The Hammock Blog

The May-June issue of Semper Fi, the magazine of the Marine Corps League, which we publish for the League, looks at what's ahead for Marine aviation. With its long-awaited new bird, the tilt-rotor Osprey, racking up impressive service in Iraq and now Afghanistan, the Corps must aggressively update its other rotary wing aircraft, as well as acquire a new generation of fighters.

The article explains the urgency behind these replacement programs and what the Corps expects from birds that Pappy and his boys would've given their eyeteeth to command.

The opening ceremonies included a brief address from Major General Carl B. Jensen,
Commanding General, Marine Corps Installations East. He drew an appreciative chuckle from the assembled vendors, Marines and Marine Corps League members when he bluntly described the equipment on display as "slicker than deer guts on a door knob."

A friend of mine called me this week to talk about some clients of theirs that have vast amounts of content they are seeking to package and monetize. Another group we are talking to has a need to create vast amounts of content to springboard a community and generate highly positive organic search results.

Every day, I am having conversations with organizations about their marketing needs. Whether the organization has content and needs to be more effective in deploying the content, or whether the organization has a deficit of content or a deficit of resources, and needs help, the priority of content has increased dramatically.

I think it’s because content is like access to credit or capital, it’s fueling growth. Particularly in an internet marketing environment.

How did we get to this place where content became so important to so many companies?

Twitter is a great tool to expand the reach of your message beyond your website, enewsletter or blog. But you can't measure your reach solely by the number of followers you have—you have to look beyond and consider the user who follows your followers.

Like Mark Twain, reports of the death of print continue to be exaggerated, though, like the Black Knight in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," print has suffered considerably more than a flesh wound.

But the recently launched "Magazines, The Power of Print" campaign underwritten by leaders of five major magazine companies—Charles H. Townsend, Condé Nast; Cathie Black, Hearst Magazines; Jack Griffin, Meredith Corporation; Ann Moore, Time Inc.; and Jann Wenner, Wenner Media—is betting $90 million worth of ad space on assuring advertisers (and readers) that magazines remain a vital — a necessary — medium.

To those who scoff, we can point to Dr. Samir Husni, aka "Mr. Magazine," who recently reported there were 170 magazine launches in 1Q 2010 — the same number as 1Q 2009 and more than in either 2007 or 2008.

"Call it what you want," writes Dr. Husni, "but yet again the innovative media companies and entrepreneurs have shown a resiliency against all odds, and for that matter against the prophets of doom and gloom.

"I want a magazine." "I want a blog." "I want a newsletter." Those are some of the most common needs expressed to us by new clients. More often than not, clients come to us with the media they want already in mind.

Rather than immediately moving forward, we prefer to start the process with a conversation about a client’s content marketing goals, then let those goals guide a custom media platform selection. We’re looking for the platforms that will work most efficiently, rather than the trendiest or flashiest. We won’t recommend a client invest in a custom magazine, for example, until we are clear about what he or she wants the magazine to do. With such an array of media choices to choose from, we realize the decision can be difficult. That’s why we draw on our years of experience—and tons of research—to craft the most appropriate media for each client.

There is hardly a typical, replicable day at Hammock (the variety is why we love our jobs here!), but here is a snapshot of a random Tuesday's tasks for Hammock's team members.

For those of you already integrating content marketing into your overall marketing strategy, whether with a blog, company e-newsletters or Twitter, your reaction to this study is probably "Well, duh." And rightly so. Content marketing, when done right, just makes sense.

What you may not know is that my title on SmallBusiness.com is "Head Helper." Being head helper for a project as big and complex as a 20,000-entry (and growing daily) wiki running on the same software platform used by Wikipedia has given me a few years of knowledge that is limited to a rather small group of people. (And, as I've attended one, I can even tell you where you'd find them.)

While Hammock is likely the only custom media and content marketing firm to create and grow such a large-scale wiki project as SmallBusiness.com, I predict others will enter the field as companies and associations become more aware of the hidden magic of the wiki platform. To be honest, if for no other reason than trying to figure out why Wikipedia shows up on the first results page of nearly any Google search, I'd be spending time trying to understand everything there is to know about Wikipedia, even if I wasn't a wikimaniac.

Here are, in no particular order, some of the most important things you should know about wikis - straight from an official wiki "head-helper":

Yes, we knew all that about Rex. We're just glad more Twitter users are now catching on.

That hunger is pretty literal for a number of us who like to put in gardens or who participate in the active and—dare I say, growing—community supported agriculture, or CSA, movement, or who have a few square feet to put in their own garden.