Content Marketing Today

A typical professional services website will explain what services the professional provides, offer a brief bio of the principal or principals, provide basic contact information, and perhaps show a list of clients.  That information is necessary but sadly insufficient.

By adding two simple but powerful content marketing elements, any professional can stand out from his or her peers. 

1. Provide a basic primer on the subject area in which the professional is an expert.  For example, an accountant could do basic articles on the importance of cash flow, how to minimize tax exposure, and what to look for in a business loan.
2. Provide regular news about topics that would be important to clients.  For our hypothetical accountant this might be the impact of new tax laws, health insurance changes or new withholding requirements.

Check out a live PR website prototype to see what's not just possible--but easy

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When zillions of baby boomers have their own Facebook and MySpace pages, you know that social media has gone mainstream.  That means that the all text, cookie-cutter press release needs to be sent off to the great PR ranch in the sky.

David Meerman Scott has written extensively about the new rules of PR and marketing in his book of the same name and on his blog, WebInkNow.  He stresses the need to communicate with a universe much broader than the traditional press sources who held the keys to publicity for your company.  Embracing this reality is the all important first step.  But there's more that you can do.

When you are reaching out to this broader group, you should also consider using a completely different version of what used to be called a press release--and is now more properly called a social media press is release. Todd Defren of Shift Communications is a pioneer in the creation of this 21st-century tool.  As he explains it in a quote on the MarketingProfs.com eNewsletter:

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You can achieve measurable results for your company or for your clients.  But it may involve changing your press release approach dramatically. You have to write for the Internet and for the search engines.

If your primary public relations strategy still amounts to sending press releases to a finite number of media contacts, you fail to take advantage of the Internet.  You are not reaching the new influencers, to use Paul Gillen's term. Even if you are sending your news release to a wider audience by using one of the excellent online PR tools, you are still making a mistake if you don't optimize your release for the search engines.

In a superb post on the "Online Marketing Blog," Lee Odden compiles the best advice from the folks who are running the major online news release outlets such as PR News wire, PRWeb, and Business Wire.  Here are some key takeaways:

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Reach Way Beyond the Traditional Press Corps

When you limit the potential audience for your news release to just the press -- and perhaps just the local press, you are ignoring tens of thousands of interested readers. These days, you can and should paint on a much broader canvas. In fact, you must reach beyond the traditional press outlets to all of the new influencers (to borrow Paul Gillin's term) and to prospective customers as well. This much broader audience may very well care about the news you have a share. We took this newer approach. That's how we made 33,000 impressions --- and got 553 journalists and prospective customers to read about the launch of our e-book. Read More

In early 2007, MindJet was ready to launch the version 7.0 of its flagship product, MindManager. The biggest challenge is that relatively few analysts or media professionals are familiar with the concept of mind mapping, not to mention the product, MindManager. Lisa Arthur, CMO, decided to create a precisely targeted mind map that would [...] Read More

Yes, of course it should. But here's one that's missing the content marketing boat. Communique PR is a Seattle-based firm founded by PR veterans who are comfortable with billion dollar clients and multi-million dollar budgets. As we all know getting regular media exposure for their clients, is the name of the game. Keeping those client brands [...] Read More

Another two bite the dust. The most recent demise is Time, Inc.'s Business 2.0 which will shut down after the October issue. Business 2.0 launched in 1998 at the height of the Internet boom, specifically to cover the wild ups and downs of the burgeoning world wide web. In June 2007, CMP Media announced that it [...] Read More