there are a few things that a content hacker needs to be equipped with for maximum productivity.... here’s your new list of must-haves: - Content Marketers Alert: The New List Of Must-Haves — Marketing & Growth Hacking — Medium

Garnish your post with a photo of a cute little kitten and animal-lovers will flock to your button like zombies to a brain smorgasbord... good writing ... does not presently guarantee an audience on Medium... risks becoming a click-bait factory, a lame production line pumping out articles around the same limited themes...it needs to radically i…

As we head deeper into the annual bloodletting that is news media budgeting for the new year, here are 10 of my top questions that I think we’ll talking about into 2016.... (my faves): Vice, Vox Media, and BuzzFeed have seen hundreds of millions in investment... we have word that Business Insider will test reader revenue... Who will follow s…

ontent from my EuroPCom session on online communities, plus some takeaways and extra links.

This should be an exciting time. After all this is what we have wanted for so long. But it could prove dangerous if we do not handle it well... Instead of getting strong, clear direction about becoming digital first there is a vague vision... One danger is that the digital first vision fades before it can take root.... The second danger is it g…

information architecture has become ripe with myths... I want to take a few moments to dispel some of them.... People convince themselves that information architecture is about organising content in a logical way. It is not... people aren’t logical.... users need to be able to reach content in three clicks.... there is no evidence to support…

how do you tell the difference between a "ninja" and a "guru"? A "maven" and a "marketing expert"? For that, we've created a helpful guide so you can hire the social media bullshit artist that best fits your company's needs: - Pando: How to tell the difference between a social media maven, a ninja, and a guru

So, how did this local come by his expertise? Years of work in developing, implementing and managing integrated offline/online marketing strategies... Far-ranging, diverse experience in marketing? Extensive education in social media technologies and how/when/why to use them? Nope. He’s an expert because he has a popular Facebook page, which is …

With the release of its new Polls feature... you can now create super-simple polls directly on Twitter with just the click or a button or a tap on your phone... the ins and outs of Twitter polls, how to set them up, and nine engaging ways you can use polls today. - The Complete Guide to New Twitter Polls: What They Are, How They Work and 9 …

showing people what’s going on is much more important than being present in that moment ... What you fail to understand, what you’ve never thought about understanding is why you do it... Every stupid video is a waste of 3 minutes you’ll never get back, and every picture is there to show the 1% of your life where you can smile for the camera…

We form imaginary islands as safe spaces for our freak flags to fly free. Imaginary islands are unbounded by physical distance, as we unite with others of mutual interest and shared spirit across geographies. We form archipelagos of fellowship across expanses. Our imaginary islands can be open to everyone or hidden to all but insiders. - Imagin…

The hip but not trendy City Room launched on June 14, 2007, a year when “blogs were the wave of the future.”... The difference between a blog and a news site is no longer a meaningful distinction: all news is posted as soon as it breaks and is then updated. Just think: when was the last time someone used the word “bloggy” to describe the tone o…

Social media marketing software team admits they’re failing at social media marketing...The bottom seems to be falling out across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+... The Buffer team is running some experiments to try to determine the cause of this huge loss in social referral traffic, but I have a few ideas of my own ... - OMG. Buffer…

Where I think Circa took a step forward ... the idea that we could ... take ANY story and add a structured element to it — even if the only structure was “this item read, this item unread.”.. I do think there are a few concepts that Circa created and executed upon that were truly “inventions”... The concept of atomizing news ... allowing a r…

the next phase of Medium is about linking writers with brands, with Medium acting as the go-between, vetting creators. Meaning, in part, a native advertising hub filled with long-tail content.... There’s going to be sponsorships and branded dollars on the platform. Our vision is to connect quality creators with brands who may want to work with the…

the value of curation combined with a second, algorithmic step: personalization. Fill a barrel with the best of the best. Now when I walk in, based on insights about my taste and what I’ve selected in the past, choose *for me* from the barrel. Wow! Thanks! - Why I Unfollowed You on Instagram — Medium

There is no shortage of content aggregators and aggregators of aggregators... give us a better overview of all the sources of information we have subscribed to and found ourselves now depending on... Constantly checking our feeds for new information, we seem to be hoping to discover something of interest, something that we can share with our ne…

I’ve been thinking about the kinds of mistakes we make when pursuing happiness. I’ve been wondering whether the biggest mistake might be seeing happiness as something we should be aiming for at all. - Everything you think you know about happiness is wrong - Quartz

Think of an interaction as a conversation between your product and your user... if the conversation is boring, your user will eventually leave ... Without interactions, there wouldn’t be any delight in the experience. - The 5 Pillars of Interaction Design — Medium

I’ve been experimenting with online communities since 2002, and thought I’d seen every useful idea already implemented. Knowledge Hub (“K-Hub”) has a lot of features common to Community of Practice platforms, and have an interesting take on Blogs, which I’ve not seen anywhere else. And it’s almost excellent...

you don’t have to be overwhelmed by social media change, espcially if you can get your head around some fundamental truths about how the web works... if you’re spending all your time learning the shiny new thing, are you taking energy and resources away from the stuff that is really impacting your business? - Five ways to calm down and not …

I recently had a great live Hangout with Ezri Carlebach and Charlelie Jourdan to discuss visual communications, taking risks and creating energy in conferences.

… because in the past I used marginal notes to provide additional info, remarks and links without breaking the flow of my main text… Now it looks like I’m having a massively narcissistic conversation with myself & my Profile is a total mess

... because in the past I used marginal notes to provide additional info, remarks and links without breaking the flow of my main text.... I’ve just gone through one of my longest posts to turn all of my suddenly-set-to-Private notes into Responses. Now it looks like I’m having a massively narcissistic conversation with myself & my Profile is a…

VICE News, the journalism outfit within VICE Media's sprawling international empire, just added another outpost to its growing list of foreign editions... English-language expansions in countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom allow the outlet to operate for 24 hours... Each edition can also cultivate local sources by writing primaril…

Millennials — a massive, influential demographic that grew up connected to the Internet, social platforms, and smart devices... have expectations about the reliability, tone, transparency, sharability, and relatability of the content they engage with. Newsrooms must meet and build upon these expectations to captivate a generation that is shapin…

on top of Twitter, you can now create images with the perfect size and format for Facebook, Instagram, and even Pinterest. You can create the visuals, share them across all platforms and then analyze them with Buffer’s analytics to know how well they’re performing. - Pablo 2.0: Create Social Media Images, Perfect for Everywhere

There's no one-size-fits-all approach to productivity. Instead, we need to personalize our strategies for making the most out of our workdays so they're aligned with our cognitive styles—and that all starts with choosing tools that play to our strengths and preferences... because we’re inundated with "proven" programs, tips, and tools (backed b…

For its genre, Dorsey’s memo is indeed admirably brief and to the point. But it’s still riddled with jargon. Why is it so hard for executives to write in a truly straightforward manner? Here is Dorsey’s memo, with our suggested cuts in strikethrough and additions in bold. - Jack Dorsey’s jargon-free firing memo, edited to remove the jargon - Qu…

You might as well tell people what you’ve done. You might even transfer some knowledge.