It’s never too late to learn something new — that’s the motto of many of us here at Hammock. And it’s especially true for those of us who have gone back to class recently to learn a new skill or master a concept that has piqued our curiosity. Here’s just a sample of the continued learning Hammockites are engaged in right now:

I was honored last week to have been asked to serve as the vice chair of the American Business Media’s Custom Media Committee. I’ve been a member of the committee for a few years, working alongside colleagues to promote the value of custom media to business and professional clients, agencies and consultants. The committee also conducts relevant research and establishes best practices for for business-to-business custom media.

Hammock is a longtime member of ABM, and Rex is currently serving on their Board of Directors.

I’m looking forward to working alongside Joe Pulizzi of Junta42, chair of the committee. Stay tuned for news of our new initiatives!

A Wiki Obsession
Posted in Wikis, by Hammock Inc.
October 21, 2009

If you’ve been around Rex, you know he’s passionate about wikis. Actually, he’s obsessed. Perhaps that comes from spending a couple of years developingSmallBusiness.com, one of the largest business-oriented wikis and the largest user-generated, wiki-model small business resource on the web.

Rex has decided to go public with his obsession. When he spoke at Barcamp Nashville recently about wikis, the crowd got energized when Rex started evangelizing. While we’re sure it can’t capture the full experience of the presentation (Rex doesn’t really do the bullet point thing), here is an annotated version of his presentation.

I just added a link to Hammock’s list of articles related to social media, magazines and everything that we love about what we do. We do this every day as a way to share articles that we think are interesting, important, informative or sometimes just plain funny as they relate to our work. It’s called bookmarking, and it’s quickly becoming a popular way to share, interact and drive traffic to your website.

An article I read last week really breaks it down.

“If you bookmark a link today and within ten days from now 1000 others also bookmark it, the bookmarking sites treat you as an authority on that particular subject because others follow whatever interests you.”

Not only does bookmarking help to make you an “authority,” it can also help add fresh content to your website. If you blog, many services like WordPress offer a plugin or widget for your bookmarks.

Delicious, Digg, Reddit and Stumbleupon are just a few of the most popular bookmarking sites. Add us to your network on Delicious. We’d love to see what you’re reading about right now!

If the results of a recent Forrester Research Study are accurate, email marketing in the United States is expected to reach $2 billion in 2014. It’s easy to understand why email is one of the preferred tools of the day given the economic climate of the last year. It’s cost-effective and delivers a high return on investment.
At Hammock, we not only advise our clients on their email newsletter efforts and are involved in their development and execution, but we also have our own monthly email newsletter about the work we do for our clients.
Here are five testing tips that we use each month to make sure our latest issue is ready when we hit send:

There are mobile apps, video, social media and online content. Oh, and the magazine itself. Magazine readers want their content, and they want it the way they want it.
A recent article on foliomag.com on the topic came as no real surprise to us.

All Things Marine
October 4, 2009

The 29th annual Modern Day Marine Expo aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico, VA, enjoyed such beautiful early autumn weather this year that more than a few people kidded the senior Marine officers present about ordering it up from some secretive climate control lab. They laughed, but I didn’t hear a single one directly deny it.
If the Marines do have weather-control equipment, it would likely have been on display at the Expo, which brings Marines and the folks who supply them together for three days of equipment critiques, evaluations and discussions.