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OPA Digital Q&A: CNN’s Louis Gump on Mobile Strategy, Part IIBy Pam Horan on 03/21/2012 | Comments OPA Digital Q&A: CNN’s Louis Gump on Mobile Strategy, Part II Today’s insights on mobile strategy come from Louis Gump, Vice President of CNN Mobile, responsible for managing CNN’s mobile business globally. In addition, Gump has served as global chairman for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). This is Part II of his interview. (Click here to read Part I): Where do you see the future of mobile and publishing industries in the next five years? What are your thoughts on how paid subscription models will play out in mobile? What additional piece of advice would you give to brands as they build out their mobile strategy? What do you believe have been the critical factors enabling CNN to remain a leader in mobile news? How has CNN aligned mobile with other platforms? OPA Digital Q&A: CNN’s Louis Gump on Mobile Strategy, Part IBy Pam Horan on 03/19/2012 | Comments The “OPA Digital Q&A” showcases perspectives on key trends in online publishing and media by industry leaders. Today’s insights on mobile strategy come from Louis Gump, Vice President of CNN Mobile, responsible for managing CNN’s mobile business globally. In addition, Gump has served as global chairman for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). This is Part I of a II part series with Louis. I welcome your comments and ask you to come back for Part II. Do you anticipate a surge in mobile ad spending this year? How do you anticipate theses strategies will manifest on the agency, publisher and technology fronts? What are you doing at CNN to take advantage of the excitement in the space? What advice would you give publishers to optimize their mobile strategy? What would you tell publishers to avoid? OPA Digital Q&A: Ad Perception’s Randy Cohen on Advertiser OptimismBy Pam Horan on 03/16/2012 | Comments The “OPA Digital Q&A” showcases perspectives on key trends in online publishing and media by industry leaders. Can you describe some of the insights that you found when conducting research for your most OPA Social Media Day: Social Readers, New Platforms, Advertiser Relationships and Brand PartnershipsBy Pam Horan on 03/14/2012 | Comments The theme for the second portion of the sessions at OPA’s Social Media Day was all about building key partnerships. The Washington Post’s Chief Digital Officer Vijay Ravindran explained that a key to the overwhelming growth of their social reader has been the inclusion of 35 content partners, whose stories are integral in rounding out the user experience. They are finding that the social reader is attracting a new audience to Washington Post content—one that reflects the Facebook demographic. Vijay anecdotally shared that the children of their writers and editors, who historically haven’t read The Washington Post in print or digital, are actually reading articles and content created by their parents because of the social reader. Google+’s Deitra Mara highlighted the social challenges that the new platform was designed to solve, primarily the ability to bring people together in the way in which they want to be grouped. Curtis Houghland, founder of AttentionUSA, lead a panel of senior advertising agency executives from Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, PhD, kbs+p and Initiative . Kbs+p’s Chief Innovation Officer, Faris Yakob pointed out that publishers have deep connections with their audiences which brands can’t easily replicate and therefore places publishers in a unique position. Andrea Wolinetz, Director Social Media, PhD, shared her concern about Facebook’s controlling of her brand’s fans. Andrea noted that when partnering with publishers, there is a halo marketers can take advantage of due to the first party relationship those publishers enjoy with their users. Dave Rosner, SVP, Director Digital Innovation at Initiative, explained that their focus is on changing business outcomes, not impressions, encouraging publishers to consider thinking similarly when developing programs and partnering with agencies to create new revenue streams. And environment matters a great deal as emphasized by Scott Prindle, VP Executive Creative Technology Director, CP+B. His clients approach social with different levels of comfort, so entering the space by partnering with established publishers is instrumental in getting brands to jump in. Michael Reidy, Digital Sales, NBC Universal ended the day with a case study highlighting the impact social had in catapulting The Voice to hit-show status. Reidy emphasized that a clear understanding of the audience—both the publisher’s and the brand’s—is crucial for a fruitful partnership and impactful program. For instance, The Voice built successful partnerships with Sprint and Starbucks, after realizing the TV audience and the brands’ target consumer shared an affinity around the importance of community. OPA Social Media Day: Tackling Influencers, Tools, Metrics, Audience Development and MoreBy Pam Horan on 03/09/2012 | Comments The 2nd Annual OPA Social Media Day provided an opportunity for the leading online media brands to share insights around successful social media programs. As we continue to surface the possibilities and opportunities available across channels, top publishers and agency heads shared their plans for the future, innovative campaigns to date and lessons learned. Ultimately, the conversations will steer publishers to help brands continue to make a meaningful impact via social media. With brand names mentioned in social media half a trillion times in a year, Forrester’s Melissa Parrish focused on the need to understand real “influencers” and the value influencers have in terms of extending brand messaging. Parrish pointed to the benefits of forging key partnerships with vendors as they can provide data and listening platforms. She also emphasized that there are no hard and fast rules, but rather the need to measure context surrounding your objectives to frame your specific campaign so that results aren’t just numbers on a page. Rhoda Bueno, Director of Marketing and Sales Development with FutureUS, discussed the types of tools publishers can use to better understand the impact of their programs. Rhoda presented a case study on the success of a cross platform program in which social was at the center. The takeaway was on the importance of choosing the right tools based on the needs of the campaign – and not on all the bells and whistles (or even cost). Next up was Adam Sherk, VP of SEO and Social Media at Define Media Group, Lisa Brewer, Director Digital Audience Development, Time Inc. and Sasha Koren, Deputy Editor Interactive News, The New York Times. Adam highlighted the need to set specific goals and measure against them instead of putting a general ROI for all social activity. He also shared lessons on how to create optimized experiences on owned websites, making sure to be thoughtful about the placement and number of social buttons to drive audiences, not discourage them. Referring specifically to People Magazine’s Facebook strategy, Lisa Brewer added that, “90% of our goal in social is to drive traffic back to our website.” She went on to say that “users want to interact with topical content and show their affinity on Facebook.” She explained that in order to make that experience as effective as possible, People Magazine has developed unique ways to reward fans around events. For instance, for the Royal Wedding, People ran a wildly successful Facebook campaign that stood out from the commonplace giveaways and contests and instead gave fans the opportunity to superimpose their own likeness onto a royal stamp. A resounding 40% of users that interacted with the stamp wound up using it as their profile image. . Concluding the discussion, Sasha Koren said the Times takes a multi-pronged approach when integrating social into coverage of major news events like the political debates or the Oscars. Sasha elaborated that social informs the news process enabling the media to produce content that is more appealing to users and even has the power to change our journalism. Check back for our next blog post in which we’ll cover the best practices The Washington Post has learned from their Facebook social reader and insights from agency executives—from Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, PhD, kbs+p and Initiative—on how publishers and agencies can strengthen their relationships to deliver better social programs. OPA Digital Q&A: Forrester’s Melissa Parrish Previews Research on Social Media Influencer StrategiesBy Pam Horan on 03/06/2012 | Comments The “OPA Digital Q&A” showcases perspectives on key trends in online publishing and media by industry leaders. In advance of her presentation at OPA’s annual Social Media Day on March 6th, 2012, I took the opportunity to ask Melissa Parrish, a senior analyst with Forrester, a few questions about the research she is previewing exclusively at our event. Be sure to follow the event on Twitter with hashtag #OPASMD2012 Can you tell us a little bit about the impetus for the new research Forrester is about to release on influencer marketing? MP: By the end of 2011, nearly 85% of US marketers were using social media in some way. With this many brands engaging their customers in social media, we wanted to do a deep dive into some of the popular objectives that lead marketers to this channel. Influencer marketing is one of the key ways that brands are able to drive measurable results in a social context, so that’s what led us to explore the topic more deeply. One of the areas you look at closely in the report is the “social influencer”.How do you define them? MP: A social influencer, simply put, is someone whose opinions about products or services, posted in a social media context, affect the decision making processes of other consumers. How does identifying these social influencers affect marketing tactics for brands and publishers? MP: Identifying influencers is the first step to creating measurable and effective programs. Without that identification step, brands and publishers are left with just a “spray and pray” strategy where they push out content and hope somebody likes it enough to share it. But through identifying people who are influential in various contexts about specific topics, brands and publishers can create smarter, more relevant content and campaigns that acknowledge the particular needs and interests of those influencers. Because the programs speak to the interests and needs of the influencer, that influencer is more likely to talk about it. Because the brand has created a complete strategy around the program—instead of, say, just a funny video that they hope will “go viral”—the marketer will be able to choose the right metrics to track that will show success towards the goal of the overall program. Are there specific tools or partners that brands and publishers are relying on to help identify and build relationships with influencers? MP: There’s a variety of tools and partners that brands and publishers can turn to for help throughout the planning and execution process. Listening vendors like Radian 6 and Sysomos and data providers like Klout, PeerIndex and FlipTop are particularly crucial in identifying influencers and measuring the success of these campaigns. Has your research revealed any best practices for effective influencer marketing? Can you give us some examples? MP: The most important best practice is to understand that there are 3 types of influencers:
Effective programs can be created to reach just one of these influencer segments, or you can really take your program to the next level by creating an influencer strategy that speaks to all 3 types of influencer. Do your findings provide any insight as to the direction Social Media is heading in the near future? MP: This particular research reinforces the idea that social media will continue to have an impact on more departments than just marketing and communications. Consider the kinds of conversations that influencers may have. Sure, some of it is likely to be about how much they simply like your brand, or about a terrific program that you’re running and want them to talk about. But they’re also probably talking about customer service questions, ideas for your products and content, reactions to your offline campaigns or event experiences, etc. Listening to them and engaging with them smartly has the potential to improve your business not just your content and campaigns.
OPA Digital Q&A Define Media Group’s Adam Sherk on Social Media: Part IIBy Pam Horan on 03/02/2012 | Comments The “OPA Digital Q&A” showcases perspectives on key trends in online publishing and media by industry leaders. How can publishers maintain active social outposts without sacrificing on-site community and engagement? AS: Fortunately for publishers, sharing links is a huge part of social media activity. As a result major social sites have become valuable referral sources as opposed to taking away traffic. A lot of the conversation around content does now happen off-site, but interestingly this has not led to a drastic reduction in on-site user activity. From what we have seen over the past few years social media has increased the total number of conversations as opposed to taking those conversations away from the main site. And publishers can always experiment with things like Facebook Comments to try to bridge the two. In addition, off-site activity can be a great source of ideas and user generated content that can be leveraged on the main site (as well as the print publication) in interesting ways. The New York Times is particularly is good at pulling social content into a value-added package of some sort on their own site, either in combination with their own reporting or through things like data visualization. For those publishers that you view as being most successful in the space right now, are there particular metrics they are using to show the success of their social media campaigns? AS: Traffic is still the most important measuring stick. As with search traffic, it is good to look at YoY (Year over Year) growth across the various social outlets as opposed to getting too focused on MoM (Month over Month). As I referenced above it is also useful to compare user activity and behavior both among social sites and against other sources of traffic. This can inform site and content planning that will ultimately lead to increased engagement and conversions. In addition it is good to define specific goals for both ongoing social activity and for specific promotions (like a special package or feature) to establish a meaningful way to evaluate success. Total followers, likes, tweets, +1’s, pins, etc. are also interesting to monitor, but quality of engagement and achievement of specific goals wins out over quantity of activity. How does social media impact SEO? AS: Social media impacts SEO in a number of ways both directly and indirectly. For instance Google is using Google+ and Bing is using Facebook to directly influence the search results that signed-in users see. Google’s new “Search Plus Your World” initiative is a very big push towards greater personalization through social connections and social activity. Google+ does not yet have the mainstream adoption of Facebook or Twitter, but Google is making it a major priority and heavily promoting it. So I wouldn’t expect it to go away anytime soon. At a basic level this means publishers should be making the most of +1 buttons on content templates and official Google+ pages. The engines are also looking at social activity in aggregate as way to evaluate the popularity or relative “importance” of content and the authority of sites. Links are still much more important but social signals are growing in prominence and value. If Google had better relationships with Twitter and Facebook we would already see greater visible integration of a wider range of social signals in its ranking algorithms. This has seemingly taken a step back in the past 1-2 years as Google places its bets on Google+. But it would be foolish for Google to ignore activity on other social sites. About Adam Sherk Adam Sherk is VP SEO and Social Media for Define Media Group. Adam works as an embedded strategist and trainer, helping news and content sites to develop and execute effective SEO and audience development programs. Adam writes about SEO and social media for publishers at AdamSherk.com. OPA Digital Q&A: Define Media Group’s Adam Sherk on Social Media - Part IBy Pam Horam on 03/01/2012 | Comments The “OPA Digital Q&A” showcases perspectives on key trends in online publishing and media by industry leaders. On March 6, 2012 Adam Sherk, VP of SEO and Social Media at Define Media Group, will lead a discussion at OPA’s annual Social Media Day (#OPASMD2012) on audience development best practices. In advance of his presentation, we had the opportunity to ask him a few questions about social media best practices, social plug-ins and more, This is Part I of a II part series with Adam. As always, we welcome your questions and comments. When it comes to social media best practices, what are some examples of publishers gaining traction? I am fairly familiar with magazine publishers like Condé Nast, Time Inc. and Hearst, all of which are doing good work. The New York Times has been active in social for quite some time but in the past year or so they have stepped up their efforts. ABC News is doing well too and The Washington Post is having success with its Social Reader. I have also been impressed with NPR. They recently shared an interesting case study on their experiments with Facebook Page geotargeting. How important is on-site optimization? What are some of the things publishers should keep in mind when deciding on the right social plugins to use? How much is too much? Facebook integration gets a lot of attention now as publishers try to figure out their comfort level with things like frictionless sharing. Like buttons, Open Graph tags and reasonable use of Facebook Social Plugins are standard practice now but it will be interesting to see how this evolves. Publishers are also doing things like comparing pageviews and time on site (by content type and social referrer) in an effort to create optimized experiences for social media visitors. This ties into ad sales and conversion rate optimization too as user intent and behavior varies by social site and as compared to search or direct navigation traffic. Check back on the blog tomorrow for Part II of Adam’s answers to find out how publishers can maintain active social pages without cannibalizing on-site community and engagement. About Adam Sherk Gannett to Launch Subscription Model Across All Community News WebsitesBy OPA Staff on 02/23/2012 | Comments Gannett announced in an earnings call that it would be unveiling a new online subscription model for its US publications, excluding the USA Today. The company announced a number of revenue generating initiatives, including the creation of a new digital marketing services business targeted at small and medium size businesses, but it is the online subscription model that got the most press. Like the existing system in place at the New York Times, the model will limit access for nonsubscribers, and offer paid content on all platforms, Jeff Bercovici of Forbes, noted. PaidContent praised Gannett’s localized approach – that “its pricing and paywall strategy to each individual market—meaning that issues of pricing, bundling and meters will be determined on a paper-per-paper basis.” PaidContent’s Jeff Roberts wrote: “This seems like a smart strategy—not only will the company have a chance to implement an optimal formula for each paper, but it will also acquire a wealth of price and marketing data.” The mediasphere will no doubt anxiously watch Gannett’s next few months as it begins rollouts of the online subscription model, but one thing is clear: similar approaches have worked because readers are reaffirming that they will pay for valuable content. Trend: Publishers Forging Key Partnerships to Bolster Tablet ProductsBy Pam Horan on 02/21/2012 | Comments In 2011, the world witnessed the iPad become one of the year’s most popular gift items. Now that more affordable tablets - such as the new Kindle Fire – are coming to the market, it’s no surprise that a recent study by the Pew Research Center found that tablet and E-reader ownership has nearly doubled in the U.S. over the holiday gift-giving period. As the surge in tablet use continues to grow, some publishers are looking to leverage the popularity of tablets through strategic partnerships. Two examples point to the trend of publisher/tablet maker partnerships. MediaPost reported that Barnes & Noble joined forces with The New York Times to offer consumers who buy a digital subscription of the newspaper on a Nook $100 off of a Nook Simple Touch or Nook Color tablet. AdAge reported a slightly different model, with the announcement that News Corp’s The Daily app will now be available on certain Verizon-marketed devices. Consumers that already own a Galaxy Tab will have access to The Daily app through a software update. Both approaches aim to incentivize tablet purchase and increase app usage. Since tablet maker/publisher partnerships are relatively new, we will have to wait and see how this seemingly symbiotic relationship performs. |

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