Overview: Content Strategy

"To zero-in on exactly what you want to say, what you want someone to take away and what you want someone to do is critical but just the beginning ... you then need to distill everything into something snackable, engaging and shareable, the amount of work and thoughtfulness intensifies. Essentially, to visually communicate through byte-sized nar…

"While we've always loved a good chart and map at Vox, appreciating a chart or map does not data journalism make. Data journalism is not just data visualization... ... the explosion in data sources readily available on the web... can both aid in telling important and necessary stories, but can also be easily misunderstood and potentially manipula…

Good overview of Circa's approach: "A new model for online journalism is emerging, focusing on the atomization of news stories into “bite-sized chunks” of information aimed at mobile audiences."

" online comments can be worth having, if the publisher puts the work in." Excellent case study. Found this stat particularly interesting: "Users who log in, which is required if you want to comment, view seven pages per session on average, while non-registered users make it to only 1.7" I'd suggest that users who both view 4 times as much conte…

"What astonished him was the level of intimacy inherent in the form. After spending a decade in radio he had assumed that it was the most intimate medium, but he found podcasting to be one step deeper, in that listeners actively subscribe to a show and in doing so feel like they’re joining a club. " - Why Slate went all-in on podcasts while other…

~"Sleek and graphics-focused, the re-skinned Fusion will feature coverage of pop culture and tech, while also highlighting social-justice causes through verticals like “Justice” and “Voices.”... Part of our overall mission is to be a lab for experimentation and innovation for our parent company. Univision and ABC ... to reach this incredibly dyna…

"build[ing] our brand in the places [the audience] is spending time”—as opposed to publishing everything on a single website and hoping it spreads from there—is not strange in the context of television companies. They’re used to filling channels that they don’t totally control. ... Vox is now publishing directly to social networks and apps; BuzzF…

"Guardian digital editor Aron Pilhofer say killing off comments is a “monumental mistake.”... ... many traditional newsrooms are failing to take full advantage of the web’s ability to create a two-way relationship with readers, and that this is a crucial element of what journalism has become in a digital age... ... "You see site after site movin…

"Taboola isn’t the only company trying ... Outbrain, Gravity ... Google and Facebook have their sights set on the same goal... Google Now... will start recommending content from specific partners like The Guardian. The Facebook newsfeed algorithm is designed to do the same." - Taboola gets $117M in funding to build a Google Now for content — Tech…

Sound familiar? "All it takes is the retirement of one blogger ... and the social web explodes with a mixture of praise, recriminations, eulogies for the death of blogging..." Good piece on how blogging has evolved, in the process pushing forward the evolution of the online world. "bloggers stopped thinking as much about being part of a larger …

With a very nice longform, multimedia html5 presentation to boot. "In this bustling environment, there is less news and more noise. ..." More news but even more noise, rather.

"Condé will have editors from its fleet of magazines work directly with marketers to produce branded content.... ... raises another potential tension point: the extent to which journalists should be involved in the business side of publishing. In the media world, the two wings have long had a church-and-state separation." - Conde Nast Unveils Br…

"Twitter video allows users to post up to 30-seconds of video clips directly to Twitter... expect to see videos from live events and breaking news coverage ... also presents an opportunity for marketers to create unique content in a variety of ways..." Most intriguing suggestion: "Crowd-Sourcing Video Content" - Twitter Launching Video and Grou…

Interesting study of "whether having a video go viral leads to long-term success [defined as] increased activity with the brand on the whole.... After 15 days from the creation of a viral video, these brand YouTube channels receive virtually the same amount of attention ... before the viral video was posted... Our data does not support that vira…

Of them all, I particularly like the look of Write Or Die, Wridea & StayFocused, which possibly says more about me than my 5 latest blog posts combined: "These tools will not only provide you with a way to write down your ideas whenever they hit you, but will also enable you to organize your time better and start writing more content through a re…

"This video would have cost peanuts. Although it’s not something that can be directly applied to most of what we do, it’s here because of what it reminds us: there’s no better comms than filming people loving what you do. Unfortunately, you first need to give them something insanely great. The greatest communications can’t transform fish’n’chips…

"Starbucks’ first-ever brand campaign, Meet Me at Starbucks ... showcases stories of how people use Starbucks as a meeting point, with an emphasis on the idea that technology brings us together, but there’s nothing quite as authentic as an in-person cup of joe. ... an incredible job of striking an emotional connection with people by associating t…

"Taster is a place for the BBC to try new ways of telling stories, develop new talent, and put new technology through its paces. It also allows the BBC to showcase a range of editorial and technology projects that may have previously remained behind closed doors... Enables the BBC to ... innovating quickly, gaining valuable feedback and respond…

"many brands even ignore the importance of curation in their streams and instead continually talk about themselves.... Content Curation is the act of discovering, aggregating and posting online content that was produced by others... typically focused on a specific topic or small number of topics that are considered relevant to the audience you’re…

"Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos" Within 24 hours of this article's publication, Starbucks changed their scheduling policy. - Working Anything but 9 to 5 - NYTimes.com

"Uprising: Winner of the 2013 AAAS Kavli award for online science journalism." - The Environmental Scandal That's Happening Right Beneath Your Feet - The Matter Archive - Medium

"Vox is placing bets on political coverage that aims to break free from the echo chamber ... creating policy-driven campaign coverage by reimagining what a traditional political reporting team looks like.... At most news outlets, journalists who cover big policy issues like healthcare and education are kept separate from reporters who tag along w…

"With election season starting up, will we see native ads masquerading as independent political reporting?" - The Dirty Politics Of Native Advertising | Tom Foremski | LinkedIn

"In 2014, we published a series of posts to help marketers get back to the basics of content marketing or to improve what they are doing. In case you missed some or all of the series, here is a quick primer." - A Blueprint to Jump-Start Your Content Marketing Strategy

"Since Taylor launched an earlier version of the site at The Boston Globe in 2007, In Focus has known for longform photo storytelling, featuring huge, high-quality images.... If you’re pandering to social media, if you’re going for clickbait, it cuts away at any sort of storytelling." - Q&A: How Alan Taylor, online photography pioneer, is rethin…

"Rather than publishing and aggregating news on a central site, the idea is to take the information to existing communities on the web — distributed journalism... The specific focus is on providing context around breaking stories ... the number of sources and reporters on the story grew quickly over a number of days. That created challenges in se…

Came up with a winning communication strategy to promote worthy-but-heavy pdf reports from the European Commission.

Not just an interesting video about what neuroscience says about self-interest and compassion (and the lack of it amongst wealthy people!). Also a good example of how to maintain interest in a 'talking head' video interview through animation and video techniques. - We Are Built To Be Kind - YouTube

"The best infographics are clear, easy to digest, and eye-catching. But the process of distilling data into a neat little chart, bar graph, or venn diagram usually requires pages and pages of messy preparatory sketches, which are rarely seen by the public. Infographic Designers’ Sketchbooks ... take readers behind the scenes of the creative proce…

"Our hope with adaptive content is to tailor content to a customer’s experience, behavior, and desires... a culmination of ... experience maps, storyboarding, empathy maps — and what we’ve been saying for so long about creating an experience... ... we all believe that our experiences should be more interactive. Why? Smartphones." - 16 Stats That…