The world is changing exponentially. Every single industry in South Africa is grappling with the challenge of how to integrate the Fourth Industrial Revolution – where technology will assist us with our work – into their day-to-day practices. What’s scary is that countries overseas are even talking about the Fifth Industrial Revolution and are devising ways in which they can adapt their businesses to fit in with this changing reality.
With this changing technology, the Internet has also radically shifted. Gone are the days when Google’s founders just wanted to categorise the world’s information with their search engine. Now, Google – and other search engines alike – have become more intuitive and have adopted quite AI-like characteristics where you ask it a question and it provides you with answers. As more users make use of this function, the results that are returned become more accurate.
The Yellow Pages of the future
The Internet has replaced the Yellow Pages as a source where people go to find information. From the number of your local pizza place to the latest research being conducted on weight loss, the Internet is the place where you can find what you’re looking for.
However, to make sure that your information can be found by people who are looking for it, you need to have a presence on the Internet. Search engine bots can’t find beautifully designed pictures. It doesn’t mean anything to them. What they’re looking for is text that they can crawl and understand so that they can adequately answer the question that searchers are posing to them.
This means that you need to have rich content on your website – as well as on other platforms such as your social media – that these bots can read. It needs to be descriptive and show people exactly what you do so that you can be seen as relevant in the field that you are in.
So, how will a content marketing course help you do this? Surely, all that’s required is to put a few bullet points up on a website and that will be enough?
Nothing could be further from the truth.