one of Get Satisfaction's addictive infographics

GetSatisfaction works with big name brands to encourage interaction, feedback and communication. And this isn’t some “useless information, supposed to fire (your) imagination” – the company offers real solutions to create a satisfying experience for its customers, and as a result, its clients.

Their Content Strategy

The software and apps help companies create a customer community, which then helps social media gurus to connect with their consumers. Utilizing independent community pages, Facebook and widgets embedded almost anywhere, customers are able to ask questions, provide feedback and troubleshoot with others.

In order to help engage its own customers and potential customers, GetSatisfaction has sharpened its own engagement skills with its seven layer blog, encompassed under the headline, “Social Studies: How to Succeed in Social Business.”

The subheadings of social business, social support, community college, tips and tricks, best practices, team satisfaction and product blog provide unique posts that better illuminate the company’s ultimate goal: providing useful communications.

The posts are unique, they’re relevant and they provide insight to clients and non-clients alike.  Many are highlighted with thought provoking infographics; subconsciously soliciting feedback and engagement.  They educate and reaffirm the need for social interaction in business, regardless of the size of the company, the product or the service being offered.

Impress Your Own Employees

The company tests out its theories on its own employees. “The key to a good corporate blog is to entertain your fellow co-workers,” said Andy Wibbles, GetSatisfaction’s director of marketing. “If they don’t laugh or enjoy the content they aren’t going to help promote it. When we post a new piece of content, I send an email to our entire team with easy links for them to retweet, Like, share on LinkedIn or blog the content. Make it easy for your content to be promoted,”

In the Best Practices section, case studies of successful companies show just how powerful the community network can be.  For example OMGPOP, the brains responsible for the addicting games that many of us find ourselves playing, was receiving 150-200 support requests every day.  After initiating the community option and a place for peer-to-peer problem solving and streamlined communications, the company found its support needs dropped to only 30 per day.

Other posts simply highlight the growing need for an interactive presence.  The site utilizes statistics, most of which it gathers from its own clients, to promote their successes. GetSatisfaction continues to take advantage of the growing demand for content marketing and the undeniable need for consumer engagement.

Noticing Trends

GetSatisfaction is using its tips and tricks for success as well. It has seen the company grow to 63,000 communities including big-name brands like Microsoft, P&G, and Mint.com (owned by Intuit). It has found itself host to nearly 10 million visitors each month and it is anticipating significant growth since the introduction of multi-language support systems in October 2011.

In addition, Wibbles said the company is focusing on its mobile strategy. “We’re spending a lot of resources right now building out our mobile strategy and the emergence of social business. Our content will echo and anticipate our product development cycle.”

Mick Jagger couldn’t find satisfaction, but GetSatisfaction and its customers surely are.

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• Flowtown’s Blog and Business Are Totally Married – And Why Yours Should Be Too (contently.com)
• Five Signs that your Blog Isn’t Reaching the Right Audience (contently.com)

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

According to FlowTown co-founder Dan Martell, the success of their blog and their business is the marriage of the two.  One cannot work without the other.  Content is great, but only if customers and readers can find it using keyword searches. On the other hand, keywords may draw someone to your website, but it won’t necessarily keep them there.

Martell explains that doing a little research, spending a little money and nailing the keywords that are specific to the business are the crucial first steps.

Next, he suggests, find and hire writers who can produce engaging content. He recommends forgoing Craigslist and other job solicitation sites.  Instead, find blogs with the voice and tone that fits the vibe for your site, the product or the organization and contact those writers.

“Find an amazing writer and refine the key words. At the end of the day content is king and most people never nail that part,” Martell says.

A Great Example Of Flowtown's Keyword Usage

Content marketing is fast becoming the standard means of company promotion, with pundits expecting more than half of all businesses to incorporate blogs into their marketing strategies by 2012.

Martell says that blogging is the Number One user acquisition channel, but it may take time to see subscriber growth.

Consistency and strong key word incorporation lead to greater interaction and sharing of content.  Martell warns not to expect overnight success.

“It definitely takes time.  It takes at least six months to see consistent growth.  Sometimes people need to come two, three or even four times before they subscribe. Just stay consistent,” he said.

And Martell should know what works. The FlowTown blog which he helped create now has over 300,000 unique visitors each month; double the number from just last year.  It’s a number Martell is not only proud of, but expects to grow.  He said that it helps to pay writers higher-than-average per post rates — you do get what you pay for, after all.  In addition, he always offers incentives based upon performance.

Interestingly, most of FlowTown’s posts are shared via Twitter or Facebook, well over 100 times.  And that’s not counting the number of re-tweets or shares not coming directly from the site itself.

Flowtown's Engaged Twitter Community

By providing engaging content, soliciting feedback and expanding the parameters of marketing, FlowTown has increased awareness on the importance of content marketing and social media strategy.  Their clients and subscribers better understand the living breathing, ever changing media platforms that are dominating society.

It is certain that FlowTown will be going through some major changes with its recent acquisition by DemandForce.  But, for its devoted customers and loyal followers it is hopeful that the changes only enhance what it is already doing. Martell described the combining of the two with just one word, “Awesome!”

As for FlowTown’s noted blog — that will remain the same. But expect it to expand under the resources of DemandForce, a leader in the small-business marketing space. “It’s win-win!” says Martell.

Related articles

• 10 Blogs You Should Be Reading If You Manage A Company’s Content Strategy (contently.com)
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• 7 Social Media Myths Debunked By Dan Zarella (contently.com)

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

The company capitalizes on the efforts of its sellers, offering the “Etsy Guide to SEO” with tips and tutorials for users to optimize their Etsy store, bringing in more traffic. The strategy is genius, because it places the effort in the hands of the user, strengthening the overall optimization for Etsy as a whole with minimal effort on the corporate side.

The result is a whole sub-culture of Etsy strategists, the sales force using the platform to sell their own handmade goods who relentlessly discuss and analyze ways to generate more traffic for their Etsy stores. A search on Google for “Etsy strategy” brings up hundreds of forums, discussion groups and blogs offering the latest inside techniques for building traffic on Etsy.

Easy on the Content

The term content strategy is an interesting one in relation to Etsy. Realistically, Etsy’s traffic strategy isn’t fundamentally grounded in blog content, as most major internet presences are.

Etsy has a blog, but beyond this, its content strategy primarily consists of on-site SEO, such as circular in-site links using searchable keywords to drive visitors to certain areas of the site.

The Etsy forum, another genius user-generated content strategy, houses the usual site outage reports as well as provides a built-in area for sellers to discuss sales and traffic strategies. Again, this content contributes to the overall SEO value of the Etsy website as a whole, and forum posts are generally naturally packed with relevant keywords.

Relying so heavily on forum content to drive SEO is an interesting risk in the post-PANDA web era, as little discussion has been made among industry analysts about the impact of Google’s PANDA update on forum content. That said, Etsy has plenty of other avenues through which it’s building organic inbound links: Through sellers’ blog posts on their personal blogs, aimed at driving traffic to their own Etsy stores and forums found elsewhere on the web.

The Risks Work

Risks associated with forum content include the natural tendency to write as one speaks, resulting in less “professional” content, and the collective nature of a forum as a place where hundreds — or thousands — of authors share their brief musings about a topic.

Etsy balances this well, however, with a high-quality blog periodically featuring various sellers, taking an in-depth look at some of the more unique offerings found on Etsy, and of course the crafty how-tos.

The Community Speaks

That said, Etsy’s blog is also populated with a multitude of voices, albeit moderated and professionalized by a team of editors, who also contribute regularly to balance out the cacophony. Sellers can pitch story ideas to editors, an appealing opportunity to those who are driven to attract more attention to their Etsy offerings.

The nature of Etsy’s business model is such that it allows a mass effort to contribute to the overall pie in terms of content and SEO.

Unlike a general forum, where contributors are motivated merely by the sound of their own keyboards, Etsy users have something to gain by being an active community participant on a personal and financial level.

The result is a win-win solution that has helped catapult Etsy, a site that started as something of an online flea market, to a major web enterprise. The business model allows the masses to earn recognition and profit financially in the hand-crafted goods vertical, one that otherwise has multiple barriers to entry, including high production costs.

Related articles

• Gilt Groupe’s Fashionable Content Strategy
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The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Clearly Gilt’s strategy is working. The brand launched another editorial site this month, a niche in male luxury apparel with a new site called Park & Bond.

A step above the typical retail site, Park & Bond ramps up the editorial component with a series of how-to articles, aiding the style-savvy man in not only selecting current trends but knowing how to wear them. What good is an Alexander McQueen sweater if paired with the wrong pants?

With a team hailing from the likes of GQ and Esquire, editors at Park & Bond take style seriously — both written and worn. The company takes a broad approach to its content strategy, tackling both the mundane (how to wash your jeans) and the edgy (how to dress your age, minus a few years). The site has a mens style magazine look and feel, serving as a one-stop-shop for the discerning man looking for the right clothes to wear on a date, to a business meeting or on vacation.

The beauty, and perhaps the most beneficial feature of Park & Bond, however, is that the site literally serves as the stylish female (or gay) friend most guys want but many don’t actually have.

Park & Bond’s content strategy is a genius approach appealing to the male luxury consumer. Men who are willing and able to spend on luxury apparel, yet may or may not have a clue about how to wear it, benefit from what is literally a GQ-esque style guide with incentive to purchase on the spot.

Most brilliant of all: Park & Bond has eliminated the middle-man; in this case, the hassle of buying a style magazine, finding something similar and making the best guess at fitting it all together.

It’s an opportunity many retail sites haven’t yet capitalized on: Why sell the clothes without telling people how to wear them? It makes sense for men, and it makes sense for Park & Bond’s bottom line.

Park & Bond is one of the first e-commerce retailers to really tackle both the commerce and content component so effectively. According to InternetRetailer.com, Park & Bond is incorporating an online store affiliated with GQ and will offer a virtual fitting room via Fits.me,with the goal of providing the in-store shopping experience complete with stylish  friend/personal shopper/stylist.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently