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Hypermile Your Content
Todd Wold Push your campaign
Today and even more so in the future, the content a company generates, such as press releases, product documentation, white papers, blog postings, forum participation, etc… is going to become increasingly critical for success online. In particular, with the advent of the social media and community sharing (a.k.a. Web 2.0), “pushing” content out to end users is going to be far more effective than only applying traditional “pull” marketing strategies, such as print advertising and search engine marketing. With so many content distribution channels available to the savvy online marketer, it is time to start using a Content Development & Marketing Plan so that you can maximize the gas mileage of each piece of content you develop.
What content do your prospects coast through before they visit your website?
Arguably already true today, users are very likely to have first read content regarding a company that is published somewhere other than on that company’s website. Here is an example list of the types of community and research based websites or other electronic media that a user might have used prior to visiting the company website:
These popular types of electronic media house comprehensive information for prospects to use while researching companies, products and services. Web surfers may view information found on a large collection of such sites long before narrowing their decision down to a handful of qualified companies and only then visiting the company websites.
Does your content have the power to go there?
Using social media channels to improve mileage
The new Web 2.0 information channels have provided a new means of pushing content out to end users. These developments promise a future of virtually endless opportunities for companies savvy enough to hitch a ride. While it’s true that not all social media channels are appropriate for some companies, there should typically be several that are a good fit. These should be carefully considered for utilization in the overall marketing mix.
For instance, many companies can benefit in one way or another from the development of a blog. A notable advantage with blogs is that they offer an opportunity to frequently publish a broad range of customized, flexible content outside of the typically rigid and static content type found on most company websites. Blogs are an efficient means for creating and publishing fresh, thought leadership content. They can also be instrumental to the success of a company’s search engine marketing program, allowing the company to reach out further to a broader demographic.
With a noteworthy blog in hand, there are now numerous ways to propel its content out to target audiences:
Each individual blog post can be proactively promoted on its own (Technorati). 
  • The blog as a whole can be promoted as an industry specific destination property (Yahoo Blogs Directory).
  • And, the most powerful form of blog promotion occurs when you do nothing at all – it is when end-users pass around links to content from your blog to other interested parties using bookmarking websites like Digg (i.e. viral marketing).
These various “content mobilizing” opportunities will allow your company to reach a larger and wider range of audience than your website alone, thus increasing the overall exposure of your company. But more so, these are the channels today’s rising companies are using – therefore, it is a simple matter of keeping up with the Jones’.
How content development helps your search engine rankings
Pushing content out to your target market is undoubtedly a key tactic moving forward, but this tactic also happens to help traditional “pull” tactics such as search engine optimization (SEO). One key factor to a successful SEO program (i.e. increasing a company’s online visibility) is to create links on other websites pointing back to the company website. This is currently the #1 tactic to increase search engine rankings. Google calls this key part of their algorithm PageRank. By producing content (e.g. blog posts, press releases, etc…) which includes one or more text links back to the company website and then distributing that content out (e.g. bookmarking a blog past on Digg, pushing a press release out onto the wire, etc…), it is not only branding the company but also increasing search engine rankings.
The fact is, a company can do an excellent job optimizing their website and its content, but they may still achieve poor search engine results due to a lack of inbound links pointing to the site from other websites. Therefore, a modern content development and marketing strategy should absolutely take inbound links into account in order to improve overall ranking.
Start with a Content Development & Marketing Plan
While there are certainly more reasons than the above, these examples do give reason for companies to reevaluate how well they are leveraging each piece of content they produce – whether it is online or offline content. Let’s say you are producing a press release about a new product. Are you . . .
Optimizing the release for search engines (using SEO-friendly phrases in the release)?
  • Including a link or two to your company in the body area of the release (not in the boilerplate footer which often get truncated upon syndication)?
  • Posting the release to BusinessWire, PR.com, PR Newswire, etc… (if you can afford it)
  • Creating a bookmark to the posted PR on social bookmarking sites (e.g. Digg)
  • Repurposing the content in the PR and creating a post on your blog?
  • Linking your blog post to your PR and your website product page band vice versa?
Each piece of content you develop can travel to this degree, if not farther, if you plan it and design it for high mileage. To achieve this companies need to establish and utilize a solid content development and marketing strategy, a strategy that not only accomplishes immediate reactive goals, such as producing a press release, but a strategy that also maps out how to leverage the same content to increase branding awareness and internet presence.  A little additional time and effort can extend the life of your content drastically, so here’s to hypermiling!