, but every business will have a slightly different perspective of the purpose of content marketing. With out a clear well defined purpose for your content marketing you have no way of understanding the potential impacts of content marketing, or even the intended aims and objectives of your content marketing.

Content marketing is not an add on issue, but is something that needs to be considered early in the content design stages.

When defining the purpose of your content marketing you should be using the following documents as guide lines and references.

the purpose of your online marketing
the aims and objectives of your online marketing plan
the aims and objectives of you web site if you have one
the aims and objectives of your blog if you have one
the aims and objectives of your social media policy if you have one
the purpose, aims and objectives of the specific content that you will be marketing

These documents along with the documentation supplied discussing the intended target market groups, as well as related marketing campaigns that have already been run and those that are either currently being run or planned for the near future will dictate the way forward within any specific content marketing campaign.

Your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) has the same identical target audience but is mostly focused on ensuring that

1) your content is located within the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)
2) your target audience will select your link in the SERP's
3) those who clicked on your result in the SERP's actually clicks on a CTA (Call To Action) within the page that they chose to open. (note that links in your navigation structure are also considered as CTA's)

If your content marketing was poorly done, then step (2) and (3) in the above list of essential steps may perhaps not be completed, as your viewers may be expecting different information or not be pleased at what they are exposed to within the page, because they have been mislead by your content marketing. It thus follows that content marketing is a very essential and critical part of the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) process, and that your content marketing needs to be aligned with, and integrated into your SEO process.

Failure here will lead to many interconnected and related issues that impact on your over all success within your online marketing efforts. Things like BOUNCE RATES, conversion rates, market share retention, customer satisfaction as well as many others are at stake. This means that CONTENT MARKETING is a very big issue and that you need to pay careful attention to detail during this process.

The essential elements that need to be considered when doing content marketing are

target market research and understanding the various target market groups needs, desires and aspirations as well as cultural and language issues
product / service research
platform research
key word and general information management
content management issues specific to platform
co-operation with other marketing divisions including but not limited to:

SEO team
copy writing team
image development team
blogging team
web site design team
print media team
digital media team
social media teams for each platform
public relations team

Content marketing can not be done in isolation as many content marketing folks are currently trying to do, purely because they do not understand that content marketing is subservient to SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Once one takes the #FUFISM (Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media) approach to online marketing then the many different #SEOVI ( Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) that need to be considered will be included within the content marketing stages of preparing your online content.

FUFISM or Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media is a new marketing philosophy where the social media forms the core communication element that binds all your marketing both online and off line into one single well balance marketing effort.

This article was written after reading articles by +Ryan Hanley
see 1) http://www.ryanhanley.com/7-ways-to-fail-at-content-marketing/
2) http://www.ryanhanley.com/does-content-marketing-work/

These articles did not stress that content marketing is subservient to your SEO but I am sure that Ryan understands this, as he is very involved within the SEO industry. Ryan is one of the few guys that is upfront and blunt when he describes what it is that you need to know, and why he believes that this is important.

Please leave a comment below...

Saturday, November 01, 2014

Is great content enough to get good SERP's?

This Post has been written in response to a comment on this Google plus post

+Rand Fishkin of +Moz posed the question : Is It Possible to Have Good SEO Simply by Having Great Content and there were many comments on the post in question. How ever many questions were left un-answered because of the individuals involved specific agendas. see the post and follow the link there for a deeper understanding of the issues discussed here.

First we need to remind those who know, and inform those who have not heard, that #FUFISM is a new marketing term which is an acronym for Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media which every person who does any form of online marketing needs to understand and put into practice.

An earlier post discussing link building can be found here

Influencer marketing (new terminology for public relations management activity) is also directly linked to your link building strategies and should be discussed in your social media policy statements which every employee needs to be aware of. This awareness should be done through your own in-house workshops where you ensure that your staff are knowledgeable of your company or organisational social media policies, and what impact their social media activities will have on your total online marketing effort.

If you have more than 5 people working on your online marketing then this is a very critical issue. failure here can and will lead to many issues where your online marketing will have a negative impact on your SERP's through errors that are made by your staff which could easily have been avoided through proper communication. This is where #FUFISM based marketing strategies come into their own, and ensure better co-operation between the various different departments who each play a different role and have a different impact on your toatal marketing strategies.

Things like a junior member of the team, or a new employee making use of a link farm, because he / she thinks that this will help, but is not aware of the impact of this type of marketing.

Other issues are when people within your online marketing use different structures for their NAT issues (NAT= Name Address and Phone Number) A set NAT format that should be used across all platforms, especially within the link building activities on social media, as this is a very sneaky and devious issue, which comes to play with Google Humming Bird and Google pigeon as well as a few other un-named algorithms.

SEO is an aful lot more than doing inpage coding, and involves many off page activities, some of which are even off line, such as adverts in the news paper, adverts on the radio or even television advertising, all of which influence how your target market searches for your info online and which words they type into the search engine.

Are your pages optimized for these specific words used in your offline marketing?

Things like industry specific words which you push out there into the public space (cyberspace) hoping to influence your target markets choice of words when searching online are also part of the SEO industries problems, and link building around these specific sets of terminology are of extreme importance, especially the passive type of link building where these words are used in the social media posts that are put out there with links to pages in your online resources that expand on the conversation around your hash tags and other industry specific terminology.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a vastly complex issue that has three criteria that need to be met

1) your pages must be found within the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

2) Your intended target market must click on your link in the SERP's

3) Those who found your listing in the SERP's and then selected your link there must either click on a CTA (Call Ta Action) within the page or stay on page long enough to satisfy the search engine that they benefited from the information on that page

If any one of these criteria are not met then your SEO has failed. poor link building, especially that of the passive kind, leads to poor conversion rates and has a very big impact on increasing the bounce rate for your pages, as those who have been mislead by your social media posts that have been shared by your influencers, will not stay on page long enough to satisfy a search engine that they have gained any benifit from your content within that specific page. This is where CO or Content Optimisation becomes one of the most critical elements of your SEO efforts.

YES YOU READ RIGHT CONTENT OPTIMISATION (CO) IS A SUB SET OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION and any body that tells you different should in my opinion never be trusted with your SEO, or any other part of your online marketing in any way.

Your bounce rate is a very critical issue and all search engines are now looking at ways to use this as a tool to push pages with poor bounce rates lower down the SERP's over time, and lift those which have better bounce rates higher up the SERP's. Google's Humming Bird algo is very active here, and those who do not take this seriously will soon discover that their rankings are slipping and they may not be able to fix this untill they fix their Content Optimisation. Your link building, and especially your link building within the social media plays a very critical role in your Conversion Optimisation (CO) as this leads to an expectation of what the viewer will find when they land on your page, and if their expectations which have been developed within your social media marketing are not met when they land on your page, you will not get any clicks and the end user (your intended target market) will depart in a very short time.

Your bounce rate is a very important #SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicator) that you need to keep under control. This is not an easy task as there are so many factors involved, and your link building through the social media is one of the primary areas that need your attention, as the impact on your CO (Conversion Optimisation) coming from your social media link building activities, both active and passive are extreme in nature.

The CTA's (Call To Action) statements within your online content must match the expectations of your intended target market which you have created within your social media marketing, through your link building and influence marketing tactics, which should all be included within your company social media policies and directives issued to your staff.

It thus follows that what +Rand Fishkin discussed in this WHITE BOARD FRIDAY is very important and you need to watch closely, and listen clearly because he talks around this issue with great care not to offend those who have niche markets such as CO (Content Optimisation) , CM (Content Marketing) SEM (Search Engine Marketers) as well as many others, all of which in my humble opinion are sub sections of Search Engine Optimisation.

Many thanx for reading this post. please leave a comment as this is a very controversial matter and the more people that discuss this the better for all.

Tuesday, February 04, 2014

Content from a FUFISM perspective

CONTENT FROM A FUFISM PERSPECTIVE

To be able to discuss content from a FUFISM perspective we first need to clarify what is content and then elaborate on the purpose, aims, objectives and related issues of different types of content. When discussing content from a FUFISM perspective we do need to remember that the primary focus will be on marketing within the online arena

CONTENT

There is very little difference between content and information, and these two terms can quite often be interchanged, with out distorting the meaning of the sentence. That being said content and information are not exactly one and the same thing, as content contains information, but information does not contain content.

Content comes in a variety of different disguises and then in various combinations of these different disguises. Each different type of content has its own subset of different media where it is found, and these are listed in the second list labeled content medium.

CONTENT TYPE

text
images
audio
video

CONTENT MEDIUM

printed material (books, news papers, magazines, files, flyers and posters)
Radio (audio)
television (audio visual)
digital and online (computer files / web sites / blogs / social media / forums)
verbal speech and telephone conversations including interpersonal communications (lectures / teaching / meetings / customer interactions)

For us to be able to transfer information from one person to another or to groups of people this information must be known and understood by the originator, then converted to a document / file using one of the four basic content types or a combination of these, then made available to the receiver of the information through a medium and in a manner that the receiver will be able to interpret and take some desired action, as in the call to action statement within that specific content.

Most information that a company has, is stored in basic text format and kept in files either printed or stored in digital format within the company intranet, which is accessible by the company staff. This content is used to formulate policies and work flow issues as well as for general administration and management of the company or organisation.

As far as this discussion is concerned we will deal with a very small subset of content, which is created and managed, specifically for the purposes of marketing, advertising and related management of company marketing and advertising issues from a FUFISM perspective.

The marketing cycle

The management will establish procedures to create more content, which is purpose orientated to achieve specific goals, aims and objectives, and establish rules for the distribution of this content to specific target groups to further the purpose, aims and objectives of the organisation or company.

Now that we have established the basics of content we need to establish the purpose, aims and objectives of having a FUFISM based content policy, and then establish a means to implement this policy so that we can use the company's existing content to create, curate and manage a FUFISM based social media marketing machine that will allow you to do your marketing and advertising from a well informed and properly managed base of operations.

So just to ensure that you are up to speed with what FUFISM is all about take a short detour and do some revision of what is FUFISM here

All marketing starts with (or rather should start with) a brief from the management to the marketing department discussing the product / service that they want exposed to the public along with the public's expected reaction and how this is expected to be managed further down the line by other departments such as sales, production, Public relations and general administration staff.

The marketing team take this brief and then begins putting in place the necessary content that will be managed, manipulated and configured into a format that is suitable for the chosen medium or media and then distribute this content according to the developed plan. This is quite a lengthy procedure and needs to be properly planned so that the content can be created then released in a co-ordinated and well managed manner.

Content development Stage one

The first stage of content development starts with studying the marketing brief and identifying as well as documenting the product / service to be marketed, then analyzing this to determine a target market or group of different target markets. Next step is the listing of the different mediums that your selected target market groups use followed by calculating which media will be used to convey your desired call to action statement to your intended target market, and documenting this.

Target market research and documenting the the target market trends, practices and habits as well as their preferred communication channels and language use is an essential part of stage one in the content development cycle.

Content development stage two

Now that you have a target market and the desired medium that your content will be channeled through you will need to start developing a content strategy plan that will entice your selected target audience to take the desired action on your call to action statement in a manner as dictated in the original marketing brief. This usually involves

a web site
a blog
one or more social media platforms
Optional extras

news paper advertising
Radio advertising
magazines advertising
billboard advertising
distribution of flyers
TV advertising
other branding / advertising options

Each of the items listed in the list above will have their own content creation issues, and have their own content management plans in place that will all need to be co-ordinated and managed by a single person who will ensure that the FUFISM principals are in place so that these different efforts can work as one collective campaign with a few different micro campaigns doing their bit to entice your desired target audience to follow through the entire conversion process as determined in the original marketing brief.

Content development stage three

The four pillars of your content strategy listed in content development stage two need to be evaluated carefully and then you need to adjust the content of each specific sector to match up and back-up all the other sectors, and repeat as is needed. This is essential and needs to be done as a collective effort by all who are working on your content from various different angles before it is published for the first time. Plan your content publishing schedule carefully and ensure that these take place in the planned order, and that all cross linking is active and functional. ensure that each piece of published content is functional and displayed online as it was designed to be, fixing all errors as soon as discovered or reported.

make any adjustments as needed, and follow up with aggressive social media support marketing. Be sure that you have briefed all staff who are in the call to action value added chain, and that everybody in the conversion chain has the necessary content to answer customer queries and solve related customer issues in the shortest possible time frame.

List of pages used during research for this post. this list is not complete, but each link here is a worth a read.as it will expand on some issue around content, content creation, content curators and content curation

http://fufism.info4u.co.za

http://4ubrand.blogspot.com

http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/blog/2014/02/01/curation/

http://www.softalkapple.com/blogs/factminers-more-or-less-folksonomy

http://d20innovation.d20blogs.org/2012/07/07/understanding-content-curation/

Thursday, June 06, 2013

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

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Using Images in your Content Marketing

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a very complicated issue with many diverse fields working collectively to ensure that your intended target market locates your online information using a search engine. Each of the many disciplines adds its own set of values to your SEO in subtle ways that most SEO practitioners deem irrelevant and ignore.

The most noticeable culprit here is the KEY WORDS meta tag in the head section, which Google says is not used in determining your PR (Page Rank), and so most SEO practitioners ignore the key words meta tag and its great value to each of your pages and your web site as a whole, especially when determining the aboutness of your work.

This article by Jenny Maclean covering the use of images in your content marketing is very interesting, and gives you some good pointers.

Content marketing is a big component of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and should not be viewed as competition to SEO but rather as a supplement to SEO. Images are an essential part of content marketing and the value that images add to the SEO efforts of your work should never be under-estimated. This sounds confusing, but SEO is used in content marketing, and content marketing is a very large component of Search Engine optimization, which is why you need to be careful of separating the two but yet understanding that they are interconnected and part of the same bundle of confusion called marketing.

One of the most important things from an SEO perspective to remember when using images are the XML markup within the image, which your viewers will never even know exists, just as most of those who visit your web pages have no idea that all web pages have a <HEAD> section. Image title, image description, image related key-words and other image describing elements can, and should be added to the image XML data, and saved in an embedded format as part of your image. You need to make sure that these embedded XML elements are directly related to your site content matching your in-page SEO content, especially any META DATA that you may have placed within the <HEAD> section of your page if you have access to it.

Unfortunately the <HEAD> section is not available when using many blogging platforms, and many web design programs also use wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) platforms which exclude access to the <HEAD> section of your pages. What you as an SEO practitioner need to do, is take some time to evaluate the image that you will be using in the context of

where this image will reside within your page,
what you are trying to portray with the image
what the image represents,
what is the purpose of including this image
how this image will impact on your SEO
who your target market is, and how they will react to your image
how this image relates to other in-page SEO issues

You then need to ensure that the relevant SEO specific set of image related key words, image title, image description and other relevant image related XML data such as image geo location, image date and all other issues relevant to your image are best suited to your IPSEO (In Page Search Engine Optimisation) and included in the embedded image XML by your graphic design team or image optimisation specialist..
If you use the same base set of variables within the <HEAD> section of your page and include the same or similar set of key words in your page as well as the embedded image XML data elements, then your image will get an awful lot more attention from Google and other search engines. Most web design people forget about the power of this embedded XML data that is used by image designers to manage image classification and image description.

Graphic art designers use these embedded XML data sets that are stored within the image XML data, very differently to web design, or SEO staff and place XML data that is not relevant to search engine optimisation within the embedded image XML for graphic design people to use.

As Jenny Maclean says in her article , some sites gain a considerable amount of their Google traffic through Google Images rather than the main web search. If you want to rank well in Images, make sure your image files are aptly named, but you also need to ensure that your image has the right XML data embedded within the image, so that search engines can index and manage the embedded XML Search Engine compatible elements in ways that benefit your total SEO effort.

GET YOUR IMAGE DESIGN TEAM ONTO THIS and remember to apply FUFISM (Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media) see http://fufism.info4u.co.za for more info on integrating your SEO efforts to ensure better SERP's.

As always the selection of your target market is important to your SEO tactics. Understanding how your selected target market will react to your image is also essential, and the XML embedded into your image file should take this target market reaction into consideration when choosing the image name as well as the embedded XML data for your image key words, image title and image description.

The embedded XML data that is associated with all images that you will be publishing within your pages should be discussed with

your copy writer,
your Social media team
Your web site design team
your marketing and advertising teams
Your public relations team
your SEO team
others who are identified through the application of your FUFISM policies.

It thus follows that your web design team, your Social media team, your blog team and all others working on any aspect of your online marketing all understand that you need to be working together as a solid, unified team when it to comes to SEO issues. Each member of the team needs to ensure that their knowledge in their specific field is integrated into your marketing strategies through the application of FUFISM (Functional User Friendly integrated Social Media) This integration can only be achieved through closer working relationships between all the role players, with an understanding of what each role player actualy contributes to your marketing, and the methods used to ensure that each role players input is appreciated by the other members of the team.

If you were un-aware of the embedded XML data that can be used in your images, then you need to take some time out and discuss what embedded XML data can actualy be included in your images embedded XML data with your graphic design team or image management staff.

Be pro active and inform the rest of your SEO team of issues that you believe should be included by talking about them at marketing meetings...

Pages discussing functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media (FUFISM)