Apologies for the late response, I've been busy holidaying it up

I wasn't sure how familiar people were with the content marketing term around here, so I gave some real-life IT examples that people would recognize. I wasn't trying to suggest that OP should try to emulate them outright, sorry for the confusion!

I figured it would be worth sharing the most popular trend in SEO that I'm aware of as a way to help focus OP's research and see if they thought it could work for them... With that said, please don't invest effort and/or money on building a whole new branch of marketing just because a guy on the internet said it might help

Scott's definitely right that SEO by itself isn't going to be a magical panacea for drawing a bunch of customers in, and there is always a good chance that hiring a dedicated SEO "expert" could end up being a bust. Passive traffic is helpful but it's not the constant flow of paying customers that some make it out to be.

I think the reason why SEO is usually considered an essential part of online marketing by most marketers I follow is because putting current SEO best practices in place doesn't just generate passive traffic. Since most current recommendations focus on making your site experience easy to use and helpful for visitors, having SEO in place means the people drawn in from your ads elsewhere will be more likely to stick around and explore. It also means you have some reliable way of tracking where site traffic is coming from, so you can track which ads you're putting out are actually bringing in traffic.

With content marketing specifically, it means your ads on social media can have a more interesting hook than a small discount or just a link to your site - Even if no one ever googles "fleece vs down jacket insulation", you could have an ad that points to the imaginary article mentioned in my last post that gets shown to people who list camping, hiking, hunting etc as an interest on FB. Then, even if they weren't actively searching for that info, their interest might be piqued by the article and either way you've gotten the idea that you're an authority on that sort of thing out to them. I'm pretty sure this is how Dollar Shave Club gets quite a few new customers - I never googled "subscription razor blades" but I get reminded of their existence every few days!

I would say that no one here can know enough details about the business in question to give a truly definitive answer for you because some of the details needed to form that answer (current sales volume, average customer lifetime spend, etc) would be foolish to post publically.

Ultimately, if you are committed to expanding the digital sales side of your business, you should consult with someone who specializes in digital marketing and discuss the details of your business, including what you do to market yourself right now. They they can help you build a digital marketing plan with clear goals, documented methods for achieving them, and metrics that you can use to measure the ROI on each method. Otherwise, it's all too easy to spend money trying out a smattering of different methods without ever really knowing which, if any, actually helped.

@scottalanmiller said:

So you feel that customers are searching for this specifically and will find it? Have you seen consumers doing this? It just seems very far fetched.

That example in particular could be far-fetched! I didn't do any actual research on whether or not people actually search for that stuff before writing the example, and that sort of research is important when putting content marketing to use so you don't waste time writing about stuff no one is searching for. With that said, millions of people Google all sorts of random things and at this point I would be more surprised if people hadn't searched for that at some point or another. The big questions are how many people are searching for a given topic, how often... and if the people searching for that will convert into a lead when they visit your site. This kind of frustrating, vague marketing voodoo is exactly why I left marketing and went into IT

With blog-focused content marketing, you try to create article topics according to the same research you'd do if you were putting together an AdWords campaign - keyword research, search volume for target terms, etc. The SEO guy's job with this strategy is to keep the copywriters updated on which article topics are most likely to bring organic traffic in - AKA which relevant topics have a high search volume but aren't already well-covered by competitors.

So maybe The North Face is already getting all the people googling for Fleece Jackets, but it turns out there's a good number of people looking for comparisons on fleece vs down jackets as an insulation layer for their winter gear and the first site that comes up is only vaguely related to the search query. Then you can publish an article on the pros and cons of both layers, and that will probably rank highly in results for that term because it's more relevant to the search query. Disclaimer, I didn't do any research for that example either so I don't know if people are actually searching for that but hey maybe!

Spiceworks is home to a ton of content marketing in action if you'd like to see some non-blog, real-life examples. This is most obvious with the string of auto-featured "how-to" or "list of resources" posts written by vendor reps which seem to have become more common recently... That's textbook content marketing, but I would argue that any vendor-specific troubleshooting help written by vendor reps could be considered content marketing as well.

Another example would be StorageCraft, which seems to have a strong content marketing strategy in action based on what I can tell from their blog archive. Looking at the archive, you can see that they seem to have a wide variety of topics targeted towards IT admins and MSPs trying to learn more about their trade - they're not exclusively writing about storage or disaster recovery, although those are definitely their most commonly-recurring article topics.

I would bet that each article that's not related to their primary topics is there because someone associated with StorageCraft did keyword research on IT-related topics and invited people to write articles that will rank highly for those keywords. The end goals are likely brand exposure and getting new email marketing leads from the CTA that pops up at the end of each article.

Here are some case studies on content marketing strategies being put in place, the kind of work that legitimate SEO firms will put into creating strategies, and the results from putting those strategies to use.

Overall, it's a very popular digital marketing strategy right now, but it's definitely possible that it's not the right fit for the company.

I think a good question to ask would be: what sort of marketing goals there are for the website itself? Is it mainly a digital storefront so people that know the company already can easily buy from it online? If so, then there's not much need for marketing at all, let alone SEO - it's a convenient offering for existing customers to continue buying from someone they know. Depending on the cost to keep the site up and income from existing online customers, this might be just fine!

On the other hand, if the company wants to expand their market to out-of state customers and others that might not already know about them, then I would say investing in SEO will make that goal much easier to attain.

I would say any B2C business is going to benefit substantially from good SEO in place, whereas it's a little less important for B2B businesses depending on your lead generation strategy.

With that said, SEO is one of the most frustrating topics because:

• The rules are always, always changing, so really it's something that you should probably have a dedicated expert handle. But...

• IMO You're more likely to find a charlatan than an actual SEO expert if you try and buy a managed SEO service or hire an SEO expert. The field attracts a lot of people that either find one tactic and stick with it, even if that tactic stops being effective, or flat-out con artists. You almost need an SEO expert on staff just to know which SEO firms are using legitimate tactics!

Content marketing is the current "Big Thing" in SEO, and with good reason... it's basically the idea that you should have a regular stream of free, helpful information on your site that showcases your brand's expertise and draws potential customers in organically through search or social media. Here's an example:

Imagine you have a RP&C blog added onto your store, and right around now you publish a post like "How Fleece Keeps You Warm Without Dragging You Down".

This post gives an overview of what your brands' fleece jackets are made of, why fleece is so warm without being bulky, and how they're perfect for layering if you end up in rain or snow. Then you toss in some situations where a fleece jacket comes in handy... hunting, camping, whatever you think your target market might be doing at some point where having a light, cozy jacket would be nice.

Depending on what sorts of wording you use, that post might be shown to someone looking for a new jacket to take camping, someone just wanting a cozy jacket, someone interested in why fleece can be so warm without being bulky, etc. These are all people that would just end up on Amazon if they googled "clothing" or even "jackets".

Then they're on your site, and even if they don't buy your products online right then and there they might be back, and either way they'll be more likely to notice your brand & store offline after the fact. A link to this story on social media is also much more clickable and shareable than a generic "Hi we are a store please come visit us thanks" ad.

I'm a fan of content marketing because you don't need to buy ads to get your name out there, and honestly it's one of the more benevolent forms of advertising - you're literally trying to help people out when they need it in order to get that brand recognition people spend hundreds to thousands of dollars to establish and maintain otherwise. I encourage you to check it out and consider if it would work for you - just keep in mind it's not actually free, because adding a stream of content to your site is a big jump that will add significant ongoing copywriting overhead to your website.

For general SEO tips, check out varvy.com for some more technical/infrastructure stuff, and consider grabbing this eBook from Yoast.

@johnhooks said:

Has anyone tried Pydio before? It looks interesting.

I have a Pydio server running off a Vultr storage-optimized VPS as a personal fileserver.

It's been running without compaint for about 6 months now... Works well, looks nice, and I appreciate how I can use their free iOS app to access whatever I have stored on my site. OwnCloud's app, on the other hand, is $.99 which isn't huge but creates a paywall if you want to deploy it on a scale beyond yourself or a few people.

Pydio was my recommendation over OwnCloud for a while, but now I think I prefer OwnCloud ever-so-slightly after giving it another chance. I would say whichever one you prefer in terms of features/interface will get the job done.

Just set up DC, DNS, and DHCP roles on my first-ever 2012 R2 server install

After spending the past few weeks delving into the depths of Linux system files and configuration, it's weird to be doing Important Setup Stuff in a GUI... not that I'm complaining!

Dan Goodin's closing paragraphs in Ars' follow-up article about this pretty much hit the nail on the head for me:

"Dell's response is a good start insofar as it offers customers an immediate remedy, apologizes, and thanks the people who brought the major security blunder to light. Now, it's time for Dell to do much more. For months now, Dell marketers have assured the public that each pre-installed app "undergoes security, privacy and usability testing." The presence of a root certificate that included the same easily extracted private key on multiple computers is proof that the process in this case failed in spectacular fashion. If Dell is serious about regaining customers' trust, company officials should explain how this failure happened and what steps are being taken to ensure similar lapses don't happen again.

Any breached company can gush about how seriously it takes security. The ones that really mean it are willing to be transparent about their failures, even if it means taking a brief hit to the company's public image. It will be worth watching Dell carefully in the coming days to see which path company officials choose."

It's nice to see that Dell has quickly taken some steps in regaining people's trust. Releasing a tool to automatically remove the certificate less than 24 hours since the original story broke is a good move! I'd still like to know what part of their sanity check review process failed to get it out in the first place though...

From Ars Technica:
"In a move eerily similar to the Superfish debacle that visited Lenovo in February, Dell is shipping computers that come preinstalled with a digital certificate that makes it easy for attackers to cryptographically impersonate Google, Bank of America, and any other HTTPS-protected website.

The self-signed transport layer security credential, which was issued by an entity calling itself eDellRoot, was preinstalled as a root certificate on at least two Dell laptops, one an Inspiron 5000 series notebook and the other an XPS 15 model. Both are signed with the same private cryptographic key. That means anyone with moderate technical skills can extract the key and use it to sign fraudulent TLS certificates for any HTTPS-protected website on the Internet. Depending on the browser used, any Dell computer that ships with the root certificate described above will then accept the encrypted Web sessions with no warnings whatsoever. At least some Dell Inspiron desktops and Precision M4800 models are also reported to be affected."

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/11/dell-does-superfish-ships-pcs-with-self-signed-root-certificates/

Very disappointing news as I have been a fan of Dell's hardware for a while and stopped buying Lenovo in part due to the Superfish debacle... All the more reason to make sure a fresh OS install is a part of setting up new computers!

@johnhooks said:

Do they think people email each other like that.

Good Morrow Sir,

I hope you are well, but lets dispense with the pleasantries. I will need a transfer of funds from the financial institution, post haste. Please inform me of the financial details.

Best Regards,

I've heard a theory that scammers intentionally mangle the grammar in their emails so they pre-screen the people that are going to catch on quickly and only get responses from people that are most likely to fall for the whole scam... No idea how true that is as I'm not a scam copywriter, but it does explain why no scammers seem to have any grasp of grammar and/or how people actually talk.

@MattSpeller said:

@WingCreative said:

Had a series of brownouts in NW Oregon due to a huge windy rain storm last night - They started happening right as I was talking about how storms make me think about the potential for power loss now and how I want to get a generator someday...

Got you covered with this one, I deployed my beard in a giant curtain to slow it down.

Jokes aside, same storm and she was pretty fierce.

Thanks - I thought I could rely on Portlanders' faces to break the storm, but it turns out they've mostly moved onto ironic mustaches at this point

It's tough loving the ambiance of heavy rain battering against the roof and windows, while also knowing that there's a good chance it will make a lot more work for me if it manages to cause a power outage...

Had a series of brownouts in NW Oregon due to a huge windy rain storm last night - They started happening right as I was talking about how storms make me think about the potential for power loss now and how I want to get a generator someday...

I think I actually might have fixed the last bug after moving a proprietary jumble of HTML, CSS and PHP from a shared host to a VPS.

It was a great impromptu crash course on various bits of Linux administration, but I don't think I'd recommend it to a friend. Perhaps to an enemy.

I can't help but compare it to when I did the same move with a WordPress site about a year ago - I have a newfound appreciation for just how easy WP + well-made plugins makes stuff like this!

@jospoortvliet said:

There's an update of the Documents app, I haven't checked if it works with 8.2 but you'd think that that is the main reason for the update

Meanwhile, Here is the next batch of #ownCloudConf videos starting with Sabre/DAV developer Evert Pot about promises & generators in PHP and followed by 8 other talks covering Docker, Jolla, Agile, Smashbox and more.

Enjoy and share.!

After finally getting some downtime at work I was able to install the Documents addon and test it out. I'm pretty sure this feature alone is going to be a major selling point for deploying OwnCloud

While testing the online editing + collaboration, everything just made sense and worked without any hoops to jump through, which is definitely more than I can say for our current solution!

This is something I've been wondering about ever since I dove into Linux webserver administration.

Everywhere you go, Apache seems to be the default way to serve files online. If there's an open source web app you're looking at, chances are good it's built on the assumption that you're using Apache.

Yet despite its ubiquity, I haven't found anyone explaining why it's the default. All I can find are references to Apache's ubiquitous nature being used to justify young web developers having to learn about it, contrasted with tale after tale about the performance and efficiency gains one can expect from switching to nginx.

Personally, I spent a bit of time using Apache because I didn't know enough about nginx to configure it at first and stuck to default configs, but I switched over as soon as I could and have never looked back. I really hope more experienced web developers have a reason to use it besides "it's what we've been using"...

I guess I'm just having trouble understanding why Apache is still the default when there's a viable alternative that is just as easy to install and configure... an alternative that seems better in every way from my perspective.

Is it just momentum at this point? Is it because there's still a ton of Apache-centric tutorials and documentation for newbies? Or is there actually something about Apache that actually makes it better in certain cases?

Yup, when you pay up front for a job it means you are the business' income stream.

Add in a referral system and you have yourself a full-blown pyramid scheme!

I enjoyed reading through The Phoenix Project - for one thing, the first chapters made me feel better about the workload I had on my plate But the whole book itself was a great (fictional) case study on shifting from traditional Development & Operations departments to a DevOps environment. It's basically a story of a dysfunctional enterprise IT environment getting better, told from the perspective of someone uniwttingly tossed into the role of IT director. It helped me see the problems DevOps practices solve along with the challenges that can arise when shifting over to them.

While we wait for MangoCon: I found this video helpful for understanding what it does and how to deal with it without disabling it altogether.

Caught in the dichotomy of wanting more time to work on things while wanting the day to be over and done with.

On the plus side, I just officially flipped the switch and the PCI compliant website should be live within the next 10 minutes or so. I'm always anxious when going live with a new site, but I've double and triple tested everything to the point where I'm reasonably confident that I'm the only one that will notice the change.

I cannot imagine someone buying a $200 "box" for security. When a $99/year subscription is tossed in there as well it goes from "maybe some people will buy this" to "maybe one person will buy this".

All of my limited gaming time over the past couple weeks has gone to Vermintide.

Left 4 Dead and its sequel are two of my top played games of all time, and I'm been a fan of the Warhammer setting in general. They've done a great job adding their own spin on the "hectic horde battle genre" (if that's a thing) with the item/forge system and new special enemies like the ratling gunner. There's also a stealth mechanic that manages to be rewarding if you pull it off in the right situations without being totally necessary.

Right now all my production Linux hosts are on VMs so I have snapshots of the backend infrastructure along with application-level backups of data as needed. Mostly these are EC2 instances running WordPress where I have a base AMI ready to go with offsite BackupBuddy backups. It's served me well in the few times I've had to use it - I can go from a launching an instance to all data recovered in about 15 minutes or less.

With that said, I'm really looking forward to seeing how Veeam's Linux backup works once it's released!