Being Dialogic by Being Machine-Readable: Should Marketers Become Metadata Warriors?

On the Web, creating value for the people we want to communicate and exchange with, is not only about satiating their needs for certain content and dialogic experiences. It is also about feeding their web agents with meaningful data.

In the context of users interacting with and in data-rich platforms, the need to deliver content  in an immersive and efficient way, serving relevant information and seamless content discovery and navigation experience is a need to deal with large volumes of data and the complexity of the relationships between the data pieces. 

To cite Hugh Dubberly, one of the co-creators of the iconic technology-forecast short movie by Apple – “Knowledge Navigator”:

“Increasingly, the data economy requires us to think in terms of networks and relationships.” (cit. https://www.dubberly.com/articles/making-sense-in-the-data-economy.html)

Being Dialogic in a Web of Data

As people increasingly use content and information through software programs, search engines, and most recently conversational interfaces of LLMs like ChatGPT,  taking care of our marketing communications, and more deeply of the dialogic continuum we want to create conditions for with them, inevitably enters the world of machine-readable information.

In Cyberia, every content experience, every dialogue, is one way or another underpinned by metadata. As Michael Andrews put it: “Metadata touches nearly everyone who’s involved with producing or using online content [and] if you are concerned about whether your content gets used, then you should be concerned about metadata”.

That tiny snippet of minutes you see next to the results when you search for “how to make tiramisu” is metadata embedded in the web page presenting the recipe. Source

The image below is a screenshot of a result of a case in which Google parsed a Lunch menu as an academic paper:

You can see that it is crucial that we explicitly tell what our content is about through metadata so that no Salad and Noodles authors appear and a menu is a menu, or a product page is a product page.

That said, we should now combine our marketing communications with the understanding that we also have the responsibility to manage the data behind their content in ways that makes these data meaningful to the data-fed agents through which our users access our messaging and information. 

But how can we do that? 

How can we meet this challenge to make our content’s data meaningful to the data-fed agents through which our users access our messaging and information?

By understanding that our users are webonauts.

It is when we look at the user as an information seeker navigating databases (see and enjoy: The design of browsing and berrypicking techniques for the online search interface by Marcia J. Bates), that marketing communications , specifically web content operations, enter the worlds of information retrieval, knowledge discovery and intelligent software agents. Worlds explored in-depth by the Semantic Web. 

Worlds we as marketers need to explore and can learn and borrow wisdom about being machine-readable from.

Enter the Semantic Web. Again.

Ten years ago (sic! :)) I wrote the Semantic Web, Relationships and a Piece of Conceptual art) intuitively chasing and seeking to understand why I am so fascinated by the Semantic Web. 

Now I now better.

Because the Semantic Web found answers to questions we are only now starting to explore in marketing.

The main topics of the Semantic Web, and here I rely heavily on T. Passin’s Explorer’s Guide to the Semantic Web  -here’s a version you can sign in Interne Archive and borrow – https://archive.org/details/explorersguideto0000pass are indexing, access and integration of data and content. And you don’t need me to tell you that these exact topics today are integral to digital marketing communications on the Web and their content. They are related to better visibility in search engines, as well as increasing user engagement with content – better known in the practice of digital marketing as search engine optimization techniques optimization, SEO. The listed topics also overlap with the technological and strategic challenges of digital marketing communications in a connected environment and communication scenario of interactive, ongoing communication with consumers. 

The Semantic Web And Its Contents 

Content is to be created and approached always with the metadata that describes it and the concepts it is woven of. And this mindset is crucial for anyone interested in constructively dealing with the fact that today’s user is actually an information seeker navigating vast amounts of information and looking for ways to find answers.

What Semantic Web research and practice has long time started to tackle is now what we face as a challenge when seeking to create content that is engaging, conversational and easy to navigate.

I like the distillation prof. Amit Sheth provides in Managing Semantic Content for the Web (Dr. Sheth published this research openly available here). According to Amit Sheth, a long-time researcher and practitioner in the field of semantic technologies, the Semantic Web will facilitate the design of complex applications, search and interoperability by associating meaning with machine-readable content. 

Translated into benefits for marketing communications, I would highlight the following:

Solutions based on Semantic Web technologies	Benefit for marketing communications
Design of complex applications	Meaningful interaction through:  Context-aware communication and decision-making.Automatic aggregation of content from different systemsDynamic content creation; Automated Recommended Content.
Interoperability	Continuous engagement across devices and platforms through:Platform and device independent content creation;Personalized Content; Rich experiences in cyberspace through connected digital media.
Search	Management of information flows (as opposed to manipulation of the marketing mix) through providing: Improved navigationDeeper results and more relevant information; Content Ecosystems; Precise automated content recommendation/retrieval.

Epilogue: How I Practice Being a Metadata Warrior in Marketing Communications

The metadata warrior concept is developed by radical archivist Jason Scott, which I borrowed because we realy need a strong framing to help us understand the pivotal role of metadata for marketing.

I truly believe we can add value to the people we want to communicate with not only by satiating their needs for certain experiences, but also by feeding their web agents with standard data.

Again, the Web is an environment built not only of webpages but of data describing these webpages and the concepts these webpages are about. And this is what the Semantic Web is – a Web of Data. A phenomenon that we, as digital marketing practitioners and content people  are in a unique position to explore and use for novel ways of meeting the people we serve with relevant, useful content. And as we saw, relevant and useful is very much dependent on relevant and useful metadata. The better defined and interlinked the data behind our content, the more efficient its use, reuse and distribution. 

Let’s do it!

In my PhD research, trying to tame the liminal creature text (woven of data and dialogue), I created a framework where I mapped the affordances of schema.org to the framework for using the dialogic potential of the Web. The dialogic content framework is open here:

It can be a start to for making the Web a better text, by being dialogic and machine-readable. And yes, it will take some warriorship!

This piece is inspired by my book  Being Dialogic.