The articulation phase of the LEAD social media strategy has a direct impact on two parts of the marketing funnel.

Inspirational content will influence the user during the awareness stage and the consideration stage.  This is nothing new. Companies have been providing content in this manner for decades. 

In fact, the earliest magazines, including Ladies Home Journal were used to push content about advertiser products.  That said, consumers have become much more savvy when it comes to endorsed product pitches or blatant marketing messages, so it is important to provide content that is not a product sales pitch.  The early Michelin tourist guides are a great example of this sponsored but non-sales related content.

You can measure your success by correlating bookings or inquiries directly from content created for your blog or other third party sites.

For example, if you write a piece of content for a travel blog, make sure to use a Google Analytics referral code with the piece in order to directly track your conversions from these articles.  If your tour or activity booking software supports referral codes, you could apply a unique promotional code or referral code to your links to track revenue from these sources. 

If this is not possible, then measure your referral traffic through your analytics in order to compare direct traffic or organic traffic versus referrals from your blog or third party sites. It is important that this is measurable so that you can determine how successful your articulation practices are in terms of impact on your business.

Remember that, although the direct marketing costs are limited, there is a time cost associated with the successful implementation of the articulation phase. If you take the time to listen carefully to your audience and focus your writing efforts on addressing their specific needs, your results will be much better than if you simply attempt to write for the sake of attracting traffic.

Your posts and articles will be indexed very quickly and you should see alerts for the content almost immediately. Don't expect to see comments from readers right away. It will take time for your content to be recognized by others in the community. To improve your chances of being seen and heard by others, make sure to use your experience with commenting on other sites to draw more attention to your own posts. 

Some simple ways to drive traffic to your content include:

• Mentioning that you have written a post about a particular subject on another blog site.
• Contacting bloggers with whom you have created a rapport and asking them for their feedback on your posts.
• Sharing your post on Facebook or Twitter using the tools like Facebook share, notes, and Twitterfeed.
• Including a summary of your post in your monthly newsletter.
• Syndicating your posts through credible blog sharing sites like BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog, and Technorati.

The build it (or in this case write it) and they will come philosophy really doesn't work for social media.  With so many blog sites (many of which are spam sites) there is actually a decreasing likelihood that your content will be found if it is not good, relevant, and timely. 

Out of all the phases of the L.E.A.D. social media strategy, the articulation phase has the potential to have the most impact, but also be the most costly.  How effective your content will be is completely based on your commitment to writing good content and your consistency in producing it.

Stephen A. Joyce has been working as a travel & tourism technology consultant since 1995. In 2005 Stephen and his company, Sentias Software Corp., began development on Rezgo.com, a next generation Web 2.0 tour and activity booking engine for SME travel suppliers and tour operators.

In June of 2007, Rezgo.com was officially released and now boasts a user base of 900+ companies. Stephen is also very active in fostering tourism technology and is co-chair of the Board of Directors of the OpenTravel Alliance, a non-profit organization whose mandate is to develop and foster messaging standards for travel e-distribution.

http://tourismtechnology.rezgo.com