Many Web sites include tools for adding fresh articles and blogs on a regular basis – are you taking advantage? Here’s how to get started:

1. Understand your audience.

The key to any content strategy is to fully understand the needs of your prospects and clients. What information can you provide to solve their problems and what’s the best way to present it?

2. Develop a blog/article strategy.

First, assign an editor. This could be a marketing director, a visionary executive, or an outsourced professional journalist. The editor’s job is to determine what types of articles and blog posts should be developed and posted on the site. Next, establish an editorial calendar (what topics are we going to post, who’s going to write it, when are we going to post it). Develop some consistency so that your writers can be comfortable and your audience can rely on you for new information.

3. Collect relevant email addresses.

Include an email signup form on your Web site. Make sure your sales and marketing professionals who engage with prospects collect emails, too. Get everyone in the company engaged in this process, and you’ll see your database grow quickly.

4. Build a newsletter.

Now that you have articles and blog posts on your Web site, you don’t have to create as much new content for a newsletter. Simply incorporate headlines and lead paragraphs with links to the articles on your site. Also, you might want to include some of the latest news headlines from your industry. Don’t forget the calendar of events, especially if you are attending trade shows, speaking engagements and conferences.

5. Find additional distribution channels.

If your company has a Facebook page and Twitter accounts, these are obvious places to promote your blogs and articles. Look at your channel partners and see what they are doing–there might be an opportunity to send them article links to run in their communities. Look for associations that your company participates in and offer them your RSS feeds. These opportunities extend your reach in front of relevant audiences.

• Web site has no consistency when you click from page to page.
• Photos take their sweet time to load.
• Headings are used as decorations instead of for structure.
• Site gives overall impression of jankiness.

Diagnosis

Frankensite (n.): A Web site made with a hodge-podge of graphics, fonts, and aesthetics. Risks include turned-off visitors and appearance of disorganization.

Causes

• The Web site has been around a while and no one has devoted much TLC to it lately.
• Half a dozen people with completely different aesthetic tastes have made changes.
• People who haven’t been trained properly have used the editor incorrectly.
• New types of content don’t quite fit the layout of your old site.

Prevention

Before you launch:

• Make sure anyone who will edit the site learns about writing for the Web and using your system.
• Think about basic layouts that might help your different types of content fit the best and create (or get help creating) a template.

After you launch:

• Review your content regularly to watch for the symptoms above.
• Get refresher trainings. If you only update the site twice a year, you may not remember how to do it.
• Don’t paste formatted content (like from Word or an email) into the editor.
• As you add new types of content, remember you can add templates (see above). A Web site is a living document, so you can add templates even after launch.
• Keep the overall goals of the site in mind as you add new things to it. Don’t add clutter for the sake of clutter.

Treatment of Common Symptoms

1. Know your audience.

Keep content relevant, and grab your readers’ attention with useful and innovative topics. It can be very effective to use a friendly, informal tone if it’s appropriate, but for highly technical articles, a more formal tone may be the best way to inform your readers.

2. Send it regularly.

Generally, sending between once a week and once every six weeks is ideal. Any more can be an annoyance; any less and your readers might forget you. When you decide on your frequency, think about what’s useful to your readers and if you can keep the quality high enough to send a newsletter however often.

3. Give them a mission.

Your readers should walk away with an action in mind. If you’re a non-profit, maybe that means donating. If you’re a store, that means offering them something special. Think about what your goals are with your newsletter and try to steer them that direction.

4. Make sure your subject line gives a sneak peak.

This is one that we here at TradeMark Media and the StyleSheet have just recently adopted. People are more likely to open your e-newsletter if they know they’re going to benefit. Also, chances are they already know what month it is and they couldn’t care less about what volume it is. For more on subject lines, see this article: http://www.enewsbuilder.net/enewsbuilder/e_article001334533.cfm?x=b11,0,w.

5. Don’t overload it.

Keep it brief. If you have a lot of subjects to cover, consider dividing your newsletter up and having your subscribers choose which topics they want to read about.

Looking for more tips? Here are some good resources:

• http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/resources/email_newsletters/nonprofit-email-newsletters/

• http://blog.subscribermail.com/2009/09/25/4-quick-ways-to-improve-your-b2b-email-newsletter/

• http://www.mailchimp.com/articles/improving_your_email_open_rate/

• http://www.michelfortin.com/how-to-improve-your-email-open-rates/

What new tech solution are you most excited to try out?

• Technology Director Mike Wisian: I discovered many new site optimization techniques after attending “Even Faster Web Sites” with speaker Steve Souders of Google.  I’ve already applied some of what I learned to the new TradeMark site and performance has noticeably improved. Thanks, Steve!
• User Experience Director Caroling Lee: Balsamiq Mockups for wireframes. I’ve already tried it out and really like the low-fi wireframes it produces. I think it helps illustrate to the client that these are non-functioning and also that they are a tool for brainstorming more than anything else.
• Designer Kyle Greenan: GameSalad is a game development environment built for non-programmers. The greatest part about GameSalad is its community-centered focus and idea that games should be shared among friends. The future for GameSalad, at least in my opinion is bright!

What was your favorite networking moment?

• Business Development Director Jean Conover: My favorite networking moment happened at a computer kiosk in the Convention Center. Janis and I were walking by and saw a man on one of the computers with our TradeMark Media Facebook page opened on the screen – he was becoming a “fan” of ours on Facebook at the exact moment we were walking by! He had seen our new Web site and really liked it. We chatted with him for a while. He was from Monterrey, Mexico, and now we’re connected with him through Facebook. It was exciting to see how a social media platform like Facebook made a random, in-person networking opportunity possible!
• Developer Janis Gonser: Ellis Lab threw one of the SXSW afterhours parties and I was lucky enough to call out the host and CTO Derek Jones for cutting in line for the food. A more detailed version of what happened will follow on our blog soon.

What was the best piece of business advice you got?

• Programmer Manoj Thomas: The best piece of advice I got was from the ‘Designers and Developers’ panel. They explained that great products are created by people that are prepared to do whatever’s necessary to get the job done right. If someone doesn’t care then they should get the boot.
• Business Development Director Jean Conover: There seemed to be a constant theme throughout all the panels this year about businesses being transparent. For so long, businesses have used traditional marketing channels and techniques to communicate, and I find it really refreshing to see that honest, open dialogs are now becoming standard practice when marketing your business and communicating with clients, prospects and the general public. Being transparent with our clients is something we pride ourselves in at TradeMark Media, and I’m glad to see this is being advocated by other professionals in our industry on a national level.
• President and Strategy Director Nick Weynand: The best piece of business advice I got this year was to rewrite our Master Services Agreement to make it more friendly. We’ve already implemented this by creating an English translation to every clause of legalese in our services agreement. I think this piece of advice will help start our relationships with clients off on the right foot (and hopefully keep the legal department from getting involved).

What surprised you the most about SXSW this year?

• Developer Janis Gonser: The amount of paper wasted for the program that was close to useless. Though, the online version has improved compared to last year.
• User Experience Director Caroling Lee: I was really surprised at the number of people that attended this year. The reports say that attendance was up 25% this year with 11,000+ attendees. No wonder the wireless and phone access was so bad!
• Account Manager Sarah Buser: I was surprised at the number of people I knew there. It was also cool to meet TradeMark contacts whose names I knew that I never got to meet before. I even randomly bumped into a Myspace friend I met two years ago at a concert two states away and haven’t seen since.
• Designer Kyle Greenan: Mindless Twitter zombies tethered to their devices. “Hey, watch out where you are going!”’ It’s as if technology is the reason for Attention Deficit Disorder. I felt bad for the panelists, but for the folks not at SXSW following on Twitter at home, it’s like they were there.

Who was your favorite speaker/what was your favorite panel and why?

• Technology Director Mike Wisian: By far my favorite speaker was Jared Spool of UIE. His panel, titled “Journey to the Center of Design”, talked about how the best design is created by teams that have a good vision, an effective feedback loop, and a great culture. I always enjoy hearing Jared speak because he is very engaging and uses audience participation to illustrate his points. He could use a little work on his Beyonce dance routine, though.
• President and Strategy Director Nick Weynand: My favorite speaker was Leah Buley with Adaptive Path. She ran a panel called “Being a UX Team of One” and it really spoke to me. She provided great examples of user experience tools that her team uses and provided some great advice for getting everyone, including the client, on board with the design phase. Design matters!
• Account Manager Sarah Buser: My favorite panel was an organizational one based on the book Getting Things Done by David Allen. I liked hearing how other people get things done as simply and efficiently as possible at work even though I hadn’t read the book yet. Caroling was already a convert and she lent me her copy, so keep an eye out for a book review soon on our blog soon.
• Programmer Manoj Thomas: Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com gave a good keynote speech. He talked about the history of Zappos and their focus on core values, team building and customer service  – a nice motivational pep talk.

TradeMark Media’s Photos from SXSW 2009