[Cross-posted on rexblog.com]
Wired editor and author of the book, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson, posted an item on his blog today that contains an observation I believe is so obvious, it is completely missed by many self-appointed experts. (Okay, I’ll admit I live in that glass house.):
“Not only do small (Long Tail) publishers montetize their content at 3-5 times the rate of the larger publishers in PubMatic’s survey, but they’re improving in the current environment while the big publisher decline.
This is a fact of life in business-to-business-media, where the business model has long been focused on “free” distribution of content to decision-makers in specialized fields. The “cost per thousand” (CPM) model of advertising sales does not exist as a metric in this long-tail of the media world. Of course, if an advertiser selling a $100,000 piece of equipment can reach 90% of the decision makers in a market of 5,000 specifying engineers, then, hell-yeah, the publisher of that content should be able to monetize it at hundreds of times the rate of, say, a newsweekly.
The lesson here: Online, if you want to monetize content, the number of eyeballs seeing your content is less important than who those eyeballs belong to. And the more helpful that content is in assisting real people make important and valuable decisions, the more “monetizable” it will be.
(This “recollection” is also cross-posted on rexblog.com.)
My first ever accidental online “citizen journalism” (before the term existed) experience occurred ten years ago, today. Unfortunately, because of the ephemeral nature of the web and certain “wish we knew then what we know now” practices, there is no place for me to point to what I did on that day.
[After the jump, read about the Hammock ‘tornado’ photos.]
Last month there was a splash in the agency world when the Boston-based agency Modernista launched its new Web site. But this wasn’t your typical agency Web site. Modernista’s new site looks like this:
What? That’s right—Modernista’s homepage looks like a Wikipedia entry. Your eye is guided to the red area at the top where you read:
“Do not be alarmed. You are viewing Modernista through the eyes of the Web. The menu on the left is our homepage. Everything behind it is beyond our control.”
I applaud the bold statement Modernista is making with this approach. By structuring their site in such a creative, extreme way, the agency is illustrating not only that they “get” social media, but that it’s the right choice for anyone looking for an interactive, dynamic, cutting-edge ad agency.
Modernista and Hammock share a similar philosophy that embraces social media, and while Modernista exploits the medium a little more radically, their site and ours have a lot in common. We both post examples of our work on an easy to update, easy to view Flickr account. They post their digital work on del.icio.us, a social media bookmarking site; Hammock.com’s Industry News is fed from our del.icio.us account, too. Like Hammock.com, Modernista also utilizes the features of YouTube and Google Maps.
At Hammock, we believe that social media should become an integral part of corporate and association communications today. Like Modernista, we often demonstrate ways a site can take advantage of the benefits of online communities, such as Facebook, del.icio.us, YouTube and Twitter. We invest our time and energy into learning and utilizing these platforms because we’re convinced the old static Web site model is not only a thing of the past, but will prevent organizations from accomplishing their communications goals. To engage with your members or clients, you must utilize these new tools to connect with your audience online.
My friend Josh Hinds interviewed me on the topic of business networking. Here’s the link to the interview. Thanks, Josh.
We’re proud of Rex for his foresight in helping to found the Custom Publishing Council (CPC) back in 1998. The CPC has always been a special partner with Hammock in promoting and creating excellence in custom media, so we were thrilled to attend CPC’s first conference, the Custom Content Conference, held in New Orleans earlier this week.
Here are some of my favorite quotes and highlights from the sessions I attended:
Joe Duffy, Duffy & Partners: “Yesterday’s consumer is becoming today’s programmer.”
Remember when Time named its 2007 Person of the Year “The Consumer”? As Joe’s session illustrated, now consumers are in control—from the color of our Nikes to the playlist on our iPod to the design for our Mini. In this atmosphere, it’s vital for brands to deliver authentic experiences. One exciting way to make that happen is through custom content.
Robert Passikoff and Amy Shea, Brand Keys: “The percentage of contribution that ‘customization’ makes to products and services through engagement, adoption and loyalty is 18%. It was 4% in 1997.”
People are bombarded with advertising messages all day, every day. To cut through the clutter, you have to speak directly to your audience with messages targeted specifically to their wants and needs and desires. With customization’s growing reach, how can you afford not to?
Joseph Plummer, Advertising Research Foundation: “Engaging storytelling campaigns prove superior in creating relevant, lasting connections with consumers that enrich brand meaning and ultimately impact brand behavior.”
At Hammock, we say “Your Story Starts Here.” It’s not only a catchy slogan, but it represents how we feel about the work we do for our clients. To us, a client’s story is the essence of their brand, so our primary goal is to communicate that story in the most engaging way possible to their members and customers.
Our CEO, Rex Hammock, has been blogging regularly since 2001. And he’s made a bit of a name for himself out there in the blogosphere. [He kills us for saying stuff like this. No, not “blogosphere.” Well, he doesn’t like that either. But he doesn’t like us bragging on him.]
Back to the bragging: Well recognized for his magazine and digital media savvy, Rex runs in some heady circles, at least via the Rexblog. So we weren’t surprised to see that Junta42’s Top Content Marketing Blogs list ranks the Rexblog as #13. Lucky 13, I say.
Rex wrote an interesting post today on the term content marketing. He takes a little issue with the semantics, but don’t be alarmed. If Hammock Inc. can help you tell your story, the rest of us don’t care what you call it.
“The Internet is an increasingly effective weapon in your arsenal of communication tools,” said public relations guru Molly Cate at a recent Nashville American Marketing Association meeting on the topic of e-Campaigns. Cate and Kristen Hayner shared tips on how to maximize Web publicity and navigate communication plans online, especially if your business is ever faced with a crisis. Here’s a list of their online communications Do’s and Don’ts:
Do:
Don’t:
We at Hammock don’t specialize in crisis communication, but we do have expertise in the social media tools—or ammunition—that the speakers endorsed. We share the same thought: Whether you are an association who wants to communicate more directly with your members, or a company who wants to engage their customers, it’s time to hop online, get connected and join the conversation.
It’s no secret that Hammock founder/CEO Rex Hammock is quick to volunteer as a lab rat when it comes to experimenting with any shiny new digital media.
So it surprised no one around here yesterday when the Nashville Tennessean ran a story about his use of Twitter.com during Tuesday night’s New Hampshire election returns. The story was based on his post about the topic that appeared on his shiny new People page — as well as on his vintage weblog, Rexblog.com, which he started nearly eight years ago.
Last night’s post-primary coverage reminded me of something. Actually, it reminded me of many things. But, the first thing that came to mind was November 8, 1994. It was the mid-term election and for an association client of Hammock Inc., a group of us helped coordinate an online election-night forum on CompuServe — a quaint little online service that used to make buggy whips. A hundred or so participants from around the country — all watching TVs at home — were chatting away about the coverage they were viewing and their response to it.
That experience led me to appreciate the enjoyment individuals have in experiencing live events in a shared-way — even if it’s from the cheap seats way up in some dial-up text-only bleachers. That night, I realized that a news event — or any type of event, say a sporting contest — is no longer merely the topic of water-cooler talk the next morning, it’s a potential real-time community gathering. A giant couch filled with friends and foes who are witty or idiotic, but who all together give an additional dimension to the event.
Since 1994, I’ve participated — and hosted — many such online gatherings, primarily among a small group of friends or colleagues. Often the gathering is done via Instant Messaging or Internet Relay (IRC) if the group is comprised of tech-savvy participants. In the past, I’ve discussed on Rexblog.com, how live events can be experienced in a completely new way when such “back channels” are available so that friends — or even strangers — can interact with one another about what they are both observing or participating in.
Last night, I had an I-see-the-light moment on Twitter when I realized that it has become — for a small segment of the world, at least — a giant real-time peanut gallery for experiencing events. I’ll admit, my additions to the conversation were mostly goofy or rude comments about what was taking place — sorta like watching the State of the Union Address on Comedy Central, but not funny. Others, however, were providing insightful and informative data (@patrickrufinni, for example).
While I’ve occasionally used Twitter for comments about sporting events, this is the first time I’ve jumped into the deep end of posting tweets on Twitter at a blistering pace. (Which is something I often un-follow people for doing.) My tweets were not worth reposting here as they — this can be said about Twitter in general — lose their meaning out of context.
However, I do know this. Using Twitter sure beats screaming at the TV.
Sidenotes: Twitter sure could benefit from having a feature that allows the creation of “groups” for topic-specific tweets. Also, the folks at Politweets.com are using the Twitter API to isolate and display tweets that include the names of candidates. A little bit glitchy but a very creative example of how Twitter can be used for something other than a confusing stream of unrelated chatter.
Okay, everyone knows about Wikipedia, the user-edited encyclopedia (actually, ecyclopedias as there are different versions around the world) with information on just about everything.
However, Wikipedia is not the only website — nor was it the first — to utilize the approach of allowing users to both read and edit the content of a web page. That style of website, nicknamed “wiki” after the Hawaiian word for fast (wikiwiki), was developed (and named) by Ward Cunningham in 1994. According to Wikipedia (we thought it only appropriate to cite the source), Cunningham was inspired by software we at Hammock loved back then, as well: Apple’s HyperCard.
At Hammock, we love wikis. That’s not surprising as we’ve been creating and managing wiki-like, online sharing communities for clients since the early 1990s. We were even forum sysops on CompuServe, for any of you who can recall that far back.
In 1999, we began the development of what turned into a massive knowledge-sharing user community called SmallBusiness.com. The site was way ahead of its time in what folks now call “social media.” While SmallBusiness.com was extremely popular with its nearly 100,000 registered users, the dot-com bust of 2001 nonetheless put our plans for SmallBusiness.com on hold. The overhead necessary to continue developing the proprietary platform on which the site ran proved too challenging during the early 2000s.
However, in 2005, we began to take note of what was happening at Wikipedia and determined that it employed the main principle on which we developed the first iteration of SmallBusiness.com: sharing knowledge at the grassroots level. Better yet, we observed that the site was running on open-source software using the kind of scrappy, low-overhead approach we were looking for to revive the popular service.
And so, in late 2005, we began work on launching a new wiki-powered SmallBusiness.com. We discovered that many of the lessons learned in our earlier experiences with online communities — or, as we like to call it, “conversational media” — worked well in the context of a wiki. The dynamics of community-building (motivations, identity, networking) seemed to translate well.
SmallBusiness.com — in addition to once more becoming the leading online sharing community of content contributed by small business owners and managers — is an incredible laboratory for the Hammock Team to experiment with ways that wikis can be used in the marketing, customer-care and membership-building efforts of our clients.
For example, in 2007, we created a wiki for the American Watercraft Association that serves as the hub of a wide range of information sharing among their members, owners of personal watercrafts. There’s even a part of that wiki that allows their members to share maps of their favorite places to use their PWCs.
While we still love publishing magazines and helping clients build traditional websites, our experience in creating and growing wikis and in helping clients develop engaging, valuable conversational media programs and platforms are also a part of our legacy — and future.