In their book, Inbound Marketing(review), authors Shah and Halligan use a couple of acronyms that, maybe due to my military background, I thought could be improved. The first one was VEPA, which I thought made a lot more sense as PAVE. PAVE relates to qualities of a call to action, and it is easy to remember that if your call to action has these qualities it will PAVE the way to better results.

In chapter 12, the authors describe a “framework…for hiring and developing inbound marketing savvy employees.” Like VEPA, this four-letter acronym is a nonsense word, DARC. Again, it’s easy to see how this can be improved by converting it into an actual word, CARD, and then leveraging a common use of this word to really make the mnemonic stick by making it a score CARD or report CARD.

The authors already make the point several times in the book that it’s important and fairly easy to measure online attributes of web sites and key company personnel, so it only makes sense that the CARD qualities be measured as well. The qualities are:

Content Creators. At the heart of Inbound Marketing is the need to create remarkable content. You need people who can do this.

Analytical Chops. Almost everything related to online marketing is measurable, to the point where sifting through the data is a challenge, You need people who are skilled at analyzing data and finding out what’s working and what isn’t, without resorting to guesswork.

Reach on the Web. It takes time to develop a following online. Wherever possible, you want to favor candidates who have an extensive following online, particularly as it relates to your industry. You can easily track your key employees’ and prospective marketing hires’ LinkedIn connections, Twitter followers, and Blog Subscribers.

Digital Citizens. Hire marketing people who are fluent with the web, not merely familiar with a few phrases. If they’re not into RSS, twitter, blogging, and whatever the latest new thing is this year, rank them below other candidates who clearly live online.

So, use the CARD acronym to remember how to score potential inbound marketing hires. Who knows, maybe I can be involved in their next book as acronymsmith or something.