Fereshteh Forough from Film Annex recently sat down for an interview with Geng Wang, Chief Operating Office of Community Elf, a Pittsburgh-based social media and reputation management firm. Community Elf, which helps companies grow and sustain their social media following, works with Film Annex to create excellent social content.
As Wang points out, social media is all about community. He says, “With Film Annex, we’ve 
really worked to build communities both here in the US but also abroad in places like Afghanistan, trying to create, in some ways, a community of young students who are able to leverage the technologies that are available with social media.” By helping Film Annex foster its sustainable philanthropy mission in Afghanistan through social channels, the company can focus more on doing good, rather than just talking about it.
Wang points out that one of the critical steps to social media is becoming a thought leader in a particular niche. By positioning key employees as thought leaders, companies can leverage their expertise and combine it with long tail keywords for a great social strategy. He explains, “You have to make sure that the niche you’re trying to make them a thought leader in is something that they’re truly knowledgeable about.”
Finally, Wang offers up some advice for business owners looking to capitalize on social media and content, like blogs. He points out that long tail keywords are a very useful method for driving traffic. He explains, “There’s different ways of evaluating good keywords. You would look at how competitive those keywords are. How hard would it be to rank for those keywords? Two, it’s around relevance to the company. What can you talk about? Three is what sort of keywords are being searched. There’s both the competitiveness of the keywords in terms of how many people are trying to rank for them, and demand. You try to find the sweet spot in between.”
View the original video.
The new Film Annex keyword ranking tool allows users in other countries to track keywords in Farsi, Pashto, Dari and a host of other languages used in Central Asia. The interface allows users to input the English-language translation of a keyword, then translates it into multiple other languages. Finally, it shows the ranking for each keyword in that particular language.
Central Asia is an important region for Film Annex's operations. The site is heavily involved in the region and even builds Internet-connected classrooms for women in Afghanistan. Giving bloggers a chance to write in their native language and get ranked for important keywords is a critical step for Film Annex's growth. This allows Afghan women and men to learn about social media and keywords while also producing quality content for one of the top online film distribution platforms.
Learning which keywords your site ranks highly for is critical when you're trying to build a viable business. Long-tail keyword research and ranking are very important for growing an online business. As other regions around the globe become more influential in today's interconnected business environment, ranking for keywords in non-English languages will become more imperative. The growth of Internet in the Central Asia region has been astonishing, and putting keywords into regional tongues is an essential key for growth.
While English is the primary language for businesses around the globe, end users may not always speak the language. A key step to growing Film Annex (and any website looking to enter the Central Asia market) revolves around putting keywords in natural native languages. Click here to try it for yourself.
A recent survey conducted by Awareness revealed that "Better Customer Engagement" was the #1 thing marketers have on their wish list this holiday season.
On tracking effectiveness of engagement activities, I spoke with Jon Pastor of Community Elf, and they think about the following 4 categories:
- Improvement in ranking for critical keywords on Google;
- Improvement in traffic to the site (visits) and stickiness (avg time on site);
- Improvement in fan/follower counts, and more importantly, engagement (shares, comments, retweets, post likes);
- Sharing of the conversation (for the important conversations regarding your topics on the internet, what % are you involved in).
As we move forward to the next level of target marketing and social media strategy for clients of Target Marketing Annex, we will reveal a number of measurement tools to clients that specifically measure marketing data.
For example, we were able to create an internal "Keyword Ranking" tool where we can rank each of our long tailed keywords for Film Annex on Google for traditional search and for video search:
"Online Video Advertising" and "Online Video Filmmakers" are harder words to rank for so we make strategic decisions when writing content about which keywords to include. As Film Annex is focused on attracting quality filmmakers, we made the decsion to write more about "online video filmmakers" into content. Hey we just did it here :)
Look for more measurement tools in the New Year.
For a number of years in the 2000's, I worked as a writer/researcher for public companies that were looking to spread their message. The marketing/research reports were your garden variety 8-12 page reports which explained the company/client via:
- executive summary;
- data and charts;
- pictures to support the prose.
Here is an unrelated example from Griffin Securities:
In the old days, the reports were sent by mail, then email, and now they are shared by companies and researchers on SlideShare.
LinkedIn acquired SlideShare for $119 million in cash and stock. SlideShare is a sharing platform for business documents, videos and presentations. SlideShare lets anyone share presentations and video and also serves as a social discovery platform for users to find relevant content and connect with other members who share similar interests. The company also has a huge enterprise following, and companies like IBM and others use the platform to curate content from all of their employees and partners on a branded page.
As of March 2012, SlideShare users uploaded more than nine million presentations, and SlideShare had nearly 29 million unique visitors according to comScore. For comparison purposes, Film Annex had 54 million unique users in October 2012, and this "corporate Blog" will get 70,000+ readers/visitors in November 2012.
The simple question is, "Does anyone read twelve to twenty page reports anymore?"
Before I get hate messages from Wall Street analyst, let me say that there is a place for independent Wall Street research, but in the modern world stakeholders/readers/investors are looking for messaging that is direct, to the point, and most importantly, transparent.
Here is an example of our private company client Cupcake Digital sharing their "Positioning Paper" on the "Investor" page of their website:
I make the argument that people/stakeholders/investors/hedge funds want to read 5 pages (or less!) of an executive summary and more importantly, they want to see their Chairman/CEO. In this video, Brad Powers, Chairman of Cupcake Digital, tells us what makes them different:
In addition, you can find an entire video series on Brad Powers, Cupcake Digital Management, Board Members and other stakeholders at:
Cupcake Digital WebTV @ Film Annex
Cupcake Digital Management Videos
Cupcake Digital Blog
Wall Street video messaging or investor video messaging combined with target marketing makes a compelling presentation for corporate and NGO clients at Target Marketing Annex.
Your Buzz is a real time online target marketing and Thought Leadership platform that allows clients and partners to market themselves to very specific groups of influencers, investors, stakeholders, and sales prospects. We create an Organic Following with and for our clients. Target Marketing Annex has developed the Your Buzz technology platform as a perfect complement to Film Annex.com's traffic and distribution.
So how does it work?
One simple way to test our progress is with the everyday Google search engine. Below are some Google Custom Search engine results from all the platforms in The Film Annex Network:
Next combine these targeted searches with our ability to identify "Influencers", where we identify, rank, and target specific influencers and prospects in clients' industries with our proprietary technology. Finally,one to one "Engagement" is how we get your industry influencers to love your company message.
The combination of Social Media technologies, keyword triangulation, and some secret Italian
sauce make for very powerful target marketing campaigns in the modern online world.
In this video, Film Annex Founder/CEO Francesco Rulli explains the concept of social media blogs. Writing is more efficient than talking because it can be searched online using specific keywords. Because explaining concepts is easier in writing, blogging gives people the opportunity to establish knowledge about topics and share it with others. The use of keywords is important when blogging, and every blogger should know what keywords are relevant to them and their field so they can establish a strong presence online. As part of the Afghan Development Project, Francesco Rulli's established "building schools in Afghanistan" as his specific keywords.
Visit the Francesco Rulli Web TV for more blogs and videos.
We often get asked the question, "So what is Film Annex Buzz? Is it a SEO (search 
engine optimization) platform?"
Yes, we use all standard and advanced SEO practices when we work with clients, but that is less than 20% of what Film Annex Buzz does. The reality is small companies DON'T have the luxury of waiting for people to find them on search. They have to reachout and engage with their stakeholders and customers. We often do this with "long tailed keywords".
- What are the keywords that best define who you are on an online search today?
- What are the keywords that are within your reach in the near future?
Let's take Francesco Rulli as an example: Italian, Online Distribution, and Judo.
If you search the above keywords separately Francesco Rulli is hard to find. If you combine them, he comes out on top of Google. What really puts Francesco apart from the rest of the world is the keyword Judo. Knowing these keywords defines Francesco and consequently shapes some of his personal and business strategies.
Once Francesco started to focus on "building schools in Afghanistan" in the content that he produces at Film Annex, he started to climb on Google to first page in searches. Now he is positioned as a Thought Leader on Afghanistan, with interviews on the United Nations TV Network. Francesco's Klout score climbed to 58 from 38 and Francesco Rulli's Film Annex Buzz is now 88 out of 100.
What Film Annex BUZZ provides to companies, organizations, people, and even filmmakers is a quantitative study of what you are today and what you could be or should be tomorrow based on your keywords. Film Annex BUZZ is the essence of the strategy that allows you to pick your battles and win them one at a time.
The reverse process of defining keywords, for example defining them after a company strategy or making a feature film, is an innovative process supported by our proprietary technology and know-how.
- What are your keywords?
- What should be your keywords?
- What will be your keywords?
- In short, who are you?
Film Annex Buzz is a Social Media Strategies program that harnesses the power and reach of social and traditional media. It serves to:
- Produce tangible, and client-specific leads;
- Grow your company’s corporate and investor audience;
- Create "on-line" conversations between a company and their stakeholders;
- Elevate your company’s visibility, and enhance your company’s transparency; and
- Positions companies and C.E.O.'s as "Thought Leaders" within their industry.
Film Annex Buzz acts as a brand or company's "Mission Control" and it functions as a Lead Generation Machine. No matter how brilliant and talented you, your brand or your company may be, you won't be amply appreciated by your "stakeholders" until the outside world recognizes you. The Film Annex Buzz platform reaches 12 million unique viewers per month and up to 30 million videos are watched each month.
On November 11th 2011: Francesco Rulli coined this term “Slavery Technology 
Organization", which was Francesco's way of poking a little fun at the BIG platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo that pay content providers (filmmakers and writers) practically nothing for their content. Here at Film Annex we share Advertising Revenues 50/50 with content providers as expressed here in one of our early articles:
http://www.filmannexcorp.com/blog/bid/99460/Financial-Sustainability-On-the-Web-Film-Annex-Shows-You-the-Money
Here is a series of "Slavery Technology Organization" articles on Film Annex Corp:
http://www.filmannexcorp.com/blog/?Tag=slavery+technology+organization
In this video, Tyler Trimbath explains the "Big Picture" of his SEO and tagging process @ Film Annex:
Watch more on Film Annex
Digging deeper, we all can use the power of effective Keyword and Tag technology, and it allows us to express a concept in a very functional way and makes specific content easily searchable on the web.
Many online articles discuss search engine optimization techniques related to titles, meta tags, and site maps which are important but confusing. There are a number of SEO techniques that may be best left to professionals, but a great deal of on-page SEO/blog tag SEO is something we can all do ourselves. SEO in general is all about ensuring that search engines can find your content in this case blogs/articles specifically. A search engine will then list your information because it provides elements relevant to what you may be providing.
Most search engines only “crawl” for text, and may not index pictures or video the same as verbage. The bulk of crawling, indexing andranking happen because of specific tag words formatted in the content or tagged to the blog itself. Research and be sure you know what keywords are being entered in search engines by those looking tofind you. Next, avoid stuffing keywords into blogs that may not make sense. On top of that make sure your content and “TAGS” are relevant to the blog orarticle. TAG’s really become specific KEY words “LONG TAILED” that break downthe rich content in each article posted.
As an example if you write an article about Political Debates, that would be considered the main category. However, “TAG’s” identify the detail in the categorysuch as “Democratic National Debates”, “Upcoming Presidential Debates”, “Final Debates Before The Primary”, etc… They are a list of specific words that individuals will use to search for exact content.
"Tags are the gasoline of this industry", without tags it can be extremely difficult to gather information and express a cohesive concept. This is the reason why Film Annex has implemented a very advanced and functional“Content Tagging” system. As a bonus aspect of the new tag system, after you write the first two letters of the tag, it will query our database and suggest Recycled Tags similar to auto-complete on your iPhone!
When creating tags for an article be sure to think about what online surfers will type into their search bar to find your content.