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Archive for the ‘Journalism’ Category

A panoply of podcasts on e-marketing Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Warning: shameless self-promotion alert!

Zazoo has been producing a series of podcasts on e-marketing for interactive marketing agency HotHouse. Here are some links to recent podcasts:

Also, visit the HotHouse blog for erudite commentary on the digital industry!


It’s not just me - no, really, I mean it, it isn’t just me! Friday, March 13th, 2009

Once you start getting involved in the digital or social media business, you tend to lose perspective. You can see all these cool things happening out there, and you’re linking up with all sorts of interesting people via Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook, and you get this feeling that, for once in your life, you’re riding the crest of a wave (forgive me if my surfing analogy is a bit skewiff, but I grew up in the land-locked American Midwest) and involved in something with enormous social and business potential.

Meanwhile, your family and friends shake their head when you tell them what you do all day and wonder what on earth is the point of linking up with people you don’t know from a bar of soap and exchanging 140-character missives on Twitter that are largely on the topic of Twitter. It’s a good reality check to engage with the ‘real’ people in your life and see that, just maybe, you’re overestimating the effect and potential, and  that most people couldn’t care less about digital communication.

Well, a new report just published by NetPop Research shows that YOU SEE, I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG - DIGITAL SOCIAL MEDIA IS EXPLODING! Yes, it’s a US report and Australia is further behind this curve, but get a load of these numbers:

  • More than 100 million Americans are regularly posting material to social media sites - that’s one-third of the population
  • Use of social media has doubled in the past two years alone
  • 7 million people, known as ‘power users’, interact with about 250 people a week via digital social networking (yes, that’s more than 30 people a day)

See Mum, I didn’t waste that college tuition by spending my days surfing the Internet!


Shirt-folding beats political history Thursday, December 11th, 2008

Attended the Thoughtworks Quarterly Technology Briefing in Sydney yesterday, where the heads of News Digital Media (Sue Klose) and Fairfax Digital (Pippa Leary) outlined developments in online media in Australia, and picked up some interesting facts about Australian online media consumption:

  • There are two spikes in visits to online news sites - at the beginning of the workday, when people check the news headlines; and at lunchtime, when they eat lunch at their desk and go for more entertainment info and videos
  • 35,000 people watched the live stream of Barack Obama’s victory speech on Fairfax Digital. That same day, a video on the site about how to fold a shirt was viewed by 39,000 people
  • Fairfax is claiming 2 million unique user per month just to its business and finance content, with 25-30 average page impressions per user
  • Online video advertising is expected to reach US$2.9 billion in the US in 2009 - 13% of the online advertising total - but the figures for Australia are expected to be only a fraction of that

Web analytics - the most important ‘W’ Monday, November 24th, 2008

Last century, when I was back in journalism school, they drummed into our (then long-haired) heads the fundamentals of a good story: the five Ws and one H - who, what, when, where, why and how.

The same basic principles apply to many facets of the Internet, not just writing copy, but also understanding web traffic. British Internet psychologist and writer Graham Jones recently posted the following on LinkedIn that is worth reproducing in full:

“All methods of analytics miss out a vital ingredient - without which the analytics are largely worthless. None of the systems explain the motivation of your web site visitors. WHY did they visit? That’s THE most important piece of information you need, yet all we get from analytics software is WHAT they did - and to some extent - HOW they did it. Although this provides some useful information, it fails to beat in-depth visitor analysis using surveys which can get at the motivation of visitors. Once you know the motivation you can gain a deeper understanding of how to improve your site. Without knowing the reasoning behind a visitor, you can only “tinker” with the site. If an enterprising software engineer were to work out how to track motivation online - that would be a breakthrough that would revolutionise analytics.”

This is what companies need to focus on when looking at web traffic and trying to work out how it benefits their business. It’s not easy, but understanding and acting on the ’soft stuff’ is what will help companies set themselves apart from their competitors in the increasingly complicated marketplace. You shouldn’t ignore the hard numbers, but you need to blend them with a deeper understanding of your customers and their motivation.

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet answer to this. Each company needs to work out its own framework that meshes with its corporate strategy and the structure will depend on the things that are most important to that company. But the insights that can be gained from this approach are well worth the effort.


Digital business model - but who profits? Monday, November 17th, 2008

Vin Crosbie from ClickZ writes that media and digital publishers have been ignoring the obvious  business model for online publishing all these years - aggregating all content and allowing users to choose what they want to read/view. Think iGoogle, on a wider scale.

Traditional publishers toyed around with this concept years ago, but as Crosbie points out they never picked it up and ran with it because it would mean collaborating with their competitors (I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago in a post that was inspired by another piece Crosbie wrote).  He calls it “not mass media, but individuated media on a mass scale.”

I understand what he’s getting at, but, frustratingly, he doesn’t go into details about how people actually make money out of this approach. One reason traditional media companies didn’t go down this route is that they correctly realised that if they just shift their traditional advertising models to the web in a format that shares profits with all the players, none of the players is going to make anywhere near the same revenue as they used to. To me, that’s where the digital business model is still missing - what do you make money out of besides banner ads?


Sacrificed on the altar of the market Thursday, November 13th, 2008

Like a Molotov cocktail hurled into a crowd, Publishing 2.0 blogger Scott Karp has ignited the already heated debate about the future of journalism and publishing with his most recent post, entitled “The market and the internet don’t care if you make money”.

He’s pinched the title from Seth Godin, the marketing pundit who is peddling his latest book Tribes, but Karp takes the idea and runs with it in a long screed about how the Internet has broken the newspaper industry’s business model, a topic about which plenty of people including myself have written about ad nauseum. But Karp offers a detailed and particularly articulate discussion of this issue, writing that “Nobody has the right to a business model - Ask not what the market can do for you, but what you can do for the market.”

As usual with this sort of thing, the comments are as entertaining and thought-provoking as the blog post, and as a former journalist I can relate to the responses from people in the traditional media. The words of Thomas Jefferson, author of the American Declaration of Independence, still echo in my ears as one of the main reasons I got into the media business: “Given a choice between a government without newspapers and newspapers without government, I would not hesitate to choose the latter.” The media have an important role in informing society and keeping governments honest. But while Jefferson specifically mentioned newspapers, if he was here today I think he would understand and approve of the Internet and blogging. It is the same principle he was talking about back in the 18th century - free speech. Whether it’s Rupert Murdoch or Ariana Huffington or Joe Bloggs exercising that right doesn’t matter.

At the end of the day, say what we will, the market doesn’t care about ‘quality’ journalism and comprehensive local news coverage. We collectively need to find a model that works in this new and changing environment. I agree with Karp that a future business model lies in the power of networks, not the power of monopolies.


Collaboration is the future Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Vin Crosbie has dug up some interesting history in a recent piece for ClickZ. He writes about how, 13 years ago, major media groups in the US attempted to get together and aggregate their stories into a (then huge) news search engine, so that people would come to one spot to look for news.

The consortium, called the New Century Nework (NCN), also planned to create a classified advertising search engine that would draw its content from all those dailies. And it planned to create a single advertising system that would allow advertisers to place banner ads to across any geographic or demographic strata of those newspapers’ Web sites.

As Crosbie writes, “Unfortunately, the nine major newspaper companies were more used to competing against each other than cooperating. With some exceptions, they didn’t loan their best new media personnel to this cooperative effort. They weren’t able to agree upon a CEO from among their own companies for the consortium, ultimately having to go outside and pick an executive without any background in either newspapers or online. Then, when the consortium began launching its services and earning some money, the companies argued with each about who should get what share, despite previous agreements about that. All the while, each of the companies was progressing with its own new media plan that would each compete with their cooperative effort.

So what happened? Within months of launching its first services, the NCN imploded. Within months, Google was started, and it soon launched Google News, which aggregates news stories from all over the world. Meanwhile, the local classifieds service Craigslist grew virally to the point where it now offers free classified advertising for tens of millions of users around the world.

As Crosbie writes, “Nothing today is causing more destruction in the media industries than the companies within each of its sectors failing to cooperate fully with each other. You don’t get to build the world of the future by competing tooth and nail.”

The community-based nature of the Internet and its agnostic approach to information mean that if you want to get ahead, you have to get along.


Like it or not, it’s business time Monday, October 20th, 2008

There has been a lot of debate in journalistic circles of late about the state of denial most journalists and media academics are in regarding new media.

A recent blog on Poynter.org recounted an exchange between digital media entrepreneur Elizabeth Overholser and journalism students at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism. Osder refuted one student’s lament that online news business models aren’t working. Then she advised the students that to figure out which online business models can work, ”Start with the impact you want to have. Figure out what audience you need to assemble to have that impact. And what kind of content is needed to do that. Then price it out: How much money do you need to do it?”

According to Overholser, a J-student groaned in reply, “If I wanted to do that, I’d have gone to Marshall (USC’s business school).”

Osder countered that while that response was understandable, thinking through the business side of journalism “forces you to be relevant and useful versus arrogant and entitled.”

I say: hear, hear! Journalists need to get their head out of the sand and embrace the Internet, because, like it or not, it is changing the face of journalism. Being a good writer isn’t enough in the 21st century; you need to be able to write web copy, operate a blog, do your research and link out to your sources, even use a video camera.

Like others who have been writing on this topic, I blame the university programs, who are still churning out journalists who are too “good” to do anything other than report and write.

Much as it pains me to say this, as someone who grew up and started their career believing in the purity and hyperspecialisation of journalism, the Internet, new ways of communicating stories, and citizen journalism are all a fact of life today, and journalists who won’t admit this and who won’t widen their perspective and their activities will end up bitter and unemployed.


Ginger, or Mary Ann? Sunday, October 5th, 2008

I have been reading the Copyblogger blog for a while, and it’s obvious why it’s rated as one of the top blogs for writers - it consistently offers practical, commercially-focused advice on how to the writing business. It often uses analogies from popular culture to get its points across, such as “What Fight Club can Teach You About Innovative Content” and, one of my personal favourites, “The Jim Morrison Guide to Strategic Content Promotion” (I am a complete Doors tragic).

Today’s entry is no exception: “Is Your Blog Ginger or Mary Ann?” Every male of a certain vintage can appreciate the iconic appeal of the two young females from Gilligan’s Island (let’s not talk about Mrs. Howell - shudder!). As Sonia Simone writes in this Copyblogger entry, Ginger represents the kind of woman men want to have an affair with, while Mary Ann symbolises the type of woman you want to marry. I never picked up the Jungian nuances of Gilligan’s Island when I was a lad, but today it’s obvious - but no less potent.

Anyway, what the hell does this have to do with digital content? As with other posts in this blog, Sonia does a good job of relating this to two types of successful blogs - the edge-pushing, paradigm-shifting, outrageous kind, and the practical, relevant kind.

As many of the commenters on this entry write, most people imagine themselves as a little bit of both (personally, I fancy myself as a bit more like The Green Hornet, but that’s another story). But one thing is for sure: I will be thinking about Ginger and Mary Ann the next time I post a blog entry - and that can’t be a bad thing!


Digital transformation still slow Saturday, September 27th, 2008

Rebecca Lieb, writing on the ClickZ website, rightly observes that it’s high past time that the advertising and media industries fully embrace digital solutions. She writes, “It’s not just old-timers on the traditional agency side of the equation who are stubbornly resisting the shift to digital. It’s an issue across the media landscape. Their reluctance was perhaps somewhat understandable in the go-go ’90s and in the sober, austere, bleak era around 2002. But now?

“Still, I’m seeing traditional publishers cut back on digital endeavors (and digital staff) in a desperate and futile effort to sustain their flagging, dead-tree legacy brands. I’m seeing digital executives going to senior management with requests for back-end tools, such as content management systems and social media software, only to learn their corporate overlords have no idea what all that stuff is, much less what it’s actually used for or how it can benefit the business.

“And I’m seeing some of those print publications flatline. Friends who have been print journalists for decades are panicking in the face of cutbacks, early retirement, consolidation, and plain old extinction.

“But they’re not learning digital skills. A critic friend stays up nights over the fact his paper is due to shutter at month’s end. When I inquired about his online skills, he replied that even the most fundamental elements of a story, such as hyperlinks, were determined and executed by the online editor. He doesn’t know how to do any of that stuff.”

I’m happy to report that not everyone in the advertising and media industries in Australia over the age of 30 is a techno-Luddite. But a lot more needs to be done to encourage them to embrace digital formats and produce new ways of communicating ideas that capitalise on these new formats, rather than continuing to produce digital creations that are still rooted in traditional thinking.

Gen Y is not reading newspapers anymore. They’re watching TV without ads, via DVD or DVD recorders, They’re staying away from websites that throw pop-up ads at them. Those of us who grew up with traditional forms of communication are still in the majority - but we won’t be for that much longer. As Lieb says in the headline of her article, “Digital or die”.


Porn loses its lustre online Thursday, September 18th, 2008

I have found a new favourite technology writer - Robert X Cringely at Infoworld. His recent article “Is Sarah Palin more popular than porn? Search me“, is a hoot. He cites a new book by Hitwise general manager Bill Tancer, which shows that searching for social media is now more popular than searching for porn online. As Cringely (yes, that’s his real name, not a pseudonym) writes, “‘As social networking traffic has increased, visits to porn sites have decreased,’ said Tancer, [who] indicated that the 18-24 year old age group particularly was searching less for porn.

“I’m guessing Tancer has not visited many social networks, or that all his Facebook friends are old farts. Because when you’re age 18 to 24, social networks ARE pornography. In fact, they’re better. Have you seen some of those profiles? Two words: humena humena.”

I never knew how ‘humena humena’ was spelled before - you learn something new every day!

He goes on to write about something (or someone) else who has gone on to become more popular than porn on the Internet: Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

“Hitwise also measures the most popular searches for political terms. You can guess which lipstick-wearing pitbull of a hockey mom tops the charts there. Per the Washington Post: ‘… in her first two days in the national spotlight, US Internet searches on all things Palin outnumbered any other politician in the past three years…. In many cases, her name was searched alongside the word ‘hot.’ I’m guessing that also includes searches for Palin’s head photo-shopped onto various nude or bikini clad models.

“Does that qualify as porn? If so, I think Tancer needs to revisit his conclusions about social nets.”

A geek with a sharp sense of humour - got to love it.


Hire a journalist for top content Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

From The HubSpot Internet Marketing blog:

“At the Inbound Marketing Summit last week, marketing guru David Meerman Scott encouraged business owners and marketing executives to ‘hire a journalist’. What was he talking about? More than 10,000 jobs have been cut this year at U.S. newspapers, and Scott sees the ‘dire situation for many reporters and editors as a tremendous opportunity for corporate marketing.’

“Why? Because journalists are trained to write, edit and, above all, tell stories in an even-handed way.

“‘Hiring people trained in journalism sounds like a good idea for marketers - they’ll be getting someone who’s more likely to be comfortable writing for a general audience, simplifying tricky concepts and telling stories,’ says Jon Fortt, a senior writer at Fortune.

“In the new world of inbound marketing, that’s what you need to do. You can’t interrupt potential customers with ‘marketing material’, you have to create rich, interesting content, that attracts people to your web site. You have to create content that’s useful to your customers, not gobbledygook about your product. Having somebody on your team who can do this will set you apart from the competition.”


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