Content Marketers Can Deliver Great Information Products to a Targeted Customer Base

Fortune 500 companies have long had the technological resources and investment capital required to build sophisticated content marketing solutions—and to manage huge amounts of demographic data relating to their prospects and customer bases. Many of these firms, such as Best Buy, Proctor & Gamble, Microsoft, and Amazon.com, probably know more about us than some of our relatives do. They also do a terrific job of delivering relevant and compelling content to different segments of their prospect bases.

Smaller companies, however, have had to rely on media companies to deliver their message to their targeted buyers . This has certainly been true with print publications and, until  recently, online as well. Affordable technology is now changing all of the rules.

Just a few years ago, it would have been laughable to imagine that a very small organization could create and maintain a Web site that could be updated daily—and that would allow visitors to interact and even buy products and services. Today, this is not only possible but pervasive. In fact, a 10-person company may be able to outmarket a 10,000-person company in a carefully chosen niche.

There are four core components underlying the shift in the technological balance of power away from media giants and toward companies of all sizes:

• The ability to create sophisticated online publications such as Web sites, digital magazines, and e-newsletters
• The ability to manage huge amounts of data relating to current and future customers
• The ability to leverage social media to engage targeted customers
• The ability to do each of these simply and inexpensively

A sophisticated Web site that would have cost $500,000 in 2001 can be replicated today for $5,000.  Even solopreneurs with a modest amount of talent and training can put WordPress to use to build a blog-powered website. Ann Porter with KitchAnn Style : Unique Design for Distinctive Living delivers a simple but image rich website/blog that illustrates her design knowledge and visual sense. She did this on her own at no cost.

The same is true with the online equivalent of circulation development and management. Print publications must still invest enormous amounts of money in acquiring and retaining subscribers. But, online, mailing list and eNewsletter software that integrates with social media costs less than $100/month even for a sizeable mailing list of 10,000 or more. Constant Contact powers the NextBus monthly newsletter which reaches 1000s of transportation executives at a cost of less than $50/month. This technology powerhouse delivers sophisticated transit solutions that benefit millions of bus and rail passengers. And, their small staff and modest marketing budget can achieve results that outshine much larger organizations. They also use WordPress to power their news site.

Social media may be the ultimate leveling force as small company content marketers can use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ to build an interactive community of customers and prospects. Often, as with George Bowers Grocery in Staunton, VA, they can outcompete Kroger on Facebook in the local market. Click here to read more about their creative approach to social media. In fact, they have increased their Facebook fans/likes by almost 40% since we first wrote about them in January 2011.

Low-cost, easy-to-use Web technology and the emergence of business-friendly social media solutions now enables medium-sized manufacturers, small companies, or one-person service firms to build online content solutions that are more sophisticated than what most media companies were putting online just a few years ago.

In fact, with focus, creativity, and a little outside help, these smaller organizations often do a better job of providing targeted content that fully engages their best customers than do some of their billion-dollar competitors.

Simply Combine the Two Online Personalities to Get a Very Happy Ending

The frightening story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde wove the tale of a saintly doctor whose alter ego was an evil murderer. Sadly, there was no happy ending.

In a parallel but more modern context, I found a company that suffers from a similarly split online personality.

If you first meet the good half—the blog, you will want to spend more time getting to know them. But, if you first meet the bad half—the website, you’re likely to head off as fast as you can.

The company in question has a website with very little content. At the same time, it has an excellent but completely separate blog, that lives, like Dr. Jekyll, under a different name.

By integrating the two separate content components, this company could deliver compelling content that immediately engaged visitors. The result: a happy ending.

A Company Website That’s Starving for Content

As you can see in the illustration below,  the homepage has almost no content. The minimal information offered is all text without a single image to enhance its appeal. And, the reverse type makes even that small amount of text relatively difficult to read.

Here’s the total amount of information that the company conveys on its homepage:

Business Performance Consulting, LLC, provides structure and feedback to business leaders, teams and managers in their efforts to design in and improve business performance.

The text is vague, but, does say more or less what the company does for its clients. However, it would be impossible to differentiate that description from dozens of other comparable companies.

Even interior pages are similarly sparse and not much more helpful. None of them has more than 100 words.

On the Other Hand: The Company Blog Delivers Content Customers Care About

Just like the good Dr. Jekyll, BPC’s blog has a completely different personality and name, "Manager by Design."  It provides the kind of content that all of us should be emulating. The bold tagline promises quite a bit, "pioneering the field of management design."  But, the blogger and owner, Walter Oelwein, delivers on the promise by providing a rich compendium of relevant content that benefits both managers and employees.

What this blog might lack in terms of an elaborate layout or fancy design is more than balanced by its substantive value.  Its content engenders trust among potential clients who need exactly the expertise that his blog posts illustrate so well.

The welcome page delivers exactly the kind of descriptive information that would have made his primary website immediately engaging:

Welcome to the Manager by Design blog.  This blog was created to help team managers improve in their ability to run teams.  I’m talking about all sorts of managers, in any industry and at any level.  This includes those just starting out as managers and those who have been doing it for years.  I have seen too many managers struggle to run teams well. I have seen too many managers “freestyle” their way through the management tasks, and ignore others entirely.

Being a manager is tough, and managers develop their practices mostly through ad-hoc means.  Management practices, whether good or bad, tend to be by accident rather than by design.  It’s time this changes and we develop a new field I’m pioneering, “Management Design.”  The idea is that we can create and develop great managers by design rather than by accident.

I love those two paragraphs. Mr. Oerlein says it colloquially and well. This is the kind of guy that I would trust to help me solve tough management issues. His sincerity shines through.

The Bottom Line: Integrating Your Blog and Your Website Benefits You and Your Visitors.

Although this may be an extreme case of a split website and blog personality, you can see how  powerful the company website would have been if it fully integrated the Manager by Design blog content to bring it front and center on the company site.

Fortunately, because of tools like WordPress, that kind of integration today is both easy and inexpensive. If your organization is suffering from a similar Jekyll and Hyde personality split between your blog and your website, integrating the two will lead to a happy ending for your business.

Read more about integrating your blog and website.

  It’s been a very good year for content marketing. In fact, visitors searching our site for the phrase “content marketing” increased by 85% in 2009 over 2008.

Social media certainly loomed larger in the past 12 months but interest in content marketing strategy accounted for the majority of the most popular posts.

Here is the Cliff’s Notes bullet point version with more detail and links to the full articles following:

• How To Create the All-Important Elevator Speech For Your Presentations and for Your Content Marketing
• 5 Reasons an eBook Should be a Core Component of Your Content Marketing Strategy
• 5 Twitter Tips to Strengthen Your Content Marketing Strategy
• Want to Attract and Retain Great Customers? Become Their Online Content Concierge!
• Six Steps to a Successful Small Business Content Marketing Strategy
• 6 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Your Most Important Social Media Tool
• Why Being Visual Can Bring Beautiful Business Results
• 6 Reasons to Embrace Social Media Today
• Top 10 Lessons Small Businesses Can Takeaway from Smart Content Marketers
• 6 Secrets to Making Online Video Work for Small Business

A more detailed look at the top 10 with links to each complete article is just below.  Kick back and enjoy.

1. How To Create the All-Important Elevator Speech For Your Presentations and for Your Content Marketing
   It is so hard, but so important to explain what it is that you do and how it will benefit the person to whom you are communicating. Not at length.  But so concisely that it can be communicated in less time than it takes an elevator to go up a few floors. And, so compellingly that your listener will remember and repeat it to others. Click to read more.

2. 5 Reasons an eBook Should be a Core Component of Your Content Marketing Strategy
   Of course, I’m assuming that you already have a website and are probably doing some business blogging.  You may also do a regular eNewsletter to inform your customers and prospects about the great content you have created recently online.  Your next step is to create an e-book that targets your ideal customers. Click here to read more.

3. 5 Twitter Tips to Strengthen Your Content Marketing Strategy
   You may be wondering why something as seemingly simple as Twitter causes so much confusion and consternation among business people.
   Perhaps, it best likened to a tool like a hammer which is simultaneously simple and powerful.  After all, a hammer can be used to put up a basic bookshelf or to build an entire home that will house a family for a lifetime. Click here to read more.

4. Want to Attract and Retain Great Customers? Become Their Online Content Concierge!
   Think of yourself as the ultimate knowledge resource like those concierges serving fine hotels such as the Ritz-Carlton or the Four Seasons—But Available 24/7. Click here to read more.
5. Six Steps to a Successful Small Business Content Marketing Strategy
   How to go from clueless to compelling to transform prospects into buyers
   In 2007, the mention of content marketing brought as many blank stares from small business owners as the mention of a website did 10 years before. In fact, in 1997 when we started our small business magazine in Southwest Florida, few owners had websites, let alone an online marketing strategy.
   In 2009, most small businesses do have websites and the term, ‘content marketing,’ has gone from obscure to fashionable. When I say fashionable, I mean that the usage of the phrase has skyrocketed in the past two years. For example, the number of visitors to our website who arrived because they had done a search for ‘content marketing,’ has increased by a factor of 10. Click here to read more.
6. 6 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Your Most Important Social Media Tool
   It’s much more powerful than those young whippersnappers–Twitter and Facebook
   Thanks to free or inexpensive blogging tools, any individual can be on the same technological footing as the New York Times or Business Week.  That may seem relatively obvious to many of you.  What I think is less obvious is that your blog is every bit as much a social media tool as Twitter, Facebook or MySpace.  In fact, I believe that a blog is the most important social media weapon in your arsenal. Click here to read more.
7. Why Being Visual Can Bring Beautiful Business Results
   Inspiration from ‘Visual Blogger’ Mark Smiciklas of Intersection Marketing
   It’s hard to make things easy. And, it’s even harder to be amusing at the same time.
   But the very best visuals take a complex idea or series of connected ideas and make them instantly understandable. Just the right visuals make those ideas even more memorable when they are funny as well. In the case of the Intersection Marketing blog from Mark Smiciklas, he manages to do both consistently. Click here to read more.
8. 6 Reasons to Embrace Social Media Today
   Social media marketing is a trend, not a fad. But,  most small to medium-sized businesses have yet to participate fully and enthusiastically.
   We have just written about a powerful new research study that paints a picture of how thousands of smart companies are already benefiting from the inclusion of social media.  What’s clear from that research is that when we evaluate social media, we are not talking about the marketing longevity equivalent of the hula hoop or the Lambada.
   Social media marketing is here to stay.  Because you want your organization to be here for the long haul as well, you need to move now.  Not next week. Not next month. But now. Click here to read more.
9. Top 10 Lessons Small Businesses Can Takeaway from Smart Content Marketers
   This week, several client meetings reinforced a vital truth:  Content marketing isn’t an arcane theory taught in expensive graduate schools that only billion dollar companies can use. In fact, great  content marketing is much more about brains than big bucks.
   Those client conversations took me back to lessons learned from more than a dozen case studies we featured in Get Content Get Customers. What came through loud and clear was that content marketing requires discipline, patience, and persistence, but it doesn’t require an enormous budget.  Click here to read more.
10. 6 Secrets to Making Online Video Work for Small Business
    Kathy Saenz of Neighborhood America Shares What It Takes to Make Video an Effective Content Marketing Tool
    Even a micro business can use video effectively to communicate with its customers online.
    But, as we amateur carpenters know, you can wind up with a mess instead of a masterpiece unless you understand how to use a potentially powerful tool well.   In that spirit we’re happy to can share with you six terrific tips for using video successfully from talented Southwest Florida professional, Kathy Saenz. Click here to read more.

Thanks to everyone for their support in 2009!

Dean Piccirillo Makes a One-Person Blog-powered Website Look like a Major Corporate Presence Online

Building a solid business blog-powered website is challenging for all of us. But it’s even more difficult for anyone who lives in the financial services universe.

Because financial services professionals must adhere to strict compliance regulations, they must be very careful about what they say and how they say it.  Dean Piccirillo a principal in HBK Sorce Financial, LLC, manages to convey relevant and compelling information while maintaining essential compliance.

Even more impressive is the quality of his own site’s design which manages to be simultaneously newsy and professional. To build DeanPiccirillo.com, Dean used a WordPress theme called Live Wire that can be significantly customized for the needs of an individual business.  Perhaps most impressive of all is the fact that Dean did almost all the work himself. Although this may be beyond the capabilities of many of us, it shows what a non-technical businessperson can achieve using the power of a tool like WordPress.

Among my favorite elements:

• His horizontal navigation includes both page links and links to the most important categories so that visitors can search intuitively for exactly what information they want right from the top of the page.
• He has a featured blog post in the upper left which changes periodically to keep the site fresh.
• He includes a tabbed news feature which lets visitors choose from: latest news, popular, and latest comments. This makes Dean’s site look as professional as a major newspaper or magazine.
• The quality of his articles is first class. For example, he writes thoroughly and compellingly about the need for long-term care insurance. That’s a topic that is or should be top of mind for all of us as we approach a certain age.
• He includes both RSS links and social media elements so that we can connect with Dean pretty much anywhere.

Dean is relatively new to the blogging and social media arena but has found it an extremely valuable tool in establishing his credibility and that of his company among prospective clients in Fort Myers. So I asked him how he’s benefited and what he has learned from his experience. Here’s what he had to say:

A Q&A with Dean Piccirillo

What tangible benefits have you gained from your business blog?

• I think blogging makes you a better professional as you are compelled to write regularly about topics of importance within your field.  Blogging challenges me on a daily basis to think carefully about the issues that are faced by my clients.  Part of this process involves considering and researching solutions to these challenges and writing about possible courses of action in a concise manner.  For this reason alone I would recommend that professional advisors blog.
• By paying attention to the statistical information available about my blog from tools such as Google Analytics, I am gaining extremely valuable information about what topics business people are interested in relative to my field.  For example, I have learned a great deal by monitoring which articles visitors to my blog are reading and what keywords they used in their search that brought them to my site.
  

What are some of the most important lessons you have learned from the process of building your site?

• Design matters – I invested a considerable amount time examining the blogging tools and platforms available, reviewing other successful blogs and thinking about layout and design.  I also invested some dollars with a professional designer for my site’s header.  Additionally, I purchased a “premium” WordPress theme rather than using a free one.  I think this effort has paid off as the feedback I’ve received related purely to site design, layout, organization, etc. has been excellent.
• Spend a significant amount of time monitoring and listening online to successful bloggers – I spent months reading other blogs, considering style, word count, etc.  I don’t think I’ve really found my “blog voice” yet, however, this research was extremely useful to me when I actually began to create content for my site.
• Consider how you’re going to integrate social networking platforms and tools – Social networking sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn are a significant source of traffic on my site.  They serve as “outposts” that allow me to easily promote the content on my site.  Because Google Analytics shows me the sites referring visitors to my blog, I know that social networks play an important role in promoting my site.
• If you’re in a highly regulated profession such as financial services, work closely with compliance and get them involved early in the planning process – Communications in financial services are tightly regulated and in most cases must be preapproved, monitored and archived.  This doesn’t preclude financial service professionals from participating in social media and social networking; it’s just more challenging and requires a considerable amount of pre-planning.

The bottom line: I believe it’s almost impossible to overestimate the power of a terrific blog powered website like DeanPiccirillo.com.

Here’s why: Of course, I can learn a little bit about Dean from his business card and from a brief conversation in a social setting. That doesn’t take him from stranger to trusted advisor, however.

On the other hand, his blog-powered website will almost certainly be the differentiator when it comes to comparing Dean to his financial services peers. His site conveys so much compelling information so professionally that it immediately generates a level of confidence in his knowledge and capability. That level of trust would otherwise be extremely difficult to achieve in so short a time.

Be sure to check out his site and see what you think.

The best small business solution is to eliminate a separate blog and website.

Unfortunately, typical small companies often misunderstand the power of a business blog–and cannot envision how it can and should be the driving force behind your online presence.  Your best bet is to leverage the power of blogging software to create an online presence which is, at once, timeless and timely.

Most of us began with a website that contains static content that was never intended to change much over time. Your static website will be an essential source of product, service, and company data to the majority of buyers that now relying on the Internet as their primary repository of information for potential purchases. Your static website is a vital beginning.  But, it’s only a beginning. 

To compete for the attention of both search engines and buyers, you will need to add more and more dynamic content over time.  That’s where a business blog comes into play.  If you already have a blog–or are considering one–you probably think of it as a completely separate entity with limited functionality.  That may be true for large organizations.  But, for a small business, your blog should be the engine behind a full fledged website that delivers much more clout than your old-fashioned static version.

What’s the difference between a traditional blog and a traditional website?

Since both the blog and the website have intrinsic merit, why not combine the best of both?

Think for a moment about the online version of a newspaper. Of course, it contains lots and lots of news stories with the most recent showing first and which are organized by topic. But, it will also include a lot of timeless information about the region such as a directory of restaurants, lists of local attractions, and guides to government and community resources. The inclusion of both timely and timeless makes the newspaper site complete.

That’s exactly what you can accomplish by combining your website and your blog effectively.

NextBusNews.com: Integrating Timeless and Timely with a WordPress-powered Website.

NextBus, Inc. is a dynamic California-based company that delivers leading-edge transportation management technology to both municipal and University transit systems. The NextBusNews.com website leverages the power of WordPress as a content management system to provide relatively static content that is intended to describe in detail how their products and services will benefit both passengers and transit executives. But, there is also plenty of up-to-the-minute news to convey which is best done using the ease and simplicity of the underlying blog engine. Thus, on the home page you have access both to the latest news and to the customer-focused information you need to understand how the company will benefit your organization.

You may not need the sophistication and complexity of the NextBusNews.com site, but you can dramatically improve the impact of your online presence by using blog-powered technology to integrate timeless and timely content for the benefit of your customers and your company.

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.

1. To Succeed Small Business Marketers Must Unlearn Traditional PR

Don’t get me wrong.  Public relations is still a critical component to any marketing strategy for companies of all sizes. 

Nonetheless, I am convinced that we need to turn our notions of public relations upside down so that it functions within a content marketing context.

I was inspired to think again about the transformation of public relations by a recent post from David Meerman Scott in his WebInkNow.com blog.  He was sharing some top of mind ideas relating to successful public relations strategies for small businesses. Read entire article

2. How to Transform Your Brochure Site into a Round-The-Clock Sales Machine

If you are a solopreneur, you certainly have too much to do and not enough time to do it. Imagine how much more you could accomplish if your website was actively selling for you 24 hours a day seven days a week!

That’s exactly what Stephanie Diamond is helping solopreneur, Natalie Currie, to accomplish using a custom MindMap. Natalie provides training and consulting in the pharmaceutical and biotech fields. Because she is so busy working in her business, she has been challenged to work on her business.

That’s where Stephanie came in. The MindMap she created served as a kind of mini–business plan. It enables a Natalie to see visually exactly what she needed to accomplish to take her business to the next level. It helped her to think through both of this strategy at the 30,000 foot level–and the on the ground of tactics she needs to implement ASAP. Read entire article.

3. The Secret to Online Marketing in the 21st Century : It’s the Content, Stupid!

Billboard marketing is fine on Route 66, but it’s all wrong on the information superhighway

Your job as a marketer is to make it easy for your buyers to buy from you. But making it easy for them may be hard for you, unless you can execute an effective content marketing strategy.

Content marketing is the art of understanding exactly what buyers need to know and delivering it to them in a relevant and compelling way.  This extends way beyond product information into the realm of best practices, case studies, success stories, and more.

Why?  All the rules have changed.  You will need to relearn the marketing game with a brand new marketing mindset.  Those that can adapt will flourish.  Those that don’t…well… think of the fate of the dinosaurs. Read entire article.

4. Authenticity at Starbucks: Coffee and People, Yes. The Corporation, No!

Bureaucrats are bouncing baristas, as they move to shut down 600 Starbucks stores.

It may not be the same everywhere, but in our Southwest corner of Florida, Starbucks is shutting down nine of their stores.  This is likely to have an impact on their local reputation that may well be replicated around the country.

As far as I’m concerned, the Starbucks experience is as much about the people who look after you as it is about the coffee. 

I might be wrong, but it looks to me like faraway bureaucrats have made decisions about their customers and about their employees that might have a short term positive affect on their stock price, but is not going to endear them to the communities in which they operate. Read entire article.

5. Sexy Headline Secrets from Cosmo!

What your blog should borrow from the classic woman’s mag and their newsstand cousins.

Sex sells.  And so do great headlines.

Imagine for a moment that your blog is on a giant newsstand something like what you might find in a Manhattan Barnes & Noble.  As a magazine you are competing with hundreds of other magazines for the attention of prospective readers who are browsing quickly through the racks. The right headline can make all the difference. It sure does for Cosmo!

As a blogger, you are competing with hundreds of thousands of other bloggers for the attention of online visitors with very little time to spend on any one article.  Thus, your article headlines are every bit as important as those of Cosmopolitan magazine. 

The Cosmo folks need to sell zillions of copies from newsstands.  Great headlines do the trick for them and they can do the trick for you. Read entire article.

6. Really Bad Online Marketing Concept: Refuse to Tell Your Visitors How You Can Help Them Solve Their Problems

Give the home page of this website a 10 second review (no cheating–you can’t look at any interior pages). Then answer the following questions:

1. Who are their target customers?
2. What product or service are they selling?
3. How can those products or services solve customer problems?

Here’s the best I could do:

1. Somebody in public transit
2. Some kind of technology relating to transit operations management
3. I have no idea.

Actually, I was probably cheating because I spent more time looking at the site before I decided to write this post.  So I might not have picked up both one and two in a quick look at the site. Read entire article.

7. 6 Reasons You Should Publish an eNewsletter

If you aren’t delivering a regular eNewsletter to build your business, you should ask yourself why. You are probably missing the biggest and best opportunity to communicate in a consistent and meaningful way with your customers.

Of course, you need to generate regular content that brings value to your customers. But, with that basic proviso, an eNewsletter should become an integral part of your content marketing arsenal. Here’s why:

An eNewsletter is one of the most effective methods of delivering content to your customers. Think of it as the logical successor to traditional direct marketing. You might think that with all the spam on the Net that email and eNewsletters are no longer effective. Not so, Adriana Iordan, Web Marketing Manager at Avangate points out, citing recent research. Read entire article.

8. Five Essential Reasons to Launch a Blog-Powered Website Right Now

Too many people–and I used to be one of them–think of a blog as an out-of-control rant by a fanatic about some topic or other. Sure there’s plenty of that. However, today, business blogs are pervasive. They provide enormous value by delivering relevant content on a myriad of topics.

But, more importantly, an increasing number of what have been termed ‘blogs’ in the past are really websites. They are full-featured websites with as much capability is anything that could be built from scratch by talented programmers.

You no longer have an excuse to stick with the brochureware website that your sister’s cousin’s nephew built for you in some kind of JavaScript that nobody knows how to modify. Read entire article.

9. 6 Ways Content Marketing Can Help You Survive the Recession

Crank up your communications now.  Don’t dial back your efforts.

The knee-jerk reaction for most companies when faced with the recession is to reduce their marketing efforts. However, decades of research show that those who maintain or increase their marketing will blow past their peers once the recession is over.

If you accept this reality, you still may be faced with a shortage of spare cash to invest in marketing–particularly in traditional advertising.  What to do? You can and should focus on a content marketing strategy that will require a whole lot of thought and effort, but will not require a lot of money.

Here are 6 ways that content marketing will help get all of us through the recession.  Read entire article.

10. Is It Time to Abandon Your Yellow Pages Advertising?

Fundamental changes in buyer behavior suggests that, at a minimum, you should be reevaluating your print Yellow Pages advertising.

You may very well want to apply those marketing dollars to creating outstanding online content on your website or on a related blog.

I’ve been researching lately whether it makes sense today to invest marketing dollars in the Yellow Pages, particularly when you have a limited advertising budget.

This decision is critical because a strong Internet presence is fundamental to successful marketing strategies for even small businesses. If you have limited dollars, you must choose wisely by understanding some powerful trends that are rearranging the Yellow Pages landscape.  Read entire article.

Do what NextBus did. Put content marketing to work on your website!

NextBus is a dynamic high-tech company in the San Francisco Bay area.  Its sophisticated technology enables bus and train riders to do something important, but easy: they can determine exactly when the next bus is arriving so they can plan their travel intelligently.

Now NextBus has an equally sophisticated website which provides a rich variety of content relating directly to the problems and solutions critical to their customers.

Like many technology companies, they have focused more of their attention on the product than on marketing in recent years.  In early 2008, they decided to build a brand-new website that would be full of relevant and compelling content for its current and future customers. We’ve written previously about their website’s excellent use of WordPress as hailed by a University of San Francisco professor.  Click here to read that article.

Rich Content Delivers Google Search Leadership

Although NextBus news.com launched in June 2008 and has been up for just five months, it already ranks high in Google search for one of the most important phrases relating to NextBus: “real-time passenger information systems.”  Any transit system looking for a leading edge technology solution would have an interest in providing real-time information that benefits both their passengers and their management team.  This is particularly impressive because NextBus as several competitors who are much larger and have much bigger marketing budgets. On the Web, however,NextBus has outmarketed their rivals.

Once again, content marketing has driven impressive Google search results.  NextBus does not have a big marketing budget.  In fact they spend no money promoting their new website apart from their regular monthly eNewsletter. Therefore, it is absolutely certain that relevant content within the site raises its Google profile dramatically.  In fact, as of November 13, 2008, NextBusnews.com ranked number two out of a total of 208,000 pages returned in the search.  That’s pretty impressive.

So, if you had any doubts about the importance of relevant and compelling content, the NextBus example should eliminate them. And, if like most small businesses, your marketing budget is very limited, you can put content marketing to work online quickly and inexpensively.  Don’t wait. Do it now. 

And, if you’d like see an excellent example of a great website built with WordPress, be sure to visit NextBusnews.com.

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. 

As an example of a business WordPress site, I use nextbusnews.com.  NextBus is the groovy technology that tells me real-time how late my next MUNI bus will be (more details on how NextBus uses WordPress as a simple content management system here).

That quote links to an article by my colleague Scott Frangos’ site, Webhelpermagazine.com.  Scott and I worked together on building this contemporary site for NextBus which provides a wealth of relevant content for its large audience of transit managers who operate in a variety of complex settings.  Although a lot of customizing was involved in building out the site, that work was still orders of magnitude easier than it would have been to build a content management system from scratch. NextBusNews.com really is a great example of how customizable WordPress can be.

I’m delighted that J.P. is building a curriculum around the use of WordPress in the creation of small business websites.  He notes a recent article in the Wall Street Journal that only 36% of small businesses in the US with Web access actually have a website.  That may seem astonishing, but it may have to do with the difficulty of creating a credible website with old-fashioned tools. If it’s too hard and too expensive, your small business may be unable to afford a kind of web presence that’s essential today.  As JP stresses, WordPress can take a lot of the heartache and expense out of building a website.

This is a great blog from an unexpected source that takes a look at the Internet, at business, and at broader social issues from an intriguing perspective.  Be sure to give it a look: The J.P. Allen Blog.

If the UK government with its mega-billion-dollar budget has confidence in WordPress to power its prime minister’s website, I think the rest of us can confidently consider making a similar move.

The surprising news came from Chris Garrett’s blog, ChrisG.com.  Chris writes consistently great stuff about blogging and new media.  Nonetheless, I was a little surprised to read this morning about merry old England’s move to a blog-powered website.  But, I think we can learn something from our friends across the pond.

Chris hypothesizes that the move to WordPress has a lot to do with the economy and restricted budgets.  But he also suggests that it may have something to do with time-to-market as well:

Think about it, consider how these things used to work. I used to be as guilty as any, building 7-figure monster bespoke content management systems over months that didn’t turn out much more capable than WordPress 2.6 is right out of the box.

He concludes that it may not really be a matter of money.  Instead, Chris says, “WordPress isn’t just being used because it is cheap, it is growing in favor because it works.”

Since we’ve written extensively about the power and flexibility of WordPress is a content management system, it’s gratifying to see increasing acceptance from surprising quarters. When 10 Downing St moves to WordPress, that should give almost anyone confidence to do exactly the same. 

WordPress is a powerful, flexible, and inexpensive content management solution.  You should most certainly take an in-depth look at WordPress.  Don’t let your Web designer tell you that he can do it better, cheaper or faster.  Perhaps, best of all, it is so easy to build out websites with WordPress that you can focus on providing great content.

The new number 10 Downing St site is not yet live, but you can get a sneak peek on the developer site:Puffbox.com.

To read more about the many reasons why you should seriously considerCreating or re-creatingYour website with WordPress, click on our related stories.

More than 10,000 visitors voted with their mouse clicks to make these the 6 hottest articles out of 126 that we have posted in the virtual pages of ContentMarketingToday.com from January through June 2008.

They range from transforming an old-fashioned brochure site into a killer sales machine…to why you need to unlearn traditional PR in the 21st century…to why you must publish an eNewsletter. 

Read on to find out why these articles were so popular with so many marketers.

1. How to Transform Your Brochure Site into a Round-The-Clock Sales Machine

If you are a solopreneur, you certainly have too much to do and not enough time to do it. Imagine how much more you could accomplish if your website was actively selling for you 24 hours a day seven days a week!

That’s exactly what Stephanie Diamond is helping solopreneur, Natalie Currie, to accomplish using a custom MindMap. Click to learn just how.

2. 11 Essential Content Marketing Insights from 2008 Custom Content Conference

Learn what some of the smartest people in the business had to say about 21st-century marketing.

When you invite leading edge content, marketing, and technology pros to address 150 professionals who spend all their time thinking about content, you are at risk of sensory overload.

If you’re not familiar with custom publishing, what’s important to know is that it provides targeted and relevant content to carefully selected customers. Content marketing flows directly from custom publishing roots. Click here to find out how those 11 insights can guide your content marketing efforts.

3.Really Bad Online Marketing Concept: Refuse to Tell Your Visitors How You Can Help Them Solve Their Problems

Here’s a quick three question quiz.

Give the home page of this website a 10 second review (no cheating–you can’t look at any interior pages). Then answer the following questions:

1. Who are their target customers?
2. What product or service are they selling?
3. How can those products or services solve customer problems?

Here’s the best I could do:

1. Somebody in public transit
2. Some kind of technology relating to transit operations management
3. I have no idea.

Actually, I was probably cheating because I spent more time looking at the site before I decided to write this post.  So I might not have picked up both one and two in a quick look at the site.  Click to learn what they should have done.

4.To Succeed Small Business Marketers Must Unlearn Traditional PR

Don’t get me wrong.  Public relations is still a critical component to any marketing strategy for companies of all sizes. 

Nonetheless, I am convinced that we need to turn our notions of public relations upside down so that it functions within a content marketing context.

I was inspired to think again about the transformation of public relations by a recent post from David Meerman Scott in his WebInkNow.com blog.  Click here to learn what you need to unlearn.

5. 6 Reasons You Should Publish an eNewsletter

If you aren’t delivering a regular eNewsletter to build your business, you should ask yourself why. You are probably missing the biggest and best opportunity to communicate in a consistent and meaningful way with your customers.

Of course, you need to generate regular content that brings value to your customers. But, with that basic proviso, an eNewsletter should become an integral part of your content marketing arsenal. Click here to learn exactly why.

6. Five Essential Reasons to Launch a Blog-Based Website Right Now

Too many people–-and I used to be one of them–-think of a blog as an out-of-control rant by a fanatic about some topic or other. Sure there’s plenty of that. However, today, business blogs are pervasive. They provide enormous value by delivering relevant content on a myriad of topics.

But, more importantly, an increasing number of what have been termed ‘blogs’ in the past are really websites. They are full-featured websites with as much capability is anything that could be built from scratch by talented programmers. I’m indebted to my new friends at ContentRobot.com for the new term, ‘ blog-powered website’ that I will use from now on. They’re doing some great stuff.

The secret sauce behind the ContentRobot.com site, ContentMarketingToday.com, and thousands of others is the powerful and often free software that will enable you to establish a content rich website.

You no longer have an excuse to stick with the brochureware website that your sister’s cousin’s nephew built for you in some kind of JavaScript that nobody knows how to modify. Click here to learn the 5 reasons you need to launch a blog-powered website now.