Opportunities & challenges for the Arab media industry, insights from Alexandria Media Forum 2018!

“Technology, media and fake news in the post-truth era” was the title of the sixth edition of the annual Alexandria Media Forum, where we, as InsideOut and Wordlift, we’re proud to be the community supporters of this edition. As a key player in the digital media business in the Arab region & Middle East we supported the forum where Fady Ramzy was a keynote speaker at the opening panel and also Andrea Volpini provided a session about the power of Artificial Intelligence powered SEO in building a rock solid content strategy for the news & media industry.

 

The opening panel: online media opportunities and challenges

The opening panel, which included Fady Ramzy Insideout CEO and Ehab el Zellaky chief editor of Al-Masry el youm, discussed the opportunities and challenges in the online news & media industry in Egypt.

“Mobile internet speeds, widespread social media usage and high video consumptions are the three pillars of the opportunity in Egypt”, highlighted Fady

In a country with a population over 100 million, where half this number are connected users with annual growth of 41%, the opportunities for the media industry, especially online, are massive. Also, the enormous usage of social media plays a crucial role in news and media distribution with Facebook and Youtube are at the top successively. Another big opportunity for online media is the widespread of 4G networks and wide adoption of mobile internet. Last but not least, as a result of all these, is the steady rise consumption of video content.

Challenges are mostly around the proper business model, which is still a mystery for most online news & media hubs. Despite some positive vibes in the past few years here where this industry witnessed the birth of few digital pure players (like Egyptian streets), still, mostly the basic advertising model is dominant. Moreover in the TV & print  media still most of the focus and investments are around traditional media although they are online (through websites, social media, mobile apps) but still in a primitive shape that doesn’t drive solid revenues.

 

AI-powered SEO for boosting content distribution & findability

Andrea joined the forum remotely through skype providing a super interesting session about how can Artificial intelligence help publishers expand traffic using semantic technologies and keeping readers engaged by helping machines understand what the content is about.

Andrea started his session with quick but solid advises for online publishers, as follows

  1. Optimize your content for featured snippets by focusing on conversational long-tail keywords (yes, look for questions in your search logs or support transcripts)
  2. Add structured data, extract entities and publish metadata using linked data (it’s good for chatbot and it’s good for SEO)
  3. Write articles and not just answers. Voice search and chatbots typically are at the top of your funnel. You still need to guide the user to the next steps with great content
  4. Make sure your content can be read out aloud quicklyelocution matters!
  5. The Web is getting AMPed and you should embrace it too.

Moreover, it’s crucial now for online publishers to understand that structured data is the foundation of the new web, specially chatbots and voice search. More details about this interesting topic are here in the slide deck below

Making Websites Talk: the rise of Voice Search and Conversational Interfaces from Andrea Volpini

Platforms and experiments for fighting fake news

Since the main topic was about fake news, the forum also presented interesting experiments for news verification & fact-checking across the Arab world and Europe like

  • Da Begad in Egypt In Arabic Da Begad means “is it true?” and it has been a trustworthy hub for news verification and fact-checking. Moreover, it won the forum’s award this year.
  • Akeed.jo in Jordan Launched by the Jordan Media Institute (JMI) and the King Abdullah II Fund for Development’s (KAFD) Democratic Empowerment Programme (Demoqrati), this website acts as the Jordanian Media Credibility Monitor to track the credibility of news material that is published and broadcast by Jordanian media outlets.
  • Annahar in Lebanon Lebanon’s leading Arabic-language daily newspaper did an experiment where they launched a news portal called Lebanonnowwnews.com along with a facebook page and they published 3 articles of fake news to monitor the user interaction with that news without checking them, and highlighted that these were fake news!
  • The Observers by France24 Is a collaborative site in French, English, Arabic and Persian and also a TV show on France 24  covering international current affairs by using eyewitness accounts from “Observers” – that’s to say people who are at the heart of an event by sending photos and videos to the observers’ team of professional journalists in Paris.

 

Wanna grow your website traffic using AI?

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What is Meta description and why it’s important for SEO?

What is Meta Description?

Meta Description is the summary of web page content. The Meta description appears under your page’s URL in the search results. This is also known as a snippet, search engines sometimes use these snippets in search results to let visitors know what a page is about before they click on it.
The Meta description will also often appear when people share your articles across other websites and social channels.

Why is the Meta description important for SEO?

Meta description is an important element of your website’s content. The meta description tags should include keywords relevant to the content of the web page they describe, this helps search engines understand what the page is about and index your web pages accordingly for relevant keywords or keyword phrases.

A Meta description can influence the decision of the searcher whether they want to click on your content from search results or not. The more descriptive, attractive and relevant the description, the more likely someone will click through.

How to write SEO optimized Meta Descriptions:

Here is a quick guide on how to optimize meta descriptions:

How To Get Your Featured Snippet:

Identify a common, simple question related to your market area. Provide a clear and direct answer to the question. Offer value added info beyond the direct answer. Make it easy for users (and Google) to find on your page.

Read here The Science Behind The Snippet and The Three Strategies To Become A Featured Snippet

Conclusion:

Your meta description acts as “organic ad text.”

The search world is constantly changing but one thing is constant: Websites with quality content that and that provide a user-friendly experience, will win in the search engine results pages “SERPs”. This all starts with your meta descriptions which are essentially the welcome door to your site’s.

Have any questions or comments about Meta Description?

Please Share it with us below! 

 

How to Become an Architect and Win in the RankBrain Era?

Google announced in 2015 its latest algorithm named RankBrain

WHAT IS RANKBRAIN?

RankBrain is a machine-learning artificial intelligence system that helps Google process some of its search results, in particular, rare or one-of-a-kind queries. It was launched in 2015 and is used globally by Google.

RankBrain is primarily focused on helping refine queries that Google processes, but the company says that the system is also used to help rank web pages. In fact, Google says RankBrain is its third most important ranking factor.

How to master SEO in the age of machine learning

WHAT IS MACHINE LEARNING?

As a form of artificial intelligence, machine learning makes it possible for computers to learn without being programmed. This means that software programs will have the ability to change and grow when exposed to new data, making computers more adaptable.

Machine learning isn’t an entirely new premise. In fact, basic machine learning algorithms existed and flourished in the 1990’s, albeit with limited applicable use. Until recently, all of Google’s updates were manual pushes, which is why we saw massively volatile results whenever major updates hit.

RankBrain Changed It All

When PageRank came out, it all made sense. It was a time in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) was not powerful enough. Yet things changed swiftly when in 2013 Google launched a new algorithm, Hummingbird. That algorithm used AI to analyze and understand human language.

In this scenario, back in 2015, RankBrain became one of the most powerful ranking factors. De facto RankBrain is shaping the web like PageRank did back in the late 90s.

The Intent with machine learning is to serve better content to users

Google’s ultimate aim is to apply machine learning so that its search algorithms will be able to learn and update themselves automatically, and it’s here where the real impact will be felt.

Content is the fuel for effective search marketing

When you publish your content as structured data, there are many different ways to leverage on it and to improve its findability and the monetization of it. It is always a fairly wild ride when working with technology: we keep on bouncing between conceptual thinking, technical specifications , and very practical examples — we’re starting to test here and now the power of linked data and how it can help publishers interact more effectively with their audience.

The simplest and most immediate benefit of semantic SEO is for sure to let your website unambiguously communicate with search engines, gain good rankings and increase CTR. With some work and a bit of luck, your content can also get featured on voice search and personal digital assistants (or as someone would call it PASO the new SEO).

At the same time, by reusing the same structured data that helps you boost your ranking on your favorite SERP, you can do a lot more.

What’s next?

In conclusion, ever since search engines took over the web they created a net that put machines in charge of it. Either you spoke their language or your content got deemed unworthy. Yet a revolution happened when Google launched RankBrain, within Hummingbird. Finally, machines were able to read human language. Thus, you should focus on becoming a better writer and inspire people through great stories.

So Are you ready to become an SEO Architect?

Try WordLift now!

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Top Digital Marketing trends in 2018!

What 2018 is holding for digital marketers?

This is a very brief guide for the biggest marketing trends we expect to see in 2018.

We have conducted our research from several trusted sources such as smart insight, social media today, wordlift, Entrepreneur, digital marketing magazine UK, Business2community, digital marketing institute, HuffingtonPost , Forbes, and marketing land

Top Digital Marketing Trends in 2018

Conclusion:

Based on current trends here is the conclusion:

  1. Marketing is likely to become more analytical, marketing is likely to become more analytical, and more focused on digital marketing through organic search, voice, and social media. In addition, new content formats like augmented reality and in-car ads will probably go mainstream.
  2. Data is the new oil in SEO: As machines get smarter (or dumber in some cases), marketers need to adjust and from traditional SEO techniques need to move into the realm of digital marketing. From analyzing the correlation between the indexing of your website from Google with your social activity to using machine-learning to prioritize backlinks opportunities the so-called “Modern SEO” is all about data. read the full article here “Top SEO Trends in 2018”
  3. The Future is for Machine Learning: With the steady growth of data produced by the Internet of Things (IoT), businesses will be turning to machine learning to process, trend, and analyze the information. Indeed, machine learning AI isn’t just a nice-to-have in 2018; it’s a must-have. It’s the only way companies can make valuable sense of the flow of data
  4. Speed gets bigger and bigger. Having a super fast mobile website in 2018 is not going to be an option but a key technical requirement for SEO. With Google that is about to deploy worldwide its mobile-first index optimizing the user experience on mobile devices is becoming crucial. Remember that already 57% of the web traffic is coming from mobile devices as a recent report from BrightEdge announced a few months ago.
  5. Video dominates: Leading brands invest in live events. Approximately two-thirds of marketers say that they will increase the number of live events they host in 2018. This is because marketers recognize that live events are one of the most effective marketing channels. Live streaming is 100 percent accessible for every type of marketer. An excellent way to connect with customers and to express the more human side of a brand.
  6. Artificial Intelligence is changing the face of Seo 

    ? What happens when Artificial Intelligence meets SEO

Ever since search engines took over the web they created a net that put machines in charge of it. Either you spoke their language or your content got deemed unworthy. Yet a revolution happened when Google launched RankBrain, within Hummingbird. Finally, machines were able to read human language. Thus, you should focus on becoming a better writer and inspire people through great stories.

Make the best out of your content with WordLift 3.15

Look at your content and let WordLift do the rest

Wordlift is Paving the way for a completely new generation of AI-driven SEO tools powered by semantic technologies that combine knowledge extraction with high-quality graphs to help editors focus on their stories and let machines find the perfect audiences for it

Take WordLift 3.15 for a test drive?  TRY IT FOR FREE ?  or

Book a Skype demo with Gennaro ??

 

SEO Top Trends in 2018!

What is out there in SEO that YOU are missing?

Google Uses Context, and So Should You!

Google uses structured data that it finds on the web to understand the content of the page, as well as they, want to understand the user’s intent when searching in order to populate the best possible answer to their query. By understanding not just the content of the search query but also the context, it becomes much easier to understand exactly what information the user is looking for and what search results would answer their query.s to gather information about the web and the world in general

Google is now producing results based on the “user intent.” User intent is the context of the search

When developing an SEO strategy there is much more to consider now than just the content of your site and the keywords within that content. You need to map out the user intent. What does your target audience want from you?

When developing your website and content strategy, go beyond just keywords. Keyword lists are still useful, but, consider the context of the search along with the words used in that search.

What are the top trends for SEO in 2018?

As we approach the end of 2017, it’s time to prepare your digital marketing team for the year ahead and look at the emerging trends that will rule the search world in 2018.

There are a number of aspects in the world of content findability that we have successfully tested in 2017 and that will become even more prominent in 2018. Let’s have a close look at  the top 5:

SEO Trends in 2018

  1. Structured Data and Semantics
  2. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
  3. Mobile-first index, Accelerated Mobile Pages and Progressive Web Apps
  4. Search is Everywhere
  5. Voice search, chatbots a, nd personal assistant search optimization

Read all about it  here thanks to wordlift for the very useful article

AI is changing the face of SEO

Search engines are becoming smarter and more human-friendly the semantic web is feeding search engines with meanings and data

In the context of the semantic web, a knowledge graph is a way of representing knowledge. In short, you start from a few triples and those triples are put in relationship to build a graph.

A knowledge graph doesn’t speak any particular language. Language is human; a knowledge graph gets expressed in open linked data, which is the language of machines.

Imagine your entire website built upon a large knowledge graph made of all the metadata that describes the thing that you write about. That knowledge graph becomes part of a larger graph that comprises the new web. That is the power of the Semantic Web.

6 Old-School SEO Tactics You Should Stop Wasting Time on

  1. Keyword stuffing
  2. Including all possible versions of the keyword in the title
  3. Heavily using anchor text on internal links
  4. Creating pages for each keyword variation
  5. Using outdated link building tactics
  6. Creating thin content

Read all about it here thanks to SEO Power Suite for that useful article

Managing short-tail and long-tail keywords can be challenging at scale especially when you’re doing a link building campaign. You need to get more info about advanced link building strategies and implement it for your website to gain higher rankings and more organic traffic.

Before you start your SEO strategy for 2018 follow Wordlift blog for all the latest releases about SEO, content marketing and semantic web.

 

How To Grow Your Travel Business With The Help Of Open Data

In this blog post we will show that open data can effectively shape your customer decisions and give energy to your business, once translated and put into insights; especially in the travel industry, that is ever-changing and deeply related to customer’s commitment.

“There’s no substitute for just going there” wrote Yvon Chouinard, an American climber, environmentalist and businessman who dedicated his life to nature and traveling. A lot has changed since when Yvon traveled around the U.S.A. to climb the Yosemite; technology and internet have radically transformed the travel industry to the point that now holidays find people, not the other way round.  

In fact, with the advent of internet and smartphones travelers have been changing their habits and needs, they find all the information they need before, while and after the trip they have been thinking about; this is called Travel 2.0 a travel based extension of the Web 2.0 and refers to the growing presence and influence of the user in the traveling process. Along with the changing of the industry, marketing in the tourism sector is changing just as well and must be revolved around customers, so companies and consultants need to know perfectly their target and who they are talking to.

The core characteristics of tourism activity still remain the same, though:

  • tourism is perishable, which is typical of services, as they are consumed while produced so, for example, you won’t be able to sell a room that is vacant today, tomorrow and this is where overbooking comes from;
  • tourism is also inconsistent, as the conditions that apply today may not apply tomorrow if it rains the facility may be perceived by customers differently than if it had been sunny and this type of offer can’t be standardized;
  • intangibility: how many times have you showed pictures of an hotel room to your friends saying “well, I guess it looked better when I was there” this is because you can’t take home the hotel room in Paris or the view from a chalet in the Alps; tourism is just memories and images depicted in the customer’s mind.

The travel industry is mainly people-oriented, so what better way to develop, for example, an effective campaign than extracting it directly from your customers?

Travelers carry and leave behind a big amount of data: inquiries, questions on forums, bookings, researches about accommodation, transport, itineraries, feedbacks and so on in different stages that go from the idea of getting away to the feedback to the airline company, hospitality structure etc. As a matter of fact, the process that customers face when planning a trip is made of a dizzying number of moments which are rich in intent, even after having booked the trip.

This kind of data is mostly raw and unstructured and comes from different sources but when brought together and analyzed this information will portrait traveler’s behaviors and shape personas from which you can start building a marketing campaign and focus on your target and its needs. Open data have become a tool that can help businesses growing and acquiring new customers when extracted and processed, they can also help to predict the future, giving the hint of a future trend of the business.

In the past few years open data have become a major tool for businesses, they can be leveraged and shaped into solutions deliverable to the final user; along with the growing importance given to open data there has also been a development of free tools, open source softwares and case studies that made having to deal with data easier.

SalzburgerLand, the Salzburg State Board of Tourism, provided us with open data coming from one of their booking channels, it contained information about the flow of visitors in the Salzburg State, for each Nation the table contained the daily amount of Inquiries, Bookings, Arrivals and Nights divided by Country of origin.  

We analyzed the data and selected the Nations with the largest amounts of entries which presumably were the ones with the largest tourist flow towards Austria, in this case, Germany, Austria , and Holland.

touristflowblog

We were also able to report in which month each of these countries visited Austria, as expected the peak of the tourist flow is reached in the months of February, March and in the Summer (June, July, and August).

whocomesandwhenblog

Once we came up with these macro-groups we examined their correlations with a pattern of researches on Google and noticed that people looked for Salzburg themed queries in all the moments the table was divided in, moreover analyzing the queries we found out that, for example, German people at the time of booking looked for hotels in specific small towns in the Salzburg area or that Dutch people while they were staying in Salzburg region looked for information about Dolomites, we assumed they were on a trip with a camper van and a research-backed our assumption along with related queries (Camping Italy) that confirmed the intent of continuing the trip driving around Europe. At this point, we had enough information to define the various targets and identify their needs. We created six personas that resembled real people with real needs around which we built the set of queries extracted from the data.

Google published a research on Travel and Hospitality which divided the customer journey in four micro-moments: I-want-to-get-away moments, time-to-make-a-plan moments, let’s-book-it moments, and can’t-wait-to-explore moments. In each one of these moments, customers or potential customers can be taken by the hand and influenced by effective content and campaigns.

Those moments start when people dream of a getaway and go on until they are on holiday, enjoying their fully thought vacation.

We found out that the data we had extracted for our client were highly correlated with relevant patterns of researches on Google, for example, a general query like “ski holiday deals” is more likely searched for during the I-want-to-get-away moment, in which people are browsing and dreaming of their future holiday. The correlation between a query and the researches on Google in a certain Nation can be an opportunity to influence people’s preferences and purchases and to reach customers in all the micro-moments that the trip is made of.

stefanblogpost

This is Stefan, he is from Germany and he has already been in the Salzburg region so he’s looking for hotels in a specific town and he also wants to know where he can go skiing in Flachau (skigebiet meaning ski area). We also elaborated a graphic of each query’s trend.

This way we can build a content campaign centered on the client’s customers and aimed at conquering and engaging users. We determined what travelers want and when in order to just be there with the right offer.

The creation of the personas worked also as a segmentation based on nationality, travel reason and loyalty so it would be easy to understand the customer’s values and what to create. The aim of marketing and content marketing, in the age of smartphones, is to connect to the person you want to reach out and deliver the answers they are looking for, be relevant to the user when in need and be on time.
When examining the data we discovered that Inquiries drive Bookings because the two are strongly correlated (Pearson Correlation=0.70) as we expected, so we could predict the trend of the bookings in the future, as the graphic below shows and this data can be useful to programme and deliver campaigns on time to users.

predictblog

A data-backed marketing campaign can fuel your business growth centering it around your customers and adapting it to the modern standards of connectivity and sharing; we can transform plain data and grey spreadsheets into beautiful, compelling stories that will draw your target’s attention.

In the end, all will be at hand, even the Yosemite, at least online!

Find out more on how this analysis has helped SLT, after the first 6 months, outperforming the competition by bringing 92.65% more users via organic search than all other travel websites in Austria (from the WordLift website)! 

 

 

 

360° Videos and Live Streaming…an Immersive Video Experience for your Audience

Why 360° Video is the next big thing In Video Marketing?

The core of video marketing is good storytelling using the power of visuals. 360° Videos are a natural extension of this because they allow the viewer to be completely immersed in the visual story.

360-degree video marketing is changing the way content is consumed, viewers can interact with the immersive, spherical footage, which keeps them engaged and focused on your brand.

The only way to attract customers and get them to understand the benefits of any service or product is to explain and to show what they can expect for their money.

360-degree video. This format offers an engagement level between VR and a standard video, 360° videos is experiencing video from each angle, the viewer has control of the viewing direction like a panorama and the good news is that No Fancy headsets is needed for 360° video.

Is 360° Video worth it? does 360° video advertising actually drive more engagement than standard video advertising? Google partnered with Columbia Sportswear to find out read more here 

360° Showcases in Media and Journalism

A lot of media companies and newspapers use 360-degree videos to include their users in their investigations. The New York Times , for example, publishes every day a video from their reporters around the world. That is extremely interesting because they also record videos in war zones or in other places where you normally wouldn’t have the chance to get close insights. 360 degree videos are a new chance for newspapers to create a new kind of media which is also interesting for the digital native generation.

The daily 360 by Newyork times, Times journalists around the world are bringing one new 360 video every day.

On a side note, one of the best ways to learn to use 360-degree videos successfully is to study what other companies are doing and learn from their success

here are some examples of brands using 360° videos

Virtual Reality and 360 Live Streaming

Combining the immersive aspect of 360° technology with the instant and engaging features of live

The 360° video gives power to the viewer. It makes them a part of the story.

360° video transports viewers into a real, immersive, live-streaming experience that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to, and that can’t be installed on a machine—for example, a live broadcast of a concert or sporting event that gives viewers a seat from the stands. For the purposes of this post, we’ll focus on 360° video, as this is the most applicable for streaming workflows. read more here about Virtual Reality and 360° Streaming Trends 2017 by Wowza

360° Videos for Social Media

Social media channels are essentials for brands to engage directly with consumers and tell their story in an impactful way, using latest technologies and formats.

Over time the types of stories that people want to tell each other and the types of content they want to share with each other will get richer and more immersive

If a picture worth a thousand words then think of the benefits that a 360° Video would offer? 360 degree Video gives your customers an opportunity to see what you’re selling in a way that normal video or photography can’t do. 360° Videos provide viewers with a complete picture.

360-degree videos take an all-angles approach to the channel and are considered by some to be a form of virtual reality (VR). These types of immersive formats can be more effective than a traditional video in sparking an emotional response in viewers. Users can interact with the video to choose the content they want to view and engage with. This works especially well with mobile devices because the user can simply adjust their phone to change their perspective

Facebook is Continually making Its Platform a more Viable Video Competitor:

The growth of video on Facebook has been enormous in 2015. Facebook has moved quickly into new areas of video including live streaming video and 360. It is also investing heavily in developing the technology to ensure that it stays at the forefront of virtual reality

Facebook is investing significant resources to ensure that it is at the forefront of virtual reality. Through its newsroom it has stated that “360° video on Facebook is the first step” toward developing a VR experience for its users. It reports that millions of people are now watching 360 videos on Facebook every single day

User experience and additional value

  • 360° videos not only focus on the content but on the User experience itself.
  • More immersive experiences for the user, and younger consumers especially will appreciate the benefits of this type of technology
  • 360 videos on your pages can help increase user spent time on your page which of course will send  signals to search engines, which could improve brands’ SEO
  • Allowing brands to broadcast live and ‘in the moment’, it means that viewers can also feel part of the action, creating a strengthened bond and connection
  • Longer Engagement = More Brand Affinity
  • 360° video also gets shares and subscribers more than standard video
  • By providing your consumers with an immersive 360-degree videos experience, you can improve overall audience engagement, increase sales and leads, and establish your brand at the forefront of digital technology innovations.

Delivering immersive experience for customers

A video is easier to consume than written content, with increased data and faster load times also resulting in people watching more videos on mobile – and sharing them too

more people are watching videos on social platforms than ever before. According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, video will account for 80% of all consumer Internet traffic by 2019

Producing a 360° video or 360° live streaming to the fullest with high quality requires the best equipment and cameras, the right streaming format and the most suitable player.

At InsideOut Today We have the experience, equipment, cameras, technical resources and the best in class streaming servers, encoders & players.

Moreover, as an Authorized Consultant and an international preferred reseller for Wowza streaming technologies, we are proud to support the distribution, technical support and consultancy for Wowza products in the Middle East & Africa

The seamless integration of wowza technologies and our resources and technical support allows us to provide an immersive video experience to your audience.

You can check here wowza latest technologies for 360 streaming including 360° streams to massive audiences on top platforms, such as Facebook Live, Periscope, Twitter and YouTube Live and also the latest innovation “Wowza ClearCaster” the best tool for optimizing professional Facebook Live streaming

If you are interested in 360° video productions, live 360° streaming, creating virtual tours or taking your virtual reality to the next level Contact us today to discuss your needs. Don’t wait. Get started today to see how 360-degree videos can make a difference for your brand.

 

 

Why blogging is now crucial for your SEO efforts

Looking ahead at the future of content:

The semantic web is inherently open and democratic. Anyone can contribute by linking his/her data with others’ data. Everyone, just like in the web of pages, can help to build super-human knowledge graphs.

This revolution is starting from a single blog post

read here the full article How the semantic web revolution is starting from a blog post

Why Blogging is important for your business:

1. Blogging Boosts Search engine optimization

Blogs allow you to have updated information and new keywords added regularly, which are going to increase your SEO and further help your traffic

Search engines love fresh content. By blogging consistently, you give Google and other search engines new content to index

2. Blogging Drives Traffic

Blogging regularly will increase visibility and thus increase the traffic to your website, thereby increasing page views and hits as your business get more exposure.

3. Blogging Adds Value

Blogs enable you to add further value to your business; by applying storytelling techniques and compelling posts; you give your readers materials they are interested in, while showing your expertise in your field you add value to your product or message.

4. Blogging builds networks and trust

Valuable and interesting blog posts attract readers who will then regularly visit your blog by regularly posting valuable, honest articles on your blog the more trust you will gain and thus Blogging  will expand your network of friends, business associates, and clients

5. Connect people to your brand

Blogging builds brand awareness for the different services you offer, thereby creating engagement among your readers.

It lets you closer to your target audience which likes to hear what you say and follow you and give you their direct feedback instantly

6. Strengthen your social media presence

by creating valuable content it will have a huge impact on your presence on various social media platforms, content that adds value to readers which will make them likely share it with their circles thus will attract new audience to your blog.

Blogs thrive on social sharing and interaction. They are designed for this…Furthermore, blogs offer multiple subscription possibilities to enter in a more frequent, personal and better-targeted dialogue with visitors.

How is Business Blogging different from Regular Blogging?

A Business blog is a marketing channel (just like Social media, direct mail, email marketing, etc.) that helps support business growth, Business Blogging is a marketing tactic that uses the art of storytelling as the spotlight to attract more online visibility to your business; Business Blogging increases support of business growth

here are the Basic Steps for starting a blog

The Effective Strategy for Blogging:

Read here all about the effective strategy for blogging  

Choose the right Link Building Tool is essential to your success

Whether you’re managing a Business or a Regular Blog, link building is one of the most crucial and difficult parts of your SEO. You need quality backlinks to make Google determine your rank for a search query: the more backlinks to your site come from other high-quality sites, the higher is the chance to gain relevance for specific keywords. Create a link building campaign is, therefore, a critical task and you’ll need an effective tool to reach the best results. Linkio is a powerful link building management software that will help you plan your strategy and set up impressive link building campaigns. It is also pretty easy to use: once you import your previous backlinks, your competitors’ data and your preferences (based on your target, your industry etc), it will provide you with a competitive anchor text planning and with suggestions on what exactly needs to be done to boost your backlink profile.

Now that you understand the importance of blogging and what makes up a successful blog and how to set your blogging marketing strategy, it’s time to take this knowledge and start blogging with a purpose in mind using the right tools that can enrich your blog posts and gives you better visibility over search engines, thus boosting the traffic to your blog!

Try Wordlift now A WordPress Plugin that does what an SEO expert would do

 

How Open Data Can Leverage your Content Marketing Efforts

Big Data provides a new paradigm for Data-Driven marketing

The amount of content published daily on the web has caused a free flow of information that 1 billion websites have to compete directly for business, bringing targeted content at lower prices. At the same time, web content needs to be highly curated and organized to get online readers’ attention and trust and serve them at the speed they want.

 Data Never Sleeps

These numbers are increasing every day, every minute and every second

With all the data generated on the Internet, it’s a must to pay attention to the opportunities that data could bring…

Big Data and Content Marketing Go Together

The adoption of big data should be focused upon delivering measurable business value: from big data to actionable data, by constantly using data and adopting a data-led culture, you may be able to make a significant change for the better in your content marketing efforts

The 5 V s of Big Data

Open data to simplify and democratize the big data

While big data is defined by size, open data is defined by its use. Big data is the term used to describe very large, complex, rapidly-changing data-sets

Open data is accessible public data that people, companies, and organizations can use to launch new ventures, analyze patterns and trends, make data-driven decisions, and solve complex problems

The web has evolved “from web of pages to web of data”, Computers understand the meaning of what we publish on the web.

The Semantic Web isn’t just about putting data on the web. It is about making links so that a person or machine can explore the web of data.  With linked data, when you have some of it, you can find other related data.

Is your Linked Open Data 5 Star?

Linked data 5 stars

  • Linked data is essential to actually connect the semantic web, having data correctly formatted  can allow you to create valuable insights.</li>
  • Content classification enables content discovery and creates alternatives entry points and routes for contents
  • When using structured content it is easier to find what you’re looking for, as content is organized and linked to other relevant and related content.
  • When you understand your audience in a data-driven way, you then have the tools available to improve services to them.

Open data creates new business models that didn’t exist before Open data puts content in a creative context and links your data to the wider world. learn here about the Linked open data project for Enel Electrified Vehicle charging Network and how it created a new business model

With data fully integrated, and a roadmap in place, brands will definitely benefit from their content marketing

So Where to start?

As Your website is the foundation of your digital presence, the semantic web can be a powerful force for your website’s SEO and user experience. However, to truly harness its potential, you need the right semantic web tools

Adding semantic markup to connect your content to your entities is the basic building block of the semantic web.

we advice you to build your own dataset using WordPress, there are plenty of content management systems out there in the web, but wordpress remains number 1 CMS  

Why use WordPress for your website:

  • WordPress is Compatible With the Web It’s open source
  • WordPress is free and the majority of its plugins is free, it has thousands of themes and plugins
  • WordPress is a constantly-evolving platform with an enormous community, Wordpress support page has a forum for everything you can think of, from fixing WordPress issues to accessibility concerns
  • It’s also easy to create a website that has a blog without having two different platforms that need to work together.

Learn more about WordPress benefits 

How to Migrate your website to Wordpress:

Migrating a website (including the design) over to WordPress is actually easier than you might think you can find here a full guide here on how to migrate your website to wordpress 

And now how to  structure content on WordPress using open data technology such as Wordlift

WordLift, by Insideout group, is  content analysis and recommendation tool for WordPress. It is a tool for publishers, newspapers and magazines to organize their content in a meaningful way, expose it better to search engines, boost their user base, website traffic, advertising and above all user experience and accordingly revenues.

Wordlift adds semantics annotations and combines information publicly available as linked open data to support editorial workflow.

If it is hard to know where to begin we can help you here

Case studies

TaoRoma is the blog of an association whose goal is to promote and introduce martial and taoist arts into our hectic daily life. Using WordLift they have structured the content of their blog, just so that it does what they created it for: showing organized content that would be relevant to readers. While creating and taking care of entities they have built their own encyclopedia. And it works just great!

 

Key Elements to Content Marketing Success

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is defined as “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” defined by the content marketing institute

Content Marketing is Still the King in 2017

Content marketing is an important component of any organization’s marketing plan, various studies and researches confirm the importance of content marketing and how it’s continuously increasing

Source Statista

Key Elements to Content Marketing Success

Planning is an integral part of content marketing success

Checklist for Content Marketing Planning:

  • The objectives: Well defined Business goals aligned with the organization’s strategic objectives “Know your goals before Planning” Jumping into digital marketing and social media without establishing your goals leads to failure of the marketing efforts
  • Your Audience: Define your content audience “Buyer Personas”, craft content for your audience  based on the buyer’s journey ” getting the right message to the right customer at the right time is crucial. people don’t want advertising when making purchasing decisions, they want valuable information they want to live the experience
  • Consistency: Deliver content consistently but always consider “Publish as often as you can while maintaining the highest quality possible”
  • Content optimization: Successful online content is not just of high quality, it is also search engine optimized with Metadata, headlines, clear structure , and useful links
  • Stories: Master the art of storytelling, make sure to produce interesting content, content that is visually appealing, content that attracts and informs. Emotion is the key driver uncover stories about your business, your employees and your customers this will increase your brand awareness and engagement
  • Data visualizations: creating data visualizations that offer real value to your readers is a great way to spread your ideas and message read more here how video is dominating digital content and the six elements of a successful video strategy
  • Measurements: Analyze your effectiveness through a measurement plan & KPIs to provide both insight and progress toward the business goals to measure how well content marketing is producing results

To Conclude:

People are searching online for relevant information…Content marketing provides it

We are proud that we guided many clients with the content marketing strategy, planning and content production and we will be happy to guide you too contact us today

WE ALSO ASSIST OUR CLIENTS IN MEETING THEIR CONTENT MARKETING OBJECTIVES THROUGH INTELLIGENT SOLUTIONS 

Check some of the case studies here of how this intelligent solution supported many companies and organizations with content marketing

STAY TUNED next week with Part 2 How Open Data Can leverage your content marketing efforts