Net a Porter recently announced plans to create a dedicated media division, working with former Harper’s Bazaar­ (UK) editor-in-chief Lucy Yeomans

” … after announcing the formation of a new media division, Net-a-Porter set into motion the first phase of a revamped editorial strategy led by Yeomans, re-launching its weekly online magazine and debuting a 104-page one-off print issue, said to be a precursor to a yet unnamed 300-page glossy magazine that will launch in the autumn and be published 4-6 times a year. Both the print and digital products will carry advertising from a mix of brands (including those not stocked by Net-a-Porter’s retail arm) and will be published in French, German and Mandarin, as well as English.”

 Read the full article here

This weeks sees the announcement that Vogue publisher Conde Nast is taking a stake in global fashion retailer FarFetch. 

“Farfetch has a unique position, connecting boutiques around the world by e-commerce to sophisticated fashion customers like our magazine readers and website users,” said Jonathan Newhouse, chairman and chief executive officer of CNI. “It’s a natural for Condé Nast”

 Link

The role of content  in the context of a digital business continues to be a vital one. For all the user generated content, there is still a need for content curators and creators of original unique content. Net a Porter’s extension into content creation follows on from their regular offline publications, weekly style guides and active social media presence. The extension of Conde Nast from content creator to retailer shows the potential symbiosis and value of being connected. 

The Importance of Content in Business

Content is an increasingly valuable commodity for any business. In marketing terms, it powers search and empowers social sharing of great content. Quality content can be shared across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest – it can be hosted on YouTube or filtered through Instagram. Having a ready source of quality content will help the sell the business, the fashion and generate additional benefits over and above publishing income. 

Mashable has some great examples of branded Fashion content here.

Quora, the professional Q&A site today launched a new blogging platform that could actively compete with Linkedin as a brand content platform.

To date, Quora has been a solid question and answer platform delivering credible content supplied by industry leaders and knowledgeable individuals. After free registration any user is allowed to ask questions or answer questions. Their profile is tailored to each category allow other users to define credibility of the answer as well as a voting function to uprank the most valuable answers.

With the launch of the blog platform, Quora is encapsulating the content into a dedicated blog for each user. For most bloggers the benefit will be access to a much wider potential audience than a standalone blog. Unlike Tumblr, Quora bloggers will gain exposure from their content and the topic indexing. So, if your blog contains content on SEO and Mobile advertising it will potentially be visible to followers of these topics, not just followers of the author.

The new blogs are very basic, just very simple CMS, image uploading and no obvious spell checker. The inclusion of a vanity URL like http://jamieriddell.quora.com/ will be of interest to any person or brand keen to gain SEO value from the Quora domain. Mobile optimisation is included as standard.

At this early stage, Quora are not talking monetisation through ads but one can expect some form of promoted content in time. One could draw comparisons with Linkedin’s efforts to boost stickiness with enhanced brand pages and their influencer program that showcases content from industry leaders including Richard Branson.

For brands, these new Quora blogs offer the potential to demonstrate knowledge to a potentially wide and engaged audience. This new platform will be set to compete with Linkedin for business content, or at least compliment any brand looking to share knowledge. 

If Linkedin is about who you know, Quora is about what you know.

Through PeerIndex Perks, Samsung are sending out signed photographic prints from one of their 143 ‘David Baileys’. Unlike some perks that arrive with no message, this came with a clear cover sheet reminding me of the camera and that I was in the draw to win one of their NX1000 smart cameras.

The campaign has been backed up with TV advertising and a dedicated website www.wearedavidbailey.co.uk which links through to Facebook.

And now I need to find space to hang my very own ‘David Bailey’

Click for a larger image

#WeAreDavidBailey

At the end of the year, Facebook created ‘The Year in review’ for each account which could be published with the user’s consent. This review created a new set of pages under the url https://www.facebook.com/yearinreview/username thus creating additional page view potential from existing content. 

Earlier in November, Facebook also trialled ‘Couple Stories’ which can be seen by visiting www.facebook.com/us – if you are in a relationship (on Facebook) you will see the combined content of the two people. Again, this is taking existing content and creating new pages. 

The couples pages don’t stop there – by comparing usernames https://www.facebook.com/username1?and=username2 you can see not only the relationship but also a timeline of key events. Again, more page opportunities from existing content.

Why is Facebook doing this?

After stellar growth, the addition of new users will start to slow over time. As a key headline figure for some time, this will be mistaken as a sign of a troubled Facebook. By boosting the potential pages views from existing content, Facebook can start to boost new figures to promote – page views per person and time spent on site.

Back in the day, this used to be called ‘Stickiness’ – wanting to increase the value of a user on site to boost  page views and potential advertising opportunities. The same ‘horizontal’ expansion has been seen with Yahoo, MSN and Google over the past decade. All those business, and Facebook included start to move from rapid growth to increased dwell time by a combination of new pages to read and new services. When is the last time you heard of a growth figure from Google? 

The increased page views will benefit Facebook as advertisers will have more opportunities to gain relevant visibility which can over time boost ad revenue. 

Google loves fresh unique content. 

One of the key considerations for any SEO strategy must be content. Both the quality of content and frequency of updating. The frequency is important. When Google visits your site it will check for fresh content. If your site has not been updated for some time, then Google will come back less frequently which will impact your traffic potential from natural search.

With major websites, updating hourly, we can expect to Google to index hourly or less. This is broadly how you see ‘live’ results within Google search results. 

How often does it visit your site? A quick way to find out is to create a Google Alert for your site or business name. Set the alert fo ‘as it happens’ and you can time the gap between publishing and alert. Over time you should start to see the gap decrease.

Working with our partner agency V4 Technical, we spotted that Google was indexing our site about a week after we updated the site. We could see this was due to a lack of fresh content. Within one week of updating the site daily, with fresh content, we got decreased the indexing time to 48 hours. With continued posting of quality content we expect that time to drop.

On this site we haven’t been as active for a while which saw our indexing frequency drop substantially from a near instant update to over a week later. Again, with a simple content strategy we are seeing greater activity from Google.

Logging into Google Webmasters will also tell you the last time of crawl and more details on the results Google took from the site.  

Find this graph in Webmasters>Health>Index Status

Including more content in your site will also boost your social and link potential. 

“If you avatar is a car, I’ll assume you are a Transformer.”

They say people buy people. Social media is very much a personal and personable experience. To that end you need to consider how you present yourself or your brand within that space. 

Consider this. We are connected and engaged on channels but we have never met. At a conference I walk in looking pretty much like in the photo below. The same photo I use in all my social profiles. The chances of you spotting me and us connecting is far greater than if I had my baby picture up. And for you, I would spot you easier if I recognised your avatar. Something harder to do than if it was a deck chair, a conservatory or indeed a car. 

The deck chair, conservatory or car may be related to your business but they don’t represent your business. Either you as an individual or your logo/brand needs to be represented in the social space. It is one of those two things that I will recognise in an advert, or in a crowded room.

This avatar is relevant to the pub but I don’t recognise it easily in my stream. Furthermore, if I drove past the pub I wouldn’t be able to recognise it from a small avatar.

A clear avatar isn’t just for offline recognition. I follow people on multiple social networks. On Twitter I will scroll through the tweets looking for content that is engaging. Recognition of an avatar brings with it association and (hopefully) trust. Therefore I will tend to pay attention when I see an avatar I trust, whether that represents a person or a business.

This recognition is further impacted by maintaining the same avatar. With one exception my avatar has been the same for five years. It means that I am recognised socially and in the real world, even if I have a few more grey hairs!

For brands that are represented this avatar can be the logo or an element of the brand identity that works in a confined space. 

Improving and maintaining a clear avatar is just one element of maximising your social presence for greater results.

*The Avatar quote is unattributed. I saw it on Facebook (I think.) I’m very happy to attribute if you can tell me who said it! 

When writing your social media updates, do consider what you want the desired result to be. If you are simply looking to update then you can use a statement.

“I am writing a blog post”

“Hello!”

But if you want a response then consider a question.

“Good Morning, How are you?”

 You can add in a statement and the question but make sure you word it correctly.

“I feel awful today, but how are  you?” ends with a question which can solicit a response.

“How are you today? I feel awful” won’t achieve as much response because you ended with a statement about your self, effectively cancelling out the question.

I’m using ‘vanilla’ updates here, they can and should be relevant to your business and what you want to achieve.

If you want someone to click on your article, try adding ‘click here’ to the statement (works better in Linkedin, Facebook than on Twitter.) The simple inclusion of ‘Click Here’ has been working to boost click rates for the past 15 years on display advertising so consider it for your social presence.

To achieve RT’s you have some options. “Please RT” is possibly the most basic request but can make you look a little desperate. If you think your update is worth sharing then perhaps approach your influential contacts and ask them privately if they would like to share your update. 

The best way to achieve reshared content is by making it unique, interesting and easy to comprehend. Those 140 characters need to ‘sell’ your idea, article or opinion. Make it easy for someone to comprehend and share it.

The Importance of Presence

All of these suggestions are also impacted by your presence. If you are an active participant within social channels you will have a more engaged audience and better relationships which will respond more readily, or share  your content. Don’t expect to tweet once a week and expect high engagement rates. 

You also need to consider when your audience is most engaged. I know that between 16:00 and 18:00 on weekdays is the time of biggest engagement between my and my social followers. I therefore ensure anything I want to share is shared during this time. For each user or brand this time may be different so try different days and day parts to find your sweet spot. 

If you liked this article, and feel it is of value to your networks then please share it using the links below.

The growth in social media, and easy access to sharing tools has seen an explosion in the amount of content shared across all networks. A curator is one who shares relevant content to their networks. 

In essence a successful curator is one that becomes a ‘taste maker’ and influencer by finding and sharing engaging content with their audience. Any person or brand can actively curate content by sharing relevant content [from others] that is relevant to their own audience. 

This curation can be as simple as actively sharing articles they feel are interesting and relevant to their audience, often using social sharing tools like BufferApp to schedule updates and link across social networks. 

Curated content is a great opportunity to add social presence when time is short adding value to follower’s streams through relevant content they may not have seen. It can work well as part of a social marketing strategy to compliment personal engagement and unique created content. 

Curated content won’t work so well as the only content shared. It also carries severe brand health risks if automated. With automated content curation, there is a much larger risk of brand association with irrelevant or unsuitable content. 

For our clients we suggest curated content has an opportunity to support their social media strategies when planned correctly and with the right safeguards in place. When placed onsite, we are also seeing the value of curated content as much lower than that of unique created content. The measurements we consider included dwell time, site depth and conversions. All these elements need to be considered when planning to use curated content.

Curated Content White Paper

In January 2012, we published this White Paper on curated content. Whilst the market has grown since January, the principles covered are still highly relevant.

With the addition of Dotcom ‘Poster Boy’ Kevin Rose and the boost in funds they could start to go after the next wave of ‘massive’ startups. 

The full article from Reuters talks of how this could grow to a billion dollar pot for investing in startups as some of their earlier investments are now ready for the next round of larger funding. 

And if you ever wondered what an approach from Google looks like then read this. The letter, between Google and startup Zlio was shared by founder Jeremie Berrebi. The letter covers the key elements they would need to put together a term sheet for moving forward with investments.

www.googleventures.com

New research out this week points to a 20% increase in user page views and time spent on site [than on an iPhone]. This noticeable statistic points to an engaged audience that are keen to dwell longer than they would on an iPhone.

Apple are predicted to sell between 8 and 10 million iPad minis before the end of the year as part of an expected 34 million mini tablet sales this year and an estimated 67 million units to ship in 2013. No small figure.

The rise in market scale of this mini tablet, coupled with positive engagement figures will require brands to consider the optimum size(s) to display their site.

To date Apple screens have only come in two sizes, making it relatively easy to optimise sites for two sizes. However, the growth in mid screen sizes across all operating systems could require some further thought on site optimisation. 

Brands developing for Apple apps will need to consider the new size whilst Android apps have been used to the screen size variations for some time.

Other options available are the improvement of existing sites or the full development of responsive web designs that will maximise a site for any viewing platform.