Another Superlist?  Say it isn’t so!

Are you looking for a good editorial calendar template to use for your organization’s content marketing?

Finding it challenging to measure the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts?

It’s not an easy task.  Here, from Content Marketing Institute is  a method to measure the impact of your content marketing using a “pyramid method”.  The pyramid they suggest includes three separate sections with these key measurements:

• Primary content indicators:  Measurements your CXO wants to know about (e.g., sales, costs savings, retention rates).
• Secondary content indicators:  Measurements that helps you make a case for the primary indicators above (e.g., lead quality, lead quantity, shorter sales cycles).
• User indicators: Measurements that the content creators need to know at to impact the secondary indicators (e.g., web traffic, “likes,” page views, search rankings).”

I recently discovered a terrific Blueprint for the Perfect Facebook Page Infographic from Salesforce that provides great tips for creating the perfect Facebook post.   In sum, the recommendations are:

1. Keep your post copy short and your tone personal.
2. Target your audience by location or language.
3. Use a call-to-action hyperlink to a page on your website.
4. Achieve more impact by including an attractive, relevant photo with your post.
5. Reach more fans with a sponsored story within 24 hours of your posting.
6. Don’t be a passive poster. Engage by asking questions and adding comments.
7. Post with mobile users in mind: short simple copy , images and video.
8. Evaluate what’s working and what’s not by reviewing the “Engaged Fans” metric on your Insights Page.If you want to see examples of how companies are using Facebook

Go grab this terrific infographic right now and keep it handy.

And if you’re looking for real world case studies and examples of how the smartest organizations are using Facebook Pages, our new updated and expanded SUPERLIST OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND CONTENT MARKETING CASE STUDIES AND EXAMPLES with 65+ links is available for purchase for the reasonable price of $5.95.

You can buy it and download it right now!

Much has changed in the world of social media since we first published our Superlist of Social Media Case Studies in 2008.  A plethora of new social media services have come and (some) gone.  More and more organizations are using social media tools in unique and creative ways.  It’s a rare organization that isn’t using some form of social media these days.

But finding and learning examples and case studies of good social media remains important to anyone wanting to improve their organization’s social media program.

Therefore, we decided to update our Superlist of Social Media Case Studies and have expanded it to include more categories for specific social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.  The new version also includes entries for Content Marketing case study collections since Content Marketing has become an important element and complement to many organization’s social media programs.

The new updated and expanded SUPERLIST OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND CONTENT MARKETING CASE STUDIES AND EXAMPLES with 65+ links is available for purchase for the reasonable price of $5.95.

You can buy it and download it right now!

In our popular Facebook for Business Superguide we included a section on Facebook Groups and Pages.

But, with Facebook’s new “like” feature and the growing popularity of Facebook Pages as a legitimate business tool, things have changed a bit.

So we’ve gathered some additional and updated resources that will help you make your organization’s Facebook page more effective — whether you’re just building one or whether you’ve already got one that you’d like to improve.  We have several sections including – Setting Up Your Page, Enhancing Your Page, Case Studies and Best Practices, Engaging and Building Your Fan Base, B2B Facebook Pages and Facebook Metrics.

Let us know if there’s anything we’ve missed.  Also please share this with your colleagues!

Setting Up Your Page

• How to Customize Your Facebook Page Using Static FBML
  From Social Media Examiner: Static FBML is a Facebook application that allows Facebook page administrators to create custom boxes and tabs on their Facebook pages. In this helpful article, Nick Shim provides a nice how-to guide on adding the application to your Facebook page and on using it most effectively.
• HOW TO: Build a Facebook Landing Page for Your Business
  From Mashable: Matt Silverman offers up a step by step guide to building a landing tab using the Static FBML application for your Facebook page.
• The Super Simple Guide to Setting Up Your First Company Facebook Page Without Blowing a Gasket – Part One
  From Search Engine Guide Blog: Effective Facebook pages can be challenging to set up. In the first of a three part series, Jennifer Laycock gets you started on setting up your first company Facebook page.
• The Super Simple Guide to Setting Up Your First Company Facebook Page Without Blowing a Gasket – Part Two
  From Search Engine Guide: In part 2, Jennifer provides a nice step-by-step for setting up discussions, events and links.
• The Super Simple Guide to Setting Up Your First Company Facebook Page Without Blowing a Gasket – Part Three
  Search Engine Guide: In part 3, Jennifer Laycock provides step by step instructions for using the Video and Photo applications for Facebook pages.
• Facebook | Create a Page
  Official Facebook page for creating a fan page.
• How to Create a FaceBook Landing Page for Your Blog
  From ProBlogger: Nice detail from Darren Rowse on how he used Facebook’s Static FBML application to create a Facebook Landing Page.
• Static FBML and FBML Tutorials
  From HyperArts: For anyone wanting to dive deeper in Static FBML and FBML, this blog is the place to visit – tons of great tutorials and advice on FBML issues. This is the link to their FBML tag.

Enhancing Your Facebook Page

• 9 Ways to Enhance Your Facebook Fan Page
  From Social Media Explorer: Ching Ya offers up great advice on how to make your Facebook Page more effective from “creating a welcome tab/page for new visitors” to “including business contact details” to “including a testimonial page” to “including a newsletter opt-in” and more.
• How to Build Engaging One-of-Kind Facebook Fan Pages
  From TechCrunch: Advice on making your Facebook Fan Page more compelling including planning your overall page strategy including making tabs relevant, taking full advantage of the profile picture 200X600 option to create impact, adding a facebook comments box to your landing page and more.
• 5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Fan Page
  From Mashable: Matt Silverman reviews 5 useful applications for your Facebook Fan page including Static FBML for you Page sidebar, Promotions, Social RSS, Poll, and YouTube for Pages.
• 8 Essential Apps for Your Brand’s Facebook Page
  From Mashable: Alison Driscoll review eight essential apps for your brand’s Facebook page – from Facebook Notes to Blog RSS Feed Reader to Twitter App and more.
• How to Create a Facebook Page That Stands Out
  From John Haydon: 12 terrific tips for creating a Facebook fan page that will stand out from the crowd and John’s take on why you should care.
• 13 Facebook Page Features That Will Make Your Day
  From John Haydon: More great stuff from John. This video includes how to use specific Facebook Page features such as “how to quickly find your page,” “how to Edit Your Thumbnail,”"how to remove unused tabs” and more.

Engaging and Building Your Fan Base

• How to Increase the Quality of Your Facebook Fans
  From Social Media Examiner: Terry Lozoff provides insights on fan-getting marketing tactics to drive a more relevant consumer base and as a result increase the quality (and worth) of your fans over time.
• How Starbucks Engages Millions of Facebook Fans
  From Social Media Examiner: Great video interview w/Alex Wheeler, Director of Digital Strategy at Starbucks. Alex shares how Starbucks built a Facebook community of over 7 million fans by asking their community to help them build their official Facebook page. Also useful discussion of how Starbucks uses video marketing on different social media channels.
• 5 Easy Ways to Drive Social Media Fans to Action
  From Social Media Examiner: Good advice from Peter Wylie on ways to ensure your Facebook page and other social media vehicles lead your social media fans to take direct actions (e.g. purchase, sign up, etc.) – from “promoting offline events” to “hosting a tweetup” to “offering coupons” and more.
• How To Get Thousands Of Facebook Fans With A Single Video
  From Allfacebook.com: Nick O’Neill offers advice on how to add a call to action on Facebook videos to get people to become fans (or to “like” you in the current Facebook framework).
• Get People to “Like” Your Facebook Page
  From Social Media Examiner: Ching Ya provides 10 ideas for getting more likes on your Facebook page. Among Ching’s recommendations is ” be likeable first” by offering quality content and consistent engagement. Also good common sense: Remind your fans to like and share your posts.
• 21 Creative Ways To Increase Your Facebook Fanbase
  From Social Media Examiner: Mari Smith provides a wide range of innovative ideas for increasing the number of fans/likes for your Facebook page from “making a compelling welcome video” to “getting fans to tag photos” to “in-store displays” and more.
• To Like or Not to Like Facebook Pages: Fandom is Old News
  From AriWriter: Ari Herzog provides a nice overview of the impact of Facebook changing to a “like” button from “become a fan” button.
• 5 Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page
  From Social Media Examiner: Naomi Trower provides 5 terrific ways to grow your Facebook fans from “inviting people from your facebook friend lists” to “finding people with Facebook search” and more.
• 13 Ways to Move Your Facebook Fans to Action
  From Social Media Examiner: Mari Smith offers up great ideas for increasing engagement with your Facebook fans through comments, wall posts, @tags and more.
• How to Better Engage Facebook Fan Page ‘Fans’ | Social Media Examiner
  From Social Media Examiner: How to use to get your Facebook fans more engaged by sharing enticing content (how often and when to post, what to post, etc.) and inciting comments.
• How to Create a Facebook Fan Page Editorial Guide
  From Social Media Examiner: One reason many Facebook pages don’t generate engagement is lack of purpose and poor planning. Here Amy Porterfield provides a good reference guide to creating an editorial guide that will help your define your purpose and develop an editorial process/plan.
• 4 Easy Steps To Promote Your Business On Facebook
  From Make Use Of: Basic steps in creating a facebook page and advice on how to promote the page.
• 4 Easy Ways to Engage Your Facebook Fans
  From Mashable: Great advice and examples from Leyl Master Black on techniques that increase Facebook fan engagement from “asking for people’s opinions” to “testing their knowledge” to “pairing promotion with content” to “thanking your fans.”
• 5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page
  From Mashable: Rundown on the 5 things that contribute to an effective Facebook Fan page from “networking with other platforms” to “creating a resources” to “creating contests that encourage participation.”
• 11 Ways to Promote Your Facebook Page Outside Facebook
  From John Haydon: Great ideas for reaching beyond Facebook to promote your page – including using email, blogging about your page, tweeting about it and more.
• How To Get More Traffic From Facebook From John Haydon: Even more strategies and tactics from John that you can use to create more traffic to your blog or website from your Facebook Page
• 4 Proven Steps to Facebook Page Success
  From Social Media Examiner: Amy Porterfield provides 4 ways to take your Facebook page to the next level and ensure success: 1. Creating a Compelling vision 2. Smart branding 3. Strategic Inbound Marketing and 4. Real Time Engagement

Case Studies and Best Practices

• 5 Fantastic Facebook Fan Page Ideas to Learn From
  From American Express Open Forum: Advice and case study examples to make your Facebook pages more engaging. Examples discussed include the Baby Gap tab of the The Gap page, Home Depot’s DIY Gifts application, Dell’s Design studio. Walgreen’s landing page, and more.
• 3 Ways to Drive Corporate Facebook Success
  From Hubspot: Three case studies that illustrate that the key to successful Facebook pages lies in involving fans in creative and personable ways.
• Facebook Fan Page Best Practices
  From The Buzz Bin: Geoff Livingston outlines some best practices for Facebook pages from “not splitting the conversation stream between your organization and fans” to “commenting on fan posts” to “Paying attention to statistics” to “making your fans feel special” and more.
• The 8 Success Criteria For Facebook Page Marketing
  From the Altimeter Group: Summary of research with 34 vendors, agencies, and experts that yielded 8 success criteria for Facebook page marketing and then tested the maturity of 30 top brands across six industries against these criteria. Criteria included setting community expectations, providing cohesive branding, being up to date, live authenticity, participating in dialog, enabling peer-to-peer interactions, fostering advocacy, and soliciting a call to action.
• 8 Different Facebook Landing Tabs Used By Businesses On Facebook
  From Social Media Examiner: Cindy King provides eight different ways businesses are using landing tabs in Facebook successfully – from “asking visitors to like your page” to “current events’ and more.
• 5 Ways I’m Using Facebook to Drive Traffic, Build Brand and Increase Reader Engagement
  From ProBlogger: Darren Rowse details 5 ways he is using Facebook to promote his blog from “asking questions” to “promoting specific Facebook status updates via Twitter and newsletters” to “involving readers in shaping their website/blog content” to “relevant promotions” to “utilizing a ‘welcome’ landing page tab.”

B2B Facebook Pages

• A Visual Guide to B2B Facebook Pages.
  From Hubspot: Nice PDF with tips on creating B2B Facebook pages along with 15 mini-case study examples of good Facebook B2B pages.
• 4 Tips for B2B Marketing on Facebook
  From Mashable: Leyl Master Black present 4 excellent tips for B2B marketers to use their Facebook presence – from “beoming an industry resource” to ” engaging your customers and making them part of your marketing efforts” to “expanding beyond your wall by adding applications” to “lightening up.”

Facebook Metrics

• How to Add Google Analytics to Your Facebook Fan Page
  From Social Media Examiner: An important part of making your Facebook page effective is understanding how it is currently performing – from visitor stats to traffic sources to keywords searches and more. In this article Mariam John provides instructions on how to set up Google Analytics tracker on your Facebook fan page.
• 3 Ways to Use Facebook Insights to Your Advantage
  From Social Media Examiner: Post includes info on sending messages to subsets of fans, Facebook advertising and more.

Other Interactive Insights Group Resources You May Find Helpful

If your organization is participating in social media through blogs, Twitter and other social networks –and even if you’re not — it’s only a matter of time before someone rants, makes a negative comment or expresses criticism about some aspect of what you’ve said or done or stand for.

Sometimes the comments demand a response.  Other times, it’s better to ignore them.  Determining when and how to respond to these negative comments is something that every organization wrestles with on a regular basis.

We’ve pulled together this collection of articles that address various aspects of how to react to negative comments and reactions on the social web.   Let us know if there are any we’ve missed.

• HOW TO: Deal With Negative Feedback in Social Media
  From Mashable: Quick guide with advice on how to handle feedback on social media – from identifying the type of feedback (constructive, trolling, etc.) to deciding how to react.
• How Do You Handle Feedback?
  From Econsultancy: Patricio Robles reviews a list of considerations in determining how to handle feedback you get online – from “who the source is” to “the tone in which the feedback is provided” and more.
• How to Deal with the Crazy, Nutso Bloggers
  From SmartBlog On Social Media: Short good post from Andy Sernovitz on what to do when you enter not reasonable complaints online but unfounded defamation from professional hater and crazies.
• Moldy Tweets: Takea Deep breath Before Responding to Negativity
  From E-Consultancy: A cautionary tale about thinking (and taking a deep breath) before you respond to negative comments online.
• Online Reputation Management: How to Handle Negative Publicity
  From Sitepoint: Alyssa Gregory offers up advice on how to gauge the risk of negative publicity you might get online and determine how best to handle it.
• 8 Tips for Responding to Negative Comments Online
  From Social Trending: Very good rundown of advice for responding to negative attacks online from “respecting their right to have their own opinion” to “attacking the issue not the person” to “not getting lost in trivialities” and more.
• How Companies Should Respond To Negative Reviews
  From Outspoken Media: A guide to determining when to respond to bad reviews on sites like Yelp (do respond when you genuinely need to make amends or if someone is mistaking the facts for example) – as well as tips on how to communicate for those times when you do respond.
• Why You Should Embrace Negative Press
  From Shoemoney: Here Jeremy Shoemaker argues and provides reasons for why you should embrace and not fear negative reactions online.
• Help for the Yelped
  From Money Magazine: The Do’s and Don’ts of responding to negative consumer comments on Yelp.
• 6 Ways to Cope with Negative Comments
  From iLibrarian: Suggestions for dealing with the negative reactions you might find online from “moderating with discretion” to “keeping you cool” to “being yourself” and more.
• How to Deal with Negative Comments On Your Blog
  From Problogger: Guest blogger Gala Darling from iCiNG adeptly tackles the question of how to handle negative emails on your blog – from not feeding the trolls to responding with compassion to reader’s legitimate concerns.
• Should You Respond to Comments via Email or in Comments?
  From Problogger: Advice on how to best respond to comments on your blog.
• Ignore it and it’ll Go Away? – Responding to Criticism Part 2
  From Problogger: Discussion of the merits of ignoring the criticism of others online.
• What to Do when Your Blog is Attacked
  From Problogger: Advice on how to handle attacks from others in social media. Excellent advice from “thickening your skin” to “establishing boundaries” to “stepping away from the computer for a moment” to “not getting personal” and more.
• Responding to Online Criticism
  From Social Signal: Here provides a model case study example of how to respond to negative criticism from TripIt – with an analysis of what they did right.
• Responding to criticism
  SmartBlog On Social Media: Advice from Andy Sernovitz about responding to negative work of mouth.
• Why Is Your Business Afraid of Negative Blog Posts?
  Search Engine Guide Blog: How you can use commenting to respond to negative comments about you in a blog post.
• How To Deal With Negative Comments About You On Twitter
  From John Haydon: Solid advice on how to deal with negative comments others make about you or your organization on Twitter.
• How To Deal With Negative Comments
  From Successful Blog: Great tips from Liz Strauss on how to handle negative comments.
• Mean Spirited Comments and Blogging
  From Lorelle on WordPress: Tips on how to respond to a commenter who is not just negative but mean-spirited.
• Handling Negative Comments On Your Blog Post
  From Chris Brogan’s Blog: Guest poster Jason Alba on five things to consider when you get a negative comment on your blog.
• When to Respond to Negative Buzz
  From eMarketer: Interview with Denise Zimmerman President of NetPlus Marketing on considerations and options for retailers in responding to negative buzz and reviews on social media sites.
• Defeating the Dark Side of Social Networking
  From Business Week: Outlines 6 sets of actions brands should take to respond to conversations on the web.
• Greenpeace vs. Nestle: How to Make Sure Your Facebook Page Doesn’t Become a PR trojan horse
  From The BrandBuilder Blog: Oliver Blanchard does a great job gleaning lessons from the recent Nestle/Greenpeace social media confrontation.
• How To Handle Negative Blog Comments
  From Ignite Social Media: Olivia Hayes provides good advice for handling negative blog comments- from “don’t delete” to “be honest” to “be humble” and more.

Other Interactive Insights Group Resources You May Find Helpful

In case you missed it, something remarkable has happened over the past several years.  Smart marketers using Social Media have been connecting directly with customers in extraordinary ways.

But, while all the attention has focused on Social Media itself and its darling Superstar offspring like  Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, there’s an unassuming but just as important Superstar that hasn’t gotten its due attention.

Of course, Social Media is a big part of the story.  But if you look at things with a slightly different lens, you’ll see an even more fundamental change has been taking place. You’ll see Social Media in a supporting role and discover that the real “leading lady” is the Message, not the Medium.

Smart Marketers Get the Message!

The smartest and successful marketers using social media haven’t been finding success by annoying or interrupting people or by talking incessantly about themselves, their brands or even their products.  Rather they’re reinventing the way they think of their role as marketers and in doing so are reshaping the very essence of marketing.   They’re realizing — as Digital Media thought leader Brian Solis describes so brilliantly in his recent article — that The Future of Marketing Begins with Publishing.

Indeed these smart marketers are harnessing the social web to grow their businesses but they’re doing so in a radically different way – they’re marketing, not with traditional sales-like pitches or slick brand slogans.  Rather they’re sharing different types of “messages” entirely.  They’re marketing with content – content that is valuable, informative and engaging — in its own right.   They’re doing what has become know as Content Marketing – and they’re starting to turn conventional media models upside down.

The “Gift” of Content Marketing

Meaningful content is the linchpin of this new type of marketing on the social web.  As digital media expert Chris Brogan in his article How Content Marketing Will Shake the Tree describes content marketing as “the ability to produce useful and entertaining information that is worthwhile on its own, but that might also be useful towards a sale or subsequent action.”  Chris makes an important point here – that the information has value and meaning to its intended audience (your potential customers) on its own – independent of its usefulness to you as a marketer in selling your product.  But ironically, it does a better job at selling your products in the end!

Think about it.  Your company knows not only the products and services that you sell but also knows a lot about the topics your customers are interested in that relate to your business.  Take Clorox as an example.  In researching and developing their cleaning products, one wouldn’t be surprised if they learned a lot about people’s concerns related to germs and cleaning.  By creating content to help parents learn about how to keep their children away from germs as they do here in 5 Fun Ideas for Keeping Kids Clean they take what they know about a topic of importance to their customers and turn it into useful appealing content.  Not all that much different from the type of article a reader might find in magazines like Family Circle or Health.  Which would you rather read?   An article with fun ideas for getting your kids clean or one entitled “How Clorox Cleans Bathrooms Better Than Other Brands”?

This new marketing trend is what Bob Gilbreath in his recently released book The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing with Meaning calls “Marketing with Meaning” where the focus is on improving customers’ lives  through the marketing itself.  It’s also what Seth Godin is talking about in his bestselling book Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? when he encourages sharing talents and knowledge freely- by giving gifts. 

Godin suggests giving these gifts will make you indispensable. And not surprisingly, content marketing is the very type of marketing that customers actually seek out – and even more importantly in today’s social media environment- share and discuss with others.

Whole Foods: Supermarket or Nature Foods Media Company?

I’ve long been a passionate fan of Whole Foods Supermarket.  In Whole Foods’ early days, what I remember most vividly were the attractive, educational brochures they made available for free to customers (this was before the Internet).  On my first visit, I went in to simply buy soy milk and each time I went back I bought more & more new products – inspired by what I learned about natural foods in their informational brochures.  This learning changed my life and today I not only buy many (many!) Whole Foods products – but the presence of a Whole Foods is a criteria for my living in a town.

When I told my husband back then that my dream job would be to work in marketing for Whole Foods, he looked at me like I was nuts and said “You work in the media business, they’re a grocery store.”  But to me, I always saw Whole Foods’ potential as much more- as a potential content provider and “media company”.

And indeed, Whole Foods today – due to its early and enthusiastic adoption of social media- is no longer just a grocery store but a dynamic provider of healthy lifestyle media content.  On its blog, via its Facebook fan page and on its 150 different Twitter accounts, Whole Foods provides a wide range of useful content- from tips on eating healthy while traveling to advice on the health benefits of Adzuki beans to lots of delicious recipes posted on Twitter to how-to videos including How to Carve A Turkey – they are a fantastic resource for healthy eating!

Of course, this content is relevant to the products Whole Foods sells.  But the content doesn’t just sell products, it also has an independent value to me as natural foods enthusiast.  In Seth Godin’s terms, it is the “gift” that Whole Foods offers me.  And by providing me with this valuable information, this “gift”,  Whole Foods makes it much more likely that I will buy their products — and tell my friends to buy from them too.

Every Company is A Media Company

This is a revolutionary change for marketing.  By embracing content marketing and leveraging social media, organizations like Clorox and Whole Foods in essence have become the media – leveraging the power of social networks and applications — from Facebook to Blogs to Twitter and a multitude of other emerging options — to connect directly with audiences to share the type of useful and compelling content once the domain of media companies.

They have created vertical content niches (think niche magazines and cable networks) by creating their own consumer-facing content.  This content is useful, meaningful and offers real value to potential customers – value that is relevant but often independent of the products and services they are selling.  It is this remarkable content that actually draws in potential customers and sets these companies up as thought leaders and resources in consumers’ minds.

In doing this, smart marketers move their companies from simply appearing adjacent to content as advertisers (increasingly likely to be ignored by readers in favor of the real content that drove them to the site in the first place) to actually being the content.  Being the content or the media company provides marketers with a unique opportunity to engage and inspire their customers – in ways not possible with a more conventional marketing and advertising. It is what Tom Foremski encourages companies to do on his insightful website Every Company is a Media Company (EC=MC).

8 Ways to Think (And Act) More Like A Media Company

So, where do you start if you want to help transform your company into a media company?  It begins with thinking and acting like a media company.  Here are some suggestions  for how you can think (and act) more like a media company:

1. Think Audience

Media companies spend time thinking about their audience and what their audience wants. Ask yourself who your potential audience is?  What problems do they have that you can help solve? What are they curious about?  What are their aspirations? What scares them?  What motivates them? What do they want to learn more about?

Chances are you know this from your consumer insights research. But don’t just assess this research from a consumer lens or use the research solely for conventional marketing uses such as product development, positioning and messaging.  Use it also to brainstorm the type of content you can offer to enhance your audience’s lives — even if they never buy from you or become your consumer (but they will if you do this right!).  When thinking about creating content forget about selling- focus on informing, inspiring, entertaining, and helping your audience.

2. Cherish Your Content

Recognize your content as a valuable asset. Media companies value, nourish and protect their content. As a marketer, you make serious investments in marketing – tag lines, marketing campaigns, branding and visual identity, and other marketing assets, etc.  If you’re going to be a successful media company, you need to invest in content and believe that this content has real value.  Acknowledge the value of your content.  Quantify it.  Start thinking of you content, as Social Media strategist Jay Baer suggests, as an information annuity.

Start by getting a handle on your current content assets by conducting of an audit of the content you already have.  Do you have content you can repackage, update, spruce up?  Do you need to invest $ and money in building new high caliber content.  Remarkable content isn’t free or cheap to create — even though today it sometimes seems that way.  Recognize that building compelling content audiences will respond to requires an investment of energy, time, creative talent and money.  Don’t take content for granted.

3. Put It In Your Marketing Plan

Make your content strategy an official part of your marketing plan.  You wouldn’t dream of having a marketing plan without a messaging strategy, pricing strategy or distribution strategy, would you?  To become a media company, you need to expand this to include a content strategy that you can apply across multiple platforms (or channels). Put it in writing and make sure everyone on your marketing team knows it is a key element of your plan.

4. Commit to Your Content

Once you have an overall content strategy, you need to nurture and maintain it.  One way to do this is to develop an editorial calendar. You can’t just put a few terrific articles out there and stop if you want to be a successful media company.  The best media companies plan out their content on a calendar schedule and make reporting or writing assignments based on this schedule.  This is what helps them turn their content strategies into reality.

You must sustain the creation of remarkable content if you want to sustain traffic and an editorial calendar is your tool to do this.  Add your editorial calendar to your list of key marketing tactics.  Take it as seriously as any media company would.  Maintain it, manage it, and treat it with the same respect you treat any of your other marketing calendars.

Don’t just put content out there and forget about it – monitor how your audience is responding to your content, ask them for feedback and ideas, and adjust your content strategies and editorial plans accordingly.

5. Rethink  Your Marketing Team

To be a media company, you’ll need content creators on your team.  You may need to rethink the who’s and how’s of your marketing team.  You need people who spend their time (or at least a part of their time) thinking about marketing from a content marketing perspective.  You need people who have the talents and skills to create truly remarkable content. Does anyone on your current team show promise of being a content creator? Do you need a Chief Content Officer – someone who can own your organization’s content marketing strategy?

Do you need to hire new people? Or perhaps bring on some freelance writers (turmoil in the publishing industry has created a tsunami of true independent talent in this area – perhaps you can bring on an embedded journalist)?  Maybe you need a new type of agency beyond your current agency roster – one that can help you plan and manage your content strategy? Junta42 an industry expert in content marketing can also help you find a content marketing vendor through their free matching program.

6. Make It Easy for Your Content to be Discovered and Shared
   

Media companies distribute their content via multiple platforms- trying to reach as many potential “eyeballs” as possible.  They make sure their content is easy for people to find.  As a media company, you need a plan to be sure your content “shows up” where your audience is.  Today this means putting your content where audiences are increasingly likely to be – on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in addition to hosting your content on your own hub site or blog.  You should have an editorial calendar (see above) for publishing your content to these different social outposts.

You need to optimize your content for social media if you want it to be discovered and shared by audiences.  Optimizing your content for traditional search engines like Google is no longer enough- as people become more likely to discover content via their social networks than they are to find it via traditional searches.  You need to be sure your content uses not only the right keywords but also the right headlines, descriptions, tags and other socially relevant metadata. This is where you need to integrate content marketing into your overall marketing strategy very strategically.

7. Expand Your Calls to Action

You probably work hard on making sure your marketing landing pages includes strong Calls to Action.  You should still focus on Calls to Action, but you may be asking people to take some additional actions. Media companies want to grow and engage their audiences, so they ask people to share their content with others,  to comment on their content, and also sometimes to bookmark their content.

Remember to explicitly ask for these things in addition to integrating share buttons on your blog or website.  It’s remarkable how simply asking someone to Tweet about your article or Share the article on Facebook (given the content is appealing) will boost the number of  people who spread the word.  I’m not suggesting you remove more conventional Calls to Action. But if you’re serious about thinking like a media company, you’ll focus too on getting people to interact with and share you content.  Here’s a great example on one of my favorite blogs MakeUseOf.com of asking directly for people to share your content.

8. Broaden Your View of Key Metrics

For traditional marketers, conversion, cost-per-click, and purchase performance metrics are paramount.  Through the lens of the content marketer, conversion of course is critical ultimately but other metrics count too.  Focus on engagement metrics too!

What counts for engagement? Measurements like return visits, time spent on site, shares, likes, comments, and bookmarks to name a few.  Understand how people demonstrate engagement with your content and make sure you measure and track these measures too.  Don’t exclusively focus on these metrics for your hub (blog or website) but also measure engagement for your social media outposts (Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts and YouTube Channels).

So, what do you think?   Are you ready to turn your company into a media company?  Have any other ideas on how to use content for marketing?  Leave your thoughts, ideas, insights here in the comments section.

Photo Credits: Photoshopping by Leezie5,  Magazine Superhigway by Laudu,  Writing in the Sand by Armin Hanisch, Gift by Robson Talaveiras

Feel like it’s time for your company to put together some social media guidelines but not sure where to start?

Want to see what other companies are doing in this area?  Need some tips on what should be covered?

Establishing clear principles and guidelines for how your employees will conduct themselves in the world of social media is critical.  There’s too much at stake – both on the upside and the downside – to ignore this.

We’ve assembled a comprehensive list of resources below to help you get started in developing a social media policy.  We’ve organized them into a couple of sections – Advice and Resources, Nonprofits and Associations, and Examples of Social Media Policies.

Let us know if there’s something valuable we’ve left out and we’ll add it to our list.

Please Take Our Poll

We’re also curious how many of you work for organizations that have social media policies in place so please take our poll. And please share this poll with others as we’d love to get as diverse and broad a response as possible to better see what the trend is.

Helpful Advice & Resources:

• 10 Things You Should Cover in Your Social Networking Policy
  From TechRepublic.com: Deb Shinder looks at 10 key considerations that such guidelines should address including “defining a clear company philosophy upfront” to “defining what is meant by social media or social networking” to “identifying oneself as an employee of the company” and more.
• Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit
  From the Social Media Business Council (formerly the Blog Council) : Draft series of checklists to help companies, their employees, and their agencies learn the appropriate and transparent ways to interact with blogs, bloggers, and the people who interact with them.
• Corporate Social Media Policy: Top 10 Guidelines
  From PR2 Squared: Free template for a social media policy based on a policy the agency helped one of their clients develop. Useful starting point for a social media policy of your own.
• 10 Steps to Creating a Social Media Policy for your Company
  From ClicktoClient: 10 solid things to consider when creating your company’s social media policy.
• Do you need a Corporate Social Media Policy?
  From Janet Fouts: Here Janet provides 3 solid reasons that your organization should implement a social media policy – from “setting branding standards for communications” to “educating your team” to “setting expectations for behavior.”
• Should Your Company Have a Social Media Policy?
  From Mashable: Sharlyn Lauby provides advice on why your company should have a social media policy, who it should apply to, when to implement your policy and more.
• When Does a Social Media Policy Go Too Far? Ask the Associated Press
  From Mashable: Benn Parr’s discusses a controversial element of AP’s social media policy that requires employees to control not only what they say, but also what their friends say on their Facebook page.
• 10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy
  From Mashable: Whether you’re writing your social media policy from the get-go, or letting it develop organically in reaction to situations as they arise, Sharlyn Lauby offers up 10 things you should definitely consider.
• Social Media Usage Guidelines: Don’t moon people with cameras (or at least hide your face when you do)
  From Beth’s Blog: In this post, Beth Kanter provides helpful insights on social media usage guidelines. Key according to Beth is to create guidelines that are simple, flexible, common sense and encouraging – and are also accompanied by education where you discuss potential situations and discuss what to do.
• B.L. Ochman’s blog: Everything You Need to Know About Corporate Social Media Policies
  B.L. Ochman’s blog: A different take on social media policies that sums it up in two words: RESPECTING CUSTOMERS.
• Drafting Trouble-Free Social Media Policies
  From Law.com’s Legal Technology: Review of legal risks of unfettered communications on social networks and advice on developing social media policies in light of these risks.
• Social Media Policies For Your Company: Internal Policies `
  From Dave Fleet: Dave outline three internal policies that organizations should consider when getting started in social media: a blogging policy, an outbound commenting policy, & employee guidelines.
• Social Media Policies For Your Company: External Policies
  From Dave Fleet: Suggests social media policies that organizations might consider posting publicly, for everyone to see. There are two: 1. Comment moderation policy 2. Interaction policy
• Twitter Tips: How to Write a Twitter Policy for Your Employees
  From CIO.com: Advice on giving your employees some rules of the road regarding Twitter from “updating your surely outdated code of business conduct” to “identifying who has a Twitter account within your company” to “encouraging disclaimers.”
• Corporate Social Media Policies and Guidelines
  From Christy Web: Ideas about what companies should consider when developing social media guidelines and policies. Also includes links to other resources on social media policies.
• 30 Tips to Manage Employees Online
  From AriWriter: Ari Herzog offers up a nice list of 30 suggested guidelines to provide to your employees for how they should handle themselves online.
• Social Media for Business: The Dos & Don’ts of Sharing
  From Mashable: It doesn’t matter if you’re on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr; your online personality is not only part of your overall brand, it becomes an interactive experience for you and your business. So, who is the face or voice of your brand and what do they share? It’s a very important decision in and of itself. Just as you create branding guidelines and key messaging guides, so too should you dedicate time to creating your social media personality.
• Elements of Web 2.0 Communication Guidelines
  From Altitude Branding: Amber Naslund does a great job capturing 7 key elements of consideration when developing web 2.0 guidelines.
• PolicyTool for Social Media
  PolicyTool is a policy generator that has you answer a brief questionnaire and provides you with a complete Social Media Policy customized to your company.

Nonprofits and Associations

• Does Your Organization Need A Social Media Policy?
  From Beth’s Blog: Fantastic overview and guide to social media policies – targeted at non-profits but good stuff for everyone.
• Social media policies
  From Association Marketing Springboard: Lindy Dreyer provides a very comprehensive four-part series on social media policies for associations.
• Where’s Your Org’s Social Media Policy?
  From Getting Attention Blog: Nancy E. Schwartz addresses the benefits of having a social media policy along with core issues to cover – targeted at non-profits.
• Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Nonprofit
  From Wild Apricot Blog:  Advice  for nonprofits on working out a social media policy for your staff and volunteers who blog and chat and comment online, where the personal and professional lines often blur.

Examples of Social Media Policies:

• List of 40 Social Media Staff Guidelines
  From Laurel Papworth: List and links to range of organization’s social media staff guidelines including GM Blogging Policies, Cisco’s Internet Posting Policies and more.
• 3 Great Social Media Policies to Steal From
  From Mashable: Jennifer Van Grove highlights the social media policies of Kodak, Intel and IBM.
• 16 social media guidelines used by real companies
  From E-Consultancy: Nice rundown of specific social media guidelines from 16 real companies from IBM (Don’t Pick Fights) to Intel (Perception is reality) to Zappos (Be Real and Use Your Best Judgment).
• Online Database of Social Media Policies
  Database of 80+ organization’s social media policies allows you to search and filter by industry.  Provided by Chris Boudreaux, author of the upcoming book “Social Media Governance.”
• Blogging Policies
  From NewPR Wiki: Links to Blogging policies from wide range of organizations including the US Navy, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Harvard law School and many others.
• Social Media Policy Examples
  From 123socialmedia: Links to some 30+ different organization’s social media policies
• Wal-Mart Blows It With Twitter Terms of Service
  From CIO: Critique of Walmart’s Twitter Terms of Service
• A Twitter-Like Twitter Policy
  From Beth’s Blog: Beth Kanter highlights a social media policy in 140 characters.
• Selection of  specific social media policy examples:
  • Mayo Clinic Employees
  • Cisco’s Internet Postings Policy
  • HP Blogging Code of Conduct
  • Intel Social Media Guidelines
  • IBM Social Computing Guidelines
  • US Navy Social Media Guidelines

Other Interactive Insights Group Resources You May Find Helpful

Still feeling confused by Twitter Hashtags- those words that start with a # symbol that you keep seeing on Twitter?

Wondering how to start or use a hashtag for your own purposes? Want to find out what a particular hashtag means?

Trying to figure out how to use hashtags for a particular purpose – to share information, to unite around an event perhaps?

Twitter hashtags are a great tool for finding, following and participating in topical discussions relevant to you.  Here I’ve put together a collection of articles with information and advice on using Twitter Hashtags.

There are three sections – How-To Use Hashtags, Tools to help you use them, and examples of ways to use Hashtags.

Hashtag Tutorials & How-To’s

• Ultimate Guide to Twitter Hashtags
  From Search Engine Journal: Here Ann Smarty provides a thorough guide to hashtags including solid tips and resources for making the most of them.
• An Introduction to Twitter Hashtags
  From Wild Apricot Blog: Nice step-by-step tutorial on hashtags- what they are and how to use them.
• Tweet Your Message to a Larger Audience with Hashtags
  From Twitips: Sherice Jacob (follow her at @sherice) from iElectrify explains what hashtags are and how to use them.
• How to start a Twitter hashtag
  From Contentious: Amy Gahran provides helpful advice on using hashtags including a discussion of the types of situations where she has used hashtags (breaking news, events) along with tips on choosing a hashtag and promoting it.
• HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags for Business
  From Mashable: Josh Caltone provides advice on how to utilize existing hashtags and how to start your own.
• Where To Find A List Of Twitter Hashtags
  From Twitter Tips Central: Where and how to find to find a list of Twitter Hashtags using Hashtags.org.
• HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Twitter #Hashtags
  From Mashable: Short guide from Benn Parr details how to identify, track, use, and organize hashtags in an efficient and useful way.
• Twitter Hashtags – What Are They, How To Create Your Own
  YouTube Video from Internet marketing and Facebook specialist Mari Smith that explains hashtags – for those who prefer video explanation to text.
• Twitter Tips: How And Why To Use Hashtags (#)
  From CIO: Nice overview to help you understand the hows and why of using hashtags.

Hashtag Tools and Resources

• Tools for Monitoring Conversations in Twitter
  From Bub.blicio.us: Discussion of how to use Hashtags.org and Twemes to find relevant topics and join productive conversations on Twitter. Especially important if you are a representative for a company and/or brand seeking solutions for effectively listening to the community in order to help them answer questions or provide them with useful information.
• #hashtags.org
  All Twitter updates that include a valid hashtag are indexed at Hashtags.org.  Here you can search and see trends for that hashtag as well as a list of recent tweets with that hashtag.  This means that you don’t have to be a Twitter user to follow the conversation — it’s visible to anyone.  Hint: you can also see all the tweets for a hashtag by adding the hashtag name at the end of the site’s URL: http://hashtags.org/tag/ for example: http://hashtags.org/tag/followfriday for the #followfriday hashtag.
• What the Hashtag?!
  A wiki-based user-editable encyclopedia for hashtags found on Twitter. They have a bot that actively monitors Twitter for trending hashtags and creates new pages as they grow in popularity. Then it’s up to the users to fill in the details. They offer a bot service that allows you to ask them what a hashtag stands for. Then they send you back a short description plus a link back to the page they’re hosting for the specific hashtag. There are also some Firefox and Greasemonkey tools for use.
• Tagalus
  Ever find yourself looking at Twitter and wondering what all this talk about #motrinmoms means? Searching Flickr and not understanding why someone would tag their photo #ip4?  A real-time dictionary for hashtags, Tagalus lets users define tags so that others can understand what they’re talking about. Other users can vote on definitions and decide which best describes the given tag. You don’t need to log in to browse the tags and definitions, but if you would like to contribute a tag, vote on a definition’s authority, comment, etc. you have to use an OpenID to log in. You can also use Tagulus on Twitter (@tagulus) to get and set definitions by sending one of two commands that @tagalus understands. You can also get a bookmarklet for your browser.  For a nice review of Tagulus see this post from ReadWriteWeb:  What Does that Hashtag Mean? New Service Tells You.
• TweetChat
  TweetChat is a tool that helps you monitor and chat about one topic. Each tweet you make automatically gets a hashtag added for the room you are in – no need to worry about hashtag typos..The room auto-updates with new posts using the hashtag you are following – no need to reload…Good tool for anyone wanting to create or contribute viaTwitter around a specific tagged topic.
• HashTweeps
  Find Twitter users by hash terms
• Twitag
  Twitag is a #tag finder for twitter that helps facilitate and organize the most recent content tagged by users.
• What the Trend
  
  What the Trend helps you find out what’s trending on Twitter and why

Different Ways to Use Hashtags

• The different uses of #hashtag
  From Fresco 2.0: Rundown of the multitude of ways that Twitter hashtags are being used from Events to products to services.
• Use Twitter HashTags To Increase Your WebSite Traffic
  From Internet Home Business Help: Some tips for getting the best use out of your Twitter hashtags to help boost traffic to your website or blog – including keeping your hashtags, memorable, short, and unique.
• Using Hashtags and Twitter to Build Website Traffic
  From SEO, Web Development, Internet Marketing, and Product Reviews: Advice on how to use Twitter hashtags to build traffic and backlinks to your site.
• Hashtag Happy Hours: How Moms Party Down on Twitter
  From Mashable: Jessica Smith fills up in on how some moms online are using Twitter hashtags to convene virtual parties.
• How To Selectively Integrate Your Personal And Corporate Twitter Accounts Using RSS And A Hashtag
  From Corporate Dollar: Nice How To instructions for organization that want to copy selective tweets from many personal Twitter accounts to a single corporate Twitter account.
• Use Hashtags To Grow Your Community
  From FeverBee: Creating a hashtag for your community and creating a community from a hashtag.
• Beyond #FollowFriday: 24 Daily Twitter Memes
  From Mashable:  Brian Wallace offers a rundown of 24 daily Twitter memes to help you meet new Twitterers and discuss common interests from the wildly popular #followfriday to #musicmonday to #thankfulthursday and more
• What Are the Most Effective Ways Nonprofits/Foundations Can Use Twitter #Hashtags?
  From Beth’s Blog: Beth Kanter reviews three good ways nonprofits can use hashtags – events and conferences, knowledge sharing, and for advocacy.
• Twitter Hashtags and Groups « American Pai
  From American Pai:  How to use Twitter Hashtags and channels to filter all the information on Twitter.
• How To Create Successful Chats on Twitter with Hashtags (Video)
  From John Haydon: In this video, John outline the basics of managing a hashtag chat on Twitter.
• Quick Ways to Plant Some Roses in a Hashtag Potty
  From Twitip: Joi Murugavell provides advice on how to use hashtags effectively.