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Executive Summary

Every organization generates content. Much of it displays great expertise and would be of significant value to your customers and prospects.

But little of this content, commentary, or analysis sees the light of day. Created around narrow organizational concerns, it dies silently within its silo.

Such profligacy with an organization's key asset is a competitive weakness. Opening the window on your content is the most effective way to build relationships with customers and generate new leads.

This white paper explains how combining an organization's content with its database of contacts and customers leads to both assets achieving their maximum potential.

On their own contacts and content are just data. But brought together they create actionable knowledge for you and your contacts, and actualize a powerful social network.

We outline a case study where a central government agency transformed itself into a finely tuned content publishing engine, getting closer to its customers as a result.

The system developed by DeCare Systems Ireland and Cake Solutions, operates on three fundamental principles:

• Manage the generation and sharing of content across the organization to drive up quality and visibility;
• Match content descriptions with contact profiles to re-purpose content as targeted information;
• Deepen profiles by analyzing all individual interactions with content over time.

Case Study

It's never easy telling a central government agency that its core product is news - it has all the wrong connotations.

It didn't see itself as a publisher of news. Yet it daily reported on developments in its key sectors and countries; but only to itself, and only for its own narrow organizational concerns.

And still the front-line complained of a lack of information. The network was blocked.

Provide Safety, Provide Training

Beyond the mechanics of actually providing news, the greatest fear was simply that their content would gain visibility and actually be read, discussed, and challenged by their clients, potential clients, and stakeholders!

We dispelled the fear of visibility with a strong editorial model that integrated expertise both within the organization and beyond into the approval process, and provided training and support to the gatekeepers of the content: the publishers.

Encode the Process in the CMS

We encoded the editorial model into the CMS and trained that select group to re-purpose content for the internet.

Anyone can now put content onto the system safe in the knowledge that not only is it checked by experts, but most likely improved in publication.

Show Immediate Benefits

One constituency was already benefiting: the researchers. Working in silos and driven by the whim of ad-hoc requests they had been run ragged by the organization that relied on their expertise.

But with a standard way of describing what their content was about and a means of distributing it they could extend, re-use, update, and share their work in a far more efficient manner.

Their work is more visible and widely recognized as valuable, leading to increases in budget and a virtuous circle.

Go with the Flow

Some of the organization's content will hold a wide audience. We can publish to a website and can let the internet do its magic.

The search engines like Google and Yahoo recognize the expertise and syndicate it to the niche audiences that the agency previously had such difficulty reaching.

Interest-based communities pick it up from there and re-syndicate. The BBC links to it.

But attached to all this content is an 'Ariadne's thread' leading back to the agency, the expert, the content creator.

And by carefully selecting the content the publishers ensure the right kind of traffic, generating the right kind of leads.

Measure What Counts

It's a great bird's eye view. But beyond Marketing it's not what the organization sees. Nor what many of your customers and prospects see.

The monthly growth of visitor numbers and registrations is simply not relevant if your sole focus is on interacting with Japanese biotech companies.

Such reporting is too high-level to feature in the day-to-day activities of most of the organization.

Niche is where the Heart Lies

In fact, what is most appreciated by the sales teams is the opportunity that niche content provides to get back in touch with potential clients and build relationships.

By capturing the business intelligence held in the organizations CRM the system generates contact profiles that match against the organization's content

So the sales teams act just like Google and Yahoo News, syndicating content to their contacts.

Close the Circle

Their contacts - and anonymous visitors - can peruse the organization's content online, in their own time, and in their own way.

But the actions they take and the navigation decisions they follow provide an invaluable insight into the visitor's interests and status.

By producing more niche content, the organization not only serves its contacts more precisely, but provides an opportunity to profile those contacts more accurately.

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