Overview: Social Media Strategy

We are thinking about how to optimize our content from its very conception... we obviously want to grow traffic... The second prong of the strategy is to change how we produce and distribute our content and optimize it for reach... optimizing some of our content for different distribution platforms, integrating visual and interactive content fr…

"We’re very excited to announce the launch of a new feature for Publications. We’re calling it Letters. ... It’s a way of connecting with your followers and starting a conversation. It’s delivered to the inboxes of all your followers. It’s also a post, so it can be recommended, highlighted, built upon, and have a life of its own." - Introd…

"The story of podcasts suddenly being “back” strongly suggests, and mostly requires, that they had been big at one time and had since gone away. That New York Magazine article even cites a “bottom” time: 2010. But that never really happened." - Why podcasts are suddenly “back” – Marco.org

"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,…

"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…

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…

"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…

~"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…

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

(FT paywall) "Serial’s success is the most visible example of a renaissance in podcasting – a format that has been around for a decade but which has received a recent surge of interest from consumers, investors and advertisers." Massively underused medium for EU comms, IMHO. - Podcasting poised to go from niche to mainstream - FT.com

"The latest trend in storytelling is not driven by super-innovative technology. It requires no expensive accessories and is accessible to all ages and backgrounds. It’s called LISTENING." Gotta love an article which starts like that! Apart from the practical guidelines promised, I liked its observation "about the temporal nature of sound - unable…

"blogging is so hyped as a panacea, you'd think that simply adding a blog to your site would also help you find the perfect spouse, cure the common cold, and even turn lead into gold. ... you should always question anything that's touted as the right answer for everyone (and everything). So should you blog?... let's look at a few examples of w…

"trying to game the algorithm doesn’t work, and that the only real secret to getting lots of interaction from Facebook for your content is to create and post great content (this was always Google’s argument as well). But what is great content? ... is it clickbait that drives people to share, or is it in-depth analysis of important topics?... by g…

Written for journalists, but good for brand journalism & gov comms, where content is usually unfailingly sunny or relentlessly bleak: "Studies show that stories which explore solutions to problems rather than just the problems themselves prompt audiences to engage with the news and share ... the media should also pay attention to the responses p…

"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…

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…

These figures need to be compared with other research shows that people seem happy to consume long articles on their mobiles. "Ad Age looked at ... Tumblr, WordPress, Blogger to see how their traffic has changed over the last year and what effect [mobile] has had on the time people spend with each service...." On the one hand we read about the …

"Online video is very much here to stay... Even companies such as Vice admit they don't have everything cracked – Vice only launched a news vertical a few months ago after realising its current affairs content was the most popular on YouTube. With that in mind, the three approaches to online video from News UK, Meredith, and Don't Panic may prove…

"blogs are ... just one specific kind of publishing format, with posts that appear in reverse chronological order.... this is a little like saying that a sonnet is just a specific way of ordering text, featuring iambic pentameter and an offset rhyming scheme. Obviously not every blog post is a poem, but there is something inherent in the practice …

As if blogs were just a question of conversational tone and reverse-chronology ... "We’re going to continue to provide bloggy content with a more conversational tone ... We’re just not going to do them as much in standard reverse-chronological blogs.” " - ‘Almost half’ of the NYT’s blogs will close or merge | Poynter.

"1. Expert credibility comes from having knowledge others do not. People want experts they can understand and trust, especially when trying to understand complex or ambiguous topics like new technology, engineering, advanced science, or law... 2. Harness hierarchical credibility 3. Seek referent credibility 4. Take advantage of associative credib…

@baekdal explores "a complete and total blind spot in the newspaper industry ... based on a business model that used to work in the old days of media, but was as a result of scarcity." Newspapers, he argues, are "the supermarket of news ... [but] upermarkets only work when visiting the individual brands is too hard to do... But on the internet, e…

"a team of 13 social-media and advertising specialists up to 45 days to plan, create, approve, and publish a corporate social-media post." Which did f*all online. It's when I see tweets like that - 45 days, 2 Faves, no RTs - that I'm thankful I'm not 'communicating' cars, 'engaging' consumers on soap powder or even tweeting about cheese. - Huge …

"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…

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

Good intro to the maths of virality, and why Upworthy's best friend will kill them eventually: " As a result, there’s a direct feedback loop between C and FBT [Facebook Throttle - the % of friends who will see a user's FB share]: the higher your clickbaitiness (C), the less that Facebook will throttle you, and the more likely that your articles w…

Points 4 & 8 my favourites: "4. LinkedIn will become the most important publisher. LinkedIn will become a premium destination for industry news, and you need to take part in that ecosystem early and often. Publish original content, network among peers in groups and raise your profile now." 8. Interactive content will trump static content. Expect…

One of the reasons I created this Tumblr was to use it as a 'first draft’ of a Content Hub (see post), an idea which crystallised after reading Sloan’s original content strategy piece on Stock and Flow.The Hub is basically my way of saying that there’s more to life than the Stream. Unsurprisingly, Alexis Madrigal’s piece in the Atlantic caugh…