DCP Dialogue

Dave Reik — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:57:28 -0700

A great way to create a buzz and character around your brand and get people talking about you is to create a viral video and upload it to YouTube. For the most part it should be an enjoyable and entertaining video which is not sales centric. A video with a great theme will produce a lot of interested eyeballs on YouTube and/or other video social media platforms. This in turn can create more consumer awareness of your company.

Following is a link to a specific article (Ten Tips for Those Who Still Aren't Using YouTube) along with one example that St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Portland, OR has done.. and quite well I might add – just take a look at the views! The “Pink Glove Dance” video is wacky to say the least…but it generated a “viral buzz” that garnered a lot of exposure for the medical center (it humanized the hospital staff and showed that they have a sense of humor), and created awareness of their efforts to support breast cancer research.

AA Article/ http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=146584

Pink Glove Dance/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEdVfyt-mLw

Digital Magazines Complete Your Marketing Jigsaw Puzzle

Dennis Cook — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 11:44:42 -0700

Media and marketing strategies are like a jigsaw puzzle – for the picture to be complete you need all the right pieces to fit together. But, for a lot of retail brands hoping to create customer loyalty and up-selling opportunities, there’s an important piece of the puzzle that’s missing.

They need a marketing vehicle that connects their e-commerce web sites, social media pages, blogs, premium clubs, and traditional advertising.

I am talking about a digital brand magazine packed with entertaining lifestyle content that attracts customer attention, associates the brand with the satisfaction of customer interests, and leads loyal customers to more purchases.

Here are three companies using variations on this concept to influence customers:

A flip book from New Era Caps
A microsite Sherwin Williams Paints
A flip book from grocery chain Hannaford

Custom brand content can be packaged in digital magazines, custom apps, print magazines, microsites, and a variety of other formats. It’s all custom media and it helps your brand to become the best source of information on the lifestyle interests of your best customers and prospects.

Content Marketing Wins Customers

Dave Reik — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:34:11 -0700

When you’re competing for business, especially against companies with more established brands, you know that you have to differentiate your company. Typically, you hire extremely knowledgeable and helpful staff to provide premier service since that is a distinction that consumers quickly recognize and value. Your top-notch employees help guide consumers to make intelligent choices (such as purchasing your products and services) and they inspire those consumers to come back in the future, rather than shifting to your competitors. That’s the historical scenario.

Today, a prospective customer's first impression of your business is more likely to be with your website rather than with your employees. So how do you provide that same superior service on the Web? That’s where content marketing comes into play. Content marketing is how you can take your company’s expertise and make it easily accessible to prospective customers online through advice, tips, downloadable whitepapers, etc. Content marketing is also how you get more people to visit your website instead of your competitors’ websites, since relevant content is the best way to boost your search rank.

Read this case study by Newt Barrett, How Content Marketing by SW Florida Insurance Agency Clobbers a Billion Dollar Competitor--it's a perfect example of how to win clients by providing customer service through content marketing. It showcases a content marketing strategy that genuinely benefits customers. You’ll see the creative, timely, relevant information that Gulfshore Insurance provides front and center on their homepage.

Then take a look at your website from the perspective of a prospective customer. Are you providing them with a valuable service that they can’t get from your competitors? What types of valuable content marketing are your competitors providing? I think this is an important exercise we all should perform on a regular basis.

And don't forget, DCP can help you implement an effective content marketing strategy.

Sports Custom Content That Stands Out

Dave Reik — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 11:27:33 -0700

With an abundance of sports coverage easily accessible across mainstream media, why do sports organizations develop their own custom content programs? There are several good answers to this question that Barry Janoff discusses in his article, Sports Custom Content: The Fans are the Stars, published in the latest issue of Content magazine.

This article talks about several sports teams but I pulled quotes below that relate to one of DCP’s major sports clients, the San Francisco Giants.

The main goal behind sports custom content is to keep loyal fans rooting for their teams. How is that accomplished?

1. Provide “more nuanced, more intimate” access to players and teams.

“Information is everywhere, and much of it is free,” says Mario Alioto, Giants senior vice president of corporate marketing. “We have access and information about our players that other media don’t have.”

2. Give fans an opportunity to share their stories.

“It’s one thing to have a magazine that interests fans, but the best kind of content marketing is when people feel they are part of it,” says Jeff Gire, senior editor at Diablo Custom Publishing. “The team wanted Giants Magazine to have stories that involved the fans.” As a result, we created a new section, “Our Fan Story”, which gives fans a place to share personal stories about the Giants.

Be sure to read the article to get the whole story.

Should Hospitals Use Facebook?

Dennis Cook — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:28:12 -0700

Hospitals are flocking to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in order to attract consumer attention and to engage consumers in meaningful and ongoing dialogue. The attraction is obvious since millions of consumers turn to these internet communities to find information and local services. But special challenges are presented to hospitals on social media sites because of concerns about patient privacy and the limits participants have in controlling the dialogue.

In a recent white paper entitled "To Facebook or Not to Facebook: The question for hospitals today" the people at MyHealthCommunity Social Network, Inc. do a great job of framing the issues and offering sound advice for hospital marketers developing a social media strategy. You can download the white paper here.

In their conclusion, the authors offer a series of recommendations on how hospital marketers should proceed. One of the points that sticks out for me is that you should “use Facebook as a place to find your audience and direct them to the appropriate platform for communication.” Those appropriate platforms include the hospitals’ own websites. DCP helps hospitals build out sections of their sites where this more secure conversation can take place.

Consumers Still Prefer Print Magazines

Dave Reik — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 11:20:38 -0700

Take a look at this very interesting whitepaper, Leveraging Loyalty to Transform Publishing, produced by the CMO Council and InfoPrint Solutions. It addresses “The Impact of Relevance in Publishing and Advertising.”

I recommend downloading this 12-page whitepaper that includes the detailed findings about what people want from their magazines. It confirms what we all believe is most essential—relevance.

Here's some info pulled from the first page of the whitepaper.

“To get a clear picture of what opportunities might exist for publications transformation, the CMO Council asked consumers what they wanted from their magazine experience.

The audit revealed that consumers do not want to give up their cherished print publications, and further that their experiences within these preferred pages has shaped and molded their buying decisions.

In a world where the internet threatens to change the face of loyalty—offering new and exciting real-time connections—magazines seem to be the one constant that consumers are not ready to relinquish. According to our survey:

92 percent plan to stick to print when it comes to their magazine consumption

Only 24 percent intend to eventually switch over to some form of e-reader device

The real message consumers want to send to publishers is keep the content relevant, be it editorial, advertorial, or advertising. But, well placed, content rich and even personalized advertising will lead to new opportunities (and even renewed opportunities) for profitable customer engagements."

Click here to download the whitepaper and read the detailed findings of the online consumer survey.

Introducing John Rodenburg, Director of Custom Media

Dave Reik — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 10:36:41 -0700

Diablo Custom Publishing (DCP) is excited to announce that John Rodenburg has joined our organization as the Director of Custom Media. John previously held the position of Vice President and Publisher of Travel and Leisure Golf for American Express Publishing. As a long time veteran of Time Inc., John held several senior positions at Sports Illustrated, including the Associate Publisher of Marketing and Associate Publisher of Sales. Prior to moving to New York in 2000, John was the Northwest Advertising Director at Sports Illustrated and a resident of the East Bay.

Barney Fonzi, Group Publisher for Diablo Publications comments, “John’s background makes him the perfect addition to our team, and we welcome his seasoned experience, strong business development skills, energy and business acumen. We are confident that John will be able to leverage his proven strategies that have worked in his past endeavors, as well as his entrepreneurial forward thinking.”

Speaking about his new role, John said, “I’m very excited about returning home to the Bay Area, and I’m equally excited about the opportunity to share my experience to help DCP reach new heights by leveraging their great reputation and brand, their diverse client portfolio of top notch work and their talented team of professionals. DCP is poised for growth and I’m excited to be a part of this expansion.”

In the next month, expect to see a blog entry from John summarizing his outlook for the Custom Media market.

Why is Drupal Gaining Popularity?

Dave Reik — Fri, 28 May 2010 10:55:28 -0700

Is it just me, or is anyone else noticing that more and more people are talking about redesigning their organization’s website using Drupal? DCP is currently working on three website redesign proposals for organizations that know they want to shift to Drupal.

I did some quick internet research and came across several interesting articles that explain 1) who is using Drupal?, 2) why are people moving to Drupal?, and 3) what is Drupal?

Take a look….

Who is Using Drupal?

Click here for a summary of over 70 well-known brands and not-for-profit organizations currently using Drupal. They fall in the following categories: Corporate, Entertainment, News, Academia, Government, Non-Profit.

Some of the impressive names include: Mattel, Zappos, Nokia, ABC, Virgin Radio, Duke University, Rutgers University, InfoWorld, Fast Company, Oxfam International, Amnesty International, and last but not least, Whitehouse.gov.

Click here for Drupal Usage Statistics from Builtwith.com. This article states, “We know of 9,390 websites using this within the top million sites on the internet and an additional extended total of 54,175 websites that are using Drupal." The CMS Distribution of the top web technologies shows that Drupal has 41% of the market share which is by far the most.

Why are People Using Drupal?

In this recent article, Big Drupal: Ten Trends for the Enterprise, Jeff Walpole says,

“Of particular note this year is the adoption of Drupal as the platform of choice for large established organizations in the publishing, media, entertainment and government spaces. To me, the embracing of Drupal by large organizations defines the point at which a technology "has arrived" on the scene and is likely to be taken seriously. It is also a good sign that it will stick around as an important technology with an installed base for a while to come.

Why is this all happening now? It is likely a combination of many things: maturity of the product itself, size of the installed base, growth in community popularity and participation, and lack of affordable alternatives for comparable web 2.0 functionality. I actually prefer to view it more as the maturity of Drupal as a platform through which the Drupal technology community is pushing Drupal forward - potentially straight into enterprise software territory. Here is my "top ten style" list of the technology trends I see fueling this growth."

What is Drupal?

From Drupal’s official website, you’ll learn that, “Drupal is a free, open-source software package that allows an individual, a community of users, or an enterprise to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Hundreds of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power an endless variety of web sites.”

Go to the Drupal site to find out details about the built-in functionality available with Drupal, as well as the thousands of freely available add-on modules.

Omniture Survey Says…Online ROI Measurement is Important, But Hard to Implement

Dave Reik — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:25:47 -0700

According to the results of the 2010 Omniture Online Analytics Benchmark Survey, the majority of marketers value the importance of measuring ROI from online marketing activities but 55% can’t effectively measure it. The survey results also reveal that only 14% of respondents currently use all three emerging channels (mobile, social media, video) in their marketing efforts.

I was surprised by these numbers! I expected that more marketers would be using emerging channels and would have systems in place for measuring results. Take a look at the highlights below or click here for more survey results. What's your reaction to this?

ROI
80% of respondents believe ROI from online marketing activities is important to measure, but only 31% of marketers can effectively measure it.

Social Media
69% of respondents are using social media in their marketing efforts however, 41% lack a mechanism to measure social media conversion.

Mobile
23% of respondents are currently using mobile in their marketing efforts. Of these people:

73% can measure if website visitors are coming from a mobile device
30% are able to measure their mobile app conversions

Video
43% of respondents are using online video in their marketing efforts. Of these people:

59% feel that post-video conversion is one of the most important video metrics, yet 70% are unable to measure post-video conversion.
40% are using online video lack a mechanism to measure video starts.

Conversion
86% of respondents think conversion rate from online marketing activities is important to measure, but 25% cannot effectively measure it.

Results of the survey included here are as of May 7, 2010.

Online Magazine Video Usage Soars

Dave Reik — Wed, 12 May 2010 11:45:41 -0700

There’s a lot of talk about the current and future explosion of video usage in online magazines. Take a look at Steve Smith’s recent article, Magazine Video Streams Up 90% in 2010, for some exciting numbers from major technology provider Brightcove.

Here are three key points from this article that quantify how video viewing and production have increased in the past year:

“Among its magazine publisher clients, Brightcove streamed 190 million videos in the first quarter of 2010, up 90% from the 99 million video streams during the same period last year.”
“In terms of “player loads” or the number of times a video player’s assets are loaded onto a page in order to make them playable, magazines had 1.2 billion player loads in Q1, up 70% from same quarter last year.”
“The number of discrete video assets loaded into the Brightcove system from magazine publishers was up 60%, from 27,224 in Q1 2009 to 43,554 in 2010.”

If you’re trying to convince someone of the popularity of video in online magazines, these numbers are very encouraging.