Building a content web

Content webs are posts and pages that link to one another to help your target readers find the information. In addition to giving your existing readers the opportunity to discover more of your rockin' ideas, they help Google and friends find your content, too. The more relevant links pointing to your page, the more likely that page will show up in the search results.

So what's a relevant link, exactly?
That's a link that will help a real human being find the information he or she wants.

• The link should be on a page devoted to a similar topic.
• The anchor text (you know, the blue words?) should tell the reader what to expect on the other side.
• The destination should actually have something useful to say, instead of being one of those pages that prattles on in sentences that never seem to make a point.

Example of a content web
I wrote a book review of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide. I added a link to that as part of my Squidoo business strategy devoted to business book reviews. The link is automatically included on the Terence P Ward professional Facebook profile. Your curiosity is perhaps piqued, so I link to the review of this book about small business marketing in this very post.

The links in the paragraph above are just part of a content web. I've given you relevant links to my collection of business book reviews, a review about a small business marketing book, and my fan page on Facebook. The review itself provides links to other relevant topics in my articles, keeping the reader interested in the information I have to offer. My Facebook page collects writing from a variety of sources from me and from others, and keeps my fans informed about what I'm doing overall with my writing business by feeding in other sites I write articles for and other blogs that I contribute to or maintain. Those blogs also link to relevant articles, but since they have different niches they don't always overlap.

The cycle goes on as I write new articles or blog posts. All of my writing is focused on giving readers useful information rather than a desperate plea to use my services or click on ads on the page so I can feed my family. My links are better than your links because they mean something to human beings, because for all its algorithms all Google PageRank is designed for is to give surfers exactly what they're looking for.

Case Study or, How I'm Awesome

My latest assignment in Duct Tape Marketing was to write up a case study, showing how a client with a problem gets it solved with my writing. It's more in-depth than a testimonial, and since I'm writing it I know it will cover the key points (that is, bring out all the wonderfulness that I have to offer). I also link to my client in it, both to show that it's real (or I might want to avoid making it easy for people to verify it) and to promote my client as a thank-you. This is my first draft, here for your consideration:

Kirk White is a minister and spiritual teacher who has been mentoring in his faith for twenty-five years. He began writing books collecting his knowledge, and I asked him about book publishing one day.

“I'm doing everything they tell me to do,”he told me. “I got a MySpace when they said I should, set up a Facebook profile when I was asked to . . . only thing I can't do is get on Wikipedia. They say it would be good if I was on Wikipedia, but I don't know how to do that.”

I thought about Kirk and what I knew of his accomplishments. “I think I can do that,” I told him, “but I'm going to need your help.”

I've been editing Wikipedia for many years, and I've sent many new articles to the gallows deletion – for not every bit of information is notable, and thus worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia. I believed that Kirk was notable, but I was going to have to follow Wikipedia's rules and prove it.

I started by talking to Kirk about the most interesting things that he'd accomplished. We came up with a list:

• He founded the first seminary in his denomination
• He's published two books
• He served on the board of a major organization within his religion
• He has been a featured speaker in a number of venues
  

Now the challenge was to find sources for this information that would be suitable for Wikipedia. I asked Kirk, “Who's been writing about you? Where has your name been in print?” We came up with another list:

• He's interviewed in the disseminal scholarly book on his faith.
• A prominent blogger named him one of the 25 most influential members of his faith.
• He'd been profiled in other books.
• He has been frequently interviewed by newspaper and television reporters.
  

Sources on Wikipedia can't be too close to the subject (so I couldn't use Kirk's books as sources about him) and can't be self-published (such as with a blog or an on-demand book publishing company). The best sources are secondary – books and journals that take an academic look at the subject – and can be considered both reliable and verifiable (with the best possible sources being peer-reviewed academic journals, since they clearly meet all three criteria). Being in a scholarly book was a big plus, with the newspapers and other books giving Kirk, as he called it, “WikiCred.” Being mentioned in a blog, no matter how prominent, didn't help him at all.

I wrote and posted the page with all the citations in place, adding a link to Kirk's web site as a finishing touch. Only one link is needed, and it won't improve the search engine rankings of Kirk's site whatsoever, but it's permitted for the convenience of the readers. Kirk White made the cut and had himself a Wikipedia page, a powerful credibility tool for a published writer.

Marketing when the rubber hits the . . .

I hope you'll forgive me, but I want to unroll this post slowly.

Really good marketing is about finding a new way to get people to think about a product. Interruption advertising was enough in the 1950s, when the world was glued to its television sets, but in the 21st century people are pretty much desensitized to that tactic. A firm marketing strategy doesn't necessarily need to stretch the truth, but it should find a new dimension to talk about.

That's why I'm terribly impressed by the FitKit, which can be downloaded or ordered by malemail by anyone interested in buying custom-sized condoms. It's great in a bunch of different ways.

• It's a product that still automatically generates a head-turn just by marketing it
• They've identified a biological fact that other manufacturers have largely ignored (my college sex ed professor liked to pull one over her foot and up to her knee to show that none of her students were too big to use one), despite clear evidence that there is an unmet need
• They point out that a properly-sized condom is less likely to fail and is more likely to be worn in the first place
• They use a sizing system that doesn't automatically play into male competitiveness, because it's not sequential (although every guy, and some women, that I've showed it to were curious how I measured up)

This campaign downplays titillation, which is good because we know that sex sells and that it's more effective if the rest of us make the jokes. It promotes birth control and disease prevention. It provides an opportunity for privacy, a far cry from the days when a visit to the drugstore could be a blessing or a curse.

Census Bureau shows us all how to market with education

Randy Aimone, my Duct Tape Marketing coach, talks quite a bit about effective advertising. After all, businesses can easily break the bank getting the word out about their services, and it's nice to be able to get an idea of how much return an advertising investment will yield. In particular, Professor Aimone (yes, he is indeed a college professor) warns how interruption advertising just doesn't have the bang for the buck that it used to carry.

Interruption advertising is something you see all the time, whether or not you know it by that name:

• Television commercials (which use technology to actually louder even if they're not legally louder than the program)
  
• Newspaper stories that are continued after two pages of furniture store sales (honestly, do furniture stores just hang a "going out of business" sign outside on opening day?)
• Radio spots that make you cringe (auto dealerships, anyone?)

Today I heard about a brilliant piece of marketing that is sure to be effective because it's not an interruption - and surprisingly, it comes from an organization that isn't exactly known for innovation: the US Government.

The Census Bureau partnered with Telemundo, a large Spanish-language television network, to reach out to this underserved demographic. A character in one of the network's most popular soap operas will be getting a job as a census worker, and spend several episodes explaining how and why people should participate. Both partners have something to gain: the Census Bureau hopes to alleviate fears that illegal aliens will be reported if they are counted (it's not part of their mandate, so they won't be), which will probably help Telemundo's ratings, since census data are used by Nielsen to place those oh-so-powerful boxes in homes (and the more Spanish-speaking homes have Nielsen boxes, the more Telemundo can charge for interruption advertising on its programs).

The idea is innovative, unobtrusive, and will probably be very effective for both partners. Kudos to the person who pitched the idea, and double-kudos to the people that didn't reject it out-of-hand because "that's not the way we do things."