Content Weapons are intentionally engineered messages or payloads (text, images, sounds or videos) using a digital delivery system aimed at a location or group of a given mindset, with the express purpose of a targeted action, impression, behavior or response. Not to be confused with "Computational propaganda" as Content Weapons are not limited to the political arena or social media technologies specifically.
Content Weapons are neither predominantly positive or negative, but the intention determines the connotation. This is based on specific verbiage, imagery or sounds contained therein (Engineered Content), delivered digitally (Through single or a multiple of devices, platforms or content channels) at a definitive target (mentality or location). This is a set of actions that has a range of intentions encompassing a casting of negative points of view to stirring up latent hostilities and everything in between. An example could be twitter or Facebook Messenger bots tweeting and sharing a crafted meme (Painting a democrat or republican opponent in a negative light), message or video aimed at swing voters or those with mostly middle of the road ideologies and only in key districts surrounding Houston Texas in the United States for the purpose of division and agitation. In essence Content Weapons are made up of 3 fundamental components,
1) Engineered message.
2) Digital Delivery system.
3) Aimed at a definitive Geo location and/or a collective with an identified ethos.
 
These are key in the separation of Content Weapons from the generally understood methods of propaganda or advertising as these remain general use terms and Content Weapons are comprised of a very specific set of criteria. As this evolution of information access via connected devices presents an entirely new set of challenges from both an offensive initiative as well as defensive protection and containment strategy perspective.
 

Description

Content Weapons is a term coined by J. Michael Stattelman in his book of the same title and derived from a multidisciplinary combination of studies and practices ranging from information warfare, psychological warfare, Cognitive science, Marketing and platform weaponization involving the use of various forms of content and technologies with the intention of narrative capture or the intended manipulation of a collective for other than commercial reasons. Delivery sub-systems of Content Weapons range from Articles, Blog posts, Videos, Whitepapers, Online Courses, Webinars, Images, Memes and even hashtags. The delivery systems at the primary level encompass the myriad of communication technologies currently available to carry these messages.
The intent and methodologies are very well known and already adopted by the general public however, the collection of the 3 fundamentals necessitates the moniker of content weapons when the intent is perceptually harmful to any group or individual and not of an advertising origin. This is asymmetric warfare in the modern age. Currently, access to and deployment of the technologies and methods for delivery are not limited to state actors or well-funded entities. With the proliferation of digital media outlets and platforms or technologies like social media combined with local, national and international influencers across a variety of channels. The potential of bots or automated agents interaction with platforms containing geofencing capabilities for targeting, the range is limitless and the costs of deployment are substantially reduced when compared to standard physical forms from previous eras. These payloads can cross borders, cultures and languages in a matter of minutes, basically travelling and striking with button clicks, likes, texts, chats, retweets or shares. These are beyond simple marketing efforts gone awry or stunts that have become a public health hazards (See Tide Pod challenge). These are calculated messages, imagery or symbols generated and paired with a given forms of media and target audiences that have been assigned a high probability for distribution and effect.
Content Weapons are specific messages carried by communication tools and technologies taken to advanced levels with intentions other than consumerism. The agents behind this digital ordinance leveraged verbiage, images, sound and video to trigger behaviors and emotions with surgical precision in service of their own agendas most often unbeknown to the recipients. Every aspect of every angle is open for exploitation. Color, Sentiment, Tone, Frequency and Beats per minute. All things verbal and non-verbal, everything read, heard and seen. Metacommunication, Color Theory, Cognitive semiotics, Meta Messaging, Paralanguage, Gestures and Personal lexicon are all fields of research that have been brought to bear at ascending stages of impact at varied orders and levels on the minds of those to which they are directed. These are the new digital bullets, bombs and explosives of the modern era warfare.
 

History

Historically messaging has been a critical component of any and all conflicts and competitive endeavors. Haves versus have nots, Us versus Them, Right versus Left. This is nothing new. Propaganda is a very well-known and documented tactic or strategy for centuries, as has Advertising/Marketing. What makes Content Weapons new and very different is the exposure everyone with an internet connection has to them as well as the frequency and vast delivery systems they now able to leverage. Internet communication technology occupies an extremely small block of the human history timeline, but the impact has outpaced everything before it. Content has taken on a radical progression from speech and rally attendance, to word of mouth, printed handouts, pamphlets dropped from aircraft, Radio broadcasts and Television specials. But the internet age has ushered in unrestrained communication technology innovation with minimal thought given to security and psychological impacts. From 2000 to 2019 the ways and means messages can be sent and received are at dizzying levels. SMS, MMS, Chats, Chatbots, Websites,
Videos, Blogs, Social Media, Direct Messaging, Notifications, Email, Tweets, Video Messages, Voice Assistants and on. The exploitation of these common use technologies has never been easier, adoption never been faster, and range never been farther for all forms of messaging.
 

Constraints

Countering this weaponry is severely hindered by the fact that these delivery systems are by and large privately owned, difficult to regulate as current legislation has lagged behind the advances in these technologies, these platforms having global reach and the privacy as well as free speech rights or lack there of with regards to the citizens in use of such. The Companies that own these platforms are hindered by increasing complexity of their own systems as well as the ever tangling web of users, application programming interfaces, increasing automation and the difficulty in identifying malicious activity or messaging on the part of private, commercial, state and non-state actors registered unofficially as users on their systems.

Cycle

The cycle of Content Weapons can follow along any traditional systems evolutionary cycle. The one most optimal would be as follows: A) Identify a target or collective.
B) In-Depth Analysis, taking into account demographics, psychographics, cultural norms and idiosyncrasies. With those precursors completed the cycle begins as 1) Content Generation, this done with strict adherence to the provided analysis only with slight deviations as to not collide with the current target psychology.
 
2) Deployment: This being done through the use of specified technologies for information dissemination in both wide use as well as fringe instances of the target audience. Commonly referred to as a "Book-End" strategy. 3) Active Monitoring and Feedback: These efforts can be achieved through the use of public and media polling as well as more advanced means such as social media monitoring applications. Once the cycle is implemented only the Content Generation and deployments are adjusted for increasing effect and incremental adjustments to the message as well as the frequency and enacted. This is done in a manner that eventually pulls the mentality of the target audience over to that of the intended aim. Based on the urgency of the originator and technology available to the target audience, these can be altered accordingly based on those needs.
 

Evolution

Factoring in the enhanced means of increasing time on applications through Gamification and Geofencing by way of device location tracking, automated and near real time Echo chamber (media) and incubation chamber creation with the implementation of Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence for personalized content generation. The higher rate of mobile connected device adoption enables a higher rate of exposure to content weapons by more of humanity and at increasing speeds. This rapid adaptation to current trends and the manipulation of them for agenda alignment is all too real. These technologies can easily be weaponized by carrying content designed to target individuals, groups, and industries themselves. Causing, economic, financial or even political harm, disorganization or upheaval. These can also lead to the highlighting of a necessary good for the promotion of better. The ever advancing technologies allowing for IoT, What3words with sound and facial recognition technologies further enhance the messaging effectiveness and targeting accuracy of Content Weapons to levels hereto unrecorded.
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If you take a look around the Internet, you will see that most websites use videos. And there is a very good reason for it — they are perfect in what concerns user engagement. Images, sound and text (if done right) all in one nice package. Easy engaging and similar to the allure that television use to wield without rival. But alas, video has out smarted a single box!

In case you are still having questions or concerns about whether you should use videos or not, the short answer is that you are late. Not that all is lost though.

While you may think that using video in your landing pages or that using a video marketing strategy is just a trend that will be over soon, you need to think again. The truth is that landing pages that include a video can see their conversions increase up to 80% when compared with traditional landing pages that only use text. And in what concerns video marketing, it may be a surprise that these also increase conversion rates. The reality is that the answer is pretty simple: when you use a video, you are establishing a higher level of trust with your audience. You are showing up in your video, you are humanizing your brand.

Users Love Videos

Ever since Google bought YouTube, we keep seeing more and more people spending a lot of time watching videos. Whether your delivery systems of choice is Youtube, Facebook, Snapchat or others. The fact is that you more than likely get your “Moving Picture” content from various providers on various screens depending on what your current environment is. Well, your potential customers are doing the exact same thing.

Just to give you an idea, back in 2016, more than 500 million hours of videos were watched on YouTube every single day. In addition, and according to a prediction for 2020, online videos should be responsible for more than 80% of all the consumer traffic.

As you can see, video is the leading tool that brands have to interact with users. So, as a good marketer, business owner, content provider or puyveyor of goods and services its long overdue that you get your “House” in order and use all of the aforementioned attention predators to your advantage.

How Video Enhances Customer Engagement

The criticality of enhanced and evolving user engagement is and will continue to be the life blood of all organizations. After all, this is the best way that you have to gain their trust, provide a quick and digestible delivery means for your particular message, so then they can pass from simple leads to customers. In addition, hands down videos are one of the most effective ways to do that.

However, not all videos are the same and they don’t all return the same results.

In case you are looking to create a video for user engagement, you want to make sure that:

- Your videos last, at least 2 minutes. In case you considering publishing your video on Facebook, you should keep in mind that 45% of people who watch the first 10 seconds of the video will watch it for at least 30 seconds.

- If you are considering using video and you are wondering where you should publish it to get the most engagement, then you should definitely choose Facebook. According to Animoto  Blog, this is the social media platform that has a larger amount of users watching videos.

• When you are considering using Twitter, you need to know that when you publish a video, you will have more 6X more chances of seeing it retweeted than photos.

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The Impact Of A Video On Purchasing Behavior

The truth is that whenever a user has the possibility, he prefers to watch a video than to read the same information. Besides, since on the video you will show up and users will see your face, there will be an immediate trust because users are seeing the creator of the product or service.

The reality is that the impact of a video on purchasing behavior is more than you can imagine:

- According to ThinkWithGoogle,  around 60% of YouTube subscribers will follow the advice of their favorite creators instead of movie or TV show personality.

- According to Animoto  (again), 4 out of 5 millennials search for video information to make a purchase decision. In addition, near 70% of them will watch a company video when they are shopping online.

The evidence is abundantly clear, Video (when done properly) cannot be beaten when it comes to user adoption, preference and distribution of your kind of “noise”. Take the time to adjust your progressive web application and embed videos across a variety of distribution channels and watch your engagement grow!

We are all aware of the importance and value of a prosperous digital marketing campaign, and a lot of marketers won’t deny the fact that SEO has a very critical role to play. There are lots of things you can do in making your promotion successful besides building links; without having to over-raise your budget.

SEO comprises of different parts; therefore, businesses can find it easy to oversee some of the minor steps to performing good on-site SEO. However, every little thing you need to do to increase your website’s ranking can make a tremendous difference, most notably, things that other sites may be overlooking –no matter how small. To make your site more competitive on search engines, you need to invest some time on image search optimization. This is an essential step to make your business stand out among others.

What is Image Optimization?

Image optimization is about reducing the file size of your images without losing quality so that your page load times remain low. It’s also about ranking the images on your website so that they can stand out on search engine result pages –preferably, page one.

The Relevance of Image Optimization

Image optimization is one of the crucial steps to take under your SEO umbrella. A complete SEO campaign comprises of a calculated plan for optimizing images that will be of value to your audience. Google recognizes the importance of imagery on websites and has suggested some useful tips on image optimization on their guidelines for image publishing.

If you own an online store, image optimization is what you need to bring your products ahead of your competitors so that prospects who are searching for that product can find them via search engines. Thus, image optimization is required for building a successful e-commerce website.

Why Images are Important for SEO

It is understood that SEO is mainly about keywords and texts, but many people fail to realize that images also have a very vital role to play. Images increase the chances of winning your audience’s attention and keeping it; it improves engagement, and just as we are dealing, it enhances the ranking of your website.

Research attests that people are 80% more likely to read content with an image and 64% more likely to remember it afterward. Human beings are attracted to images –and motion pictures as well. You can’t imagine finding yourself on a webpage with plain texts on a white background looking like a word document; it would look repulsive and very dull, as it may be. So, images are needed to keep a webpage alive.

How this affects the website’s Google ranking is understandable. Google crawlers and algorithm, as much as they are very fast paced, they take into account how your website visitors behave when they visit your site. Do they get out of the site immediately they get in or do they spend some time and get engaged in the contents of the website? Whichever the case may be, it affects the ranking of your website.

Tips for Image Search Optimization

So far, optimizing images for search engines is not rocket science; so it can be quickly done. Here are a few tips to get you ahead on your game.

1. Use relevant, high-quality images.

This is very important for SEO user experience. A badly cropped or blurry image will make your page look unprofessional. Images are meant to provide a better illustration for the contents on the webpage; otherwise, it is irrelevant. The best is to use an image that’s related to the content on the page and looks clear.

2. Customize the filename.

This step is straightforward, but it’s surprising that very few people know about it. Take your time to customize the image’s filename before it to your website. Rename the file using keywords that are related to the content for which the image is intended.

3. Use alt tags.

This is one part of webpages that lots of visitors won’t see, but of course, search engine crawlers go through it. Alt text can be provided for every image added to your website. This alt tags (or texts) will show up faster in cases where the browser is having troubles loading the images, and they will be replaced by the image immediately the connectivity permits. This text makes it easier for search engine algorithms to take note of the content of the page.

4. Find the right quality-to-size ratio.

This is one complicated part, you don’t want your image to be big so that it won’t slow down your website, but you want it to look great. Site speed is one of the search engine ranking factors. Website visitors would be glad to spend so much time waiting for your images to load and as such may not show much interest in the website; further translating to poor website ranking.

5. Choose the right file type.

There are three essential kinds of image files fit for websites. Understanding the different file types can help you choose the best one for your needs.

Those are just some introductory tips for you to get started, please do your own due diligence and ensure that adequate steps are taken by those tasked with your digital marketing campaign.

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When you think about the most important things that you need to do to grow your business, you never think about attention. However, attention is the most valuable resource anyone can give you. And this is becoming more important every day.

The reality is that you are competing with the entire world, with 24–7 global news, with news feeds with clickbait, with the latest Internet outrage. So, as you can imagine, the number #1 marketing challenge marketers need to deal with today is related to getting traffic and leads.

The truth is that in the old days, getting more traffic and, subsequently more leads, was only a matter of publishing more content. However, today, this hardly makes any sense. If you look at the rock bottom of this issue, you are looking for attention. And this is more and more rare and scarce.

There have always existed people who we believe lived ahead of their time. And this is exactly the case of Herbert A. Simmon who, back in 1969 (50 years ago), wrote: “Now when we speak of an information-rich world, we may expect, analogically, that the wealth of information means a dearth of something else — a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

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So, How Can You Grab Attention?

#1: Personalization:

One of the things that you can do to get the attention of people is to personalize your messages. However, and in what concerns content, this is what marketers have been doing for the last 5 to 10 years. If you take a closer look at the blogs and businesses out there you will see that you have specific ones for each industry. In our opinion, this is a trend that will continue.

#2: Immediacy:

When you are learning how to sell a product or service, one of the things that you will immediately learn is that you need to create a sense of urgency. And this is exactly what works when you are trying to get the attention of your readers or potential buyers. Just take the New York Times or The Washington Post examples. Whenever there is a breaking news, you will get a notification. So, like most of us, you click on the notification and you end up in the front of a paywall.

#3: Interpretation:

Another great way to gather the attention of the reader is by using guidance and support in the specific area they are looking for. These type of content can be divided between training and certification courses, curation, community, and research.

#4: Authenticity:

You can be sure that you will get a lot of attention with authenticity. One of the best examples that we can provide you is real advice from real people. And this is when you can take advantage of your social media presence.

Let’s say that you know that most people have a common issue. So, one of the things that you can do to grab their attention is to create a video, for example, where you explain everything about the issue and how to solve it. You will then publish it under Snapchat Stories, Instagram Videos, Facebook Live, among others.

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