social business in the media industry - danske medier november 2012

© 2012 Mike Moran

Mike Moran

www.mikemoran.com

How Publishers Use Social Media to Drive Revenue

Danske MedierNovember 2, 2012

Mike Moran

© 2008 Mike Moran© 2012 Mike Moran© 2012 Mike Moran

Traditional revenue sources are drying up

Newspapers have lost classifieds to Craig’s List

Trade magazines compete with free content from their former advertisers

2

Mike Moran


Online consumers tend not to pay for any model

Subscription or paywall: Readers subscribe to content for a monthly or annual fee

Freemium: Some content free with premium content by subscription

Metered: Content is free up to a point, such as number of articles viewed

Transactional: Individual downloads of content, such as songs or reports

3

Mike Moran


But wait! Some models work, right?

It’s not that they never work, but they rarely do

Even successes aren’t as successful as people think

The Wall Street Journal online subscribers are worth just ¼ of offline subscribers

4

Mike Moran


If you have deep, marketable content…

…turn it into applications and experiences

Understand what your customers’ problems are

5

Mike Moran


The freemium model works for deep content

Platts gives away low-value information to attract attention in search and social media

They charge forthe deep contentthat industryanalysts need todo their jobs

6

Mike Moran


Aggregation is also under attack

Is your data proprietary?

If not, eventually you are in trouble

7

Mike Moran


Crowdsourcing also attacks some sectors

Some publishers don’t have deep enough content

It’s hard to protect things people will create for free

8

Mike Moran


Many publishers don’t have unique content

If you are running wire stories, it is now a commodity

You had a distribution business, not a content business

The first lesson: Youmust be in the contentbusiness becausedistribution is free

9

Mike Moran


Even more important, advertising is under attack

Advertising does still work

But display ads are among the worst way to spend online ad budgets

And no one knowshow to monetizemobile ads

10

Mike Moran


Even Google’s growth is under attack

11

Mike Moran


Advertising doesn’t work as well online

But instead of lamenting the effect on you..

...think about what this means to advertisers

What are they doing instead?

Marketers have becomepublishers

12

Mike Moran


Kraft’s iFood Assistant helps you make dinner

Search for recipe ideas

Not just at home, but in the store while you are shopping

Kraft products highlighted

13

Mike Moran


Scott’s personalized lawn care advice

Customer discloses zip code and grass type

Scotts provides tips for lawn care, including the right products to use based on actual weather conditions

14

Mike Moran


Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Center

15

Mike Moran


Pharmaceutical companies explain diseases

16

Mike Moran


Publishers must solve their clients’ problems

The old problem: How can I advertise to customers?

The new problem: How can I use content for marketing?

17

Mike Moran


The new buzzword: Content Marketing

Provide quality content

Sell lots of stuff

It sounds simple, but it offers marketers a new set of problems

18

Mike Moran


Two ways that content marketing works

Search

Social

19

Mike Moran


What is high quality content?

How to solve a problem

A new use for your product

A case study for a client

It’s not about advertisers—it is about their customers

20

Marketers must think like

publishers

Mike Moran


Marketers have never had to provide content

Public relations people did some of this work

Marketers never did any of it

It’s hard!

21

Mike Moran


It’s even worse for B2B marketers

They never had any marketing!

They had products and services, and they had sales, but no marketing at all

22

Mike Moran


Where do marketers get all this content?

Many are not doing it at all

Many are trying to do it themselves

Do you smell an opportunity?

23

Mike Moran


Opportunity 1: Syndication

License your content to marketers and use your name for its credibility

The Associated Press syndicates content to newspapers but also many online sources

24

Mike Moran


Opportunity 2: Custom content

Publishers create content for marketers without attribution

A tech magazine publisher now writes hundreds of white papers each month for high-tech companies

25

Mike Moran


Why would marketers want to work with you?

You have reach to audiences offline and in social

You might be underestimating what you know:

Knowing what readers are interested in

Recruiting experts who know the subjects

Executing editorial calendars

Controlling quality—especially plagiarism

Licensing content, including permissions

26

Mike Moran


What weaknesses must you shore up?

You aren’t experts in marketing strategy

You might want to ally with agencies that have similar problems

They know how to do marketing

But they have been dependent on advertising

They do not know how to do content

27

Mike Moran


Thank you!

28

www.converseon.com

© 2012 Mike Moran

Mike Moran

www.mikemoran.com

Search and Social Need Each Other

Danske MedierNovember 2, 2012

Mike Moran


The new buzzword: Content Marketing

Provide quality content

Sell lots of stuff

But how do you do it?

30

Mike Moran


Content marketing uses the buying cycle

31

Learn

Buy

Shop

Use

Get

Search

Answer “research questions” with informational content

Respond to product queries with comparisons

Provide detailed model and product pages for buyers

Mike Moran


Search keywords tip off the step in the cycle

32

• Learn baldness remedy• Shop rogaine• Buy rogaine coupons• Get rogaine shipping• Use rogaine side effects

Learn

Buy

Shop

Use

Get

Search

You need bite-sized chunks of content

Mike Moran


How do folks find your brilliant content marketing?

When you launch your content, it’s all social: Blog about it

Tweet it

Share it everywhere you can

That lasts about three days—a week if you are lucky

After that, virtually all of your traffic comes from search

33

Mike Moran


Search and social must work together

Search makes social better

If no one sees your social media, it doesn’t matter

Most blogs and videos are seen only because of search

Social makes search better

More search results

Better search rankings

34

Mike Moran


What is high quality content?

How to solve a problem

A new use for your product

A case study for a client

It’s not about advertisers—it is about their customers

35

Marketers must think like

publishers

But how do Facebook and Google know it is quality content?

Mike Moran


Do you want to be in Facebook’s newsfeed?

36

Mike Moran


Facebook uses a content algorithm for newsfeeds

The EdgeRank algorithm decides what shows up in news feeds based on:

Connection: tighter connections are better

Importance: more important updates are better

Time: newer updates are better

Brands have complained that it’s gettingharder to get into fans’ newsfeeds

37

Mike Moran


Facebook’s algorithm is a ranking algorithm

Just as with search, there are many more updates than can be displayed

Estimates are that there are 500 possibilities for every item displayed

Importance (“weight”) keeps changing, but engaging content seems to be the new key

Do ads help? Maybe

38

Mike Moran


The search ranking algorithm decides who’s first

Social does not affect paid search results

It helps decide the #1 organic result

Some will do anything

39

89% of clicks on page 1

Mike Moran


Black Hat SEO experts fool everybody

They fool Google

They fool searchers

They are extremely smartand hardworking

If it works for you,good luck

40

Mike Moran


Some people reverse engineer the algorithm

Google wants the keywords on the page

Google wants the keywords in the title

Google wants links to the site

What Google really wantsis high quality search results

for the searchers

41

Mike Moran


How does Google decide what quality is?

Quality links

Social activity

Human ratings

42

Mike Moran

© 2008 Mike Moran© 2012 Mike Moran© 2012 Mike Moran43

Why do search engines care about links?

They are votes for quality

They mimic citations in scientific research papers

The best papers have the most citations

Velychko/shutterstock.com

Mike Moran


How do search engines value links?

The most links

From the best sites

With the right anchor text

PageRank is Google’s name for

its page factor ranking

Mike Moran


Social activity is now affecting search rankings

Bing has a deal with Facebook to rank results based on what your friends like

Google downgrades sites with bad reviews

Social media activity is becoming, like links, a marker for quality content

If you aren’t doing social for its own intrinsic value, you need to think about its impact on organic search

45

Mike Moran


If social activity doesn’t match link analysis…

…it seems more suspicious to Google as spam

It’s difficult for spammers to simulate both

46

Mike Moran


Google Plus and other social activity counts

47

Use social cues as markers of quality.

Mike Moran


And some content has nothing better

The views are the best indicator of video quality

Links to videos are not as strong

48

Mike Moran


How do search marketers cope?

You must think beyond text

But new media still needs text: Good titles and good descriptions

And it attracts links

Mike Moran


Optimize your social media for search

Ping your blog posts, open up message boards

Use keyword tools (such as Google’s) so you use the best words

Use those keywords in your titles and throughout your content, but write naturally

Publicize your content so others will share and link

50

Get Pages Indexed

Choose Keywords

Optimize Content

AttractLinks

Mike Moran


How else does Google know quality from spam?

51

Human raters doublecheck page quality.

Mike Moran


Google added a new factor to the ranking algorithm

Human beings rate a small subset of search results: Nice design? Speedy response? Quality content? Would you return?

Sites that people like getbumped higher in ranking

The sites they don’t likeare shoved down

52

Mike Moran


Machine learning scales the human ratings

Even Google can’t afford human ratings for every page for every search

So, it looks for patterns—common features

If your site looks like thelow-rated sites, your sitegets ranked lower

53

Mike Moran


What does it mean to “look like” low quality?

Machine learning detects patterns in what pages look like based on “features”

What could the features be?

The length of the title tag

The ratio of words to pictures

The commonality of runs of words

54

Mike Moran


It’s not just about spamming

Most of you don’t practice real black hat SEO

But you don’t win by examining the terms of service like a legal document

You see what works forall three parties

55

Google Searchers

You

Mike Moran


That wasn’t just bad luck

Tactics that help everyone get rewarded

Tactics that help only you don’t

Maybe you should stick to what will work long-term

56

Google Searchers

You

Mike Moran


But wait! Does this sound familiar?

Facebook wants high quality content in your newsfeed

Content that people like will appear in more newsfeeds

Engagement shows quality

57

Facebook Users

You

Mike Moran


Don’t be a good scout. Be good at business.

You’re not trying out for sainthood

Do it because it works

It’s less risky, easier to do, and has fewer ups and downs

Focus on a quality content, and success will follow

58

Google

Facebook

Searchers

You

Mike Moran


Thank you!

59

www.converseon.com

social business in the media industry - danske medier november 2012

Business