If your content marketing plan incorporates online reviews of your product or service, don’t fake them.

Jay Baer of Convince and Convert makes some compelling arguments about why a company’s social media programs should be about helping, not about selling, and lists several companies that approaching their social media programs in this correct way. From a content marketing standpoint, Geek Squad really stood out among the companies Baer name-checked. He said:
“Geek Squad makes its living providing technology configuration and repair services, via BestBuy stores everywhere. But yet Geek Squad has a YouTube channel that includes hundreds of videos showing people how to do it themselves. They aren’t trying to sell you services –- at least not at that point –- they are being helpful.”
Sounds a lot like a good content marketing strategy, too.

“I want a magazine.” “I want a blog.” “I want a newsletter.” Those are some of the most common needs expressed to us by new clients. More often than not, clients come to us with the media they want already in mind.
Rather than immediately moving forward, we prefer to start the process with a conversation about a client’s content marketing goals, then let those goals guide a custom media platform selection. We’re looking for the platforms that will work most efficiently, rather than the trendiest or flashiest. We won’t recommend a client invest in a custom magazine, for example, until we are clear about what he or she wants the magazine to do. With such an array of media choices to choose from, we realize the decision can be difficult. That’s why we draw on our years of experience—and tons of research—to craft the most appropriate media for each client.

There is hardly a typical, replicable day at Hammock (the variety is why we love our jobs here!), but here is a snapshot of a random Tuesday’s tasks for Hammock’s team members.

More than 350 blogs were reviewed by Junta42 and their lead researcher Janet Robbins for their selection of the Junta42 Top Content Marketing blogs. This is the eight installment of this list for Junta42. Congratulations to Jay Baer from Convince and Convert for his spot at the top. Here are the top ten blogs:

A recent study shows that U.S. consumers are “more likely to respond to content marketing than other forms of online marketing,” according to this recent article from Vertical Leap. Specifically, the study indicated that content marketing generates a greater response than banner or pop-up advertisements, email offers or sponsored links.
For those of you already integrating content marketing into your overall marketing strategy, whether with a blog, company e-newsletters or Twitter, your reaction to this study is probably “Well, duh.” And rightly so. Content marketing, when done right, just makes sense.

Despite what some might think, simply setting up a few social media accounts isn’t enough. You have to have a strategy of how to use them.
Once you’ve outlined your objectives, if you’re having trouble deciding which social media platforms to use to best market yourself, check out this handy chart from Revenflo to get an idea of which social media platforms will help you achieve your goals. For example, Facebook and Twitter have ended up in the Most Effective Customer Communication and Most Effective Brand Exposure categories, while Digg and StumbleUpon are considered effective in driving traffic to your website.

Kudos to Junta42’s Joe Pulizzi for appealing to burger freaks and content geeks all at once. He took a very long but interesting (not to mention mouthwatering) article about Five Guys Burger and Fries from this month’s issue of Inc. magazine and turned it into lessons about content marketing. One of my favorites:
Never cut corners on content. Your customers will notice: “Jerry (Murrell) and Five Guys gets potatoes north of the 42nd parallel because they grow slower and are more solid,” Pulizzi says. “They soak all their fries in water so they won’t absorb any oil when they are fried. The beef is never frozen and all burgers ordered are fresh. My favorite: always two slices of tomatoes…no matter what and even in the current tomato crisis. That’s Five Guys secret sauce. Your content marketing must be different in some way. I’m getting tired of all the sites I go to that simply just aggregate content all day or say the same thing as everyone else. How does that help your brand story?”
The others are equally thought-provoking. Thanks, Joe!

[Photo credit: zordroyd/Flickr via Wiki-Commons]

As many people know, Hammock Inc. is the developer of the wiki project, SmallBusiness.com.*
What you may not know is that my title on SmallBusiness.com is “Head Helper.” Being head helper for a project as big and complex as a 20,000-entry (and growing daily) wiki running on the same software platform used by Wikipedia has given me a few years of knowledge that is limited to a rather small group of people. (And, as I’ve attended one, I can even tell you where you’d find them.)
While Hammock is likely the only custom media and content marketing firm to create and grow such a large-scale wiki project as SmallBusiness.com, I predict others will enter the field as companies and associations become more aware of the hidden magic of the wiki platform. To be honest, if for no other reason than trying to figure out why Wikipedia shows up on the first results page of nearly any Google search, I’d be spending time trying to understand everything there is to know about Wikipedia, even if I wasn’t a wikimaniac.
Here are, in no particular order, some of the most important things you should know about wikis – straight from an official wiki “head-helper”:

“People don’t care what you say about your products. They want to know what other people say about your products.”
After hearing that message from marketing speaker David Meerman Scott and embarking on a seemingly unrelated search for New York pizza, ClickZ blogger Sage Lewis realized just how much user-generated content dominates his decision-making process.