by Jacqueline Koch | Nov 6, 2015 |
By guest blogger, Chris Carr, MerlinX Development Manager at MerlinOne
In the closing scene of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, a crate containing the Ark of the Covenant, recovered in a great adventure, is wheeled into a cavernous government warehouse and piled among a sea of other identical crates. The irony is not lost on the viewer: The priceless artifact is about to vanish, once again, perhaps to be discovered by some future archaeologist in another few thousand years.
This is the precise scenario that unfolds every day in countless publishing organizations. At some point an organization amasses enough files and documents that finding what you need, let alone knowing what you have, starts to feel very much like archaeology. This is the point where most organizations start to look into digital asset management (DAM). Whether that point is reached once you amass tens or hundreds of thousands of files or more depends on the organization, but the day invariably arrives.
Indeed, storing and finding assets was the primary focus of the earliest DAM systems—and is still a core function—but along the way DAM has evolved, matured and learned a few tricks. Let’s look at a few of the roles DAM has taken on along the way.
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by Jacqueline Koch | Nov 4, 2015 |
By Steven Wise
Hyperlocal journalism is a concept that has struggled for more than a decade to prove its viability as a profitable business model. Yet the potential for citizen-driven news continues to inspire new efforts in the space.
‘The magic of hyperlocal sites,’ according to Mark Potts, founder of the pioneering Backfence.com, ‘is that they provide a forum for community members to share and discuss what’s going on around town.’
Pott’s site shut down in 2007, two years after launch, joining a list of early hyperlocal content casualties that includes the demise of CitySearch and Microsoft Sidewalk in the 1990s. After so many flame-outs, the 2013 collapse of the much-heralded hyperlocal content site Patch.com may have come as no surprise to many. What’s truly remarkable is, after downsizing and retooling, Patch is back and becoming an example of how hyperlocal content can work.
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by Jacqueline Koch | Nov 3, 2015 |
By Gretchen McLaurin
Content marketing is about engaging your customers about your products – informing, not selling. According to a Smart Insights survey, it is the most commercially important digital marketing trend in 2015. This modern form of storytelling, done well, helps establish your credibility by providing detailed curated information, increasing opportunities for customers to land on your website and ultimately spend money.
The marketing industry has always engaged in a quality versus quantity debate. Using multiple avenues, it is possible more content may be better to increase traffic, boost your brand, promote conversations and assist customers. Whether reading blogs, how-to guides, or industry whitepapers, customers use content marketing to make decisions about the products and services that suit them. When this content is shared via social media, by customers who share links, pins and tweets to spread the word about products that interest them, it increases visibility of your site.
According to polling by Ascend2 and reported by eMarketer.com, spending on content marketing reached US$145bn so far this year and is estimated to double to $300bn in the next four years. Simultaneously, in a ranking of impediments to achieving marketing goals, a lack of content creation resources, writers, bloggers and infographic producers, is cited by marketers worldwide as the top problem (and has been since 2012). While many marketers are struggling to identify the ROI of their content marketing efforts, there is consensus that content marketing is an essential means to engage customers. Companies are turning to the booming freelance economy to help fill this gap. –
by Jacqueline Koch | Oct 27, 2015 |
One publication that appears to be thriving in this new digital age is women’s fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar, which saw a whopping 45.9 per cent year-over-year audience growth in August 2015.
In August, the audience for magazines in the United States grew 4.2 per cent year-over-year to 1.67bn, according to the most recent MPA Magazine Media 3600 Brand Audience Report. While any growth in the publishing sector is good news, it is important to point out that most of this growth is coming from the mobile web, where the audience grew by 42.4 per cent to over 440m in August 2015. In the same timeframe the audience for print and digital editions shrank by 5.6 per cent, while the web (desktop/laptop) audience declined by 1.1 per cent. This is a downturn from the July numbers, where the web audience grew by 3.2 per cent.
These statistics tell a good news, bad news story. While the overall audience size has grown, there is much work to be done by publishers to keep and grow their audiences as technology continues to turn this industry on its head.
One publication that appears to be thriving in this new digital age is women’s fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar, which saw a whopping 45.9 per cent year-over-year audience growth in August 2015.
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by Jacqueline Koch | Oct 27, 2015 |
By Steven Wise
The potential for rampant ad blocking can be a daunting prospect for the US$140bn a year online advertising business. This is especially true for publishers whose businesses hinge on their ability to deliver ad messages to their audiences.
While ad blocking software for desktop browsers has been available for years, it hasn’t had a dramatic impact on how publishers monetise ads. However, in the last few months, industry chatter over ad blocking has risen substantially thanks to some new developments from Apple.
Ad blocking comes in a various forms
Earlier this month Apple introduced the latest generation of iPhones, along with a new mobile operating system, iOS 9, which allows ad blocking plug-ins. Within days of the release, ad blocking apps became among the most downloaded category in the Apple App Store. The top selling ad blocker in the iTunes Store is
Crystal, a top 10 app selling for $0.99.
1Blocker is a popular alternative which is free with limits or $2.99 for the full feature version.
Typical ad blockers suppress banner ads, popups, and autoplay videos. For end users, the obvious benefit is a less cluttered browsing experience. But there can be secondary benefits as well, like faster page loading, less data usage, and better battery life on their smartphones.
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by Jacqueline Koch | Oct 1, 2015 |
When the user-generated content (UGC) craze started in 2005 with the meteoric rise of Youtube videos, no one knew if it would last. Yet, today the quality and quantity of UGC in online publications are growing more rapidly than ever.
According to a 2015 report by Mary Meeker, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, content on the web is increasingly dominated by UGC. This is evidenced by the fact that Pinterest pin creation is up 75 per cent, Twitch video broadcasts are up 83 per cent, Wattpad stories are up 140 per cent and Airbnb reviews are up 140 per cent year-over-year.
A number of factors are colliding to drive this massive growth in UGC, starting with a rich set of new consumer-friendly content creation tools. These include products and applications like GoPro and Hyperlapse, which allow consumers to create visceral video experiences that rival those created by professionals. Add to that near ubiquitous access to smartphones with high quality cameras, the huge increase in mobile broadband speeds and effortless options for delivering images and videos from laptops or smartphones to highly visible websites. As a result, this year more UGC will be created, distributed and shared across social media platforms than content created by professionals.
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In the closing scene of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, a crate containing the Ark of the Covenant, recovered in a great adventure, is wheeled into a cavernous government warehouse and piled among a sea of other identical crates. The irony is not lost on the viewer: The priceless artifact is about to vanish, once again, perhaps to be discovered by some future archaeologist in another few thousand years.
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