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One of the best things about pursuing online content as hard as I do, is the opportunity I get to meet like-minded people, both online and in real life. New Hampshire-based author, speaker and consultant, Tom Asacker, for instance.

I have yet to meet Tom in person, but we’ve had a handful of fruitful phone conversations and many emails. The fact is Tom is a lucid thinker with a no-nonsense delivery, and I enjoy that. Let’s look at a sample from his blog:

Clarity should be the guiding principle behind every marketing effort. Clearness of thought. Clearness of appearance. Clearness of purpose. Clarity should inform every campaign, drive every question, and rationalize every dollar spent and every piece of data captured and analyzed.

Open your eyes marketers! Your marketing plans are a smorgasbord of expensive and misguided tactics that collectively fail to add up to a clear and compelling idea–a reason to believe and to choose.

Of course, advice like this can be easy to grasp but difficult to execute. Companies are often complex places with lots of competing ideas about who and what they are. Can you boil your company down to one clear and compelling idea and then turn that idea into actionable marketing campaigns?

Don’t fret if you said “no.” Seeing the whole, weighing the parts and finding the one thread that runs through everything may sound like analytical work, but in my experience it is a poet’s job.

Now back to Tom (the philosopher in this story)…

Because we have an active fishing metaphor built in to the Bonehook brand, I’m pleased to discover the following hunter/gatherer story from Jack Connors of Hill Holiday, as told to Rance Crain of Ad Age.

“There are trappers and there are skinners. To be a trapper you’ve got to put on snow shoes, you’ve got to go out in the cold, you’ve got to set those traps, and then you’ve got to go back and see if there’s any animals in them. And it’s cold out there.”

Most people sign up to be skinners, Jack said, because you can stay warm and you don’t have to be tramping about. But he characterized himself as an old fashioned trapper. I love the hunt.

Naturally, we do not want to hook our client’s prospects any more than Connors wants to trap his prey, not in any literal sense. We shape the stories this way because hunting and fishing stories are primal, ancient forms and proven archetypes. They work, and that’s what brand building is about–creating a solid foundation for a company’s deep story, whether it’s our own company or a client’s.

On Tuesday, I spoke about the future of paid content at Geekend’s first-ever road show in Boston. The event was part of the annual Direct Marketing Association (DMA) conference, held this year at Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

You can also download the text of my talk, and audio is now available care of the Geekend team.

Lisa Barone, Chief Branding Officer of Outspoken Media, attended a marketing conference last week where Social, Local and Mobile were top of mind.

According to Barone’s report from a #SoLoMo panel she attended:

• One out of every five searches has a local intent.
• One out of every three mobile searches has a local intent.

Customers are going online to find information about the businesses that exist 15 Miles from their doorstep. “If you’re not there, you don’t exist,” argued panelist, Gregg Stewart.

Barone also noted that nearly half of social network searchers select a local business based off consumer ratings and reviews.

I think it is safe to say many small businesses are not yet optimizing social media (and the recommendation engines therein), local search listings and the mobile web to the degree that their customers would like.

Given that word-of-mouth is critical online and off, companies can ask customers to rate them on Yelp and on Google and to “Like” them on Facebook.

You don’t want to “buy” customer reviews, but some form of reward might be extended to customers who lend a helping hand. For instance, if I like a new business that just opened in my neighborhood and post something positive on their Facebook Wall, I’m signaling that I want to be treated as a “friend,” not just another nameless customer.

Content marketing is exploding today, but what is it exactly? And when is content the best approach to a marketing problem?

According to Andrew Boer, president of MovableMedia, there’s a notable difference between content marketing and custom content.

Writing on Adotas, Boer argues:

In my view, there is a simple and fundamental difference between content marketing and custom content: one is internal, one is external.

Custom content — pioneered by folks like Pohly & Pohly over 50 years ago with the airline magazine — was typically the creation of content meant to build an affinity with your existing audience. This content would reinforce the brand, communicate the value of the product and create new opportunities.

There is some overlap, but content marketing for the most part is a different beast. Content marketing is predominantly outward facing — it is about creating content that will attract new customers for brands. It can be branded content, but it can also be simply “brand-relevant” content that attracts an audience.

Interesting distinction, but I prefer to keep things much simpler. Content is what people volunteer to spend time with, versus ads which they avoid like the plague.

When the content is brand-sponsored it needs to keep people in the franchise and attract prospects. Why limit it to one or the other?

Now, let’s look at the “when to use content?” question.

Kevin Ryan, Gilt Groupe’s chairman and CEO, spoke with DailyFinance about his company’s growth opportunities, the world of private-sale sites, and the company’s content strategy.

We’re not a content company: We’re an e-commerce company. Our goal is provide great ways to buy great merchandise. We think that content helps that, in some areas more than others. It’s not important when buying a pair of socks, but it is when buying foie gras. Gilt Taste has some articles; JetSetter [the travel site] has reviews of the hotels.

Ryan makes a good point. Content is often best when there’s a passionate audience for it. I could make the case that really great socks are worth talking about, but foie gras or button-cap chanterelles or anything that might be considered a lifestyle product is a better candidate for content marketing.

Business-to-business offerings, and professional services companies (in B2B or B2C), also benefit from content marketing.

Anytime there is a knowledgeable audience with a keen interest in knowing more, content is a good answer.

In marketing circles it is accepted that well-made content builds the brand and grows the business, and that providing said content for free is a necessary step in establishing an audience, a portion of which can be converted into customers over the long haul.

But for writers, who don’t think of themselves as brands, personal or otherwise, the act of giving away the shop can be confounding. For instance, John Vorhaus, author of the novels The California Roll and The Albuquerque Turkey, plus the how-to series Killer Poker is not wild about free.

All the free content we provide hurts us two ways. First, it erodes the time we could be spending writing words we actually get paid for. Second, it puts us in competition with ourselves and undercuts the general notion that writers should be paid, and paid well, for our words. As long as we’re in competition with ourselves, individually and collectively, we’re kind of in a jam.

I don’t know the way out of this trap. I can’t stop marketing myself or I’ll have no market. But if I continue marketing myself in this manner, the product I bring to market will continue to be worth less and less.

Vorhaus, like many brand teams, is wondering about his return on investment. Creating content has a cost, even if the cost to distribute it to a large audience is negligible. The good news is the cost is relatively affordable when you develop a system that’s long on consistency. Slow and steady wins the race!

Essentially, you need to make room for content to develop and grow. How that happens in one situation versus another is like the difference between growing grapes in the volcanic soils of Oregon or cotton in the red clay hills of Georgia. For instance, I help clients do it themselves, especially where Facebook is concerned. Other clients don’t have the time, expertise or inclination to do it themselves. In those cases, Bonehook takes on the content production tasks and writes articles for web sites, email newsletters and the like.

A lot of it comes down to juggling. Running your business means you’ve already got three flaming batons in the air. Taking on the steady requirements of filling your digital properties with the kind of material that keeps them fresh and interesting is adding a fourth flaming baton to the mix. It’s not easy, but you can do it. You can write novels while simultaneously promoting them. And you can make products or sell services while simultaneously sharing stories that build the brand and grow the business. You may need a hand, but you can do it.

Vorhaus mentions in his column that he loves writing the free stuff as much as the paid. Therein, is another key insight into how this all works. When you love what you do it’s easy to tell stories that involve people in the brand and help them care about the company.

Content Marketing is on the rise. But there are still plenty of questions about what kind of brand-sponsored content is most compelling and effective.

To address some of these questions, Patricia Redsicker of Business 2 Community recently spoke to Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs and co-author of Content Rules about a variety of content marketing topics, including how to use personal stories in content marketing.

I’m a big believer in using stories to engage, but I also make the distinction between personal and personable content.

On a personal blog, you can bare your soul and “tell all” like I do on my blog, Annarchy. But with corporations and content marketing, it’s about delivering personable content. It’s about giving your products or services a pulse and talking about the stuff that makes your product real to people so that they can relate to it.

That’s a great explanation. Because content marketing is about breathing life into a company’s products or services, the executions need not be laden with benefit-driven copy (like you might find in a direct mailer). The persuasive arch in content marketing is much larger because “the conversation” can be extended for days, and in some cases, forever.

Digital — where so much content marketing takes place — is a campfire. And content is the fuel. Run out of fuel and the fire goes out. Of course, you won’t run out of fuel when you properly tap your customers, prospects and staff for their stories, then task the agency with working these various sources, along with the brand’s own contributions, into the fire.

Photo Credit: Flickr user, Mack Collier

When the context is right, I like to say things like, “Every company is a media company,” or “Media is a marketing service today.” Thankfully, I also get to live these maxims — a fact that conveniently turns them from new media platitudes into tangible case studies.

For instance, last spring, Karsh\Hagan in Denver hired me to write a series of lifestyle articles for their client American Crew. The first batch of articles are now beginning to appear on AmericanCrew.com, where men go for grooming advice.

Visitors to AmericanCrew.com can now pick up few more tips while online…about where to vacation, how to talk to a stylist and get the perfect haircut, and which films to watch with their girlfriend, just to name a few.

Given that lifestyle content is my specialty and a passion, I have to say, I’m thrilled to be working on this on-going project. “Paid, owned and earned media” is another call to action for brands today, and for those who help brands achieve their communications objectives. I came up on paid and migrated to owned, where I’ve been for a good five years.

I think it is worth noting that the owned media space is the ultimate venue for branding. This point tends to get lost in the shuffle for digital supremacy, which is a problem. When making an ad campaign for the paid media channel, the content of the campaign is meant to interrupt people. Content that lives on a brand’s site, or social media page, is another story — it doesn’t interrupt (via a clever headline or striking image), it attracts (thanks to its utility or entertainment value).

Northwestern student and aspiring journalist Drew Gannon has a feature piece for her tear sheet titled “How to Choose an Advertising Agency” running in Inc.

I certainly don’t want to pick on aspiring journalist, but I will challenge her conclusions (it’s a professional obligation).

Many small businesses just out of the entrepreneurial gate rely on their own abilities and the abilities of their staff for in-house advertising and marketing needs. But for most emergent companies, a partnership with an advertising agency is an unavoidable step in the growth process.

Excuse me? Lots of successful firms have neatly avoided ever hiring an ad agency.

Furthermore, hiring an ad agency isn’t a negative, it’s a chance for the company to sing.

Gannon has more advice for brand managers seeking an agency…

With an RFP in hand, it’s time to start the actual search. Remember that agencies come in all shapes, sizes, and colors: there are thousands of them, and they are constantly changing.

No. RFPs are lame. I, like many of my peers in this business, have a talent for putting things on paper, but there’s much more to initiating and maintaining a successful client-agency relationship. It begins with chemistry, and in the best cases is followed by mutual respect and a long-term friendship.

Believe me, I wish that it was as easy as searching the Web for the right agency resource, but it’s not. People who sling ideas for a living typically need to come highly recommended, because the creative arts are a mystery to many. Just like medicine, law and accounting.