Content Marketing Today

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:

Read More

A guest post from White paper expert Gordon Graham

If you are selling a technical or otherwise complex product, white papers can be one of your single most successful content marketing tools.  But that's only if you strip out the hype. So pay careful attention to what Gordon has to say below.

Why you must seek out and destroy hype

by Gordon Graham, That White Paper Guy

While every company is unique, a lot of white papers share the same problems. How can I put this delicately?

Many white papers suffer from an over-abundance of wishful thinking, unattributed factoids, vacuous logic, and good old-fashioned hype.

And there's no place where hype is less welcome than in your next white paper.

Read More

This younger generation behaves much differently than their Gen X counterparts.

Although both groups are active Internet users, the Gen Y set is looking for community while Gen X'ers are much more task oriented.  The behavioral differences are pretty startling.

Read More

The Industrial Marketer Is Customer Focused and Content Rich.  Your small company can do exactly the same even with a much smaller budget.

We have written a lot about ThomasNet as the content marketer's content marketer.  In fact, they are featured in our book, Get Content. Get Customers., We applaud them for the great work they do in teaching their clients how to use targeted content to generate online sales from their websites.

Their eNewsletter is a superb example of how their own customer focus makes it completely natural to deliver relevant and valuable content to their target market: small to medium-sized manufacturing companies.  Most of their client companies are no-nonsense, straightforward organizations who work very hard to deliver high-quality products.  The look of their newsletter is equally no-nonsense and straightforward.  It is nicely, but simply designed. Even better, it has a very useful content.

Read More

We also signed with a top tier agent whose company has handled multimillion copy business bestsellers.

This might seem just like an excuse for self-promotion.  But really and truly, it's an example of how content marketing can work to achieve an astonishing result that neither Joe nor I would have anticipated when we began work on Get Content. Get Customers. in August 2007.

We decided to self publish because the efforts of rookie authors to sign with a major publishing company would at best have delayed the publication of the book by six to 12 months.  And, at worst, been an exercise in frustration in addition to wasted time.

Here's how content marketing made it all happen:

Read More

Patsi Krakoff simplifies search engine marketing for business.

The Internet now looks a lot like Carl Sagan's famous description of the universe. 

But, instead of billions and billions of stars, it contains billions and billions of websites.  How on earth will you ever be found on the web amidst all that competition?

According to blogging expert, Patsi Krakoff, on her blog, Writing on the Web, the key is content marketing:

Read More

Timely Business News, Features, Analysis, and Events Deliver a Competitive Edge.

Southwest Florida Business Today is relatively new on the regional publishing scene.  Publisher and owner, Karen Moore, is a newspaper veteran with decades of experience.  Although her first priority at launch was to get the print publication up and running successfully, soon afterward she focused on creating an online newspaper site that would stack up very well relative to its competition. Read More

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).

Read More

Leading edge transit technology supplier, NextBus is cited as a great example.

You may think of professors as ivory tower folks who live in a world apart--even an IT Prof within a business school.  But J.P. Allen is a different breed.  He has a great blog that focuses on "the future of IT, business, and society on the new Web."

In a recent post he gave a shout out to NextBus as a great example of a cool company with a cool WordPress-based website, NextBusNews.com. 

Read More

If they ever served a purpose, they serve no purpose today.

That's the word from online content marketing master, Eric Holter.  Eric is just launching a new business aimed at helping ad agencies create an effective Web presence. It's called agencycritique.com.

Splash pages have always struck me as being pointless wastes of time.  Your visitors come to your site to get information about how you can help solve their problems.  They do not come to be either amazed or irritated by some wild and wacky graphic that is supposed to represent your creativity.

Of course, I base this assessment on nothing other than my own belief in the commonsensical nature of that proposition.  Eric approaches the issue with some actual data.

Read More