The Hammock Blog

20|20’s assignment to Hammock was to assist them in gathering contact information from potential clients that have a specific need for executing qualitative research.

Yet where in the marketing budget are such content strategies as "thought leadership," or customer-support video how-tos, email newsletters or recurring customer publications?

Recently, on our Content that Works blog, we reported on research the Council commissioned that surveyed Chief Marketing Officers' use of custom media and content. A new, related study explores Customers' Attitudes Toward Custom Content.

Our proprietary research reveals that custom media and content programs can be focused on supporting specific business objectives. This new research, conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications, provides some background that can help explain why content marketing is so effective at generating desired results -- consumers like it.

Among the findings:

While research and a strategic approach has always been a part of the way Hammock serves its clients, last year we instituted a formal process for new and existing clients to ensure that the work we do for them is tied directly into their business objectives.

The process, which we call objective-based content marketing, begins with a research and strategy phase where we develop a Content Marketing Intelligence Report (CMIR). In it, we collaborate with our clients to agree upon a specific set of measurable objectives (metrics) that can be influenced by our work. These metrics can be continuously monitored in order to ensure that our work stays in sync with the priorities of the client.

Each year about this time, I'm asked by various publications and websites to contribute my predictions on trends in the magazine industry and new media in general. After a couple of decades of constant curiosity about the evolving roles of media focused on helping companies and associations strengthen their relationships with customers and members, I've come to this conclusion: In attempting to predict the future, it is far more challenging to predict the "when" than to predict the "what."

For instance, the people who follow my blog know that I spent years predicting what finally, eight months ago, became the iPad. While I predicted the "what it was going to be" with great accuracy, I was less accurate on the when. In his book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, author Steven Johnson explains the concept of "adjacent possibilities," a term coined by scientist Stuart Kauffman. The term is an attempt to capture the essence of a creative process wherein new possibilities are made possible only after the occurrence of some preceding "first order" innovation. For the iPad that means two-decades of innovations were required before the "adjacent possibility" of the iPad could finally arrive — innovations in the areas of networking, mobility, memory, miniaturization, Moore's law, Metcalfe's law and lots of laws related to the FCC and telephone carriers.

I can only guess about when the following predictions will occur because some of them may not quite be ready for their prime time. But I'm fairly confident that one day, they will be.

Writers and editors frequently need to find experts who can speak authoritatively on the subject of an article. Journalists who specialize in a given field soon accumulate a list of go-to gurus, but generalists don't have that advantage.

Probably the first thing you try will be a direct online search. You may strike gold—especially in the sources cited by sites such as Wikipedia—or you may be overwhelmed with irrelevant sites. And even after refining your search, the results may still be ambiguous or less than solid.

Here are some suggestions for narrowing your search:

• Ask your editor for suggestions about experts.

• Run a search for other articles on the topic to see who's been consulted previously, or, even better, experts who write on the topic.

• Blogs can be a good source of leads to experts. Similarly, Twitter may help you find people who post regularly on a given topic.

• Contact relevant professional or trade associations. The organization itself may include highly knowledgeable individuals, or they can direct you to members who are versed in the subject. Suite 101 also recommends consulting universities, whose faculty may be knowledgeable or can direct you to colleagues who can help.

• Websites such as Help A Reporter Out and Media Bistro serve as a crossroads for writers seeking information and public relations professionals and businesses eager to supply it. The Adventurous Writer recommends Prof.net as a source of professional experts.

• JournalismNet describes itself as "a free web site with over 600 pages … designed to bring you an investigative guide to the Internet - the best tools, tricks and websites from around the world."

• Friends and colleagues may be able to help—writers and editors minds are attics where all sorts of odd facts lie waiting to be discovered.

Once you have a list of experts, take time to check them out online to see what others have said about them, such as possible biases. You may still use an expert with a known slant, but you will be able to include that as a caveat to your readers.

Rex recently outlined his thoughts about the iPad, touching on the debate among early adopters regarding whether or not the iPad is "good for creating content." Google Docs are read-only on the device, but the Keynote app allows you to create an entire presentation.

And while he doesn't view magazines as a medium that needs saving, he does believe that the iPad "provides lots of opportunities for magazine companies who do something other than replicate magazines on an app."

Over at PM Digital, they asked their digital bloggers for first impressions of the iPad:

• Tim Kilroy: "It means your presentation layer just got cooler, and more transparent. The opportunity to create impact and engagement just increased."
• Anthony Avolio: "Marketers must actively consider touch interfaces when planning their designs... While the iPad is just one device, it's likely the start of a new mainstream push for touch interfaces."
• Glenn Lalich: "The iPad just gave email creative a dazzling shot in the arm... And it didn't cost marketers a cent."

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.

"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.

As Rex and I are the resident Mac-heads in the office, I thought I'd use this "count-down week" to interview him about why he believes the iPad is such a big deal -- especially when it comes to the business we're in: Custom media and content marketing.

That's not unusual. We've been rethinking it constantly since we first launched it in 1995.

I used to think a website -- the design and structure part -- should last for a couple of years. While I've always thought the content should constantly change, I thought the "look" and "feel" should stay fairly constant. Such a personal bias can be seen in my 10-year-old blog. Despite undergoing three or four significant re-designs and three changes in content management systems, even a regular reader would be hard-pressed to point out anything that has changed about the design of RexBlog. Being subtle with the changes sometimes is more difficult than a major overhaul.

I've also always believed (and still do) that different people visit a site for different reasons and a company should make the site's navigation flexible enough for any of those reasons to be satisfied. Unfortunately, I've discovered over the years that no matter how flexible you make a site, it won't work for everyone. So you keep trying.

Today, we've thrown out the two-year rule. Today, we accept the reality that a company's website design and structure should be constantly reconsidered. Things change -- rapidly. And the need to have a website change along with new ways people use the web should be a part of your approach to maintaining the site.

This morning Rex, one of the founders of CPC (oops, make that, CCC), moderated a panel of custom media CEOs and industry veterans. Chris McMurry, CEO of McMurry, Diana Pohly, President/CEO of The Pohly Company, Valerie P. Valente, SVP/Publishing Director of Rodale Custom Publishing and Cameron Brown, President of King Fish Media shared strategies for evolving their content services to better meet the needs of their clients. The panelists acknowledged that 20 years ago their businesses were focused on magazines and newsletters while today those offerings have expanded to video, social media, event media and more.

Even though platform choices and vehicles have expanded, their focus remains the same: Meeting their clients’ goals with custom content.

Do you know how well your content is working for you? If you can't answer this question with confidence, you aren't alone. Most marketers today lack a clear idea of how their content is helping them meet their business objectives. But with all of the money and resources invested toward this content, they can't afford to be in the dark about how it's helping them meet their goals.

Enter the content audit. At Hammock, we understand how important such an audit can be. That's why we provide services to evaluate how clients' current use of media and other content is working for them. Immediately after starting a relationship with a client, we conduct a Hammock Content Marketing Intelligence Report, a comprehensive look at which content is currently working and what changes are needed. This report involves an intake assessment, in which we collect all relevant information from the client for our research. (We provide a simple checklist of what we need so it’s a pretty painless process.)

I hand made the magazines and complied statistics about the teams, players and games of the NASL. My mother, who was a teacher, allowed me to use the mimeograph machine at her office to make a dozen slightly wet and purple copies, which were stapled. I brought the issues to school, and offered them for sale in a unit of my class that was devoted to helping us understand economics. We reserved two hours at the end of the day each Friday to buy and sell to our classmates.

A guy named Sunil Chitra sold erasers with staples pushed in that could be used in our games of racecar before school. Sam Fowler made some sort of kettle popcorn. They met their goals. I know I bought from both of them. My foray into magazine publishing ended with two magazines sold. By the standards of how success could be measured in that situation, it was clearly a failure.

Creating content today can be a pure passion (like fanzines about NASL soccer) for fun, or it can be used to drive business aims, in which case it must be measured for its effectiveness. Content today is just as critical to the growth of a business as capital or access to credit. But content has to move the needle, and we need marks to tell how far the needle has moved.

At Hammock, we create custom content strategy based on our client’s goals and we benchmark and measure those things that we can influence and which drive the business goals. We then create and source the best content for the job. But that’s not enough. We set the marks with our clients, and track the movement of the needle every month, using custom reports to show how it’s working, and when necessary, make a course adjustment.

It’s still great fun to be in a business of creating content. But you can’t buy popcorn or little eraser cars unless you can create content that works.

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:

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:

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.

Your customers are busy. Preoccupied and stressed. They feel the strain of the economy. Despite the many distractions they face, you have to find a way to successfully connect with them. The key to that connection is content--but not just any content. By creating relevant, engaging and informational content you will find that not only will your prospects become customers, but also that you will build loyalty with your existing customers.

This morning, I ran across one that is not only interesting -- it's inspiring. It's inspiring because it underscores the dramatic opportunities that exist when a content company doesn't let its legacy get in the way of its opportunity.

Because marketers are discovering that the difference between success and failure is often the quality, strategy and measurement of an organization's content, we've decided to more clearly define our services by using the term "content marketing" to stress the solutions and support we can provide our clients.

Yesterday, I wrote about some of the year-long content marketing plans I'd execute instead of spending $3 million on a Superbowl ad. (If you read to the 5th point, my list of ideas had more than $2 million left over.)

But why do companies keep spending money on the hail-Mary passes that a $3 million Superbowl ad represents? In some cases -- Budweiser beer springs to mind -- an ad during the Superbowl makes lots of sense. Budweiser probably generates tens of millions in revenue during the game itself, making the ad something of a "Let's go out to the lobby" jingle from the old days at the movie theater.

But for advertisers who are using the ad to generate conversation about their brands or products, the venue and costs make little sense. So why do they spend such a significant portion of their budgets on a 30-second ad and not a year-long content marketing strategy?