“Uncommon valor was a common virtue.” — Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, USN, 16 March 1945.
Guadalcanal. Bougainville. New Britain. Saipan. Tarawa. Peleliu. Guam. Tinian. Iwo Jima. Of all the names steeped in blood and honor during Marine campaigns of World War II, Iwo Jima has always resonated most deeply in the American imagination. The March-April issue of Semper Fi magazine, which we publish for the Marine Corps League, commemorates the American capture of that desolate little volcanic island.
But neither casualty statistics nor the strategic importance of its airfields explains why Iwo Jima emerged as an icon. It’s the photograph … THE photograph. Joe Rosenthal’s image of four Marines and one Navy Corpsman raising the second American flag atop Mt. Suribachi flashed around the world days after the event.

[Part 1 of a Series: See: Introduction. See: Links to other posts in this series.]
Business people do lots of things on the internet other than read or watch or listen to content. So when I say that only two kinds of content matter to them, I don’t mean web-based applications and email.
I mean the kind of content we typically think of as news and information and advertising and the stuff now called “post-advertising” — the kind of content that marketing people and journalists and bloggers and Twitter users create and add to the internet. The kind of content that companies hand over millions of dollars to Google so that business people will click through to see it.
I’ve given these two kinds of content that matter most to business customers the following names:

The following are links to a series of posts written by Hammock founder Rex Hammock in which he explores the various kinds of content that is being used by companies, associations, and other organizations and institutions to build stronger relationships with their customers, members, etc.
The posts also examine ways in which different types of content and different communications channels and platforms can work independently or in a complementary, integrated fashion to help companies reach specific business objectives.

If you think marketing is about crafting showy, syrupy stories about your brand for a consumer audience, think again. Marketing is about finding the true stories that make your brand unique and using them to engage employees and consumers, blogs Brett Virmalo of digital agency Tippingpoint Labs. Ready to ramp up your marketing? Virmalo suggests focusing on these five areas.
•Product design and development. To market a product, build your messaging around the problem that your team set out to solve when they developed it.
•The post-purchase experience. Don’t spam your customers with the next product you want them to purchase. Figure out what they are buying and how you can help them use it, so you can provide them valuable, relevant content.
•Customer support.When a customer has a problem or complaint, focus on how you can help them solve it as quickly and as painlessly as possible instead of explaining what went wrong.
•Product reviews. Are you engaging in online ratings and review spaces like Yelp, GetSatisfaction and the like? If not, you should be. Seize any opportunity to set the record straight when an unfair review is posted.
•Employees and CEOs. Think of every employee as a brand ambassador and encourage them to promote your brand through their social networks. Give CEOs a platform to blog or Tweet about your brand or position them as experts who are willing to speak at conferences, to reporters, ect.

A new study reveals that small businesses are increasingly incorporating social media into their marketing strategies. In fact, usage of social media among small businesses has doubled over the last year: 24 percent of small businesses with fewer than 100 employees use social media versus 12 percent last year, according to the latest Small Business Success Index study performed by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.
The study found that the most common social media methods among small businesses is creating a Facebook or LinkedIn page (75 percent). Only 39 percent of small businesses have a blog, and 26 percent use Twitter to share information about their area of expertise.
The study also provided insight into why small business owners are hesitant about using social media to market their businesses. Biggest barriers include longer-than- expected marketing results and the fear that social media channels give customers an opportunity to publicly criticize their business.

[See also: Table of Contents for this series.]
Over the coming months, I will be writing a series of posts that focus on the role of “content” in how companies and customers connect with one-another. (Of course, when I say “companies,” I also mean associations and governments and churches and schools and candidates. And when I say “customers,” I also mean members and alumni and supporters, etc.) But first, I thought I’d provide an introduction.

Ever wonder how all the puzzle pieces come together to create a bimonthly publication? Take a peek into the process for American Spirit, a history- and preservation-focused magazine Hammock publishes for the Daughters of the American Revolution. The upcoming May/June issue is a special one, as it will be distributed to all DAR members to commemorate the three-year term of President General Linda Gist Calvin. No two cycles of the magazine are the same, but here are roughly the steps the editors and designers take from initial story ideas to the magazine landing on the coffee table:

The illustration of a fashionable woman with a sky-high wig gracing the March/April issue of American Spirit, the magazine we publish for the Daughters of the American Revolution, is for a story on 18th-century hairstyles. It’s a relief to learn that an obsession with how our hair looks is far from a modern phenomenon. Our early American forefathers spent time and money on their hairstyles — whether importing wigs from Europe or forming their own distinctly American looks. In our cover feature on “Revolutionary Hair,” readers learn more about big wigs, men in pigtails and the origin of the term powder rooms.

We hear it all the time: Companies who treat their websites as “brochure” sites and then wonder why they don’t have more visitors. According to this content marketing post from Talk Back Media, “your site should be like a salesperson working around the clock to boost your business”—and a brochure site will simply not cut it. The goal is to create content on an ongoing basis that continues to tell the story of your product or service. It doesn’t matter what form the content takes—it can be through blogs, white papers, case studies or people pages—it just has to be vibrant, relevant and regularly updated. This discipline not only makes your site more attractive to search engines, but also to site visitors. They’ll have an incentive to come back to the site more often if they know the content will be different every time and of interest to them because you have set yourself up as an expert and a trusted source.