This question of content and engagement strategy gets at the heart of how a company succeeds in bringing an audience to their website, keeping them engaged and even converting them to an action.

I think content strategy development is all about discovering what people are passionate about, whether it's finding an answer to a question, or discussing the intricacies of a hobby or past time.

For example, if you want to get my attention, write a great case study on how a new marketing technique produced better results for your company. Even better, tell me a story about how an old marketing tactic still works and actually beats new techniques in terms of ROI. Yes, my passions are for the humdrum topics of marketing, PR, and social media.

Discovering what makes your audience passionate is rather easy in today's world of social media monitoring tools. You can use them to find the current conversations online about a topic, Visible Technologies, Radian6, Nielen Buzzmetrics and many others all help you to determine what your audience is discussing and writing about. And even who has the most influence on a topic, not just in terms of content, but engagement across their community.

The iPad is the topic of the moment in many technology and business circles. People are wondering if the iPad foreshadows another great change in publishing, or is a dead end because they suggest it flies in the face of the free web. Take either side of the argument and you will find passionate people, who either love you or hate you, but you'll certainly get people to listen.

Don't forget however, that online is not just about the content topic, but whether your audience wants to connect with you. You have to ask yourself, is your community passionate about you and your company?

If you sell Harley Davison Motor bikes the answer is a definite yes! But if you sell yogurt like Stonyfield Farms, writing about yogurt is not going to create passion around your brand. Instead Stonyfield has a dairy farmer write about organic farming, and readers can easily make the connection between Stonyfield being the brand that produces yogurt from organic milk.
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