When Orville Wright made the first controlled, powered aircraft flight over 120 feet in 12 seconds, at a speed of little more than 6 miles per hour on the 17th December 1903, there were naysayers aplenty who grunted that, as an idea, it would never get off the ground! Similar luddite sentiments have always been expressed whenever change threatens to disrupt the entrenched attitudes of the fearful, distrustful and narrow minded! Read more →
Wedding King Content to Queen Interest, thereby maintaining follower loyalty, is the social orb and sceptre of the search imperative. Without which, having incurred the wrath shared betwixt search engine and human visitor, your web realm would fall from grace, to such lowly rank more befitting the common spam serf farm than credible site pages!
Notwithstanding, the emphasis on quality content now rising in the ascendency, the great challenge facing online marketing and social media messaging is the sheer volume of content hurtling through channel and platform in the attempt to engage our attention. Today’s marketing strategies are completely consumed with ensuring a brand identity and content messages reach the intended niche audience recipient. It’s less about ‘reach’ and more about ‘getting through’.
By year end 2010, the internet comprised of around 225 million websites, of which 9.5 per cent (21.4 million) were new, with an estimated 152 million blogs and 25 billion tweets being sent, creating ever more ‘response’ content.
Clearly, being online, onDemand, on the go, all the time – via mobile app, smartphone, tablet and kindle, netbook, laptop, PC and TV – means shifting the focus to more precisely targeted content, filtered to rise above the saturated noise frequencies.
More importantly, in the era of ‘constant distraction ’ is for eCommerce and online enterprise to find the key to visitor retention and keeping audiences on site to engage further and discover more valuable content. Today’s seasoned searchers need to be uncovering new interest from the instant they arrive or they will assume a one-trick site and disappear forever.
Simplistic solutions such as linking to ‘related content’ or ‘popular content’ or content based on a previous browsing history has shown to be of less interest because most casual content browsing is not always based on actively searching for a specific topic or even the same subject. With the exception of latest news updates, providing personalised ‘interest’ connecting with follower/visitor experience is a key stimulus.
Feedback behaviours, which will determine quality rating via blog comment, like, or tweet can serve up invaluable nuggets of information on the prevailing areas of interest and its’ relevancy, usefulness and value to a niche segment. User engagement stimulated to responding by commenting or sharing is now also noticed by the search engines and feeds in to PageRank.
Solving the challenge of overcoming information overload to optimise for content discovery entails understanding the restless movement of content via social networks, to news feeds, bookmark sites, opt-in email marketing newsletters, forums and blogs and mobile.
Dispensing ‘regal largesse’ can only occur by the will of the people, without which your kingdom diminishes and loyalty deserts.
While the above article title not only echoes the handy way by which musicians can remember the E,G,B,D,F notes of the treble clef musical scale, it might also serve to remind website owners of the recent announcement by global social network giant, Facebook, to the imminent launch of their own dedicated, news journalist resource.
It has not gone unnoticed that the hugely successful social media, micro-blogging site, Twitter, has been remodelled by its’ worldwide use as a critical reporting tool to circulate key news messages across an expanding range of platforms from mobile, smartphone, laptop to traditional PC.
To date, online businesses have only slowly been coming around to accepting the online marketing potential of the medium if properly understood and implemented within integrated company link building campaigns. However, with social network goliath, Facebook, claiming a whopping 300 per cent increase in referral traffic to online media enterprises in 2010, and the instant 140 character soundbite tweets also increasingly featured on TV and radio broadcasts, published in physical print formats, and just about everywhere else, inbetween.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that Facebook, look to cut themselves in on a slice of the news reporting action by launching a ‘Journalists on Facebook’ page. Overnight, social media has come to dominate news reporting, whether applied to eCommerce, business, community, organisation or individual products or services, in any field.
The power of interactive feedback via ‘tweet’, ‘like’ and ‘share’ and now Google’s +1 button, has led to the latest step by Facebook to stake a vital space as the essential news desk resource for the growing number of serious, professional journalists currently interacting and live sourcing on the network.
As the emphasis on providing original, quality content continues to gain importance for both search engine algorithms and human consumers, attempts to cleanse the web of the widespread abuse of spam content is increasingly on everyone’s radar. Ethical and relevant link building involving blogs, messaging and other key seo copywriting content are intrinsically bound to credible marketing strategies.
Best practice engagement to disseminate quality news and information content across search and social channels benefits all onDemand web users. The market reach potential for online brand identity using high value content by reputable web marketing agencies is now within reach of site owners.
Interaction via Facebook with a staggering global audience of more than 500 million people is web business, which can no longer afford to be ignored by sceptical site owners – they need to remind themselves that Every Good Business Deserves Facebook !
Google algorithm has been on the march again! This time to crawl the acres of endless illegal links and spammed content clogging up the furrows of a potential green and pleasant online land. Content is getting a shakedown, and not before time too!
Undoubtedly, writing content for websites, blogs, articles, Twitter, Facebook, PPC ads and for every other type of online reading is coming of age. It’s time businesses start to face the realities of the specific and various writing skills really required for today’s multi channel and platform environment.
Creating web copy is not just for the purpose of inserting SEO keywords to pagerank. Nor is it about creating long paragraphs of industry insider jargon to impress other industry competitors or potential customers – because they won’t even bother to read beyond the first line if it looks a dull slog!
Most site owners are now beginning to understand the difference between today’s skim reading from a PC screen and yesterday’s lingering over every sentence in the glossy print company brochure. But the process has become more complex because of the different, niche audiences on different channels and platforms, each requiring different approaches. A blog is not a web page, a PPC ad is not a tweet, yet they all need to be optimised for both human and algorithm.
Creating a web presence is about link building a cross-channel / platform brand identity and web presence in an organic, social media network of ongoing and integrated online marketing engagement. It’s about creating the interactive space where you offer valuable content, to be quickly and easily accessed, responded to and shared if liked.
It’s not about focusing on putting all the budget into designing a wizzy looking website – y’know lots of Flash animation – and thinking you can save money by trawling through other websites and cobbling together your own copy by simply changing the company name, inserting your products or service, dropping in a few URLs as they used to do in 1995!
The online landscape is changing in ways that are not necessarily obvious to eCommerce owners in a hurry to rank for their widget keywords and cut costs on writing content. The way we read from a PC screen is not only different from a mobile or tablet screen, our search behaviour alters according to intent. Not everyone reads in the same way all of the time.
According to research studies, around 80 per cent of screen search is most likely to be simply skim reading from standard website pages but a significant 16 per cent will spend time to read more closely and attentively, if reading a blog or small article. This means that copy content needs to be created in specific instances for both possible types of readers who can absorb the information on multiple levels.
Content has always required to be tailored to specific market niches, demographic segments, interests with a corresponding call to action. But now, emergent technologies are allowing interaction to be played out across different screen formats for different purposes and, therefore, demands consistent brand positioning, tone and content technique adapted to destination and fit for purpose.
The key to successful web marketing strategies is to encourage interaction and positive response, which leads to conversion. They can only do this, if they can read what you say, understand and agree and be encouraged and confident to act by return.
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