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AI Tools Bug Out Because the Internet Can Never Forget

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AI Tools Bug Out Because the Internet Can Never Forget

The internet never forgets.

That famous meme dates to at least the early 2000s. The digital internet acts as a more permanent version of what philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs deemed as the “collective memory” in his book of the same name almost 100 years ago. He concludes societies have a collective memory that depends on the framework within which they exist.

Put simply: In groups, both individual and group memories exist. I experience this when a group of my childhood friends remembers me doing things I haven’t the foggiest recollection of doing.

For better and worse, the internet has become society’s collective memory. Unlike a disagreement between friends arising over whose memory is more fallible, the internet doesn’t forget.

For better and worse, the internet has become society’s collective memory, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Over the years, this collective photographic memory has presented interesting challenges for society. Young people recording their – let’s just call it formative – behavior and opinions on social media experience greater challenges than those who did similar things in their youth without the ability to make them part of the collective memory of the internet. The same is true for post-internet companies. People can retrieve almost every word of anything the brand’s ever said in a press release or digital marketing and communications channel.

For example, if you asked me last week if I’d ever given an interview on Fox News, I would laugh and say “no.” But in writing this article, I used the Internet Archive to review a website I wrote in 1998. A press release (that I authored) was right there, highlighting my appearance on a local Fox News TV affiliate talking about this new thing called the “world wide web” and how I believed families, individuals, and companies would build websites in the future.

I forgot all about that interview, but the internet did not.

Photographic memory is a bug, not a feature

In my last weekly CMI News video, I covered the launch of Microsoft’s integration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT into web search. In that story, I also talked about Google’s attempt at newsjacking Microsoft’s announcement and its resulting very bad day.

Google’s bad day stemmed from the AI chatbot returning an inaccurate “fact” that the James Webb Telescope took the first picture of exoplanets (those that lie outside our solar system). In fact, the first telescope to photograph exoplanets did so in 2004.

Did the internet have that information? Yes, of course, it did. Did the internet forget? No.

The internet remembered perfectly. Its memories, though, are inaccurate. Most of the popular search engines (including Google and Bing) returned results with the Webb-did-it-first answer as hundreds of articles from media outlets repeated the same inaccurate conclusion.

The mistake seems to have originated from a NASA release that opened, “For the first time, astronomers have used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to take a direct image of a planet outside our solar system.”  Say what you will structurally about that sentence – the end result led all those media companies to run with one distinct interpretation of the “fact” – that it was the first time exoplanets had been photographed.

The thing is, when NASA distributed the release in September 2022, almost no one cared about the erroneous interpretation of the sentence. (A few articles contained comments to correct the record or detail the event more precisely.) The internet stored the results in its memory. When an artificial intelligence tool used collective memory to answer a question about the James Webb Space Telescope, it dutifully remembered. Perfectly.

@Google’s Bard AI mistake on the Webb telescope discovery was built on an erroneous interpretation made repeatedly by media five months earlier on the internet, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

The internet is our collective memory. The more of us who remember inaccurately, the more likely the collective will do the same.

Forgetfulness is a feature, not a bug

Scientists have long shown the human trait of forgetfulness is a good thing. It helps people prioritize, think better, make better decisions, and be more creative. Human “memory” is not designed to retrieve facts from a database but to help people retain what is valuable to make intelligent decisions. Your brain isn’t broken when you forget something. It often purposely disregards the information to let you focus on retaining more important information, simplifying a concept, or allowing you to find new information about what you already believe you understand.

Think about when you watched a movie for the second time and forgot how great it was or saw it in a new way. Or think about when you say to someone, “What you’re saying doesn’t sound right, but I forget why,” and look up something you feel you should already know.

Humans have the ability to forget irrelevant information. Now, your brains aren’t the perfect judge of what’s irrelevant. Sometimes, they wrongly judge what information is irrelevant. When I forgot something at the grocery store after my wife explicitly asked for it, my brain either decided the request was irrelevant information or it made room for something else (like what I was going to write about for my weekly article). Believe me when I say my juicy rationalization for my forgetfulness is the latter, not the former.

Overall, the flaws in AI – and specifically generative content at this point in its development – demonstrate why forgetfulness can be a feature and one to incorporate into your process. AI designers have their work cut out for them to design systems that can forget and “not know” things so that they can reframe AI learning to understand what information is relevant and irrelevant.

Don’t forget to forget your content

As marketing and communication practitioners, you have your collective memory challenges. Don’t forget your repository of digital content acts like the internet. It, too, never forgets.

AI tools can present an attractive opportunity to learn from your website, digital asset management system, measurement data, CRM platform, etc. One marketing director told me recently they turned an AI chatbot loose on 128,000 documents collected over the years to learn how to suggest and create new content and insights for the marketing team.

That’s a wonderful experiment, but don’t forget (pun intended) that just because you created it, the information can still be inaccurate, irrelevant, or something the brand would rather forget. As you deploy AI-oriented tools, be more mindful of these two things:

1. Remember you are the AI

An AI-based tool predicts a content topic won’t work because of how poorly it performed in the past. The AI dutifully recalls every image, word, and punctuation of the content campaign you long forgot. It remembers how poorly it all turned out.

The AI tool returns answers based on that collective memory. However, while the memory isn’t wrong, you may have been. It’s possible that just like the reporters that misread the NASA release and created hundreds of articles with an inaccurate description, you’ve created tons of messaging, content, analysis, and measurement data based on something just as inaccurate. (The same thinking applies when the AI tool suggests content topics based on positive performances.)

Just because the machine learned correctly doesn’t mean it learned something correct.

2. Remember why people forget things

People forget things to allow room to focus on what’s important. That’s not because they can’t “fit” more information inside their brains; it’s because people’s memories are meant to help them focus on the information that they believe is most important and make better choices.

AI can help develop content based on learning from a perfect collective memory of everything created. But sometimes, forgetting details allows people to see a new forest. Sometimes it’s because you forgot why you loved that old content so much that you could see something familiar in a new way.

If you put all your trust in the photographic memory to write content or suggest creative based mostly on irrelevant or (worse) inaccurate information, you can bet it will always be accurate to what you remembered but never benefit from what you’ve forgotten.

Don’t forget this

Remember, everything relevant is always worth remembering, but remembering everything isn’t always relevant.

Sometimes having some memory loss can be a good thing in making better creative decisions.

It’s your story. Tell it well.

Get Robert’s take on content marketing industry news in just five minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries

Watch previous episodes or read the lightly edited transcripts.

Subscribe to workday or weekly CMI emails to get Rose-Colored Glasses in your inbox each week. 

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute



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Tips and Tricks for Digital PR

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Tips and Tricks for Digital PR

In the bustling digital landscape of the 21st century, public relations (PR) stands as a beacon of brand visibility, trust-building, and reputation management. As businesses navigate the complexities of online competition, the synergy between search engine optimization (SEO) and PR has become increasingly evident. This article delves into digital PR, exploring how strategic integration with SEO practices can elevate brand visibility, drive organic traffic, and amplify PR success.

The SEO & Digital PR Power Couple

In today’s digital landscape, success hinges on a strong online presence. Two crucial aspects of achieving this are SEO and Digital PR. While they may have functioned as separate strategies in the past, they’re now recognized as a powerful team.

SEO focuses on optimizing your website and content to rank higher in search engine results, driving organic traffic. PR, on the other hand, builds brand awareness and cultivates positive press mentions.

However, creating compelling content that resonates with audiences and search engines can be challenging for many PR professionals. A recent Institute for Public Relations study found that nearly three-quarters (70%) of PR practitioners struggle with content creation. This is where the magic of SEO and digital PR working together comes in.

Combining these forces creates a synergy that delivers impressive results. Effective SEO techniques in PR campaigns can amplify brand messaging and ensure it reaches the right audience through search engines.

Conversely, strong PR efforts can generate backlinks to your website, a significant factor influencing SEO ranking. This teamwork propels brands to industry leadership by establishing online authority and positive brand sentiment.

Optimizing Your PR Efforts for SEO

PR and SEO go hand-in-hand in today’s digital marketing landscape. By aligning your PR activities with SEO best practices, you can significantly boost your online presence and reach a wider audience. Here’s how:

Keyword Research

Just like any successful marketing campaign, PR needs a strong foundation. Keyword research is crucial for understanding the language your target audience uses online. According to Google, more than half of consumers (53%) consult online resources before purchasing a product or service.

This includes potential students researching educational options. For instance, terms like “best online degrees for 2024” can be valuable keywords for online schools to target in their PR efforts to reach potential students actively searching for programs.

By identifying relevant keywords with high search volume, PR professionals can craft messaging that resonates with their audience and increases the discoverability of their content in search results.

Content is King (and Queen)

Compelling and newsworthy content is the cornerstone of any successful PR campaign. But for SEO, it’s not just about capturing attention.

High-quality content, such as press releases, blog posts, and infographics, should also be optimized for search engines. This includes using relevant keywords strategically throughout your content and adhering to on-page SEO best practices. By creating content that is both informative and search-engine friendly, you attract not only readers but also valuable backlinks and organic traffic.

Building Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites pointing back to yours. Search engines consider backlinks a sign of trustworthiness and authority.

Strategic PR campaigns can help you secure these valuable backlinks by pitching newsworthy content to relevant websites, building relationships with journalists and influencers, and leveraging social media to promote your content. However, focusing on earning backlinks from reputable sources is crucial, as spammy tactics can hurt your SEO efforts.

Optimizing Media Coverage

Every media placement you secure, whether an article, interview, or social media mention, presents an opportunity to enhance your SEO. Encourage journalists and influencers to include relevant keywords and links to your website in their coverage.

Promoting these media placements on your social media channels can amplify their reach and drive more organic traffic to your website.

Advanced SEO Techniques for PR Success

Today’s audiences crave engaging content; SEO is crucial to seeing your message. Incorporating advanced SEO tactics into your PR strategy can amplify your reach and achieve tremendous success.

Leveraging Multimedia

We’re living in the age of visual storytelling. Eye-catching images, infographics, and videos aren’t just trends; they’re powerful tools for grabbing attention and boosting SEO.

A Demand Metric report highlights the power of video marketing for conversions. 93% of marketers agree that video is just as practical, or even more effective, at driving conversions compared to other content formats.

These elements enhance user experience and provide opportunities for keyword optimization. Descriptive alt tags and strategic file names can help search engines understand your content and improve your ranking for relevant searches.

Data-Driven PR

Gone are the days of guesswork in PR. You can achieve laser focus and maximum impact by integrating SEO data with your PR strategy. Tools like keyword research can help you identify topics and language your target audience is actively searching for.

Analyzing website traffic and other SEO metrics allows you to tailor your content for optimal performance. This data-driven approach ensures you craft content that resonates with your audience and achieves your PR goals.

Collaboration is Key: Aligning SEO & PR Teams

Many companies have separate SEO and PR teams, but these teams should work together closely for maximum impact. By collaborating, SEO and PR can achieve more than they could. Here’s why:

  • More robust results: When SEO and PR share information, like keyword research and content plans, they can create campaigns strategically placed in search engines and reach the right audience through media coverage.
  • Unified Voice: Consistent team communication ensures a consistent message across all channels, from website content to press releases. This builds trust and credibility with your target audience.
  • Measurable Success: Working together allows SEO and PR to track the combined impact of their efforts. This data can refine future campaigns and demonstrate the overall value they bring to the organization.

In short, by breaking down silos and working as one unit, SEO and PR can create a powerful force for achieving your company’s goals.

The Future of SEO & Digital PR

The digital world is constantly changing, and how we approach SEO and digital PR also needs to evolve. Here’s a look at some of the biggest trends we can expect to see:

AI-powered everything

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to become a game-changer in SEO and digital PR. AI can help create high-quality content tailored to specific audiences, analyze vast data to identify trends and opportunities and personalize outreach efforts for journalists and influencers.

Voice search is king

With the rise of voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, voice search optimization is becoming increasingly important. This means websites must be optimized for natural language queries and focus on long-tail keywords that people might use when speaking.

Focus on user experience

Search engines are becoming more competent at understanding what users are looking for and giving more weight to websites offering a positive UX. This means creating sites that are easy to navigate, load quickly, and provide valuable and relevant information.

Building trust and authority

Search engines also emphasize Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) when ranking websites. This means businesses must establish themselves as thought leaders by creating high-quality content and building relationships with other reputable websites.

By staying ahead of these trends, businesses can ensure their websites are visible, and their brands are well-represented in the ever-changing digital landscape.

Beyond the Buzz: Building Lasting Success with SEO-Fueled PR

In the dynamic realm of digital PR, mastering the art of SEO integration is paramount for sustained success. By optimizing PR efforts through strategic keyword research, compelling content creation, and targeted link-building strategies, brands can amplify their visibility, drive organic traffic, and forge lasting connections with their audience.

As we march towards the future, the synergy between SEO and PR will continue to be a guiding light, illuminating the path towards digital supremacy.

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3 Contextual Link-Building Strategies That Actually Work

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3 Contextual Link-Building Strategies That Actually Work

 

Quality content can get your web pages ranking higher in Google search results. But contextual links can help, too.

Google says the inclusion of relevant, high-quality links signals the content that includes them may be quality content, too.

So, how can you earn contextual links to give your content an edge over the competition? Adopt one, two, or all three of the strategies detailed in this article.

But first, let’s understand what contextual links are.

What are contextual links?

A contextual link appears in the body of a web page’s content. A hyperlink is added to a relevant word or phrase. They:

  • Link to other pages on the site.
  • Cite the source of a claim or statistic.
  • Indicate other relevant pages.
  • Provide readers with more in-depth information on the topic.
  • Guide readers to a product or service.

In this screenshot of an article with the header, Challenges of Productivity Tracking in Remote Workplaces, three phrases are hyperlinked — measure productivity, Microsoft, and research by Gartner.

Each contextual link serves a purpose:

  • “Measure productivity” goes to a Slack article about how to measure employee productivity.
  • “Microsoft” directs the reader to the original research for the cited statistic.
  • “Research by Gartner” links to the native source for the research cited in that paragraph.

With a contextual link-building strategy, you not only boost your content in the eyes of Google but also encourage other sites to use your valuable content to provide their readers with additional information or context.

Now, let me show you three strategies to grow your contextual links and improve your content’s rankings.

1. Help sites fix their broken links

Broken link building involves contacting a website, pointing out a broken external link on a page, and suggesting your content as its replacement.

Broken links could result from a 404 error, a blank page, or a redirect to an irrelevant page — any alteration that ruins the original link’s purpose.

Since broken links negatively affect the visitor experience, removing them is in the site’s best interest. Your replacement offer gives them a quick solution to their problem. Plus, people are more willing to help you after you’ve helped them.

To find broken links, use a tool like Free Backlink Checker extension. I also like to inspect links manually since most tools only pick up 404 errors. Rely solely on them, and you will miss relevant broken-link opportunities.

Ahrefs also has tools for finding broken links. Its free broken link checker is helpful, but the paid version is more robust.

Paid subscribers can go to Site Explorer, go to the Outgoing Links report, and click on “Broken Links” from the dropdown menu.

The report identifies the total number of broken links (3,136 in the example below), the referring pages (the URL for the content including the broken link), the anchor (the words hyperlinked in the content), and the link (the URL that no longer directs to a viable page).

The report identifies the total number of broken links (3,136 in the example below), the referring pages, the anchor, and the link.

Ahrefs subscribers can also compile a Best by Links report under the Pages option in the Site Explorer tool.

In this example, the report lists pages with 404 page-not-found errors for TheMuse.com. It has 6,230 pages with broken external links. Each page URL listed is accompanied by the number of referring domains and a number of links to the page.

The report lists pages with 404 page-not-found errors for TheMuse.com. It has 6,230 pages with broken external links.

This research can identify the topics with the biggest potential to become the fixes for a broken link. You can create content to address them or identify content you already published. Just make sure the content closely matches the intent of the anchor text’s original link.

For example, the same research report, which is now a broken link, is cited in articles from Oyster and TINYpulse. On Oyster, the anchor text reads, “44% of companies did not allow remote work.” On TINYpulse, the anchor text says, “only 33% are very satisfied with the level of trust in their organization.”

On Oyster, the anchor text reads, “44% of companies did not allow remote work.”
On TINYpulse, the anchor text says, “only 33% are very satisfied with the level of trust in their organization.”

For a single article link to replace the broken link on Oyster and TINYpulse, the content would need to cite both a statistic about remote work and another stat about trust in organizations.

2. Guest posting

Like the broken-link replacement strategy, guest posting benefits both your and the recipient’s sites. You reach out to sites and offer to write content about a topic relevant to their audience that relates to your content subjects and includes a link to your site. This technique works well because you typically control where and how to add your link to make it as relevant as possible.

You can take multiple approaches to win guest-posting opportunities. No matter which tactics you use, track the sites and verify the site’s quality using Ahrefs, another tool, or a direct visit to the site.

First, you can use Ahrefs (or a similar tool) to examine your competitors’ backlinks and identify any links that come from guest posts. The anchor or surrounding text might hint at its status with phrases such as “contributed by,” “guest post by,” or the name of the brand or author. You also can check links manually to see if they’re contributed content.

In this example from Collegiate Parent, the headline reads “EFC Too High? Tips for Successful Aid Appeals” and includes a byline for “Billie Jo Weis.” At this point, you don’t know if it is a contributed article.

The headline reads “EFC Too High? Tips for Successful Aid Appeals” and includes a byline for “Billie Jo Weis.”

But scroll down to the end, and you can see the author’s bio. It confirms the article is a guest post because her bio says she is a client services advisor for My College Planning Team, not the publisher (Collegiate Parent).

The bio confirms the article is a guest post because it says she is a client services advisor for My College Planning Team, not the publisher (Collegiate Parent)

You can also use Google search operators to identify sites open to guest contributions. You’ll want to do several searches using variations of your target keywords and topic accompanied by phrases, such as “guest post,” “contributed by,” “guest post by,” and “guest posting guidelines.”

The example in the screenshot below works for a brand targeting college prep topics. The search is “’college prep’ ‘guest post by’ -site.pinterest.com.” The results reveal four articles from four sites that use the words “college prep” and “guest post by.” You can add those sites to your outreach tracker.

The example screenshot shows the search for "college prep" and "guest post by" -site.pinterest.com. The results reveal four articles from four sites that use the words

Finally, you can list sites relevant to your niche that didn’t appear in the earlier searches.

TIP: Not all sites that accept guest articles say so on their website.

3. Niche edits

A niche edit, sometimes referred to as a link insert, is a technique that adds a link to existing content. The key to success is finding relevant articles on high-quality sites and pitching your content as a valuable addition to those articles.

You can use a similar process to the Google guest post search. Input a broad keyword for your targeted keyword, then tell it you don’t want the targeted keyword in the title. If the entire article is about your targeted keyword, your chances of getting the publisher to include a link to a similar article are low.

Here’s an example from one of our client’s that sought to make niche edits for the keyword “soft skills.”

The Google search included these phrases:

  • “Organizational development” soft skills -intitle:”soft skills”
  • “Organizational development” soft skills employee training -intitle:”soft skills”
  • Soft skills employee training  -intitle:”soft skills” organizations

It led to an added link for “soft skills” in this article — “Employee Development,” which includes the header, “What are the benefits of employee development for an organization?”

Article from Big Think, which includes the header, “What are the benefits of employee development for an organization?” The article shows the "soft skills" link.

You can do several searches, modifying your search operators each time to see what sites and content appears. Think of multiple angles to broaden the potential sites that publish content with your targeted or a related keyword.

After you’ve crafted a list of high-quality prospects, it’s time for outreach.

Niche edits might be the hardest of the three strategies to achieve because they’re not as clear of a win-win situation as the other two (repairing broken links and publishing new content).

Your email pitch can make or break your niche-edit campaign. It must convince the publisher that your content provides so much value that they will want to take an extra step with content they’ve already completed.

 Here are some tips to craft a link-earning email pitch:

  • Start by mentioning something about them. It could be something you like about their website or the article you’re targeting. You want them to know you’ve explored their site and read the article. But don’t overdo it. A simple compliment or sentence about how you found the article helpful should suffice.
  • Introduce your content and mention how it can help their audience. Be concise and convincing, but don’t oversell it.
  • Go one step further and point to a section or sentence where you think your content might be a good fit. This will help them see where your content can add value and link to it.

Get linking

Though contextual link building may seem challenging to execute, it can bring great rewards. Follow these tips and strategies, and your valuable content will get more attention from external sites and eventually Google rankings where it deserves to be.

All tools mentioned in this article are identified by the author. If you have a tool to suggest, please tag CMI on social.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Google’s Surgical Strike on Reputation Abuse

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Google’s Surgical Strike on Reputation Abuse

These aren’t easy questions. On the one hand, many of these sites do clearly fit Google’s warning and were using their authority and reputation to rank content that is low-relevance to the main site and its visitors. With any punitive action, though, the problem is that the sites ranking below the penalized sites may not be of any higher quality. Is USA Today’s coupon section less useful than the dedicated coupon sites that will take its place from the perspective of searchers? Probably not, especially since the data comes from similar sources.

There is a legitimate question of trust here — searchers are more likely to trust this content if it’s attached to a major brand. If a site is hosting third-party content, such as a coupon marketplace, then they’re essentially lending their brand and credibility to content that they haven’t vetted. This could be seen as an abuse of trust.

In Google’s eyes, I suspect the problem is that this tactic has just spread too far, and they couldn’t continue to ignore it. Unfortunately for the sites that were hit, the penalties were severe and wiped out impacted content. Regardless of how we feel about the outcome, this was not an empty threat, and SEOs need to take Google’s new guidelines seriously.

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