Of course this isn’t web or blog content, but rather just business or personal emails we send back and forth. But can we ever use any of it as content for our sites?

Indeed we can.

The Value of Author’s Letters.

I’ve been reading Norman Mailer’s letters recently, and it occured to me that he made dozens of great points, observations, and arguments while writing to friends and editors. This is normal–we often say great stuff in our emails, too (probably not as great as his, but hey).

But it’s not really publishable, per se—it’s generally only great authors who get that privledge, and thank god, because reading through people’s random emails would be an atrocious task.

But what about the few times we do write something truly memorable in an email? An anecdote, a product review, a recounted experience—we send a lot of these things to each other. I tell various stories in a ton of different contexts: flickr captions, google reader shared item comments, my photoblog, and in emails, too.

Many of the best things I’ve ever written are likely buried somewhere inside emails. If I were running a business, surely I’d have sent many good thoughts and observations on my business out to various friends and associates. Keep that part in mind while I tell you a story.

My Friend and his Duplicate Emails (He’s Proud of Them).

I’ve got a friend who admitted to a strange practice: when he tells an anecdote that takes more than a few lines in an email, he’ll often copy and paste the whole thing into other emails when someone asks about it.

After a few seconds of personalization, that second (or third, or fourth) recipient gets the great anecdote too.

Why not just make it into a blog, you might ask? Well, a blog changes things: it’s automatically more public, and it has a frontend that requires more work than just firing off an email. This is changing, of course, but updating a blog still isn’t really as easy—for most of us—as sending an email.

How to Keep Track of Your Finest Email Moments.

So let’s say we want to keep track of our greatest e-mails, those moments of prosodic excellence where we’ve written something truly great and might want to see it again in the future, or perhaps even use it. Is there a way we can keep track of this stuff, and quickly and easily turn it into published content?

Tracking isn’t much of an issue with something like GMail: just create a tag called “content” or whatever you’d like, and any time you notice you’ve written something that might be useful elsewhere, give it that tag. Every once in a while, go through your ‘content’ tag and see what you can find.

Getting All That Good Writing Online, Somehow.

So how do we get it online? Obviously we could just copy and paste it to our blog, but there’s a new service that makes this even better: it’s called Posterous. It’s been catching on recently among a few high-profile bloggers, and its mission statement is simple: blogging through e-mail.

It’s microblogging, much like tumblr offers (they too offer e-mail postings), but with a real focus on posting from your inbox as the primary way of getting content online.

A Practical Way to Make This Work for You.

Let’s pretend you’re running a blog and company website that promotes your independent printing shop.

Every once in a while, you write a great email to a friend, extolling the glories of letterpress, or talking about a new printer you just brought in, or talking about what a pleasure it was to finish a particular job.

As you know, getting interesting content (you don’t send deadly-boring emails, do you?) like that online is invaluable for several reasons:

• it keeps potential customers on your site,
• makes your business far easier to optimize for search engines,
• and increases the chances that other people around the web might enjoy something you write and link to it, thereby greatly increasing your traffic—and potential sales.

So try this out: setup a quick blog on Posterous. They’ve just taken the extra step of not requiring even a sign-up in order to create an account—you can just email their post@posterous.com address directly and within a few seconds you’ll have a subdomain and an account.

Then, every time you write something good in an email, take a few extra seconds to forward that to the posterous email address. You’ll already be in your e-mail client, so there won’t be much of a time commitment to speak of.

Then, just feed the posterous RSS into your main blog (you can do this through posterous or—likely—through your blogging platform too), and you’ve instantly got another way to add content to your site directly from your inbox.

If this Posterous Idea Makes Things Too Complicated, Not to Worry.

I didn’t want this article to sound like an ad for Posterous—we’re not affiliated in any way. But I like the site.

And I was just using it as an example of how simplified blogging tools are getting. What’s really important to take away from this article is this: if you are at all a writer, if your emails occasionally contain great bits of information about your business, life, or anything that might serve you well if published online, take advantage of it! Don’t just let that content be for one person—edit it a bit and put it to work for you.

Currently, online retail sales only represent about 4-8% of all purchases made in the USA. That means that the majority of all purchases are still being made from traditional brick and mortar stores. So why should offline retailers focus on online marketing and SEO? Because according to BIGResearch, 89% of offline purchases in 2007 were largely influenced by online research conducted by the consumer. Not only that, but TMP Directional Marketing released research data suggesting that approximately 82% of individuals who use local search engines followed up with some sort of offline action such as an in store visit or a phone call.

Marketing managers are calling this the ROBO effect (Research Online, Buy Offline). And it seems to be more than just a trend. These numbers have been going strong since the inception of search engines and are headed up. In 2007, over $500 billion of offline purchases were influenced by online research. (eMarketer) Jupiter Research estimates that that number will reach $1 trillion in just two short years.

Sherman states that this offline/online research/purchasing pattern is a “vicious circle.” Effective offline marketing campaigns will drive people to the web to do more research. In turn, 39% of people who did an online search based on offline information purchased a product from the same company whose ad prompted the search in the first place. Again, individual stores have a hard time measuring the effects of their offline ads in correlation to their online presence. But it’s undeniable that having some sort of searchable online presence will induce sales that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred, or may have occurred somewhere else.

It seems that mostly large businesses are the ones who are desegregating their online and offline marketing efforts. Even so, only 55% of online marketing managers are integrating their SEO efforts with offline channels. For instance, television ads are by far the most effective way to prompt consumers to do a search. However, only 12% of all companies use television as a means of driving people to their website or a search engine. SEO and SEM managers don’t intentionally ignore the obvious channels for driving internet searches and traffic. Most search marketers work for small firms that can’t afford television ads. But don’t worry, there’s hope for the little guys.

Get a web address if for no other reason that to blog, draw in consumer participation and offer more information about products. If marketers want to take it one step further, they can offer an 800 number for consumers to make their order. Another option that many businesses like Cabella’s and Payless Shoe Stores offer is the ability to order online and pick up their order in the store that is closest to them. This is a great way to create an online presence while driving traffic to your store.

Use the same branding online as you do offline. Colors, logos, tag lines, etc. should all be integrated into your website and online advertisements. Many businesses are using videos, articles and blogs to drive traffic to their website as well. This enables your website address to show up in integrated searches. And lastly, make sure that there is keyword synchronicity between offline and online content. This will allow users to find you more easily.

Before and during your website’s construction make sure your target audience knows its coming. Buying your web address and then setting up something aesthetically pleasing or interesting that says “website under construction. You will be able to learn more about XYZ company’s products on January 01, 2009.” Give a date. You’ll be surprised how many people will remember.

This of course, brings us to advertising. Although television is the most effective way to prompt people about using a product, businesses can use newspapers, magazines, radio shows, email blasts and even direct mail to get their business name and web address out there. What’s important is that they know who you are, they have some keywords they can use to find information about you online, and they have a web address. The point is to think holistically and use a consistent design and message everywhere so that they will remember who you are and ultimately have you in mind when they go to make their purchase offline.

When people search online 36% are looking for news, 31% are looking for images and 17% are looking for videos. Sherman states that “Search marketers should put a priority on optimizing press releases. Optimizing other types of digital assets is important, but should be secondary.” He also states that it is important to know who your target audience is and don’t be afraid to assign them “personas” so that marketing campaigns and in-store customer service efforts can be tailored to them. For instance Best Buy has discovered and named four customer profiles: “Buzz” the techie, “Barry” the wealthy professional, “Ray” the family man and “Jill” the soccer mom. Each one of these identified personalities will receive different kinds of information and product offers in-store and out.

Another way to drive up sales in your brick and mortar institution is through the use of social networking. Social networking is essentially online buzz marketing. By creating your own blogs and participating in other companies/peoples blogs and chats you can build up your own image, improve a negative misconception that the public may have had about your business or a product, and offer the kind of information that people need to feel comfortable making a purchase from you. It essentially plays on the power of word of mouth and reviews. Social marketing needs to be done right though. The focus should be on sincerity, responsiveness, and a casual non-sales approach. Social networking (marketing) is especially useful because it involves direct communication with the consumer when they feel least inhibited. They are more likely to give honest opinions and tell you exactly what they think, want and need. It’s like having your own focus group, but better.

Here’s a few more online facts that may shock and surprise you. According to the Universal McCann’s Comparative Study on Social Media Trends, April 2008:

• 73% of active online users have read a blog
• 45% have started their own blog
• 39% subscribe to an RSS feeds
• 57% have joined a social network
• 55% have uploaded photos
• 83% have watched video clips

Many search marketers face organizational challenges when attempting to integrate SEO/SEM into their marketing mix. Stakeholders may see the internet as unknown territory, and therefore are threatened or intimidated by it. They may also have some sort of “vested interest” in keeping with traditional offline marketing techniques. However, by sharing best practice techniques and case studies proving the success that offline and online integration can bring, they may slowly change their mind about it.

Good marketing means working smart and knowing your customers habits. Right now all consumers believe that knowledge is power and the internet is a source for both. This makes online search engines a powerful tool for offline businesses if they decide to use it. Remember to think holistically, remain consistent in branding efforts and use it as a part of a larger online/offline marketing campaign.

Gannett Co., Hearst Corp., the New York Times Co. and Tribune Co. are setting up the network as a stand-alone company called quadrantOne. Like a consortium created by Yahoo Inc. and a group of newspapers last year, it will allow national advertisers to buy space on certain Web sites operated by their newspapers in a bid to capture new sales as revenue at their print editions disappear.

QuadrantOne will include more than 120 papers, whose Web sites reach a total of 50 million unique monthly visitors, the company said. All four publishers have devoted funding to the company.

The network doesn’t include Gannett’s largest paper, USA Today, or the New York Times, which already have their own national sales operations. Instead, those companies will use the system to place ads on local titles such as the New York Times’s Boston Globe.

QuadrantOne is designed to let national advertisers buy space in many local papers as well as on the Web sites of local television affiliates, without media buyers and planners having to make calls to multiple companies. If a marketer “can make one phone call to a portal or 100 in local markets to get the same audience” for their product, “the answer…would be a no-brainer,” said quadrantOne interim Chief Executive Dana Hayes.