Well, it’s time for businesses to break out their nightlights and start facing their fears because they’re missing out on a valuable resource that’s sitting right in the cubicle next door. According to recent post from Shel Holtz from MarketingProfs, most companies are nervous that their employees will trash talk their brand if given permission to exercise their right to the First Amendment. Yet, if you really think about it, employees are the LAST people who want your business to tank. If not for any other reason but they have bills to pay and mouths to feed.

Holtz also mentioned that by having your employees talk about your brand on social venues not only will they be able to reach tons of people who believe and trust their good judgment, but they’ll be able to use their extensive brand knowledge to educate them about your products. All in all, employees are the best-untapped resource when it comes to promoting a brand. But if you’re still a little squeamish about giving your employees free reign, check out IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines. They have a fair stance on their employee’s use of social media.

What do you think about restricting employees’ social media use?

Boston, MA: March 10, 2010 –Captains of Industry, a strategic marketing and communications agency in Boston, Massachusetts with an expertise in website design, recently designed and launched a new website for Creighton Farms, a luxury golf community by Southworth Development located in the scenic Virginia Piedmont region. The site was designed to emphasized the beautiful photography of the homes, golf course, and surrounding landscape, and give potential homebuyers a feeling of homecoming on the website. In addition to the rich, elegant look and feel, a new media center, photo galleries, and interactive maps of the area were added to help Southworth Development tell the story of Creighton Farms.

“Our goal with the Creighton Farms website was to develop a design that showcased the natural and architectural beauty of the area, while still making it easy to access and navigate the content,” said Ted Page, Principal and Creative Director of Captains of Industry. “I think visitors to the site will really be able to imagine themselves and their families living there.”

In order to provide full management of the website to Southworth Development, Captains of Industry developed it on the Drupal platform. The marketing team at Southworth Development will be able to easily upload news stories and videos, as well as edit and add pages.

If you are interested in working with Captains of Industry on your own website design project, please contact Ted Page at info@captainsofindustry.com.

About Captains of Industry
Captains of Industry is an independent marketing, filmmaking and website design company dedicated to telling their clients’ stories, engaging customers, and getting results. The Captains have expertise in renewable energy and viral marketing and have created memorable work for clients ranging from First Wind, Alteris Renewables, and Deepwater Wind to Dunkin’ Donuts, Bose Professional systems, and SolidWorks. In a BusinessWeek CEO Guide to Online Video, two of Captains’ campaigns were ranked among the top ten created nationally. Learn more at www.captainsofindustry.com or follow us on twitter @CaptainsBoston.

About Southworth Development
Southworth Development LLC is a privately held company based in Newton, Massachusetts, specializing in the development of residential resort & hospitality-branded real estate communities. Through our wholly owned subsidiaries, Southworth Golf and Southworth Europe, Southworth is a leader in the international golf community, having served as owner, manager, consultant or construction manager to dozens of properties throughout the United States, Scotland, The Bahamas, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic.

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We’ve selected 4 great finalists, and have provided some insights on each of them here. Over the next two weeks, we invite your feedback on which of these 4 should be the ultimate winner. While Captains will make the final decision, the dialog in the marketing community about these entrants, and the very nature of web content and engagement, will play an important role in the process. Please weigh in and tell us what you think.

Drum roll please.

The Alberta Geological Survey
This web page is certainly yawn inducing, but look at what they’re saying. There’s diamonds in them thar hills! And lots of them! Apparently, Alberta, Canada, has a potential mother lode of diamonds worth billions of dollars. The web page itself, though, is text heavy with copy such as “The Buffalo Head Hills area has the highest diamond content results to date.”

The Nibble
This specialty food magazine home page was a real standout, and it certainly helped that they offered to bribe us with food (how did they know us so well?). This entry raised some really good questions. When you’re trying to engage your audience, is well-written text enough – versus a video, podcast or other type of content? And to what degree does the design of the web page, as well as the user interface, impact your ability to experience the content? If you have a minute, check out their Squash Glossary. http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/vegetables/squash-glossary.asp

Intimate Surprises
Talk about sexy. This company lets you subscribe to receive monthly gift packages with items that are “fun, sexy and unexpected – and designed for couples to enjoy together.” At first, our review team raised the concern that doing a content makeover for this page would be perceived as too easy. Who couldn’t do sexy content for a company that helps you have better sex? But the reality is that it wouldn’t be that easy. The content would need to be tasteful and smart, reflecting their brand. And it can’t give too much away. After all, it’s about surprises, yes?

Communicative Health Care Associates
Here’s how they describe themselves: “Communicative Health Care Associates (CHCA) specializes in full speech-language diagnostic services, therapeutic care, and hearing screenings and through our division, Allied Rehabilitation Associates (ARA), we offer comprehensive, multidisciplinary rehabilitation services including physical and occupational therapies.” Translation: They help people speak or sign, people who have lost (or never had) the ability to communicate and connect with their fellow man, and move their body without pain, either through injury, birth defect, disease, or old age.” What a wonderful service and company! This web page, which is truly dull right now, has the potential to tell a human and very moving story that will help their customers understand the great value of their services.

Leave us your comments on the finalists and share your ideas here!

1. Always use some sort of greeting. A simple “Hey (insert recipient name here), How are you doing?” will work wonders in putting someone in your favor. Especially if you’re asking for one.

2. Watch your tone. No one wants to feel like they’re being SHOUTED at via Facebook. Or made to believe that you’re excited about everything you’re saying!!!

3. Capitalize what needs capitalizing. As in proper names, days of the week, holidays, and the first letter of each new sentence.

4. Proofread. Even if it’s a quick glance over a short Tweet or post. Sometimes one misplaced, comma can throw off your whole sentence.

5. Say thank you. Make all your Mom’s effort worthwhile. Always try to end your writing, especially if it’s on Linked In, with at least a “Thanks” or “Talk to you soon.”

Thanks everyone. I hope this was helpful.

Talk to you soon,

Lindsey

The Incredibly Boring Web Content Challenge has been quite the intense process. The Captains have been hard at work reviewing one utterly uninteresting submission after another. The entire team has been working late nights, downing double espressos, and reading and re-reading until most of our employees have developed double vision. To see for yourself just how grueling the submission process can be, check out the latest video from Captains of Industry.

All submissions are due today (March 8)! So get them in to www.captainsofindustry.com/yawn while you still can.

We’ve received some great submissions to date and Intimate Surprises is definitely in the running, but there’s still time for your company to enter before the March 8th deadline. If you haven’t yet entered, submit now. Good luck!

The Most Boring Game Ever

When you’re bored with that, head over to the Incredibly Boring Web Content page and enter your submission!

Boston, MA: February 16, 2010 –Captains of Industry, in partnership with their media sponsor MarketingProfs, today launched the Incredibly Boring Web Content Challenge. The Challenge will offer one company the chance to have a piece of their most boring content Captainized for free, in the form of a web video, podcast, quiz or other engaging web media.

Here’s how it works. Companies can submit their dullest, most incredibly boring product or service to www.captainsofindustry.com/yawn. The Captains will pick the one that really makes them snore and Captainize it for free, making it ideal for effective inbound marketing campaigns.

“Even great products can sound dull if their story isn’t told well on the web,” said Ted Page, Principal and Creative Director of Captains of Industry. “The Incredibly Boring Web Content Challenge is a good way to demonstrate that it is possible to make any subject matter exciting and entertaining, helping clients attract the right customers to their sites.”

To enter, participants can send a link to the content they think could use a makeover to yawn@captainsofindustry.com by March 8th, 2010. It can be anything from a chunk of web content or a downloadable document—but participants must provide an active URL that is no more than 2 pages in length. To be eligible, the submitter must occupy an officer, marketing, or sales position at their company. Only one entry will be chosen for Captainization into an exciting piece of FREE content.

To learn more about the Incredibly Boring Web Content Contest, watch the Announcement Video and view the submission guidelines at http://www.captainsofindustry.com/yawn/.

Stay tuned for more updates about the Incredibly Boring Web Content Challenge at www.captainsofindustry.com.

About Captains of Industry
Captains of Industry is an independent marketing and filmmaking company dedicated to telling their clients’ stories, engaging customers, and getting results. The Captains have expertise in renewable energy and viral marketing and have created memorable work for clients ranging from First Wind, Alteris Renewables, and Deepwater Wind to Dunkin’ Donuts, Bose Professional Systems, and SolidWorks. In a BusinessWeek CEO Guide to Online Video, two of Captains’ campaigns were ranked among the top ten created nationally. Learn more at www.captainsofindustry.com or follow us on twitter @CaptainsBoston.

About MarketingProfs
MarketingProfs is a rich and trusted resource that offers actionable know-how regarding marketing applications of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media tools along with coverage of more traditional marketing topics, such as lead generation and email marketing. The MarketingProfs team is committed to helping you market your products and services smarter. Entrepreneurs, small-business owners and marketers in the world’s largest corporations make up our more than 350,000 members. Our library of more than 3,000 articles, online seminars, conferences, discussion forum, and special reports deliver the tools, templates, and tactics you need to quickly turn even the toughest marketing challenge into your own marketing success story. Follow MarketingProfs on Twitter @MarketingProfs.

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Picture a gangly teenage boy sitting in the back row of his science class, listening to his teacher, Mr. Powell.  At the time, I was compelled by my mother to wear hand-me-down bellbottom jeans, and they were too short, so I looked vaguely like someone from the Starship Enterprise. I was not particularly good at science, but I revered Mr. Powell and hung on every word he said. He talked about working two jobs. At night he was a meat cutter. By day, he taught at the Diamond Middle School in Lexington. He told us about his life, how exhausted he often was, and how too many people had forgotten the importance of working hard and giving it all they had.
Even with two jobs, he didn’t make much money. He was half-Italian, and spoke with his hands, jumping to new and fascinating topics like a maestro conducting an orchestra. No matter what the subject matter was (i.e. the chemical properties of hydrogen), he always seemed to come back to the underlying currents of his life, his family, the things that drove him to live right, to do the honorable thing, to stand up for his beliefs, to keep working 19 hours a day because it was necessary. And if we just learned that, we’d be ok in life. If we just learned to be good people, everything else would fall into place, just as molecules bonded to form compounds, or living, breathing matter.

I took his lessons to heart and have lived by them ever since.  When we tell stories on the web, or when we do anything in the world of communications, it’s really important to remember that the story we tell matters a great deal. But what also matters is the dignity, honesty, hard work and integrity we bring to that process. These things shine through in every story we tell.

To Mr. Powell, wherever you are today, thank you.