More and more, I’ve been running into businesses that are using Internet data to drive their content marketing efforts. What this means is that instead of an organization creating content for their websites in the form of text, audio or video, they are generating content by extracting information (data) accessible on the web.

Two excellent examples of this are Webbed Marketing and Hubspot…

Webbed Marketing, an internet marketing company, created a very interesting tool on their website called the Webbed-O-Meter. The Webbed-O-Meter measures the amount of buzz your website is getting in the blogosphere by pulling in content from Yahoo! SiteExplorer, Wikipedia, Technorati, NewsPad (PRWeb), Feedster, IceRocket, Del.icio.us, Digg, Google, and Google Groups.
Junta42 scored a so-so 21.1 out of 100. According to the Webbed-O-Meter:

“Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. You’ve got some going right now. Interested in knowing who is talking, what they are saying and how to get more people Buzzing? Contact Webbed Marketing and we’ll help you get answers… and more Buzz.”

Regardless of the score, I love the concept, and the idea of attracting customers by offering a unique data formula set that creates unique content.

Internet Marketing Software company, Hubspot, has created a similar type of data-driven tool called the Website Grader. Website Grader pulls information from around the web to generate a report that measures your website against all others graded with the service. Here are Junta42’s results for Website Grader:

“A website grade of 99/100 for www.junta42.com means that of the hundreds of thousands of websites that have previously been evaluated, our algorithm has calculated that this site scores higher than 99% of them in terms of its marketing effectiveness. The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over 50 different variables, including search engine data, website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, and others.”

I’ve personally used Website Grader for about a year, both for myself and for clients. It’s an incredibly helpful tool. Hubspot collects an email address every time you do the report (so they can send you a link to the final report). Since Hubspot has had my email they’ve notified me of their periodic educational webcasts. I’ve attended a few (which were both excellent), and have recently looked into purchasing their software package.

Website Grader has been so successful for Hubspot, that they’ve created an interesting follow-up called pressreleasegrader.com, which (no brainer here) measures the probable effectiveness of your press release and grades it against the other press releases entered into the system.

Now that’s what I call content marketing.

I don’t know if data-driven content will ultimately be the killer app, but it is definitely something that organizations need to consider as part of their total online content marketing and custom publishing program.

Joe Pulizzi is founder of Junta42 Match and co-author of the book Get Content. Get Customers., which teaches businesses how to create their own content marketing strategies with step-by-step examples from companies doing it right.