Overview: Content Creation & Marketing

As Michael Silverman puts it, "a brilliant online community has more potential than your current social networking strategy", and he isn't even talking about EU communications. The only downside, not mentioned, is that convening a community requires: - web publishing technologies which do not date from the previous millennium - real online commu…

"We explain the European court of justice ruling saying that Google will have to delete some information from its index – and why it has divided opinion" Good example of explainer journalism, and of how answering the comments often looks like more work than writing the thing in the first place (if you don't believe me, scan the comments): - Expl…

"... technical weaknesses in the paper’s backend: The lack of an organized system of tags to organize stories’ metadata ..."

Content shock defined - a lot of content to consume triggered by this post, which is ironic: "the volume of free content is exploding at a ridiculous rate... our ability to consume that content is finite. There are only so many hours in a day... This intersection of finite content consumption and rising content availability will create a tremor …

"When someone sends you any attachment via email, you can save it straight to your Drive. Hover over the attachment and you'll see the Drive icon. Click on it and place it where you like. " - 8 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do With Google Drive

Pin this on your wall: "some answers for the ideal lengths of tweets and titles and everything in between..." ... including title tags, email subjects, blog post lengths and a dozen other critical pieces of content.

Have you found the best hashtags to reach your audience? If you have, you should consider starting to gather in-depth intelligence about them. To get the latest trending hashtags related to #hashtags, updated daily and based on a full sampling of tweets, check out our professional hashtags analytics solution CyBranding Hashtag Intelligence. - See …

Building links to your site is a critical part of online promotion. A good article on some techniques *beyond* blogger outreach: "Here are just some of the wealth of link opportunities that are out there in almost every market: Resource pages Forums Directories Professional organizations Events Submission-based Press"…

"Stephanie shares how marketers can make the most out of the LinkedIn publishing platform." - LinkedIn Publishing Platform: What Marketers Need to Know | Social Media Examiner

"There's no such thing as "perfectly optimized", but I took a stab at drawing up the mythical beast anyway: "... I first saw the "perfectly optimised page" infographic on Twitter, but discovered a much richer, larger article on Moz. In itself, this is a great use of infographics and data visualisation - the infographic stands on its and has bee…

Place all your content eggs in someone else's basket, you'll get what you deserve. Facebook it, after all, a business. Some basic advice here, but it amounts to the same thing: monitor, optimise & diversify: "Facebook organic reach was around 6% in February, 2014 — a decline of 49% from October. For brands with more than 500,000 likes, the fall-o…

Reflecting Shirky's (pre-Twitter) observations about reciprocity, social media and traditional media, Slate reframes how to view Twitter. Worth a read: "Twitter is not a social network. Not primarily, anyway. It’s better described as a social media platform, with the emphasis on “media platform... Social networks connect people with one another…

When planning a social media campaign around user-generated content, first ask yourself how your users see you ... "The initial photo posted by the department was friendly enough: it featured two smiling officers flanking an equally happy member of the public, with a message that asked followers to post pictures with the hashtag for use on the NY…

"Marketers now have a very real option to bring the majority of their media agency work in-house. If agencies want to maintain relevance ... [they need to] break down the silos they’ve spent the last two-plus decades creating.... The silos will come down one way or another. Smart agencies will dismantle them by design; the rest will crumble under…

My second post as an accredited LinkedIn blogger covers how to apply to the Platform, and provides a look at the blogging interface

LinkedIn posts are open to the public, even those not in your LinkedIn network, so you end up with a public blog page, over which you have no control.

The bandwagon effect about the plague of social media experts seems to be coming to a close, at least in corporate USA

... (if it ever was)". I wonder how long it will take the Brussels Bubble? "Have you watched somewhat helplessly these past few months as your Facebook interactions dropped rapidly? Has the "reach" of your posts dipped as low as you've ever seen it, no matter how great your content is? It's not your fault. It's Facebook's fault. And they're do…

" If we wanted more email subscribers, we’d have to make it easier for people to subscribe." Quartz's new approach to enewslettre subscription, which has seen daily subscriber rates double since February, is like the 'Quick Subscribe' feature I always propose for online community sites: - some users may create an account to subscribe, but most wo…

"It’s hard to fake being useful. You have to know what you’re doing, from your strategy all the way through your execution. But when useful content is so important to your credibility, it’s hard to justify anything less. ... How do you make content useful? ... craft it with users’ real needs, decisions, and questions in mind" Insight 2 from resea…

"E-mail remains a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than social media—nearly 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter combined " McKinsey continues with some basic rules for email communications, with brief case studies. Particularly like the impact of customising emails, something we did with the INFSO newsroom over 10 years ago…

Social media 101 perhaps, but worth sharing: "So what can you do to improve your SMO strategy and start generating some positive social signals that will produce powerful results for your business or brand? ...: - Reputation – building a strong reputation online that will have visitors viewing you as a trusted, reliable source. - Engagement …

"Crafting the perfect pitch: Create a message, tailor it to your audience, and include a call to action. Journalists, bloggers, and other PR pros receive dozens of email pitches a day. To make your pitch stand out, take a page from movie marketers. They’re experts in capturing the audience’s attention in three minutes or less and leaving them on …

Maybe the EC should focus on being useful online, rather than being trendy on Facebook? From the ever-good Digital Tonto: "Brands need to become publishers [who] begin with an editorial mission ... [so] stop thinking about content and start thinking about what you have to offer the world ... stop thinking about promoting and start thinking in te…

There are more good recommendations in here than can be summarised, but if I had to choose one, it's: "Integrate the developers and editors, from where they sit to whom they report to. If you’re going to do social journalism well, you’re becoming a technology platform company... Almost all the important breakthroughs in social media have come fro…

"we're expanding LinkedIn's publishing platform and testing a new feature that lets members write longer form posts about their expertise and professional interests. Posts are shared with your network and the LinkedIn community, and become a part of your LinkedIn profile. " - LinkedIn's Publishing Platform - Overview | LinkedIn Help Center A…

Good perspectives on the limits of audiovisual content re-use: "editor-in-chief of NowThis News ... stressed the need for publishers to create content on a platform-by-platform approach ... bearing in mind the wider context of how content is shared on different networks." In reality, this is no different from text content re-use. You don't necess…

"He says that his goal is to capture the readers attention like these [clickbait] articles, but then get them to interact, think about, share, and meaningfully engage with the content. " - 2014: The future of content marketing - an interview with Brian Solis - Technorati Business

I wonder if their EC clients know? "Since 2006, Ketchum... has billed millions of dollars to the Kremlin to advise and assist Moscow with improving its image in the West. ... one former employee says the client is probably not getting its money’s worth: “I can imagine my old Ketchum colleagues holding their heads in anguish ... This is way, way, w…

Looks like one kind of newspaper has a long future - the worst kind: "Supermarket tabloids have long been an icon of unreliability, largely because of their outrageous claims and sensational, melodramatic design. But when individual pieces are shared via social media, these visual and context clues are typically stripped out... Without this conte…