Serious Humor: Digital Marketing Made Easy and Fun – 29 October 2019

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TRENDS: WHAT ARE THE COOL MARKETERS TALKING ABOUT? #CoolKids

Content Marketing, Meet AI; AI, meet Content Content Marketing –

If you haven’t heard yet, AI (‘Artificial Intelligence‘) for marketing is a thing. A big thing. A thing that’s coming to an Alexa, Siri, or Google Device near you. A thing that’s impacting how the Google search engine works, and how you – as a marketer – should craft content. It’s also coming to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the Gang as a way those algorithms ‘learn’ what people like, and give them more of it. Crafty little devils.

What Does AI Mean for You as a Marketer?

It means the more things change, the more they stay the same. Content still remains king, jack, queen, and the deuce of spades for your SEO and your Social Media Marketing Strategy, but increasingly your content needs to ‘speak AI.’ Check out Google’s October official blog announcement (https://jm-seo.net/b052b), for example, which introduces you to ‘Bert’ (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), which is a fancy way of saying Google’s getting smarter and smarter at figuring out what search queries mean, and at matching the best content against those queries. Your to-do? Anticipate how people talk to Google devices, and craft content that clearly reflects that ‘semantic structure.’ Learn to ‘speak AI’ with your content, so that Google understands it and can match it, tightly, to the queries of real humans looking for your business.

As for Facebook, you can watch Zuckerberg’s October grilling on ‘Libra’ (it’s AI-based cryptocurrency system) on YouTube at https://jm-seo.net/uv3 as well as whether or not Facebook (can, or should) algorithmically filter ‘political ads.’ I recommend you compare that video with a ‘Bad Lip Reading’ of Zuckerberg’s previous testimony at https://jm-seo.net/00d for a good laugh. Hilarious, and you may not be able to tell the two apart amidst the congressional grandstanding. But seriously, what’s your to-do? Pay attention to Facebook’s algorithmic changes, new features such as the coming ‘news tab’ (https://jm-seo.net/22659), and optimize your Facebook (Twitter, YouTube, Instagram…) posts for maximum engagement. Engagement is the new metric that drives AI, and AI drives organic reach. So ask yourself and your content team what type of content will people not only click into but stay engaged with as measured by time on site, a low bounce rate, likes, comments, and shares on social.

TIPS: WHAT DO THE COOL MARKETERS KNOW THAT YOU DON’T? #SmartyPants

Never Stop Learning: Google, Facebook, and the Gang –

The cool kids know to never stop learning, to be so cool (fool) that they look like they know everything when really they just know where to look. as in the massive Google support site (https://jm-seo.net/29427) where you can dive into the official Google answers for whatever your question.  Search it for ‘AI’ and your first result might be this post, ‘Why does Google want to build an Artificial Intelligence to destroy humanity?’ at https://jm-seo.net/9c310 with the first response being, ‘Google is a business the purpose of which is to make money. Google accomplishes that primarily by hooking our attention for the benefit of Google advertisers and paid content providers…Therefore, murdering us doesn’t make sense.’ Or, more seriously, the Cool Marketers know Google has an entire mega learning site (that they just renamed ‘Skillshare’ at https://jm-seo.net/bf238) which has free videos on how to do SEO and Google Ads. #USEFUL.

On the other more elementary end of the scale Google has launched a new SEO series on how search works at https://jm-seo.net/ed40f. How true to reality will it be? Well, be a critical viewer since what they’ll leave out may be as important as what they point in their “explanation” of how SEO works. You can check out my own video of how to do an SEO audit at https://jm-seo.net/4px with step-by-step instructions to improving your rank on Google. Another more advanced resource is Moz’s post on how Google actually values links to your website at https://jm-seo.net/0ca06.

And your to-dos are…

Learn where the Google learning resources are, and set aside a lunch break to watch some official Google videos. Invest in your lifelong learning as a Google marketer.

Cool Tool Fool – Who’s Advertising What on Facebook?

The basics still matter as a Facebook marketer, and did you know that there are a ton of free Facebook learning materials at https://jm-seo.net/3b58e – called “Facebook Blueprint?” Well, now you do. Yes, you can reverse engineer competitors on Facebook at https://jm-seo.net/37573. Yes, it’s sneaky. Yes, it’s fun and useful to do. Use the Facebook Ad Library tool at https://jm-seo.net/b1t to do it. Your to-do? Keep one eye on Facebook, and another on Google, the King and Queen of Internet marketing. Use tools and free learning resources to not only boost your knowledge but to know where to find the answers, when you have questions.

TO-DOs: SET ASIDE LEARNING TIME

Be a lifelong learner of marketing tricks.

Digital marketing is a changin’, and you need to keep up with the changes. Yes, of course, follow the major blogs and conferences on SEO, Google Ads, and Social Media Marketing. (They’re listed on my Dashboard). But bookmark and set aside some time for the learning resources listed above for Google and Facebook. As for the others? Each has pretty impressive free learning resources as well. Like this LinkedIn Webinar on using LinkedIn for LeadGen (https://jm-seo.net/fdcd3), or the massive LinkedIn business learning site at https://jm-seo.net/0f022.

Amazon is increasingly a “social” medium in the e-commerce space, and the dominant player in books. Book = legitimacy. Did you know you can publish books on Amazon for free? Not that it’s easy, but you can use eBooks to bolster your brand credibility (even if they aren’t bestsellers). Or you might get lucky and write the next great nonfiction book or even bestselling novel. Check out Amazon’s free learning resources on publishing via its KDP (Kindle Direct Program) at https://jm-seo.net/2d1f9. And, if you’re selling on Amazon, here’s my mini tutorial on how to SEO Amazon – https://jm-seo.net/ob2 with links to tips and tools. Don’t miss the SONAR tool by Sellics to reverse engineer Amazon keywords https://jm-seo.net/7fd13.

As for other platforms, Twitter just released its official playbook for brands at https://jm-seo.net/57eab; and everything that marketers need to know about TikTok is at https://jm-seo.net/8f6b1. With all these official, free learning resources, however, you’ll have to figure out how to apportion your time between ‘learning’ and ‘doing’ digital marketing. #TIMEISMONEY

SIGNING OFF: #Bye-bye

Well, friends, that’s SERIOUS HUMOR for 10/28/2019.

Got a question? Comment? Click here to send it in.

~ Jason McDonald