Five on Friday - five fabulous web 2.0 tools of the week (29-05-09)

May 29th, 2009

Hello all

Your regular ‘Five on Friday’ host isn’t here today, so I’ll be your captain for the week, steering a path through the sea of web 2.0 tools.

To kick us off, we have a recommendation from a reader:

1. Twiogle - It’s a great search engine that indexes Google and Twitter, easy to use, simple and it also has nice video, book, blog, and image functionality. Top job!

2. Yasni - In at number two, and another recommendation from our loyal readers, Yasni is a people-based search engine,  with more than 10 million visitors worldwide each month. Imagine Google meets Friends Reunited.

3. Tweepler - We’re going back to Twitter for number 3, and specifically organising your Twitter feed. Tweepler is a processing tool that allows you to classify your new Twitter followers in one of two ‘buckets’. ‘Follow’, meaning you wish to follow them back and ‘Ignore’ meaning you don’t want to follow them and can archive them out of the way, reducing Twitter noise.

4. FileTwt - This is a useful application allowing Twitter users to upload a file and tweet about it automatically. It also allows users to send file links as direct messages for sharing private files.

5. Trackle -  Finally, with all of our web profiles and accounts, we need a tool to keep track, and this is it. Trackle tracks all of your personalised information on the web and then indexes it by category. The service is built using algorithms that provide a layer of intelligence meaning timely results with notification via web, email or SMS.

Posted in Blog, Content, Digital media, Industry events, Journalism, Liberate Media news, PR | No Comments »

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Trade press concerns about blogging

April 17th, 2009

The digital marketing trade press has embraced blogging to varying degrees. While Haymarket has recently relaunched many of its magazine websites and simultaneously stepped-up the intensity of its blogging, other publishing houses are yet to rollout blogs for their flagship titles. Magazines such as NMA and Marketing Week, for example, are still without blogs.

What’s apparent is that some trade publishers have been nervous about blog content undermining the value of their magazine and online editorial, often failing to grasp where blogging can add value.

Having been following the progress of the Haymarket blogs and watching what other trade publishers are doing, as well as discussing the practicalities of blogging with journalists in our sector, I thought it might be helpful to offer some insight into some of the shared concerns, and for what it’s worth, my views on how these problems can be addressed…

* New demands for journalists to produce magazine and online content are high enough. Adding blogging to the list will lead to poorer quality of writing and less time for investigative reporting - this is a genuine concern that is shared by every trade editor I speak to, and journalists are similarly reluctant to take on extra writing responsibilities. Compile this with the recent redundancies that have taken place across most trade media, and the average journalist is over-worked and over-stressed.

However, this line of argument is missing the point about the role blogging plays in news consumption, and failing to acknowledge what magazine audiences want nowadays. Blog content can be equally as important as magazine coverage, if not more. Now is the time for publishers to be re-evaluating their content priorities.

* If content is now being broken online and followed-up in the magazine, what can we write about in a blog?- every new blogger worries about finding subject matter to write about, but journalists shouldn’t really have this problem! As a former trade journalist I know so many stories never make it into the magazine, or you have fascinating conversations with contacts that you wish you could do something with editorially. A magazine blog can be the perfect place to write about titbits of information that might otherwise get lost, or to start debate on subjects that you might feel passionate about. Although magazine editorial guidelines will most likely still need to be adhered to, the blog should be a place where journalists can publish independently and have a bit more freedom with subject matter.

* Blogging just doesn’t draw in the level of traffic that we’d like -magazines that have tested the water with blogging, but not dived in wholeheartedly, often cite this as a reason for delaying the launch of a proper blog. There can be many reasons for a magazine blog not taking off properly, but frequently the reasons are that the blog is hidden away on the website and not signposted clearly enough, that content is not interesting or updated frequently enough, and that measures have not been put in place to share the content socially or allow for comment and conversation.

* There’s no budget for professional blog set-up or consultancy, so we’re looking into it ourselves - it’s clear that times are tough for the trade publishing industry, and having worked on a trade magazine, I know what a battle it can be to make money available for these sort of projects. I would argue that this is a sign of a blog not being given the priority it should be, but that isn’t offering a useful solution to the problem.

Launching a magazine blog is a serious business (well it should be) and it’s important to bring in experts who know what they’re doing. It’s crucial that you have advice on the platform you’re going to use, as well as how it’s going to be designed and optimised etc. Particularly within the digital marketing industry, I’m sure there are companies out there who would be willing to advise the likes of NMA etc on a blog strategy for free. Now is a time to make the most of your contacts!

* We’ve already added ‘comments’ to our stories, so why do we need to blog? -this is probably the lamest excuse that I’ve heard for not blogging, but it’s come up a lot in conversations that I’ve had! If you’re a reader of sites such as NMA.co.uk and Revolutionmagazine.com etc, you’ll know that stories very rarely receive comments. Ticking this box is not a reason to delay launching a blog.

Posted in Blog, Blogging, Content, Journalism, Uncategorized | No Comments »

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Online news rises in importance for media & marketing trade press

April 9th, 2009

Lots of news at the moment about traditional newspapers and magazines going bust, tightening their belts and generally finding ways to cut costs.

After a recent conversation with the editor of a well-known trade magazine within the media and marketing sector, it is apparent that online is finally as high up on the priority list as offline magazines. Journalists are now being asked to function across both medias, which is increasing their workloads and meaning less time for investigative journalism.

Here is some information on the rise of online news sources for five well-known trade publications within our sector:

The graphs below show unique visitors to the various websites from Google Trends and Compete.

New Media Age


Marketing Week

Marketing Magazine

Media Week

Revolution

The majority of sites have seen a definite rise in traffic and visitors, probably due to the fact that news stories are now being broken on the web before appearing in the magazine. Additionally some sites have undergone a relaunch in recent months - the spike in March’s traffic to the Revolution website can be undoubtedly attributed to this. Similarly, sites like NMA.co.uk are also investing more in initiatives like podcasting, which can be a great traffic driver.

Through Twitter and social bookmarking etc, news can be broken and shared in an instant, and I believe going forward more and more exclusives will be given to the online trade press rather than the print press.

I might just have to re-visit these sites in six months time, to see if the trend is continuing…

Posted in Blog, Journalism, Social media, Trends and research | 1 Comment »

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Looking for new bloggers to engage with digital and technology clients

April 3rd, 2009

At Liberate Media we are always looking to engage with like-minded individuals and bloggers, who share our passion for all things technology and digital.

As part of this focus, we are eager to build new connections with bloggers who are interested in hearing from our clients. Don’t worry, we’re not going to spam anyone with press releases, but if you would be interested in getting in touch on a more one-to-one basis to discuss campaigns, opinions or simply to have a discussion on a relevant topic, we would love to hear from you.

We have added a brief preview of some of our relevant clients below, but we are also in touch with a number of other brands and industry experts on various projects and campaigns, so please get in touch if you would like to hear more.

Associated Northcliffe Digital - Associated Northcliffe Digital has a massive online footprint, operating the digital assets of Associated Newspapers Ltd and Northcliffe Media, as well as key online classified sites.

Collective - Collective has been the lead agency behind Honda’s digital strategy for the past five years, and is using PR to help tell this story and gain greater recognition for the other high-calibre brands it works with including EA, Sega and Snickers.

iBAHN - Having worked to establish iBAHN as the internet provider of choice for business travellers across the globe, we are now re-focusing our efforts on raising the profile of iBAHN’s growing portfolio of in-room digital entertainment services.

Kerb - Kerb is leading the future of online advertising, through its creation of highly engaging content-led campaigns and viral games for brands such as Samsung, Sony PlayStation, E4 and MTV. Its sister company, Kerb Games, is expert at producing highly successful massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs).

Napster - Napster is the pioneer of digital music, and is now one of the industry’s fastest growing mobile music platforms.

Mike Bayler - a consultant and author, specialising in consumer-led marketing and innovation. He has advised some of the world’s leading brands, media companies and international stars, including Nokia, Diageo, Telefonica, Bacardi Global Brands, Sky, BT, Sony BMG, Ogilvy and Mather, Robbie Williams, Dido and Simon Cowell.

Posted in Blog, Blogging, Journalism | 1 Comment »

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Mzinga backlash: Is Twitter a reliable journalist/blogger source?

March 18th, 2009

Respected blogger and Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang came in for a bit of a battering yesterday when he published a blog post about social software company Mzinga, claiming he’d received multiple reports (”over four direct messages or emails”) that the company was in trouble. Please read the full post by Jeremiah.

The post has received 75 irate comments (at time of writing), and Jeremiah has since been compelled to write a full public apology to Mzinga which has stirred up a further 35 comments.

The incident is an important lesson to every blogger/journalist, and raises a big question mark over whether Twitter should be considered a reliable source of information, or indeed any social source.

Trained journalists are taught to use multiple sources - as a rule of thumb, I was always taught to corroborate a story through a minimum of two to three trusted sources.

According to Wikipedia, examples of sources include “official records, publications or broadcasts, officials in government or business, organizations or corporations, witnesses of crime, accidents or other events, and people involved with or affected by a news event or issue”. I haven’t been able to find any up-to-date industry guidelines on how journalists should treat social media sources - if you know of any, please share!

In my mind, the mistake that Jeremiah made was to not wait for an official response from Mzinga. He linked to a Twitter reply from the company’s PR manager, in which she wrote: “@jowyang Sorry to not reply sooner. Happy to talk about what you’ve been hearing. Will DM you to set up a time to chat”, but decided to publish before having had this conversation. A journalist would never have been able to sneak this under the nose of an editor!

Respected bloggers have a responsibility to their readers, and it could be argued should be bound by the same ethical and liable rules as journalists. Twitter is an unmoderated platform where anyone can say anything, and if it is to be used as a story source, my feeling is that the rule of multiple sources should be at least tripled before a story can be corroborated.

If any journalists are reading this post, I’d be interested to hear whether their editorial guidelines are the same for their newspaper/magazine as their company blog, and whether they relax rules for a personal blog that they might write.

Posted in Blog, Blogging, Journalism | 6 Comments »

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