Eugene Schwartz who died in 1995 famously said;-

There is your audience. There is the language. There are the words that they use.

The people who are trying to make the case that Social Media can be the way to go and that optimisation is dead or dying are likely to have hitched a lift on the "Social Media Expert" bus with little or no knowledge of direct marketing, advertising or branding or of their history and evolution.

The 'smart' marketer joins a conversation or discussion that is already going on and directs the need for solutions and benefits towards a specific solution. Before you can join and understand that conversation you need to be aware and understand how those involved in it think, feel and talk about their world.

When Eugene Schwartz was alive, back in 60's (The so-called "Mad Men" period) the quote above was part of a longer statement of his, another part of the same statement follows:-

One hour a day, read. Read everything in the world except your business. Read

junk. Very much junk. Read so that anything that interests you will stick in your

memory.

That was his way of trying to make advertisers and copywriters aware and familiar with the language, the problems, the desires of the people/prospects around them.

In order to be able to communicate effectively, you must be aware of how your prospective audience thinks, what they want, what are their pressure points? These sorts of questions do not derive from the Internet, they have been in good marketers minds for decades, if not centuries!

But, all thanks to the Internet, search engine data and social media listening tools make this sort of information available to the marketer who is prepared to do the research. Remember, we are trying to join an ongoing conversation.

The trouble is that the blunt end of the 'Optimisation' industry, having spent years trying to finesse the search results by building bodgy sites full of keywords with no regard for long-term viability has given 'keywords' a bad name. In the same way some of the self-proclaimed 'experts' in social media have let themselves down because of a critical lack of marketing expertise.

But don't allow yourself to be blinded to the very real utility of being aware of how and of what your audience speaks or of real keyword research. They allow you to know what people are looking for in Google or Bing and what they are talking about on FB or Twitter. You are not only aware of what they talk about but also how they talk about it and that can be just as educational when it comes down to building content. That data alone could be worth it's weight in diamonds, if you know how to realise its' value!

Take a few minutes out, go back and re-read everything I have written so far on 'Content Marketing'.

We've been concentrating on two things really, creating great content and building an audience for it. What we have been doing in fact is creating great content and giving it away! We are giving it away because it's cheaper and more effective than advertising. We are not giving anything away really, we are building a real audience not just evanescent and transitory traffic!

The medium we are conversing via right now, gives you, me, everyone who is connected, the capacity to build an audience and address that audience directly, without any intervention from any intermediaries.

This is enormously empowering! Everything that I/we have talked about in the preceding posts, content, social media and SEO are all involved.

Permission is the difference between old style, traditional, marketing and online marketing.

LISTS AREN'T BOUGHT, THEY ARE BUILT!

Your offers will be accepted voluntarily due to your consistent, timely delivery of valuable (independent) content.

Content that's good enough that people would pay for it if they had to!

More soon