free ebook: Content Is Currency (by Ardath Albee)

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free ebook by Ardath Albee (B2B marketing strategist and CEO of Marketing Interactions)

via ThoseInMedia LinkedIn mailing list:

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Read the eBook to learn:
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- 8 methods of listening that will help you improve content relevance
- How to integrate different formats, create an editorial calendar and measure success

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Blog by Black Tarzan
Digital Branding Academy | 2011

From Prospect to Evangelist: Optimizing Relationships with Social Media

Free ebook from Hubspot - From Prospect to Evangelist: Optimizing Relationships with Social Media

download now @ http://www.hubspot.com/new-ebook-from-prospect-to-evangelist-with-social-media/?source=hspd-20110305-evangelist-ebook

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Blog by Black Tarzan
Digital Branding Academy | 2011

#iPad Procrastination [#Apple #apps #mobile #commmunications #monetize]

By Jerry Del Colliano | Re-posted from Inside Music Media...

The iPad is the new Walkman.

No, it’s more than that.

The iPad is the new Walkman, TV, newsstand, bookstore, Wii and communication center all in the palm of your hand.

For some reason, traditional media companies either don’t get this or don’t want to believe it. After all, acknowledging that Apple will be hosting their content in the foreseeable future is a scary thought to them.

There is no time to waste in understanding the changes that will have to be made to keep up with – well, your consumers.

They are buying iPads as fast as Apple can make them. Hardly anyone doesn’t want one. It’s a matter of when they get the money. Over three million sold in less than three months and there is no reason to believe this demand will recede any time soon. Keep in mind that Apple has defied the recession and continues to do so with computers, iPods, iPads and iPhones.

How big is the iPad already?

• iPad is Apple’s third largest business in less than one season next to iPhones and Macs.

• The apps that work so well on Apple mobile devices have generated nearly $1.5 billion in sales since their June 2008 launch.

• In less than three months on the market, half of the Fortune 100 companies are either reported to be testing or launching the iPad for service, sales and other business functions.

• The iPad will eventually have competitors although I don’t see anyone overtaking Apple’s dominance in this area (Full disclosure: I am an Apple shareholder). Other iPhone or mobile devices easily work with iPad apps.

So what’s the delay?

Media companies are hanging on to what they’ve got -- what they are familiar with.

As I mentioned earlier, no one in traditional media likes to hand Steve Jobs 30% of their revenue just to get access to his commerce tools. They would rather have the greater expense of owning the towers, transmitters, printing presses, bookstores and what not.

Record labels are particularly bitter and yet Jobs has triumphed and the labels have been made to look like prehistoric operators who have the one thing everyone loves (music), but don’t seem to know how to distribute it to a market that has clearly moved on.

Traditional media companies don’t like to risk moving their content to platforms that they don’t fully understand. If you bought a radio group for billions of dollars, you wouldn’t be so anxious to adapt to the fast growing mobile market while you’re in over your head in debt to pay for the stations.

But there really is no time to waste.

Look to the record labels and do the opposite. They have let Apple break down their albums for easy cherry picking by consumers and yet they don’t understand that the album had died a long time ago. The onset of the CD emboldened record execs into making them think the album would never die.

It has.

Both creatively in some (not all) cases and as a means for consumers to access music.

If media companies, then, are procrastinating on embracing the iPad, here’s how to accelerate the process:

1. Move right now to optimize your non-digital content for the iPad. This will be different than designing it for a computer or laptop and takes some creative thinking, but from now on the litmus test for delivery of content is how does it work on an iPad.

2. Social networking is at the heart of an iPad. Who needs magazines delivered on a handheld device if you can’t talk to the authors directly or communicate with others reading the articles. The feature on digital books that shows you what others are underlining is one of my favorites. Cliff Notes in the digital age.

3. All audio will need video. All video has audio. Both will need text and social networking. This is the Holy Grail of iPadding.

4. New content must be created by traditional media companies separate and apart from what they do at their day jobs. This content – preferably short-form – does not even have to be consistent with what their main business is. For example, if a radio station plays the hits, it can also maintain a sports blog that listeners can access. The deciding factor is monetization.

5. There are three major ways to monetize iPad content in my view – banner ads, event marketing and/or paid subscriptions. That means new ways to look at content creation before you do it. And it means attracting the kind of people who can sell this content not as an add-on but a standalone.

Many interactive opportunities and the revenue they suggest will be missed if the iPad does not become the major focus on every media company. I'm focusing on that right now. While challenging, it presents so much promise and I will share with you my experiences after Inside Music Media – iPad-style is launched this fall.

The iPad is the great liberator from gatekeepers (other than Apple).

In the past, if you wanted to do a show, you needed to find a radio station to broadcast it.

Now, do content on the iPad and you will not need a radio station.

This is not taking anything away from radio or TV when it is local and live. That's a business -- a good one. But this is as well and it can run in tandem with traditional media or it can stand alone.

No one is in your way.

Nothing can stop you but a lack of trust in the mobile future and should that be a problem there is reassuring evidence all around us increasingly living their lives in real time, on the go and connected to each other.

Procrastinating is detrimental to your brand.

Posted by Dexter Bryant Jr. | Powered by d.BRYJ Music Media Group

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The New Media #Content Revolution (#newmedia)

By Jerry Del Colliano | Re-posted from Inside Music Media...

I am often asked by readers to suggest some ways they might start thinking about entrepreneurial ideas for the new media content revolution ahead.

It’s one thing to learn from the mistakes of consolidators in the music and radio industries and their predecessors in publishing and TV but the best way to see actionable growth ideas for the future is to study sociology along with the emerging technology now.

Here are a few ideas I thought might interest you:

1. Textbooks Out, iPads and Kindles In

Gabe Hobbs’ Hobbs Blobs tells us that Clearwater High School in Florida is planning to eliminate all textbooks by the start of school this fall. That’s 2,100 students at an estimated expense of $600,000. It was all over the front page of the St. Petersburg Times touting the first-in-nation high school to go paperless.

Gabe wisely projects that radio might want to find a place on these new age textbooks because students will have 3G connectivity.

24/7 formats will probably not be the answer but if my former associate George Michael, the WFIL legendary teen personality, were alive, he might say – get into the high school news business. Maybe even the Clearwater High School news business.

For those of you fired from a perfectly good radio job by the stupidity of consolidated managers, they will never do this, but you might.

Hint?

2. Virgin to Publish In-Flight iPad Magazine

Richard Branson is a crazy man and that’s why we love him. Fly Virgin Atlantic and you’ll love him even more once his new “Maverick” iPad-only inflight magazine becomes available to passengers.

Virgin will save the trees and target their upscale international audience with content on entrepreneurism, technology and travel.

Branson’s daughter, Holly, will head the project that will likely reduce traditional publishing costs and start playing to what is likely to be planeloads of fliers with electronic devices on their laps.

First iPad-only issue comes out in October. Then iPhone and android device editions will follow.

Hearst sold 12,000 downloads of its Popular Mechanics app since it was released in early July. Wired has been ringing up monthly app business since it dumped paper. Esquire; Marie Claire; O, The Oprah Magazine; Food Network Magazine; Cosmopolitan and Harper's Bazaar are next.

This is what we’ve been talking about and for those of you who attended my Media Solutions Lab last January – the future we saw together then is arriving now which prompts the question – why aren’t you in the multimedia business?

And that’s what it really is or is destined to become – not simply print, or video or audio. It’s everything wrapped around social networking. The paid model is here as an addition to free. Ad supported Internet is alive and well but there are not enough ad dollars nor will there be to support a wide range of entrepreneurial ventures.

I’m going to do some special segments on the opportunities ahead in multimedia content creation at our next Media Solutions Lab January 27 (save the date). In the meantime, take a close look at your area(s) of expertise and start conceptualizing a new model built around – the iPad, America’s new entertainment and information device.

3. Paywalls Are Coming

News Corp’s Times and Sunday Times is getting ready to start charging for content. It has erected a paywall that even Google’s web crawlers cannot surmount

Revenue from online advertising is not enough.

Hulu launched a premium TV service for $9.99 a month for full seasons of TV shows and other content. That’s really aggressive and may not work. Who knows what the sweet spot is for monthly subscription pricing.

Even local newspapers like The Tallahassee Democrat, a Gannett paper no less, is charging for the online edition. The Wall Street Journal almost always has charged and The New York Times has a cockamamie metering concept that it will introduce in 2011 although I believe The Times model will fail because it tends to punish heavy readers.

This publication – Inside Music Media will go to a pay model by early fall -- $99 for a year, $14.99 per month.

Radio stations that could offer specialized short-form music programs, experts on music discovery by genre and news and entertainment could also find a lucrative pay model if the content has certain elements.

This is my criteria for success.

To succeed with a paywall the content must be unique, compelling and addictive.

If all three of these criteria are not met, chances for success diminish.

For example, if a radio station offered a website and music-enhanced discovery site around hit music, it would likely fail unless it has content not available elsewhere that consumers would be compelled to read so they could become addicted to the product.

Classical music buffs who are left with nothing on terrestrial radio could get several hours of music a day ported to their electronic device of choice with outstanding, exquisite content and expert context may very well pay. You might also monetize through ads.

Local will be a big area.

Will someone please do this before I do?

Zip code Newsradio.

Type in News-08003 and get all the news for Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Not fluff. No repackaged news from other sources or it will fail. Unique, compelling and addictive. Social networking for that zip, video, pictures, text.

If the content exists somewhere else for free, you’re through.

There are many new opportunities cropping up for new media. It is important to understand one thing more than anything else – the consumer.

Your target consumer will tell you what they want, will use and maybe even pay for.

Posted by Dexter Bryant Jr. | Powered by d.BRYJ Music Media Group

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New Rules of Mass #Media Social Networking (#socialnetworking)

The last few months have been hella busy around here. Thankfully I had a few minutes today to catch up on my reading.

Jerry Del Colliano is one of my favorite writers because his analysis of mass media and social networking is spot on every time. He recently raised a very poignant question on his blog (Inside Music Media): how do you develop a way to connect with fans in a meaningful way?

1. Never mass market toward friends and social network followers because that is getting old and turning social media into a modern day direct mail (which I sometimes feel is being done) is a prescription for failure.

2. Social media must be two-way communication not one-way – the way radio stations and lots of others find it easier to do. Interact. Present a way for everyone in your "clubhouse" to talk to you and each other. It takes participation. Fans know when you have assigned social networking to someone with whom they would never choose to communicate.

3. Only say that which is worth communicating. As in life, fewer words can have more impact than too many words. People don’t have the time to read everything on your mind. Perhaps this explains the popularity of Twitter's 140 characters. The world is progressively all getting attention deficit or at the very least, impatience with the communications process.

Mass marketing IS NOT communication. Make meaningful connections by speaking to your audience like human beings, not like a mass of nameless individuals. And don't forget they're all ADHD so talk like you tweet ^_^

Posted by Dexter Bryant Jr. | Powered by d.BRYJ Music Media Group

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The Paid Internet Gains Credibility

By Jerry Del Colliano

As you know I have been a great proponent of the paid Internet for some time now.

I am aware that most people – including Millennials feel they are entitled to a free Internet.

Working with young people since 2004, I know not to discredit or dismiss their disdain for paying for that which they expect to get for free.

You’ve heard me tell you of my own decision to take this site to a paid model this summer. Everything I do is a virtual “lab” to me. So far the work is proceeding that will enable Inside Music Media to continue unimpeded by influence from advertisers or power brokers.

Then, last week I noted that Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine Editor and Chief, launched a new Apple app for Wired priced aggressively at $4.99 per issue.

Wired sold 24,000 iPad apps in the first 24 hours.

That’s $120,000 in revenue in one day keeping in mind that the print edition of Wired only sells about 82,000 single newsstand copies per month and Wired has approximately 672,000 paid subscribers.

Did I mention that Apple’s cut is $36,000 – who is complaining?

But that’s not the big story.

The big story is that Chris Anderson is the author of the book Free which proclaims the paid model dead as a doornail and free content as the second coming of the Internet. Anderson argues that “Freemium” – as I understand it, is the ability to sell paid content to people who already get the milk and don’t need the cow.

Think ESPN.com.

They’ve sold premium for years. It’s not a big business – simply an add-on.

Malcolm Gladwell did a review of Anderson’s Free in The New Yorker and he blistered him:

“It would be nice to know, as well, just how a business goes about reorganizing itself around getting people to work for “non-monetary rewards.” Does he mean that the New York Times should be staffed by volunteers, like Meals on Wheels? Anderson’s reference to people who “prefer to buy their music online” carries the faint suggestion that refraining from theft should be considered a mere preference. And then there is his insistence that the relentless downward pressure on prices represents an iron law of the digital economy. Why is it a law? Free is just another price, and prices are set by individual actors, in accordance with the aggregated particulars of marketplace power."

Mel Karmazin, when he ran Infinity/CBS, refused to allow his stations' intellectual property to be streamed for free on the Internet. Everyone thought he was crazy. Now broadcasters give away their online programming for free or for very cheap online ads. That’s no business model.

Jerry Lee refuses to allow top-rated B-101 to be streamed in Philadelphia because music royalty fees make it economically untenable and because in reality so few people actually listen to radio station streams – compared to the terrestrial signal.

Now we see the proponent of “Freemium” suddenly sound like a convert:

“The tablet is our opportunity to make the Wired we always dreamed of. It has all the visual impact of paper, enhanced by interactive elements like video and animated infographics. We can offer you a history of Mars landings that lets you explore the red planet yourself. We can take you inside Trent Reznor’s recording studio and let you listen to snippets of his work in progress. And we can show you exactly how Pixar crafted each frame of its new movie, Toy Story 3.”

The free vs. paid discussion is one that you will want to watch closely because it will present so many opportunities for growth in the media business.

Apple has sold 2 million iPads in less than 60 days – and they are only getting warmed up. If you refuse to go to an Apple store and play with one then you may dismiss a lot of what I am saying here. (Full disclosure: I am an Apple shareholder). If you own one, you know.

The iPad is the new transmitter and tower.

The new cable system.

The new printing press.

And Apple intends to charge rent.

What’s even better is that the marketplace – you know, those Millennials that expect to get everything on the Internet for free – are showing us again and again that they will buy Apple apps in great numbers.

For radio, the growth opportunities ahead are dazzling.

Create new content that is both compelling and addictive in news, music, sports or entertainment and build in social networking beyond Twitter and Facebook and you have a paid item that can be sold as an app through the iTunes store.

Optimize your website for the iPad and you’re in business.

That’s what I am hope to do with Inside Music Media and my many commerce interests. Websites are dead as we know them. Instead, live, breathing, interactive and mobile tablet sites will temp consumers to pay for content if that content is unique.

For record labels, paid content is a better growth business than music.

They will learn one of these days to give the music away for free since they have no way of protecting it, but then offer record label-generated private paid sites for artists, genres, localities – the possibilities are endless.

Traditional media holds the advantage going forward if they choose to use it.

They broadcast on terrestrial signals or make music on CDs and downloads, but if they build the future thinking about how to come up with riveting content based on their broad businesses, I believe consumers will pay.

There will always be free content on the Internet – free is a price and it works with advertisers and other incentives as part of a business model.

But so is paid.

Mel was right.

Jerry Lee is right.

And now Chris Anderson has seen the Promised Land.

There is big money in Apple iPad apps for radio and records.

http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com/2010/05/paid-internet-gains-credibility.html

Written by Jerry Del Colliano for Inside Music Media.

Re-posted by Dexter Bryant Jr.
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Comcast's Breakthrough iPad App

By Jerry Del Colliano

If you need evidence as to why Apple’s iPad is going to change the media world, look at what Comcast just announced.

An app.

A very special app that turns your iPad into more than just a television remote.

Take a moment to see Comcast CEO Brian Roberts explain why a TV/cable remote is a thing of the past. Watch here.

So there it is – pairing the iPad to the Comcast cable box. Easy for them to do and much less expensive than being in the hardware business.

The iPad keyboard is the killer app because Comcast customers will soon be able to search 70,000 on demand shows just by typing a few letters onto their iPads.

The iPad then controls the TV, changes channels, adjusts volume and has a social networking aspect – one user can invite another Comcast subscriber via iPad to watch the same TV show.

Roberts says the iPad “liberates us from the cable box and puts it in the power of the consumer”.

A long way from the days when Milton Shapp and his electronics company developed the Jerrold cable box – one of the first devices in the early days of cable (Jerrold was Shapp’s middle name and Shapp eventually became governor of Pennsylvania).

It doesn’t stop there.

Apple, as I have warned (and I am a shareholder) stands to become a dominant power not only in electronics, which it arguably is already, but in content which it is fast becoming. And unlike what we do, Apple doesn’t have to spend any money on content development.

They act as a gatekeeper to allow third party content providers access to their cool and intuitive devices.

They get to charge "tolls" to content providers for using their "turnpike".

And other companies are embracing the iPad.

Take Livio’s new iPhone/iPod Touch radio app made especially for listening in cars.

Large button pre-sets for ease of use while driving. The app suggests listening options (a modern day “scan”). It zeros in on similar stations, if that’s what the driver wants. GPS can be used to find links to local stations while driving.

In the early days of broadcasting, companies like RCA may have manufactured radios and televisions as well as owned interest in broadcast stations but it was nothing compared to what Apple is pulling off today.

Apple owns access.

RCA had to give access to competing stations for free.

Therefore, unless and until another electronics company can come up with a serious competitor for Apple apps and products, Apple becomes the de facto gatekeeper.

Book publishers and newspaper moguls are worried about all this power in the hands of Steve Jobs and the potential for eating into their profits. But they have no alternative currently.

Record labels continue to fall flat on their faces adapting to new Internet and mobile devices. They are now stonewalling Apple on using recorded music for Apple’s new cloud-based and Lala-inspired streaming service which is due soon.

It sticks in the labels’ craw that Jobs now runs their business and that they in fact gave him the keys to their companies when he played to their piracy fears when pitching iTunes/iPod as a Napster killer. Now the labels have no choice but to play nice and yet they continue to go off the planet.

RIAA has won the initial phase of its lawsuit against LimeWire and in the process is opening the door to hundreds of other alternative services that will fulfill the public obsession with sharing music files. This could be worse for the labels than dealing with one entity such as LimeWire. Details on the labels “victory” are here.

Look to radio.

The industry has not adapted to Apple apps other than to create players that will allow consumers to listen to terrestrial radio or get minor content from cash-pinched stations.

In other words, Comcast can use an iPad to replace the cable remote and call that a success, but radio stations that use apps to allow for radio listening on mobile/Internet devices are failures for doing the same thing.

Well, not quite.

Radio could be a potent force in content and could make iPhones, iPads and iPods natural delivery systems for new content not currently on their terrestrial signals.

But broadcasters continue to insist that radio be consumed the way they need it (or want it) to be used instead of the way that best cooperates with the inevitable.

And what is the inevitable?

Look around.

I was at Glee Live Saturday night when the TV-inspired production company came to Phoenix. From mid theater you see the consumer telling you (if not begging you) to make content for the way they live now.

Phones everywhere. Pictures at the concert taken and transmitted immediately to Facebook pages everywhere.

Apple has done more than any company to dictate the future of the entertainment business without providing one single bit of content that they have to pay to produce.

In fact, they use content from third party sources and profit from it.

Like it or not, you’ll be attending sporting events some day and participating in the play by voting on whether the umpire’s call at first base was right or wrong. See the replay and then decide. Of course, the fans don't get the final say, but talk about social networking!

Then they will meet other fans in the stadium. Stay connected after the game.

Attend shows that are built to have content you can have in your lap on an iPad that enhances the traditional stage only presentation. Of course, you’ll be prompted to buy things while enjoying the show.

And in radio, 100 podcasts per locality and music services that are narrated by experts – unique and compelling. News available by zip code with GPS news alerts that come to you while you walk through the streets.

If I’m a broadcast company, I’m calling a brainstorming session. Turning the best minds loose and having them develop content for the new gold standard in broadcasting.

The Apple iPad with all its apps replaces broadcast transmitters and towers.

We may not like it, but it is starting to happen now.

http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com/2010/05/comcasts-breakthrough-ipad-app.html

Written by Jerry Del Colliano for Inside Music Media

Posted by Dexter Bryant Jr.
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