Here's #9 of a 10-part series on the "The 10 Hallmarks of Great Web Content." Read the full white paper, or view all the blog posts in the series.

Hallmark of Great Web Content #9:
Great Web content is interactive.


Use cool tools as “link bait”—something other sites will read about and want to link to. For instance, create a handy web-based calculator for a need common to your audience. Maybe it’s a mortgage comparison calculator for borrowers. Or an ROI calculator for software buyers. Or a calculator to help farmers determine how much herbicide to mix.

Other potential tools could include color selectors, product selectors, or video demos. Whatever the tool is, just make sure it’s “cool,” relevant and well-publicized.

The use of video content in Internet marketing is soaring. YouTube has found that 37 percent of its users have purchased something offline that they saw advertised on YouTube. The company offers this advice to marketers who want to make effective use of video:

• “Just because you have video doesn’t mean it’s good or meaningful to the people in your market. Either modify it so it is, or don’t use it.”

• “Check everything you intend to post on YouTube to make sure it represents your brand and moves your mission forward.”

TechTarget’s “2009 Media Consumption Benchmark Report 2: Closing the Gap.” also confirmed that technology buyers are using social communities in the decision-making process. “A very high percentage of the buyers indicated they now consider social communities to be one of the major places they'd go for information on the Web,” said Marilou Barsam, senior VP-corporate and client marketing at TechTarget.

For more hallmarks of great web content, read the white paper.

Labels: content marketing, social network content, ten hallmarks of great web content, web copy writing

BtoB Magazine's recent article "When Enough is Enough" describes how Cisco Systems straddles the fine line between spamming its existing customers, and keeping Cisco top-of-mind.

The article quotes John Coe, president of the Sales & Marketing Institute, on the role of content:

In fact, Coe said, if your messages bring value to your customers—beyond your company's latest product offerings—there might not be an upper limit to the number of times you can reach out to them.

“If you're sending information of value and relevance, you can probably do that all day long and they'll be happy,” Coe said. “That's a relationship-developer, not a relationship-decayer.”

Isn't the same true of social media?

The difference between content and spam is in the quality of the message, and the interest of the audience.

Anil Dash has been blogging about the non-benefit of having nearly 300,000 Twitter followers. (His conclusions parallel our question, "Is Anybody Following Your Thought Leadership?" When "thought leadership" is measured by Twitter followers, the answer is clearly no.)

Anil Dash does have valuable, relevant things to say--but they are not of value or relevance to all 300,000 random followers. Even major brands with huge Twitter followings have seen no increased results, Dash reports.

Sheer numbers--number of names on an email list, number of Twitter followers, number of Tweets, number of blog posts--build equity when they communicate the right message to the right people--not to the masses.

Unlike advertising and old-school PR, too much low-value communication is hurtful, or at best wasteful, because now the audience gets to say "enough is enough."

But when the content is useful, credible, and informative? We would follow tweets like that all day long.

Labels: social network content, thought leadership

I used to be a Partner at Ketchum so I feel bad for my friends there. I also dabble and work in social media, so I can see the other side of this story too.

It's a prime example of the opposing pull of business discretion with self expression as our professional and social lives become more blended. Discretion is certainly required in any client/service relationship, and self expression is almost mandated if you want to be noticed in the online social world.

It looks like Ketchumite James Andrews got caught in a trap not unlike the unwitting college graduate who gets turned down for a job because the recruiter went to his Facebook page.

If you are wondering what I am talking about, the whole sordid mess is laid out in a series of posts on David Henderson's blog. If nothing else, it's interesting reading.

Ketchum has done great work for FedEx for years, so hopefully FedEx will remember that. And while I've used just about every other sort of social media, I haven't yet ventured into Twitter.

Maybe I'll wait a while.

Labels: public relations, social communities, social network content

You can have the best technology in the world behind your online social community. But to keep users coming back -- and back again regularly -- engaging content is mandatory.

That's why we're proud to announce a partnership with one of the leading social network developers in the country, Neighborhood America. The company has created many popular Web 2.0 sites including HGTV's Rate My Space and FOX News' uReport.

Check out the release that went out on the wire today!

Labels: neighborhood america, social communities, social network content