On Llamas, Dresses, Net Neutrality: A Clue(Train)!
That desire for community, to connect with others who share your interests, is what drives the best and worst of what, as a whole, makes the internet so invaluable — from the early days of Usenet to Tumblr and whatever comes next — and for some (including business execs who don’t get it), so dangerous. I’m sure there are plenty of business lessons to be learned from all of this, and I’m sure there will be plenty of think pieces and hot takes addressing those, but I’m far more interested in grappling with the human element.
Gaming’s Killer App: Twitch?
it’s the non-gaming aspects of the Xbox One that I find most intriguing because I don’t believe “next gen” will ultimately be defined by graphics, and the first real example of that is Twitch. Per Google research, “Gamers are an important driver of brand engagement, as they create, curate, and share content.” And that’s where Twitch comes in and things get really interesting.
TIMESUCK? You’re. Doing. It. Wrong.
There are myriad ways to connect with readers nowadays, both directly and indirectly, but you can’t do it all, nor should you try. Whether you’re a novelist or journalist, poet or pundit, striking the right balance is critical to implementing and sustaining an effective marketing strategy. From websites to social media to live events, this presentation focuses on the value of owned channels, offline/analog engagement, and how to make sure you’re not wasting your time.
Yahoo Bets Big on GIFs, Porn, and Fickle Teens…
When Google acquired Blogger in 2003, it was a smart move that tied directly to their core ad business, with the visionary bonus of foreseeing the value of user-generated content when it was still scoffed at. Yahoo acquiring Tumblr 10 years later (after badly fumbling GeoCities, del.icio.us, and Flickr, among others) is like the drunk uncle showing up late to a baby shower with a stripper and a trained monkey. Even the “announcement” via GIF feels forced and desperate.
Discovery is Publishers’ Problem; Readers are Doing Just Fine
Never mind the folly of dismissing Goodreads, a social network dedicated to books with 13m+ members and is steadily growing, or even Pinterest, where Random House has inexplicably attracted 1.5m followers, but the very idea that “something is really, chronically missing in online retail discovery” is arguably contradicted by Amazon’s 2012 results, suggesting that “online retail discovery” isn’t really a problem for readers. It’s a problem for publishers.
You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure: On Social Media & Publishing
For the third consecutive year, I had the pleasure of doing a presentation on social media for my friend Peter Costanzo’s M.S. in Publishing: Digital and Print Media class at NYU last night, and while preparing for it, I was surprised by how much has changed since the first time, and how much hasn’t. Pinterest and Tumblr are bigger deals now (or at least perceived as such), while Twitter is steadily maturing (from a business perspective), Facebook changes its approach every six months, and email is still the underrated king of the hill.
That Time Publishing Lost its Sense of Humor and Missed the Point
And that is ultimately the point I took from Biggs’ post. Again, it’s not new, but when so many outside observers feel the need to continually repeat it, maybe it’s because the message isn’t getting through to those who need to hear it?
Rethinking Engagement: Facebook and Permission Marketing
If you think of a “Like” as an opt-in, you’re as close to the value proposition of an email list as it gets outside of actually acquiring that email, and you should treat the content you post to your Facebook Page with as much care and attention as you do your email newsletters. Even better, think of your Facebook Page as a key component of your brand’s overall audience development strategy, complementing your website and email program, and as your audience there grows, leverage Facebook Insights as aggressively as your web analytics to inform and evolve your content strategy.
Moving Beyond THE BOOK; Three Takeaways from #Book2
The latest edition of Book^2 Camp, a publishing and technology “unconference,” took place yesterday, and while it lacked the star power of last year’s Margaret Atwood appearance, it was another worthwhile Sunday afternoon full of thoughtful conversations about the future of publishing. Three quick takeaways.
Are Inexpensive Self-published Ebooks the New Blogs?
It reminds me of 2003, the year I started blogging, and how some people were able to attract large audiences for their writing, and the mainstream media scoffed that they would ever be taken seriously. Fast-forward, many of those early bloggers are now considered “real” journalists, some because they went to work for traditional media brands, others because they attracted a significant enough audience on their own that they couldn’t be ignored.