Instagram and Twitter

Instagram photos can no longer be viewed on Twitter because the two companies are in a feud, reports ReadWrite.

“The real problem is not that the people running these companies are greedy, selfish and childish (though they are),” according to Jon Mitchell. “The real problem is that they are behaving in a completely rational way given the Web 2.0 business model, which ultimately makes this kind of exploitation inevitable.”

Mitchell writes, “We actual Web-using humans do not care about this fight. We don’t care about companies fighting. We want our things to work well and be fun. In a less cynical world, we could have a better experience for sharing photos of our lives with each other.”

Branded Content Beats Editorial 

Digiday’s Lydia Leavitt writes that some branded content is beating out editorial in terms of engagement and shares.

She highlights Pulse, an RSS-aggregation app, which claims that users are 25 percent more likely to pass along branded content over traditional news stories. The content on Pulse is alongside news from The New Yorker and Time and there is nothing on it that says it’s sponsored.

“When a piece of (good) branded content is given the chance to go head-to-head with regular reported stories, there’s a much stronger chance people will click on it and actually give it a read,” says Leavitt.

More and More Paywalls

Paid Content’s Laura Hazard Owen reports that in 2013, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News will be launching paywalls.

In April, the papers were bought out, for the fifth time in six years, by Interstate General Media. The paywalls will appear on new websites and Philly.com will still be free.

Yahoo Sports and NBC Sports Collaborating Online

According to the New York Times, Yahoo Sports and NBC Sports will be linking to each other’s stories online and collaborating on web videos to raise “visibility for each other with minimal investment.”

The two sites are doing it for traffic in the hopes of collectively becoming the number one sports destination online in America. Yahoo will be able to showcase writers on NBC Sports shows and have access to personalities such as Bob Costas. Finances of the collaboration were not revealed.

Content Marketing Trends in 2012

Heidi Cohen of Content Marketing Institute discusses the five biggest trends in content marketing in 2012. At this point, nine out of 10 businesses are on social media, and a whopping 90 percent of people’s media interactions are screen based.

This year, photos were huge— Instagram was purchased by Facebook and grew exponentially in size. Content marketing has greatly influenced shopping, whether it’s in the form of deals or coupons, product information, comments or reviews, or how to videos.

Mobile Readers Want Relevant Content

James Dohnert of ClickZ cites a study that found that “67 percent of U.S. consumers will pay more attention to an ad if it’s relevant to the news item they are reading” on their mobile devices.

Nineteen percent of the respondents said that humor was an important factor in advertising, while 24 percent said they receive their primary news on tablets or smartphones.

Print Version of Wine Advocate Closing Down

Wine Advocate, the 34-year-old newsletter, will be phased out, according to the Wall Street Journal. Robert M. Parker will step down as editor in chief and the newsletter will start accepting ads.

Headquarters will be moved to Singapore and investors from the country will be taking over financial decisions. It has nearly 50,000 subscribers who pay $75 a year for six issues.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Delta’s Safety Videos are Comedy Gold

Delta is putting out more content after its in-flight safety videos became YouTube hits, Deadline Detroit reports.

The new safety videos feature “dressed-alike triplets, a miniature bag ‘small enough to fit under the seat’ and an accordion player,” along with the original flight attendant from the videos, “Deltalina.” One of the videos has more than 50,000 views on YouTube.

The Ad Industry and Journalists

Forbes’ Lewis DVorkin argues that journalists, instead of ignoring and turning away from what’s going on in the ad business, should learn to understand it.

He says, “The economics of journalism no longer work like they used to. The same holds true for the advertising business. These two clashing industry realities require both print stalwarts and digital believers to get a grip.”

DVorkin delves into content marketing and how for some journalists, it may mean a full-time job.

The New Yorker’s Content Marketing Approach

Copyblogger’s Demian Farnworth writes about what makes New Yorker’s content model work. The magazine is full of 10,000 word articles that are in-depth and tell a great story, and he says that marketers/writers should look to do the same with their work.

Like The New Yorker, companies should hire quality writers. After all, “Only superior content will build your influence with your target audience and Google.”

Marketers need to speak the language of the consumer by answering their questions, alleviating their friends and encouraging their desires as well.

Washington Post’s Executive Editor Steps Down

Marcus Brauchli, who has been with the Washington Post as executive editor for four years, is being replaced by Martin Barton, editor of The Boston Globe, according to the New York Times.

In the third quarter, revenue in the publishing division of the Post dropped by 4 percent because of a loss of ad sales. It also faces tough competition from online news outlets printing similar stories, such as Politico.

Lay-Offs at NBCUniversal

The Wall Street Journal reports that about 100 people are going to be laid off at NBCUniversal over the next few days. By the end of the week, the company will have laid off 500 people over the past few months.

The cuts are part of budget review and “include about 100 people from G4 videogame cable channel several weeks ago, as well as two dozen previously reported layoffs at NBC’s “The Tonight Show” in the late summer, and separate cuts at Universal film studio.”

Creating Content for Latinos

ClickZ’s Gustavo Razzetti writes about how the media and content creators can appeal to Latino consumers.

He says, “Marketing to emerging cultures is about connecting with deep cultural values. Brands that want to engage with Latinos (or other emerging cultures) need to create, not simply communicate. They need to embrace that culture and be part of it. Brands need to act as a cultural enabler, empowering people and amplifying the influential role that emerging cultures are playing.”

Papa John Memes Take Over Reddit

Redditors, according to Mashable, are posting memes that poke fun at Papa John’s for its opposition to Obamacare. It started on Sunday, when one user called for a boycott of the chain.

CEO John Schnatter is being portrayed in the memes as a hypocrite – He gave away two million pizzas last year, but can’t spend money on health care for employees.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

The Secret to Bleacher Report’s Success

The ever-popular Bleacher Report prides itself on  content produced by thousands of fans, but it continues to walk the line of popularity and negative perception.

SF Weekly has details on the way stories are created for the sports giant and it isn’t always pretty, but it is big business.

“Reverse-engineering content to fit a pre-written headline is a Bleacher Report staple. The analytics team basically says, ‘Hey, we think this is going to be trending, these eight to 10 terms will be trending in the next couple of days,’” a former editor told the SF Weekly. ‘We say ’thank you,’ and we as editors come up with the headlines and pass those on to writers to write the content.”

30 Years Later the Datsun Is Back

Why revive the brand? The Wall Street Journal spoke to CEO Carlos Ghosn, about plans to sell the new Datsun for $3,000 and if Nissan can make a profit with cars priced so low.

“He portrayed the relaunch as much as a life’s mission as a business strategy, with the goal of providing poorer populations a greater chance at car ownership,” The Wall Street Journal said.

How One Awesome Picture Can Change Your Mind About a Magazine

You probably haven’t thought about Mad Magazine in twenty years.  

You know what you are going to get: a (sometimes) awesome pun along with some sort of caricature of a famous celebrity as portrayed by Alfred E. Neuman.

But today’s fake New Yorker cover created, according to Mad.com, with the help of Apple Maps has the internet all a-twitter. Even Salon thinks it’s “amazing.”

Want to See How It All Got Started?

The New Yorker has a clip of the first political advertisement from Dwight Eisenhower’s campaign and it’s so attention-grabbing that today’s presidential hopefuls might want to take a look and consider adding more loudspeaker to their commercials.

What Do Memes Have to Do with SEO?

Business2Community explains how memes and SEO go hand-in-hand. That is, if you can get the balance right.

“The trick is to find the perfect meme for your niche, come up with the perfect caption, and then share it far and wide in all the right places. Sounds easy right?”Business2Community’s Dave Conklin said.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

What if writers repurpose material across platforms for the same client? What if they take elements from one article and re-use it for several different clients?

The short answer is, all of this is suspect now, given how much attention re-purposing in a post-Lehrer world is getting. Experts say writers would do well to check their clients’ fine print.

The Back Story: Jonah Lehrer and Repurposing for ‘New Yorker’ Blogs

Lehrer, author and staff writer for The New Yorker, found himself in hot water last week with Jim Romenesko’s initial discovery that he was repurposing his writing all over the place.

That is, Lehrer was repurposing his own material from magazines to books, from print to Web, and all of this in various combinations. He was perhaps plagiarizing from other writers, too.

The weightiest element of the journalism-ethics argument, regarding what Lehrer did or did not do, is of course about potential plagiarism. (Not self-plagiarism, as it has been described by some – such a thing cannot exist.) But whether Lehrer took content from others will have to play out over time.

But the other, less-weighty, can of worms of to what degree it might be OK for writers and publishers to reuse their own already published material poses more complicated and perhaps far-reaching implications for media professionals.  As Mark Horowitz, former editor of Wired puts it: Is repurposing magazine articles for books the norm? (Matthew May rounds up his comment in his blog.) Is this an OK thing for a journalist to do?

For content writers and publishers, however, the conversation is different. The material that they produce is of a different sort.

Let’s look at how the Lehrer situation suggests a kind of content–journalism pressure to which we all can pay some fresh attention.

Thanksgiving Turkey: Content is Meant to Be Repurposed (But Not Always)

“The Jonah Lehrer situation is all but irrelevant to content marketing,” suggests Rebecca Lieb, analyst for Altimeter Group. “I regularly exhort marketers to think about how they can repurpose content. Like journalists, they have to feed the beast. Unlike most journalists, they must do so in multiple channels and often with a much narrower, vertical field of information.”

In Lieb’s model of how content-writers can work — and this is confined to the realm of a single-client scenario — the material is something akin to a turkey on Thanksgiving Day. You have the big meal, and then you carve away at what’s left for a dozen other suppers.

“Say an executive speaks at an event, that’s the main content event,” Lieb said. “A content-marketer’s job may be to repurpose that speech into multiple pieces, often in a wide variety of channels: a YouTube video; a SlideShare deck; multiple blog posts; an article; a column; images; info-graphics; newsletter articles, etc.

“This squeezes more value out of the content,” she continued, “and incorporates it into formats and channels more likely to reach specific audience segments.”

But what if the content-writer starts repurposing across clients? That’s what Lehrer did when he grafted his earlier writings into more recent blogs for The New Yorker. Well, for the content-writer, it all depends on details: whatever specifics have been agreed upon for the job.

“Virtually any publication I’ve written for, or run, has a contractual clause specifying that material submitted for publication must be original and not published elsewhere,” Lieb said. “Usually with a statement of how long exclusive rights last.”

“The rule,” she added, referring to both writers and their clients: “Spell it out up front. Don’t rely on ‘expectations’.”

The Derivative Effect: Content and Its Impact Upon Journalism

If content-writers are expected to repurpose their material, but they’re also working for multiple clients — and maybe experiencing the temptation to bring their best bits right along — doesn’t this suggest a repurposing-as-the-norm pressure that they (and also journalists) should concretely address?

“I believe words matter,” said Joe Chernov, vice president of content marketing for Eloqua. “To that end, ‘brand journalism’ is not synonymous with ‘journalism’. The former is a derivative of the latter.

“While tactics like repurposing and remixing copy might be effective on the brand side of content creation,” he continued, “there is a sanctity to true journalism that needs to be upheld, particularly as the sands beneath both worlds shift.”

One way to think about what seems to have been Lehrer’s mindset — at least, his mindset when it comes to the repurposing part of what he did — is to consider that the Internet, and content-writing in particular, may be softening some of journalism’s previously taken-for-granted boundaries.

Pointing this out isn’t to excuse Lehrer’s mistakes. (He has acknowledged that some of what he did was dumb.) But acknowledging that the Web is still for many a faster, looser publishing environment is to remind ourselves that we must be mindful of the specific requirements and demands of each context of how we create and publish content.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently