When creating content for the web, it can’t stand alone on it’s own, if you want it to be found.
The hypertext transfer protocol, http, is a method of connecting similar content together so that a web of interconnected links is formed. As more content is linked into that web it creates an interconnected contextual web. This can be done either on one site or across a number of sites. As search indexing takes place through the interconnected contextual web, the authority of the site or sites will rise. This is the power of content marketing.
Another term for this is cross-linking, but cross-linking does not in its own create a contextual web. Search engine indexing ‘bots work by following link to link, much like a web surfer would. Just as a real life web surfer would look for links on the page that leads deeper into what that person is interested in, so do search engines.
Now everyone must have clicked a link at some point and thought, yes, that’s exactly what I am looking for only to find that the page that the clicked link opens has nothing to do with what the clicked link looked like it was about. This is a practise that is known as link baiting and should be avoided as the ‘bots are looking for a contextual link, and will downgrade your site’s ranking accordingly if there is no context.
Interconnected contextual webs are a great way of using content marketing to build your brand, but make sure that the links that you put in are relevant to the content that they point to. If the link word is content then it should point to a page that is about content. The interconnected contextual web then becomes a content gateway that will breakdown the boundary between brands and buyers.
The Baz Bus is a hop-on, hop-off bus service for independent travellers in South Africa. As a cost effective way of covering the large distances in South Africa they are the way to go.
The Baz Bus offers a flexible timetable that stops at all the major backpacker lodges and cities in South Africa, so if you heading to South Africa then plan your trip using the Baz Bus. They also offer time based travel passes so you can just come and go where you want, when you please. They cover the major routes around the country so you don’t have to worry about it. Their team of experts will be able to advise you on all aspects of your trip , leaving you free to enjoy yourself. You can purchase a ticket right now by clicking the following picture:
The Baz Bus has been around since 1995 and they are a reputable and experienced carrier of travellers around South Africa with their fleet of 19 semi-luxury buses. There will be no chickens on your bus and you won’t be roughing it! The Baz Bus is also a great way to meet travellers from around the world so even if you are travelling to South Africa on your own, you will be sure to make friends along the way. They are also flexible so if you like a place, just stay a little bit longer, the Baz Bus will be waiting for you when you are ready to go.
The Baz Bus is also a socially responsible company and they involve themselves in a number of community upliftment projects and children’s support organisations, so you can see the beautiful countryside of South Africa with a clean conscience.
Just click the picture above to book your trip today…
The Young Designers Emporium or YDE is part of the Truworths group and they are a label that promotes fresh, new design talent in South Africa.
Their stated mission is to make the youthful, fashionable South African look attractive and successful and feel enthused with confidence. YDE offers arange of top styles that will make you feel fashionable wherever you are, and now you can open an account with them.
Opening an account with the Young Designers Emporium is an easy process. You just have to click the picture below and then click the “Apply Here” logo. Fill in the form and you will be ready to go get those clothes that you have always dreamed about.
The Young Designers Emporium is a place where you can find underground, individualist styles to suit your every mood. They stock more than 90 cutting edge design labels and have been going strong for more than 10 years. Now you can open an account with them by clicking the picture above. It is even possible for you to open your YDE account with an SMS, so just click the picture above to find out how.
YDE breaks out of a boring retail environment by creating amazing window displays and offering the finest in international and local design trends. With the Young Designers Emporium you can always be sure that you will be getting sexy, chic and expressive clothing.
When you open a Young Designers Emporium account you get their ‘Plastic’ card which gives you a credit facility and also keeps you up to date with their promotions and sales, ensuring that you always get a good deal while looking great.
Open your account today by clicking on the picture above…
Springleap is not just an online apparel retailer, retailer they are so much more…
Springleap is a community where you can find the freshest, funkiest T-shirts, anywhere in the world, right here online. Springleap is no ordinary online clothing store as they have built a community around their designs. The designs themselves are crowdsourced, meaning that users of Springleap vote on the best designs as submitted by their users. Springleap is a worldwide community of design loving folk who want the best T shirts that are available.
Their unique method of creating designs means that only the freshest flavours of design are created, bringing you the greatest T shirt you will ever find. Each month they run a design competition that enables designers to submit their designs so that the Springleap community of design lovers can vote on which they like the most. The winner each month gets a cash prize and a whole bunch of teeshirts thrown into the mix. Each teeshirt is individually printed with the designers name making them an instant advertisement and of course giving you the funkiest clothing you could desire.
Give Springleap a try today and find your ultimo fashion statement, expressing exactly who you are, where ever you are. Prices are great value and you can get your tshirts sent to you anywhere in the world and pay in major currencies like Dollars, Pounds and Euros. It costs you nothing to become a member of the Springleap graphic design lovers community and you will always find the latest fashion available with them.
Springleap is a community of design lovers, with a monthly tshirt design competition with the winners voted by YOU… Go get ‘em tiger.
Content marketing is all about getting the right content out to the right audience. There are also many sites out there that will pay you to write content for them. You could go with the traditional ways of freelancing and hawking your portfolio around, but there are also new methods that Web 2.0 has enabled.
There are now sites that find clients who are willing to pay for content and then you can join up with them and find a list of content buyers that want you to post about their products on your site. This is a great way of harnessing the power of Web 2.0, essentially crowd sourcing the content creators and the content buyers into one social network.
The paid posts section of greymacpherson.net will be all about finding and then posting articles on and for these kind of services.
They will be filed under the Services>Paid Posts category as this is not about underhand marketing, where a quick product mention is placed in the content for cash and then no mention is made of that. All of the posts in the paid posts section are for money (except this one!). SocialSpark requires that you disclose that the post is a paid for post, at the top of your posts, which is an ethical viewpoint to take.
Non-disclosure of payment would be like a financial journalist ramping up a company that they hold shares in, unethical and not a great way to gain and hold trust, although lucrative.
All the posts in this section are paid for, but will be honest reviews and commentary on the actual products and sites that pay for the content. If you like it, click it!
Flowers, everybody loves them. If you want to send flowers then you can go to an online florist who will be able to create and send the floral confection that you most desire anywhere in the world.
There is currently a promotion under way where you can buy flowers and stand a chance to win a pamper hamper! Now who wouldn’t want one of those? So if you are interested in winning and you want to send someone special a bouquet, then consider clicking the advert below. In order to win you will first need to buy flowers, but flowers are a great way to tell someone how much you care about them. So buy those flowers today and stand a chance to win!
Mmmmm…. just look at all those yummy goodies that are in the hamper, what a great idea to send someone you care about a big bunch of floral artistry and stand a chance to get your hands on all those scrummy goodies. This is a competition that has winner written all over it.
Now you may be wanting to win the hamper but the person that you send those flowers to will appreciate what they really mean.
That you care, that you are thinking of them, whatever the situation, whenever the time, it is always great to get a big bunch of flowers sent to you, and your favourite online florist will be able to help you show just what you feel from the comfort of your computer…
And then, let’s not forget, there is that hamper to be won!
Content marketing is all about providing the content that your users want to see and engaging them with it.
The reviews section on greymacpherson.net is based on the premise that content is more effective than plain adverts. So the reviews section will review adverts placed with affiliate marketing programmes such as TrafficSynergy.
These will be real reviews based around the adverts that are served as part of the affiliate network. Rather than placing the advert in a regular position such as on the side bars or the top of the page, the advert itself will be placed within the body of the content and the content will revolve around that advert.
Many people tend to go advert blind, and click through rates are in fact very low. Content marketing is a method that can be used to increase interaction with the advert. The reviews section will take an honest look at the product on offer and then serve the advert on that page, contextualising the placement rather than just placing it on a rotation through out the site. If content marketing is all about opening content gateways then if people find the page that the advert is contextually placed with in, due to the searcher already having an interest in the content that is displayed on that page then there should be more interaction with the advert.
The review section will be constantly expanding as decent affiliate network adverts are offered and reviews are posted around them, this is not just for making money, but will tend to review adverts that are good value and are a worthwhile offer.
Social Media is one of the newest forms of communication that has evolved on the internet. It is essentially a series of peer to peer trust networks. Various Social Media programmes and websites enable like minded folk to connect with each other. Social Media can be a massive marketing opportunity, but it can also be a mine field that can blow up in the face of your brand without careful strategy, planning and implementation.
Many companies want to know how to effectively use Social Media, but are unsure about how to go about it. Greymacpherson.net offers a bespoke Social Media training programme that takes place in your own offices. Firstly a strategic session is held to determine what your brand wants to get out of Social Media, from there a bespoke programme is drawn up to train and engage the key staff who will be involved in implementing your Social Media function.
Each brand needs to approach Social Media from a perspective that makes sense to the identity of the brand. Breaking the boundary between brand and buyer requires that appropriate content gateways are opened up between your company and your customers. Your Social Media campaign should be tailor made to provide a bespoke strategy that will work for you.
Rushing into Social Media without a plan and a programme is unlikely to deliver the hoped for results.
Contact me to find out more about our Social Media training and information programme and get greymacpherson.net train your key personnel to achieve the best results your brand can out of Social Media.
All brands can benefit from Social Media but the content needs to be appropriate and the implementation deliberate, in order to get the best results.
Content is more than just the words that you see on the screen.
Content, when written for the web is about not only the words that you see on your screen but the ability of those words to interact with the internet. The Internet is an interconnected contextual web. The ability of HTTP or the hyper text transfer protocol is to interlink related concepts. HTTP was developed as a method of more easily referencing academic papers between geographically separated people. HTTP has moved on from its core beginnings and is now able to link together related content across the entire world. Content then becomes more than just the words that you see but also includes it’s meta data, or the data about what the content itself is about.
When writing for the web it is imperative that the content about the content is included. This is normally done via meta data and the hyperlinks that are within the content pointing themselves to related content, creating that interconnected contextual web.
For this article the meta content is “Article in an ongoing series on content marketing that deals with content about content”. This is the meta description that applies to this article, and is a powerful tool in marketing your content, however it should only describe what the content is actually about.
The meta keywords that are attached to this article are “Content, content marketing, series, content about content” and the meta title of this article is “Content about content”. This is also reflected in the URL of this article which is: http://greymacpherson.net/content/marketing/content-about-content.
Linking these concepts together into the copy of the article enables search engines to to better link together into a interconnected contextual web the content that is in that copy. This article refers to itself but the concept and process remains the same to link the content to other relevant content that is external to the actual article and in this case is content about content.
Right click and select view source in order to see the relevant meta data.
Content gateways are portals between your site and your users.
Content is the most effective method of getting and keeping web users. Users will come to your site for what they find there. If what you have to offer is not what they are looking for they will quickly bounce to another site that does carry the content that they are looking for. It is all about the content.
The internet is a massive environment and there are so many sites that, in order for you to build the kind of content that brings and keeps users, you need to be very specific in your focus. Greymacpherson.net is concentrated on content itself. You can then brand build with that content.
If you are a travel site, you will need to build content that is of interest to your users and has the authority in that market to speak for itself. If you are dealing with personal finance products then the content that you produce would be specifically focussed on being an authority on that type of content. There can be some can be some cross over. For example a travel site could run content on saving for your holidays as could a personal finance site. However the focus on each of these sites would be different.
The travel site would look at holidays first and then how you might save for them. The personal finance site would focus on saving, and then how that could be towards your holidays.
A content gateway is a portal that breaks down the boundaries between brands and buyers.
Content gateways are how you open your site to the world.
A content gateway is a very specific piece of content that is designed to open a gateway about a very specific topic between your site and the users if your site. An amorphous content gateway would not entice users in, just as few people would go through the door marked “somewhere” unless they were looking for a place called somewhere.
Content gateways are key to content marketing.
Contact me to work out which content gateways you can open on your site.
Content is a general term, that can be used in a number of ways.
I could give you definitions from various sources.
But, lets try and break this down a bit instead…
<body></body>
As simple as that? Perhaps not.
Is it everything that you see, and read and click and interact with?
Warmer, maybe.
But, still not what it, itself, really is.
Content is more than just the words or images or clicky bits, it is how it makes you feel and respond. It is that ’something’ that makes you want to come back and read some more, see some more, interact a bit more…
Content also goes deeper than just what you can see, read or interact with. Content for print is very different to content for the web. With print what you see is what you get, but with web content you can get interactive, you can follow links, you can comment and get involved with the content. It is a much more dynamic medium and these factors need to be taken into account when you create digital content.
Content for the web is not just for your readers, it is also for search engines. Content for the web should be written with Search Engine Optimisation in mind. You should take care to line up the meta data, the headlines the body and the links, making your content accessible to both readers and ‘bots, essentially including content about content.
Well written web content should synthesise the two parts to make an enjoyable reader experience that makes you, the reader, want to come back for more, and also makes the ‘bots want to come back for more, leveraging your content into search engine rankings, utilising your content for content marketing.
When your company is using content marketing to reach out to consumers, you are engaged in business to consumer, also know as B2C content marketing.
There is a difference between content that is for consumers as compared to content for business to business (B2B) marketing.
With all content marketing the key is to break down the boundaries between brand and buyer. You want to provide content that will reach out to your target audience and engage them with your brand.
Consumers are all individuals. Each individual has their own needs and wants. They will all be looking for content that addresses their needs and wants. There is no point in writing content for the B2C market that looks at what you want rather than what your audience wants.
So, the answer is to get specific. Address a specific topic per page and make it easy for your audience to find more via navigation rather than putting everything onto the one page. If your provide a page per topic then you will get better search rankings and you will be able to optimise for particular categories.
The content in this series looks at content marketing, and that is then classified as a category itself. It is designed to engage with an audience that has an interest in content marketing.
If you are writing about travel, organise your topics into a travel category followed by sub-categories that look at specific aspects of travel, finally channel down into a specific resort, destination or travel experience and provide your audience with details on what they might find there such as price, quality, family options, etc. Link all of these back to your main travel category and contact page and you provide a content gateway where people can find out about the specific things that they are interested in, whilst still being able to contact your site and purchase immediately.
Content marketing for the B2C, Business to consumer market is all about providing what your audience wants, when they want it.
When you are enabling a content marketing strategy you need to know who your audience is.
You need to speak to your audience and provide them with the kind of content that they want to find. This article will look at business to business, also know as B2B marketing.
Business to business is a massive market and is defined as when your company is selling to another business rather than to the consumer. This series on content marketing will look also look at business to consumer (B2C) based content marketing.
When you are selling to another business, B2B, there are a number of factors that you will have to consider.
The tone of the writing will tend to be more technical and formal, you can expect that your audience already knows about the type of products and services that your content is promoting.
You will be able to use more technical language and explain the products and services in more detail, differentiating your products and services from the competition by listing technical details and unique selling points that you may have. You do not have to phrase the content around your brand name as much as the particular type of product or service that your content is supporting.
For example rather than talking about Brand X the most amazing widget in the world, rather talk about widgets, specific widgets and then the technical specifications of your widget. At the end of the article place your call to action that Brand X is the most amazing widget in the world, contact us now to get one!
The B2B audience already knows about widgets and will look for specifications that suit their needs. Frame your content around specifications enabling your audience to quickly see if that is the widget for them, and provide a way for them to find out more and order.
If you would like any B2B content creation for your website, just contact me.
I grew up in Johannesburg in South Africa, where I attended Bryneven Primary and Ferndale High School.
After finishing high school I started a BCom degree via Unisa in 1994. I then transferred to the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland where I graduated in 2000 with an MA in Business Organisations from the School of Management and Languages.
Heriot-Watt is a very diverse and cosmopolitan university situated in and around the ancient city of Edinburgh. It is the eighth-oldest higher education institution in the United Kingdom. They are ranked as one of the top 20 universities in the UK for graduate employability, and run one of the largest business schools in the world. As a learning experience it was fantastic and offered more than just academia and study.
While I was a student at the Heriot-Watt I was heavily involved in the Heriot-Watt University Students Association. Over my years there I was variously Duty Manager, Communications Officer, Events Organiser and in 1998/99 I was elected as the Student President.
During this period I was also involved with the National Union of Students both nationally in the UK and in Scotland, having been elected to positions with both bodies. During my time in the student movement I took numerous short courses on lobbying and campaigning, communications and running student unions.
Having completed my degree I went travelling for a number of years visiting France, Holland, Portugal, Israel, and the Caribbean.
When I returned home to South Africa a took an evening course in Graphic Design at City Varsity in Cape Town.
I am a voracious reader with an abiding belief in life-long learning. I love new things, and I love to learn more about just about everything!
Contact me so that I can continue my education with you, finding the best possible content fit for your website, opening content gateways to find you your customers.
Content marketing, is in part, the process of providing timely, relevant information.
That information whilst timely should stay relevant over time to the audience that you want to engage with.
This starts to build an online brand identity using content marketing.
When you employ a content marketing strategy to drive the customers that you want to your site, you need to be very clear and specific about who your audience is and which keywords and descriptions would be most appropriate to them.
The content on this site is specifically tuned to attract an audience that is interested in content marketing and finding out about that. The brand identity is that greymacpherson.net is a place where you can get and find out about bespoke digital content creation. Articles that relate to this should be prominent and repeated through out the content of the site. Associating your brand, with the content that you publish consistently, will build your brand around those content descriptions.
The boundaries between brand and buyer are breaking down, and when you brand build with content then you should not be setting up a barrier between yourself and your customers, but rather creating a content gateway that enables conversations and empowers buyers to be part of the brand community.
Your content should over time, shape the brand identity that you wish to embody.
Using content based brand building to associate specific keywords and descriptions with your site, will improve your search rankings on those terms, allowing you to be found by the people who would most want to engage with your brand and purchase from you.
Provide content that is timely but build your brand over time with content.
Greymacpherson is the online persona of Graeme MacPherson.
This page is a little bit about myself, my interests, education, experience and clients.
It’s just a way for you to get to know me a bit better. The internet can be an anonymous medium, and in all business relationships, trust is key.
If you are going to do business with someone you need to get to know them, you need to see that they can do what you want them to do for you, before you engage them.
That is what an about page is all about! The content that you find here should be key in you deciding whether I can provide you with the services that you want.
Greymacpherson.net aims to be a bespoke digital content creation portal enabling you to open content gateways between you and your customers, breaking down the boundaries between brands and buyers.
I am Greymacpherson, welcome!
The rest of this site is generally about content and content marketing. I am writing an ongoing series on these topics and that can be found under the ‘Content‘ tab above. The content marketing series will be looking at, inter alia, content marketing practices, Web2.0, and opening content gateways between buyers and brands, leveraging conversations into sales.
Please do get involved in the discussion, content should not be static, but rather dynamic. I would encourage you to leave links back to your own site when you get involved in the discussion and leave comments.
Out of deep seeds grow mighty trees…
Content marketing is about providing the right information, at the right time, to the right people.
This opens a content gateway between your company and the people who buy your products. This gateway, however, is not one way, but rather a two way portal that breaks down the barriers between your brand and your buyers.
Not all companies want to be this close to their customers, but the old models of top down structuring that puts the brand above the buyer is breaking down and your customers will start to demand more and more that you be in contact with them and be able to respond to what they want from your brand rather than what you think that they want from your brand.
There is no such thing as a generalised customer. Each customer is unique and has a different set of desires and motivations. It may seem scary having to deal with so many different clients, when previously, it may have just been a matter of trying to match services to demographic projections. Content marketing is a way for you to get a better handle on your customers and what it is that they really want rather than what you may have been providing.
The premise of content marketing is that you use your content to create a conversation within a highly targeted interest niche.
The content that you are reading is targeted at people interested in content marketing.
If you are in the building business then then you should be serving content that speaks to your customers. If you build warehouses and factories your content should be aimed and toned to engage a business to business audience. If you are building individual dream homes then your content should seek to engage the business to consumer audience.
The type of business that you are doing should set the tone of how you use content marketing to breakdown the barriers between your brand and your buyers. Business to business content marketing has different needs to business to consumer content marketing. Each individual business has different needs to all others. Content marketing is about creating bespoke content for your specific niche.
Content marketing is a powerful new tool that enables producers to meet their consumers, in a way that is mutually beneficial to both.
The world is moving away from traditional methods of economic exchange. No longer is the monolith corporation dictating the tastes of people. People instead are choosing for themselves, what they want, how and when they want it. The growth of the internet has helped to level the information asymetry that used to exist. Previously the big guys could get away with it as the consumer did not have access to the same sort of information that they did. Now you have the information at your fingertips to make a relevant informed choice about what you want and how and when you are going to get it.
In the internet’s infancy, the so called Web 1.0, the information power of the web was still in the hierarchic style, whereby large brands would broadcast their message at their users. This has evolved into Web 2.0, which is a much even model, allowing buyers direct interaction with the brands that seek to court their money. This widening of the information available to people has greatly broken down the barrier between brand and buyer and is opening content gateways between them via social media and content based marketing practices.
If you want to get people to buy what you got, you got to get talking to them.
This is the first in what will be an ongoing series dealing with content marketing within Web 2.0 and beyond. Please get involved in the discussion…
Hi,
Please do get in touch with me so that we can discuss what your site is all about and then which kind of content will connect you and your users in the ways that you both want.
I also value comments about the site and content marketing in general, so please interact with me.
Send me a message,
Let’s talk about content…
Cheers,
Grey.
Content is key, content is a gateway, content needs to be fresh, original and targeted to the specific needs of your website.
Content is more than just the words that your read on the page. Content is reaching out to the world and giving them relevant, timely information to help them do what they want to do…
A website should not be a static entity, it should constantly evolving to provide a better portal for web users to find what they want, and to be able to act on that instantaneously.
Here is where content becomes the key.
You may have the best looking website in the world, or provide a service that no-one else does.
You might even be ready to take over the world.
None of that matters if nobody can find you.
Just contact me so that we can discuss the specific requirements of your site and leverage what you are all about, to get more users on site and engaging with your services. Content draws traffic and your bespoke digital content is only a message and a conversation away…
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