Content Marketing Today

You may not be a fan of Bob Barr or of the Libertarian political persuasion.  Nonetheless, there is a lot to like about his WordPress driven website,BobBarr2008.com.  There is also a lot to learn about his effective use of an online content marketing strategy to spread the word and to raise money.

Barr's site illustrates how flexible WordPress can be as a tool for building out a full-fledged website. It also illustrates how an effective online content marketing strategy might be able to take a candidate from relative obscurity and little funding to someone who might be taken seriously on the national stage.

Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia, recently announced that he is running for president of the United States as a libertarian.  In pre-Internet days, such a candidacy would have gained no traction whatsoever.  Raising campaign funds would have been a prohibitively expensive proposition. Moreover, telling his story to a nationwide audience would have been virtually impossible.

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They offer a terrific solution on a terrific website.

A sad irony of online marketing for small restaurants is that their need to create and maintain a great website is outweighed only by their lack of time and money to make that happen.

For many organizations, a relatively static website that requires only infrequent change will be perfectly effective.  Although the same businesses would probably benefit from a business blog, the website itself need only provide a consistent set of information.

A restaurant is different.  Things are always changing.  There are new menu items.  There are weekly specials. They need to change prices--up or down.  There are special offers for their best customers.  They may hold events  That need promotion.

All of this should be conveyed on their website.  But, when can a small restaurant owner find the time to design, build, and maintain that sort of timely online presence?

Fortunately, a new company, SandwichBoard, has come along just in time. Not only is this a great product offering, but their website is a good example of how to build trust with your target customers by making it clear that you can help them solve a huge problem.

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If you are a small business marketer, there's a lot to love and to learn by watching this video.

When you need to make a splash in the small business marketplace and your budget is limited, imagination needs to take the place of money.  That's exactly what the folks at the Search Engine Guide had to do this spring to promote their upcoming Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference.

Of course, they could have gone the route of traditional press releases sent out to everybody they knew. But that's what everybody does.  Moreover, the search engine guide folks are big fans of social media marketing. 

They had to cook up something a unique and compelling that would meet the challenge as they described it, "How do you capture someone's attention online, where information overload has left most Internet users blind to anything resembling a sales pitch?"

Here is exactly what they did to break through that clutter.

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The new website has proved to be an invaluable resource for members, business owners, and visitors.

In a previous article that focused on their print magazine, we wrote in depth about the many challenges that all membership organizations such as Chambers of commerce face when it comes to proving the value to their members.  Beyond those challenges, a small staff must manage a wide variety of tasks, services, and events.

The much improved Naples Chamber website launched in the fourth quarter of 2006 with a powerful combination of business content, community information, and e-commerce functionality.  The site now enables the chamber to provide a much more value with much less effort.

Here's exactly what they did to produce such a dramatic positive difference with an effective online content marketing strategy:

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We have written a lot about Mindjet and their extensive use of content marketing. In fact, we feature their online marketing efforts in our upcoming book, Get Content. Get Customers. I'm impressed that they keep improving what they do--particularly in the area of design and visual content. I just received their latest eNewsletter. It has changed dramatically from previous versions. It's now even better than before--and that's saying something. Even if you lack their budget, you can emulate what they do. Read More

You might not know that until recently tourism had been declining significantly in the Bahamas. For a country that derives 60% of its GDP from tourism, that was a disastrous trend.

With the help of branding gurus, Duffy & Partners, the Bahamas has reversed its tourism slide. The company took a hard look at the marketing campaigns that they and their competitive destinations were conducting.

What stood out was that nothing stood out. 

Everything looked pretty much the same. Even though the Bahamas were outspending their competitors, the results were clearly disappointing.  The lack of a comprehensive branding and marketing campaign led to a disappointing ROI on all the money being spent.

The challenge then was obvious: how to reinvent the Bahamas as a unique and compelling destination that would lure tourists back again and again thus reversing the slide in visitors.

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Cathe Olson, a young California mother, figured out how to stay home with her kids and still make an excellent living by becoming a self published author.  The power of the Internet combined with a persistent content marketing campaign has enabled her to sell more than 35,000 books over the past seven years.

That might not sound like she's entered the ranks of bestsellers.  However it probably puts her in the top five to 10% of all published authors in the United States.  And, because she self publishes, 35,000 books translates into a very nice annual income.  Between her two books, she is still selling about 8000 copies per year.

If you have ever thought about writing a book, you can learn a lot from Cathe about how to do so profitably over many years.  Clearly, writing the book is just the beginning.  Conducting an effective content marketing campaign is essential to actually selling a lot of copies.  Here are some of the key lessons she has to teach about turning a book into a long-lasting income stream:

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Trendspottings does it right. By emulating their approach you can improve your eNewsletter results.

We've written about the great work that Noise Inc. did for the 'Tween Waters Inn on Sanibel Island, Florida. They took a website with a minimal visuals and transformed it by using evocative imagery to create the portrait of a fantastical getaway in a tropical paradise. They take an equally powerful visual approach in their newsletter, Trendspottings. Here are the elements that make their March 2008 eNewsletter so successful: Read More

Content + Design are Inextricably Intertwined in this Clean and Colorful Website.

Successful branding depends equally on content and design.

Joe Duffy, head of the firm, kicked off the 2008 Custom Content Conference. He had plenty to say, but he made two related points that stood out.  First, marketers must provide more meaningful content that makes lives better.  Second, design makes the world makes sense.  As an example, he used the iPhone, noting that it's design and functionality had forced everyone else to get better and that it had "improved your ability to manage your life."

But, when it comes to a successful blend of design and content he could just as well have been pointing to his own website, Duffy.com.

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Regular readers know that I'm a big fan of mind mapping. I've written frequently about the concept, but applications and about Mindjet, the company that sells MindManager software. Both the product and the concept are growing in a viral way over the Internet.

Chuck Frey has a lot to do with spreading the mind mapping  virus through his mind mapping blog and his Innovation Tools website.  Not only is Chuck a great thinker he's also a great marketer.  His mind mapping software update eNewsletter is a superb example of content marketing.

Basically, he manages to compress a huge chunk of his blog content into an eNewsletter.  For those of us who subscribe and who are mind mapping fanatics, this ' blog in your inbox' eNewsletter is welcome whenever it arrives.

Here's what makes it so powerful:

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