Content Writing & Your Digital Presence

Your Online Semantic Foundation is Built On & Fortified By The Content You Write

 

Everything you do online adds to the semantic structure of your digital presence.  Luckily, your actions can be purposeful. You can organize and establish trails and tributaries of information (about yourself and your business) to craft the ways in which you will be known online. In other words, you can deliberately construct your digital or online presence. The thing to keep in mind is that it demands being intentional in your actions. Also, consistency is a huge factor.

It’s your chance to make sure you’re contributing, on your own behalf to building an overarching compilation of evidence or clues about who you are, what you do, why you do it and the connections you want to emphasize. If you demonstrate with continuity and authenticity who you are, that’s primarily who you’ll be in the public’s perception.

“Semantic structure is a fancy term for an organization that represents meaning.” Like a sentence. (opencontent.org:docs:semantics.html)

In a recent post focused on igniting our creative marketing strategies, I wrote, “With so many moving parts, satellite options, constant changes and new arenas continually popping up online how do we take full advantage of what’s available to us to forge a cohesive online presence?”

It can be daunting. Yet, the imperative is to do just that. Granted, there is such a thing as being presented with more choices all at once than feel manageable. However, we find the venues or social platforms that make most sense for us; where our most valued audience and customers are. Then we set about the long-term task of connecting the dots that become our known entity across the web.

Our Content Is Our Identity Emissary

Making those choices and following through with them begins the process of making our content work for us. [Tweet “We use our content as an identity emissary.”]We build a cross-web picture of our brand identity via our social actions and with the content we create. The content that, at least in the beginning stages, will be housed on our hub; our business website. (Later on, you may also be creating content for other domains)

 “The transition of marketing has been one from the traditional 4Ps of Product, Place, Price and Promotion to the modern 4Es of Experience, Everywhere, Exchange and Evangelism. 

…In the hyper-connected, transparent world we are in now, branding requires real connection and the establishment of authenticity that allows brand values to surface.

…Unless your brand is clearly understood, its intent, values and expertise experienced then it is unlikely to be able to do anything more than struggle for the necessary mindshare of your audience required to make a sale.

In the new marketing age the segregation of branding, marketing and search engine optimization no longer exist. Being yourself, clichéd as it might sound has become the ultimate point of differentiation.”
David Amerland, “The New Marketing Is Also The New SEO”

Content Development & Your Online Presence

If you’re pursuing an online presence because you’re in business (or for any other reason), you’ll quickly encounter the conjoined need for creating content. There’s little chance for building a meaningful, fully realized online presence without it. Learning how to go about it can be challenging for some. But looking at it from different angles, realizing we can invent our own unique methods, style and footsteps eases the hopefully temporary confusion or difficulty.

Digital Footprint:
“Active digital footprints are created when personal data is released deliberately by a user for the purpose of sharing information about oneself by means of websites or social media.” (Wikipedia)

Apply that principal to branding on the semantic web. [Tweet “Whenever you have interacted online and left a piece of yourself behind, it counts. “]Or shared someone else’s content as well as the original content you publish online. Each become part of the structure of your digital footprint.

Describing the underlying concepts of writing content in the context of the semantic web, Teodora Petkova has described how we create the semantic network of our own brand. She has a way of projecting concept to practical application without the reader having to feel the challenge of the journey. Instead, it’s right there for the taking so you can transform it and put it to use for yourself and your business.

“Publishing on the web is actually entering a huge corpus of texts. It is a way to build countless relationships with the quadrillion words available on the web and the indefinite number of associations in a person’s mind. In other words, content writing is about creating semantic networks. Through associations they connect you to people, places, concepts, you name it. They shape your identity.”
Theodora Petkova, “A Conceptual Basis for Content Writing”

Finally. Writing Content

As a first hand witness to the content marketing overwhelm that can paralyze small and micro business owners, I am reminded again of feeling like Dorothy on the return trip and this is what I wrote about it not all that long ago:

“Simplifying; coming from where we already are, accepting what’s compelling right now, what we already know, even if it might not seem right, is often right. That place is precisely where we’re going to mine some of the best golden material we’ve got.

The reason we often we miss the bulls eye is that we’re focusing on a spot too far away. Turn the dial and bring it closer. Look right here. Relax into that spot, that thought, or idea that was here all along and is yours alone.”  “Seeking Your Wily Idea For Writing Content”

[Tweet “You know your business better than anyone else.”] All the big stuff and the small details too. There’s the mundane, everyday, run of the mill operational minutiae that makes everything work. You have your purpose, striving and dreams. What you can do, what you do now and hope to do in the future. These things make you who we are. Put together they tell your story.

A little here, some more there in bits and pieces. Parts. Dissected, taken apart and put back together deliberately across the semantically woven web, you put out the content that sends the message to your customers, to Google, your audience your evangelists. And shows them how you can fulfill their needs. You can do this. Think of it in the smaller parts, and one step at a time, put them together. Stick with it and it will all add up to a complete semantic picture.

 

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Photo Credit: iStock, Re-mix by Gina Fiedel

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