"With the launch of new site after new site in 2014, it's been a fascinating time to watch digital media try to figure itself out. Amid the turmoil of disruption, buffeted by tech companies' control over information distribution, but aware of new fields of possibility, the past few years were filled with defending legacy brands. So this new round…

“The top theme last week on my TumblrHub was content in its varied forms: content strategy, curation, audiovisual, storytelling, data journalism, user comments and more.” - first weekly review of this TumblrHub, posted on LinkedIn.

"Employees don't want to be "satisfied" as much as they want to be engaged. What they want most is a great boss who cares about their development, and a company that focuses on and develops their strengths." - Employee Satisfaction Doesn't Matter | LinkedIn

"Internal communications are responsible for engagement, which can enable employees to actively play a part in shaping the values and the type of experience customers have. Engaged employees who have been inspired and experience the vision, values and mission will then be strong advocates as they work and become involved in the brand themselves…

"if you co-create with your consumers, you are more likely to develop something that they want to buy; consumers are far more likely to be advocates and ambassadors for something that they have had a say in developing; the very act of engaging in a process of co-creation will increase consumer loyalty to your brand. Swap the word "employees" fo…

Apparently we are all now "little more than webs of flesh spun over packages of saleable data", according to a searing indictment of Google's anti-anonymity policy specifically. This is required reading for anyone interested in a balanced view of anonymity, privacy and public discourse: "The Google+ so-called "real name" policy can best be descr…

Particularly like reason 1: "1. Content curation provides a variety of perspectives. Offering diverse points of view enhances your credibility. This is particularly important on social media platforms where participants get annoyed with businesses that just shout me, me, me. " Remind you of anyone you know? - The Top 10 Reasons You Need Content…

"A single +1 from an authoritative Google+ account can propel a brand new site to a top 10 ranking with no other promotional activity involved, as long as the site being promoted is in the same niche as the Google+ account" - 8 Reasons Why You Need to Establish Authority on Google+

Good insights on combining editorial, programming and visual experts from NPR: "The multimedia crew wanted to make pictures and video that were truly web-native, which required web makers. And our news apps lacked empathy — something we’re so great at on the radio. It’s hard to make people care with a chart. Pictures were the obvious missing piec…

"The empowered consumer will bypass or ignore communications that aren’t relevant and don’t add value ... brands that want to be invited into the conversation will have to say something that’s worthy of their audience’s time and attention... there are some guiding principles behind great brand storytelling. Call them the 10 Commandments of Conten…

"When reading straight data, only the language parts of our brains work to decode the meaning. But when we read a story, not only do the language parts of our brains light up, but any other part of the brain that we would use if we were actually experiencing what we’re reading about becomes activated as well... it’s far easier for us to remember …

New report ”examines the current state of data journalism... calling for more transparency on how data is collected and used in journalism, anticipating an explosion in news apps as a way of producing information, and ways newsrooms can address security around their data and reporting. " In particular, I love this: "...the advice that newsroom le…

"I had been searching for some templates to make explainer videos for clients and my own projects and there are some good options if you are willing to sift through all the crap out there. If you know me, you know I research like a beast before buying something. I have Adobe After Affects and was willing to invest the time to get familiar enough t…

"An attractive CEO makes a company a more attractive investment, ... According to a 2013 study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, CEOs with more attractive faces tended to have better stock market performance in their first days on the job and also after merger and acquisitions. ... those CEOs' companies' stocks performed…

"Huffington Post’s U.S. site and mobile apps will shift to using only Facebook comments, CTO Otto Toth announced. “This is far from an an end to conversation; it’s the start of conversation where you want to have it — and where you’ve been having it already,” he wrote. Readers are having a Facebook conversation under Toth’s post, but many of the…

"We’ve been on Livefyre comments for a little under a year now, and while we weren’t the biggest fans of Facebook Comments* while we were using them, we’ve since realized that there is no perfect solution for commenting. And Facebook Comments, as troubled as they can be, are actually not that bad. ... until someone invents a perfect solution... w…

" a buggy Livefyre launch, with lots of you using it and breaking it, is still better than Facebook Comments." - Commenters, We Want You Back | TechCrunch

Since trying and half-rejecting Google+ and Tumblr, I've been accepted as a LinkedIn blogger. At least I never bothered with Facebook.

"marketers need to shift their SEO strategies to focus on user intent rather than keywords ... will have to consider their information architecture and the relationship between sections of their websites in relation to the intent of web users (i.e. is the search navigational, informational or transactional?) in order to deliver the most valuable c…

couple of good questions here: "2. What services do we need to provide our clients in order to increase revenues 10 times from our top 25 clients? Package and price multiple services from all service categories ... have upfront conversations with clients allowing them to select services from a menu of items. ... 3. How do we improve retention a…

"Though the political conversation about Europe has gained in importance everywhere in recent years, the truth is that Europeans are not having the same conversation. That is a serious problem for Europe’s leaders: the electoral earthquake is big enough for them to feel compelled to respond to their citizens’ economic and political discontent; but…

"The only kind of moderation that scales with the community is the community. ... Through the trust system, Discourse communities develop a natural immune system that repels the trolls, spam, and hate that eventually tear apart communities on other forum software. - Stack Overflow Founder's Next Big Thing: Reinventing Online Communities – ReadWri…

"companies will be able to operate throughout the region if they fulfill the interpretation of European rules from only one country’s privacy authority ... [so] technology companies ... could set up shop in the European country with the most lenient interpretation of data privacy." - E.U. Debates Which Nation Will Regulate Web Privacy - NYTimes.c…

Aug(De)Mented Reality- deliriously wonderful!

Useful trick to document your website's evolution: "Head on over to the Wayback machine and choose the Save Page Now option. It doesn't work on all sites, but if you want to capture content that might change, you can add a page directly to the archive and get a custom URL for it. If the link is a PDF, it will capture that as well." I just archiv…

"a team of 13 social-media and advertising specialists up to 45 days to plan, create, approve, and publish a corporate social-media post." Which did f*all online. It's when I see tweets like that - 45 days, 2 Faves, no RTs - that I'm thankful I'm not 'communicating' cars, 'engaging' consumers on soap powder or even tweeting about cheese. - Huge …

"Getting the bloggers to review and publish content about you is not going to be a walk in the park. It is not about you, it is about them. So you need to offer something of value to them." - 3 Social Media Tools to Identify Influential Bloggers - Jeffbullas's Blog

oor-er, they animated it. That makes it better.

"The experience of talking about race, ethnicity and culture on the Internet is nearly always deeply disenchanting. People don't even talk past each other; they talk right through each other. Prejudices harden. We find ourselves confirming our worst stereotypes of one another. And that's before the slurs fly." Some great lessons for making it wor…

Latest post on my shiny new LinkedIn blog. Read it, and resolve to stand out of the herd ;)