It takes more than establishing a presence on Facebook or Twitter, or launching a corporate blog to make effective use of social media. As Heidi Cohen points out, it takes a lot of work to make your social media marketing plans work.
As the new shiny thing on the marketing block, social media is filled with both mystery and promise. Many businesses are just beginning to get to acquainted with it, and may be infatuated with what it seems to promise.
If you read this blog regularly, though, you know we’ve said all along that social media is not magic. It’s a tool and like any tool, it takes time and effort to wield effectively and to learn what it can and cannot.
Cohen’s post summarizes points about effective social media that you’ll find in other posts on Hammock.com. These include:
• Frequent updating
• Consistent messages
• Participation by management and employees
• Clear guidelines for contributors
• Dovetailing online and offline efforts
• Buy-in and commitment by leadership
She doesn’t bullet-point it, but running through Cohen’s post is a point we cannot stress enough: Your social media need targeted, meaningful and creative content—content that instructs, informs, motivates and, yes, entertains those who access it.
We’d also add that media such as blogs and websites should embody good, functional design that makes them easy to navigate and to find desired content.
Each of Cohen’s tips suggests metrics to measure the effectiveness—or lack of effectiveness—of your social media strategy. That’s something we do for clients—we call it a Content Marketing Intelligence Report or CMIR. Measure early, measure often, and respond to what you learn.

Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign gained immortality for using the simple slogan “It’s the economy, stupid” to beat incumbent President George H. W. Bush. Today’s content marketers should remind themselves that “It’s the content, stupid,” that ultimately attracts, retains and persuades readers.
We’ve always said that, and it’s nice to see another content marketing company, Pace Communications, agreeing with us in this blog post by account director Kerry Andrews – plus she quotes one of our favorite marketing bloggers, Seth Godin.
To expand on what she says about relevance, your messages have to work well with whatever formats or media you choose to convey them. Apple’s new iPad has re-agitated the debate over online vs. print design, as well as how best to craft content for a new means of delivery.
Integrating medium, message and design should be part of your overall marketing strategy, and it brings into play designers, writers and marketing specialists. Ideally, the result will be, as Alexander Pope put it, “What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.”

Like Mark Twain, reports of the death of print continue to be exaggerated, though, like the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” print has suffered considerably more than a flesh wound.
But the recently launched “Magazines, The Power of Print” campaign underwritten by leaders of five major magazine companies—Charles H. Townsend, Condé Nast; Cathie Black, Hearst Magazines; Jack Griffin, Meredith Corporation; Ann Moore, Time Inc.; and Jann Wenner, Wenner Media—is betting $90 million worth of ad space on assuring advertisers (and readers) that magazines remain a vital — a necessary — medium.
To those who scoff, we can point to Dr. Samir Husni, aka “Mr. Magazine,” who recently reported there were 170 magazine launches in 1Q 2010 — the same number as 1Q 2009 and more than in either 2007 or 2008.
“Call it what you want,” writes Dr. Husni, “but yet again the innovative media companies and entrepreneurs have shown a resiliency against all odds, and for that matter against the prophets of doom and gloom.

One sign that social media are maturing is that content tricks such as lists and how-tos do no longer satisfy readers who have had their fill of hors d’oeuvres and hunger for something substantial.
That’s the viewpoint of Drew Hawkins, who recently commented in a blog post titled “The Fall of Content” that “When creating content, whether it’s your blog or Twitter or some other platform, you should ask yourself: are you posting something that you are genuinely passionate about? Or are you just trying to drive traffic at the expense of your reader?”
Customers are ready to move past design gimmicks – fascination by bright shiny objects – in favor of design and capabilities that make information easier to find and use. “Thou shalt not direct a visitor away from thy site” was never more true than today.
Thus content and design must work together – and also with your other marketing and communications strategies.
Hawkins isn’t alone in this viewpoint or the first to express it — it’s something Hammock has believed since its founding in 1991. Your online presence needs to provide potential customers and clients with content that helps them evaluate and use your products and services—what we call contextual content. And the design must be clear, easy to navigate and use.
Whether in print, online or skywritten, content and design must be not only creative, but also meaningful and helpful to our clients’ audiences. Otherwise, it’s like an ad that gets everyone talking – but no one can remember what the product is.
And isn’t the point to have content that works for your product or service?

In what is billed as the “First-Ever BtoB Buying Survey,” researchers found that potential purchasers increasingly are forgoing the traditional buying model in favor of combing social media sites for content that provides information and application results about products and services.
The survey, called “Transforming the B2B Buying Process“, was conducted by DemandGen Report, a G3 Communications Publication.

Spring always lures Hammock folk outdoors, and after this particularly long, cold grey winter, we are all hungering for some sunshine and balmier weather.
That hunger is pretty literal for a number of us who like to put in gardens or who participate in the active and—dare I say, growing—community supported agriculture, or CSA, movement, or who have a few square feet to put in their own garden.

“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.

You’d be hard-pressed to find an outfit more devoted to tradition than the United States Marine Corps, but on the other hand, they didn’t get through almost 235 years of existence by failing to innovate.
In that spirit, the 87-year-old Marine Corps League, the nation’s only federally chartered Marine Corps-related veterans organization, came to Hammock Inc. four years ago seeking to reinvigorate their member magazine as part of a campaign to increase recruitment and retention.
As we reported a couple years ago, Semper Fi, the magazine of the Marine Corps League™, has been an essential tool for that campaign. It’s also proved to be a versatile tool for Marine Corps League programs, and a casebook example of objective-based content. Here is how we’ve done it:

For the United States Marine Corps, February 23 is a hallowed day. On that date in 1945, Marines in two separate actions raised the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi on a desolate little Pacific island called Iwo Jima.

The first flag-raising was captured by Marine photographer Lou Lowery. It’s a gritty, stark image that shows a rifleman guarding the detail and conveys a sense of the desperate danger that hung over the battle which had begun on 19 February and would last more than another month.

But this flag was too small to see well from below where it could be worth your life to raise your head, so a second detail was sent up the peak to raise a larger flag.

The second flag raising was photographed by Joe Rosenthal, and it gave the Corps an icon for the ages, and a thrill of hope to America and a war-weary world. The photo showed five Marines and a Navy Corpsman struggling to drive the flagpole into the stony ground.

Soon, the image flashed around the world; it won the Pulitzer Prize and has become one of the most reproduced photos of all time and was the basis for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, VA.

For Marines, the image is a solemn reminder of all Leathernecks who have fought and died, from the American Revolution to Marjah in Afghanistan. Those WWII battles in the Pacific were all bloody, vicious affairs but Iwo Jima still ranks as the bloodiest in the Corps’ proud history.

The March-April issue of Semper Fi Magazine which we produce for the Marine Corps League salutes League members who fought on those black sand beaches. Now in their 80s and even 90s, they are becoming an increasingly rare national treasure.

If you know an Iwo Jima survivor, perhaps he will tell you something of his experience there. Many do not choose to recall those days, however, and their silence in itself speaks volumes. In any event, thank him.

Marines have always been amphibious warriors, usually striking from the sea onto dry land. At the 2010 Marine West Expo aboard Camp Pendleton, CA, a powerful winter storm did just that to the hundreds of vendors displaying the latest in military gear under a large tent. The storm swept ashore Jan. 26, the night before the show opened, and driving rain seeped into the carpeting under the exhibits.