Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

A few days back the New York Times online and LinkedIn (a very popular social network for professionals) joined together in a substantial content deal that will mutually benefit the giants. Its like Web content's Panama Canal joining two oceans of users with a cleverly-placed shortcut.

This is significant for the two sites. LinkedIn is seen as a network reference-only site that is infrequently sourced by an enourmous based of members. The New York Times is a news giant who's seeing their numbers decline like all other news orgs. This is a marriage of convenience that is significant for many reasons.

First, the New York Times is in a unique position to help LinkedIn with catch-of-the-day content relevant to sectors suiting their members' interestes. LinkedIn has seen fresh subscribable content as their Achilles heel. People only visit when they have a specific networking need. The New York Times can address LinkedIn's content freshness with little additional cost or effort. 

Second, this is significant because LinkedIn boasts millions of members who aren't currently visitng the New York Times. Ad revenues will likely increase as a result right out of the gate.

The question is, will people who happen to be confirming the occasional Link request use LinkedIn as their news portal? And will the New York Times online drive more people to LinkedIn? It remains to be seen. I predict this marriage will favor the New York Times as their merely opening another channel for incoming traffic which will boost the money they can make on advertising. LinkedIn, at least in the beginning, will not likely see reciprocal traffic from their new partner because people who are quickly accessing their daily news fix are less likely to jump into relationship building. 

"Content is King," according to our Cord Silverstein, our Engagement Marketing VP here at Capstrat. “Content and links are the two main players in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). That’s it. There’s not even a close third. Sure, a few minor things can be done to help out, but it’s a lost cause if the main players aren’t in the game.”

Content
Search engines want to deliver the best results to their users. So how does Google decide what your site is about? They evaluate pages much like Web users do: by looking at the words in the page title, in the headers, in bold, and mentioned repeatedly throughout the text.  Google calculates "keyword density" to see what your site is about.

Links
Search engines count the number of links pointing to your site to evaluate how credible and popular it is. Only one-way links count -- you can’t swap links with someone else and get credit for it. Best way to get links? Write good content. Once that’s done, you can participate in online forums, blogs, and social media to get the ball rolling. If you’ve done your job well, people will naturally want to link to your site. They will want to share it with their friends. They will bookmark it on StumbleUpon and recommend it on Digg.

So as you're creating your site, don't focus on SEO, but rather focus on creating great content. Keep in mind how Google reads your site, but remember that if your site has something to offer, the rest pretty much follows suit.


Tools:
See what search engines think your site is about:
http://www.seomoz.org/term-extractor

See what links Google gives you credit for:
www.google.com (search for “link:www.YourSite.com”)

What's news to me may not be news to my super-smart coworkers in the Interactive department here at Capstrat. But what's news to me is likely news to my cohorts in the client services and government relations departments. (Not to mention definitely news to my friends who don't have a clue what it is we do here at Capstrat and barely grasp the concept of the web.)

So, with that, I'm going to provide a snapshot of my favorite findings from the Web Content 2008 Conference in Chicago. (My format = Presentation title, Presenter, Best things I learned.) If you're interested in something particular and would like me to dive into further detail, give me a shout out. I'm happy to oblige.

The Next Content Wave: Hypersyndication by Dick Costolo of Google

• There's a new travel site out there, for addicted web travel researchers like me. Build your trip ideas from sites all across the web and publish them in one place, at www.offbeatguides.com . Dick tells us this site is still very early in their beta program, but that it's going to be a huge success. They'll mail you a pocket-sized guide of your destination - including your specific accommodations - or you can print to a PDF version. Either way, it would be a relief to hit the road with something other than my manila folder with a stack of print-outs from various sites. I've signed up for an invitation to the beta version. No luck yet. 

• Interesting remark from Dick: Those who comment across the web (even without association with a company or personal Web site) will be their own brands. And not too far off in the future. Think about that before posting a rash reaction to your friend's latest round of uploaded party photos or worse, getting fired up in a string of comments on a highly publicized news story. Yep, your own brand. I kind of like that.

• One more thing: www.getsatisfaction.com is the future of customer service. Dick recommends a third party customer service organization as a means to participate in conversation with your customers. Whole Foods does it. Food for thought.

The Many-Armed Starfish: Today and Tomorrow in Social Media by Darren Barefoot of Capulet Communications (Voted most popular presenter in unofficial poll.)

• Your brand is what people say your brand is. Case in point - www.brandtags.net (I'm not sure why people would associate Disney with ‘evil', but hey, not everyone is a fan like me I suppose.) The idea of this site is that a brand only exists in our heads. I'd recommend checking out your clients on the site. Go contribute yourself. Could be an eye-opener. Maybe it will lend itself to an argument that they should relinquish control, embrace social media and it'll all be ok Depending on what you find, obviously, you may be doing damage control.

• Dogster . Catster . What about Hamsterer? A quick online hunt reveals Hamsterer really did exist, but does no longer. Shame.

• His five lessons:

•     Relinquish control. Think about pulling your Google results as your bio.
•     Users will help each other.
•     Empower your most passionate customers, perhaps as advocates or private beta users.
•     Think outside the page.
•     Go where your customers are! Don't start your own social network. Try starting a broad discussion online and lightly sponsor it. Check out www.babycenter.com . (All my pregnant friends love it!)

When John Lovett of Jupiterresearch took the podium at the end of the first day of the conference, I thought, "This better be good." By 4pm, we were all on major information overload.

Working on several Web projects that require dynamic content, I was curious to see what John was going to share with us. What perhaps stood out the most to me was his acknowledgment of the challenge of creating dynamic content for business-to-business sites. He also showed examples of dynamic content and reassured us that it could be as simple as adding an image gallery to introduce the concept to a nervous client.

My favorite example was Hotels.com going from a community of 'experts' who post their opinion of hotels to a community of hotel-goers like you and me. He had us raise our hand if we went online to check user reviews of our hotel for this trip, and most of us lifted a hand. It's perfect. Hotels.com has dynamic content, we're providing it for them (thus cutting back on their internal resources) and it's what we want to read anyway.

I take back hotels.com as my favorite example now. It had to be the Target example. Think of the last product search you did on their site - let's say for a blender. The actual content of the product information is maybe two or three paragraphs. The rest is star ratings from users, comments from purchasers, recommendations of other products bought by blender buyers, and the list goes on. Target has dynamic content nailed. At least for now.

The trick is business-to-business. Like John said, that's a tougher nut to crack. I will now (thanks to John) look at my online Target and travel experiences to come up with ideas to address my client's needs dynamically.

One thing I continue to struggle with is how relevant sitemaps are--and to whom?¹

Below is an example sitemap, which indicates the basic hierarchy of pages or categories within a site.

What's wrong with this picture?

Sitemaps don't represent pages...

Implicitly, they communicate pages of content. This is not necessarily the case. They are a quasi-system model that blurs the lines between content and page. This leads to misinterpretation.

Extending this, they are rooted in a page-centric approach that assumes pages have one state. Ajax-y interactions that reload different content into the same page aren't communicated. 

...and they don't really represent content.

They suggest content, but a through the lens of a page. This, I believe, is an artifact left over from the days where sitemaps were closely tied to the physical implementation. As we've evolved the idea of a sitemap away from actual pages, we didn't rethink how it is actually interpreted or used by either developers or clients. 

...and they don't reflect true navigation or interaction paths.

In fact, they indicate a hierarchical flow between pages. Sitemaps suggest that users typically access the site through the home page. Users who arrive via a search or a link from a friend are likely to be entering at a deeper level than the home page. Luke Wroblewski has a great podcast and set of slides on this.

And sitemaps don't account for related items--hyperlinks that bring together similar content that exist in different categories of the site. Similar information may be "nearer" than sitemaps suggest. The perceived distance is content too and associate navigation can be as important as the categorical navigation. 

So, what do they do well?

For me, they are good as a sketch -- not a final product -- for how content may be organized and how navigation may occur. They work well for initial scoping. But having to caveat what sitemaps are feels like a cop out. There's gotta be a better way.

 Any thoughts? Do sitemaps help you or confuse you?

¹I'm talking about the information architecture kind, but many of the points also extend to those junk drawer sitemap pages that many sites have. That's entirely another issue to address.

Finally getting around to posting here. The idea of writing or reading a blog daily — or even weekly — had me flummoxed. There’s so much information coming at me from other directions, I can hardly keep up. Why would I want to punish myself even more with the burden of keeping up with multiple blogs?

But then I started thinking of blogs as the equivalent of magazines. I don’t feel compelled to read the vast array of publications out there. I pick and choose what interests me. Some I read regularly, some I just pick up to read one article. And I don’t feel guilty for not reading every magazine on the stand. So why should blogs intimidate me? I can just drop in for what interests me. (And try not to be sucked in for the rest of the day….)

Matter of fact, as a copywriter, I appreciate how blogs simply highlight the primacy of content. It’s the only explanation for an incredible volume of text, often with little formatting and egregious typos. (I love that word. Say it with me: egregious .) It’s the strength of the ideas shared in blogs that give them the power to catch and hold our attention. With the explosion of blogs, it’s clear that people are starved for content that’s authentic and relevant, that sounds like them. They’re not screaming for marketing speak. A cautionary reminder for every other form of communication.

Warren Buffet called him “the best business editor I’ve ever seen.”  On Sunday, The New York Times published a rousing tribute to his smarts and passion.  Below please see quotes from Jim Michaels, late editor of Forbes.  He’s talking (barking?) about business reporting, but his advice really applies to just about every kind of content.  The link and the story itself are printed below the select quotes.  Worth a read …
 “Too bloody complicated. That’s not writing. Make it simple and interesting. That’s writing.”

 “The character is deader than a dodo. Can’t (the writer) inject a little life without adding 10,000 words?”

“A good story turned into oatmeal by bad organization.”

“Please fix this quickest. It lacks most of the ingredients of a Forbes story. The quotes are room emptiers.”

“If I can’t stay awake editing this, how can a reader stay awake reading it? What’s the point? If it has a point, maybe we can make a story of it.”

“I can’t make head nor tail of this. There’s a story buried in all this confusion, but I can’t find it. Fix it or kill it.”

 “This is exactly the sort of lazy writer jargon that will put us out of business. Please use the rich resources of the English language.”

 “Here’s another one I can’t understand without help from a lawyer and accountant.”

“This is more an essay as written than a Forbes article. It badly needs the concrete images, the real people that will anchor it to reality. It’s called shoe-leather reporting.”

Have you ever watched a Mom try to reason with a toddler in a toy store? That’s the image that came to mind when I heard about the NFL’s attempt to control its online content. From an article in Ad Age.

It’s great that the NFL is capitalizing on its vast storehouse of clips. Armchair quarterbacks, fantasy football enthusiasts and even casual fans ought to enjoy “instant replays” from today and seasons past. But, while ramping up its Web site, the NFL has decided to restrict other sites from featuring NFL clips. This runs counter to the mass democratization of the Web. It remains to be seen whether this approach will be successful.

And, I had to chuckle when I read that the NFL’s legal team is going to police other news and video sites, including YouTube. Like the Mom trying to wrestle control from a 3-year old, I suspect the NFL would be better off with a less rigid approach.