Overview: Content Strategy

"Marketers and PR professionals are hard-wired to put the product/company first. Journalists put the consumer first.... journalists should be in the box seat when it comes to running a newsroom - be it for the media or a brand." plus 5 or 6 more reasons, spelt out here - Why a journalist should run your brand newsroom | LinkedIn

"Brands that try to get in on the social conversation around 9/11 can come off as crass and opportunistic. " "can" come off as crass?? Really? This is the crassest thing I can imagine. - This Guy's Replies to 9/11 Brand Tweets Sum Up Everything That's Wrong With 9/11 Brand Tweets | Adweek

"Displaying data can be a tricky proposition, because different rules apply in different contexts. A sales director presenting financial projections to a group of field reps wouldn’t visualize her data the same way that a design consultant would in a written proposal to a potential client. So how do you make the right choices for your situation? …

"Chartist is noteworthy because it doesn't just make existing charts smaller or bigger, it changes the the way the data is displayed so that it makes sense on whichever size screen it's being viewed on. A chart showing each of the 12 months along its x axis when displayed in a full-width browser window, for example, will change to show only six m…

"I do think that as waves of smart people hit the limits of their frustration with Twitter and Facebook, many will look around and realize, hey, this blogging thing still makes a great deal of sense. "

Nicholas Carr is: "By Big Internet, I mean the platform- and plantation-based internet, the one centered around giants like Google and Facebook and Twitter and Amazon and Apple. Maybe these companies were insurgents at one point, but now they’re fat and bland and obsessed with expanding or defending their empires. They’ve become the Henry VIIIs…

"There is something about the personal blog, yourname.com, where you control everything and get to do whatever the hell pleases you. God, yes - see Where to find me, Oct 2013: http://mathew.blogactiv.eu/2013/10/02/where-to-find-me/

"People are talking about blogs. Again! And not just random nameless “people” cited in some clueless trend story. Specific people are talking about reviving their actual blogs. In some cases, they are even following through."

"Facebook seems to be trying to get more transparent about how the algorithms ... function, with a statement on Monday about cracking down on “clickbait.” ... But despite the attempts at openness, the bottom line remains the same: Facebook is a black box. No one really has any clue why the site chooses to show or hide certain content... what com…

"Few pieces of journalism — let alone narrative journalism — effect change in a matter of hours. But that’s what happened with “Working Anything but 9 to 5,” ... A rare combination of intimate narrative and exposé, Kantor’s Aug. 13 story followed a tumultuous month in the life of Jannette Navarro, a young single mother struggling to make ends me…

"Google Stories and ... Hangouts on Air will both play a role in initial experiments ... "Say the council is shutting down the swimming pool," she said of how Hangouts on Air may be used, "we can get a member of the community to talk to the chief executive of the council, what their plans are, why they're doing it. Then we can take that, repackag…

"I honestly doubt that there is an algorithm in the world that can reliably surface such unexpected content, so well. An algorithm ... cannot surface unexpected, diverse and sometimes weird content exactly because of how algorithms work: they know what they already know.... Twitter brims with human judgment, and the problem with algorithmic filte…

"Government around the world is pretty good at thinking about its own needs — they often put their political needs followed by the policy needs. The actual machine of government comes second. The third need then generally becomes the system needs, so the IT or whatever system’s driving it... the user comes a poor fourth, really." Turning that ups…

"The Guardian released a beta version of its new website to get reader feedback as it continues to tweak its design.... Content discovery is a major focus ... “container model” allows the paper to implement a responsive design while also retaining a story hierarchy, user experience director... Each item contains a story, which are put together…

While possibly a bit naive regarding Facebook's motivation for crucifying organic reach, some good points here: "- Talking doesn’t equal connecting: It seems that many brands take their audience for granted. Liking a page doesn’t always imply interest. ... - Paid reach won’t substitute for great storytelling: While paid reach might get more visib…

"3 main talking points of why your B2C clients should want to work with bloggers."

It wasn't supposed to be this way... "The internet is ballooning with fluff, and bad content marketing is to blame. In our obsession with "engaging" our "audience" in "real-time" with "targeted content" that goes "viral," we are driving people insane... Although word on the street is that people want short, “snackable” content, the data says…

Unsurprising that LinkedIn promoted this post.... the comments rapidly turned into an interesting conversation on Linkedin v. Facebook... people seem to comment more on LinkedIn posts than elsewhere. Perhaps the return of blogging that people are starting to talk about is next.

Thoughtful longread on the past (and future?) of longreads - i.e., blogging. Plus a hint that Vox's Chorus CMS may be getting wider use in the future... "Today everyone in the media world is launching email newsletters... Great. But what I miss from emails is the sense of community, the shared experience... Obviously Twitter replaced parts of t…

Sonar Solo allows you to search any topic to find trends and influencers about any subject, in real time. Sonar Solo visualizes what’s on people's minds right now, by combining data mining, trend intelligence and advanced sentiment analysis on the world's social media chatter.

Beat this: "Each day, HBR.org publish five to seven pieces of top-notch content with a staff of fewer than 10 full-time digital editors and no full-time writers ... four million unique visitors every month." What really stood out for me was how they get the "expert take", using the Content Partnership model I used when trying to decentralise com…

Kepler’s Tally of Planets is a wonderful NYTimes.com interactive feature: "NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered more than 950 confirmed planets orbiting distant stars. Planets with a known size and orbit are shown below" - Kepler’s Tally of Planets - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

A wonderful presentation from Jonathan Corum, science graphics editor at The New York Times, on creating infographics and data visualisations that truly add value: "Sometimes, I feel more like a translator than a designer. Trying to translate the point the scientist is trying to make to a wider audience, and removing all of the jargon. ... If I …

“Horses aren’t unemployed now because they got lazy as a species, they’re unemployable. There’s little work a horse can do that do that pays for its housing and hay.” Are you next? Probably. - Humans need not apply

At least 1 year's reading right here: " ... the main projects, events, new sites, trends, personalities and general observations that have struck me as being important to help further the development of this field." A well-timed survey, given the recent publication of the UpShot's opus on the US economy and other daa visualisation ventures. But t…

"Because blogging isn’t new and hip, many people dismiss this form of content as less effective.... Blogging is a great front door for any individual or organization because it is real estate that you can own.... Contrast that with social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and G+. All are good, but you will never own your real estate the…

"We are moving toward a new Internet paradigm where Google responds to questions with answers, rather than redirections to bog-pits of branded content – and marketers loathe it.... People want to read things that are relevant, interesting, and not predicated on barely veiled advertising guile. Mercifully, search engine technology is catching up. T…

"... envisions a Yahoo that’s as ubiquitous as computers seem destined to be. Phones, watches, public terminals, brain implants — Yahoo wants to be able to deliver content to all of them... Yahoo Labs’ biggest focus appears to be on machine learning... a dedicated machine learning group based in New York; ... “hardcore science and some theory,…

"But the ramification of this fundamental shift in design is that we now consume content in headlines, thumbnails and mini descriptions. According to a recent study by Copyblogger, on average 8/10 people will read headline copy, but only 2/10 will read the rest. We have all become headline hunters." While I dispute the idea here that Facebook inv…

Awesome takedown of native advertising. Via AdAge.