If you believe in the primary importance of content, and I can’t uncover any legitimate argument why you shouldn’t, then you simply must bookmark Junta42. It’s packed with valuable information, insights, and links, like one of today’s posts “11 Free Social Media Optimization Tools.” Stay on top of this topic by letting Junta42 do the heavy lifting for you.

In the online world, content is king. To provide relevant and useful content, businesses need a content strategy. Here is a useful approach by Michele Linn from a recent post on Junta42 “What’s Most Important About Content? It’s Not The Format“:

I love it when clients are enthusiastic about creating a content marketing strategy, but one of the first questions they often pose is,  ”What type of content should we create?” As Ardath Albee states in a recent post on her blog, Marketing Interactions, you should focus on these three things before thinking about the format:

Buyers, Prospects, Customers and Influencers – whose attention do you want to capture and keep?

Priorities, Problems, Issues, Objectives, Needs and Situations -what issue can you help your audience solve?

Buying stages – what information do your prospects need for wherever they are in the buying process?

Ardath walks readers through a great example of how to develop a content marketing program, which is much more than stringing together a few types of custom content. Instead of writing a white paper or an eBook because you need some new content, think of content as part of your brand building strategy.

Consider what your an audience has responded positively to and build content related to that. You can then reference other related white paper, webcasts, case studies, etc.

As Ardath says, “If you start with format, you’ll likely end up with one-off content that doesn’t attract the kind of extended attention you need to get people to stick with you all the way through the buying cycle.”

According to Joe Pulizzi at junta42, 6 in 10 marketers will spend more in 2010. Significant for small businesses is their relatively larger emphasis on content marketing. Get his full post and a link to his whitepaper.