Whoa! I took a few weeks off from blogging to work on my book and here’s what I missed in the world of Content Marketing:

Atomic Reach now features a Content Marketing microsite. It’s a one-stop microsite focused on content marketing topics, and is a great addition to CMI’s resources. If you’re a fellow content marketer apply today to be a part of it and you could win a $350 Best Buy gift card!

Also available is the Social Marketing ROI Report about the ROI of Social Marketing. Download the report for free before December 9. ($97 value)

Content Marketing Tribe

Finally, a great post about creating better buyer personas by Jayme Thomason of DivvyHQ @jaymethomason. It includes the sentence, “[W]e must genuinely care about, serve, or enlighten our audiences to build relationships.” So true. I also resonated with this statement: “*Disclaimer! Before you get your analytical pants in a twist, I know this process isn’t scientific. But neither is producing good content. That’s why it’s called an art.” Preach it, Jayme! Read the article at CMI.

Tweet-able Lessons from #cmworld 2011

9 seconds. Its the attention span of goldfish—and most of your audience. Know this. (TY @sallyhogshead)

Bring your best game to an introduction. It’s your only hope for further access and relationship-building. (TY @sallyhogshead)

You, and your content, must be fascinating. How? By tapping into your authentic self, as person or organization. (TY @sallyhogshead)

If you’re practicing real-time content marketing, you might be able to leverage paragraph 2 in mainstream news stories. (TY @dmscott)

No one should prevent you from telling your story. (TY @ReginaBrett)

Your content should make a positive difference in the world. (TY @ReginaBrett)

Irna Phillips sparked soap opera industry & became early content marketer. She insisted: “Programming must sell product.” (TY @TPLDrew)

We all have an audience, no matter its size. (TY @TPLDrew)

Content + Audience + Resources = Participation Creation (TY @TPLDrew)

Who is your duet partner? Don’t be afraid to pair with unlikely partners to grow your respective audiences. (TY @TPLDrew)

Reach out and respect your “super fans”; they will return the favor. (TY @StoryWorldwide)

Content marketing is not just tactical; it’s social. It’s personal.

When you think you know your customer—get to know them some more.

Also… I’m listed on Alltop!

This blog is now listed as a top resource under “content marketing“—thanks, Alltop! And, thanks to you, too. I appreciate the email, tweets, and DM discussions. Join my free newsletter for tips to grow your business using content. It’s simple to sign up!

Silent Bob to Social Media

Today’s CMWorld opening session featured Brian Clark of Copyblogger.com and Michael Stelzner of SocialMediaExaminer.com, after a funny and content-fueled performance last night by Kevin Smith. Here are highlights:

On personal flaws…

“We’re all writers, and writers are nuts,” says Brian Clark (BC) of Copyblogger when asked about behind-the-scenes challenges. Michael Stelzner (MS) admitted, “My biggest weakness is me. You can’t always strive for perfection.”

Your formula for success?

BC: “We are reader focused, and we don’t take for granted that people will care [about what we write about], and we actually do what we recommend.”

MS: “[We aim to offer a] ‘Nordstrom experience’, all about service.” He adds design plays a major role, too. “Serve others, lift others up. Give, give, give.”

How do you decide what content to produce?

BC: “I’m not a fan of asking directly.” Rather, Clark says he’s a fan of observation first, even though it takes longer. What are people’s problems? Desires? Trust that the audience will tell you what they need. Once you have audience you can develop solutions tailored to them.

MS: “Our SurveyMonkey survey, ‘State of Social Media 2009′ was also intelligence gathering/investigative exercise.” This now-annual survey ask open ended questions, providing invaluable content ideas. In exchange, participants received the compiled report for free.

How do you define content marketing?

BC: “Giving away valuable information to build an audience and eventually sell to them.”

MS: “[Content marketing is] developing information an audience loves, which builds fans, traffic, and your list.” He adds, “Give away your best stuff.  People will ask: ‘How much more will I gain if I hire/pay for product?’”

Your take on building a personal brand or a business brand?

BC: “I likes being behind the scenes, building the business,” but admits that his personal brand is tied closely to it. Clark gave the example of Pete Cashmore of @Mashable, handing over his Twitter account to employees ( BC runs copyblogger twitter account himself). Clark notes, “Do they [audience] want the real you, or the you that fulfills their needs?” and reiterated, that he intentionally places content and products before self-promotion.

MS: “I knew I couldn’t scale Michael Stelzner [as "the Whitepaper guy"] so now I make the spotlight shine on other people.” This gives him the flexibility to eventually sell the site later. “If you want freedom, be careful building a personal brand.”

What’s the biggest mistake you see others making?

BC: “Not focusing on audience’s wants and needs—you’re a servant.” For example, it’s egotistical to ignore great headlines, scannable chunks, and other easily-consumable formatting.

MS: “People promoting their stuff in your content—no one cares about your stuff or want to be converted.”

Next major social media tool?

“Google+ is a force to reckon with” says Stelzner, who added that he thought it will give Facebook a run for its money once a version comes out for business. “Also,” adds Clark, “Google+ seeds Google search results, so, good to get in now.”

New Office

1880s school house now my office (above entrance on left)

As I shared with newsletter subscribers, I’m getting a new office September 1st. Yay! I’ll be right above George Bowers.

New Projects

Two projects lined up for the second half of the year:

1. I’m writing a book, to be published by in 2012! The book is titled “Urban Escapee: Ditch the City Commute, Start a Business, and Revitalize Main Street” – and is based on running this business as well as building George Bowers Grocery with my husband.

2. You want practical examples! So, this blog is moving to more “show” and less “tell”.  I will be demonstrating content marketing in action via the re-development of a retired project, “FHS”. I will detail and debut that project in the next post. Watch for monthly posts moving forward.

Thanks for sending your content marketing questions into the newsletter.

See you at Content Marketing World the first week of September!

Today, July 1st, is halfway until New Years Day, 2012!

If you’re managing a content marketing program – or plan to enact one before the end of the year – here is a round-up of six helpful and informative posts to get you motivated again.

6 Favorite Content Marketing Posts (first half of 2011)

12 Reasons to Put Blogs at the Center of Your Content Marketing by Heidi Cohen (@heidicohen)
I have repeatedly referred clients to this post. It’s that good.

22 WordPress Plugins for Content Marketers by Brody Dorland (@brodydorland)
Wordpress is the most popular platform for blogs and microsites; these plugins make the tool even more powerful. I offer a similar list of Twitter content marketing tools.

Who Will Create Your Content? 10 Essential Content Creation Skills by Heidi Cohen (@heidicohen)
This post is a good reminder that diverse skill sets comprise a successful content marketing program. It’s also a reminder that it is imperative to have someone managing the process, too.

10 Top Business Blogs and Why They Are Successful by Amy Porterfield (@amyporterfield)
This post showcases companies using blogs creatively and explains their success.

How to Build Marketing Content Around B2B Buying Triggers by Doug Kessler (@dougkessler)
- this is the part where you move swiftly to improve the story.

TED Talk: Lisa Gansky, “The Future of Business is Mesh”
I loved Lisa’s phrase in this video (paraphrasing), “A brand is the voice and product is the souvenir”…Doesn’t that ALSO sound like content marketing objectives? I do share her vision of more sharable, “mesh-based” businesses… and believe content marketing will play an increasingly role in developing them.

Content marketing may benefit small businesses, but, its power really shines when viewed from the perspective of a global corporation.

I’m working with a client who is spearheading an internal training program for a large, multinational corporation. The training? Introducing employees to the concept, practice, and benefits of blogging. This training program encourages employees to blog internally, on the company’s intranet.

I consider this a content marketing initiative because the totality of the custom training materials are working in concert to educate and excite employees about blogging. (In addition, blogging itself is the foundation of many content marketing strategies!)

Major blogging benefit: scalable learning

Consider a corporation operating in multiple timezones. There are people in the same roles in multiple locations, and, these employees would benefit from sharing resources, ideas, and approaches with peers. The company gets stronger as the employees enhance their fundamental skills.

Who really benefits?

It’s simplistic, but accurate, to say: everyone.

You might assume that the benefit of blogging is only for the corporation itself in the form of increased worker productivity and reduced training costs.

However, employees benefit too. Not only are they enriched by internal mentors on their way “up the corporate ladder” (who may or may not be available “in person”), these employees also benefit from the social interaction possible with blogging (for example, by sharing comments on a particular post).

Too big to fail!

A glimpse inside a mammoth corporation’s content marketing efforts have yielded the following insights you can use in content marketing efforts of virtually any size:

Think scalability. If the goal is to build an increasingly-useful resource you have to start by thinking big. How will this project be built so that it has room to grow? How will you enroll the necessary stakeholders? Will these results operate independently, or, as a modular part of something else?

Be clear on your project’s mission. Who is involved? What will be accomplished? Who will benefit? What is the time commitment? And… how will you facilitate content that improves with age—by that I mean, content that becomes more useful as people interact with it, comment on it, and share it?

Who owns the content? Companies of all sizes are encouraged to have clear language in place that asserts what, if any, content produced by an employee remains the employee’s intellectual property.

What do you think?

I’d encourage companies to consider a creative commons license for employee-produced content. By freeing the content the company can watch and see if there are any “open source” improvements to it. Do you think that’s too radical an idea for major corporations right now?

photo: mark sebastian, flickr

Content Marketing Includes Social Media

Patricia Redsicker’s review of the book Content Rules includes a great observation:

I had not yet made the connection between social media and content marketing – I was still treating them as two separate entities.

OneForty

To assist other marketers with the task of incorporating social media into their content marketing plans, I’ve created a collection of social media tools for content marketing at OneForty. (If you are unaware, OneForty functions as the “app store” for Twitter.)

Two Tools You May Not Know About

My content marketing “toolkit” list covers the basics, but also features two cool tools:

Storify:

Content marketing relies on telling a consistent and evolving story about your brand. Using Storify you can collect bits and pieces of the social web into a cohesive narrative. Learn more about Storify here.

Keepstream:

Keepstream is a platform for building collections of web content. This is particularly helpful for the content marketer who curates ongoing social media conversations and news updates for their audience. Save everything from individual tweets to web pages into topics. You can embed these curated collections into any website, too. Learn more about Keepstream here.

What Did I Miss?

What social media tools would you add that are helpful for content marketing campaigns?

Let me know, and I’ll add them to this toolkit or feature them in an upcoming issue of Chief Content Officer. You can also review other recommended content marketing tools here.

I frequently personify web content. Bear with me.

After all, it’s important to recognize that online marketing content requires a commitment. Moreover, you should prevent your content from getting sick, even though it won’t die. Quick marketing campaigns are being replaced with an overall, ongoing content marketing strategy.

So in this context, is your web content “learning”? Is it getting smarter?

By this I mean:

• Are you noticing the content that gets the most attention?
• Are you creating more in-depth or granular content on these topics?
• Are you organizing older content in new or unexpected combinations?
• Are you updating content for relevancy today?

In my opinion content marketing is not static. It is an ongoing process to educate and persuade your customer. This requires that the content creator must continue learning and making adjustments. After all, producing and curating the best content is fundamental to content marketing.

Content marketing is a tactic any small business owner can use to promote their business.

Why invest time with content marketing?

Three reasons:

• Web searches: local, social, and mobile searches are increasingly used to find goods and services
• Content that delivers value is a great opportunity to demonstrate competency and showcase how you differ from competitors
• Custom content builds your brand

Example: Real Estate Agent

A real estate agent’s job is more than selling a house—they have to sell the entire package surrounding the house, too: neighborhood, schools, job prospects, investment possibilities, etc. There are fair housing rules to ensure licensed Realtors do not discriminate or comment negatively on, say, a particular neighborhood or street. Within this context a Realtor must sell the buyer on the positive aspects of any particular house or street.

A Realtor could create the following custom content for marketing purposes (assuming s/he stayed within the boundaries of their license):

• Monthly email newsletter highlighting positive trends, area news, or niche-specific expertise (e.g. historic home restoration and sales)
• Video clips that educate prospects on “things to look for when evaluating a home”
• Audio series that discusses area history
• Postcard series that offers bite-sized landscaping, remodeling, or other tips
• QR codes: one Realtor I work with creates QR codes which direct to custom webpages for each of his luxury homes. These codes are distributed on all his web and print content.

Notice that these suggestions are all different media: written, visual, aural, and hard-copy print.

Preferred Content Attributes

Excellent content marketing shares these specific qualities, regardless of output medium:

• Delivers value to your audience—educational aspects are particularly desirable
• Showcases your expertise in a broader, real world context
• Demonstrates how your expertise is relevant to your prospects…but without being “all about me”.

Here’s my quick, recommended content philosophy. If you’re a small business owner sign up for email tips about using content marketing to your advantage.

Uh, oh: Everyone is a Publisher

The paradox: marketing your business online is cheap and effective. But, it is time consuming. The effort involved is a commitment many overworked, independent business owners cannot afford. I can relate! There are too many other things to do to keep the lights on—particularly if your business is so “micro” that you’re the entire marketing department!

Marketing Content Produced by a Typical Small Business

Content marketing is “simply” using content to educate your target audience about your products, services, events, or industry. The content itself can be in any format (text, images, audio, video). Ideally, when the content is strategically deployed online it encourages participation with your target audience/customers.

That’s a lot different than the marketing world where simply announcing a price cut would bring folks inside!

Let’s look at the marketing content required for a small business to wiggle into hearts and minds online (the cheapest and most targeted path to your customers):

• Website content
• Email marketing
• Business blog content/article marketing
• Facebook updates
• Twitter tweets
• Online ads
• …and so on!

Easy? No! Time consuming? Yes!

Did I forget to mention that each of these disparate bits of content must be coordinated toward an overarching marketing message, too?

It’s no wonder that many business owners throw up their hands. Yes, marketing is vital—but add these to a long list of other vital tasks!

It’s Exhausting

Not surprisingly, most independent business owners are so busy they either neglect these marketing needs altogether or hand things off and hope for the best.

Can’t Afford to Hire Someone?

Custom content can be expensive. If your budget (or dogged DIY-independence!) means that you’re the entire marketing team, here are some tips:

Choose wisely.

Invest in the avenues that yield the best results. My husband and I tried producing a variety of content to market our micro-grocery. We experimented and selected a core set of channels, such as Facebook. Then, we automated the process with a regular content production schedule.

Create an editorial calendar.

Planning a calendar ensures that you produce web content frequently enough that it reaches your target customers.

For example, we send a weekly blog post that doubles as an email newsletter for George Bowers Grocery. It is produced on Tuesday for distribution Wednesday. The format and delivery schedule remains consistent although the content itself changes.

Don’t give up.

Content marketing takes time. You’ll need to amass a certain quantity of relevant content, and publish regularly to effectively communicate with your prospective customers. Small business owners should map out a year-long plan and track results as they go.

A solid content marketing plan can effectively expand a local business’s reach and brand awareness.