Tag Archives: mobile

Friday #Content Reads: 13.5.16

Here’s a selection of my best content strategy reads over the last week. Enjoy!

Announcing Keyword Explorer: Moz’s New Keyword Research Tool
Interesting new tool from Moz.com. I’m not entirely sure if this does anything over and above a basic understanding of Google’s Keyword Planner but it’s a nice introduction to keyword research if you’ve never done this before.

One month in: Four things The New York Times has learned using Facebook Live
I thought this was a fantastic insight into what NYT has been doing with Facebook Live. P.S, here’s what we’ve been up to on LBC and We The Unicorns…


Internet Video Views Is A 100 Percent Bullshit Metric
The validity of Facebook’s success metric is up for debate again this week. A useful reminder I think, of what makes true video engagement – otherwise we’re all going to end up exploding watermelons.

Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
I‘m sure you all read this story which resulted in Facebook publishing their editorial guidelines for their Trending module. As someone who has advised on editorial Code of Conducts in the past, I’ve found the whole issue fascinating. It looks like Facebook is recognising the need for more publisher transparency – although I’m sure it would deny it was a publisher.

3 charts that show the very different news audiences for mobile web and apps
Read this to understand the different kind of engagement across mobile web and app.

And lastly, thanks to Classic FM for unearthing this video of Prince this week. I’ve had the tune in my head all week…

Content Strategy Links of the Week, December 22

You know the drill by now folks. Here’s my best reads from the last week or so. Enjoy and have a fantastic Christmas and New Year. See you all in 2015!

Bad community is worse than no community
“By coupling a format that encourages intimacy with a network design that encourages out-of-context amplification, Twitter has evolved into something fundamentally volatile. It’s fun, fast and powerful, but remains highly risky for anything approaching honest conversation, or even satire.”

Consumer-aware, context-aware
“Smart news organizations know that in 2015, the value of our attention will continue to eclipse the value of our clicks. The best way to harness attention in the digital ecosystem is to service the consumer’s needs rather than simply repackaging content to fit the form factor of her various devices. A deeply engaged consumer is easier to monetize. She is a good ambassador for the news organization. And, ostensibly, she’s a better informed citizen.”

The news mixtape
“If the rise of podcasts and newsletters has taught us anything this year, it’s that there’s value in consuming bundled content.

The rise of the jacktivist
“…news outlets will have to do more than merely report what’s going on. Journalists will have the added responsibility of giving people a pathway to act, to improve their lives and the lives of others.

Again, I understand this may seem anathema to some, but people today need more than headlines and stories. They need more than data, visuals, and explanations. They need more than journalism. They need an empathy-driven service to improve their lives, their communities, and our world.”

16 reasons why this research will change how you look at news consumption | Online Journalism Blog
“The value news has in people’s everyday life seems to hinge less on the increasing technological, social and participatory affordances of the informative platform than on time- and place-dependent user needs …

“News wants and needs, place, moment of the day and especially the convenience of a particular news carrier appear to be defining factors in what people do with news. As Rosa (26) explained, she checks the news on her smartphone and her work computer during the day, snacks the news on her laptop and in the newspaper after work, and reads her newspaper’s weekend supplements on Saturday morning at home.”

(PS I loved the 16 consumption trends spotted here…)

  1. Reading
  2. Watching
  3. Viewing
  4. Listening
  5. Checking
  6. Snacking
  7. Scanning
  8. Monitoring
  9. Searching
  10. Clicking
  11. Linking
  12. Sharing
  13. Liking
  14. Recommending
  15. Commenting
  16. Voting

Andy Carvin launches social-media reporting team for First Look
“Because the idea of Reportedly is to have journalists or anchor/producers embedded in different social platforms and engaging directly with users there, the project doesn’t have a website yet, although it will be getting one. Carvin said that to begin with, the team will be using a Medium collection to talk about how the experiment is unfolding, and to brainstorm about the kind of journalism they want to do. But in the future, he hopes there will be a site that can act as a “central dashboard” where readers can see everything.”

The gender split in news consumption: A case of discovery?
“It could simply be, then, that the seeming disparity between the equal amount of women and men who have access to connected devices and the fact that men actually consume more news on those types of devices could be explained by the following statement: Women in the UK prefer to discover their news through social means, and certain types of digital content (that of BuzzFeed and Upworthy etc.) are simply more shareable than others.

Ultimately, the difference in the type of news content men and women consume could be as much about how they find news as what they are intrinsically interested in.”

The newsonomics of the newly quantified, gamified news reader
“The trick here is in inferring reader likes and dislikes, as in the Cosby story example. Says Frons: “Subject-based personalization limits serendipity — one of the main pleasures of social feeds in particular and the Internet in general…For content creators, I am not sure that slicing the report up into micro-individuated bundles is ever going to make business or product sense. But a little bit of personalization within a product can go a long way.”

Managing the digital content strategy for the Jingle Bell Ball 2014

One of the reasons I absolute love working for Global Radio is being involved in the amazing selection of events they put on each year. Whether it’s Capital’s Summertime Ball, Jingle Bell Ball or XFM’s Winter Wonderland – it’s always an exciting time of year as the company rallies round to deliver a brilliant experience for our audience.

As a content person I particularly love these live events because, no matter how much you plan in advance, there are always challenges (and opportunities) that crop up which need to be dealt with in the moment. If you want to get academic, it means providing an editorial structure that is nimble enough to adapt to traffic behaviour, potential technical difficulties, competitors or just amazing stuff that just happens on the day that you couldn’t have prepared for in any planning session. And it rocks.

This year covering Capital’s Jingle Bell Ball has been extra special for us as we’ve recently launched our brand new mobile site only a few weeks ago. As the majority of the Capital audience visit us via mobile, it’s been important to ensure they get the best experience possible and, looking at the positive growth in audience numbers, it’s good to see they agree!

Besides updating platforms, I think the biggest change we made this year to cover the ball was just around workflow. This is the nerdy side of editorial that, I must admit, I’m very interested in. This year we really looked at the time it took to deliver content to our audience from inception (onstage performances or backstage antics) to delivery (video, gallery, article etc) and eliminated any obstacles. That meant creating a workflow that adapted throughout the day and in accordance with the content we wanted to prioritise.

Layer on search and social and that’s an interesting beast to manoeuvre – and only made possible by a brilliant digital content team working within a slick operation that is all working towards a common goal.

Day one is now over and I’m about to head over to the O2 to prepare for the arrival of another fantastic lineup of artists. If you’re with us today in person, or through radio, online or mobile, I hope you have a brilliant day!

Follow Capital’s Jingle Bell Ball live blog here.

Capital FM website.