I came across three articles recently, discussing various aspects of digital content, where they are headed, and how they are moulding the way brands are talking to consumers online.
Rather than draw any definite conclusions about the topics, I will highlight some of their main points and discuss them here, because … well, to paraphrase Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski, that’s just like, an opinion, man.
Much like we have to separate fact from “Internet fact”, the web is also flooded with opinion, and counter-opinion. So much so that we get to pick and choose which ones suit our purposes. I’ve said before not to believe everything an “e-marketing ninja” or “social media guru” or “online community Jedi” says.
Just like their made-up job title, their job is made up, too. Nobody was employed full-time to look after a Twitter account 10 years ago. There’s no big old dusty rulebook to pull from a shelf on high and consult. The Internet is a fluid and rapidly changing entity. There’s no one universal way of doing it “right”, bar some basic rules of etiquette, and commonsense. With that in mind, let’s look at the three topics discussed below: newsletters, social media and metrics.
The return of the newsletter
This short piece from Wired does a good job of summarising the ups and downs of newsletters, as well as sharing some of the best ones around. This was the most important takeaway for me:
“That’s why newsletters are back. They’re finite and manageable, guaranteed to be seen, and accessible on any device. They’re also increasingly personal – written by some of the web’s favourite curators, rather than faceless corporate entities.”
Well, I’m glad somebody at Wired read my blogpost from last year and agrees with me.
We’ve started moving some of our clients’ monthly mailers over to a new, responsive format. The templates we use still require input from our design team, but are also fluid enough to allow the content people to shape each one around that month’s content. This allows for more personalisation, and more flexibility in messaging. Most importantly, responsive mailers look great on phones, and we know from our analytics that more and more people are reading them on the go, via a mobile device.
I also agree that it’s the finite nature of newsletters that is important. They ought to be short. They need to include important, high-level info. They need to be consistent in what they include. If your audience wants to dig deeper, let them click through to your site for that. We should treat access to somebody’s inbox – a place being constantly bombarded with plenty other competing interests – as an honour, one that should not be abused.
Twitter, Facebook a waste of time?
At Flow, we develop integrated communications, and in this context, we see newsletters and social media working hand-in-hand to deliver excellent content to your audience. Not so for this author.
He’s stuck on the issue of reach – another thing I’ve discussed before on this blog.
“It’s clear that Facebook and Twitter don’t offer the relationships that marketing leaders crave,” says Nate Elliott of market research firm Forrester. “Yet most brands still use these sites as the centrepiece of their social efforts – thereby wasting significant financial, technological and human resources on social networks that don’t deliver value.”
Well, if you’re not using them correctly, sure. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater is a bit shortsighted. If brands are prepared to pay to reach their audience (not for every single post, but for the important stuff), and actually prepared to engage meaningfully with their followers, Facebook and Twitter are still very much relevant. They work in unison with newsletters, not as alternatives. But also, this is very much dependent on the client, and the audience. We personalise a communications solution that’s right for your business, and many, many businesses are doing very well on Facebook and Twitter.
Give the article a read and check out some of the interesting comments on it, too.
A mile wide, an inch deep
I found this to be a fascinating piece, discussing the underlying subject of all digital strategies: measuring success.
Ev Williams, the CEO of news and blogging platform Medium, discusses the multi-dimensionality of web metrics. Advertisers like to chase sites that receive lots of hits, but this does not always mean that people are engaging with content, which is more valuable.
“We pay more attention to time spent reading than number of visitors at Medium because, in a world of infinite content – where there are a million shiny attention-grabbing objects a touch away and notifications coming in constantly – it’s meaningful when someone is actually spending time. After all, for a currency to be valuable, it has to be scarce. And while the amount of attention people are willing to give to media and the Internet in general has skyrocketed — largely due to having a screen and connection with them everywhere — it eventually is finite.”
This is why I have lamented the rise of clickbait before. It encourages quantity over quality. At Flow, we believe quality is more important, and it can be measured by looking at the time people spend on clients’ sites, and how many pages they viewed, to gauge how well we’re doing this. Both newsletters and social media should be driving people to this quality content, speaking in a voice that is personalised and authentic.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of the above – leave a comment below.
