DCP Dialogue

Sports Custom Content That Stands Out

With an abundance of sports coverage easily accessible across mainstream media, why do sports organizations develop their own custom content programs? There are several good answers to this question that Barry Janoff discusses in his article, Sports Custom Content: The Fans are the Stars, published in the latest issue of Content magazine.

This article talks about several sports teams but I pulled quotes below that relate to one of DCP’s major sports clients, the San Francisco Giants.

The main goal behind sports custom content is to keep loyal fans rooting for their teams. How is that accomplished?

1. Provide “more nuanced, more intimate” access to players and teams.

“Information is everywhere, and much of it is free,” says Mario Alioto, Giants senior vice president of corporate marketing. “We have access and information about our players that other media don’t have.”

2. Give fans an opportunity to share their stories.

“It’s one thing to have a magazine that interests fans, but the best kind of content marketing is when people feel they are part of it,” says Jeff Gire, senior editor at Diablo Custom Publishing. “The team wanted Giants Magazine to have stories that involved the fans.” As a result, we created a new section, “Our Fan Story”, which gives fans a place to share personal stories about the Giants.

Be sure to read the article to get the whole story.

Should Hospitals Use Facebook?

Hospitals are flocking to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in order to attract consumer attention and to engage consumers in meaningful and ongoing dialogue. The attraction is obvious since millions of consumers turn to these internet communities to find information and local services. But special challenges are presented to hospitals on social media sites because of concerns about patient privacy and the limits participants have in controlling the dialogue.

In a recent white paper entitled "To Facebook or Not to Facebook: The question for hospitals today" the people at MyHealthCommunity Social Network, Inc. do a great job of framing the issues and offering sound advice for hospital marketers developing a social media strategy. You can download the white paper here.

In their conclusion, the authors offer a series of recommendations on how hospital marketers should proceed. One of the points that sticks out for me is that you should “use Facebook as a place to find your audience and direct them to the appropriate platform for communication.” Those appropriate platforms include the hospitals’ own websites. DCP helps hospitals build out sections of their sites where this more secure conversation can take place.

Consumers Still Prefer Print Magazines

Take a look at this very interesting whitepaper, Leveraging Loyalty to Transform Publishing, produced by the CMO Council and InfoPrint Solutions. It addresses “The Impact of Relevance in Publishing and Advertising.”

I recommend downloading this 12-page whitepaper that includes the detailed findings about what people want from their magazines. It confirms what we all believe is most essential—relevance.

Here's some info pulled from the first page of the whitepaper.

“To get a clear picture of what opportunities might exist for publications transformation, the CMO Council asked consumers what they wanted from their magazine experience.

The audit revealed that consumers do not want to give up their cherished print publications, and further that their experiences within these preferred pages has shaped and molded their buying decisions.

In a world where the internet threatens to change the face of loyalty—offering new and exciting real-time connections—magazines seem to be the one constant that consumers are not ready to relinquish. According to our survey:

92 percent plan to stick to print when it comes to their magazine consumption

Only 24 percent intend to eventually switch over to some form of e-reader device

The real message consumers want to send to publishers is keep the content relevant, be it editorial, advertorial, or advertising. But, well placed, content rich and even personalized advertising will lead to new opportunities (and even renewed opportunities) for profitable customer engagements."

Click here to download the whitepaper and read the detailed findings of the online consumer survey.

Introducing John Rodenburg, Director of Custom Media

Diablo Custom Publishing (DCP) is excited to announce that John Rodenburg has joined our organization as the Director of Custom Media. John previously held the position of Vice President and Publisher of Travel and Leisure Golf for American Express Publishing. As a long time veteran of Time Inc., John held several senior positions at Sports Illustrated, including the Associate Publisher of Marketing and Associate Publisher of Sales. Prior to moving to New York in 2000, John was the Northwest Advertising Director at Sports Illustrated and a resident of the East Bay.

Barney Fonzi, Group Publisher for Diablo Publications comments, “John’s background makes him the perfect addition to our team, and we welcome his seasoned experience, strong business development skills, energy and business acumen. We are confident that John will be able to leverage his proven strategies that have worked in his past endeavors, as well as his entrepreneurial forward thinking.” 

Speaking about his new role, John said, “I’m very excited about returning home to the Bay Area, and I’m equally excited about the opportunity to share my experience to help DCP reach new heights by leveraging their great reputation and brand, their diverse client portfolio of top notch work and their talented team of professionals. DCP is poised for growth and I’m excited to be a part of this expansion.”

In the next month, expect to see a blog entry from John summarizing his outlook for the Custom Media market.

Why is Drupal Gaining Popularity?

Is it just me, or is anyone else noticing that more and more people are talking about redesigning their organization’s website using Drupal? DCP is currently working on three website redesign proposals for organizations that know they want to shift to Drupal.

I did some quick internet research and came across several interesting articles that explain 1) who is using Drupal?, 2) why are people moving to Drupal?, and 3) what is Drupal?

Take a look….

Who is Using Drupal?

Click here for a summary of over 70 well-known brands and not-for-profit organizations currently using Drupal. They fall in the following categories: Corporate, Entertainment, News, Academia, Government, Non-Profit.

Some of the impressive names include: Mattel, Zappos, Nokia, ABC, Virgin Radio, Duke University, Rutgers University, InfoWorld, Fast Company, Oxfam International, Amnesty International, and last but not least, Whitehouse.gov.

Click here for Drupal Usage Statistics from Builtwith.com. This article states, “We know of 9,390 websites using this within the top million sites on the internet and an additional extended total of 54,175 websites that are using Drupal." The CMS Distribution of the top web technologies shows that Drupal has 41% of the market share which is by far the most.

Why are People Using Drupal?

In this recent article, Big Drupal: Ten Trends for the Enterprise, Jeff Walpole says,

“Of particular note this year is the adoption of Drupal as the platform of choice for large established organizations in the publishing, media, entertainment and government spaces. To me, the embracing of Drupal by large organizations defines the point at which a technology "has arrived" on the scene and is likely to be taken seriously. It is also a good sign that it will stick around as an important technology with an installed base for a while to come.

Why is this all happening now? It is likely a combination of many things: maturity of the product itself, size of the installed base, growth in community popularity and participation, and lack of affordable alternatives for comparable web 2.0 functionality. I actually prefer to view it more as the maturity of Drupal as a platform through which the Drupal technology community is pushing Drupal forward - potentially straight into enterprise software territory. Here is my "top ten style" list of the technology trends I see fueling this growth."

What is Drupal?

From Drupal’s official website, you’ll learn that, “Drupal is a free, open-source software package that allows an individual, a community of users, or an enterprise to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Hundreds of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power an endless variety of web sites.”

Go to the Drupal site to find out details about the built-in functionality available with Drupal, as well as the thousands of freely available add-on modules.

 

Omniture Survey Says…Online ROI Measurement is Important, But Hard to Implement

According to the results of the 2010 Omniture Online Analytics Benchmark Survey, the majority of marketers value the importance of measuring ROI from online marketing activities but 55% can’t effectively measure it. The survey results also reveal that only 14% of respondents currently use all three emerging channels (mobile, social media, video) in their marketing efforts.

I was surprised by these numbers! I expected that more marketers would be using emerging channels and would have systems in place for measuring results. Take a look at the highlights below or click here for more survey results. What's your reaction to this?

ROI
80% of respondents believe ROI from online marketing activities is important to measure, but only 31% of marketers can effectively measure it.

Social Media
69% of respondents are using social media in their marketing efforts however, 41% lack a mechanism to measure social media conversion.

Mobile
23% of respondents are currently using mobile in their marketing efforts. Of these people:

• 73% can measure if website visitors are coming from a mobile device
• 30% are able to measure their mobile app conversions

Video
43% of respondents are using online video in their marketing efforts. Of these people:

• 59% feel that post-video conversion is one of the most important video metrics, yet 70% are unable to measure post-video conversion.
• 40% are using online video lack a mechanism to measure video starts.

Conversion
86% of respondents think conversion rate from online marketing activities is important to measure, but 25% cannot effectively measure it.

Results of the survey included here are as of May 7, 2010.

Online Magazine Video Usage Soars

There’s a lot of talk about the current and future explosion of video usage in online magazines. Take a look at Steve Smith’s recent article, Magazine Video Streams Up 90% in 2010, for some exciting numbers from major technology provider Brightcove.

Here are three key points from this article that quantify how video viewing and production have increased in the past year:

1. “Among its magazine publisher clients, Brightcove streamed 190 million videos in the first quarter of 2010, up 90% from the 99 million video streams during the same period last year.”
2. “In terms of “player loads” or the number of times a video player’s assets are loaded onto a page in order to make them playable, magazines had 1.2 billion player loads in Q1, up 70% from same quarter last year.”
3. “The number of discrete video assets loaded into the Brightcove system from magazine publishers was up 60%, from 27,224 in Q1 2009 to 43,554 in 2010.”

If you’re trying to convince someone of the popularity of video in online magazines, these numbers are very encouraging.

Content Marketing Rises to $47 Billion in 2009

According to a new survey from the Custom Content Council (CCC), U.S. corporations spent a record $47.2 billion on branded content last year. The 10th annual industry “Characteristics Study: A Look at the Volume and Type of Content Marketing in America for 2010” includes the study of electronic and other forms of content marketing for the first time—which explains the significant increase in spending from 2008.

This year’s study reveals that 32% of the overall marketing, advertising and communications budget were dedicated to content marketing. This is the greatest-ever proportion of funds dedicated to content marketing in the 10-year history of this study.

What does this mean?

Marketing organizations recognize the need to communicate regularly with their audience and provide them with meaningful content. Marketing today is not as much about flashy marketing campaigns as it is about constant interaction and sharing of relevant information with a targeted audience. Since today’s consumers make highly educated decisions, marketing organizations need to play a key role in the transfer of knowledge and participate in their consumers’ decision-making process. The more valuable content an organization provides, the more likely they will build and grow a loyal customer base.

How are companies communicating with their audience today?

Custom Magazines/Newsletters Still Strong:

• In 2009, average circulation per issue increased to an all-time high of 48,162 copies per issue.
• The number of unique printed custom publication titles decreased from 1.9 in 2008 to 1.7 in 2009. That said, those titles published increased in both page count and circulation.

Other Forms of Branded Content:

• The most common other forms being used are website updates of articles, blog post and e-newsletters.
• The least common are mobile and e-zines such as flipbooks and interactive PDFs.

What marketing vehicles are companies expecting to add in the future?
While mobile content is not yet widely used, it does rank as the medium that most marketers believe they are likely to invest in next year. Beyond that, marketers plan to invest in video and audio.

Custom Content Council Executive Director Lori Rosen said, “As more and more companies explore custom content solutions across print and digital platforms, we will continue to see an increased financial investment. Things are changing rapidly—the data shows just how much change the industry has undergone in 12 months-and we haven’t even touched social media surface. Next year we will be measuring Twitter, Facebook and more. It’s an exciting time to be involved in content marketing in all its forms.”

Digital Magazines vs. Online Magazine Microsites vs. Websites

What’s the Best Solution?

There are many options for presenting magazine-style content online. How do you know which approach is ideal for your publication? You can start by answering three simple questions.

1. Is your online magazine an extension of a print publication?
2. Do you want to optimize your online magazine for web viewing?
3. Will you update your online magazine content regularly?

First, what are the different solutions?

If we put online magazines on a continuum with print-centric solutions (PDF/Digital Magazine) on the left to web-centric solutions (full featured website) on the right, magazine microsites would fall in the middle. Below are explanations of each.

PDFs are the simplest online versions of a print magazine. You just post the PDF file of your magazine online and allow people to view it. But it’s not very compelling for readers because:

• Large files are often blocked by firewalls and slow to download
• Readers don’t want to download big files onto their computer
• Reader experience is cumbersome—you have to read pages sequentially
• No interactive content

This option is also limiting for publishers—you can’t add rich media or new content, you can’t track viewer activity, and search engine optimization (SEO) is limited. This solution is quickly becoming obsolete.

Digital Magazines (flip books) are high-quality online replicas of print publications that offer value-added functionality such as interactive media and live links. There’s no file downloading and it’s easier for readers to navigate with a flexible control strip and search functionality. Advertisers like this approach because they can replicate print advertisements online and embed active links to their website. However, people find these solutions hard to read because they’re based on PDFs that were designed for print viewing, not for the Web. Reading requires a lot of zooming in and zooming out. And publishers can’t add new content. Digital magazines are a lively way to view a static print magazine online.

Online Magazine Microsites are HTML-based solutions that take advantage of the design and interactive possibilities of the Web. Based on a print publication or an online-only magazine, it’s a dynamic gathering place where readers peruse your magazine content, view rich media (videos, podcasts, slideshows), and link to your social media sites. Online magazines replicate the magazine-reading experience with a flag treatment, Table of Contents, feature stories, and departments. By mixing custom designed feature articles with various article templates, you don’t have to design every page from scratch. Instead, you upload content as often as you want using a simple Content Management System (CMS). Readers prefer this solution because articles are easy to consume and graphically compelling, content is updated regularly, plus navigation is highly intuitive.

Websites can be used to house online magazine content for organizations’ whose primary business is magazine publishing. For these companies, the main website is an extension of the magazine. For organizations that do more than magazine publishing, articles posted on the primary site get lost unless they’re packaged in a magazine microsite.

What are the ideal scenarios for each solution?
Getting back to the original questions….

1. Is your online magazine an extension of a print publication?
2. Do you want to optimize your online magazine for web viewing?
3. Will you update your online magazine content regularly?

If your online magazine is based on a print publication you can consider all options. But if you’re creating a web-only magazine it makes sense to focus solely on web-centric solutions. Why create a print-centric publication to be viewed online? Why invest in designing each and every page of your publication from scratch when it’s never going to print? There are much more efficient ways to do this. If you plan to update your content regularly, PDF/Digital Magazines are not a viable solution—an online magazine or website is the way to go.

The ideal scenarios for each solution are:

PDF/Digital Magazines
You have a print issue and have already invested in the design of each page. Repurpose it. Don't want to add any extra content; just want to replicate your print piece. Great for magazines with ads—publishers can sell online ad space in addition to print.

Online Magazine Microsites
You want to extend your magazine's brand online and give your magazine lovers a solution optimized for the Web. Regularly post fresh content to keep your audience engaged. Make your magazine a two-way conversation with your audience through article commenting.

Websites
Your company is all about your online magazine. Readers don’t distinguish between your magazine’s brand and your organization’s brand.

Social Media Marketing: Not the Leading Marketing Tool

The title of a recent Junta42 Content Marketing blog entry caught my eye--“Five Reasons Social Media Marketing Comes Last”. When every other blog entry, email subject line, whitepaper, and webinar advocates the high priority of social media marketing, it was refreshing to read something different.

Based on an excerpt from Shama Kabani’s new book, The Zen of Social Media Marketing, this blog entry explains why social media marketing should come last in your marketing plan, yet why it must be there.

The main distinction Shama makes is that social media is a consumer platform, not a marketing platform. With a consumer-owned platform, you can listen and you can participate in the conversation but you don’t control what or how much is said. You still need a marketing platform—a one-way communication vehicle that enables you to deliver your marketing message to the consumers you want to reach.

Since social media is where your customers are, you have to be there. But don’t forget that while social media provides a great place to meet and greet customers, you still need traditional marketing platforms (i.e. advertising, websites, email, e-newsletters, PR, webinars, special events, catalogs, etc.) to communicate your comprehensive marketing message.