According to Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint, “content is no longer king.” In an article Elowitz published on All Things D this week, he states that the evolution of the internet has killed that mantra, and content and distribution have parted ways making way to disaggregation. He explains that content is a means to an end, and that end is an audience, particularly for advertisers who pay to reach that audience. Therefore, he believes that content shouldn’t be the goal, audience should. He writes:

“[Media] companies have sunk billions into content management systems — using CMS as the cornerstone of their modernization — under the impression that they traffic in content. But they don’t. They traffic in audience. And how much have they spent on audience development systems? Not much, if any at all. Distribution decisions are just as important as content decisions in building and serving an audience, and yet they’re being largely ignored. The myopic focus on content over distribution is widespread, and it’s a bad business decision.”

Elowitz offers three steps that media companies need to follow to succeed in the future.

1. Put someone in charge of audience development, and that role should not be an editorial position. It should be its own discipline.
2. Adopt an audience development strategy using the data available to them to select the best content, distribution channels, and timing for publishing content.
3. Be systematic in audience development which will turn audience development into an important competitive advantage.

I can understand the point Ben is trying to make — that many media companies don’t prioritize the wants and needs of their audience — and his three suggested steps are ones that every online publisher should follow. However, I disagree with the idea that content and distribution have parted ways. I actually think they’re closer than ever.

It’s true, as Elowitz states in his article, that content distribution is no longer linear. However, that simply means the importance of understanding your audience and publishing content that will appeal to that audience depending on where and when they consume it brings the two disciplines together in a tight relationship. It’s a fundamental principle of marketing that applies to delivering content to an audience just as it applies to delivering messages about products to consumers. If you don’t know who your audience is, you’re throwing darts in the dark.

Without content, you can’t attract an audience. You might know who you want to reach online but without relevant, authoritative content that meets the wants, needs, and expectations of that target audience, you can’t get to them. Few online advertisers (with experienced media buyers) would purchase ad space without knowing who the audience is for the content on the page where the ad will display.

Content attracts the audience, and offering that content through appropriate distribution channels gives it broader exposure to the “right” audience. In Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps, I refer to this as the “Four Rights” — the right message, to the right audience, at the right time, and in the right place. Without the four rights, you’re content, distribution, and audience will be wrong.

In other words, content, distribution, and audience need to get along brilliantly. If any piece is missing, your results will suffer.

What do you think?

Image: Cleferson Comarela Barbosa

Over the weekend, I attended the Mashable Connect conference in Orlando, Florida, and I walked away with some great insights and food for thought. One of the presentations focused on how to reinvent the web, and I didn’t just enjoy this presentation because the presenter, Roger McNamee is a really cool guy.

Sure, Roger’s got a deep background in finance, investing, and the music and entertainment business (members of his band, Moonalice, played with members of the Grateful Dead and a host of other music legends), but also, one of his business partners in his venture capital firm, Elevation Partners, is U2 lead singer Bono (the company name is a hat tip to the popular song by U2). I still list The Joshua Tree Tour back in the late 1980s as one of the must fun concerts I’ve ever been to, but I digress.

Roger shared his view on mobile and social as they relate to the web today saying, “Social and mobile are the ante to get in the game now, but you have to be great and do something better than everyone else to win.” Throwing your chips on the table is just the first step and is unlikely to win you the pot.

He suggested that paid content can ignore the Android device entirely, and focus efforts on delivering mobile content via the iPhone and iPad. Roger told the audience, “Ask children under the age of 8 how they access content. They don’t use computers the way we do today. They don’t want a desktop computer. They want an iPhone or an iPad. We’re soon going to live in a world where your mobile phone becomes the set top box for your TV.”

What does this mean for content publishers? Think beyond the traditional web. It’s being reinvented as we speak, and mobile content delivery that’s “great” and “better than everyone else” will lead the way.

What do you think?

Image: Flickr

Last week, the web was buzzing with news about Google Drive, the new tool from Google that is being positioned as the alternative to Dropbox, Box, SugarSync, and other cloud storage systems. However, not everyone was impressed by the Google Drive announcement and a question began brewing: “What is the value of Google Drive?”

Newstex Authoritative Content Publisher Shelly Palmer points out that, “Google Drive is so integrated with Google Apps for Business, Google Docs and Google that it is destined to become the seminal point of ‘the’ paradigm shift to business in the cloud.  Or, as I like to think of it, business with a single point of failure.”

In other words, in Google’s quest to make people Google-dependent, there is an added element of risk that most people won’t even realize they’re taking. Shelly explains:

“I consider Information ‘the’ currency of the Information Age. And right now, my business information is in my version of an Information Hedge Fund. I’ve got information, the currency of my business, stored in all kinds of places – some safer than others. So, what would possess me to put all of my InfoCurrency in one place? What is the upside? There is none. It is a remarkably stupid idea.

“Single threading your business through a single point of failure is like putting all of your money in one pretty good investment and hoping for the best. You could make a profit, but if anything goes wrong, you lose. Of course the things that can go wrong are completely out of your control, just like financial investments – you have no say over new regulations, lawsuits, market conditions, you’re just hoping that your investment advisor picked the right investments.” — Shelly Palmer, ShellyPalmer.com

While Shelly warns against relying on a single-point of failure to store and protect your information currency, Newstex Vice President of Technology Chris Moyer adds another layer of consideration — added value. He explains:

“Google Drive doesn’t actually add any value to the existing Google App ecosystem. It tries to act like Dropbox, synchronizing ‘files’ to your system, but anything created with Google Documents can’t be edited with a local editor. For example, if you make a spreadsheet with Google Docs, you can’t then open that spreadsheet in Excel or Numbers. When you try to edit it, it takes you directly to the web site to edit it. The real question is, what is Google Drive adding that the Web view doesn’t already have?

“To Shelly Palmer’s point, this means that Google Apps really becomes a single point-of-failure. Even though we all have documents ‘synchronized’ on our local systems, if they’re Google Docs, we can’t actually do anything with them if we’re not able to contact Google Apps. Forget if Google were to suddenly die (which is highly unlikely), but what about if you’re just not connected to the internet? What if you’re sitting on a plane and want to tackle editing that presentation that you started using Google Presentation, or modify that report you were writing using Google Document?

“The entire advantage of services like Dropbox is that they synchronize files which can just be used by you as you would normally, with your local editor, and they sync back up with the server whenever you do get an internet connection, but they just work even if you don’t. If Dropbox were to go away tomorrow, you’d still have all your files saved on any local computer that you synchronized the files to. With Google, you just end up with these really useless links to web pages to edit and view the documents, not something useful.” — Chris Moyer, Newstex

According to CNET, Google is working on adding more functionality to make Google Drive more competitive with Dropbox and similar services. Already, a tiered pricing structure is offered to give users more storage space (and turn them into paying Google customers — a bold step for Google). Stephen Shankland explains:

“Google is applying its data-extraction technology to whatever you upload to Google Drive for personal searching purposes. Its Google Goggles technology scours images for recognizable text and images — a Coca-Cola logo pops to the front of the search results even though it’s only in a photo, for example, and Google uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology to try to extract text from PDFs.

“Because Google Drive copies file names to your local hard drive, your Windows or Mac machine can find them through search that way, too. However, at this stage, the contents of the files aren’t indexed, though Google is working on that too. Opening one of the files through Windows Explorer or Mac OS X’s Finder takes you to a copy of the file in your browser.

“But just because you see those file names on your hard drive drive, don’t get your hopes up that you won’t always need a network connection. As with Google Docs today, offline access to Google Docs documents is limited to seeing the files but not editing them.” — Steven Shankland, CNET.com

Bottom-line, Google Drive integrates seamlessly with a variety of Google products. For example, you have to pay for additional storage space through Google Wallet, and uploaded content will become searchable (for personal searching purposes — so far) making Google+ and Google Social Search integration an expected future enhancement. However, Google Drive should be used with caution because it comes with risks. If information and content are your livelihood, you can’t afford to take risks with a single point of failure.

What’s your blogging process? That’s a question that Mitch Joel of Six Pixels of Separation asked blogging pros to answer recently, and the result is a collection of fantastic insights from seasoned bloggers.

No two bloggers follow the exact same process to create content, and that’s what makes blogging so interesting. Every blogger is able to show his or her unique insight and personality as they discuss a topic they feel strongly about.

Amber Naslund of Brass Tack Thinking paraphrased a quote from writer Joan Didion and explained her blogging process in seven words: “I write to discover what I think.” Amber explains that sometimes she has a clear idea of what she wants to communicate in a post and sometimes she’s writing to work through a question.

I can relate to this blogging process as I often find myself writing blog posts as a way to think through an issue. Twenty years ago, one might have referred to the process as “thinking out loud,” but today, we can “thing through blogging.” A blog is a great place to share your own expertise and thoughts, but it’s also a great place to recognize that you don’t know everything and invite your audience to join the conversation and share their insights, too. It offers an excellent opportunity to hear varying opinions and see the bigger picture from diverse perspectives. That’s one of the reasons why blog comments and social media sharing are so useful.

Amber is a successful social media strategist who spent several years with Radian6, and knows what bloggers are “supposed” to do to increase traffic. However, she explains that great blogs don’t have to be all about traffic statistics and search engine optimization. This is an important lesson to keep in mind for Authoritative Content publishers who focus more on quality of content than quantity of visitors. Amber wrote:

“[My blog has] never been a deliberate, crafted exercise in “what will make people hire me or buy stuff?” when I write. I suck at SEO, I don’t follow blogging “rules”, I don’t agonize over headlines like I should and I rarely pitch my stuff or write about the hot new thing or create controversy to stir some traffic. I couldn’t tell you what my traffic numbers are if you asked me, and that’s not humblebrag false humility BS, it’s seriously that I don’t know, because it’s not what I write for.”

In other words, there is no single recipe for blogging success, and each blogger can follow the blogging process that enables him or her to reach their individual goals.

You can follow the links to read more blogging processes from Christopher S. Penn of Awaken Your Superhero and Mark W. Schaefer of Grow. What is your blogging process?

Image: Svilen Milev

Did you know there is a specific pattern of traffic to most content that is published online? Ky Harlin of BuzzFeed analyzed content on BuzzFeed and across the company’s partner network (a total of 300 million monthly visitors) to get a better understanding of how the time of day that content is published affects its traffic and overall exposure. What he found might surprise you.

Harlin found that the number of page views content gets follows a common pattern throughout the day. He wrote, “regardless of the time range you choose or the day you’re looking at, [the pattern's] shape remains remarkably similar. The peaks and troughs may shift slightly depending on other qualities, but the overall shape remains the same.” He explained, “The pattern won’t come as a shock. What might be surprising is the high predictability of the pattern — over the 1,700 days I looked at, 86% follow the above pattern. Furthermore, this is independent of extraneous factors, such as the number of articles published on that day.”

He offers the following notes about the common pattern he found:

• Content published between 4:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. gets the fewest page views.
• Page views grow steadily until the lunch hour where they continue to grow but at a slower pace throughout the afternoon.
• Page views peak at 4:00 p.m. and traffic drops slowly but steadily after 4:00 p.m.
• From midnight through the remainder of the night, page views drop quickly until they reach the low point at 5:00 a.m.

You can see Harlin’s complete graph that shows page views by hour in his article, “How Time of Day Affects Content Performance.” He also explains that content performance has less of a correlation with the quantity of content published than you might think.

Bottom-line, quality content is key, and when you make an effort to publish that content at the right time of day, you can maximize both traffic and exposure to it. This isn’t a new discovery, but publishers are still not giving it enough attention. Last year, I wrote an article for Newstex about the best times to publish content on Facebook and Twitter. Combine the lessons in that article with Harlin’s findings, and you’ll be on your way to growing your audience.

Image: Ivan Prole

New research from Time Inc. reveals that “Digital Natives” (people who grew up with mobile technology as part of their everyday lives) switch between content platforms 27 times per hour (that’s every other minute).

Furthermore, the research report explains that Digital Natives spend more time using varied content platforms at the same time. Therefore, their emotional engagement with content can be limited, and they experience fewer emotional highs and lows based on the content they consume.

Digital Natives use multiple devices to consume content even at home where 65% take their mobile devices with them from room to room. Only 41% of Digital Immigrants (people who first learned about mobile technology as adults) report taking their devices with them from one room to the next. For Digital Natives, switching between content platforms is a part of life that they don’t even think about. They just do it.

Following is a breakdown of data from the Time Inc. study that shows the number of respondents who used different types of media on the previous day to give you an idea of what activities Digital Natives are doing and how those activities differ from what Digital Immigrants are doing:

• Checked personal email: Digital Natives = 98%; Digital Immigrants = 96%
• Checked news or weather online: Digital Natives = 81%; Digital Immigrants = 82%
• Made or received calls on mobile phone: Digital Natives = 85%; Digital Immigrants = 71%
• Sent or received text messages: Digital Natives = 85%; Digital Immigrants = 52%
• Checked Facebook: Digital Natives = 80%; Digital Immigrants = 57%
• Checked Twitter: Digital Natives = 14%; Digital Immigrants = 26%
• Checked news or weather on TV: Digital Natives = 55%; Digital Immigrants = 78%
• Used home phone: Digital Natives = 31%; Digital Immigrants = 57%

While only 28% of Digital Immigrants prefer to receive text messages than to speak with a person, 54% of Digital Natives prefer text messaging. Betsy Frank, Chief Research & Insights Officer for Time Inc. suggests, “In order to keep Digital Natives engaged, content creators and marketers will need to think differently. Grabbing them from the beginning is essential, as is content they can snack on and offering multiple access points to every story.”

In other words, content publishers should make sure audiences can access their content through a variety of access points such as mobile and syndication to increase exposure and engagement with the growing audience of Digital Natives.

Image: DaveonFlickr

Just how popular is WordPress? A recent list of the top 100 blogs from Technorati revealed that 48 of the top 100 blogs in the world are built on WordPress. Well-known WordPress developer and SEO expert Joost de Valk of Yoast.com (he creates some fantastic WordPress plugins!) worked with the team at Design by Soap to create an infographic that presents all the WordPress stats visually. Now, you don’t have to wonder how popular WordPress is. You can see it all in one place.

Here are some highlights from the data in the WordPress a Global Phenomenon infographic:

• WordPress is on 72.4 million websites around the world.
• WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS).
• 50% of the 73.4 million sites using WordPress are hosted on WordPress.com, and 50% are self-hosted using the open source version of WordPress at WordPress.org.
• By the end of 2011, 20-25% of new websites published were built using WordPress.
• In 2011, WordPress was used on 14.7% of the top 1 million websites in the world.
• In 2011, WordPress was used on nearly 48% of the top 100 blogs in the world.
• WordPress is the leader in the CMS market with 53.8% market share. Joomla has a 9.2% market share, and Drupal has a 6.7% market share. The remaining 30.3% is split between a variety of other platforms, including internal and proprietary content management systems.

WordPress is used by independent bloggers, small businesses, media organizations, corporations, government agencies, universities and academic institutions, and many more. From Forbes to Harvard Law School and NASA to the NFL, WordPress has become the go-to content management system that is flexible enough to meet the needs of the blogger hobbyist to the largest companies and media websites in the world.

You can view the infographic below (click to view it at full-size).

What do you think? Can another CMS ultimately compete with WordPress? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

In a new interview with The Guardian, Google co-founder Sergey Brin offers his warnings about the biggest threats to web freedom, and government legislation is just part of the story. Facebook and Apple are identified as big threats, too.

Government Threats

As you’d expect, Brin warns people that government interference in web freedom is already happening in countries around the world as governments realize how powerful tools like Twitter are in spreading messages, ramping up protests, and more. He references China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the United Kingdom specifically in his interview with The Guardian and warns that there is even legislation being debated in the United States that could limit web freedom. It bears mentioning that Brin is credited as one of the key decision-makers in Google’s 2010 partial pullout in China brought on by censorship concerns.

Facebook and Apple Threats

Brin warns in his interview that threats to web freedom are coming from dominant players in the technology and internet industries, too. Companies like Facebook and Apple are putting up what Brin refers to as “restrictive walled gardens” that give those companies tight control over the software that can be released on their platforms. When companies have that high level of control over the access provided to their users, they become as guilty of hindering internet freedom as governments that enact specific laws meant to restrict those freedoms.

Of course, Brin positions Google as the opposite of Facebook and Apple painting it as a company that has always put web freedom first in its list of priorities. From the outside looking in, it’s safe to assume that many people would disagree with that claim. However, the general points that Brin makes are valid. Internet freedom is in jeopardy and we seem to be moving in the wrong direction with bills like SOPA and PIPA making headlines in recent months.

In simplest terms, no form of online content is safe from scrutiny as legislators and companies try to find the “right” way to control the global online conversation. The problem is that as far as web users are concerned, there is no “right” way to control the web. And that’s what really matters.

What do you think of the threats to web freedom? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Svilen Milev

In a story released today, eMarketer predicts that 33.5% of the U.S. population (approximately 110 million people) will watch video content on a mobile phone at least once a month by 2016.

This prediction includes mobile phone users who view video content through mobile browsers, subscriptions, downloads, or applications, and it’ss a significant jump from the 45.2 million Americans (14.4% of the U.S. population) who watched video content on mobile phones at least once per month in 2011.

eMarketer also predicts that mobile social networking will continue to grow, and by 2014, 33.3% of the U.S. population will visit social networking sites using their mobile phones at least once per month. That’s up from 18.7% at the end of 2011. Most of those visits are expected to go to Facebook. In fact, eMarketer estimates that the number of mobile Facebook users in the U.S. will jump from 49.4 million at the end of 2011 to 93.9 million in 2014, and 98% of those people will access the site using smartphones. In other words, not only will people consume more content via mobile devices in the coming years, but they’ll find much of that content through mobile social networking activities.

Statistics and trend analysis show us again and again that content consumption is moving more and more toward mobile devices every day. The new data from eMarketer quantifies the trend going out four more years. As new mobile devices and apps are launched in the coming years, those numbers could go even higher. For example, the vast majority of U.S. mobile device users still consume content via mobile phones. As tablets proliferate the market, there is no doubt that content consumption won’t simply shift to tablets. Instead, it’s likely that overall mobile content consumption will increase.

Recent studies by Nielsen and Digitas have shown that people have become multi-screen viewers, which means they watch television and consume content on their mobile phones and tablet devices at the same time. In short, people are consuming more content than ever, and we’re a long way from seeing mobile content consumption growth rates reaching a plateau. Mobile is not a fad, and it’s only going to get more popular. In other words, there is no stopping progress.

Is your content mobile-ready?

The content creators that syndicate their content through Newstex are editorially selected as Authoritative Content publishers. But what makes content authoritative? What sets premium, credible, and trustworthy content apart from the abundance of inferior content published online every day?

In a recent article from Content Rules, three suggestions were provided for how content creators can raise content standards in order to boost the overall quality of content published online:

1. Content publishers must recognize that you get what you pay for.
2. Content developers must focus on semantics to make their content intelligent.
3. Content creators must link content to business strategy.

I agree with all three of these suggestions. Far too many companies and online publishers turn to cheap content mills to churn out massive amounts of content in an effort to boost search traffic to their websites. However, the vast majority of that content is very low quality, filled with errors and inaccuracies, and ineffective in building appropriate brand perceptions in consumers’ minds. It’s easy to trade the long-term, strategic growth that comes from publishing authoritative content for short-term quantity goals that boost web traffic right now. But which strategy will sustain a business for years to come? Quality always trumps quantity in the long-run.

Furthermore, I agree that it’s essential to make your content flexible and intelligent. Recently, I shared a list of 15 ways to diversify your authoritative content to give it a longer life and reach a broader audience. The key is to create content that helps you meet your goals by delivering something meaningful to the audience that will consume it. Not everyone likes to consume content in the same ways, so it’s imperative that you offer diverse brand experiences that give them the opportunity to self-select how they want to consume your content and interact with your brand.

Whether you publish content online to build a business or strictly to communicate news and information, the rules of authoritative content still apply. Create high quality, flexible, and intelligent content that ties directly to your overall business or publishing strategy, and your authoritative content will drive long-term, organic, sustainable growth for many years to come.

Image: Dave Smith