The case for long copy

October 5, 2009

While researching good examples of sales copy for my training session on Digital Publishing Strategy for the APA this week, I’ve re-encountered the debate about long copy in digital media. Most usability studies suggest that short copy is best for web writing, due to information overload and the scanning behaviour of users online. However, it’s [...]

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Real-time search is the new battlefield for Google

August 3, 2009

The new search deal between Yahoo and Microsoft is unsurprisingly drawing a lot of attention from the blogosphere and the mainstream press right now. But while it’s big news for these two companies, it also highlights the fact that they are several steps behind Google. While the Yahoo deal provides Microsoft with a 28% share [...]

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Blog Vs Lifestream

July 13, 2009

Thought leaders like Steve Rubel and Erick Schonfeld perceive a major shift in web publishing. They see digital content moving from an architecture of pages towards information that is distributed in real-time streams. According to this argument, the traditional web is based on the way we use books, magazines, journals and other static media. The [...]

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The Age of Networking

May 21, 2009

Visualisation of network effects. Illustration used by permission from the VM Foundry. The legendary historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote a four-part history of Europe which broke down the key stages of modern European history like this: Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 Age of Capital: 1848-1875 Age of Empire: 1875-1914 Age of Extremes: 1914-1991 If Hobsbawm were to [...]

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Merging communication and information

April 1, 2009

‘Society is held together by communication and information.’ So said Samuel Johnson back in the 18th Century. Here in the 21st Century Johnson’s words are even more apt. New online social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed are merging information and communication through simple and easy-to-use interfaces. Communication: Through Twitter and Facebook you can [...]

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Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook?

March 17, 2009

Things aren’t looking good for Facebook right now. The new changes have had some pretty fierce negative reactions. Take a look at the comments on the Facebook blog for a sampling of the current mood amongst Facebook users. Of course negative comments to change are often far from being representative. Whenever a social platform makes [...]

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2009 is Twitter’s year already

March 9, 2009

We’re not yet a quarter of the way into 2009 but already it’s clear that, if 2008 was Facebook‘s year, 2009 is Twitter‘s. In January 2009 Twitter saw a 10-fold traffic increase in the UK over the previous year, and this was before Jonathan Ross announced it on his Friday night show and Phillip Schofield [...]

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Web design: why I chose the WordPress Thesis theme for this site

March 5, 2009

When I set up this personal site, I decided straight away to use WordPress as the platform. I’m a huge WordPress fan, not just as a blogging platform but as a general CMS. It’s very easy to use and flexible, which makes training and maintenance easy, and for many of the projects I’ve worked on [...]

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Marketing as storytelling

February 25, 2009

Jason Falls writes brilliantly on marketing for social media, and his latest blog post, The marketing of unmarketing – a history and primer, summarises all the issues facing marketers today. I’m hooked by this quote: ‘The brand with the best storytellers win.’ (Fredrick Marckini, CEO of iProspect). Jason goes on to define the relationship between [...]

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