Content Marketing Today

Veteran Sailors, Steve and Doris Colgate, Make Sailing Come Alive on the Web

Sailing is a wonderful, exhilarating sport for those who have the training and experience to enjoy the ever-changing interplay of wind and water on a boat driven by its sails.

First, you have to learn how to sail.  Happily, like 100,000+ students before you, you can do just that at Fort Myers-based Offshore Sailing School.  Once, you have learned from their skilled instructors, sailing becomes a lifelong pleasure.

But, you can learn even more from the Offshore Sailing School  folks. You can learn a lot about content marketing online.

Bringing Modern Marketing to a Traditional Business

Steve and Doris have been running a sailing school for more than 40 years, building a successful business with multiple locations and a world-class repetition. Although they have been doing this for a long time,  there is nothing dated or old-fashioned about their approach to content marketing. They are fully engaged online with a website, a YouTube channel, a blog, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account. 

I particularly like what they are doing on their website and on YouTube as examples of how to take a traditional business and bring it successfully into the 21st century content marketing world--with a strong visual approach to everything that they do.

If Your Visitors Have To Search for It, They Won't.

I continue to be surprised by the number of marketing and advertising companies who have websites that hide examples of the great work that they do behind a bunch of content clichés that fail to distinguish them from every other similar company. 

I recently stumbled upon the website of such a company who is missing its primary content marketing opportunity. They have great stuff, but it's really hard to find.

Content marketing is all about providing relevant, compelling, and easily accessible information to your prospective customers.

In this case, what is genuinely relevant and compelling is the work that this agency has done on behalf of of its clients. That  visual content represents potential solutions to the problems that its Web visitors are facing.Unfortunately, the content that counts is lurking behind some same old, same old verbiage.

Another Excellent Infographic Offers Content Marketers a First Baby Step to Findability

Courtesy of PPCBlog.com

If you're in business today, you have to be on the Internet.  But, being there is barely a beginning.

Once you are on the Internet, it's vital that your potential customers can find you and your content by searching on Google and other search engines. That’s what SEO is all about.

Before Fretting about SEO, First Get a Clue About How Google Works from PPCBLOG’s Infographic

Marketing Campaign Trashes Worst Suspected  Big Brokerage Firm Traits

One of the great things about funny advertising campaigns is that they tend to be particularly memorable.

Even better, we’re more likely to talk about them with our friends.  And in the viral age, we can even share commercials via YouTube and other social media. 

Best of all, funny commercials that also embed a simple and compelling message, make it unavoidable for us to remember both the commercial and the message.

In their latest TV advertising campaign, Scottrade invented the character, Chad A. Ridgeway, who represents all of the worst traits we ever experienced or imagined about the folks who tried to get us to invest big bucks with them. 

Chad is slick and just this side of sleazy. He plays racquetball, travels in a limo, and owns his own medium-size yacht. What we know for sure is he managed to get where he is by charging us a lot of money to buy and sell stocks.  But, as we learn from the commercials, all  that easy money and easy living may vanish because of the compelling value offered by Scottrade.

Even in good economic times, you may face tough competition. During our brutal lingering economic slowdown, it really is a jungle out there.

When it comes to making your way safely through that jungle, who better to turn to than the ultimate content marketing warrior, Amazon.com?  After all, they are not only brilliant e-commerce players but they are just about the best at connecting with their customers.

Arguably, Amazon.com changed the rules for all online retailing but is a certainly changed the rules for bookselling. Since Amazon's founding in 1995, the brick-and-mortar Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association has dropped from 365 stores to just 188. Even the venerable Seattle-based Elliott Bay was forced to leave its 40 year location in Pioneer Square or cheaper quarters elsewhere.

Amazon.com leverages the long tail phenomenon of selling zillions of product units all the way from best-sellers to books and other products that would never make it into a brick-and-mortar establishment. they do a brilliant job of logistics and supply-chain management, stacking just what they need, organizing print on demand where appropriate, and enabling overnight delivery for the vast majority of the products they sell.

All of that is exceptional and essential, but I believe they really shine by doing a superb job of connecting with their customers so that those customers want to keep doing business with Amazon.com year in and year out.

In fact, Amazon.com is a superb content marketer.  You probably don't have their size and scale but you can certainly emulate their approach to their customers in the following ways:

Let Infographics Help You Make Your Point Instantly

Here’s a great example of an effective infographic that illustrates social media behavior by age group, based on a Forrester Research study.  With few words and relevant graphics, it enables us to absorb lots of information in a hurry.

That’s what effective infographics are all about.

I fully understand the importance of the visual component of content, but I’m not very good at conceptualizing or creating great visuals to illustrate the points that I’m trying to make.

So, I was delighted to find a wonderfully helpful—and visual—site that is putting me on the right track: CoolInfographics.com from Randy Krum. As he indicates, it’s all about getting your point across. Which, in turn, is essential to effective content marketing. You must make it obvious to your target customers why your content is relevant and important to them. On the web, you have only a few seconds to make that happen. Effective infographics can make that all-important instant connection.

If you need as much visual help as I do, you’ll love Randy’s site and his recent post with practical advice—illustrated with infographic examples, of course-- for us verbal types.

Get Ready to Rethink Your Content Marketing by Aiming at Millions of Buyers on the Move

For those of us who been around computing since the early days of PCs, the consumer move to mobile devices and away from desktop and even laptop computers is astonishing--and maybe a little terrifying.

In the first year of its existence, 1981, the IBM PC sold 100,000 units. Most of those buyers were geeks or leading-edge business users. Apple's iPad sold 1 million units in less than one month and 2 million units in just two months. IPad users still include geeks and business types but they're just as likely to include your six-year-old and your grandmother.

These unbelievable sales numbers represent a fundamental transformation in the way a very large segment of the population is consuming information and accessing the Internet. To get some idea of the seismic nature of this shift take a look my favorite highlights from a presentation given by Morgan Stanley at the June 2010 CM Summit in New York City:

When They Learn How Hard It is to Do It Well,  They Will Turn to You as the Trusted Solution Provider of Choice

If you provide professional or other  services, you and your organization must be expert at what you do. Therefore, with your advice and instruction, your customers can learn to install their own wall-mounted TVs, organize their own closets, create their own business plans or optimize their own sites for search engines, etc., etc.

You might wonder why you’d want to offer that invaluable assistance at no charge. Wouldn’t you be working yourself out of a job by teaching them to do what you do so very well?  Here’s why I think you don’t have to worry.

Even small companies can make a news splash by emulating these best practices on PR Web

The iPad is the new computing superstar with 2 million units sold in 2 months. As a result, plenty of small companies are benefiting from the apps they have developed for the new tablet computer. Within this new environment, startups can thrive by creating unique and usable software applications that enable iPad users to be more productive.

Todo from Appigo is one such app. It's a very intuitive application that helps users manage to-do lists, tasks, and projects on their iPad. Because the iPad is hot news, great apps are potentially newsworthy, too. Unfortunately, there are plenty of competitive choices even at this early date.

How, then, can this one small player stand out from the crowd?

It’s not an oxymoron. Cool government content marketing is thriving up North.

Surprise! The Liquor Control Board of Ontario manages to tread the fine line of selling cases of liquor while extolling moderation.

Their website, www.LCBO.com, couldn’t be any more graphically pleasing or fun to peruse. Believe it or not, they also entice you to come in and shop for premade cocktails or to select from a huge selection of vintage wines.