Content That Works

Results from a recent spending study signal good news for content marketers in 2012. According to the 2011 “Spending Study” conducted by the Custom Content Council, total spend on branded content went up significantly in 2011—to $1,914,000 per company, the highest level ever. Publication budgets increased by 68 percent.

From generating leads to building longer-lasting and closer relationships current customers, marketers are discovering that smart content, deployed strategically, is key to reaching a wide array of business objectives.

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?

A recent Custom Content Council* study shows that 84 percent of CMOs strongly/somewhat agree that custom content “represents the future of marketing,” backed by the fact that 59 percent of them have moved marketing money away from traditional advertising methods and put it into custom content.

For years, we at Hammock have been tooting the custom content horn: How it drives lead generation, leads to direct sales, and aids in customer retention. So when we see results of studies that illustrate just how important other industry leaders consider it, too, we get excited.

The study surveyed CMOs in fields including healthcare, technology, finance, retail, communications and insurance. Eighty-three percent of CMOs surveyed indicated they are "receptive toward using custom content in their marketing plans," which is a 16 point increase since the previous study conducted in 2006.

The findings also indicate that nine out of 10 chief marketing officers see value in custom content and recognize its positive effect on customers, and 85 percent believe custom content leads to repeat customers.

Other highlights from the study include nine in 10 CMOs reporting their belief that “a majority of consumers find useful information in custom media,” and nearly half strongly agree (91 percent strongly/somewhat agree) that custom content “should be an integral part of the marketing mix for any business.”

*Hammock Inc. is one of six founding members of the Custom Content Council. Today, more than 75 companies -- including some of the world's largest media companies -- are members of the leading national association of content marketing and custom media providers.

Over time, content creators will discover which apps, eBooks or services their audience will purchase and use on their smart phones and iPads. However, savvy publishers and content marketers are discovering ways to get their content onto mobile devices with approaches that help drive business metrics and meet organizational objectives -- and not by selling 99-cent apps.

Here are just a few ways to get your content on your customers' and members' smart phones and pad devices:

LivingSocial has helped its members find targeted deals since 2007, but Hammock has been delivering similar kinds of targeted content for far longer. Since 1991 we’ve learned that one of the best ways to help our clients become more relevant to their members is by sending messages that directly speak to their various audiences. In the same way that group buying websites—which send daily emails to members spotlighting their city’s deals—have skyrocketed in popularity in the last year, organizations that target specific members can more clearly build loyalty, better demonstrate their value and even see financial benefits.

Almost any marketer can cite some statistic about how efficient and valuable it is to retain a customer versus going out and acquiring a new one. There are a bewildering number of stats, but they all agree: it’s cheaper to retain than to obtain, and your current customers are valuable.

We are talking about customer retention in this installment (part three) of a five-part discussion about what business objectives you can expect a well-developed and executed content marketing strategy to accomplish.

Installment one: lead generation

Installment two: direct sales

New York Life
Insurance Magazine, 1942

For some reason, every few months or so, a reporter will discover that a consumer or business product company has launched a magazine or web property designed to communicate directly with its customers -- and will write about it as if this were some newly discovered form of marketing. As launching and managing such media properties is what I have done for much of the past 25 years, I am pleased that such an approach to marketing is continuously treated as something new and fresh and cutting-edged, despite having been around since the 1800s.

Until they heard of the controversial website WikiLeaks, many people thought the word "wiki" and the website Wikipedia were synonymous.

Today, there are countless wikis, many built using the same approaches and software used by Wikipedia. SmallBusiness.com, a wiki created and managed by Hammock, is one of them. Other wikis use different software, different approaches and are so different looking from Wikipedia, you may not even realize they're wikis. (Ironically, there's nothing about the software or approach used by the website WikiLeaks that is a wiki as popularly defined.)

Earlier this year, Hammock began working with 20|20 Research on a project designed to help boost their organic search results and generate leads for its suite of online research products.

Long known for its physical research facilities, the company now boasts impressive online products with a fast-growing user base of research professionals in the United States and Europe. As these new products ramp up, they want to make sure their expanded capabilities and unique online products are receiving the recognition they deserve.

When they reached out to us they were already savvy content marketers and a step ahead of most companies. Not only did they have a well-written and authoritative CEO blog, they also had a strong presence on LinkedIn and Twitter.

However, like many companies, the full plate of duties already being handled by everyone on staff made it difficult for the company to find the time and focus needed to reach the objectives they had for their online efforts.

Hammock provides content marketing services, which includes publishing print and digital magazines customized to meet our clients' objectives. We study those objectives and work to ensure each issue of a client's publication meets their specific goals. We accomplish this with expert writing about topics of interest to our clients' target audience—and compelling design that brings to vivid life our writers' stories. In the last month, these stories have included everything from historic re-enactors to the U.S. Marine Corps special ops and from the latest in pharmaceutical innovations to how health-care reform will affect supply chain managers. No matter the topic, our storytelling is tailored to the interests and passions of our clients' customers and members. But we don't just tell you that's what we do—we're always eager to show you. View our latest work for some of the publications we publish for our clients, including American Spirit, Semper Fi, The Source and Pharmaceutical Commerce.

Savvy marketers no longer depend solely on traditional advertising in traditional media to reach their audience. Creating and managing their own branded media -- from e-media to print magazines and from video to iPad apps --marketers now are learning that content is the glue holding their marketplaces together. Since our own Rex Hammock helped to create what is now the largest content marketing trade group in the United States, the Custom Content Council, we asked him to answer one simple question that we get asked a lot these days: “What exactly is content marketing?”

At Hammock, we create content that helps our clients accomplish business objectives. Sounds great, but what objectives are we helping them achieve?

The following five objectives are what you can expect to influence and measure with a well-developed and executed content marketing strategy:

1. Lead generation
2. Direct sales
3. Customer retention
4. Branding support
5. Thought leadership

For today’s post, let’s focus on lead generation.

Content marketing is part of the marketing mix for nine out of 10 B2B marketers, but these same marketers are uncertain about the effectiveness of these channels. These findings are part of the recent “B2B Content Marketing: 2010 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends” report developed by MarketingProfs and Junta42. The report identified that marketers are facing a confidence gap—between the content marketing tactics they employ and their ability to measure their effectiveness. While 79 percent of marketers surveyed are using social media tactics (excluding blogs), only 31 percent of those who use social media tactics rate the tactic as effective.

Maximizing your content, or “merchandising” it, as CB Whittemore of Simple Marketing Now LLC says, is stretching each piece of content for everything it’s worth, like a retail store merchandises to get the most out of each dollar spent. What’s more valuable to your business: a hundred blogs that only a handful of people ever see, or a few great pieces of content that have been reworked and reused in multiple modes of communication to reach a maximum number of viewers? Content is useless if you don’t get it out there in the open for people to read where they prefer to consume content. It’s much more effective and efficient to spend time amplifying each content piece’s reach than pumping out more and more content that just doesn’t go anywhere.

What are the best ways you extend the reach of your marketing? Here are three of our favorites:

Ever had writer's block? If you're the one churning out content for your website, chances are you have. The worst is when you've exhausted all of the usual places you look for inspiration and come up empty-handed. Well, here's another source to add to your arsenal of awesome content ideas: your web analytics. That's right, those pages and pages of keywords showing how people find your site are full of great content ideas, says Dianna Huff of the Content Marketing Institute.

Dianna says every time she looks at her Google Analytics report, she comes away with at least half a dozen content ideas. (Hey, that could be two weeks worth of content!)

She shares her tips for finding content ideas in keyword reports:

• Look for combinations of search phrases around a specific topic.
• Look for questions/phrases that need answers.
• Look for non-relevant search phrases.

Check out the post for more insight on each of these.

What in the world could a band known for its live shows, drug culture and merchandise have to do with successful content marketing today? Surprisingly, a lot, says Brian Clark of Copyblogger.com, as he shows how the Grateful Dead successfully mastered the use of content marketing to create their army of intensely loyal “Deadheads” in only four steps.

Even if you’re not a member of a psychedelic jam band, you too can use these steps to think about your business’ content marketing approach and how to best “give away something valuable in order to sell something related.” According to Clark and “the Dead,” there are four key steps to truly successful content marketing:

Although every business or brand can benefit from productive content marketing, there are some times when you shouldn’t even bother, explains Joe Pulizzi over on the Junta42 blog. He shares seven problems for brands that often result in ineffective or even useless content marketing.

Instead of producing custom content just for the sake of having it, knowing these common pitfalls could be key in refining your content marketing strategy. He shares seven, but here are the three we found most useful:

1. Your content doesn’t meet the needs of the customer. As Joe puts it, “If you are a chip company, why are you aggregating pictures of babies and puppies? Why are you spending time and resources on content marketing that will have no hope of generating more revenue or cost savings in some way?” The goal is to enhance your relationship with the customer, and providing relevant information that actually helps them is the best way to do this.
2. You’re producing content that’s just like your competitors’. The reason you create custom content is to make your company stand out from the competition. If a customer can get the same information elsewhere, what’s stopping them?
3. Your content suffers through lack of expertise and resources. If you’re going to do it, it only pays off when it’s done well. Pulizzi recommends doing what you can do well internally while outsourcing at least a portion of the content marketing.

It's news to no one—who doesn't know that Google is the No. 1 search engine? But a new report from Experian Hitwise gives content marketers an important reminder about keywords and search engine optimization.

Sure, there are other search engines out there, namely Yahoo and Bing, but those stand in the shadows of Google, which accounted for 72 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in May, according to the report. Yahoo's share was 14 percent, while Bing had 9 percent of all U.S. searches in May. Ask.com accounted for 2 percent of all U.S. searches.

If your content marketing strategy includes keywords for search engine optimization, give preference to content that will influence where you want your business to land for that keyword in Google. In most cases, the content marketing strategy for getting Google hits will be the same for the other search engines, but don't get too excited if your business pops up on page 1 in Bing but buried in Google. That keyword should still be marked "needs improvement." Or rather, "needs content."

Every once in a while, it's a good idea to step back and take a thorough look at how effective your blogging efforts are. Sociatic calls this auditing your blog, and breaks down the 20-question process into six areas to look at: Design, subscriptions, content, monetization, marketing and measurement. Some of the questions they suggest you ask yourself include:

• Do I have the essential pages set up? Make sure you have an About and Contact page, and consider other pages like Resources, Services and a custom error page.


• Is your RSS feed (or feeds) easily located?


• Is my content well-formatted (and formatted consistently)?


• Is my monetization method (i.e. ads) working?


• Is my blog showing up in all of the major search engines?

As a nod to all of the professional journalists who are turning to content marketing for job security, Clare McDermott of Junta42's Content Marketing Institute gives us six things we can learn from these former newsroom junkies about content marketing. They all are great and make perfect sense, but here are my favorites:

• Remember that you are reporting a story, not marketing a product.This is huge, and it really is the difference between folks actually reading the content on your site and rolling their eyes as they navigate away from your site.
• Schedule consistent pitch meetings.We're content experts and we hold a weekly meeting to come up with new, fresh ideas for our Hammock blog.
• Institute strong editorial guidelines. Just because it's on a website or a blog doesn't mean it can be messy. This is especially valuable if you have more than one content contributor. Make sure everyone posting knows how to cite a source. (And proofread, please!)

"My name is Lucille Meachum, but I’m Lucy to everyone, only Lucille on my business cards. I’m 41, and happily married now for seventeen years — wow. I have two great kids that can really get my blood pressure going one minute, but can be sweet and caring the next, even to each other."

No, that's not an exercise in creative writing you're reading, it's an example of a persona you should be creating for your content marketing strategy, according to Keith Weigold, a contributor to Junta42's new Content Marketing Institute blog.

To know who you're targeting with your content, Weigold says, you have to understand more than just their demographics. "A key to engaging content is put the customer first, to solve her problems and answer his questions. This requires understanding their beliefs, feelings, wants and needs," he says.

Weigold walks us through the process of creating a persona--starting with the information we're most likely to have about our customers (demographics) and filling in the blanks until you can write your target customer's narrative.

"This ultimate step truly places you within her shoes and provides the customer-centric viewpoint so crucial to effective content marketing," Weigold concludes.

In most cases, a client's website plays a big role in their overall content strategy. But how many companies take the time to think about the goals of their website and how they fit within their overall content marketing strategy? Not many, based on our experience. The good news is that it’s never too late to stop and rethink the purpose of your website.

Patsi Krakoff, content marketing specialist and co-founder of The Blog Squad, shares recommendations for five content marketing goals for websites:

How-to articles for using Twitter abound, but we liked the way this article from Connected Marketer zeroed in on helpful tips for tweeting responsibly and building a B2B community on Twitter. Blogger Jeremy Victor outlines the how Twitter can help "start conversations and build real life relationships" that will ultimately benefit your business.

Our favorite tips:
Don’t: Flood your audience with self- or company-promotional tweets. A balance is critical.
Don’t: Post negatively about a competitor. Don’t post negatively about anything for that matter.
Do: Provide value and be selective in your tweeting. Only tweet about things that the community of people whom you are working to attract will find interesting or valuable. A great place to start is to share links to industry news or new product announcements.

Measuring ROI seems to be a hot topic this week, as Bill previously pointed to an article about why it's important to measure ROI on social media marketing efforts.

A new study by Omniture doesn't go into why measuring ROI is so important, but it does show that marketers simply aren't doing it, regardless of online marketing method: "80% believe ROI from online marketing activities is important to measure, but only 31% of marketers can effectively measure it," according to the 2010 Omniture Online Analytics Benchmark Survey. Further, "86% of respondents think conversion rate from online marketing activities is important to measure, but 25% cannot effectively measure it."

At Hammock, we do a lot of content marketing for clients, and for each of those clients, we report back on a monthly basis about how our content marketing efforts are working for them. And by "report back" I don't mean vague statements about how awesome our work is; I mean specific metrics that clearly show how our work is helping our clients achieve their business goals.

Custom publishing has changed significantly since Rex created Hammock Inc. 19 years ago. While the “custom” part remains, “custom content” rather than “custom publishing” is a more accurate way to describe what we do and the work we create for our clients. Custom content is published in print, online, on websites or via social media. The platforms and the methods of distribution and syndication are varied based on the goals of our clients.

The first step in successful content marketing is to ensure your website is set up properly. Good Plum has a list of several common mistakes businesses make with their websites, including:

• A bad domain name: Will you choose one that incorporates important keywords? Or will you go with one that's catchy? Or both? Spend time researching and testing your domain name, Good Plum says.
• Neglecting traffic generation strategies: Websites that ignore tie-ins to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, fail to research keywords and other Internet marketing tactics, and ignore their rank in organic and paid search will not be as easily discovered as those who utilize those services.
• An ugly website: It might sound harsh, but if your website is difficult to look at (blinking banner ads everywhere, 10 different fonts, 50 different colors, etc.), people won't stay long. Be kind to your visitors' eyes and invest time in developing a good design—both visual and navigational—for your website.

While social media can be credited with numerous positive contributions to society, sometimes that sphere can feel impolite and harsh to folks diving in. Applying a little more politeness and a lot more dependability to your content marketing efforts can go a long way toward building trust and ensuring your success. Take a lesson from Grandma.

What do you know about your customers? Besides the fact that they all have at one time used your products or services? Drilling down to more specific information can help you improve your content marketing strategy, says Michael Thompson on btobonline.com.

"Collecting customer preferences allows you to have a better understanding of each customer's interests," he says. "This information becomes even more valuable when married with ongoing activity data, giving you a full view of your customers’ buying behavior and what drives them to take action. Collecting and harvesting this information allows you to create more relevant e-mail marketing communications, providing your customers with information they want, when they want it, to drive significantly higher sales conversion rates."

Lee Odden's article on content strategy vs. tactics got a lot of attention this week, with more than 40 people in his social network expressing their opinion on the value of social media experimentation.

It's impossible not to get hooked on Zillow.com. The site provides historical data on housing purchasing prices and allows you, with a few clicks, to discover not only what your neighbor paid for his house, but also the purchase price of every house on your block. You can further feed your curiosity with the “Zestimate” feature, which provides an estimate on the value of your house today. It’s not hard to see why its site traffic last month was more than 10 million unique monthly visitors.

I won't lie: When the Associated Press announced they were changing the entry in their stylebook from "Web site" to "website," several of us here in the office danced a little happydance. Despite being users (and lovers) of AP style, that was one word we did not agree with them on.

Robert Niles of The Online Journalism Review explains the importance of the AP's change in this recent blog post, referencing a tweet he made regarding the change: "If you're publishing online, Google style (i.e. SEO) always trumps AP style."

I don't completely agree with Niles; I think it's still important for journalism students to learn AP style. But it's also important that they learn to write for the web.

People are using Google to look for your content, and if you're still writing like you're publishing a magazine or newspaper, by default you're making it more difficult for Google to find you and, therefore, connect a potential client, customer or reader with your content.

That's not to say that all AP style is Google offensive, because it's not. But if you're writing a piece for your website or blog, you can't ignore what search engines look for. SEO (or "Internet marketing," for those who think SEO is a negative term) isn't just making sure you have your title and alt tags in place. It also involves using words and phrases that accurately describe what your article or blog post is about in a web-friendly way to help Google connect the right searchers to you.

Read more from OJR: The Online Journalism Review.

Content marketing can be a cost-effective way to get the word out about a company, putting the small guys on a more even playing field with the big boys. One reason it's an economical strategy is because you can repurpose your content in dozens of different ways, turning a blog entry into a white paper or an article into the script of a video. The idea is to recycle content so that it "takes advantage of the different ways that your readers absorb information," says blogger Beth Hrusch.

So it's probably no surprise that Joe Pulizzi's blog on Junta42 is one of my go-tos for great content marketing insight, and Joe's latest post illustrates just why that is.

The post is a tough-love tirade about content marketing and how a company's content marketing strategy will fail if the content is all about the company and not about the customers' needs. He gives an example of content marketing that doesn't work (sorry, Ford Motors) and challenges companies to take this content marketing test.

Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign gained immortality for using the simple slogan "It's the economy, stupid" to beat incumbent President George H. W. Bush. Today's content marketers should remind themselves that "It's the content, stupid," that ultimately attracts, retains and persuades readers.

We've always said that, and it's nice to see another content marketing company, Pace Communications, agreeing with us in this blog post by account director Kerry Andrews – plus she quotes one of our favorite marketing bloggers, Seth Godin.

To expand on what she says about relevance, your messages have to work well with whatever formats or media you choose to convey them. Apple's new iPad has re-agitated the debate over online vs. print design, as well as how best to craft content for a new means of delivery.

Integrating medium, message and design should be part of your overall marketing strategy, and it brings into play designers, writers and marketing specialists. Ideally, the result will be, as Alexander Pope put it, "What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

Did you know that the average visitor to your website spends less than two minutes on each page? So you better get to your point—and fast. Writing for the web is different from writing for print, and so it’s important you adapt your content for those who skim, because the reality is that most of your visitors will only scan your content, rather than read it word for word. Ginny Redish’s book "Letting Go of the Words," focuses on how to create content that will "answer people’s questions and let them get on with their lives."

Blogging for your business is crucial, but working the right amount of marketing into your posts is also important, according to this recent article. It's one thing to blog, but if you want it to help boost your business, you've got to have a goal in mind and tailor the content of your blog to meet that goal, whether it be offering information, asking visitors to watch a video, or showcasing an example of your company's recent work.

Blogs are a great way to discuss business in a more laid-back manner than you might in a white paper or memo to a client, and you can't underestimate their value in connecting with customers -- current and potential.

Just remember: Content is king, but only if it's targeted, quality content.

If your content marketing plan incorporates online reviews of your product or service, don't fake them.

Jay Baer of Convince and Convert makes some compelling arguments about why a company's social media programs should be about helping, not about selling, and lists several companies that approaching their social media programs in this correct way. From a content marketing standpoint, Geek Squad really stood out among the companies Baer name-checked. He said:

"Geek Squad makes its living providing technology configuration and repair services, via BestBuy stores everywhere. But yet Geek Squad has a YouTube channel that includes hundreds of videos showing people how to do it themselves. They aren’t trying to sell you services –- at least not at that point –- they are being helpful."

Sounds a lot like a good content marketing strategy, too.

More than 350 blogs were reviewed by Junta42 and their lead researcher Janet Robbins for their selection of the Junta42 Top Content Marketing blogs. This is the eight installment of this list for Junta42. Congratulations to Jay Baer from Convince and Convert for his spot at the top. Here are the top ten blogs:

Despite what some might think, simply setting up a few social media accounts isn't enough. You have to have a strategy of how to use them.

Once you've outlined your objectives, if you're having trouble deciding which social media platforms to use to best market yourself, check out this handy chart from Revenflo to get an idea of which social media platforms will help you achieve your goals. For example, Facebook and Twitter have ended up in the Most Effective Customer Communication and Most Effective Brand Exposure categories, while Digg and StumbleUpon are considered effective in driving traffic to your website.

Kudos to Junta42's Joe Pulizzi for appealing to burger freaks and content geeks all at once. He took a very long but interesting (not to mention mouthwatering) article about Five Guys Burger and Fries from this month's issue of Inc. magazine and turned it into lessons about content marketing. One of my favorites:

Never cut corners on content. Your customers will notice: "Jerry (Murrell) and Five Guys gets potatoes north of the 42nd parallel because they grow slower and are more solid," Pulizzi says. "They soak all their fries in water so they won't absorb any oil when they are fried. The beef is never frozen and all burgers ordered are fresh. My favorite: always two slices of tomatoes...no matter what and even in the current tomato crisis. That's Five Guys secret sauce. Your content marketing must be different in some way. I'm getting tired of all the sites I go to that simply just aggregate content all day or say the same thing as everyone else. How does that help your brand story?"

The others are equally thought-provoking. Thanks, Joe!

"People don't care what you say about your products. They want to know what other people say about your products."

After hearing that message from marketing speaker David Meerman Scott and embarking on a seemingly unrelated search for New York pizza, ClickZ blogger Sage Lewis realized just how much user-generated content dominates his decision-making process.

When a visitor arrives at one of your landing pages, it’s critical the page is designed to make it easy for the visitor to perform a desired action. These actions can be varied—for some of our clients it can be to fill out a form or to watch a video. For others, the action can be to spend more time on the site, clicking to other pages. Good, relevant content makes these actions happen and we help clients create this type of content that meets their goals. Michele Linn of socialemailmarketing.eu has some great tips for how content marketers build better landing pages:

In what is billed as the "First-Ever BtoB Buying Survey," researchers found that potential purchasers increasingly are forgoing the traditional buying model in favor of combing social media sites for content that provides information and application results about products and services.

The survey, called "Transforming the B2B Buying Process", was conducted by DemandGen Report, a G3 Communications Publication.

Considering that most consumers are more likely to do business with a company they trust, as a 2009 survey found, it makes sense for businesses to work on building relationships with their customers. And good, relevant content -- updated often -- can help achieve this. Practical eCommerce suggests setting up a blog as the most obvious content hub, and recommends adding video (creating it, embedding it and distributing it) as well.

The more you communicate with your audience, the more your relationship with them will grow, which could lead to more conversations -- and sales.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

How do you view your newsletter—whether e-mail or print? Do you see it as separate from your website? If so, you're potentially overlooking a huge opportunity to maximize your content marketing impact, says Newt Barrett on Web2journal.com.

In his post, Barrett shares seven ways to get more for your newsletter buck. Depending on your business, all seven of his ideas might not apply, but on his list are a few must-dos to make your newsletter work harder for you:

• Link each newsletter story to a page on your website. "You want your readers to find their way easily to your online home so they can discover lots more about your company, its products and its people," he says.
• Be sure to make RSS feeds available for your newsletter and for all of your web content. "This is an easy and free way of syndicating your news stories that will extend your newsletter subscriber base dramatically," Newt says.
• Be sure each article integrates social media sharing capabilities. "If you’re lucky, a great article may go viral and be spread across the web by enthusiasts who value and want to share your content," he says."

Valentine's Day is over, but if you're looking for a good content marketing strategy, you could probably take a few lessons from the best Valentine's cards and gifts you've received through the years. According to the Idea Launch blog, effective content marketing is like a valentine. It is:

•Funny
•Intelligent
•Keeps things fresh and exciting
•Trustworthy
•Dependable
•Thoughtful and considerate
•Understanding

Your blog, e-mail newsletter or Web site can be well-written and come with the best "packaging" in the world, but remember: If it doesn't have heart and connect with the audience, you won't make an impact.

If you are looking for the best places online to keep up with the latest on content marketing, look no further. The savvy folks of Junta42 have done the work for you—reviewing hundreds of blogs to come up with the best of the best when it comes to content marketing blogs for your reading pleasure. While we might be a bit biased (as our own Rex Hammock’s rexblog.com comes in at number 11), we think this is a great list full of cutting edge thinking about content marketing.

Here are the top 5 blogs from the list:

Many businesses have realized the importance of maintaining a blog, but how many see their blog as a product? New media marketing master Chris Brogan discusses the importance of viewing your blog as a part of a "content ecosystem," noting that as soon as you recognize your blog as "only 'a' channel, that’s when you start thinking of other outreach opportunities."

According to Brogan, being able to view your content -- and all of your products -- as an ecosystem instead of completely separate entities increases its value and opens the door for development.

If you're not getting all you want out of your content marketing efforts, this content marketing essentials article on copyblogger.com provides a few essential ideas on how to keep readers coming back for more.

1. Offer a reward. Give your readers something that will benefit them in some way. The content must entertain or help, and hopefully do both.
2. Show that you know your stuff, but don’t get a big head. Be a trustworthy source of information. Your readers want someone they can relate to, not an over-their-head college lecturer or smarter-than-everyone-else guru.
3. Create a relationship first: You won’t create relationships—or sell anything—without building trust. Think about creating a “content net” in which you can sell what you have over time and not rely on one hard sell.

Focusing on these content marketing basics and making them part of your overall content marketing strategy should help lead you to the results you are looking for.

Want to attract customers with your content marketing? One of the first steps to hooking readers is making sure that everything you publish is polished and error-free. Blogger Sean Rasmussen recommends these steps when editing online content:

•Let it rest. Don't rush to publish. After writing something, let it some time pass between your first draft and final edit. You'll be more likely to catch errors this way.

•Proof carefully. Always run spell-check, but remember it's not foolproof. Read your text thoroughly and ask someone else to proof it, too, so another set of eyes can catch what yours may have missed.

•Preview before publishing. If you're adding content to a system that allows you to do this, take advantage of it and check for proper formatting, line breaks and photo placement.

•Content first, SEO second. You want to drive search engines to your sales page, but don't put SEO keywords ahead of producing quality content. Write the piece first—and then add the keywords.

Is your company doing a good job executing your content marketing strategy? Are you struggling to find the resources to carry out all of your plans? Are you unsure about whether your content strategy is effective?

Today companies who provide relevant and engaging content for their customers and prospects are positioning themselves ideally to retain and attract new sales. That’s why it’s not a surprise that according to the results of the recent Junta42 Content Marketing Spending Survey, content marketing accounts for one out of every three marketing dollars spent. Having a content marketing strategy is important, but execution is key. Here are five tips on how to improve your content marketing implementation from interactive marketing strategist Heidi Cohen:

Still relying on old forms of media to get the word out about your business? If so, your content marketing strategy needs an update.

The mindset of prospective customers and buyers is evolving, says content marketing blogger Bernie Borges. An integrated approach of old and new is needed to get this audience to fully connect with your brand.

So, what exactly would such an approach look like? It could mean forging ahead with a brick-and-mortar trade show, while using blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube to engage an audience before, during and after the event. (Hammock managed a similar old/new media blending with Association Media & Publishing last year.)

For more practical ways to take these old media formats--phone, print ad, tradeshows and direct mail--and convert them to new media marketing, read more of Borges' article here.

Here's one for the doesn't surprise us folder: Social media usage in content marketing jumped 500 percent in two years, according to a new Junta 42 study.

Other content products that have seen the biggest increases since 2008 are blogs, online video and eBooks, followed by digital magazines, podcasts and microsites.

Does this mean your company should be using the hottest tools and ditching the least popular ones? Not at all. What it means is that there are a lot more ways to communicate with your audience these days.

Are your content marketing efforts hitting a wall? Does it seem like your e-mail blasts and newsletters disappear into cyberspace? Do your carefully crafted Tweets, status updates and posts feel like a waste of time?

The truth is converting content into cash is easy, but it takes getting into the skin of your readers and winning their trust and friendship. Here are secrets on how to do this from online business blogger Dan Ohis:

A recent interview with Joe Pulizzi of Junta42 provides some great insight into the role of content today in the marketplace and why companies are looking to outsource the creation of this content to experts in custom media and content marketing. Today companies can’t rely on their customers to tell their story. They need their own custom content to tell their story, and then as Joe points out, "great content should spawn useful user-generated content."

Here are Joe’s keys to success in content marketing:

Have you ever heard the expression, "You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else"? Well, the expression applies not just in relationships, but also when it comes to your content marketing strategy, according to Joe Pulizzi, founder of Junta42.

In his latest blog post, Pulizzi acknowledges the fact that so many businesses spend countless hours and resources creating buyer personas (sometimes even giving them names), so they can understand who their customers are, without really understanding the brand they are selling (their brand persona).

How does this relate to content marketing? Isn't content marketing all about the customer? Clearly not, when you consider Pulizzi's example:

"Just think of the difference between Southwest and Continental airlines. Two reputable companies. Two very different companies. If Continental came out with a video series about their flight attendants doing tricks on passengers, it would seem severely out of place. Southwest, not so much."

It may seem like newspapers, magazines and television stations are the experts when it comes to developing local content, but small businesses could have a corner on that market, too—if they just took advantage of it. More consumers are seeking online content about events they can attend in the community and information about local organizations—and small businesses are in the prime position to fill that niche, according this BizReport blog.

Social networks are the best way to publicize this information because they are "becoming the new search engine," said Jon Zack, co-founder of EggZack.com, which gives businesses an online platform for creating, uploading and distributing online newsletters, event flyers and other marketing materials. Sharing content through social networks ensures that customers will hear about the event and perhaps even repost a link to the information for family and friends.

At Hammock, we know that a well-executed content marketing strategy will allow a client to influence the decision-making and buying behavior of their customers, which is why we were not surprised to read the results of the latest annual Junta 42 Content Marketing Spending Survey, showing that 59 percent of those surveyed plan to increase their spending on content marketing in 2010. For marketers, the research show that content marketing spending is growing rapidly as a portion of their overall budget—serving as 33 percent of current overall marketing budgets, compared to only 11 percent in 2008. Marketers are expected to spend those bigger budgets on social media (72 percent), enewsletters (63 percent), blogs (63 percent), whitepapers (48 percent) and article marketing (48 percent).

View the Content Marketing Spending Report.

You've heard it before, the people who don't really "get" Twitter say it's just for telling other people about what you had for lunch. But if you're a marketer, you know Twitter is (and can be) so much more than that.

Jason Falls knows this. In a recent post on Social Media Today, he breaks down the four social media marketing styles that he's observed using Twitter:

• The Conversationalist. Those who "use Twitter for their business, but seem more apt and willing to participate in the daily chitter-chatter..."
• The Conversational Marketer. The marketer on Twitter who "... has a more obvious, even stated, purpose for using Twitter."
• The Salesman. Falls says this is the marketer who pushes products more than 50 percent of the time, conversing with others even less.
• The Broadcaster. Falls initially called this type of marketer the "spammer," but notes many of them definitely have a following.

So, which marketing style do you have on Twitter?

Ten years ago, custom content meant a newsletter or a member magazine of varying sizes and frequency. And today? It probably wouldn't be an overstatement to say a company's options are endless in how it can reach and engage current and prospective customers.

As John Bell points out on his Digital Influence Mapping Project blog, custom content, especially the digital kind, today can take many forms.

It could be an app, like the ones created by Kraft Foods and Geico Insurance. Or it could be a community site, like Weber Nation, created for owners of Weber grills to share their tips, techniques and grilling victories.

And the list goes on. There are more options today than in the past, but the goal of custom content has always been the same—to engage customers in a meaningful way.

The challenge for marketers is figuring out which strategy works best for their audience. Are you a marketer facing that challenge? We can help.

You may have heard about the four P's of B2C marketing: product, price, placement and promotion. But what are the rules when it comes to B2B marketing? In his blog, marketing guru Paul Dunay outlines the four C's of B2B marketing, which he argues are the most applicable principles to the challenges marketers face today. They are:

1. Content. Creating a steady stream of content to engage your audience.
2. Connection. Creating content that connects with your target audience.
3. Communication. Creating content that engages your audience in an ongoing conversation.
4. Conversion. Creating content that converts your audience into customers.

Whether it be for the blogs we maintain or the magazines we publish, we get lots of press releases and "pitches" at Hammock, so we appreciated -- and wanted to pass along -- these tips for online publicity from writer Lindsay Robertson. Her post goes into detail on each one, but here are the highlights:

At Hammock, we are big believers that a well-executed content marketing strategy develops content and media that engage a potential customer. That is why marketers should review this six-step content marketing check-up before they finalize their content marketing plans for 2010.

The six steps include: mapping site content to the buying cycle, reducing friction on gated content, reviewing content analytics, capturing the value of content, including sharing options with your content and optimizing content for search. This exercise will help marketers assess what is and isn't working for them when it comes to their B2B content development and content marketing efforts.

The start of a new year always brings a plethora of prediction lists: Resolutions, trends and forecasts. A recent blog post over at MediaPost Communications highlighting Keith Kelsen, founder of the 5th Screen Project and a contributor to Digital Signage Today, lists 10 predictions for 2010. Including one of our favorites: Content!

"Content will continue to be the No. 1 trend. As always, the most important part of any strategy remains the most difficult. According to Kelsen, DO companies really only began addressing content seriously in 2009. Kelsen sees more custom content created especially for DO networks, but at the same time more 'continuity' between this content and content delivered via other channels like cinema, TV, PC and mobile."

We agree with the magazine experts at Foliomag.com who are predicting that content’s role for publishers this year will expand and grow. The creation and execution of targeted content will be a huge asset for publishers and will help them connect with their readers who are looking to access content not only in a variety of places, but also with different platforms and tools.

"It will be imperative to respond to the readers needs—where, when and in the format they prefer—or see yourself being pushed out of the market. Print will still play a flagship role for most magazine enterprises, but there will be a continued drive to expand existing channels including print magazines and newsletters, digital magazines and e-newsletters, mobile, Web sites, blogs, podcasts, virtual events, video and many others."