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Content Mission: Journalists See Online Strong and Offline Fading

Written on July 24, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, marketing

As the definition of a journalist gets stretched to the outer limits due to the proliferation of content farms and $10 per ‘article’ writers, it’s understandable that there is some concern in the ranks. It’s not there won’t be outlets for their work but it’s more about the state of the traditional outlets where most have made their living.

Mashable reports on a recent survey which reveal these concerns

In a survey conducted over May and June this year, PR network Oriella asked media moguls how the Internet was affecting their business, their publishing formats and even the quality of the content issuing forth from their newsrooms.

In a survey of 770 journalists across 15 countries, the company determined that, while media creators are slightly more optimistic than they were last year about maintaining revenues vis-a-vis the rise of online ad budgets, many are still worried about whether traditional media formats can succeed in the long run.

“Concerns about the viability of journalists’ traditional media channels (print, radio or television) have intensified,” the report reads.

Of course, loss of advertising dollars leads the way for concern about viability of traditional media offerings. Since more and more people are moving online for their news, there will be fewer dollars available from advertisers who can support the kind of staffs that these outlets traditionally require.

Since most people can see the chain reaction of these concerns the next obvious worry is if their traditional offline mediums will survive or just go away (if that hasn’t happened already).

In the end, there may be no stopping these sweeping changes. Many act as if it’s the fault of the traditional media themselves but it’s really just people changing and moving to where they are more comfortable. Online is that place and not’s because the traditional media was bad.
Where the trouble has come is the slow pace of adaption by traditional media of the online space. In essence, they have created their own troubles by waiting too long and having to react to this paradigm shift rather than help mold it.

Traditional media, for the most part, missed a golden opportunity. Why did they miss it? I think it was because they were getting fat and happy by being unchallenged at the top of the media heap for too long. At that point you can lose your edge. They have simply lost their edge. With businesses being run by human beings this will happen. Most people want to go into cruise control when things are going well but they unfortunately lose focus at that point and are vulnerable to being replaced.

Since I am part of the ‘new media’ side of the coin it’s easy to lob criticism at the traditional side of the media. The trouble with that is that I then become no better and could very well suffer the same consequences.

For new media to really thrive we have to stay on top of the issues that face our industry as well. The primary one that I see is maintaining a high level of quality. With content farms churning out content that is more of a crapshoot with regards to quality this can end up being trouble.

If enough readers and content consumers get burned they will look elsewhere for information. Delivery methods may change but quality never goes out of style. Right now, the online publishing world needs to be very vigilant regarding the state of the quality of content. There’s plenty of talk but little action and as the content farm mentality gains momentum the window of opportunity to take this problem by the horns is closing very rapidly.

Could the online space suffer a similar fate to the offline space? Could the proliferation of lower quality content create enough discontent amongst content consumers that they will look elsewhere? Of course, where are they going to look, back to the offline space? Not necessarily but they may have less patience thus making it hard for even online entities to keep advertisers interested.

So what’s your take?

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Content Mission: Journalists See Online Strong and Offline Fading

Social Media Pays: People More Likely to Buy from Brands they Follow

Written on March 17, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

A new study from market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies shows that social media might actually pay off—in real dollars in addition to the traditional branding and influence lift. The survey of over 1500 consumers showed that they were more likely to buy from and recommend brands they follow on Twitter and Facebook.

51% of those surveyed said they were more likely to buy from a brand after following them on Facebook; 67% said they were more likely to buy after following on Twitter. Brands also got a boost in recommendations: 60% of Facebook fans and 79% of Twitter followers were more likely to recommend a brand to their friends.

This is only natural, says eConsultancy:

The most popular reason people follow brands in social media is to receive discounts. But there were also many people who responded that they follow as a customer of the brand and to show their support of it. On Twitter, that reason was less popular. Only 2% of respondents followed a brand to show their support. More often, they are looking for discounts, new information and exclusive content.

That makes a lot of sense, as Facebook’s fan ability is more geared toward letting users express their appreciation for something.

And here’s our grain of salt: this is a survey. This only shows what people think they’re doing. It may be that people don’t want to admit they’re only following Nike to look cool. However, with questions like these, I’d assume there’s at least a little boost for the brands in terms of dollars and recommendations.

What do you think? Are these people accurately reporting their spending and recommendations?

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Social Media Pays: People More Likely to Buy from Brands they Follow

Google Sitelinks Come in How Many Flavors?

Written on December 17, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: book, seo

Google has long been known for having “10 blue links” and they have expanded far beyond that.

But even amongst the traditional listings there are lots of variations in how they are displayed.

Here is a regular result

with a second indented result

sometimes the second indented result can show inline sitelinks

traditional single listing with 2 indented results under it (and then sometimes a non-indented 4th listing)

traditional single listing with 3 or 4 inline sitelinks

sometimes that has a second indented listing as well

traditional single listing with 8 sublinks below it (and this often has the second intented results below it too…though in such cases it is not indented)

traditional single listing with 4 links under it (often with dates near them) for forums & some blogs

And the above does not take into account handling of domains vs subdomains (or http vs https), using breadcrumbs in the search results, insertion of additional data (like a picture of a video or reviews from micro-format data), other helpful links (like a link to the businesses location on Google Maps), and all the types of vertical search data (videos, music, movies, local, news, real time, shopping/product results) being pulled into the regular search results. And then you can layer personalization and localization on top of the search results as well as yet another layer of change. And don’t forget about any user based metrics or temporal metrics Google might be able to add with caffeine.

When you think of all the different ways data can be modified and displayed it makes information architecture a bit challenging, especially for new projects when you don’t know where you will be at in a year, how much the market will change in that next year, and how many additional formats Google will create between now and then.

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Google Sitelinks Come in How Many Flavors?

Google Feeds Its Spiders

Written on October 30, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

Just in time for Halloween, Google has given us a chance to put together a very timely and pithy headline (although I have to give credit where credit is due – hat tip to Andy). So how exactly is Google doing this and what the heck does it mean? In a nutshell, it’s a way to move toward a kind of ‘simulated’ real time search because the idea is to use its RSS/Atom feeds to identify and index new content more quickly. Is this replacing the traditional crawling technique of forever? There is no consensus on this aspect but it is obvious that Google is fully on board the real-time search train that is leaving the station as we speak.

ReadWriteWeb reports

According to a post on Google’s Webmaster Central blog, Google is now discovering web sites by automatically scanning RSS and Atom feeds. This new process will help Google more quickly identify web pages and will allow users to find new content in search results as soon as it goes live. While not exactly “real-time,” using feeds to identify updates to websites is an arguably faster method than the traditional crawling techniques Google has used in the past. And Google may get even faster in the near future – the post also notes that the company may soon explore using mechanisms like the real-time protocol PubSubHubbub to identify updated items going forward.

This is pretty nifty. Of course, the obvious question is how do you rank these new entries into whatever keyword clustered group the page belongs in? Just because they are the newest or freshest entries into a space by no means determines their relevancy and quality.

In fact, one could argue that real time could be a real pain in the butt because it could simply end up meaning that whoever is first is best. That’s not a good result. It’s kinda like saying that the kid in school who runs the 100 yard dash the fastest get the prize for Best Science Project. There is no correlation between speed and quality. It happens on occasion but it is more rare than one might think. Real time may be more suited for news and not for research. It’s too early to tell but these are questions that will be cropping up regularly moving forward.

The bottom line is that Google is going to be using all of its considerable resources to try to harness the new push to real time results. Once everything is gathered however then the fun really begins.

If I could be so bold as to make a suggestion I would like to see a “real time” search option and “traditional” one. I’m not sure there will be a real clean way to present real time results with those that are actually the best result without making the SERP’s a complete usability train wreck.

What are your thoughts on this one?

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Google Feeds Its Spiders