Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
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.
Creating the future – how should we teach social media?
March 4th, 2009
We met our guest blogger and academic Lorraine Warren at a Twestival event recently and had one of those energizing sessions where people who haven’t met before find common cause and bounce scores of ideas off each other. We couldn’t leave it there and asked Dr Warren if she would write a post for our blog – happily she agreed and brings just a few of her key thoughts on social media to this first of, we hope, many entries. Dr Warren is Director of Postgraduate Education and Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the School of Management at the University of Southampton.
I really love the teaching side of life as an academic in the innovation and new technology field. The real driver for me is that students will go out into the world ready to play a part in shaping new futures, not just reacting to what’s already going on around them. I want them to se
e beyond the management of decline, retreat and recession, and instead look ahead to creating value and change around them, to become thought leaders, and to build new futures and opportunities.
As I’m always saying, disruptive innovation creating new markets is always a possibility, but it’s unlikely you’ll get there on your own. You can’t know everything yourself, you have to bring together ideas from a wide range of sources – that’s what open innovation is about.
To me using, the internet is a big part of looking outside what I’m doing today and thinking ahead to what might happen tomorrow – keeping an eye on thought leaders through the use of social media spaces like Twitter, the blogosphere and Facebook, as well as basic stuff like a library of decent RSS feeds: not to get through the day on current projects, but to check out the periphery, to check out what people who think like I do – and more importantly, what people who don’t think like I do are up to.
To build that up in class, I asked my students recently how many of them used Twitter, wrote blogs themselves, or checked out key bloggers, kept RSS feed libraries, or used something like Facebook to create value in some way beyond parties or the social. Very few hands went in the air, despite all the talk of Generation Y!
Later on, disappointed with this cold start, I asked one of the students, Chris Hughes, why this was. In his opinion, people were just so busy getting on with the needs of the day, and their degree, that they just didn’t see the value right now. Things like MySpace and Facebook came and went out of social fashion, and often weren’t used well, getting clogged up with proliferations of spam and poor quality contacts – and then of course, abandoned.
Ok, not a scientific survey, but still a bit worrying if as educators and influencers we automatically assume that everyone is just getting on with this stuff. I know some new courses are grasping the media and marketing part of this nettle, but that’s not the whole answer for me.
I need to think how to bring this kind of futures thinking more into the assessment process, to focus attention, and get away from using the internet purely as an information resource and basic comms device. Practising what I preach – any ideas out there?
Marketing trade press set for shake-up
February 12th, 2009
Stories of journalist and newspaper cut-backs are rife, and over the past few days the UK marketing trade press has been the latest casualty.
Centaur has made the decision to close its magazines Precision Marketing and Brand Strategy, while Marketing Week is undergoing a major staff reshuffle. New journalists to be joining the Marketing Week team are rumoured to be Ruth Mortimer, formerly editor of Brand Strategy and Branwell Johnson, former editor of Mad.co.uk, while some existing staff will be leaving.
According to the Precision Marketing website, Centaur is avoiding placing any blame on the current economic situation. The announcement reads:
“Centaur Media is to shift the coverage of direct marketing from Precision Marketing to Marketing Week, reflecting the transformation of direct marketing from a niche function to a mainstream operation…Precision Marketing, which had a circulation of 12,000, is therefore to cease publishing from the February editon onwards.”
Arguably Centaur is paying the price for not evolving its marketing titles quickly enough. A re-design for Marketing Week is on the cards, but this is long overdue. Interesting that little mention has been made of it increasing its digital marketing coverage, or delivery of news through social media. While NMA and Marketing Week are both placing increasing editorial focus on features, I question whether this is really what readers want or need. Subscription-only content is going to have to work harder to keep its reader-base in my opinion…
PR is not online or offline, it’s through-the-line
December 10th, 2008
Social media and online PR have been the hot topics of discussion in the PR industry for some time, and the temperature is increasing as we approach 2009, which is seen by many to be the year of social media.
However, when it comes to offline or traditional PR, which is often wrongly labelled as simply media relations, the excitement dies and the level of conversation follows a similar downward spiral.
But why is this? Is traditional PR slowly dying? Are we moving online at such a rate that offline communications have become devalued? Put simply, no, that’s very far from the truth.
Don’t get me wrong, at Liberate Media we’ve been talking about the benefits and necessity of online communications since our inception, and that hasn’t changed. But neither has our vision that online and offline are in fact the mechanisms through which we deliver good PR, not the definition itself.
So what happens when we blur the lines and combine offline and online PR? “Not a lot” I hear you say, “It’s hardly a revolutionary thought”. Very true, but how many case studies are you aware of that are combining the two areas successfully via a seamless strategy? Sure, many brands engage in both online and offline PR, many via separate agencies or specialists, but the links, although evident, are rarely maximised.
Let me give you an example. There have been instances in recent new business meetings where we’ve been informed that the PR to date has been handled offline by agency X and online by agency Y, and when we try to explain that Liberate Media offers a joint strategy, not one bolted onto the other, we are met with quizzical looks and a degree of disbelief.
So why is this? I think that we, the agencies, are mainly to blame. PR agencies that offer online, or social media consultancy, have usually differentiated this offering through their online or digital department/division/individual, making it appear as though they are specialists operating separately to give credence to their capabilities. Furthermore, there are also a growing number of specialists that do a great job of offering online consultancy but rarely offer traditional PR services as well.
So we’ve divided the two specialisms and that divide, we believe, should not exist. Not just because our company offers both services but because the customer journey may begin online or offline and switch between the two. So how do we engage communities effectively where ever they are, if not by meeting them of their own turf?
The simple truth is, at the moment we’re still taking a channel approach, ring-fencing online away from the rest of PR.
There is no real reason why the two shouldn’t co-exist and in fact aren’t better suited to co-exist through a purpose-built strategy, not two strategies coming together and then being revised to fit.
The fundamentals of good PR work equally well online as they do offline. The rules of open and honest two-way communications aren’t particularly new, but enforcing these rules through brand communications is.
So what I am asking is for is a shift in thinking: as we evolve PR and continue to develop new campaigns that encapsulate core business objectives, please don’t compartmentalise thinking into offline or online. Simply state your objectives and look to your agency/contacts/internal PR department to develop a clear through-the-line strategy.
Let’s break free from the online vs offline thinking trap now and avoid revisiting it in a year when the dye is cast. Let’s break free from the mistakes of the past, when we waited until the market as a whole was comfortable with seperate offerings before pulling together delivery. Instead, let’s embrace PR in all its forms and simply develop brand communications that engage our target communities at their point of interest.
November 26th, 2008
Don’t worry, this isn’t a post about the economic slow down, I think we’ve had quite enough of that for now. No, this post comes as a result of Jon Henley’s article on Guardian.co.uk today titled: ‘The bloggers who take it one post at a time’. It’s a great piece, based in turn on a recent article from the New York Times titled: Blogging at a snail’s pace.
As you can probably gather, both pieces overview a more relaxed approach to blogging, quality over quantity if you like, where the object is not the first to get a post published on a breaking issue, but the one that can add most value.
Both of these pieces refer to Todd Sieling’s ‘A slow blog manifesto’ written in 2006 by the technology consultant from British Columbia, who formulated a structure for the slow blogging movement, saying: “Slow blogging is a rejection of immediacy, it is an affirmation that not all things are worth reading are written quickly.”
Having digested these articles, I felt it was worth pointing out that they have a lot of relevancy in the communications industry, and would be good advice to take on board for any blogger. In fact it’s something that I recommend to my clients: don’t try to be the first on the scene, try to add to the conversation.
It’s still true that blogging, and the wider circle of social media, moves quickly. The last few years have seen a constant push to get more information out in as short a time frame as possible. Twitter is an example of the success of quick fire candid comment, but blogging gives us the opportunity to add more than just news or speed to an issue. It gives us the opportunity to put our opinion across and delve deeper into the discussion, or at least look at a different angle.
It’s too easy to forget that blogging isn’t a race; we need to listen to our community and understand what would be most useful, to be relevant in a conversation. If that’s speed and constant availability, Twitter is probably a much better outlet for you.
If your subscribers read your posts because they appreciate your knowledge or like your take on issues, then that’s what they want to hear, whether that’s an hour or two days after the issue has broken. I myself often like to sit back and see how an issue develops before posting or commenting, it makes sense to get the whole picture before joining in, and simply joining in shouldn’t be a key motivator.
So, what have I taken from the slow blog theory? Well, affirmation of a belief that time isn’t the key factor in blogging, it is important, but it isn’t the issue we should focus on. Offering something to the debate should be the focus.
This isn’t an excuse for those that like to post every few months to say that they are using their time to think - we know that isn’t the case, and it isn’t supposed to be a mantra that every post should be an epic, short posts are very useful and relevant, it’s just confirmation that slowing down and adding value is something that will be appreciated by your subscribers and wider community.