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:

Amazing Mobile Computing Facts from Morgan Stanley’s Presentation:

• It took more than 1 year to sell 1 Million iPods but only 28 days to sell 1 Million +iPads
• Billions of mobile apps have been downloaded:
  • 4B iPhone
  • 400MM Android
  • 12MM iPad (in just 6 weeks)
• In 2010 more Smartphones will be sold than either desktop or laptop computers
• In 2012 Smartphones will out sell desktop and laptop computers combined!
• Among Smartphone users as of April 2010,
  • 48% have browsed the web
  • 40% have used social media
  • 30% read the news
• The iPhone represents 55% of mobile page views
• At the end of 2009 twice as much time was spent on social networking as on e-mail
• Thanks to mobile devices, consumers are already doing cloud computing, leaving the enterprise behind
• Since 2008, mobile users have come to expect:
  • always on access with super fast boot time
  • near zero latency access to nearly all information
  • daylong plus battery life and elegant portable devices

Cranky Laptops Cave to Cuddly and Communicative IPads

It happened to me and it’s probably happened to you, too.

Within the past several days, I had to reach out to professionals to bring a six month old laptop back from a near-death experience.  After three hours on the phone with an exceptionally patient and competent HP technician, I was both homicidal and suicidal.

We don’t want that. We want our information and our connectivity right now. We want easy and we want painless.

That’s exactly what’s driving so many millions of  customers to mobile devices of which the iPad may be the perfect prototype. In fact, if I could write and dictate articles easily on the iPad, I would probably have tossed my laptop out the window.

IPad and Its Mobile Cousins to the Rescue

The iPad, or something very much like it, is what we really want from our information devices. It turns on immediately. It’s super responsive. It easily connects to the Internet. It’s both powerful and portable. And, perhaps best of all, it doesn’t rely on a resource hog of an operating system and a bunch of pesky devices that fail when you most need them.

For those of us who do a lot of writing, building complex spreadsheets or other very sophisticated applications, we will probably have to hang on to our desktop or laptop computers. But for many of you and for many of your customers, the use of computing devices is primarily:

• to connect and communicate wherever we are whenever we want
• to consume information via the Internet, including e-mail, news, web-based content
• to get our social media fix
• to consume locally based information from word processing documents, spreadsheets, PDF files, etc.
• to write a short e-mail or text messages
• to listen to music, watch videos, watch TV or movies
• to play games

We can do all of that with an increasingly rich and robust set of mobile computing devices that include not only the iPad but the iPhone, Blackberry, Android devices, and some potentially  terrific tablet computers just over the horizon.

That means that just when you thought it was safe to go back into the content marketing water, you will have to do a bit of rethinking. But I think it’s more a matter of adjustment than a dramatic change in your approach to your customers.

How to Take Advantage of This Content Marketing Mobile Inflection Point

You are almost certainly using the Internet as a primary content marketing weapon.  And, it is probably delivering significant a better results than many of your traditional advertising and marketing practices. Now, begin to think slightly differently as your customers go mobile for much of the information they consume.

• Make sure that your website is fully readable on the most important mobile devices which would include the iPhone, the Android, and the iPad. That may mean giving up Flash. At a minimum, it’s critical that any flash on your website takes a secondary rather than a primary role on your home and on your landing pages.
• Consider working with a developer to create an iPhone or an iPad app that will take advantage of the unique capabilities of these two pervasive computing devices.  In particular, think about how the touchscreen might improve your users interaction with your content.
• Get social with Facebook, Twitter or other applications that can reach out to your customers with special offers while they’re on the move and in a buying mood.  As indicated above, 40% are actively pursuing social media opportunities while on their smart phone or iPad.
• Provide special offers, coupons, or dedicated discounts that mobile users can bring with them directly on their smart phone or iPad.  Don’t make them print something out if they can to show it to you on their mobile device.

We are at the beginning of a fundamental transformation in the way that we all consume information. Our customers and their computers are on the move as never before.  Just as you may have tried to reach traveling prospects with billboard ads on the highway, now it’s time to make sure that you’re connecting with them on the virtual highway.

The good news is that, unlike driving a Corvette on Route 66, your prospects can slow down to pay attention to what you have to say. Just make sure that the new mobile information you’re providing is still relevant and compelling as all good content marketers do.

If you’d like to see the entire Morgan Stanley presentation you can click below:

We hope you’re a firm believer in the value of content marketing. If so, you know how important it is to deliver relevant and valuable content to your most important current and prospective customers. With that understanding, you are ahead of the game.

However, it is vital to incorporate a content strategy process so that you can deliver on the full promise of content marketing.

Content strategy is the kissing cousin of content marketing. As Wikipedia defines it, content strategy is "the practice of planning for content creation, delivery, and governance" and "a repeatable system that defines the entire editorial content development process for a website development project."   If you don’t have an online content strategy, it’s high time you begin work on developing one to keep your content marketing on target.

Thanks to two info-packed days I spent at the April 2010 Content Strategy Forum, I’d like to give you a head start. The Forum provided a wealth of insights on developing and deploying the right process to transform your content marketing vision into a reality that delivers bottom-line results.

Here are the top 10 takeaways on the how-to’s of content strategy:

1. From the very moment you launch your website, you are in the publishing business. As we have said for several years, you need to think like a publisher in order to do content marketing effectively. But the even bigger idea from the Forum is that a website, like it or not, is a publication. For that site, and your strategy, to succeed, you must operate as though you were running a magazine or newspaper.
2. You must assign a content strategy leader with both responsibility and authority in order to succeed. Too many organizations, including many well known global multinationals, are cranking out content without a coherent strategy driven by an appointed leader. In organizations of every size, it is essential that a skilled, trusted individual be given the power to drive your content strategy.
3. Conduct a thorough content audit at the beginning of your process. This means determining exactly what online content you have, where it resides, who’s responsible for it, who is the target reader, and how it is being created and maintained.  Because so many organizations have developed a patchwork quilt of content over many years, they may be completely clueless about what they have and where it is. Without this basic understanding, you cannot hope to roll out an effective content strategy.
4. Effective content is much more than words on a virtual page. Your content includes both the verbal and visual components and should reflect an understanding of how your target users will respond once they reach your website. This requires an understanding of information architecture and user interface design.  All of these elements must work in concert to deliver results.
5. You must have a clear assessment of what your target customers expect to find online when they are searching for answers to their problems. A relatively small number of companies are really clued in to their prospects’ online information needs. These may well be different from what they want at your retail location or when they call you on the phone.
6. Include all participants in the content creation process from the get go. This includes your key marketing folks, your content strategists, copywriters, designers, and, as appropriate, senior management.  When key decision-makers are left out of the process in the beginning, content problem-solving becomes extremely difficult as your launch approaches.
7. Determine what internal and external resources will be required to generate every element of the content that will become part of your online strategy. It’s not enough to determine what you need to provide. Just as important is determining who will be delivering all that content. Moreover, you need to establish a process workflow so that their contributions will show up just the way that you want them and exactly when you need them.
8. Define and deploy a repeatable process in order to maintain and expand your content. Although great ideas underlie great content, without effective process management you cannot hope to deliver consistent quality.  This is very much like a traditional publication which develops an annual editorial calendar and a carefully crafted workflow for each issue. Since you are now in the publishing business, you need to do exactly the same.
9. Design your content so that results are quantifiable and easy to measure. Amorphous marketing is out. Measurable marketing is in.  The nature of the web makes it pretty easy to measure almost every user activity on your website. To make that measurement meaningful, you need to determine what quantifiable results you need, how to deliver those results, and how to make changes when you results don’t match your objectives.  All of this needs to be built in from the beginning.
10. "Content strategy will be as hot as social media and 12 months," Kristina Halvorson.  Although I’m not sure that I’m totally on board with Kristina’s prediction, I am confident that she’s on the right conceptual track. Social media is the bright shiny new toy under the content marketing Christmas tree. Because it’s new and buzzworthy, lots of marketers think they need social media whether or not it’s appropriate. As content marketing replaces more and more traditional marketing, having an effective content strategy will rise to the top of the marketing concept food chain.  Social media isn’t going away. That said, it may well be, just another component of an effective high-level content strategy.

The bottom line: It’s hard to make things easy for your customers online. Without an effective content strategy, hard becomes impossible.

But, with an effective content strategy,it becomes much less hard to make things much more easy for your customers to trust you, to engage with you, and finally to buy from you. 

If you’re ready to start developing that strategy, run out and buy Kristina Halvorson’s practical, put-it-to-work book, Content Strategy for the Web.

Thanks to content marketing maven, Beth Hrusch of Interact Media for this great guest post.

Marketing your small business with Facebook sounds like a lot of fun and a great idea—until it hits you.  You really have no clue how to do it.  Sure you’ve heard of it, and people are certainly on board (some with remarkably good results).  But, getting started can be intimidating, maintenance is scary and how do you measure returns, anyway?

So, now you know how your parents felt when confronted with email.  Don’t worry.  One of the great things about social media for marketing is the fact that it gives small businesses some of the advantages once enjoyed by large corporations with big marketing budgets—namely, tremendous reach and measurable results.   And, you can play around with it until you find the way to use it that works best for you.  And it’s cheap.

If you want to start marketing your small business with Facebook, here are a few pointers:

Create your account

1. Start a business account by creating a Facebook Ad or Page.  A Facebook Page identifies your business, and you can opt for a description of your business type, your product or brand or your position.  Make sure to be accurate here, as this identification is how interested parties will find you.

A couple of things worth noting:  filling out your profile completely helps establish trust with people because it shows that you’re transparent and have nothing to hide.  The more open and honest you can be with your groups the better your results will be.  Also, read the Facebook rules for business accounts before going too far!  They can and will ban your account for certain violations.

2. Customize your settings.  Here, you can control who sees your profile and who can contact you.  You can block users, join networks, set up email and mobile phone notifications of everything from posts to your Wall to any time someone tags you in a photo.

3. Install applications.  Establish feeds whereby all of your groups and networks can see your latest blog posts and tweets (yes, you can integrate your Twitter activity into your Facebook page).  There are a lot of apps for Facebook that do a myriad of amazing things.  Facebook for iPhone 3.0, for example, lets you manage your account on the go with added features like integrated news feeds, Event RSVP and the ability to phone or text people directly from your Page.  A handy way to contact a client or update your page with new content for your customers while away from the office.  Post real-time notes and photos from your trade show or presentation as events are happening or get back to a client who contacts you through your account.

Share with others

When marketing with Facebook, the idea is to keep it fresh and updated with new content, photos, events, feeds and messages so that your network can use it to learn more about your business (see “maintenance is scary”, above).   A lot of companies have employees share the task of adding to the company Page, or designate one person as the social media administrator.  Whoever does it, it’s important to keep your presence on Facebook timely and relevant by posting information regularly.

Also, make it easy for people to check you out.  Try adding your Facebook URL to your email signature, business cards, or other company literature.  Upload email addresses to see who’s on Facebook so you can add them as friends.  Build your professional network using your common interests.

Networks, Fan Pages and groups

Joining a network or group brings you into contact with others who are either looking for your products and services or in the same or related fields.  Sharing resources and information with each other builds business relationships that often lead to sales.  It’s highly recommended that anyone marketing on Facebook join as many relevant groups and networks as possible, and engage with them regularly.

A Fan Page gives you a place to put all of your links, content, photos, company news and Events, so add to it so your fans and groups know what’s going on in your world.  Post some surveys, contests or quizzes every once in a while.  These are popular ways to engage fans and potential customers.

Getting measurable returns

For small business owners, Facebook offers a lot of tools that can help you expand your presence and increase brand awareness.  To see how your efforts are doing, start with Facebook Insights, a free service that analyzes metrics such as user actions, page exposure and behavior related to your Pages and Ads.  These analytics are one important piece of the puzzle when it comes to determining the growth of your pages.

Studying comments, quantity of new connections and how many times your brand is mentioned help you determine which conversations you should engage.  By putting all the pieces together, you can get a picture of how your social media efforts are affecting leads and sales.

Facebook is an economical marketing tool for companies of all sizes.  It allows small businesses, in particular, to take advantage of some very agile features in order to get the same results once reserved for companies with big marketing bucks.  Try it out and see what it can do for you!

Beth Hrusch is Senior Editor at Interact Media, a content marketing software company

If you’re not already a fan of the TV classic in the making, Mad Men, it’s all about the Madison Avenue ad agency world of the early 1960s. There was plenty of drinking, smoking, and carrying on. But, there was plenty of great, and surprisingly timeless, marketing taking place, too.

Most of you probably are not old enough to remember when housewives really did wear shirtwaist dresses to do housework, when color TV was just beginning to take hold, when JFK  had just promised a man on the moon, and when a lot of famous brands were invented or enhanced by the ad agency Mad Men in the title.  That may have been a long time ago, but we can still learn some timeless content marketing truths from one wonderful segment.

In a Mad Men segment about the creation of the Kodak Carousel the roots of content marketing shine through when lead character, Don Draper, makes it clear that building a brand is all about storytelling and engaging the consumer–and not about technology or the company itself.

Way back in the 1960s, Kodak dominated the photography world in ways that seem almost unimaginable today. Their technology was leading edge. How to make it relevant to consumers was the hard part.

The ad agency’s challenge was to launch a new slide projector that enabled customers to load a bunch of slides into a wheel so that they could create a long-running slideshow that ran seamlessly.

Don Draper, the top creative guy, launched his presentation by saying of the still unnamed product, "It’s not a wheel. It’s a carousel." He went on to say, "This device isn’t a space ship. It’s a time machine."

Don then painted a picture of precious family moments captured forever and relived again and again thanks to the wonderful Kodak Carousel "time machine."

What struck me about the Kodak segment was that Don’s approach to marketing a product was essentially timeless. Marketing is still all about telling stories that connect with your customers. Even though we now tell those stories on websites, blogs, and social media, our need to build a bond with the folks who buy our products remains the same.

The best of traditional marketing lives on in today as ‘content marketing.’ To boil it down to basics, here are the timeless marketing commandments that were true for Kodak in 1960 and for all of us today as we focus on delivering content that is relevant and compelling for our customers.

Your job as a content marketer then and now:

• B to B: Make your customers successful
• B to C: Make your customers’ lives better
• 1st understand, then be understood
• Listen, really listen to your customers
• Engage your customers in dialogue
• Encourage word of mouth

Of course, a critically important difference between 1960 and today is the new, affordable, and  powerful tools we can use to pursue all of those content marketing activities. Kodak really understands what content marketing is all about. We might have anticipated that to be true from their eager acceptance of the heartfelt, storytelling approach taken for the launch of the Carousel.

Kodak Has Made the 21st Century Marketing Transition Brilliantly

The Kodak Carousel lives on virtually in an iPhone application that permits all of the capture and sharing of memories that meant so much back in 1960 and still mean so much to us today in 2010.

Kodak understands its customers in 2010 on an emotional level just they did 50 years ago. They now participate enthusiastically in a full range of content marketing activities that revolve around storytelling. And, today, the storytelling comes just as much from customers as it does from Kodak. Here is what they have going online:

• a website that is rich in video and visuals
• multiple blogs
• multiple Facebook pages and games
• a very cool iPhone application
• a presence on Twitter

Content marketing: Important in 1960.  Essential in 2010.   Game changer for small companies.

Today, content is both essential and easy to do. Fortunately, even solopreneurs with micro-resources can be effective content marketers. Content marketing really does level the playing field with with larger–even much larger–competitors.

You may not be able to replicate everything online that Kodak is doing. But you can come pretty darned close. Absolutely every tool they use online is available to you free or inexpensively. In fact, you can’t afford not to implement a content marketing strategy. It’s working for Kodak and it will work for you.

Although our Southwest Florida region comprises mostly small businesses, we are blessed with a surprising number of savvy local experts on content marketing and social media. I was delighted to take part in a recent Collier Business Industry Association (CBIA) Sales and Marketing Council session with just such a group:

• Marc Meyer, Principle at Digital Response Marketing Group
• Jim Cossetta, cofounder of 4what.com
• Paul Mussina, President, Business Technology insight

Attendees from the building industry and related companies struggle with two simultaneous challenges:

• They are suffering from our a especially steep downturn in building that limits both people and dollar resources.
• They need to transform from traditional marketing methods to content marketing and social media.

Fortunately, there is a new generation of affordable tools and techniques that can make that transformation inexpensive—and with a bit of outside help—almost painless.

Here are some practical lessons on content marketing and social media that I’d like to share from the St. Patrick’s Day session.

Top 10 takeaways from my speaker colleagues

1. Social media in general and Twitter in particular are as much about listening as they are about broadcasting. To make this easy, use one of the powerful software tools available. Social media guru, Marc Meyer, suggested TweetDeck as his favorite.
2. Marc noted that you won’t succeed by spending all your time pimping your products and services.  That’s exactly the kind of unwanted spam that content marketers need to avoid.
3. Don’t bother to tweet unless you have something worthwhile to contribute to a set of Twitter followers who share your interests.
4. With Twitter and any social media effort you must allow enough time for results that will slowly build over time. Consistency is critical to your success, as Marc stressed.
5. According to Marc, you are not engaging with content marketing and social media for fun, even though it might be enjoyable. You’re doing it either to make money, to save money or to build equity.
6. "Become a news anchor for your business." That was Jim Cossetta’s advice for thinking about how to use video effectively for content marketing.  In other words, put yourself out front as the most effective spokesperson to explain how your company can benefit its customers by leading them to your site with an introductory video tour.
7. Take advantage of incredibly inexpensive technology like the Sony flip cam to create your own television studio.
8. Consider using video in tandem with your promotional e-mails to create a ‘wow factor.’ He used the example of local contractor, Statewide Painting and their recent email effort which allowed video to tell the story.
9. Make an RFP much less boring by integrating video to demonstrate exactly how you can meet the requirements of the RFP and help your prospect achieve its objectives with your assistance. In effect, you are able to give an in person visual presentation without actually being there.
10. For those of us, who are still using spreadsheets or antiquated content management tools for customer relationship management (CRM), it’s time to step up our game by investing in affordable products that can improve sales results dramatically, according to Paul Messino.

Summing up:

It’s time to implement content marketing and social media as core components in your business strategy. But, there are now plenty of tools and techniques that make it pretty darned easy and inexpensive.

In order to generate measurable marketing response, you may well continue to rely on direct mail.  Although it may be less effective than in pre-Internet days, direct marketing does work with the right targeted message to the right audience. 

You can optimize your efforts by using a tool suggested by Blase Ciabaton. It’s all about PURLs that let you get personal with your prospects.

As a content marketer, you can target prospects individually with the use of PURLs, which are ‘personalized URLs.’  Thus, a 10,000 person direct marketing campaign would generate 10,000 PURLs which serve as individualized landing pages and can even greet the direct mail recipient by name.

This approach also enables the sender to track activities driven from that landing page precisely because it is attached to a unique individual.

According to Blase, here’s why this approach is so valuable:

“PURLs represent the future of direct mail marketing.  For those already using direct mail successfully, PURLs are very likely increase the response rate.  For anyone who’s avoided direct mail because of the difficulty in measuring response rate, then PURLs are the ideal way to leverage direct mail and have an accurate understanding of response.”

If you are still wondering how you might use this approach, Blase provides the example of a university prospecting for its new Freshman class:

A local college sends out a targeted direct mail campaign to attract rising high school seniors to apply.  Interested students enter their personal URL from the mail piece, and are welcomed by name to their custom landing page.  A very brief survey that’s on the landing page asks the students to select from a list of possible degrees or majors, and then asks for their preferred method of contact while collecting this additional contact info (cell phone @, e-mail address, etc.).

Direct marketing lives on. It fits well within our content marketing universe when the messages we send and the PURLs to which we send our prospects accurately reflect our understanding of their individuality.

You can learn much more about how to put PURLs to work by checking out what Blase has to say at TheDirectMailMan

[I have made corrections below on the elements to the original story re Apple Newton. I made the edits because careful reader, Zach Leary, noted my Steve Jobs history was way off and that he had no involvement in the creation or development of the Newton.]

Timing is everything. Too early with too little for too few and you lose. That was the fate of the Apple Newton which might be considered the great grandfather of the iPad.

That won’t be the future of the iPad as it comes to market at just the right time, providing a marvelous new outlet for content marketers to capture the increasingly mobile digital generation that now includes most of us.

The Sad Fate of the Apple Newton in the 1990s. Great idea. Unfortunate timing.

For Apple, the Newton was a tablet pc that was too early to deliver on its lofty promise in the early 90s.  It failed not because the ultimate concept was wrong, but because users weren’t screaming for a mobile device and because the Newton’s capabilities were limited and disappointing to many.  In many respects, the Newton was a remarkable product for its time, but it didn’t deliver enough value to captivate millions of users as its descendents the iPod and iPhone have done.

Apple might have been too early with a tablet but will be will be proven right over time. Steve Jobs killed it off in 1998 when he returned after his multi-year hiatus.  But the tablet concept lived on.

The iPad delivers what the Newton just hinted at . This new device reflects everything Apple has learned about computing and communications as they introduced and continually improved their highly mobile products–from the Newton to the iPod, to the iPhone, and now to the iPad.

The iPad in 2010 is Dressed for Success.  Incredible idea. Terrific timing. Genuine Game Changer.

The new iPad dwarfs the old Newton: It’s colorful, connected, powerful, packed with storage, easy to use, larger, thinner, and just a bit heavier.

The iPad not only delivers solutions for today’s users demand, but is perfectly positioned to dominate for years to come as the standard for tablet computing on the go.

When you introduce a product that matches a confluence of powerful trends, you win.  Here’s why I believe that the iPad is that product:

The iPad: Dominating 2 Critical Trends That Will Drive the Future of Computing

1. Print is giving way to digital content for almost every generation. This seismic shift applies to books…to newspapers…to magazines…to catalogues…to advertising…to direct marketing.  It’s impossible to avoid headlines that shout out the disintegration of traditional print.  Even the best newspapers struggle with print while attempting to make their online products both compelling and profitable.  Costs are up. Subscriptions are down. Staffing has been slashed. Ad revenues have plummeted.
   We are consuming our information digitally and leaving paper behind.  That trend will only accelerate as we find just the right digital solution to meet our information consumption needs.
2. There is another equally powerful tectonic transition– from stationary to mobile. Today we expect to be able to compute and to connect with the world on the run. We also expect to receive the information we want instantly wherever we are. And, since the days of portable cassette players and the Sony Discman, we also want to take our entertainment with us as well.  But, now the definition of entertainment is much broader and includes games, movies, books, and magazines. We want our fun on the run.

In short, we want everything that we have always wanted but we want it on our terms. We are impatient mobile consumers of information and infotainment.

Apple: Seducing Us First with the iPod and the iPhone—Tablet PCs by Any Other Name

Apple has been warming up users with small devices that they adore—the iPod and the iPhone. They have trained us to love their own version of  ‘tablet pc’s’ even though that’s not what they called them. Hundreds of millions of users are now comfortable using Apple touch screens and virtual keyboards even on these super small computers.  That makes them tiny—and unbelievably successful–tablet computers.  The numbers tell the story:

• The iPod. Launched October 2001. 240 million sold by Jan 2010.
• The iPhone. Launched June 2007. 33.75 million sold by Q4 2009.

In spite of  the iPhone/iPod’s miniature form factor, millions of users are using these computing cousins for much more than phones or music devices. They are put them to work:

• to browse the internet
• to read online newspapers and magazines in the browser
• to read books via Kindle iPhone app
• to manage calendar and task info
• to manage finances
• to play games
• to connect with friends/colleagues via email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
• to share pix and videos
• to use a myriad of business and personal applications—2 billion downloaded by Q3 2009.

Soon users will be doing even more, more enjoyably by migrating to the next generation of tablet computers: the IPad.

Let’s Get Large. Bringing the Best of the iPod/iPhone to the iPad

If millions of users are doing so much with such tiny devices, imagine what they will do with a WIFI-enabled, full color, backlit, iPad with a 9.7” screen with 10 hours of reading time.  That’s as large as a small laptop or typical netbook, every bit as powerful, and much more enjoyable to use.

There is a lot to love:

• It’s large but thin–1/2”—and light–1.5 lbs.
• Instant on. No multi-minute Windows warm up wait.
• From the get go, every iPhone application will run unchanged on the iPad
• Users can buy books in full-color from the iBook store which uses the open eBook standard. It will be easy for authors to get their books onto the iPad.
• You can read Kindle books in a nice large size with your Kindle iPhone app.
• You can keep and share all your music, pictures, and videos from your iPod or iPhone.
• You can browse the iTunes store for music, video, and apps.
• You will be able to access customized information products such as the NY Times.
• You can draw and diagram to your heart’s content on a nice, large screen.
• You can easily connect a real keyboard if you want or use a comfortably sized virtual keyboard.
• You have a choice of WIFI only (plenty for many users) or the addition of high-speed 3G internet connectivity.

What’s missing and does it matter?

• No native phone, although you can use Skype or other internet phone software.
• No camera, but you can easily download pix to the iPad from your real camera or camera-enabled smart phone.

I believe that Apple has gotten the iPad just right and that Apple will dominate the heart of an exploding market for tablet computers where every other tablet pretender will be compared for better or for worse to the iPad.

For content marketers who are increasingly focusing on social and mobile media, the iPad offers loads of enticing possibilities to be newly relevant and compelling to a very active group enthusiasts.  Be there or be very square.

Postscript:

Yes, I will be pre-ordering mine on March 12.  And, no, the Newton wasn’t named after me.

If you were to dig up a five or 10-year-old edition of the Yellow Pages, you would find that in every major category, there are lots of very large ads from companies with huge budgets to spend influencing buying behavior. Back then, it really was important to have some kind of presence in the Yellow Pages because they frequently represented the last stage in purchasing.

Today everything has changed. Buyers go first to the web to do their research about potential purchases. They then either buy directly from the web or take their research results and go to the store or contact the business in order to complete their purchase.  You have only to look at the incredible shrinking Yellow Pages to understand how little influence they have in purchasing behavior today.

That is sad for the Yellow Pages. But it is terrific for small business marketers.

In days past, they would have had to invest thousands of dollars every month year in and year out to be able to compete against large established companies. A tiny Yellow Pages ad could cost several hundred dollars per month. Unfortunately, the impact of that small ad would be minimal compared to that of their giant-sized competitors.

On the Internet Even Small Companies Can Be Major Players

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.

The power of such a web presence is that it can have infinite depth and breath. Although the website of a small business may lack some of the polish and pizzazz 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. Moreover, we’ve all seen small companies execute more effectively on the internet than their competitors who may have big budgets but less understanding of what works on the web.

Even better, social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter make communicating with your customers and building a base of rabid fans surprisingly easy. Because both of those tools are free, ideas and creativity have the chance to beat out marketing efforts from companies with big budgets but a poor understanding of how to put social media to work for the benefit of their customers.

Bad Economic News. Great Marketing News.

Every small business faces the challenges of a very tough economy. That’s the bad news. But, the good news is that it is never an easier or less expensive to create and conduct an effective marketing program.

You can now go head-to-head with the big guys online–and win.

Penton’s shift to online only for Welding Design & Fabrication symbolizes the decline of traditional media.  At the same time, Miller Electric shows just how powerful content marketing can be as a replacement for traditional publishing—even when publishers take their acts to the web.

Penton’s print magazine launched in 1959 when Eisenhower was President, Sputnik had just gone into orbit, and most TVs were black and white. After decades of success, the print edition of Welding Design & Fabrication succumbed to fundamental changes in buyer behavior and vanishing ad dollars.  In fact, only an association publication remains in print.

Print pubs are perishing across the B2B landscape as advertisers and readers flee. What’s happening at Penton is happening everywhere. You may regret the demise of B2B print as do I, but you cannot bring it back to life. You can no more expect a return to publishing days gone by than you can to poodle skirts and hula hoops.

In most niche markets, only one or two publications are likely to survive. This print apocalypse would have posed tough marketing challenges just 10 years ago, because B2B buyers still relied primarily on print for their information. Thus, sending a message to those buyers meant either PR or advertising campaigns aimed at welding or whatever targeted magazines delivered the right set of customers. Today, those buyers have moved online.

Just Going Online is Necessary but not Sufficient to Solve the Publishing Problem

Penton promised great things for the online version of Welding Design & Fabrication in their news release, “We are excited about the opportunity to focus our efforts online and trust our readers will look forward to the enhanced online features and solutions we will be launching in the near future to better support their operations.”

But, as my friend and former Penton exec, Bob Rosenbaum pointed out, “A focus on ‘product introductions, as well as increased participation by thought leaders, vendors and suppliers throughout the industry’ is shorthand for a reduction on spending for original content.“ He added that “This move makes sense only in the context of cutting expenses. Readers don’t want this, and while advertisers in the market are looking for creative digital products, they will view this as a last gasp. And they will flee.”

In fact, the current site seems to bear out Bob’s concern:

• Its lead news item is 15 days old as of January 29
• the only event it shows is 4 days past as of January 29
• It has a link to webcasts, but they appear to date back to 2007
• it doesn’t produce its own videos and those they show appear to be vendor infomercials
• its educational products are provided by ToolingU.com and available to anybody without going to Penton.

Of course, as unfortunate as this disappointing effort is for the future of Penton, it is equally problematic for marketers who need to connect to buyers in a meaningful way.  If Welding Design & Fabrication loses relevance online, how can marketers reach and influence their buyers efficiently?

There is a sound content marketing solution, but it requires businesses to replace the role of traditional publishers. Those early to market with the best solutions will benefit the most—and possibly lock out late comers. Miller Electric shows us the way.

Smart Business are Becoming the B2B Media—No longer out of Choice But out of Necessity.

Millerwelds.com shows what business can and must do from now on to replace the role traditional media in the marketing mix. We have written extensively about them online, Yes, Content Marketing Can Make Welding Cool!  and in our book, Get Content Get Customers. But, a single current example illustrates how their content beats the Penton online welding effort. They produce a host of very useful and practical videos that instruct users on a broad range of welding topics.

Here’s one example:

Although there is a brief mention of a Miller product, this video is all about best welding practices.

Penton lags way behind Miller not only in videos, but also in how-to information, interactive buying guides, and easily accessible content.  They prove that a business can out publish a publisher.

You may not have the resources that Miller can leverage, but by studying their approach to their customers, you will certainly be inspired to start thinking and acting like a publisher. That’s critical,because soon you will have few realistic alternatives to effective content marketing.

Guest post from Kathleen Taylor, APR, President of the Southwest Florida chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association offers 4 top takeaways from their January 2010 Social Media Cafe.   Her report from the seminar illustrates that social media is beginning to permeate PR even in a relatively small market such as the Naples/Ft. Myers Fl area.

By Kathleen Taylor, APR

"The wisdom’s in the room. Make a concerted effort to learn from those around you," said Butch Ward from Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, FL, as he spoke with a crowd of public relations professionals at the January 2010 Social Media Café.  Butch and three fellow experts shared new ways of including social media tactics in our public relations practices.

The Poynter Institute describes itself as “a school dedicated to teaching and inspiring journalists and media leaders.” The Institute’s interest in how PR or “business communication” professionals practice exemplifies the social media requirement  to reach beyond the way we’ve always done things. As Butch reminded the audience, we are all learning together as we explore the new  social media sandbox. Fortunately for all of us, not everything is new and unfamiliar.

In fact, as we expand our minds to embrace new technology and new methods, the best of traditional public relations and marketing principles still apply.  Moreover, even new elements such as business blogging don’t need to be intimidating.

Here are 4 useful tips from the Social Media Café seminar that will make even reluctant marketing professionals comfortable about  jumping on board the social media train before it has left the station:

1. Research, planning, implementation, and evaluation: These fundamentals still apply to social media.

Don’t be tempted by the deceptive simplicity of going social. Some companies jump right in with little or no knowledge of why they want to be there. Don’t abandon the traditional wisdom of defining goals and calculating the plan. Before diving in, consider what you want to talk about and which social media connection can be the most beneficial. Are your customers already participating on this platform? Do you want to build your brand in a different market? Not all Social media sites serve the same purpose, and many are industry-specific. Companies will typically benefit more from a social media venture that fits them strategically. Social media is continuously evolving, and it can serve a multitude of purposes for a company; just don’t let the extent of your reasoning be “because everyone else is doing it.”

2. Blog posts don’t need to be long or fancy to be useful and popular. Just know your subject matter, and give people what they need to know.

Your business blog can provide timely and valuable insights to your customers about your industry, on current events, and on key market trends. Don’t be intimidated because plain and simple writing will work just fine when combined with the authenticity and transparency your customers demand. Your business will benefit from a blog because you give customers reasons to keep coming back. Providing a detailed, updated communications with your audience makes your company  both more approachable and more valuable to customers. Equally important is the fact that regular, relevant blog activity that attracts and keeps a regular following can boost your Google Web site ranking.

3. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million!

Practically from the moment the moving picture was invented, audiences were captivated. In recent years, YouTube has captured our attention with millions of users count on it for news, entertainment and seemingly countless cute kitty home movies (Doubt me? I dare you to search for “cute kitties” on YouTube.). Research by eMarketer shows that there is a HUGE audience watching online video. Now, it’s your turn to put video to work in attracting that vast universe. From promotional videos, how-tos, and testimonials to commercials and interviews with company officials, you’ll find dozens of opportunities to get your customers to pay much more attention to what you have to say (Here are 2 recent posts the may be helpful as you explore the possibilities: 10 Ways to Win with Online Video and 6 Secrets to Making Online Video Work for Small Business )

4. Talk about ethical decision making within a social media context before a crisis presents itself.

Pretending something will never become a problem is a bit like triple-dog daring Murphy’s Law.  Your limited time is better spent considering sticky social media situations in advance than to find yourself in a crisis without a plan.
A case in point: As both professional and personal participation grows in social media networking, there are ethical concerns on both the part of the employee and the company when it comes to social media and the freedom it allows. If unfavorable commentary about your company were broadcast through an employee’s personal site, would his or her job be at risk? Are employees already aware of the expectations? Have a plan. Be proactive and have these conversations about social media ethics with your employees and partners now.

Contributing presenters to the Florida Public Relations Association’s Social Media Café on January 22, 2010 at the Royal Palm Yacht Club in Fort Myers, FL included: Butch Ward of Poynter Institute, Michelle Catin of rbb Public Relations, Chris Griffith of Keller Williams Elite Realty, and Michelle K. Gardner of John Scott Daily Florida Institute of Government at the University of Central Florida. You can read more about the presentations at the blog: http://www.fpraswflchapter.blogspot.com/

More on guest blogger, Kathleen Taylor:

Kathleen Taylor, APR is the president of the Southwest Florida chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association. She currently works as a public relations consultant for a variety of clients ranging from real estate to healthcare. When she’s not penning public relations prose at
her computer, she’s discovered that logging miles in her running shoes provides great cardio and generates great ideas. You can follow Kathleen on Twitter @KatTayls, and learn more about her profession background at http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/taylorkathleen.