TheWayoftheWeb

Content and Digital Marketing Specialists

strategy

Content farms most threaten UK media firms

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The ‘content farm’ strategy of building huge numbers of writers producing content for relatively low payments has been receiving increased coverage as aol concentrates on becoming a content firm rather than a technology firm.

It’s a tactic also being used by the likes of Demand Media and Answers.com, and has also been utilised by companies such as Yahoo. The fear is that a few thousand writers will produce enough content to severely distort the internet ecosystem and lead to a web ruled by low-quality content which targets the lowest common denominator.

Aside from the irony of bloggers using ‘low quality content’ as a criticism of another internet content strategy after the label has been unfairly levelled at them for years, I’m sure that it’s not the blogging companies and individuals that have most to fear.

It’s traditional media companies that will be hit first by another broadside – they have formal structures which will be impossible to change in time to respond to a new threat.

Based on my experience working for the largest UK magazine publisher for many years, (talking to many other people reveals most companies aren’t too far removed), the structure hasn’t radically changed for most people with print taking the majority of resource (Including designers, sub-editors, etc), and the digital teams still fighting to either gain parity or integration as the inequality between print and digital revenues continues to hold them back.

Now they’re about to get hit by an army of content writers. More importantly, this army will be hitting SEO-friendly articles in a more effective way than print teams have managed, and they’ll also have the benefit of significant resource and big brand names/internet properties as bases to build from.

If any large print company radically alter what they’re doing in a timescale of less than 6 months, it’d be a miracle.

If they want to take on this threat head-to-head, it’d require a complete focus-change and retooling within days and weeks.

And UK media companies are in an even worse position than their generally more evolved US counterparts, with a smaller geographical area and audience, less subscription-based revenue, and a small pool of extremely low-cost freelance talent if they were to try this route.

Meanwhile I actually think most blogs will be fine – the most general sites may experience problems, although I think the likes of Techcrunch and Mashable mix size and flexibility well enough to adapt as needed. And individuals who are producing far more specific niche content should have an advantage in producing articles which not only target SEO traffic, but also provide far greater value – and they’ll also be able to get more specific as necessary. Yes, they’ll have far bigger challenges to grow their readership, but they’ll be able to differentiate with higher-quality, longer, more in-depth displays of their specialist knowledge, and hopefully many of them will finally embrace and prove the ‘1000 true fans’ theory.

Bloggers of all sizes also have one huge advantage – they’ve built their success on a personal brand, whether it’s Mike Arrington, Pete Cashmore, or someone writing about collecting vintage bottle caps. This is something that is difficult to replicate or attack, and means that existing audiences are likely to show greater loyalty, whilst also being more likely to commit to sharing via word-of-mouth and social media.

The widespread belief seems to be that Google will solve all of this by putting more weighting on real-time sharing of content, and less on generic content of the type which has seen spam blogs tackled to some extent. While I think this will happen, it’s going to take some time, and some Twitter users are susceptible to Retweeting anything with a snappy headline.

So what can UK media companies do? Well, they may get a brief window in which to change, bearing in mind all the content farms are primarily America, so certain differences in language should preserve a reasonable amount of UK traffic.

They have to personalise their content producers and their brands, produce numerous niche sites with extremely small editorial teams, and prepare for low profit margins for the foreseeable future.

Besides the fact I’ve worked for a number of traditional print-based companies for years, and spent a long time at one in particular, I’m confident about the possibility to still be able to build a thriving online property around content – so much so that I’ve committed to a new side-project with a couple of great people which will hopefully reinforce my point. Expect more details on it shortly!

Valentino Rossi wins 9th world title – lessons for everyone

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Valentino Rossi secured his ninth world championship title yesterday, cementing his position as the greatest motocycle racer of all time.  He’s claimed titles on five different types of motorcycle (125cc,250cc,500cc two strokes and 990 and 800cc four-strokes), lapped 0.5 seconds slower than Michael Schumacher in an F1 car and won events in a WRC rally car.

What’s also important is that since 2000, when Rossi arrived in the premier class on a 500cc GP motorcycle, he has been teamed with probably the best chief engineer in motorcycling, Jeremy Burgess, and a tightly-knit pit crew who followed him from Honda to Yamaha in 2004 as he became the second rider in history to retain the world championship after swapping bike manufacturers.

And Rossi has even picked up some notable tech fans in Robert Scoble and Dave Winer.

Having spent a decade watching, reading about, and writing about Vale’s amazing success with Jeremy Burgess, I think the pair share three approaches which apply to success in any situation:

5 Ps – Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance:

Valentino was lucky enough to have grown up with an ex-GP racer dad, Graziano, and from an early age was able to practice on two and four wheels – often racing around local gravel pits with various racers in a go-kart, this gave him a great preparation in handling a vehicle which is sliding around – something you can notice as he often laps fastest towards the end of the race when everyone should be suffering with tyre wear. He’s also able to change his riding style to accomodate this, and Burgess famously said he can tell on which lap a photo of Rossi has been taken by the way he’s moving his body to adjust to the tyres.

K.I.S.S – Keep It Simple, Stupid:

A lot of riders have been overwhelmed by the amount of adjustability on a GP bike – particularly those who have transferred from the rival World Superbike series. JB, who also helped fellow motorcycling legend Mick Doohan to five world titles, and Freddie Spencer to a further world crown, is famous for telling it like it is, and keeping a tight focus on what needs to be done.

M.I.L.L.F – Make It Look Like Fun:

I was hoping this would end up as MILF for search traffic, but there you go – one of the key elements of the fanatical fame and support that Valentino has achieved is that he has always come across as easy-going, likeable and having fun.

His post-race celebrations have calmed down in recent years, but included costumes, props, and even nipping into a trackside portaloo on one occasion. He’s also known for enjoying the racing itself and often claims to have enjoyed a hard race which ends with him in second, than an easy victory – and famously once he managed to oversleep and miss the morning practice session at a Grand Prix!

But all of this masks someone who is incredibly dedicated and hard-working to achieve what he wants both behind the scenes and on the track. He’s lauded for his test and analysis numerous changes to the motorcycle at once, when most riders would struggle. And at the same time he plays a psychological game with his rivals, managing to push riders like Sete Gibernau and Max Biaggi into mistakes over the years.

I’d embed some examples of his on-track exploits, including the famous collisions with the likes of Gibernau and Biaggi when needed, but in attempting to be nice to the copyright holders, I have to acknowledge they’ve disabled embedding their Youtube channel (like idiots).

If you’re interested in more insight into both Rossi and Burgess, I highly recommend Valentino Rossi: MotoGenius by Matt Oxley (Disclosure: We both worked for MCN around the same time although our paths rarely, if ever, crossed). And for more insight into the psyche of world champion motorcycle racers, including their relationship with ‘flow’, I’d also recommend his The Fast Stuff: Twenty years of top bike racing tales from the world’s maddest motorsport.

Why newspapers will need 1000 true fans…

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Newspapers will need to focus on their ‘1000 true fans’ when they switch on paywalls, judging by a survey released today by Paid Content UK and Harris.

The survey has appeared in response to plans by Rupert Murdoch and others to start putting news content behind a paywall, and reveals that if their favourite news site started charging, 3/4 of people claim they’d find another free site – only 5% would pay to continue reading.

And ironically, it’s younger readers who are more likely to cough up some cash than the older users – the 35-44-year-olds are the ones most likely to go elsewhere- although the middle class readers are most likely to pay.

Now that doesn’t have to be bad news for newspapers, if they can provide something that is worth subscription payments which make up for the lost readership.

The problem, as identified by Matt Thompson at Nieman Reports, and covered by Karthika Muthukumaraswamy at Online Journalism Blog (OJB), is that the majority of online news lacks in depth and detail what it gains in ‘24/7 access, real-time updates, increased transparency, and multiperspectival discussions’

In fact ‘The home page of almost every popular news site looks like a commercial for news stories other than the one you’re reading’.

The problem isn’t the internet itself, which is what the OJB article ends with – Thompson uses the example of Wikipedia to form great long form articles and stories, whilst Muthukumaraswamy picks out the New York Times, CNN, the BBC and The Guardian as examples of news orgs producing great standalone features.

The problem is one of perception by news teams.

The online format has always been taught as following the ‘hard news’ example – get the story across as quickly and in as few words as possible. People don’t have the time or patience to read more online, so hit them with hundreds of brief news items and they’ll flit about like a moth in a well-lit kitchen. The same thing we’ve seen advised for blogs, online video, and has been supported by the rise of microblogging.

But that’s wrong – as you can see by the success of full-length novels on mobile phones in Japan, for example.

Many, many people are now accessing the web by an ever-increasing number of devices, and as the digital familiarity has increased, we’re looking for increasingly different things.

Meanwhile newspapers heading behind the paywall will have to flip their editorial approach as quickly as they flip their business model. They’ll need to provide depth, detail and context to justify payment, using editorial teams which have been cut back more and more to try and survive on display advertising. And I haven’t seen a huge number of Murdoch titles hiring staff, for example. In fact, it appears to be AOL that’s hiring! (1500 writers is a clear indication of intent).

The paywall model will be doomed for exactly the same reason that most display-ad model newspaper sites were doomed – a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of online journalism. Almost 10 years ago I saw a competitor site switch to a paywall model and heard many people ask how they could survive – and at the same time those people were imagining a world in which the print news team would seamlessly move across to an all-conquering website.

Meanwhile hundreds of blogs and websites were springing up on a daily basis by starting small and experimenting their way into growth and editorial staff – the exact opposite of businesses which closed small-scale publications and dismissed any launches which didn’t look likely to drive an immediate huge audience with a corresponding need for staff and resources.

A handful of news organisations will make it through the next few years, whether by spreading themselves far and wide, or by engaging totally with their 1000 true fans to the degree that they can secure repeated subscriptions. Any that don’t commit fully to one of these directions, and achieve it to their maximum potential, are going to fail to crawl out of the swamp and evolve digital legs.

Ideas and friction

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When you’re working or marketing a new idea, it isn’t just about having a new idea – it’s about that idea gaining traction.

The important thing to remember is that you have to have some friction (internal or external) to be able to get any grip.

That’s why roads get covered in sticky Tarmac, and why off-road tyres have bigger tread.

If there isn’t any friction, you’re trying to drive on ice. Or you’re heading downhill with no way to stop.

More on business strategy in a networked world

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Following on from my previous post on networked business strategy – which was itself a response to a post from Dave Cushman) – I thought it’s a topic worth expanding upon in light of the constant debate over online publishing revenue.

Flicking through Seth Godin’s ‘Tribes’ reminded me of the work of Ronald Coase, the Nobel laureate in Economics.

Back in 1937 he wrote the highly influential ‘The Nature of the Firm‘ which looks at the fact that “production could be carried on without any organization that is, firms at all”, he sets out the transaction costs ( which means the cost of obtaining something through the market is generally more than the actual price, plus search and information costs, bargaining costs, keeping trade secrets and policing and enforcement costs) which mean that ‘firms will arise when they can produce what they need internally and somehow avoid these costs’.

Or as Seth says, ‘we start formal organisations when it’s cheaper than leading a tribe instead’.

This is where the kernel of your business is located.

Or for the flipside:

As my former boss at Bauer Media, Carl Lyons, wrote today ‘people will pay for digital content – if it’s easy enough‘. (Now I’ve left, I can say his blog is well worth reading, without sucking up!)

The flipside is this:

‘Consumers (Customers/users/whatever terminology you like) will accept using a firm for their needs when it avoids the transactional costs of circumventing it.’

By that I mean that I’ll happily pay for a Pro account on Flickr simply because it was a lot easier and more convenient than finding an alternative when I needed it, despite the fact I know I could find a reasonable alternative. I’ll happily buy books from Amazon (My recommendations are all here) or sell via either Amazon or Ebay because although I could find alternative routes to the market, they involve a cost of time, effort, organisation etc I’m not happy about paying at the moment.

So the key seems to be:

1. Figure out what people want to achieve when they are in the area of the market you serve

2. Figure out what you might offer which allows them to achieve what they want in a way which reduces their transactional costs (Time, effort, cost, etc)

3. Figure out how you might offer that service in a way which allows your service to benefit from an internal reduction/removal of transaction costs over/above/with the network.

Does this seem to make sense?

Applying this to a content model:

If we accept that there will always be free content available from somewhere, the transactional cost for a consumer is finding it, judging reliability, going into more background, possibly acting upon it, sharing it, discussing it etc (Any I’ve missed?)

As a content producer, the cost of content creation in many circumstances has already been hugely disrupted by online publishing, digital audio, video etc. The cost of a live broadcast for a major television company over recording it on a mobile and broadcasting via Qik? And the difference in terms of the technology gap will only reduce in line with Moore’s Law.

But the content curation (rather than aggregation) aspect raises big transactional costs via the network – what relative percentage of trust do you place in Wikipedia? Digg? Reddit? Is it cheaper to organise a network, build a system, or use a specialist journalist? And they have contacts to relevant industries which could come under Trade Secrets in transactional costs etc.

And this is also why I despair when online publishers only talk about display advertising revenue (or now subscriptions), as if they’re the only possibilities for revenue. (If a blogger puts Google Ads on his site and then claims he can’t monetise he gets a lot of feedback very quickly!).

The transactional cost for me of finding a product to buy is either in terms of locating reviews and hoping a relevant display advert is close by. Googling it and finding what I’m looking for. Or posting a message on Twitter. And the subscription model has the flaw of inviting/inciting the network to either reproduce content outside, or finding ways to beat the pay wall.

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