Content That Works

Earlier this year we produced a magazine that included QR codes in it for download-able apps. All a reader had to do was scan it with a QR code reader (an app available for smart phones) and the app would download instantly. Imagine if the QR code was for a coupon for your store? Pretty cool, huh?

Junta42's Joe Pulizzi has more insight on mobile marketing trends and statistics, including:

• 56 percent of companies plan to increase budgets for mobile marketing in 2010.
• Marketers plan to increase their online marketing budgets by an average of 17 percent this year, drawing money away from traditional channels, like print.

Wondering how your company can reach out through this growing marketing channel? We can help!

One of the biggest keys of successful Internet marketing is posting fresh, original content as often as possible. But do you ever struggle with doing this day after day? If you're feeling uninspired, give these 5 R's of content creation from BharatBhasha.com a try:

1. Research. Before writing, use Google to research phrases that people use to search for your topic. This will give you ideas about hot topics as well as keywords to use in your content. Visit popular forums to get an sense of what people want to know about your topic.

2. Rearrange. Develop an outline to help you organize your thoughts and set the tone of your piece. Start with bullet points and then flesh them out into full-blown paragraphs.

3. Reveal. Humanize your content by sharing anecdotes or adding personal touches. Share stories or offer examples that help your readers connect your content to their situation. Don't be afraid to get visual, especially with technical topics.

4. Read. It's always good to have someone else proof and critique your content, but if you're the sole editor, print out a copy and read it out loud. This will force you to double-check every word instead of letting your mind "autosuggest" words that aren't there. If a word looks funny, look it up, especially if it's a term spell-check wouldn't catch!

5. Revise. Be as creative as you want when you sit down to start writing and save your critical side for later—when it's time to polish your first draft.

Once you've followed these steps, you're on your way to becoming a professional copywriter!

At Hammock we not only love words and beautiful layouts--but we love data too. Why are we so fond of numbers and graphs and spreadsheets? Because this kind of data collection and analysis ensures that the media we are creating are doing what they are intended to do. We’re always clear on how our words and video and tweets and other media are working (or not working) because measurement is such an integral part of what we do.

Jon Buscall, in this content marketing article, “Data is Content Marketing’s Friend,” says you can’t rely on your gut instinct when it comes to evaluating if your media is meeting your objectives. I couldn’t agree more. We don’t rely on crystal balls or some kind of unscientific “feeling” when it comes to our clients’ content marketing efforts—we rely on hard data to track if their strategy is working and if changes are necessary. At Hammock data is indeed our friend and it helps us create content that works for our clients.

Rex is live-tweeting the Custom Content Conference, happening this week in Nashville. The theme of this year's conference is "Content: Use It Or Lose It: Taking Advantage of Content in a Custom Media Age." Follow Rex's observations and pithy quotes from the speakers here: twitter.com/hammock.inc.

There is no one who thinks about content and how to make it work for your business more than Rex. Don't miss his Content That Works series for a distillation of his approach to and analysis of content marketing.

A new study released today found that interactive digital magazines outperform traditional Web sites when it comes to engagement, according to BtoB.

Eighty-two percent of respondents said they were more engaged with their digital magazine than with Web sites covering the same topic. Seventy percent of survey respondents said they were more likely to ignore Web site banner ads than ads in their digital magazine.

The survey polled readers of eight interactive digital magazines that "are taking advantage of the interactivity offered by the Web and supplying readers with video, slide shows and Flash animation," study author Josh Gordon told BtoB.

Speaking of engagement, Junta42 founder Joe Pulizzi posted a free whitepaper on the topic at his blog. It's called "Engagement: Understanding It, Achieving It, Measuring It." You can get it for free, no strings attached, and it includes great insight on something we're passionate about here at Hammock.

As if you needed another reminder: Content marketing is the best way to build your presence on the Internet. Sure, it takes more time than submitting an ad, but the payoff is much greater, writes T.J. Philpott in an articlecity.com blog. Here are his five reasons to adopt a content marketing strategy:
1. It's economical. All it costs is time and effort.
2. It lasts. Newsletters, blog posts or articles drive traffic long after they have been published.
3. It boosts credibility. The more content you publish, the faster your reputation grows online.
4. It draws traffic. By focusing your content on what you're trying to promote, you'll pull in not just any traffic, but targeted traffic.
5. It's search engine friendly. The more you publish quality content and link back to your site, the higher your rankings will be in search engines.

Convinced yet?

At Hammock we work with clients to create content that works--content that solves specific business challenges. But how do we know what content will work for each client? There are some universal content marketing rules to follow, as Rex points out in his "Content That Works" series, but sometimes learning what not to do is just as helpful to guiding strategy decisions.

Here are five areas where Targetmarketingmag.com sees marketers make mistakes when it comes to their content marketing plans:

While it's important in your content marketing to spread your message across multiple social media platforms, it's also helpful to have a good idea of what the users of those platforms are looking for so you can tailor your message.

According to this recent article on Mashable.com, "Twitterers mostly consume news, MySpace users want games and entertainment, Facebookers are into both news and community and Digg's audience has a mixed bag of interests."

That's not to say you shouldn't post tweets that show a more personal, community oriented side of your business on Twitter and discount putting any business postings on Facebook, but it's always helpful to understand how a particular audience interacts with information.

Head over to Mashable to check out the breakdown of what users are interested in on the various social media sites.

I've been a fan of the Good organization since it launched in 2006. It continues to post content that I want to see, read and experience.

It seems small business owners are mixed on the value of social media for business. Those who love it have seen an uptick in sales that they can tie directly to their social media efforts. Those who aren't impressed say the time investment isn't worth the effort, according to the Wall Street Journal.

But what effort were these businesses making? The article mentioned a few ways in which these companies used social media (customer service, direct sales leads). But nowhere was social media mentioned as a way to push out content.

At Hammock, we believe content plays an integral role in retaining and recruiting customers. But we're not talking about just any old content. We're talking about engaging content that people actually look forward to reading and experiencing. We call that content that works!

If you've heard it once, you've heard it a million times. To compete in today's global economy, you need a Web presence with a blog, a Twitter account, a Facebook page ... the list goes on and on. But with all the time and energy you put into these social media efforts, how do you make sure you're getting a return on your investment? Here are the top three ways to make your social media efforts pay off, from John Jantsch's Duct Tape Marketing blog.

1. Follow up. Use networking sites to follow up with prospects you meet in the real world. Instead of meeting someone at a Chamber of Commerce mixer and following up with a phone call, send that person a LinkedIn invitation and, once you're connected, pass along an article with tips about the very topic you discussed when you met.

2. Stay top of mind. Use social media to stay in front of your customers and educate them about what you have to offer. Share practical tools and tips and success stories through a blog that you encourage customers to subscribe to so you can engage with them. Upload video testimonials to YouTube and embed them on your site, or create a Facebook fan page with information about promotions and events.

3. Keep tabs on your industry. Subscribe to blogs written by industry leaders, competitors and journalists to stay informed about what's going on in your market. Scan the day's industry-related stories with a Google News Reader or set up Google Alerts to track industry terms and the news they create.

Everywhere you turn today companies are encouraging you to follow them on Twitter. And it's not just the big national players like CNN who promote themselves on the social media tool--it's local small businesses too, which I was reminded of just last week. At a fundraiser I struck up a conversation with caterers from Sweet 16th, my favorite bakery in Nashville. During our quick chat they explained how they are making bread now and chimed in, “Follow us on Twitter so you can find out which breads are available each day.”

When crafting your content marketing strategy, it's imperative that you know what your customers want (and simplifying it to "my product" isn't good enough). To better understand what your customers are searching for in an experience and a product, DesignDamage suggests researching your customers "natural behaviors," and asking several questions, including:

• Where does your customer go when searching for your products and services?


• When and how do customers gain access to your products and services?


• What does value mean to them?


• What are some of the potential barrier to purchase?


• Who are your competitors and how are they perceived in the customer’s eyes?

[Part 3 of a Series: See: Introduction. See: Links to other posts in this series.]

One of the ways you can measure the importance our culture places on different kinds of content is by observing the awards associated with them. For example, film and video have all sorts of awards that lots of people seem to care about -- even people who don't watch that much film or video. Music has all sorts of awards, and not just Grammys or CMAs. In the headquarters town of Hammock Inc., Nashville, almost every day there are short items on local websites about parties celebrating Gold or Platinum Records (or whatever they call "records" these days).

To compete a decade ago, a small business' marketing budget had a great big line item called Yellow Pages advertising. Small businesses would spend hundreds of month on a tiny ad that got them nowhere compared to their competitors who spent thousands on the full-page ad.

But today, thanks to the demise of the Yellow Pages and the rise of content marketing, the game has changed, according to ContentMarketingToday.com:

"For a capital investment of $5-$10,000 a business of any size can build a credible and compelling website that integrates a blog, an eNewsletter and social media in order to compete effectively with companies that might be 10 or 100 times their size."

An even better snippet from the post is this: "Although the website of a small business may lack some of the polish and pizazz of its giant brethren, it can be every bit as successful when it conveys content that is truly relevant and compelling for its ideal target customers."

At Hammock, we call that Content That Works.

Digital marketing is all the rage right now, but recent statistics show that you shouldn't count print out when planning your marketing strategy, according to the Junta42 Content Marketing blog. Statistics from APA (the UK's association of branded editorial content) reveal the following:

•The average time a reader spends with a custom print magazine is 45 minutes.
•Custom print magazines get an average 44 percent response rate and an 8 percent increase in sales annually.
•And most surprising of all, men and women between 18–24 who receive custom magazines from a corporation are the most engaged age group.

One company that's doing this is Fortune magazine, which has a content marketing strategy for its Web site and social networks, but is also investing heavily in its print magazine. The magazine, in addition to adding more useful news for readers about careers and entrepreneurship—and extending those conversations online—is also switching to higher quality paper and making significant design and font changes. The reason for the redesign? To make the aesthetic experience of flipping through a print magazine more rewarding for readers.

The jury is still out on how the iPad and other tablets will impact what has been a struggling magazine industry the last few years, but Wired editor Chris Anderson has a positive outlook on the potential of the tablet to change the industry. Why is Anderson so confident in the opportunities tablets will create for magazines and content marketers? He shared the following insights at the American Association of Advertising Agencies' Transformation Conference in San Francisco last week:

If you are a marketer, you depend on effective content to reach and serve customers. However, we're now experiencing a tsunami of change in the ways such content can be created and distributed. Change may be good, but it can be filled with risk and confusion.

However, I've decided to use the Wikipedia entry Metal umlaut as the example for today's "lesson." If you're curious why, it's because many years ago, Jon Udell used this entry's history to demonstrate what a screencast is. Also, after the first draft, I felt this post needed more cowbell.

So here's what you can learn from a well-done wiki entry about the elements needed in great "research" content:

Creating great content is just the part of a content strategy -- once you've got it, you need to effectively market it. If nobody knows your content exists, then all of your hard work will be for naught. This article from Wild Pitch Marketing suggests five great outlets to use to garner attention for your content, including:

• Social media. "Networking and word of mouth is the most powerful promotional strategy to get the attention you need for your content."


• Search engine marketing. "...Optimize your content to produce better visibility in the search engines so that more people can discover your content..."


• Blogging. The ease of sharing blogged content (via syndication and widgets) allows others to help you distribute your content.

Head over to Wild Pitch Marketing to learn more about how to get your content noticed.

After 30 years of thinking about content, creating it or working with other content creators, Rex Hammock knows quite a bit about helping business people communicate better with their customers. In fact, our resident content marketing expert is in the middle of a new series, Content That Works, in which he outlines some practical ways to create engaging content that people actually look forward to reading and experiencing.

[Part 1 of a Series: See: Introduction. See: Links to other posts in this series.]

Business people do lots of things on the internet other than read or watch or listen to content. So when I say that only two kinds of content matter to them, I don't mean web-based applications and email.

I mean the kind of content we typically think of as news and information and advertising and the stuff now called "post-advertising" -- the kind of content that marketing people and journalists and bloggers and Twitter users create and add to the internet. The kind of content that companies hand over millions of dollars to Google so that business people will click through to see it.

I've given these two kinds of content that matter most to business customers the following names:

The posts also examine ways in which different types of content and different communications channels and platforms can work independently or in a complementary, integrated fashion to help companies reach specific business objectives.

If you think marketing is about crafting showy, syrupy stories about your brand for a consumer audience, think again. Marketing is about finding the true stories that make your brand unique and using them to engage employees and consumers, blogs Brett Virmalo of digital agency Tippingpoint Labs. Ready to ramp up your marketing? Virmalo suggests focusing on these five areas.

•Product design and development. To market a product, build your messaging around the problem that your team set out to solve when they developed it.

•The post-purchase experience. Don't spam your customers with the next product you want them to purchase. Figure out what they are buying and how you can help them use it, so you can provide them valuable, relevant content.

•Customer support.When a customer has a problem or complaint, focus on how you can help them solve it as quickly and as painlessly as possible instead of explaining what went wrong.

•Product reviews. Are you engaging in online ratings and review spaces like Yelp, GetSatisfaction and the like? If not, you should be. Seize any opportunity to set the record straight when an unfair review is posted.

•Employees and CEOs. Think of every employee as a brand ambassador and encourage them to promote your brand through their social networks. Give CEOs a platform to blog or Tweet about your brand or position them as experts who are willing to speak at conferences, to reporters, ect.

A new study reveals that small businesses are increasingly incorporating social media into their marketing strategies. In fact, usage of social media among small businesses has doubled over the last year: 24 percent of small businesses with fewer than 100 employees use social media versus 12 percent last year, according to the latest Small Business Success Index study performed by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.

The study found that the most common social media methods among small businesses is creating a Facebook or LinkedIn page (75 percent). Only 39 percent of small businesses have a blog, and 26 percent use Twitter to share information about their area of expertise.

The study also provided insight into why small business owners are hesitant about using social media to market their businesses. Biggest barriers include longer-than- expected marketing results and the fear that social media channels give customers an opportunity to publicly criticize their business.

[See also: Table of Contents for this series.]

Over the coming months, I will be writing a series of posts that focus on the role of "content" in how companies and customers connect with one-another. (Of course, when I say "companies," I also mean associations and governments and churches and schools and candidates. And when I say "customers," I also mean members and alumni and supporters, etc.) But first, I thought I'd provide an introduction.

We hear it all the time: Companies who treat their websites as "brochure" sites and then wonder why they don’t have more visitors. According to this content marketing post from Talk Back Media, "your site should be like a salesperson working around the clock to boost your business"—and a brochure site will simply not cut it. The goal is to create content on an ongoing basis that continues to tell the story of your product or service. It doesn’t matter what form the content takes—it can be through blogs, white papers, case studies or people pages—it just has to be vibrant, relevant and regularly updated. This discipline not only makes your site more attractive to search engines, but also to site visitors. They’ll have an incentive to come back to the site more often if they know the content will be different every time and of interest to them because you have set yourself up as an expert and a trusted source.