Content Marketing Book Review: Audience, Relevance and Search
A few months ago, the PR folks working with IBM Press sent me a copy of “Consultation, Relevance and Search: Targeting Web Audiences with Relevant Content” by a trio of authors: James Mathewson, Frank Donatone and Cynthia Fishel. I have somewhat of a connection with IBM Press because of editing the Social Media Marketing chapter of Mike Moran and Bill Hunt’s Search Engine Marketing Inc., 2nd Edition. (Interview)
Amusing Tale: Quick forward to Oct 13th and I’m on my way through the MSP airport to catch a plane to Las Vegas where I’m speaking at Blog World New Media Expo. I complain on Twitter about $36/day parking (highway robbery in my book) and James Mathewson chimed in with advice on parking at Terminal 2. Ironically, the book I picked out to read on the plot was Mathewson’s “Consultation Relevance and Search”. On top of that, James is a fellow Minnesotan and we’ve never met or had any kind of correspondence before. Writing this review was simply meant to be 
Essentially, “Consultation, Relevance and Search” is a book for folks in the content creation business to better know writing for the web. More specifically, writing for search engines.
Many online marketers, myself included, evangelize “write for people first”. The authors of this book place a lot of faith in Google’s ability to emulate the information understanding needs of searchers and therefore focus on writing for search engines first.
A point of clarification: When I advise people to write for people first, then search engines, I’m talking about writing content in a way that is designed to guide the booklover to a particular outcome. The content should be able to stand on its own, regardless of the source that brought the visitor to it.
This is in contrast to some who write for search engines only, ensuing in keyword stuffing, nonsensical passages and other tactics simply to rank highly in search results. Of course, that’s not the kind of “search engines first” writing Mathewson, Donatone and Fishel are talking about.
The book discusses how to know customers through search and social keyword research and writing copy according to how best to connect with web content consumption, which is decidedly uncommon from pring.
The first chapter covers the essence of the entire book from keywords to information architecture to social media to measuring the success of web content. Advice is not too dissimilar that what you’d find in better blogs that cover these topics but one business I found fascinating was Chapter 2: “How the Web Medium Has Evolved from Its Oral and Print Origins”.
There are strong literary influences to the writing style and topic of this book. Chapter 2 is certainly a excellent example of that and provides some fascinating context for how uncommon web writing is from print. In particular, that web content is shapeless, meaning on the web is determined by the booklover not the writer, the booklover is in control of the tale not the writer and that web writing is never finished.
If you’ve read one of my favorite books, Search Engine Marketing Inc, then you should know that Consultation, Relevance and Search is a fantastic complement to it. It drills into the substance of meaning, context and purposefulness of writing for the web.
Many writers produce content in situations where the primary medium is traditional, like print. That same content is also published to the web. That scenario is not writing for the web. This book will help content creators know how to write specifically for web audiences and incorporate search friendly perspectives througout.
The effect of better understanding such web content creation, especially across and organization, is the effect of operationalizing SEO. As a replacement for of having a SEO “optimize” content as an extra step in the content process, following the advice in this book should help websites make optimized content from the start, saving time, likely money and increasing website marketing performance.
The best business about this book is that it’s a excellent primer for the mechanics of implementing a Content Marketing strategy that places substance on the value of Search Engine Optimization and Social Media. If those are goals for your online marketing efforts, then this book is value checking out: IBM Press.
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Content Marketing Book Review: Consultation, Relevance and Search | http://www.toprankblog.com