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Great digital startup success story: The news site for young people secures investment. A little over six months ago two young journalists sat down at Google Campus in London and discussed how to build a news site for 18 to 25-year-olds with articles written by people in that age category. Under the mantra "don't publish anything boring", Planet Ivy has grown into a site with a network of more than 150 young writers publishing around 80 articles a week between them and reaching up to 400,000 unique users a month. Six months on and back in at Google Campus, where the three paid employees of Planet Ivy are based, the founder and the editor of the title told Journalism.co.uk about the site's model and how they have received investment from an angel investor and from Ascension Ventures....
Great question: Why would anyone talk to a journalist today According to Gallup, 60% of the American public has little or no trust in news media. Audiences and readership have been declining, as trust in media has been eroding. In the same survey, 30% of people surveyed told pollsters they had abandoned a media outlet because it no longer provided information they found useful. I realize there is a big dose of self-interest in this post. I make my living teaching people to communicate with journalists. That doesn't mean the three reasons below are less valid. There is still value in talking to reporters....
But one quick glance at your computer screen or smartphone will tell you that the news media has changed enormously in the last 10 years. What began as two separate worlds – “ traditional media” and “online media” – is now thoroughly and completely transformed into one seamless media landscape that continues to morph and change as new technologies come online and users discover new ways to engage. At the same time, the public relations tactics needed to sweet talk editors and writers into covering your news have remained surprisingly constant. What’s changed more than anything are the pitching targets and pitchable opportunities. Here are five things that haven’t changed about media relations, and then five things that have...
I If you are serious about turning a blog into income and then your business, then laying the right foundations is important. It means sitting down and doing some planning. It means asking some questions What am I going to focus on? What should the branding and design be like? What should I develop it on? The list goes on. If you do mean business then you need to create the right framework and foundation for your blog. A framework for the future Sometimes a little thought, the right framework and resources can be time saving and stress relieving in the long run. Here are 10 key building blocks to get you started....
Everyone wants to cut the fat from their work flows. Good news: Applying lean methodology to your efforts is simple, and can result in more effective content marketing. Use these 6 steps to go lean...
Via Ally Greer
Bookshelves are designed in our homes, schools, offices, libraries and companies to keep books, office files and other documents at place. Today, bookshelf is not just a piece of furniture rather it has also taken a form of art.
Via Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com
Think of web television as a nuclear family. It all started with TV — the traditional type. Along came the web, which, in many ways, was TV’s polar opposite: interactive, responsive, progressive. As much as TV was about tradition, the web was all about change. From this unlikely pairing came little programs that, when viewed together, make up an episodic web series, or webisode. Webisodes share some of the attributes of each of their media parents; yet they also bring a whole new generation of brand storytelling opportunities to life. It’s this pedigreed combination of the web and television that some big brands are experimenting with as a way to provide distinctive and uniquely engaging content to consumers. As one of the most engaging forms of branded content, the episodic web series has a lot of appeal. For example, just like a TV miniseries or a series of books, a good web TV series can help forge an ongoing relationship with target consumers: Once viewers have been drawn in by the entertainment value of a webisode, they’re likely to stick around to see what happens next — and to visit related YouTube channels, Facebook pages, or other touch points that are part of your branded environment. They’ll get to know your brand a little better. They may even start to like it more than they realized....
Most businesses need employee participation to create quality content. Two methods to leverage the content marketing potential of employees.... In order for most businesses to create a lot of high quality content, employee participation is necessary. I’ve said many times, no marketing department is big enough to produce all the content it needs. Additionally, consider that in most businesses the marketing team is not comprised of domain experts. Here’s what Forrester Research says on this topic: “Today’s B2B buyer will find three pieces of content about a vendor for every one piece that marketing can publish or sales can deliver. They are finding this content in an ever-expanding number and variety of channels.” The way I see it, there are two primary methods to harness employee involvement in a social business. One involves a carrot and one involves a stick....
Just because the social fanbase is hanging out in different places, doesn't mean brands can't build effective campaign bridges between those fragmented audiences.... Recently, Champs Sports, ESPN.com, General Electric, and Cole Haan, among others, added their Tumblr addresses into display and TV ads. Tumblr has been a destination that's "on the up" for some time, having now grown to over 102 million blogs, so this brand attention isn't surprising. Media fragmentation - consumers accessing digital sites from an increasingly diverse set of screens - is well-acknowledged. But now we have social fragmentation as well. B2C social is no longer just Facebook and Twitter. For brands looking to drive awareness in the consumer space, it's a social patchwork of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and YouTube - each with its own zeitgeist and rules of engagement. Social fragmentation has resulted from consumers having myriad interests, flitting from place to place, following friends, following trends, following celebrities, leaving cohorts they are "done" with, and moving on to fresh groups and new identities. And everywhere, there are literally thousands of brand messages a day competing for their attention. Brands must be consistent, clear, and memorable to stand out in the cacophony of messages being delivered to these fragmented audiences hanging out on multiple social platforms. In the "old" days, brands could run campaigns on their websites/microsites, use offline and online paid media to drive traffic, and consider that to be "digital mission accomplished." Then, brands could safely add in Facebook and Twitter and consider their social plans nailed. No more. So what are some practical choices available for marketers to deal with social fragmentation?...
Disappointed by the SEO you hired? You’re not alone! A good number of our clients are coming to us having been messed up by some rather unhelpful “seo"... ...Confession: I really struggled to find the word “inadequate” to describe the SEO work that I’m talking about. I started with “incompetent”, thought about “lousy”, “deficient”, “unqualified” and “incapable”, and then finally landed on “inadequate”. I’m trying to use a term that includes some innocent deficiencies, and that doesn’t imply a conscious effort to scam. Tell-tale signs of an inadequate SEO Here are a few things that I’m spotting as I review the SEO work that’s been done for our clients prior to their coming to us for help. These are the things that have hurt our clients, and sometimes our clients have been the last to figure it out....
Video is powerful because it shows there are people behind your business, which is important for building a strong brand that people can relate to. But how can you integrate it into your content marketing strategy effectively? Know Your Audience Before you can put together a video that will be relevant to your audience, you need to know precisely who that audience is. It’s important not to try to appeal to everyone – instead, figure out your archetypal customer. Two tools to help you do this are Sally Hogshead's 7 triggers of fascination and a simple guide to creating a customer persona. This’ll smooth out the rest of the process, because it’s much easier to figure out what to say to one person than to 1000....
Not that long ago we started distinguishing between owned, earned and paid media but how real was that? Media evolutions that scare me.... If you’re looking for tips and tricks regarding the evolutions in brand journalism and the usage of content marketing (oops, I used the term) in branding and PR, don’t read this. If you want an opinion (mine, that is) on the dangers of some content and media evolutions, read on. I have a good friend who’s quite cynical, even more than I am. He sees marketing as lying and making people pay too much for products. I can’t even blame him. As a former journalist and publisher but at the same time a marketer, I’m in a constant state of duality regarding the role of both journalism/media on one hand and marketing on the other. And in this “digital and social age” it’s getting worse. If you know part of the role of a publisher (read on) you’ll understand that duality. Also look at the number of journalists becoming “content marketers”. Are there still journalists in fact? I never read a story about a “content marketer” becoming a journalist. Especially phenomena such as brand journalism (for later blog posts) and converged media confuse me in an ‘ethical’ way. Marketing is business. Brands are business. Media is business. Brand journalism is business. If media converge, do we still have credible media? Each time I preach people-centric and human marketing, I hope you keep that in mind. We are not doing business for a greater moral cause (although we can, more than ever)....
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Simon Dumenco deconstructs the culture of the global news conglomerate that billionaire Mike Bloomberg whimmed into being. Remember that time Bloomberg News got caught using subscriber information from Bloomberg data terminals to spy on the financial industry? Oh, right, that pretty much just happened. But conveniently for Bloomberg, a bigger journalism-related scandal -- the revelation that the Justice Department was spying on the Associated Press (a story that will haunt the Obama administration forever) -- broke, overshadowing the Bloomberg scandal. You may have missed Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief Matthew Winkler's admission and apology, titled "Holding Ourselves Accountable," that was published in the dead of the night last Monday -- at 12:11 a.m. ET. In it, he owned up to the fact that Bloomberg News reporters had access to "limited client information" for Bloomberg's financial-data-terminal business, a sibling division of the Bloomberg empire that serves more than 300,000 subscribers on Wall Street and beyond....
How we consume the news has changed dramatically over the years. With the rise of social and information networks like Twitter and Facebook, we now have access to our own crowdsourced news wires. Add to that an army of applications reinterpreting the magazine and newspaper for mobile and tablet forms, and what we have is a news media renaissance that puts the reader's interests above all else. Should you prefer to discover news through social connections, you can turn to Flipboard, Smartr or XYDO. If you want to consume news from just the publishers you trust, then you'll likely develop an affinity for Pulse or FLUD. But if you'd rather your application tell you what to read, Zite may be right for you. And, we're just getting started. What follows is a collection of 13 different apps and services that provide you with alternative ways to consume news....
Yes, social media play an important role in your digital channels, but they are outposts meant to bring traffic to home base: your website! During Social Media Marketing World event in San Diego last month, Chris Brogan gave a provocative session, aptly called: You Aren’t Going to Like This: Social Media Isn’t the Answer! It echoed what I strongly believe and what I tend to recommend during my consulting with clients in the travel and hospitality industry. In essence, social media are an important part of the digital channels an organization needs to embrace, but they are mere “outposts” in your communication mix, part of a bigger, four-step approach which can be summarized as follows...
Traditional media is on the decline and we can now identify "influencers" with relevant content pipelines to help us. Now what do we do about it? All the old “pipelines” for our content are drying up. So one viable alternative is to borrow somebody else’s pipeline. Today, bloggers, podcasters, and home video producers are gaining consumer mindshare through their passionate and entertaining content. No wonder this is the new media gold rush — influencer outreach. I have a 360-degree experience with this trend as I strategize with clients, advise agencies, and become a target for outreach programs myself. And what I see is not pretty. Sure we have tons of content. We have lots of wonderful new alternatives to identify influencers. Now, what do we do about it? I think the core competency that needs to develop is a mindset transformation from a “purchaser of ad space” to a “developer of relationships.” Here is a model to get you thinking about this in a new way.... Will it be celebrity, advocates or influencers?
Discover 60 of the freshest stats and facts on social media strategy, including Twitter integration for easy sharing!
Tell me the truth - is there such thing as a social media statistic that isn’t mind-blowing? The growth of major networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ has fundamentally changed the way we connect with our friends and brands in less than 10 years time. When I was in college, Facebook was a status symbol for students. Now, it’s one of the world’s biggest information highways. Join us to discover 60 of the most surprising stats we’ve encountered lately:
The media constellation has become increasingly fractured. The Web produced the initial fissure, but mobile created new cracks in the landscape. Today, no single medium earns more than 45% of our media consumption. How can you solve this problem? Social media offers a solution....
To help you keep up to speed with what’s going on in the field, we’ve assembled some of our case studies, statistics, infographics, opinion and best practice blog content all in one place for you to digest at your leisure. You could even bookmark and share this page to add to your ninja toolset. And if you’re going to be applying for one of the social media jobs advertised on our digital marketing jobs board, these posts will help you brush up and look smart. Read below for more…
You've seen videos of people doing ridiculous things on the Internet. But you probably haven't seen too many videos of small businesses sharing their good work. Web video is more or less the domain of the ridiculous — whether that means something cute or something painful. Even top ads and commercials have a touch of the absurd (Old Spice, Dos Equis, I'm looking at you). So how does a small business compete with disturbingly low attention spans and a whole Internet of viral videos? Read on for five ways that small businesses can take advantage of web video without blowing their budgets and let us know your own success stories in the comments below....
I first started to dabble with content marketing in 1998. At that time, I worked in the internal communications department for an insurance company. Our goal was to get the employees to use our internal processing and database services, rather than outsourcing. Our solution: We created a monthly print newsletter focused on educating employees on the latest Microsoft Office updates and enhancements. Over the following six months, employees did start to use more of our services. The newsletter was part of the solution that made this achievement possible. Now, 15 years later, I’ve seen all sides of this little, booming industry, and it has afforded me a bit of perspective. We’ve come so far, and yet there is still so much to be accomplished. Here are some of the things we (at CMI) have learned along the way. I hope you find one or two helpful nuggets of wisdom in here....
The social media movement born of Alan Jones' sexist comments had huge early success, but its clicktivists' wings have since been clipped. It was around the year of my birth that Philip Morris began a campaign to seduce its female smokers. In an era largely untroubled by my pregnant mother's cigarettes, the Virginia Slims campaign was, in itself, unsurprising. What was surprising was the company's use of a ''women's libber'' to promote its product. This was the first time feminism sold anything to anyone; apart from its core principles, I suppose. Since then, the idea of an emerging social freedom has been used many times to sell women face cream and alcohol. The ''you go girl'' message has been successfully co-opted to bring my gender high heels and financial services and small cars. Because you're worth it. These days, women are still buying back their own dissent from advertisers. But things are different now. In an age of social networking, where so many of us feel we are in ''control'' of our media, the way to a lady's wallet is a more difficult business....
Traffic is the lifeline of a blog; if you don’t have it, you don’t exist. Most people rely on the mighty search engines for their traffic. But there are other ways of getting traffic to your blog by utilizing the power of social media. The role of social media sites is front and center when it comes to driving traffic to my site. The most popular ones include; Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in descending order in terms of traffic. This means that Facebook is the biggest traffic referrer to my site, other than the search engines. But how do I really do it?...
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It's all about providing consumers with meaningful content when and where they want to consume it...