I’m very excited to announce today that SocialTract has been acquired by DigitalSherpa, creating the largest provider of content marketing solutions for small-to-medium businesses in the US.  We believe that the combination of SocialTract’s content-driven solutions with DigitalSherpa’s search, social and measurement capabilities will help take our customers in the HVAC, plumbing, medical-equipment and accounting fields to the next level.

More than anything, I want to thank SocialTract’s loyal customer base, especially those that started with us just less than three years ago.  Special thanks goes to Theo Etzel from Conditioned Air (Naples, FL) and Paul Wadsworth from PK Wadsworth (Cleveland, OH), who were SocialTract’s first two customers and helped us shape the service that is now SocialTract.  In addition, I’d like to thank Steve Lazuka and the Zerys team and Jim Cadena, who runs the Lennox premier-dealer program.

But most of all, I want to thank the SocialTract staff and advisors, both current and past, who helped SocialTract grow from idea to a service, and help us serve more than 200 customers with valuable, compelling content marketing: Beth Brinton, Janet Okoben, Jim McDermott, Ron Smith, Pam Kozelka, Joseph Kalinowski, Michael Weiss, Lynn Cole, Terry Tanker, Laura Byrom, Amber Terrell, Kristen Bohn and too many others to mention.

Here is the formal press release:

DigitalSherpa Acquires SocialTract, Creating the Largest Content Marketing Provider to Small-to-Medium Businesses in the U.S.

ATLANTA, GA, Jul 31, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — DigitalSherpa, a subsidiary of Network Communications, Inc., announced that it has acquired SocialTract, a content and social media marketing company specifically designed for service companies and small businesses. By combining resources and expertise, this alliance will make DigitalSherpa the leading provider of content and social media marketing services to small-to-medium businesses (SMB) in the United States.

The acquisition fits into DigitalSherpa’s strategy to provide an affordable Internet marketing solution for all types of small businesses. With the purchase of SocialTract, DigitalSherpa adds new relationships in the service industry, primarily with HVAC/HVACR and Home-Medical Equipment businesses.

“What makes SocialTract so attractive to us is how closely aligned our views are on the management of content marketing for SMBs,” states Adam Japko, President of DigitalSherpa. “Having implemented content and social media marketing at over 2,000 small businesses, we recognized the strong ROI that SocialTract provided its clients and how our social media management services could help activate their content further. This acquisition not only substantially expands our client base, but also allows us to bring in talented staff to make us the largest SMB content marketing business in the country.”

Key SocialTract staff will remain to ensure a smooth transition. This acquisition precipitates the upcoming release in a few months of expanded social and web marketing services that will help DigitalSherpa and SocialTract clients achieve new levels of Internet marketing ROI.

Joe Pulizzi, CEO of Z Squared Media LLC, the parent company of SocialTract, Content Marketing Institute and Content Marketing World, adds, “We could not think of a better content marketing business than DigitalSherpa to expand on the progress we established at SocialTract in the HVAC space. DigitalSherpa’s experience with small businesses across many industries, their foray into social media integration, and their approach to ROI is the next step for current and future SocialTract clients. It was a priority of mine to find a company like DigitalSherpa that understands content marketing at its most advanced levels, adds value to our clients, and gives the team that helped build SocialTract a positive professional environment.”

DigitalSherpa is one of the largest content marketing services for small businesses in the world, having initiated and managed content marketing and social media programs for more than 2,000 local businesses since its launch in August 2009. The solution was developed around the proliferation of blogs and other social media tools that made it feasible for small businesses to develop significant Internet footprints.