Overview: Content Creation & Marketing

It’s tempting to merely argue that the recent crop of newsletters are what came to replace the independent blogosphere of the mid-aughts.... take a look at the subject lines for several of the newsletters ... Any web editor who plugged these as headlines into a CMS would be summarily fired... why are readers responding so well when they fly in th…

ThinkUp analyzes your Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook activity to give you fun and surprising insights, then emails them to you (or tweets at you if it's super interesting).

Facebook’s Notes feature is giving The Boston Globe another way to post directly to the Facebook platform... Notes, an early Facebook staple, stagnated for years until last September, when Facebook updated the feature with a cleaner, more customizable design and editing tool reminiscent of Medium. Unlike video posted directly to Facebook, there’s…

Betts ... became the first data head to join the publisher’s board, recognizing data’s importance in growing its subscriptions and audience. Today, he heads up a 30-person team focused on customer analytics and research. Here are lessons from Betts on data maturity and driving audience engagement... While subscriptions are critical ... it’s not t…

For some news organisations, packaging and distributing news on social media falls under the remit of the engagement team. For others, the task is assigned to a distributed news team or to a social content studio within the editorial department.This is the third in a series of articles on how news for social is produced... BuzzFeed Distributed i…

the hallmark of a good branded podcast is that the marketing is subtle... this is something where you want to build a long-term relationship with people. It’s not about short-term conversions, or anything like that, but about having an amazing first experience with a brand.

Publishers are placing big bets on social platforms like Facebook and Snapchat, praying that fishing for audiences outside their owned sites will eventually pay off in new readers and advertising... it’s still a gamble... payoff in audience and ad dollars is uncertain. Plus, fishing expeditions are hardly free. Hiring more staff is just part of t…

Rather than paying to be sandwiched within ad breaks and between editorial pages, brands can communicate directly with consumers. Unfortunately, the result is often a longer form version of the same old ads. Marketers need to change their approach. Here are four questions that will help you create a viable strategy... ... done effectively, people…

I’ve just spent a few days running the Discovery phase of a new project to further develop the communication strategy of an EU Institution, with a particular focus on retooling its online, social media and publications tactics. Apart from focusing on developing a new information architecture, I’m running the overall project. This means not only en…

Reposting your blog on LinkedIn and Medium is a no-brainer. Which is precisely the problem - it takes no brains.

We’re all rushing to create piles and piles of content to serve our customers, upkeep an online image, and create more brand awareness. Despite that... people targeted aren’t “taking action”. Visitors come and go and analytics aren’t great ... Content marketing cannot be all about your company and fulfilling company needs... Get rid of excessivel…

the number of marketers who consider their content marketing effective dropped by 20%... content generated by the brands increased by 78%... the number of interactions by followers FELL by 60%... “Marketers are getting better at distributing content, but are not getting better at creating content worth distributing.”... marketers are under p…

The 12-person unit, called the social stories team, includes a variety of roles: writers, animators, graphics professionals, and producers, who create and package content for Instagram, Vine, Tumblr and Snapchat Discover.

How can you make your social visuals more compelling?The Media Octopus put together an information-packed infographic on the importance of social visuals. It contains a lot of great advice and creative ideas for marketers looking to up their visual game, including these four tips for visual social success:

the first crux of Harcourt’s argument: The expository society exploits, rather than represses, our desires. The second ... government and commercial surveillance infrastructures have wholly merged.... Harcourt’s analysis hinges on desire: We want to participate, we are impelled to do so, and we like it. But it seems to me we are as much compelled …

By the time Cameron wrote “Orbital Content” in April of 2011, almost all visits to A List Apart and zeldman.com were triggered by tweets and other third-party posts... SO JUST WHY are we afraid of Medium?

"I’m posting different things in different places, not just reposting the same thing over and over" - in response to Shel Holtz and Dave Winer on Medium

When you put your life online, people think they know 80% of who you are. But internet personas are really only 20% true.... “It seemed like you were using personal experiences to gain approval from ‘the internet’  ... I wondered why the approval of your friends and family wasn’t enough. It felt like a distorted version of you"

benefit of building a brand that audiences recognize ... allow us to build a strong revenue model and a strong connection to an audience. If they see us on Snapchat and Snapchat has a very large audience, then they get to know and trust Vox and see it as a source that they care about... think about your brand as an interconnected ethos that should…

first U.S. newspaper and first business publication available on the platform ... (U.K.’s Daily Mail is also there).... team consists of five people who will publish eight items each weekday ... “a mix of core coverage, such as Markets, Business, and World news, and the luxury and lifestyle features that we believe provide the perfect snackable c…

In which I studiously avoid curating anything about 2016 or David Bowie.

The DMC is a practical guide to develop a strategy to accelerate business growth. It's made for anyone in the company to get around the table. Marketers, Entrepreneurs, Developers, Designers, Sales,... It's a tool of co-creation. Brainstorming as a starting point, the digital strategy is the finish line. As you go to through the process you'll lea…

Social media platforms are built with all the insidious effectiveness of gambling machines, but it is possible to come out in front.

What started as 10 things from 5 publishers you trust has turned into 20 things from publishers competing for your attention ... the savviest publishers realize that the cheapest way to produce more is to repackage the work of others. So the quality of the average thing in your feed is getting worse... The social media site ... keeps track of what…

For 20 years, the media and marketing world has been beholden to the pageview, a deeply flawed metric that only captures the most superficial impression of how people behave on the Web.... proxy metrics such as shares and likes have proved inadequate as well...

There is no public measure of your ego on Snapchat. No “54 likes” 13469 followers or “423 comments”. When your reader sees your post it doesn’t tell him or her the size of your ego.It’s a huge difference with LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Those three keep reminding you how important the person you’re reading is ... the Snapchat user doesn’t care …

On Tuesday, the American people will see a multi-platform streaming and social broadcast of the State of the Union that reflects the ways people experience live events in 2016. We’ll be reaching people where they are — and making it possible for them to engage, respond, and share the President’s speech themselves in new and different ways... vide…

bringing new technology into the newsroom to change how the outlet commissions and publishes opinion pieces ... expand the coverage beyond just text, into visual story formats that can be accessed and shared across different platforms.... the FT's comment section is a "huge source of strength and a very valuable asset".... a new Facebook commu…

A brand is a unique set of associations in the mind of a customer... Mention a luxury brand like Rolex and the associations that spring to mind are likely to include wealth, prestige, status, craftsmanship, heritage, exploration. Whatever your take on someone who sports a $30,000 Daytona, it’s probably going to be different from what you think whe…

society had a pretty straightforward system of rewards: you give us something of value, and we’ll heap praise on you. It’s a fair trade ... that most social media gurus ... are unwilling to make ... insist on trying to “hack” the system... sheer laziness... shortcuts to notoriety rather than slowly, painstakingly, lovingly crafting something of va…