Jon Henshaw, the SEO guru (among many other things) at the web-development firm, Sitening, says some very nice things about the online strategy displayed on the Hammock Inc. company website, Hammock.com. (Yes, I do have a job.) Thanks, Jon. I feel like Sally Field.

There are subtle things about the site that Jon notes — simple things that took me years of blogging to figure out and that took several people at Hammock (not just me, but thanks for the credit, Jon) nearly a year to think through. Again, it’s a simple strategy that any business or association, large or small, could implement. But for some reason, very few do — perhaps because the “content” commitment such a strategy requires appears daunting once you start scratching the surface. (Another promo: Helping companies and associations do such things is our business.)

Jon observes one of things I’m very proud of (in a geekish way), but something no one else has written about: Every employee at Hammock has a “blog” designed to look okay even if it’s never updated. I’ve often said that if they weren’t called “blogs,” more people would have one. So internally, we decided to have a page for each employee, but to not use the B-word (or, come to think of it, any letter followed by “-word”). Internally, we call them People pages. On the site, at first, we didn’t call them anything. They were just pages for each employee that contain work-related contact info. Officially, they reside in the “About” category. Each of these pages have an easy-to-remember URL, like mine, Hammock.com/RexHammock. But as Jon noticed — and we have now acknowledged — each of these pages is also a blog built on Moveable Type with all the bells and whistles you’d expect on a blog — even a stealth blog. Recently, we did add them to the “blogs” category and put the word “blogs” at the top of each page. The first (and for several, only) “post” on each page is a bio that has another easy-to-remember URL, like Hammock.com/RexHammock/bio. Some employees have never made a second post to their page, but by design, such a page doesn’t look like a blog that hasn’t been updated — just something that provides helpful contact information. Some employees use them like a phone message — “I’m out of the office until Sept. 2.” Others do use them like a blog. Those who study online behavior would recognize the pages’ versatility in serving dual roles for identity and expression. As each “people page” (it’s a stealth blog, remember) has an RSS feed, it’s easy for them to be integrated with other services. For example, I have mine feeding into my FriendFeed page.

In Jon’s post, he speculates about the SEO mojo that our strategy generates. I’d share the before and after data (we have about nine months of data) but I’m not yet a true believer in all that radical transparency stuff. Let’s just say, it’s working.

In a future shameless self-promotional post, I’ll explain how the Hammock.com website embraces a variety of social media services in nuanced ways (APIs, RSS, etc.) and how we’re working with association and corporate clients to do the same.

Technorati Tags: hammock, SEO, strategy

Warning: This post rambles on a bit about custom publishing before finally getting to the point of asking someone from the UK (Martin Stabe, are you out there?) to translate some English into American for me. But first, the rambling part.

In the U.S., the company I run is referred to as a “custom publishing” or “custom media” company.

In the UK, such a firm is called a “customer publishing” company or, sometimes, a “publishing agency.” So, I’ve grown to accept that in my small niche of the media world, in the UK and US, we often say different things that actually mean the same thing.

Customer publishing companies or custom media agencies are marketing services companies that provide a wide array of outsourced services and products for marketers and other communicators at companies or associations who want to create and manage on-going (recurring) media (magazines, online media [podcasts, video], email newsletters, wikis, etc.) that will help them develop closer, deeper and longer relationships with people known as customers or members (we typically call them readers or viewers or participants, as well).

In many ways, our firm operates like a custom media “agency” on behalf of our clients. And, more-and-more often, our clients are other media companies who want to outsource to us aspects of editorial or production processes.

I say all that because I’ve been instrumental over the years in trying to raise the visibility of the entire notion that companies like mine exist in the U.S. — independent media “agencies” or divisions of giant media companies — that are “custom publishers — or custom media” providers.

In the UK, the notion of “customer publishing” is more universally understood by publishers, marketers, journalists and readers. As I said, in the UK, they call it “customer publishing” a term that never caught on in the U.S., because, well, those of us who started the Custom Publishing Council didn’t want to limit our market universe to those who had only “customers” when a lot of our work was focused on publishing magazines for clients who have readers with names like: members, alumni, patients, employees, supporters, donors, passengers, etc. It’s sort of like back when a former head of the IRS wanted to start calling tax-payers “customers.” The designation just didn’t work.

Sorry for all that rambling on the way to getting to the following question:

Today, in The Guardian, there is an article about Dennis Publishing starting a customer publishing “arm” that includes this quote:

“Dennis Publishing is to launch a customer publishing arm under the creative watch of former Maxim editor Derek Harbinson to produce print and digital magazines for businesses in a bid to create new revenue streams. The new subsidiary, Dennis Communications, which will sit alongside the firm’s traditional consumer publishing division and focus on producing traditional print and digital customer magazines, which will offer bespoke video footage, moving imagery and editorial.

I followed that all the way to the part where it says “will offer bespoke video footage, moving imagery…”

As I know there are a few UK media-types who occasionally tune into my RSS feed, I’m wondering if any of you could translate that phrase “bespoke video footage and moving imagery” into American.

It’s true, I’m not a fan of the term “content marketing” and would never apply that term to the work I do. That said, I really like some people who are evangelizing the use of the term “content marketing” who have honored this blog with a high ranking on a new list of bloggers who write about what they believe the term describes (more on that in a minute).

So since I’m an accidental (but appreciative) “content marketing” blogger, I’d like to use this new authority to explain fully why I don’t like or use the term “content marketing” except when a potential client is using it to describe something they’d like to hire my firm to do. (The same is true for “Web 2.0″ or any other term I may accidentally be associated with.)

See, I have a problem with the word content when used to describe what I create. I believe using the word “content” voluntarily to describe what I do insults the talent, skill, creativity and craft that goes into the media my colleagues and I create and manage in collaboration with our clients. I believe the term “content marketing” makes it sound like I’m marketing a service to shovel out some commodity created primarily to fill up space or time. Creating “content” is not what we do. Helping tell brand stories. Adding value to products. Encouraging loyalty or involvement. Educating. Activating. Those are the things the talented individuals at our company do with and for the talented individuals who are our clients. “Generating content” is absolutely the least valuable of all the services we provide. And I say that knowing the “content” we create is consistently judged to be among the best “content” created by people at companies like ours.

Longtime readers of this blog know my go-to muse on the topic of the term “content” is the philosopher Doc Searls who summarizes everything I believe when he says (and I’m leaving it precisely in his vernacular), “Stop calling everything ‘content.’ It’s a bullshit word that the dot-commers started using back in the ’90s as a wrapper for everything that could be digitized and put online. It’s handy, but it masks and insults the true nature of writing, journalism, photography, and the rest of what we still, blessedly (if adjectivally) call ‘editorial.’ Your job is journalism, not container cargo.”

End of rant.

I need to be very clear: I have nothing personal against my friends and industry colleagues who want to use the term “content marketing” to describe a business category. I don’t use the term — but I’m not leading any faction that’s “anti-” anything. I’m for whatever anyone can do to let marketers know there are companies out there who can help them create and manage media used in building brands and creating communities. And I’m honored that my weblog is ranked #13 on the new Junta 42 Top Content Marketing Blogs. And I’m (big surprise here) enough of a self-promoter to encourage people to go there and “vote” (hitch) this blog up the list. And I’m also enough of a search-engine geek to know that if the marketplace wants to call the business I’m in “content marketing,” then I’m not going to try to hide from the term when potential clients are searching for it. So, “content marketing” searchers, head right over to Hammock.com if you’re looking for a company that can help you solve any editorial or graphic design or video or online content marketing needs you may have. Anything not involving container cargo ship content, in other words.

Oh, and another thing: if you haven’t fallen asleep yet, you must actually be interested in “content marketing” (or custom media, customer media, custom publishing, customer media, conversational media, conversation marketing, etc.) so let me also point you to a new weblog on Hammock.com called Custom Media Craft. It’s tightly focused on the “crafts” used in our development and management of brand story telling. Oh, wait. Another term for another post.

Technorati Tags: cluetrain, custommedia, custompublishing, doc searls, hammockinc

On a new blog at Hammock.com called “Custom Media Craft,” I’ve just posted a “think piece” called 2008: The Year of Mediacasting, along with a sidebar post called 8 Mediacasting Ideas for 2008.

Excerpt:

“The goal of most corporate and association marketers should be to use digital and online content to generate actions, not to attract eyeballs. The content doesn’t need to be on your website — the content needs to be in the hands, and ears, and eyes, and heads of your members or customers. Unless your business model is advertising, page views are not the correct metric to measure your online strategy. Action, engagement, sales, enrollment, loyalty, retention, increased contributions, advocacy and education are business goals that require you to get your message (”content”) to your audience — in any way they want to receive it. In 2008, let your content extend beyond your website. Cast it out in any way you can.”

Read the rest: here.

My custom publishing/custom media friend Joe Pulizzi has launched Junta42, a new “digg-like” service focused on “content marketing.” Content marketing is a term Joe uses to describe, “the biggest industry that nobody has ever heard of.” It encompasses all those types of media that are being created by and for the group formerly known as advertisers. I’m not a big fan of the term, but I can see the need to have a phrase like “content marketing” in order to place an umbrella-term over a lot of different types of developments in the worlds of media and marketing that mash-together custom publishing and custom media, branded media, sponsored media, association- and corporate-owned media, advertorials, etc.

Says Joe, “The future of content around the globe will rest, not in the hands of the traditional press, but in the hands of corporations. It’s businesses, not the media, that have the financial resources to go out and find the best research and editors to create great content. Plus, businesses are beginning to figure out that the creation of great content is key to lasting customer relationships.”

According to Joe, Junta42 was created to make it as easy as possible for marketing, association, and publishing professionals to find out what’s going on in content marketing. As someone who has been looking for a source of such information, I hope Junta42 delivers on that wish.

Quote of the day: Hugh MacLeod, gapingvoid.com: “Buying space in someone else’s brain is far harder than buying space in someone else’s media.”

Do I find it ironic that the Internet Advertising Bureau is launching a print magazine to reach marketers? No.

Think of it this way. If you were in charge of getting tourists from the U.S. to come visit, say, France, would you advertise in Paris or in New York?

Quote from the press release:

“The Interactive Advertising Bureau, the leading trade association for the Interactive Advertising industry, today announced the launch of the first issue of MIXX Magazine. MIXX, which stands for Marketing and Interactive Excellence, will provide marketers and agencies with Interactive advertising primers across all platforms including: mobile, digital video, display, search, user generated content, email, gaming, lead generation, local, and more. The IAB and Adweek Magazines have partnered to produce MIXX Magazine with the help of Media Ventures Inc, a custom publisher. Each issue of MIXX builds on the work of the IAB committees highlighting a specific sector of the Interactive advertising industry.

(Disclosure: For any readers who may have missed it during the past six years of this blog, my day job is helping marketers — including large associations — create and manage both print and online media to reach and build strong relationships with their customers, members, etc. None of the parties mentioned in this post are clients of Hammock Publishing. However, they know where to reach me.)

Technorati Tags: advertising, custom publishing

Custom publishing update: Other than not mentioning a custom publishing company I’m fond of, this DM News article about custom publishing is a good overview.

Just for the record, that is what I do for a living: When I see an article like the one in today’s New York Times that makes it appear that the century-old practice of custom(er) publishing is something new, it makes me realize that my work has just begun. That companies (and associations, government agencies, military branches, churches, schools, etc.) are creating web (and print) properties that aren’t packaged as traditional advertising is nothing new. I’ve been doing it online for clients since CompuServe forum days. And print examples of this go back to, at least, the late 1800s (John Deere has published a customer magazine continously for over 100 years). No doubt, as we speak there are being produced custom-produced corporate podcasting…and it will be nothing new, really.

Oh, by the way, if your company needs help figuring out how to do all this, I know just the company for you, but you can also find our “friendly competitors” in directories found here and here.

I forgot? Someone just e-mailed me asking why I have not pointed to this Folio: Magazine article that quotes me. In it, I say that Hammock Publising would rather work with advertising agencies than compete with them. At least that’s what I meant to say. Okay, so now I’ve pointed to it.

Custom publishing update: Here’s an interesting brand extension. Direct Marketer, Penzeys Spices, is launching a magazine, Penzeys One.

Quote from Bill Penzeys’s introduction letter:

Another key difference is who gets to be the hero of our magazine. It won’t be some celebrity chef who spends his evenings away from the people he cares about. The hero will not be some professional writer who claims to know the exact correct way to do everything. The hero of our magazine will be you the reader. You are the one putting forth the effort of cooking to better the lives of the people around you. You deserve the spotlight. I have never understood why magazines that are supposed to be for cooks make people who cook look vaguely like bumpkins who just fell off the turnip truck and are somehow living in the past. I have met you guys and you are bright, charming engaged people. The warmth inside you that drives you to want to enrich the lives around you shines through. You are our future. You are my heroes and the magazine will do its best to show people who cook as the truly cool people they are.

Trivia: The very first magazine published by Hammock Publishing (back in 1991) was an employee publication called “One” for a large corporate client.

Custom publishing update - controversy department: For three years on this weblog, I have repeatedly marveled at the skills of Abercrombie & Fitch marketers to produce controversial custom publishing projects seemingly designed to generate publicity by creating protests from church groups. So it is only fitting that I blog this Editor & Publisher report on the backlash to a custom publishing project developed by the kind of church group that usually protests anything coming from A-F. Both Sides Magazine was distributed as a paid insert in 200,000 zoned issues of Sunday’s Washington Post (but not the metro edition). The magazine which, according to E&P, espsouses “a strong argument against gay marriage,” is described on its website as “an outreach ministry of Grace Christian Church” of Woodbridge, Va. According to E&P, it has generated “more than 1,000 e-mails and phone calls, according to Ombudsman Michel Getler, who said most of the comments opposed the publication as offensive.”

Quote:

“They were overwhelmingly negative about the Post distributing this thing,” Getler told E&P, noting that many of the responses were from outside the Post circulation area, indicating a formal campaign against the publication may have begun. “People were upset and they let the paper know.”…Although the publication was clearly marked as advertising in several locations, and carried a note on the second page stating it “is not a product of the Washington Post,” newspaper officials said it drew an angry reaction from many readers. “It is not something everyone agreed with,” said Publisher Boisfeuillet Jones Jr., who said the advertisers had a right to pay for placement of their viewpoint. “I’m not going to say I agree with it, but it is a case where we went through the vetting process.

It appears all sides are learning how to play this controvery marketing custom publishing game.

Custom publishing update: The anonymous vaporzine scout has outdone himself: a vaporzine and and a custom magazine find, both in one day. He just sent me a link to a Communication Arts feature on the Virgin Atlantic “mini-magazine” called, ugh, Jetrosexual.

Quote:

This small, perfect-bound, coffee-table-style, mini magazine provides a glimpse into the lifestyle of the jet setter. The result of a collaboration between Miami-based Crispin Porter + Bogusky and New York studio Graham Clifford Design, this small format lifestyle book was created to identify and reflect a new genre of air travelers—the entrepreneurs, artists and musicians who move through time zones spreading culture and commerce wherever they go.

This sounds similar to a jethrorexual, except we only move through Southwest waiting areas and instead of spreading culture, we spread the flu. And we don’t have a trendy mini-magazine yet.

Special bonus rexblog feature: Earlier today, I blogged a report from a Bentonville, Ark., newspaper regarding the special customized cover and editorial section appearing in issues of Lucky Magazine sold in Wal-Marts. As the only “history of custom publishing” I can search is my memory, I’ve been trying to rack my brain to recall another instance in which a magazine has run such a special section that is not labeled an advertorial section and that is marketed on the newsstand with a cover-flap featuring the place-of-purchase. I’m sure there are others, but the closest I can think of are annual sports season previews (from Athlon and others) that feature custom covers highlighting the local franchise or university. However, the Wal-Mart Lucky is a concept that uses the magazine’s cover to specifically promote the retailer in which the magazine is being sold…and includes an “editorial” section, produced by the editorial staff of the magazine, that features products found at the retailer.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that (in Lucky’s case, at least) there is any editorial integrity issues in question here. It’s Lucky Magazine, after all. It’s a bold move, I must say, and it takes product placement to new heights — the cover. And as I said in my previous post, I have my doubts about the ROI on such an effort, if, as implied in the article, there is no revenue beyond the incremental magazine units sold at Wal-Mart (if the numbers reported are correct).

But I had to go pick up a copy for myself. And, as a service to the seven readers of the rexblog, I scanned in the pages below so you can check out the Wal-Mart Lucky version for yourselves. Click on any image to enlarge.

Regular Lucky (left) Wal-Mart Lucky (right)

The four-page “Lucky Shops Wal-Mart” bonus section

Is Lucky pioneering a new form of custom publishing? The wall between “traditional” and “custom” magazine publishing seems to be blurring even more through a creative arrangement being pioneered between Conde Nast’s Lucky magazine and Wal-mart. While I’ve blogged many times about the strategy of magazines trying to utilize the 800-lb. gorilla distribution channel of Wal-Mart, the local newspaper in Bentonville, Ark. is the surprising source of this news about a unique magazine strategy: Apparently, copies of Lucky magazine sold in Wal-Mart include a special section called “Lucky Shops Wal-Mart.”

Quote from the Northwest Arkansas News:

“Since Wal-Mart is the biggest retailer in the country and we were the first and biggest shopping magazine, we figured it would be a good match,” said Lucky Magazine fashion editor Liz Kiernan….”Lucky Shops Wal-Mart” is a four-page section in the back of Lucky Magazines sold at Wal-Mart. A 3 1/2-inch flap on the cover advertises the Wal-Mart section, which is not available in issues sold elsewhere. The four pages are dedicated to beauty, home decor and fashion. “We pick out our favorite items and put them in the layout,” said Kiernan, who oversees the two fashion pages. Lucky started the section one year ago, and has added a Wal-Mart section to roughly eight of the last 12 issues. “It’s considered cool to find inexpensive clothes at Lucky — that’s sort of the philosophy around here,” Kiernan said.

The reporter, perhaps because she is writing for a “local” newspaper, actually gets an amazing amount of information from the typically tight-lipped folks at Wal-Mart and Conde Nast. For example, she reports that the 4-page section has helped to increase by 76 percent the number of Lucky issues (units) sold in Wal-Mart during last year, to 23,000 copies a month. (I’ll skip over my typical rant regarding reporters and numbers and not ask why she didn’t make the obvious observation that 23,000 copies of the magazine is only about seven copies of Lucky per each of the 3,200 stores, per month — not such of a blockbuster performance.)

Despite appearing to be an advertorial section, the article implies “Lucky Shops Wal-Mart” is not paid-for by Wal-Mart: “Lucky usually contacts Wal-Mart with specific items in mind. ‘They usually know what the trends are,’ said Suzanne Haney with Wal-Mart Corporate Communications.” Is it paid for? Is it an advertorial? The article does not make this clear.

Very interesting article that raises lots of questions: How is the ROI measured by Lucky? What is the increase in net revenues from the 23,000 copies jn return for the in-kind value (if not paid-for) of four-pages of custom, advertorial content and a 3 1/2-inch flap promo that sprinkles the Lucky-brand karma-pixie-dust onto the Wal-mart brand? Is it worth it? The seven readers of the rexblog want to know!

Update: I have posted scans of the issue in a new post.