Our client's magazines were being delayed once they entered the Bulk Mail Center. The magazines were entering a facility that served a large area of the heavily populated northeastern United States, but the magazines weren't making it to our client's members' homes for three or four weeks. They were being transported from postal facility to postal facility to postal facility until they reached the local post office for delivery.

While participating in a webinar on postal concerns, I learned about a company that co-mails magazines together. We worked out a plan where:

• Our client’s magazines would be picked up at our printer, who would have them sorted by zip codes


• The magazines would be shipped to a center where hundreds of other magazines would be pooled together into mail streams by ZIP codes


• These large bundles of magazines would be directly trucked to USPS distribution centers close the subscribers’ homes


• The magazines arrived at the local post offices quicker and were delivered within 7-10 days after leaving the printer’s dock.

Plus, the client paid less in postage or postal freight.

Our friend Joe Pulizzi of Junta42 has released a new white paper called "New Rules of Custom Publishing - New Complimentary White Paper: Nine Strategies to Create a World-Class Content Marketing Company." You can download the white paper in a digital format here.

After the jump, read Joe's list of Nine strategies to create a world-class content marketing company. As anyone who follows Hammock Inc., it's no surprise we agree with each one of them:

A common failure among organizations is to forget all of the touch points one's members or clients have with their brand, and the opportunity the organization has to capitalize on those engagement opportunities. What does that mean for today's marketing and communications professionals? As we continue to be bombarded with millions of competing marketing messages, it's important that your organization successfully breaks through the clutter. Here's how you can make your organization's marketing stand out:

Take inventory: Evaluate those communication vehicles already in place. Include magazines, newsletters, e-mail newsletters, annual reports, e-mails, Web site, direct mail, event promotions, advertising, telemarketing efforts and sales materials in your assessment—and be willing to discontinue those that aren’t working.

Revisit your logo: Is your logo representative of your organization's mission and culture? If not, it might be time to consider investing in a new logo to reflect your brand more effectively.

Be consistent with print and online products: Make sure that all of your print and digital media products share a common design template. This includes the use of fonts, sizes, headers and overall aesthetic.

Create a style guide: If your organization does not already have one in place, author a rulebook of standards for editorial and design work.

Police your communications: Assign a member of your team to be responsible for monitoring all outgoing company communications to ensure that your organization's guidelines are applied before the messaging goes out the door.

It's been a while since I've made an "audio post" to a blog (I'm more "video" these days). However, some recent blog posts and Twitter comments by Patrick Ruffini inspired me to dust-off the Skype account and Audio Hijack software and give him a call. In 2004 Ruffini had the very Web 1.0 title "webmaster" for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. Despite the title, he ushered in some very Web 2.0 features and approaches to the site -- and the campaign. Over 30,000 off-line "meetup-like" volunteer gatherings were organized on the site and over 5,000 websites and weblogs hosted the badges and widgets (remember, this was in 2004) that Ruffini's team developed using RSS and XML. After the election, he ran the Inauguration website and later had a two-year stint as eCampaign Director for the GOP.

After the jump, read more and listen to the interview.