Archive for February, 2008

Live streaming video. Next big thing. Sarah Meyers of Pop17.com explains it well:

When Youtube adds this sometime this year, as Meyers discovered it will, it’ll become huge. Hey, mainstream media companies: Jump on this now. Don’t wait for yet another big Internet trend to go huge before deciding then to experiment (as has happened SO many times before with other things). Let’s move a bit faster this time, eh?

Chris Pirillo is an example of leading the way on live streaming video. Experimentation is the order of the day with this. Yeah, Pirillo at his desk occasionally talking can be pretty dull. But there are interesting uses for this, you can be sure. I’d just like to see some media companies do some of the innovating.

How could traditional news and media companies best use live streaming video?

Today’s tip is, perhaps, a bit bizarre. But don’t dismiss it out of hand! There’s some serious logic to why newspapers and local news organizations might want to open up coffee shops. Seriously.

Credit for this idea goes to Greg Harmon, a media consultant with Belden Associates. He’s pushing the idea to some of his newspaper clients that they should turn some unused space in their buildings into Internet cafes open to the public, as a way to connect with readers more directly and openly. Harmon explains: Continued

On one of my current projects, I made a bad choice of web hosting company. Fortunately, we figured out how bad this service was before launch, so transition to a new host didn’t disrupt anything. Whew!

I just want to give a little shout-out about a great service that helped me transition the website (which is built using Wordpress) to the new hosting company. EZSiteMove.com came to the rescue after my failed attempts at figuring out how to move everything over and have the site be completely operational.

They did a great job in the time advertised, and the rate was reasonable. Two thumbs up!

Does your news organization have some celebrities on staff? Perhaps a star columnist, a sports reporter who’s well known, celebrity stringers (athletes, politicians), etc. Maybe the editor or publisher is a “star” in the community.

Today’s tip will put those people in what may be an uncomfortable position: Have them dive in to discussion areas and article comment threads on your website. Get them to engage directly with the online audience — regularly. They should answer questions; express opinions alongside users … just “mix it up” and start talking. Continued

Have you thought about why social networks (aka, social utilities) like Facebook and MySpace quickly attracted tens of millions of users, and got them addicted? No need to think too hard. It’s because 1) people like to talk about themselves, and 2) people like to talk to their friends and know what’s going on in their friends’ lives. The social networks serve those needs. Bingo! Multi-billion-dollar businesses are formed.

It’s about the people

News organizations need to take some clues from this. I’ll write plenty of future tips covering lessons that can be learned from social networking, but for today I’m going to focus on one small thing you can do… Continued

I’m getting requests to include more marketing advice on this site, and I’m happy to oblige. Here’s a marketing technique that people in traditional marketing and traditional media often overlook: Establish and work on having a relationship with your audience. Ask them to talk about themselves, and stop talking so much about you.

Let’s face it, it’s human nature for most folks to want to talk about themselves. Journalists may be in the business of talking mostly about what they know, but the opportunity with the Internet is to get the audience talking too. So to build and grow the modern audience, you need to give them — at every reasonable opportunity — the ability to talk about themselves, share what they think, and ask you questions. Continued

The flamboyant new owner of the Tribune Co., billionaire Sam Zell, visited one of his properties in Virginia, the Daily Press, yesterday, and (according to this report) told employees this:

Tribune’s smaller newspapers, including the Daily Press, would serve as a ‘petri dish’ of innovation, where new ideas would be tested and incubated before being passed along to the company’s big three: the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Newsday of Long Island, N.Y.”

I have to say, while I think Zell is on the right track with trying to shake things up at Tribune, he’s got this backward. Letting the smaller properties in a chain try the innovations and then passing them along to the flagship papers is something the newspaper industry has already been doing — and I think that’s part of the reason the industry is still in such a mess. It’s not bold eough.

Some of the largest newspapers are bleeding badly; layoffs and buyouts are the order of the day, and quality of the product is deteriorating. (My local paper keeps getting thinner; the day is very near when it’s no longer worth it to renew my subscription.) Zell should be telling his flagship papers to stop stalling and start innovating big-time. Waiting for experiments from the hinterlands to pan out before implementing them in Chicago, LA and Long Island is a going-too-slow approach.

Zell is known for being a change agent. So why doesn’t he demand that every paper in the Tribune chain innovate like there’s no tomorrow? Tomorrow is going to suck if they don’t.

Look, pure-play Internet companies have demonstrated that there are billions of dollars to be made from innovating. I’m sure that Zell believes the newspaper industry can reinvent itself and take part. So why would he take such a conservative approach? How odd.

What do you think?

I’m sitting on hold with my website hosting company, Bluehost, waiting for tech support. Here’s a company that impresses me with its customer service, and here’s why:

I landed in the tech support waiting queue and told that I was “caller No. 12.” A few seconds later: “You are caller No. 11.” And so on and so on till a tech support rep comes on the line. Nice! This is so much better than having no idea how long I’ll be on hold, which is how the majority of companies handle waits for tech support.

Information! That’s what consumers want. I’m much less grumpy waiting in this queue knowing what to expect than otherwise.

Can everyone start doing this? Please?!

One of the most striking things about today’s media environment is the low barrier to entry for publishing and trying out new entrepreneurial ideas. Open-source publishing systems push the price for competing against big companies close to zero for the “little guys.” They often can add advanced, cutting-edge features to their blogs and websites for free or just a few bucks by using the latest widget or plug-in. The great irony is that those small players often add features before big media companies get around to it. Continued

In yesterday’s tip I talked about e-mail sub-lists as a marketing tool. Here’s another bit of e-mail advice: Personalize your e-mails to improve open rates.

It’s been demonstrated that inserting personalization variables into outgoing e-mails’ subject lines significantly increases the number of people who open an e-mail. We all get so many messages — many of them spam that slip through our spam filters — so it’s important to have strong and relevant subject lines that entice recipients to open your messages. You may have a brilliantly thought-out e-mail communications program for your audience or member base, but if they don’t open your messages, that’s a lot of wasted effort. Continued