How the workout matrix is like a marketing matrix

In today's 2.0 blog-wiki-mashup viral marketing and social media world, a good marketing mix involves:

1. getting the right content for your audience
   
2. getting content distributed through the right mediums to capture your target audience (among hundred's of other marketing tactics)

One way to think of it is:

• A .com website is fairly static only changing with a web "facelift," product launches, and minor updates to pages; A good CMS can help a .com site get updated more often, but it's important to have consistency through look/brand/message
  
• Blogs that keep a community engaged and pushes people to the website(s) - posts include new and interesting offerings, community member interviews, cool use cases (beyond the "glossy" PDF'd use cases on the .com site), etc.
• A .org site that lives with the projects and/or products (for open source companies) and includes community interaction opportunities and documenation to help get users off the ground
• A twitter feed to push people to the blog and websites and to "talk" to media, partners, community members, etc. that map to the offering
• Facebook and/or Linkedin groups where people can interact, bond over the project or products, share stories (but drive use cases to the site and blog), and "hang" in the virtual world
• A podcast feed to give your offerings a voice
• Syndicated videos and content across pubs relevant to your site to engage prospects and push more people to your site

Some of this helps SEO through linking and text, some helps move people forward in a learning/purchasing process, and some helps drive raw leads through linking.

A good fitness mix is similar to a marketing matrix and involves:

1. Activities targeted towards your key sport (for me, running helps me run (duh) for some, sprint repeats and hoop practice helps basketball)
2. Activities that improve your core (not just literally (that too) but your general fitness)

From a runner's point of view, you could think of this as:

• Running in the environment you're going to race in (i.e. if you're racing in Hawaii, run somewhere humid)
  
• Incorporating hills and dirt trails (I'm a huge fan of the dirt) to help increase cardio fitness and improve your stride (yes! I think hills and trails help stride - I'll explain another time)
• Working on core - plan is my favorite here (this helps with posture and maintaining for the long haul ... er, run)
• Supplemental workouts (biking and swimming are mine - they get the heart rate up and fatigue different muscles than you use when running so you're not over-exerted for your next workout. These are great workouts to incorporate during marathon training - I've seen many athletes fall to shin splints or stress fractures from over training with running - if they got in the pool for one of their runs (and did pool running, not just laps), though, impact would be averted
• Yoga (I'm becoming a true believer here - yoga helps decrease stress and on the running front it helps open up muscles that have frozen - during a 1/2 marathon I once pulled my groin muscle; I had another 1/2 a few weeks later and by doing yoga I was able to alleviate the strain)

Some of these help running (or whatever the core sport is) through working muscles and form for that sport, and some help improve through giving the body a break, but still working cardio, when a break is needed.