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There are 7 Hero Stories Every Website should master:

* Enlightened (REI.com).

* Vicarious BestBuy).

* Altruistic (Kiva.org).

* Rescue (Kiva.org).
* Stranger (McKinsey).
* Like Us (CharityWater).

* Togehter (Kickstarter).

Find detailed examples of copy each kind of "hero" copy here: http://bit.ly/14LcUpg

Share your examples here: http://bit.ly/16XD5II

@HaikuDeck Here: http://bit.ly/1duNwc7

Not only is there a new sheriff in town, content marketing, but there is a rapidly evolving new movement too. How can you create "lean content"? Read on.

A live blog of the presentations of three incredible content marketing ninjas at the Raleigh SEO Meetup, 26 March 2013.

Something CORE is changing pushed by social media and a altruism mentioned in books by Godin and Benkler, the commons revolution is happening. You In?

The "sheer genius" of the Pebble watch campaign on kickstarter will be somethig you want your team to emulate soon, very soon.

The foundation of good content is knowing your audience - and what they want to know.

That's why we develop "personas" - descriptions of the people we are creating the content for.

This can be daunting if you haven't done it before. In this Hubspot blog post, Corey Eridon helps you through the proces with 9 questions you need to ask about your possible audience. 

Very useful for content creators/curators, not just marketers. 

Content marketing can be an extremely complicated, time-consuming, and expensive proposition! So I came up with content options for the time-starved!

Let’s face it. Content development can be a complicated, time-consuming, and expensive proposition! So I started thinking about this in the context of my friends and small business customers who simply can’t afford that kind of effort. It led to this idea: micro-content, or creating small bits of marketing content when you don’t have time to blog, create videos or spend all day on Facebook.

Let’s examine ideas about using micro-content for your social media strategy, assuming you are testing the water and only have 15 minutes a day to devote to this activity. Hey, I’m up for a challenge!

Preparation

Like any marketing initiative, you must have a firm idea of your strategy, selling points, and target audience...

Read more: http://bit.ly/LEiFKi

Reevaluate Your Content Factory and Convert! A majority of bloggers, authors, writers, business owners, and publishers will always harp on creating content for customer and audience engagement, but...

Content's Many Audiences
When you create content you need to think about who will be its eventual consumer. Do you know who and why your content will be consumed by? Not ever and not nearly.

What you do know is you need some content for search engine spiders, the only one guaranteed to read every word on your pages (lol). You also need short attention span and mobile theater. Think of a smart phone as a game console and you wouldn't be too far wrong.

Finally you need content that springs legs and walks around the world. My advice is to NOT plan for consumption as much as general content characteristics. Search engines love LONG form content. Users love graphics and short attention span theater.

Mobile users want instant gratification and to easily file for later. Rich snippets work great on mobile, will leave search engines wondering what the heck you are up to and may or may not go viral.

Do you need all three kinds of content: long form, rich snippets and games for mobile and viral content? Sure, and DO make sure you create all three, but don't limit where you publish.

Always test everything everywhere. If you have a rich snippet go viral then write a blog post and create some more weight for SEO and to promote viral. If you have long form go viral cut it up and tweet it.

Don't get MARRIED to the idea that X content goes into Y channel. Be flexible, test everything and COPE (Create Once and Publish Everywhere).

The Internet is full of people sharing interesting things all day. From liking pictures on Facebook to retweeting cool articles, sharing is something everyone enjoys doing in one way or another. Yet receiving likes and retweets can seem impossible.

How can organisations create enough authentic, relevant and helpful content?

Marcus Sheridan has an answer: educate all employees to become content marketers. Yes! Employees can write and blog! Why ever not?

Marcus "The Sales Lion" has proved it in a number of companies. Here he tells "how".

This is gold dust for larger organisations struggling to produce content. And it could be adapted for smaller companies too.

Here are 3 of Marcus's steps:

*Have a CCO - Chief Content Officer

*Educate management

*Regularly share content marketing "victories"

Read the full post http://www.thesaleslion.com/steps-turning-large-companies-content-marketing-blogging-machines/ ;

Did you know there is a lot of work that has to happen before one begins creating a content marketing strategy? There is and I am going to give you some strategies that will help you begin and also explain some important “non-negotiables”, as I call them.

First, Create a Team

Your business will need at the least a team of two people. This is especially true when your are writing/rewriting the content for the main pages of a website. They need to work together to create the content you need. There should be brainstorming and as they say, two brains are better than one. Seriously, this task is a two person job at a minimum.

There is Work to Be Done Before Your Team Begins:

There are no short cuts for effective and organized content marketing. The non-negotiables below have to be completed before writing begins. They apply to the writing of main content pages of a website and all other forms of content marketing.

Read more: http://bit.ly/M0gEc7