Content creation strategies

Image via WikipediaCreating unique content probably sounds daunting, especially if you are running a small business and you are already head cook and bottle washer. To ease some of the burden of creating content you should first come up with a strategic plan for all your inbound marketing initiatives including content. Here are a few thoughts on building a content strategy. If you have other good strategies please share them.
What makes good content?: As described in the previous post, content needs to be high quality, relevant and non-pitchy. 
Forms of content: The items you produce do not need to be a War and Peace sized endeavor. People are already inundated with loads of content so it makes sense to make your materials easily digestible and simple to understand. As such, think of delivering quick snippets from research you have done or read, trends you are seeing in the market and why they are important and what they mean to your customers, and, possibly most importantly, links to other content providers that you consider valuable (see here for a post from Hubspot on the importance of link building). You should also consider developing some white papers and cases studies on how you solved a customers pain.
Shareable: All of the blogging platforms have widgets that allow readers to share your content with others. Make sure you have enabled them.
Tracking: Tracking how readers are reacting to the content is extremely important as it will allow you to spot what your followers are most interested in and not interested as in reading and sharing. There a number of different tools available to track your content (good overview here). At the very least you should use a service like bit.ly for simple tracking purposes. 

These are just a few simple thoughts on how to develop a content strategy. Please share your own.

An integrated approach to technology and market strategy is critical to success

Image via Wikipedia

The firm I work for has several new products being released over the coming months that will require a technology acumen that we are not currently best suited to handle. As a result,  we need to develop a long term technology strategy to support the release of these products. Additionally, our marketing needs to be aligned with the technology road map to ensure that we are messaging our new capabilities in a cohesive manner. If you are a technology company, you can no longer think of your technology and market strategy as mutually exclusive.

SaaS firms like Salesforce.com understand that there is no difference between its technology infrastructure and go to market planning and messaging. However, some firms, in particular mine, do not view technology and marketing as related to one another. An approach like this will dilute our overall messaging and branding and could lead to confusion about who you are in the marketplace. Additionally, if you do not implement a strategy road map that looks at technology and marketing strategy as an integrated unit then you will end up supporting multiple one-off technologies and have to craft multiple messages.

In the past, the positioning of my firm was one as a content provider or publisher. However, we are releasing a new platform that will make us more of a service provider that delivers content, with as much if not more focus on the technology than the content. Our approach to date has been to explore individual technologies like vcms and mobile, an approach that only addresses weaknesses and is not an overall road map. The goal now is to work with the technology group as they map out their needs so we can also adapt our messaging to fit this new world order.

So my advice is to integrate your technology and market planning to make sure each one knows what the other is doing so there is no disconnect.