Content Marketing Today

Our readers flocked to a broad range of content marketing-related issues over the past 12 months. In fact, the breadth of topics surprised me. Here's the Cliff's Notes version of what you can find:

• Unlearn Traditional PR
• Transform website into sales machine
• The Secret to Online Marketing
• Authenticity at Starbucks
• Sexy Headline Secrets from Cosmo
• A Really Bad Website Concept
• 6 Reasons to Publish an eNewsletter
• 5 Reasons to Launch a Blog-powered Website
• 6 Ways to Survive the Recession with Content Marketing
• Is it Time to Abandon Yellow Pages Advertising

Read on for a quick take on the posts that readers like you made made most popular.

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Rare Apple Misstep Sends Weekly News about Music You May Hate

If you are one of the millions of iTunes fans, you appreciate the brilliant work they do in aggregating music creatively.  This includes pre-constructed sets of music from different eras, different artists or different styles in the iTunes store.  In November, it launched the 'Genius Bar' which enables you to create new playlists from your stored music or to discover new tunes that you're likely to love based on a song that you have chosen from your own iTunes collection.

The iTunes folks excel at enabling you to choose,to organize, and to discover all sorts of music that you love.  Of course, you've probably bought quite a few more iTunes selections than you should have thanks to their terrifically targeted musical content. iTunes is brilliant at offering you what you don't even know you want.

That's why I'm astonished at how far off the mark they are with their weekly new music eNewsletter.

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You can learn exactly what you should be doing by avoiding some of these colossal mistakes.

You probably receive a lot of direct mail marketing materials both at work and at home.  Certainly, some of it is terrific and much of it not so terrific.  But, I would be willing to bet that none of it is quite as bad is something I received recently.

It is a postcard sent jointly from a real estate agent and a bank mortgage specialist. To create an effective direct marketing piece, I suggest you do the opposite of each of the marketing missteps listed below:

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Big bucks squandered to insert content free DVD in magazine

You can be sure that an advertising sales rep did a great job convincing the Harding Poorman Group to insert a DVD in the October 2008 issue of Book Business.

While conceding that they do show off their packaging technology, they blew the opportunity to demonstrate to their prospects the kind of rich content that DVD could and should contain.  In other words, it all boils down to a missed content marketing opportunity.  Prospects are likely to say, "I loved your packaging, but you don't show me why I should invest big bucks to put a DVD in a magazine."

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First-generation website in desperate need of an essential but easy overhaul.

Based on copyright information displayed on their website, this law firm was probably an online pioneer back in the mid-1990s. Moreover, it's obvious that they understood the need to put meaningful content on the site that would be relevant to prospective clients. It even has a short and cool website address, WWLaw.com.

The bad news is that the site is as dated as a flower power Volkswagen minibus.  The good news is that it would be very easy to fix so that it reinforces the strengths and skills of the law firm in question. 

Here's my advice on what they need to do:

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1990s icons talk about nothing in a meaningless way.

If you're old enough, you may remember the deeply flawed introduction of the Infinity luxury car from Nissan which was all about flowers and trees and nothing about a high performance high-end car.  Since the new brand entered the market at the same time as Toyota's Lexus, goofing up at the beginning was pretty unfortunate.

The Bill Gates--Jerry Seinfeld adver-tale is equally oblique.  The first in the series also misfires in its effort to lay the groundwork for positioning Microsoft as a leader once more. The campaign launch pairs a retired Microsoft CEO and a rarely seen Seinfeld both of whom flourished in the 90s and have floundered in more recent years (apologies to fans of Windows Vista and the lamentable Bee Movie).

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Ironically, Morris Rosenthal's website led me to the content-challenged online home of an intellectual property lawyer who specializes in publishing issues.  It's ironic because Morris is a genuine king of content.  [this is a correction; I initially made the wrong attribution to Aaron Shepard who is also a fabulous content marketer.]

He has written extensively on the nuts and bolts issue that neophyte publishers like me need to know to succeed.  He has written an excellent book on self-publishing: Print-on-Demand Book Publishing. In addition, he provides a wealth of articles on his site about specific issues such as how to deal with a big-time publisher if you are an author. At the conclusion of that particular article he refers his readers to zickrubin.com.  Based on Morris' ability to deliver so much great content, I expected to find something similar on the website of the law firm he recommended.

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Websitegrader.com from HubSpot might make you humble, but it will also make you a lot smarter about how you present yourself on the web.

Since I'm in the content marketing business, I spent a lot of time looking at websites to assess what kind of job they do in presenting content that is relevant and valuable for their likely target customers.  Of course, the success of a website depends both on the quality of content and on the quality of its visitor friendly design.  Moreover, it's important that visitors can find it in the first place. 

Now, a great new tool, websitegrader.com, delivers a meaningful score from zero to 100 --with 100 being perfect--for the marketing effectiveness any website on the net.

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New website stalls out completely and provokes unfortunate puns!

Microsoft just launched what might technically be called a website but is more properly a lame product promotion page with a gimmick that is far from unique.  You have the chance to win 5000 gallons of gas.  Wow!  Nobody ever thought of that before. The new site, bumptheslump.com, targets small business owners with the nominal mission of helping them get through the current economic slowdown. Actually, calling it a website is giving it too much credit.  It's really a webpage with links to five different Microsoft products.  Although these links are disguised as business tips, their disguises would not have fooled little red riding hood.  Don't try this with your content marketing campaigns. Read More

The venerable San Jose Mercury News is about to launch an e-Edition as I learned from a recent e-mail from their marketing folks.  It seems to me that this is a desperate, last-ditch attempt to salvage their brand and their business.

As the Silicon Valley grew with the explosion of PCs and the Internet, this newspaper grew along with it... until recently.  Clearly, it is now suffering from the same malaise as the vast majority of newspapers around the country. 

All over the US advertising and circulation revenues are falling significantly.  With very few exceptions--the Wall Street Journal being the most successful--online versions of daily newspapers have been giving away their content.  They have tried to support their online versions with advertising revenues alone.  This has been problematic because the amount that newspapers can charge for online advertising is a fraction of what they have gotten for print in years past.  Moreover, circulation revenues typically would cover the cost of newspaper production.  This meant that a much higher percentage of advertising revenues could go to the bottom line.

So I understand why The Mercury News is attempting to charge for subscriptions.  But their rationale for changing their model seems to be all about them and not at all about me.

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