People love a good anecdote. From hieroglyphics to song lyrics to a favorite novel, the well-crafted story is arguably the most effective means of communication to motivate change and pass along history. If an individual can tell a good tale, they have the ability to command the attention of others. Same goes for a business, says Scott Esmond, Director of Business Development at Red Door Interactive.

However, the modern expression of this ancient art is far more complicated than the days of pen and paper. The present digital age means individuals can Tweet, Skype, blog, Facebook and IM at any moment of the day from almost any platform. In a marketplace filled with competing and often confusing messages from companies and products, one of the only remaining ways to truly stand out is through one cohesive voice.

A cohesive content strategy is an effective tool to facilitate and simplify storytelling on the web. It’s the delivery of fresh and relevant information to a specific group so they can be actionable. In today’s world, content covers everything from a press release to video to a website; essentially anything you can produce that’s consumed. The practice, previously reserved for web designers and usability testers, is fairly novel and gaining momentum among marketers and mainstream business because it’s just that efficient and targeted.

With effective content strategies, companies large and small can be rewarded with increased customer loyalty, increased brand equity and a perception of leadership in their market. So when launching a content strategy for your online presence, make sure that you follow these seven steps to make sure your story is both heard and appreciated.

Do a content audit of the business. Every company has a voice – whether they work at it or not -and managing it starts from the inside. Identify what type of content is available and what should be updated. Look beyond just your website and include any off-site content (user reviews, organic search listings, social profiles and posts) as well as marketing, sales and PR content. Begin gathering opinions from your own staff, then reach out to the public to reveal any discrepancies between perception and reality. It can be a daunting task, but agencies like ours can help guide you through the process.

Designate a content strategy leader. Put one central person in charge of managing the process. This individual is responsible for keeping the content up-to-date, managing editorial calendars and delegating tasks. It’s essential that a skilled, trusted employee is the point person for company information every day. If your leader is not already an expert, some good learning sources include Junta42.com and copyblogger.com.

Be timely and relevant. This quote sums up the importance of timeliness; “Good content capitalizes on an opportunity in the life of the content’s consumer.” Such information is fed by what’s going on with a company’s brand, what’s going on with the media and what’s relevant to the customer. Try and gain information from the audience, ask them directly what type of content they want, and then follow through and provide what’s applicable to their lifestyle. Much like a relationship, it’s important not to just talk about the company all the time.

Assign contributors. Once the state of environment, audience, and content has been identified, it's time to write. This is when companies task their most talented and creative staff to help deliver to the consumer what they want. Ask that good storyteller to be the voice of the brand.

Make it easy for customers to share. The quickest way companies can allow their customers to share content is putting links to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquare and other social media channels on their own website. Consider content your most important design element. It's imperative for companies to pay attention to content placement and ensure its consumable, not hidden or lost to a lot of scrolling. Also identify the piece as yours, for example, a title card with your company name before a video gets set to go viral on the web.

Study, Study, Study. When it comes to content strategy, businesses should spend a good portion of time in the virtual "library." Now companies can see where visitors went before and after coming to their website and referral URLs, where people share your content. This information is readily available through Google Analytics, Facebook metrics for fan pages, and social media monitoring tools including (from free to far from free) SocialMention, PeopleBrowsr, Radian 6, and TNS Cymfony. It's also fairly easy to set up on-site surveys.

Let go of the fear. Conversations about the company's content are going to happen regardless. That's why it's helpful to provide consumers a conversational platform and engage them on your space. Should they be more active on review sites like Yelp, you should still engage and learn. Leading review sites also provide statistics that can help inform your strategy.

There are certainly a handful of companies that are grasping the concept of content strategy. REI incorporated an "expert advice" section for customers interested in rock climbing and provides them with a list of important items to pack for their trips. Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty has done an exceptional job reaching out to teen girls, presenting content that's relevant and not simply trying to sell their products.

Lastly, Vail Resorts mobilized their loyal skiers and riders to produce user generated content in their Snow Squad competition to become part of next year's on mountain social media team. The takeaway is that effective content strategy leads to effective storytelling in the digital age.

Will Books Survive eBooks?

This is a post by Ned Resnikoff, researcher and freelance writer.

When you cut through all of the chaff, the debate over whether analog books are dead sounds a lot like this:

Pro-ebook, anti-book: I personally think ebooks are fine. They are also cheaper to produce. Therefore, the book is dead.

Pro-book: Hey! I happen to like books. Therefore, the book is not dead, and we should continue to pay taxes supporting our local libraries.

Those are some pretty self-centered arguments, but as a stalwart book partisan I figure the least I can do is be unabashed about my self-centeredness. I happen to like books. Therefore, the book is not dead.

Here’s the thing: I don’t have anything against ebooks. I own a first-generation Kindle, and sometimes I even use it. But it’s almost always easier and more pleasurable for me to read a book. My attachment to them is pragmatic, and not just aesthetic or sentimental (though it is both of those things as well). As Nicholas Carr writes:

Because we’ve come to take printed books for granted, we tend to overlook their enormous flexibility as reading instruments. It’s easy to flip through the pages of a physical book, forward and backward. It’s easy to jump quickly between widely separated sections, marking your place with your thumb or a stray bit of paper or even a hair plucked from your head (yes, I believe I’ve done that). You can write anywhere and in any form on any page of a book, using pen or pencil or highlighter or the tip of a burnt match (ditto). You can dog-ear pages or fold them in half or rip them out. You can keep many different books open simultaneously, dipping in and out of them to gather related information. And when you just want to read, the tranquility of a printed book provides a natural shield against distraction. Despite being low-tech – or maybe because of it – printed books and other paper documents support all sorts of reading techniques, they make it easy to shift seamlessly between those techniques, and they’re amenable to personal idiosyncrasies and eccentricities.

E-books are much more rigid. Refreshing discrete pages of text on a fixed screen is a far different, and far less flexible, process than flipping through pliant pages of fixed text. By necessity, a screen-based, software-powered reading device imposes navigational protocols and routines on the user, allowing certain patterns of use but preventing or hindering others. All sorts of modes of navigation and reading that are easy with printed books become more difficult with electronic books – and even a small degree of added difficulty will quickly frustrate a reader. Whereas a printed book adapts readily to whoever is holding it, an e-book requires the reader to adapt to it.

Maybe someday the ebook will become as versatile as the book. I rather suspect it will just become a different kind of medium with its own advantages and idiosyncrasies. The book will remain the book: disposable for some, not so much for others.

That’s all the justification I need for keeping libraries open and well-stocked. If a statistically significant slice of the population still finds it easier and more pleasurable to read a physical book than an ebook, taxpayers should accommodate them. After all, the whole reason we have libraries is to increase everyone’s ease of access to information. For quite a few folks, gleaning that information from ink and paper is still easier than squinting at a screen.