Hurricane Sandy’s Social Buzz, Disney Gets Star Wars, Content Is War

The Content Strategist picks the day’s most relevant and interesting stories about the world of content from around the web. Here’s what you should be reading today:

Hurricane Sandy and Social Media 

Due to power outages on the East Coast, many people were forced to rely upon their phones and social media for news updates, reports the Wall Street Journal.

There were messages on Twitter and Facebook, along with photos of the storm uploaded to Instagram.

The word “Sandy” popped up 4.8 million times on social media sites this past Monday, while people were posting 10 pictures per second that included the hashtag #sandy.

Disney’s Branded Content Strategy for Lucasfilm

In a deal that has people shocked, Disney has announced that it plans to buy Lucasfilm and put out a seventh “Star Wars” movie in 2015.

A press release by the company said that the “acquisition continues Disney’s strategic focus on creating and monetizing the world’s best branded content, innovative technology and global growth to drive long-term shareholder value.”

Disney will be paying $4.05 billion to acquire Lucasfilm.

Content Marketing is War

CopyBlogger’s Demian Farnworth says that when it comes to content, marketers should be making waves and pretend they’re at war in order to succeed. Marketers should looking at people in the same niche and aiming create content that is better than the competition.

“You have a sea of competition,” he writes. “And you are drowning in it.”

Visible metrics like comments and shares should be the goal in order to beat this competition. To get epic content going, he suggests reading blogs and riffing on and repackaging content that’s already out there. Notes should be taken, and possible resources should be recorded. Content marketers, of course, need to study the niche and figure out what to do to become the best in the industry.

Overcoming Content Marketing Obstacles

Blogger Kevin K. Lau lays out a list of content marketing obstacles and how marketers can overcome them on his website.

Content should always be fresh, and to achieve this, marketers need to “listen and observe your audience intently as well as know what is going on around the Internet.”

Organization is also tricky, and it can be accomplished by putting subtopics inside of articles/blog posts. That way, the reader can easily follow along. Channeling is the last issue, and it should be done as soon as possible on the social media channels that your audience hangs out on.

Bad News for Newspapers

Wall Street Journal’s Tess Stynes says that circulation of newspapers in the United States is down 0.2 percent since September 2011.

While her own publication “maintained its position as the country’s largest newspaper by average weekday circulation” and saw an increased circulation of 9.4 percent, USA Today slipped by 3.9 percent.

The New York Times still holds the place for highest Sunday circulation, and it improved by 40 percent in terms of weekday readers.

Chirpify Comes to Instagram

Chirpify, a program that allows for in-stream commerce on social media networks, is now on Instagram, according to ClickZ. Last week, the company announced that it would be expanding from Twitter to Instagram, and its website was slammed with visitors and new members.

Lisa Lacy writes, “To sell within Instagram, sellers and fundraisers can post a photo and set the initial comment to ‘#InstaSale $amount.'”

Unlike Twitter, Chirpify on Instagram doesn’t have peer-to-peer payments because there is no messaging on the platform.

Sandy Statuses on Facebook

One more Sandy Item: According to Mashable’s Andrea Smith, the phrase “we are OK” was the top status on Facebook. Other popular keywords included power, damage, safe, thankful, and affected.