Marketing Chapter 7 Homework Search Engine Marketers Call this Space The Screen Where Listings Are Virtually Guaranteed

Unlock access to all the studying documents.

View Full Document

Chapter 7: Social publishing

Chapter overview

In Chapter 7, students learn about Zone 2 in the zones of social media marketing. Social

publishing is the primary opportunity for brands to share their message in their voice with the

target audience. Because of the importance of social publishing in search engine optimisation

(SEO), this chapter also includes an introduction to SEO and its relationship to social media

marketing.

Teaching tips and resources

To explore the effectiveness of brand’s social publishing tactics, ask students to audit a brand’s

blog, YouTube channel, or Instagram channel and identify the use of linkbait and other best

practices from the chapter. If your students are conducting their own project, recommend that

they visit Google’s free SEO tools, listed below.

• Google Suggest

• Google Keywords

• Google Trends

To enhance the discussion of the responsibility of brands working with influencers:

Learning objectives

When students finish reading this chapter, they will be able to answer these questions:

1. What are the channels of social publishing?

2. Who creates the content published in social channels? What kind of content can be

published?

3. What content characteristics enhance perceived content quality and value? How can

marketers plan and organise their efforts as they embrace a social publishing strategy?

Chapter outline

I. The Social Publishing Zone

• Social publishing is the production and issuance of content for distribution via

social publishing sites.

• Content is the unit of value in a social community, akin to the dollar in our

economy.

• Figure 7.1 illustrates the four zones.

II. Publishing Content

• Content marketing is 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.

A. Types of Content

1. Content may be curated or original. It may include many types of content

including, but not limited to those listed below.

• Blog posts and feature articles

• Press releases

2. Table 7.1 provides a breakdown on the most popular types of content

brands use for social publishing.

B. Channels of Content Distribution

• Blogs: Blogs offer an opportunity for individuals to express their

opinions, share their expertise, make money by selling onsite

advertising and attract clients for consulting work.

• Media-sharing sites: Media-sharing sites are earned media

because their environments are not directly controlled by the

person or organisation posting the content.

C. Content Producers: What Is ‘Authentic’?

1. The proliferation of untruths and exaggerations (or so-called urban

legends) is so widespread that some specialised websites do nothing but

verify or refute them.

2. An editorial message is objective and unbiased; the source expresses an

opinion or interpretation along with the factual information.

7. Consumer-solicited content (CSC) refers to invited but non-compensated

citizen advertising, which is another way to describe marketing messages

that actual consumers create.

8. Incentivised content is encouraged by the offer of an incentive, such as the

chance to win a contest, receive free merchandise, or even earn cold hard

cash.

9. Call to action refers to a direct request in a marketing message for a

III. Developing Effective Branded Content

• Table 7.2 illustrates the marketing objectives pursued using social publishing by

B2B and B2C marketers.

• Table 7.2 illustrates types of content in the social publishing strategies of B2B and

B2C marketers.

• Figure 7.2 illustrates a content value ladder.

A. The Content Value Ladder characterises content in terms of its originality and

substance.

1. At the lowest step in the ladder we find the least important type of

materials. Filler content is simply information that people copy from other

sources.

2. All other content on the ladder is original content. This level refers to

contributions that originate with the poster.

IV. Distributing and Promoting Content

• Table 7.5 illustrates social publishing vehicles used by B2B and B2C marketers.

• Table 7.6 illustrates how B2B and B2C marketers use paid promotions to activate

social content.

• The media plan designates how the campaign’s creative content will be

disseminated to the target audience using specific media vehicles such as radio or

billboards.

• Using search engine optimisation (SEO), the process of modifying content, site

characteristics and content connections to achieve improved search engine

rankings, marketers develop and publish content in ways that improve the

likelihood that search engines will rank the sites well in response to search queries.

• Social media optimisation (SMO) is a process that makes it more likely for

content on a specific social media platform to be more visible and linkable in

online communities.

• Table 7.7 illustrates media optimisation matrix.

A. Level 1: Social Publishing and SEO

• A branded article is an article that is written to promote SOS’s

expertise in the field.

respondents to sophisticated devices that follow the precise movements of

eyeballs as they scan ads on TV or computer screens.

C. How Search Engines Work

1. Search engines use web crawlers (also known as spiders and bots); these

are automated web programs that gather information from sites that

ultimately form the search engine’s entries.

2. The indexed data include tags and keywords derived from site content.

D. Onsite Optimisation

1. Offsite indicators are links from other sites.

2. Onsite, coders try to optimise certain site characteristics (called onsite

indicators) that the search bots and the search engine index.

3. The primary onsite variables are keywords embedded in the page’s tags,

title, URL and content.

E. Offsite Optimisation

1. These offsite indicators include the number of links to a website from other

sites, the credibility of those sites, the type of site promoting the link and

the link text (called anchor text).

2. Links are the building blocks of social publishing.

3. There are two approaches to building links: (1) publish related content and

links across other sites; (2) encourage other, unaffiliated sites to link to the

brand’s content.

4. Linkwheels increase the number of links back to a site.

5. When other sites link back to the content, it’s called a backlink or a

trackback.

6. Figure 7.3 illustrates a SOS linkwheel structure.

7. SEO marketers may be white, grey, or black hats:

• White hats play by the rules of the system, striving to provide good

quality content, with the best use of keywords and tags, and

earned links at reputable sites.

• Gary hats take some liberties with the system.

F. Level 2: SMO

• Content can be promoted on social networks, blogs, microblogs and social

bookmarking and on news sites that use aggregators.

• SMO employs tactics to increase the likelihood that others will share and

promote content. These tactics can be onsite and offsite.

1. Onsite Tactics

• SMO is all about encouraging people who are exposed to your content

to share, promote and recommend it. To do this, the content needs to be

valuable, interesting, or entertaining enough that someone wants to

endorse it.

• A power site refers to a site with enormous readership, such as

CNN.com.

• Onsite tactics include title, share tools and RSS feeds.

c. RSS feeds are tools to automatically feed new published content to

subscribers.

2. Offsite Tactics

• Social media press releases: Social media press releases are

announcements that let media know of new developments via

social channels. They should have an optimised title, good

keywords and tags, links to the main site landing page, RSS

feed options, share buttons and embeddable multimedia content

that can be shared on several networks, in addition to the typical

press release content.

• Figure 7.4 illustrates a social media press release template.

• Social news and bookmarking sites: These filter vast amounts of

information into sets that individuals can manage.

Chapter summary

1. What are the channels of social publishing?

The channels of social publishing include blogs, media-sharing sites, micro-sharing sites, social

2. Who creates the content published in social channels? What kind of content can be

published?

Anyone can create the content published in social channels. Content can be editorial, commercial,

3. What content characteristics enhance perceived content quality and value? How can

marketers plan and organise their efforts as they embrace a social publishing strategy?

We can characterise content in terms of its originality and substance. The higher the level of

originality and substance, the higher readers will perceive the content’s quality and value to be.

4. What is the role of social publishing in social media marketing? How do social media

marketers utilise SEO and SMO to meet marketing objectives?

Social publishing enables marketers to distribute branded content. Also called content marketing,

this approach helps to bring consumers to the brand’s sites. Because consumers utilise search

5. How can social content be promoted? What role do social news and social bookmarking

sites play in content promotion?

Social content can be promoted with social media press releases, microblog posts and social news