content

Why Startups Need Great Content

By Mark Evans in Content Marketing, Startups No Comments Tags: , ,

For startups, attracting the spotlight can be a major challenge.

Without large marketing budgets and an army of people to spread the word, it can be a struggle to get anyone to pay attention to a startup, even if it is doing interesting things. The reality is there is so much competition and digital noise that attracting the spotlight is not an easy proposition.

Given this difficult landscape, there is a tool that startups can use to get some traction: great content.

Content is a fertile medium because it requires things that startups have in abundance: domain expertise, enthusiasm and energy. With these three ingredients, startups have the ability to create content that offers value, insight and information about not only what they’re but the industry in which they play and the key trends impacting it.

Great content can provide startups with credibility, position them as thought leaders and attract more attention from people looking for insight from people who not only talking the talk but walking the walk.

So what does it take to create great content? For the most part, it’s time, people (it helps to have someone who can write), consistency and some ideas. In the scheme of things, the cost can be relatively modest but, over time, the ROI can be significant.

Why Zite Has Rocked My Content World

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod, Blogs, Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , ,

First a confession: I was late to the tablet game. With several laptops at home and a job that requires a lot of mobile working, there just wasn’t much of a use case for a tablet. Time passed, a friend of mine at Carbon Computing got me a great deal on an iPad, and now I’m part of the tablet world.

While I haven’t spent much time pimping my iPad, one of the first apps add was Zite because there had been so much buzz about it, particularly after the Vancouver-based startup was acquired by CNN for a reported $25-million.

This may sound dramatic but Zite has dramatically changed how I consume content. As someone who sucks in a lot of content every day for market intelligence and information, and ideas for columns and blog posts, any way that improves efficiency and productivity is a wonderful thing.

With Zite, I can create categories that are interesting or relevant to my interests and needs. Then, Zite generates stories in a magazine format that can be quickly scanned and read. It’s also easy to save an article or blog post to read for later, or share it via social media or email.

Zite also lets you “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” a story to adjust your preferences, although it would be great if you could add a particular Web site or blog into the editorial mix.

Zite has been a productivity-booster because I can cover the content landscape in 10 minutes for ideas and information. At the same time, it has cut down on the amount of time on Twitter, which I use as a quasi-RSS reader.

More important, it has dramatically changed how much content I can consume and read and, in the process, saved me a lot of time, which is one of the most important considerations.

The Weekly Blogging Wrap

By Mark Evans in Social Media, Startups No Comments Tags: , , ,

I write a lot of content each week in a variety of places so I figured it might be valuable to provide a wrap-up:

Monday: 

Globe & Mail: Knowing when it’s time to move on – A look at how some entrepreneurs such as TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington have to decide to leave after their business has been acquired.

Sysomos: Is social media ROI that important yet? There’s lots of talk about ROI but some major companies don’t seem too concerned about it.

Mark Evans Tech: The downside of Canada’s start-up buying binge – Everyone is excited about a bunch of Canadian start-ups being acquired but there are some negatives.

Tuesday:

Sysomos: The perils of pissing off bloggers – ConAgra pranked a bunch of mommy and food bloggers, only to discover it was a dumb thing to do.

Wednesday:

Sysomos: Six tips to avoid social media overload – It’s easy to get overwhelmed by social media so it’s important to have a good management plan.

Mark Evans Tech: Should Canadian governments be funding start-ups? – Sadly, the federal and provincial governments in Canada are still in the business of financing start-ups.

Thursday:

Mark Evans Tech: For start-ups, it’s all about traction – Forget about raising venture capital to nurture an idea; go out and attract some users and money

Friday:

Globe & Mail: A best-kept secret no more – The story of WattPad, which recently raised $3.5-million in venture capital from a group of investors that included Union Square Ventures

Sysomos: How would social media impacted 9/11 – What if social media was around in 2001?

Mark Evans Tech: Did a Web browser that sucked kill the BlackBerry? – The BlackBerry has been plagued for years by a bad Web browser. Now, it’s coming back to haunt RIM.

The Marriage of Social Media and SEO

By Mark Evans in Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , , ,

When Magazines Canada asked me to do a presentation on social media and SEO, my immediate reaction was “Well, that’s interesting and different” because it wasn’t a topic I had explored much.

In doing research for the presentation, which happened earlier today, I realized I had been spending a lot of time on SEO without realizing it. When you boil it down, the creation of content and leveraging social media to distribute it (and get others to distribute content for you) is a pillar of SEO – at least the organic kind.

Content thrives when it’s easy for people to find it. With the major search engines now starting to embrace and index social media activity, there’s a natural marriage happening between social media and SEO.

In doing my research, one thing was stood out was a blog post by Rohn Jay Miller, which included this statement:

“The fabulous collision between social networks and search engines is the most important change to the Internet in the last ten years. And it’s changing the Internet forever.”

Here’s my presentation, which can also be found on SlideShare.

The Marriage of Social Media & SEO

Who Controls the Pipes, Wins

By Mark Evans in ILEC News, Analysis, Media 2 Comments Tags: , , ,

Given some of the recent transactions, convergence has come roaring back after being considered dead in the wake of some disastrous deals earlier this decade. Can anyone say AOL/Time-Warner?

Despite the renewed belief that content and connectivity are a magical pairing, my take is it’s much ado about nothing all over again. At the end of the day, the pipes are much more valuable than content. Why? It’s simple: There are only a limited number of pipes but lots of content. This may live in a 500-channel universe but there’s limited way to access all of this content.

If consumers want content, they need a way to get it, and they are willing to pay higher prices for better, faster, more convenient connections. Look at how broadband prices continue to be increased with nary a whimper from consumers, who are loathe to pay anything for online services, even those they find valuable and useful.

No one talks about it much but he/she who controls the pipes, wins. It’s as simple as that.

There’s at least one person who seems to share my thesis: Rogers Communications CEO Nadir Mohammed, who provided this juicy quote to the Globe & Mail:

“We think there’s a lot of glory in dumb pipes,” he says. This is shortly before he also says, “There’s no such thing as dumb pipes.”

This quote come from the leader of a company which owns large broadband and wireless businesses, as well as radio stations and TV stations, magazines, Web sites and a baseball team.

The sudden need by pipe owners such as Bell Canada and Shaw to own content sounds like the same arguments pipe owners were making a decade ago, and we all know how well that turned out. The difference between then and now is there’s so much more content being created, which has made content is more of a commodity.

Meanwhile, the number of pipes has stayed relatively the same. Sure, there are a few more wireless carriers but it’s not like billions of dollars being poured into building new broadband networks being created. As long as pipes are in short supply, they will remain an extremely valuable asset – much more valuable than content.

Social Media: The Emperor with No Clothes?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 12 Comments Tags: , , ,

I’m conflicted about social media.

On one hand, I enthusiastically believe it has the potential to be a powerful and effective way to reach people and consumers in new and different ways. On the other hand, I have my reservations about how social media is being hyped and sold as the best thing since sliced bread.

To me, one of the biggest issues with social media is the obsession with strategy, tactics and tools. Not that they are a bad thing but strategy provides a plan of what to do, tactics offers details on how to do it, and the tools let you do social media.

The problem is the embrace of strategy, tactics and tools aren’t enough to be successful with social media. To make social media truly effective, you also need content and compelling stories. These elements make it possible to build relationships and engage with people in a public forum.

Many companies, however, don’t succeed with social media because they can’t or don’t embrace content and story telling. They work hard at social media by following the strategic and tactical recommendations provided by consultants or internal resources but the tools at their disposal don’t seem to have any magic in them.

At the end of the day, many companies simply give up, and dismiss social media as overblown. To them, social media is the emperor with no clothes. The emperor thinks he looks great but there’s no substance to support it.

One of the problems is the social media landscape is loaded with unrealistic expectations. The success stories, which at this stage are few and far between, are celebrated, caressed and sold as what could be. Truth be told, there aren’t that many successes to be celebrated given how many companies are now using social media.

In many ways, social media reminds me of 1996/1997 when the Web first started to emerge into the mainstream. Companies were scrambling to get onto the Web so they happily paid tens of thousands of dollars to someone who could HTML to build a static Web site with a handful of pages. Looking back, it is easy to see how these Web sites barely scratched the surface of what was possible.

The same goes for social media. There are lots of people selling social media as the new, amazing medium, and lots of companies happily jumping on the bandwagon without realizing most of the services being sold only get them halfway down the road to success.

This may be part of social media’s evolution but it’s really about time there was a lot more focus and attention on content, creativity and great stories. If you look at some of the companies that have done well with social media – Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, T-Mobile, Blendtec – content is a key part of the mix. Yet, the market doesn’t seem ready or willing to embrace content as much as strategy, tactics and tools.

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