Kristina Halvorson, a content strategy professional whose work I admire, published this article as a rebuttal to another popular social media writer’s article. He says social media widgets will help make your website relevant. She says, wait a second, first, you need a content strategy.

“Make your corporate website relevant by having a well-founded, sustainable content strategy. Let that content strategy inform the kind of content you create and share, how you share it, how you engage, and how you react. Define process. Allocate resources to content creation and maintenance. Align on content governance policies and guidelines.”

Read the full article.

What do you think?

This article is courtesy of Jeff at Morgan County Economic Development (thanks, Jeff!). Click here and enjoy.

“Boiled down to its ultimate simplicity, a brand is really nothing more than a promise.

Fulfill that promise consistently, the brand remains strong and gets stronger. Break it, or have one that’s too vague in meaning and you’re either heading for trouble or going to have a real hard time of getting started.”

Read More.

Atlas and the economic development profession are “atwitter” about Social Media.  Here, we are really interested to shape how social media is changing the profession, and to further that aim, we have partnered with the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) and Marty Vanags, President and CEO of the Economic Development Council of the Bloomington - Normal area.

Join us on Thursday March 18, 2010 at 2:30 EST as we co-present “Leveraging Social Media for Low-Cost, Targeted Marketing.” Ben Wright, Atlas’ CEO, and Marty will cover the theory and practice of developing successful social media campaigns, from the expert and practitioner’s point of view.

Click here for more information, and to register!

The webinar will cover the following topics:

• How best to get started in social media?
• How to set goals for your social media initiatives?
• What efforts you can replace by being active in social media?
• How can you be engaging, but avoid controversy?
• How best to make the most of the time you spend on social media?
• What staff support do you need?
• What training resources are available?
• What tools to use?  Twitter?  Blogs?  Facebook?  Foursquare?

We hope you can join us!

Visit Atlas’ slidespace for two other presentations on the topic.

Today I want to direct you to this fantastic article on how to rank higher in Google’s local searches by studying your competitors.

By identifying who is doing well and following the 6 steps outlined in the article above, you can increase your own ranking (and exposure).

This could be especially helpful for real estate and tourism. Take a look.