Overview: Content Strategy

Great "best of times, worst of times" piece on storytelling. Not just worth a read, it's worth learning the formula. An example: "Our access to knowledge and stories has never been greater, and it’s growing every day.... "21 things only a 90s kid can appreciate” will probably get 50 times more traffic than a post about climate change or political…

"Bloggers aren’t journalists or employees – they’re independent souls who have built a following by keeping their readers interested, amused and engaged. They don’t like to be controlled or deceived, and they definitely don’t like you to waste their time. Forgetting this will get you into trouble" - 6 Do's And Don'ts Of Blogger Outreach

"the impact of IoT won’t be the Things, it will be the way the data can be analyzed to shape downstream innovation.... data from the highway department ,,, perfectly predicted the housing boom and bust, with an approximately six month lead time." - Trawling with Engines of Meaning — Work Futures — Medium

"Stacy sits down with Google Ventures to share her perspectives on startup hiring, leadership, and more." Also a good example of video journalism, but a comparison between total Reads (as measured usign Medium's womderful metrics) vs number of views of the embedded videos - i.e., do people watch them, or just read the textual summaries? - Manage…

"Each day Clippet offers a selection of 10 news stories digested into one-minute audio clips. " - UK startup Clippet targets millennials with audio news to go

One of those projects you feel privileged to work on. It’s not often you get to experiment with crowdsourcing, augmented reality, faceted search and commemorating US war dead in one project.

"All interesting theories are an attack on the taken-for-granted... We accept beliefs that align with our biases, but reject the value of these findings. Why? Because they don’t teach us anything new. In order to grab the attention of an audience, you must make a proposition that negates an accepted one."

The Journalist's Toolbox

"a year after Russia swallowed Crimea, the EU is moving into the propaganda business in a bid to win an information war it is currently losing... the EU’s spin-team is to be largely made up of the same civil servants who have so miserably failed to convince the bloc’s own citizens of the benefits of Europe. Having worked with EU officials for alm…

"Facebook is ... aiming to be the Internet equivalent of a broadband provider — providing the means by which all media is published and accessed. Here’s what brands and publishers need to know ... - Facebook urging publishers to post their articles and videos directly to Facebook... - For publishers that use Facebook for their comments sections,…

From 360-degree to Buzzwedge, a guide for the perplexed: - 10 Content Marketing Buzzwords You'll Hear Way Too Much At SXSW

"There are some choice accessories that will take your Meerkat and Periscope performance to a new level of professionalism. From devices that turn your iPhone into a mini video rig to grip-anywhere tripods, check out these accessories that will make your live streams look and sound better. " - 5 accessories to improve your crappy Meerkat videos

"Most visitors to departmental and agency content want to see what the current position is, so there is a need to manage historical content. Users expect this to be available. In the past there have been different approaches to this. Having a single government website gives us an opportunity to make this consistent, manageable and effective for u…

"One of the most frustrating things about reading (or listening to) science journalism is trying to resolve contradictory claims. Coffee is good for you; no, it’s bad for you... Eating meat is good for you; no, don’t eat meat! Some people, like many of those who oppose vaccines, ease the tension by deciding that science is all relative—just a ma…

Good reading for anyone communicating on an issue like science - or indeed the EU: "The problem is that he delivered his argument by targeting the most admirable hallmark of the scientific method: uncertainty in the face of incomplete evidence. And that makes his essay a pernicious attack on science itself. Bilton’s argument follows a familiar f…

"But Meerkat, which designed to work exclusively with Twitter, has taken off because its simple interface makes it almost effortless for anyone to start broadcasting. Users say it also owes its popularity to the evanescence of its recordings. Once a user records a stream, it’s impossible for other Meerkat users to watch it afterwards. Meerkat is …

"A Content Marketing Roadmap (CMR) is a strategy and game plan for content production and publication, usually for a three-month period. Its purpose is to take the guesswork out of blogging and lead generation and to, with every piece of content written and published, be working toward a goal." - What is a Content Marketing Roadmap? | Amanda Shaw…

"many marketers have a problem getting out of the corporate-agenda mentality. Especially when it comes to producing content that will resonate with their audience and be shared by their audience. Storyboarding is a fantastic way to get to storytelling... storyboarding is likely to unveil epiphanies that lead to your storytelling... allows you t…

"Images with text over them ... do make a post more enticing to your followers or friends... Buffer's Pablo, which creates these images, out of beta." - Buffer Officially Launches its Image Creation Tool Pablo

Nice infographic on the science behind storytelling, and how to apply it to presentations: "A story doesn’t spark agreement or disagreement but rather participation… igniting 7 parts of the brain… testament to why as humans we love stories…"

"Google is now clearly marking websites in mobile search results that it considers mobile friendly and if that tag isn’t getting displayed around your content, your website may see a drop in mobile traffic. Responsive design is definitely the way to go but will that be enough. How do you confirm if your web pages are considered mobile friendly by…

"the Internet has dismantled newspaper’s geographic monopoly & business model ... & also upended the core assumptions underlying the actual journalism ... BuzzFeed as an organization has been figuring out what works online for over eight years now, and while “The Dress” may have been unusual in its scale, its existence was no accident... BuzzFee…

A typically good piece of data journalism from Guardian's Datablog: "The number of people employed on zero-hours contracts reached 697,000 in the fourth quarter of 2014. See the characteristics of people employed on zero-hours contracts in four charts " - Zero-hours contracts in four charts | News | The Guardian

"the system ... counts the number of incorrect facts within a page ... by tapping into the Knowledge Vault, the vast store of facts that Google has pulled off the internet. Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth. Web pages that contain contradictory information are bumped down the rankings." - Google wan…

"some people have the sense that data somehow makes designers less powerful, that you’re basing decisions based purely on mechanical measures rather than designer intuition and genius... data is what ... turns designers from artists into the most important decision makers in a company... prototypes can really only get you to local maxima ... the…

Good case study, concluding with observations on the role of journalists which also apply to government communicators: "An engaged journalist's role in the 21st century is not only to inform but to bring readers directly into the conversation through... real-time coverage, alternative story forms, crowdsourcing, beat blogging, user-generated co…

I freely admit: I've been a fanboy of the UK's Government Digital Service (GDS) since studying their design principles. Those principles are still good. Everything else, it turns out, was not.

"...the trick with content marketing is that it's a long game.... it can take months to build a backlog of great, search-friendly content.The great thing is, once that content's written, it'll work for you over time by accumulating traffic and generating leads... I’ve been inspired by BuzzFeed and other popular online content platforms, whose les…

"Crowdsourcing is not about work. Crowdsourcing is about community. Without a solid community, you get not-solid results from your crowdsourcing endeavor.... The goal of many of these tactics is not to stop assholes from being assholes, just to slow them down and demotivate them from destroying your community." - Crowdsourcing isn’t broken — Bac…

"This interactive project lets you step into the shoes of the president of Azerbaijan and assess how the decisions you make influence your popularity in the country" - President for a day, via https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/online-storytelling-ideas-from-hackastory-hackathon/s2/a564037