Posted on February 26, 2010 in Content Marketing, Social media, by Megan Morris
If you’re not aggregating your content on your company’s Facebook fan page, you should be — especially now that Google Analytics can be set up to track activity on the page. As this article from Buzzmarketing Daily notes, Facebook’s default traffic analyzer, Facebook Insights, only tracks the activity of users who have become fans of your page. Google Analytics, however, tracks the actions of anyone who visits the page and provides information related to “visits, average time on site, visitor location, and more.”
Check out Buzzmarketing Daily to learn more about what Google Analytics for Facebook can help you determine about the visitors to your page.
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Posted on in Association media, Case study, Clients, Content Marketing, Event media, Magazines, by Bill Hudgins
You’d be hard-pressed to find an outfit more devoted to tradition than the United States Marine Corps, but on the other hand, they didn’t get through almost 235 years of existence by failing to innovate.
In that spirit, the 87-year-old Marine Corps League, the nation’s only federally chartered Marine Corps-related veterans organization, came to Hammock Inc. four years ago seeking to reinvigorate their member magazine as part of a campaign to increase recruitment and retention.
As we reported a couple years ago, Semper Fi, the magazine of the Marine Corps League™, has been an essential tool for that campaign. It’s also proved to be a versatile tool for Marine Corps League programs, and a casebook example of objective-based content. Here is how we’ve done it:
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Posted on February 25, 2010 in Content Marketing, by Jamie Roberts
The photo of three angry-looking guys and the caption, “Are your people pages scaring away prospects?” accompanying this content marketing article by communications consultant Jon Buscall made me laugh. Maybe your company doesn’t have people pages that would actually frighten away prospects, but are those pages showcasing your team in a way that would make those prospects eager to work with you?
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Posted on February 24, 2010 in Content Marketing, by Jamie Roberts
It might not be all that significant unless you know me or my friend Beth, but I love all the stories that this snapshot tells, all the small symbols it captures of an enduring friendship:
*A connection made in graduate school. Some strong bonds are made when you survive English T.A. boot camp together.
*Two English nerds who get a rush out of writing and editing and smart communication and (okay, let’s be honest) geeking out on grammar and punctuation.
*A kitchen table, where the best work and the greatest conversations are sparked.
*A friend who labors nonstop to spread humanitarian relief across the Caribbean, and especially now to Haiti.
*An afternoon we both spent working on Nazarenes Help Haiti, a Web site where tons of content — from news to video to photos to links — on earthquake relief can be found.
*An iPod remote, ’cause how could you cope without the perfect mix?
*An artist’s lovely painting of a cup of coffee, the goodness that fuels us on long nights and prods us awake on early mornings.
*A vase of flowers, a gift of beauty amid too many reminders of pain and rubble.
*A baby’s jacket, a symbol of new, giggling, sweet life.
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Posted on in Clients, Magazines, by Bill Hudgins
For the United States Marine Corps, February 23 is a hallowed day. On that date in 1945, Marines in two separate actions raised the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi on a desolate little Pacific island called Iwo Jima.
The first flag-raising was captured by Marine photographer Lou Lowery. It’s a gritty, stark image that shows a rifleman guarding the detail and conveys a sense of the desperate danger that hung over the battle which had begun on 19 February and would last more than another month.
But this flag was too small to see well from below where it could be worth your life to raise your head, so a second detail was sent up the peak to raise a larger flag.
The second flag raising was photographed by Joe Rosenthal, and it gave the Corps an icon for the ages, and a thrill of hope to America and a war-weary world. The photo showed five Marines and a Navy Corpsman struggling to drive the flagpole into the stony ground.
Soon, the image flashed around the world; it won the Pulitzer Prize and has become one of the most reproduced photos of all time and was the basis for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, VA.
For Marines, the image is a solemn reminder of all Leathernecks who have fought and died, from the American Revolution to Marjah in Afghanistan. Those WWII battles in the Pacific were all bloody, vicious affairs but Iwo Jima still ranks as the bloodiest in the Corps’ proud history.
The March-April issue of Semper Fi Magazine which we produce for the Marine Corps League salutes League members who fought on those black sand beaches. Now in their 80s and even 90s, they are becoming an increasingly rare national treasure.
If you know an Iwo Jima survivor, perhaps he will tell you something of his experience there. Many do not choose to recall those days, however, and their silence in itself speaks volumes. In any event, thank him.
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