Do you really “Get What You Pay For”?

Philip Berne at SlashGear (http://www.slashgear.com) published an article late in June this year titled “You Get What You Pay For” (http://www.slashgear.com/you-get-what-you-pay-for-2391228). The article is an interesting comparison of two approaches used by traditional publishing houses to engage their audiences in the Web 2.0 arena, and questions the value of comments and posts by under-qualified, non-expert contributors, basically concluding that for the content to have real value the contributor needs to be someone with expertise, experience and reputation within the field. Oh and how are we paying for this free content? As Philip points out we are all paying with our time, and let’s face it, in this day and age, we are all time short and deadline pressured.  It is an interesting read and I would recommend having a look at it. Philip certainly has expertise, experience and reputation in his field.

His opinion and arguments set me thinking about the whole issue of the ‘free’ internet, and ‘getting what you pay for’ in the wider context of the World Wide Web. We are often approached by SME business who verbalise that their web presence is important to them and has a high profile within their business. They are often experienced internet users who have previously had classic brochure-ware sites and are looking to move to the next level. Many will have pre-assigned a budget but have not defined a requirement or functional specification, let alone the user journeys or usability considerations. Basically they know what they want in broad terms, and I quote “we like the BBC site and want to have something like that”, but believe that a free internet means this is a free or low cost method of marketing.

Let’s look at a couple of assumptions we regularly hear:

1. The internet is a cheap marketing tool : The internet is not cheap, if done properly it can be very cost effective, but it is rarely, if ever, cheap. Even if we put aside the cost of operational issues such as server hosting, design, site build etc., just keeping a site up to date with new and interesting content, ensuring that social media engagement is maximised, managing the aging of content, and engaging with your internal staff so that “writing a bit for the website” isn’t seen as a chore means a significant investment in time and effort. And as Philip points out in his article, time is money.
2. Design and Content are separate : Yes they are, but they cannot be considered in isolation. Firstly, design is not just about “colouring in”. A site does need to look good, that is a given, but is also very subjective. Things I like I know my business partners and co-workers don’t. However, design should cover many more, non-subjective areas. Brand re-enforcement, usability, and user journey definition are just the first few areas of consideration, and a practical view of the interaction of the design and the content you plan to present is essential. For example, what is the point of a latest news feed on the home page with 5 story summaries displayed if you only add news every 6 months? Recently, we have had a lot of requests for social media mash-ups on home pages. If you are only tweeting twice a month it probably isn’t appropriate to put that twitter feed on the homepage of your corporate site. Either ‘invest’ the time in tweeting regularly, or leave it off the page.

I won’t carry on and list lots of further examples as I am sure you see where I am coming from. The fact of the matter is that you can engage with the internet and World Wide Web at whatever level you wish to. Web design and delivery can be from next to nothing for a simple brochure-ware site to millions of pounds for a fully integrated internet delivery (BBC 2008 web spend was £110 million (source http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/29/bbc.digitalmedia )). But you must always bear in mind that when you enter this arena you only get what you pay for, be that in purchased professional services, engagement with your suppliers and copywriters and investment of your own time. If you like the BBC’s approach and want to do ‘something like that’ then go and do it, just don’t expect to emulate a multi-million pound site for a few thousand, and expect to continue your investment every day, with new content, site evolution and engaging more staff in your organisation into your vision of your company on the web.

I was sent a link by B2B Marketing for an interesting and relevant whitepaper, " YouTube: Best Practices for the B2B Marketer ", that originated from Google.

Although it is effectively a bit of 'self promotion', the advise that it contains about creating and sharing video content is relevant and thought provoking for any company considering using YouTube as part of their communication strategy.

Furthermore, the underlying principles of good content creation, regular uploads (tweets/updates/comments), cross promotion, tracking and analysis etc. etc. etc. are all equally relevant to Twitter  and Facebook.

We were recently approached by a client who was being pressured from ‘the powers that be’ to get cracking with their social media marketing. On the face of it that’s not a silly thing for them to be pursuing, however, this particular client have trouble keeping their own website up to date, let alone providing content regularly for tweets, blogs and Facebook posts. Unfortunately they are not unusual, as is so often the case, the day-to-day business of running a business gets in the way of good communications with clients and prospective clients.

When considering social media as part of your marketing strategy there are a number of key things to remember:

1. The first thing that companies often fail to understand, yet every blogger & tweeter knows, is that the social platforms prove beyond ANY question of a doubt that the quality of the content is the thing that sets you apart.
2. Secondly, commitment HAS to be unwavering – have a look and see how many company twitter and Facebook accounts/pages have had a few entries made and are then just forgotten about
3. Engaging a social media  agency isn’t an answer in itself, and certainly won’t make you a success – if you don’t feed them, the dissatisfaction spiral will kill the relationship:

• If you don’t provide them enough raw material to create the social media ‘chatter’, they start to get dissatisfied with you as a client (remember they only want to talk about successes!)
• You don’t see the ‘massive upturn’ in whatever you decide to measure as the success criteria, and feel the social media agency isn’t ‘doing its job’

4. At all costs avoid the pressure from the parts of your business that want to use the social media platforms as direct sales tools (“Buy a widget from us for only £10”). If you don’t you’ll very quickly alienate your users as they realise you have no real interest in bringing value to the community but just want to ‘sell stuff’.
5. And finally do make sure that your CORE audience uses the medium! For example, if your clients are typically aged 55-65 it is unlikely that social media is the right medium to engage with them.

You need to take a strategic approach to ALL these things and should be considering these as part of a cohesive online and offline communications approach. That means a concerted effort in formulating a plan, implementing it, managing it and refining it. Overall this means ensuring your company to takes communications via the web SERIOUSLY!

As long as you consider these core points then social media platforms can certainly be a key element of a successful’ joined-up’ communications strategy.

So you have some great audio content you want to share. It is professionally produced MP3s and covers an area of interest in your market place. How do you reach your audience in a simple and easy way?

Existing technology, in common use today, means we can add the content to a web server and then link to the files for download. You can also generate RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and make these available. But in reality none of these items really provide a great solution for the distribution and syndication of audio. That's where podcasting comes in.

Podcasting combines the ability to have audio on your website for people to enjoy with the ability to syndicate the content via a RSS style feed. The big difference is that when the feed is consumed by the user, they can subscribe to it and automatically download the content. Or more importantly they can automatically synchronise it with either an external player, like an iPod or Zune, or a podcatcher program such as Feed Demon or even iTunes. That is the essence of podcasting and why it is becoming so popular, its simple for the user to consume the content they want.

There are many MP3 players on the market and the sophistication of the devices and the software supplied with them is increasing rapidly. Nearly all of the major MP3 player manufacturers provide podcast synchronisation software with their units. Apple provide the iTunes package, Microsoft provide the Zune application, Creative provide Zencast, Archos provide Archoslink, the list goes on and on. All have a commonality in the fact that they support an industry standard for podcasting, RSS feeds with enclosure tags (the enclosure tag actually details the media file and makes it available for download).

Major software and internet services providers such as Google and Yahoo are also providing free online services to allow users to subscribe to and consume podcast content. Many content providers are now ensuring they have implemented single click subscribe capabilities to further simplify consumption. One click and iTunes can be downloading the podcast series of your choice ready to synchronise with your player. 

Content providers are embracing the technology as well. Many specialist providers have been around for a number of years now. Providers such as EscapePod, and PodCastle have been providing free short story content for some considerable time, in fact EscapePod had it's 4th birthday in May this year. More recently major international providers have been embracing this arena. The BBC have lead the way in internet content provision to the mass market with the BBC iPlayer. Now they are providing a wide range of content as podcasts. Currently, they have over 200 podcast series available on their website ranging from the Reith Lectures, through The World Service Global News to local radio programs and sports roundups. All available with single click subscription for the major MP3 players and podcatchers, single episode download and "play on page" capabilities.

Podcasting isn't difficult but in an market where consumer expectations and technology competence are growing daily it is essential that it is done properly. To succeed you must have high production values for your content, something of value to say, and you must provide it in the formats and with the capabilities the consumers have come to accept. A few links to files on a web page really doesn't cut it anymore.

Where is all the content coming from?

This may seem like a bit of an odd question from a content management based consultancy but two significant things have come to light over the past month that have made me wonder what is happening with content from the traditional content providers, organisations that have historically been slow to embrace the internet and its delivery methodologies.

Firstly, the Guardian has announced ‘The Guardian Open Platform’. This platform provides a methodology and API to allow partner organisations to access and consume The Guardian’s content. The Guardian describes the platform as follows:

‘The Open Platform is the suite of services that make it possible for our partners to build applications with the Guardian. We've opened up our platform so that everyone can benefit from our journalism, our brand, and the technologies that power guardian.co.uk.’

The platform is formed of a content API and a content data store. Interestingly the platform is free and is the start of a new approach to the internet for The Guardian.

‘Our aim is to make the Guardian Open Platform a useful environment for anyone who creates for the internet. We will offer more services in the future such as an ad network and an application platform.

This initial release is a beta trial that will help us identify the ways our partners want to work with us. Access will be granted on a limited basis.’

So where is the money in this? Well as you would expect they are offering the beta free but state in their terms that it is currently restricted to 5000 API calls per key per day, and that in the future they will require partners to join their advertising network. Still this is an interesting and thought provoking approach. Will The Guardian be the big winner in this content provision approach? Will other broadsheet and tabloid papers follow suit? Time will tell.

Secondly, Google are rumored to be having talks with the major traditional print and content providers about providing preferential search ranking. These talks have been closed door and related to an article report in Advertising Age. To quote Daniel Sung who reported this in an opinion piece on TechDigest;

‘there was a report in Advertising Age this morning on the ranking of Google search results and how certain members of the old school, established and, essentially, print centred publishers are complaining because the fact that their pages don't come at the top is unfair. "You should not have a system," one content executive told AdAge, "where those who are essentially parasites off the true producers of content benefit disproportionately."’

Daniel’s full opinion piece can be found at TechDigest.tv and is linked here.

So the next few months may well see some significant changes in the way content is provided to us all as internet users. Will Google alter their approach and provide a premium content layer? If they do this could be one of the most significant changes in the way content is provided in the history of Google. Or will we see silos of high quality content and data made available for anyone’s site to consume along The Guardian model? I know which one I would prefer.

The Web 2.0 revolution has provided an accessible platform for anyone who wishes to air a viewpoint or be able to express an interest or personal passion. The content for a blog, for example, is typically in the hands of one author and as such they can control and monitor it, ensuring it conforms to what they believe is acceptable and any legal guidelines. However, from a Business point of view it should be remembered that many of the Web 2.0 technologies also allow for the consumer of the information to post some form of comment. The most obvious example of this is the comment capability on many blogs, however let us not discount the way discussion forums allow users to respond to a topic or thread posted by another user. All of this provides an arena for lively debate and interaction but also provides an opportunity for the technology to be abused.

Now ‘abuse’ may seem like a strong term to use but there are many recorded cases where malicious comments have been posted to web sites and blogs, often in breach of national laws. These offensive comments are normally addressed in a very fast and effective manner by site owners and administrators but without moderation the offensive comment has already been presented to the audience. The cases of these types of comment are thankfully rare, but the erroneous information error is far more prevalent.

As a simple example from earlier this year during President Obama's inauguration lunch, US Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, presumably attending the lunch, were both taken ill. Shortly after the event Wikipedia entries reported that they were both dead. Since both have recovered and are still with us I think we can assume the information was incorrect. The changes were removed from Wikipedia within a few minutes of being posted. (Source www.techdigest.tv, 26-01-2009)

Another well publicised miss-reported health issue was Steve Job’s heart attack at the beginning of October 2008. The story was reported by a ‘citizen journalist’ on CNN’s un-moderated news site iReport (www.ireport.com). Within minutes of the story being posted significant speculation was on sites such as Twitter (www.twitter.com). Within an hour Apple were referring to the story as a fake.
These may seem like minor issues but as Adrian Kingsley-Hughes reported in his ZDNET blog, the Apple news saw a significant drop in Apple’s stock price and also lead to an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission as to whether this was a deliberate attempt to force Apple’s stock down.

Now having read the example detailed above you may believe that we are strongly in favour of moderation of posts and comments in a Web 2.0 environment. Well we aren’t. Every case should be examined on its own merit but we must also look at the legal situations within the UK. A major global law firm with offices throughout the UK (Pinsent Masons) advises on their own website www.out-law.com about user generated content. To summarise their article:

• If you moderate your site and inappropriate material is not dealt with by the moderators then the site operators may become liable for the user generated comments.
• If the site is unmoderated the operator will find it easier to avoid liability for user generated content that is defamatory or in some other way breaks the law. The only caveat is that the operator of the site provides a process to quickly remove offensive content when they are made aware of it.

The examples we have distilled above are from a much larger article available on Pinsent Masons’ Out-law website and we would strongly advise anyone looking to move into the area of user generated content to both read the full article, its associated articles and seek appropriate advise from their legal advisors.

Finally, do not expect all of the comments and feedback you receive via Web 2.0 to be positive. If people feel they have an issue with regard to a product or service they will seek out a forum to voice their concern. This should be seen as an opportunity to both respond to any genuine complaints or issues, and also to gain valuable feedback. Most people using the internet today have learnt to sift through the comments and feedback available to them, filtering the extreme ‘reviews’, both good and bad, to draw a balanced opinion. Any site where the only product or service comments are unqualified praise is easily seen through. And remember, allowing users to comment on a blog or participate in a forum is optional. You don’t have to do it.

We are regularly asked about WEB 2.0 and user generated content models by our customers. Where does WEB 2.0 fit into their web strategy? How can blogging or social media be included in their site? What are the issues or risks? With all of these questions come some basic tenets that you must consider when looking towards the user generated content revolution. In this article we will explain the common technologies available to implement a WEB 2.0 environment and in future articles we will address the individual considerations and issues with the different types of WEB 2.0 components.

What technologies could you utilise?

There are 3 primary technologies that companies initially consider when looking at their first involvement in WEB 2.0. Each provides a different and unique service and each has its own considerations.

Blogs

A blog is simply a reverse chronological list of items of interest, be these comment, details of events, product information or video and diary style entries. This article is a blog entry. A blog is typically maintained by an individual or a single organisation and often allows other to comment on the individual articles and items. Many blogs can also be consumed as Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds.

Discussion Forums

A discussion forum, or  forum, is a series of threaded ‘conversations’ normally arranged into categories that keep common subjects together. Forums, by their very nature, have contributions from multiple users and are often used to discuss or support products and services. A contributing user will typically be required to register with an email address and some form of user name or screen name. Most forums go to some lengths to disassociate themselves with the submissions of their members to ensure that any legally questionable postings cannot be associated with the hosting body.

Wiki

A Wiki is a collection of interlinked web pages that allow a collaborative group to contribute and edit the content. A wiki provide a simplified mark-up language that means contributing users do not have to have a technical knowledge of HTML or web development. Possibly the most well known example of a wiki is Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org), however many organisations use wiki’s on intranets and extranets as support or knowledge management systems. The essential concepts of a wiki, as explained by its creator Ward Cunningham, are:

• All users are invited to edit and contribute to the content of the wiki using nothing more than a web browser.
• The wiki encourages meaningful associations between topics by making the creation of inter page links easy and intuitive.
• A wiki is not a static or carefully structured website but a constantly changing and evolving site driven forward by its users acting as contributors and editors.

Many wiki sites do not require validation of the entries made by contributors but rely on peer review and 'self policing' to validate the accuracy its content.

Social Networking Service

A social networking service, or social network, is typically a service that focuses on building online communities with common interests and who wish to share and exchange experiences with likeminded individuals. Popular and well know social networking services include Facebook (http://www.facebook.com), MySpace (http://www.myspace.com) and Bebo (http://www.bebo.com), however many businesses have chosen to create specialised communities utilising social networking technologies. These communities may cover specific interests or groups and may be global or limited to a smaller geographic area. An example would be the American site MomSpace (http://www.momspace.com). These business sites are often funded by click based advertising specific to the interest group they represent.