Archive for the ‘online content’ Category

Thanks to Aeneas McDonnell from The Economist for sharing this great video ‘Did you know?’ about the changing media landscape, at the EPublishing Innovation Forum yesterday.

Maile Ohye, manager of Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, laid out her blueprint for a social media, content and SEO optimised website in an interview with TopRank’s online marketing blog last week.

The question that caught our attention was to do with how she sees the role of social media within website marketing activity, particularly in relation to SEO.

Here’s what she said:

“I think having a solid site: great content, good experience for users (intuitive navigation, responsive), descriptive page titles, standardized URL structure, etc., is of primary importance. A strong site is the foundation where you’ll likely make your online conversions. Once this foundation is established, the social media approach helps drive traffic, builds excitement (and inbound links), that you’ll be able to capitalize on with your solid site.”

Politicians are failing to take advantage of new media’s huge potential to engage voters with 79% of Britons unable to recall any online electioneering, a survey by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts found earlier this month.

And this was supposed to be the new-media election – yet TV appears to be stealing the show. The debate on ITV on April 15th was watched by 9.4m Britons – 37% of the prime-time audience – and led to a ten-point swing to the Liberal Democrats.

E-mail, blogging, social networking and tweeting have all had some impact – but arguably nothing comparable to this. As the political debate rages on, a report in The Economist this week describes the televised debates between Nick Clegg, Gordon Brown and David Cameron as “a triumph for old media.”

The Economist also reports that Get Elected, a political-research outfit, has examined 100 tight races, where online campaigning should presumably be fierce. It found that only 45% of the candidates in those races had Twitter accounts. Read the rest of this entry »

A cautionary tale for publishers looking to build paywalls around online editorial content from Nielsen, whose latest survey of 27,000 consumers in 52 countries shows 79% will not pay, assuming that content is available elsewhere.

However, consumers will pay for movies, music and games, which top the rankings of things we will pay for online.

Blogs and consumer generated video ranked lowest of all and were generally expected to be free.

The research firm found that consumers expect content to meet certain criteria before they are willing to pay for with 78% saying they should get free online access if they already subscribe to a newspaper, magazine, radio or TV service.

Nielsen found that 47% of respondents are willing to accept more advertising to subsidise free content. In turn, 64% believe that if they must pay for content, there should be no ads.

Speaking at the Government’s digital creative industry conference C&binet (surely they meant C@binet)  late yesterday, Simon Fuller, Spice Girls’ creator said that content providers were the key to future success online.

Fuller describes digital media as a “war zone” where creative ideas will dominate. He referred to his own operation, 19 Entertainment, as a “bespoke aggregator”. “The next big idea could come from some kid in India. That’s the way it should be – I’m excited,” he said, quoted in The Guardian.

Fuller said that while he believed certain companies – such as Google and Microsoft – have a “big head start” in online there is still room for many players in the emerging digital media market. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week OLA’s Internet Activity Index revealed content led sites are still king online with a 24% increase in share since 2003 with communications and commerce sites falling behind. -41% & -19% respectively.

And then on Friday, NMA broke the story that the UK’s second biggest advertiser, P&G is introducing a payment by engagement model for publishers whereby they are remunerated by the number of sign-ups to newsletters or video views.

2-0 to those of us looking to promote content and engagement this week then – email marketers, bloggers, social media networkers, Twitterers and status updaters Read the rest of this entry »