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.

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:

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?

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.

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.

Looking for a shortcut to creating an online buzz and driving more traffic to your Web site? While it’s true there are overnight success stories of companies whose traffic spiked after something they posted went viral, this kind of success is only temporary, as this Buzz Factory blog points out. Instead shoot for lasting success, which comes from creating engaging content for your target market across several social media sites consistently and every day. Just a little bit of daily activity on your part will bring in traffic that will ultimately prove to be more beneficial than a one-time spike.

As kids, most of us loved listening to stories, and as adults, we’re still suckers for a story well told. Since the beginning of time, people have used stories to entertain, educate and inspire. Stories that used to be carved into stone, written on parchment or recited around a campfire can now be shared through a podcast, told through a Tweet or portrayed through an interactive slideshow or video. All you need is one great story. If you have that, you can find dozens of different ways to tell it, depending on your audience and your outlet for sharing it.
Storytelling, at its most basic definition, is using words, images and sounds to convey events. In print, this often takes the form of telling or explaining; in video, showing; and in online media, demonstrating and engaging. But whether you’re conveying your story through a simple blog post or a multimedia package complete with clickable graphics, live video streaming and Flash animation, you’ll succeed at captivating your audience if you follow these five tried-and-true storytelling principles:

A successful content marketing strategy is not limited to only posting relevant, engaging content on your website. You have to learn how to take that great content and distribute it—syndicating it to other online outlets. One of those outlets is Twitter.
Twitter is where a growing portion of your audience is consuming their content, whether breaking news or pithy analysis. So embrace the power of Twitter to drive people back to your site’s compelling content. Twitter should become a larger source of your referring website traffic.
Wondering how to make Twitter part of your content marketing strategy? Here are three content marketing Twitter tips from Meqouda’s Amanada McArthur:

This film nerd always gets super-excited around Oscar time. Just for fun, I’ve checked out the content available on Oscars.com, sponsored by ABC, the home of this year’s Academy Awards broadcast, and Oscars.org, the official site of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). These two sites have different strengths, but both add valuable content for their audiences.

I’m going on vacation next week, and for the last few weeks, I’ve gone to TripAdvisor.com almost every day to see if there were any new reviews about the hotel where I’ll be staying. Yesterday, I got lucky. There was a new review, and after I read it I may have closed my eyes for a few seconds imagining myself kayaking in sunny Mexico. Man, I love TripAdvisor.
It’s not the lists of hotels or restaurants or the links to book your trip on Expedia.com that make TripAdvisor successful — it’s the traveler reviews offering first-hand knowledge and photos from people who have been where you want to go. It’s unique, valuable content, and it’s the reason I recommend the site to anyone telling me they’re planning a vacation.
So what can your business learn from a site with monthly visits in the millions? It’s simple: Content is king.