Our First Ever Digital Content and Digital Media News Roundup

Digital media, in a lot of ways, is still an emerging industry. There's a lot going on, but still a lot that needs to be figured out. The biggest issue that needs to be figured out: what works and why. Here's some of the latest and greatest in this week's first ever digital content and digital media news roundup: Digital Seen Surpassing TV in Capturing Our Time - NPR - For the first time ever, the time average Americans spend on digital media has outpaced the time spent watching traditional television. Digital media does include watching TV shows on Hulu and Netflix, if you were wondering. This means that there's huge potential in digital media, particularly in tablets and smartphones, which are predicted to have the highest growth in the years to come. But, don't ditch the old tube quite yet. There's still going to be value in watching something live, and many traditional TV networks aren't going to start live streaming things online. If you want to watch the Super Bowl next year, then you will have to be in front of a television.

The Most Valuable Commodity in Online Marketing - Digiday - Email addresses, specifically personal email addresses, are the most valuable commodity online according to this article. They do have a point, as it's something that we'd never get rid of and rarely, if ever, changes. It's not mutable like a screen name or a user name. With cookies under fire for tracking and retargeting, everything will shift to email as a way to figure out who we are and what would be best to advertise to us.

Let's Get Personal: Why We Need to Market to Individuals, Not Audiences - HubSpot - Do you like the idea of a personalized front page for your website? It's a difficult thing to achieve, as individuals are complicated and variegated beings. This article argues the value of creating a personalized experience for your customers/readers, and that the news industry is far behind on this concept. Depending on your website, personalization could be difficult or easy to achieve. Imagine how much more content you'd have to create to meet the personalization standards of everyone in your audience!

Are Brands Confusing Advertising with Marketing - Six Pixels of Separation - In our humble opinion, brands are still struggling with this distinction. We think that many brands still think that advertising is marketing, even though the two are essentially mutually exclusive in online channels. Many brands are still struggling because it's still too much about sales and generating leads, when it's more worthwhile to create something that actually benefits their customers and to help them solve their problems. That's the marketing aspect of it.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos Acquires Washington Post. Co - Media Daily News - We're really curious to see what impact this will have on the news industry, and what Bezos will do with his new properties. We think this won't hurt the news industry by constricting voices or purporting a particular point of view the way a Koch Brothers purchase would have. We also don't really think that Bezos is doing this to jump into the news industry itself. It will be interesting to see what changes take place with the Washington Post, and if the quality of content ever decreases at all.

Tiny Pulitzer-Prize Winning Newsroom May Be the Future of Journalism - eContent - We never heard of InsideClimate News, but we'll be following all that they're doing from here on out. This news site, run by seven people, won a Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for their coverage of the Dilbit oil spill in Michigan. This little news site accomplished something that seemed reserved for only the big guys, showing that these niche news sites might be the future of the news industry. After all, as the established news organizations struggle to cover everything and shutter different news desks, these niche sites doing it right will be the ones picking up the slack.

Related Links:

What a Koch Brothers Newspaper Purchase Would Mean for News

3 Big Principles for Media Creators

How News Websites and Online Publications Can Do SEO

46 Article Ideas You Can Use for Your Blog Right Now

Maintaining a blog or online publication isn't easy, and one of the toughest aspects of maintenance is coming up with things to write about! Even if you're preparing an editorial calendar for the next month, or even the next few months, the ideas aren't always flowing. If you need a little help, or if you need something to write about right now, then consider one of the 46 article ideas below. Surely, you can find something here that's compelling to do and to share with your audience.

1. Live blog what's happening at a conference, event, or trade show.
2. Attended a webinar, conference, event or trade show recently? Share what you’ve learned.
3. Instead of recapping the conference or webinar, review it! What would you have wished to learn? What could they have done better?
4. Did you just hold your own event? Do a recap.
5. Will you be holding an event? Do a post about it and why people should come.
6. Do a roundup of niche-related news articles that your readers may have missed.
7. Write a follow-up to one of your most popular blog posts.
8. Respond to comments made on a previous blog post.
9. Write a counterpoint to a post from another blog.
10. Agree with a post from another blog.
11. Ask another niche blogger to do guest post.
12. Ask another niche blogger if you can reprint one of his/her posts. Make sure to write your own introduction and give credit to the blogger.
13. Look at what your competitors are blogging about, and write your own post on something they’ve done.
14. Take a current event and show what your niche can learn from it.
15. Take a seemingly unrelated current event and show what it means to your industry.
16. Find a recent news article on your industry and add your own angle.
17. Compare your niche to something from pop culture, like a TV show or a new dance craze.
18. Counter a prevailing niche trend or perspective.
19. Affirm a prevailing niche trend or perspective.
20. Bust a myth or two about your niche/product/service.
21. Confirm a rumor or fact about your niche/product/service.
22. Make a prediction on an emerging trend, or on something else happening in your niche.
23. Define some niche lingo or key terms.
24. Are there any new research findings or statistics related to your niche? Write a post on why that new something is important.
25. Present the history or some little known facts about your niche.
26. Outline a solution to a big niche problem.
27. Or, just rant about that problem. That’s okay too.
28. Ask several niche leaders about an issue related to your niche. Post the responses.
29. Create a beginner’s post to your niche (think of it as a very quick 101!)
30. Conduct some research on something related to your niche and share your findings.
31. Create a “recipe of success” for your niche.
32. Create a “5 Pillars” or a “10 Commandments” for your niche.
33. Answer a frequently asked question related to your niche.
34. Make a list of the 10 best other niche blogs or news sites.
35. Make a list of the biggest lessons you’ve learned in your niche.
36. Compile a list of the best apps for your niche.
37. Make a list of your favorite quotes related to your niche.
38. Make a pros/cons list of something in your niche.
39. Review a book related to your niche.
40. Ask your readers what they’d like you to write about.
41. Write about the best idea(s) suggested.
42. Conduct a poll.
43. Post the results to that poll.
44. If there’s a movie about or involving your niche, write about what it gets right or wrong.
45. Ask for reader submissions (can be posts, pics, or vids).
46. Share the best ones!

Twitter Strategies for News Agencies

Research from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 93% of tweets from major news organizations contain a link to their own site. Only six percent of tweets didn't have a link, and a dismal one percent contain a link to another news site. The study looked at over 3,600 tweets from 13 news institutions in a one week period, finding that their use of Twitter is primarily to disseminate their own information and content. Although this isn't a bad way for news agencies to use Twitter, the microblogging tool can be more than a soap box for your own news stories. Here are a few additional Twitter strategies for news agencies, so more of those tweets aren't just links to articles:

1. Enhance Reporting by Asking Questions - Twitter is full of experts, and full of ideas. If you need help finding sources, or finding story angles, then let the Twitterverse in on it. This can save you a lot of time and headache if yo're stuck , or add more quality to your stories by finding more sources with personal experience related to your topic. Of course, Twitter shouldn't be a replacement for good 'ole legwork and talking to people in person. But, it doesn't hurt as as supplement.
2. Listen - Make sure to listen to your followers and get a sense of what is going on. You may be able to find a few things to report on, or make contacts with your reporting or your news in the long run. A good way to listen is to consider what your followers would like you to write about, or to ask them for story suggestions. Another way is to look at trending hashtags, or see what sort of stories they are tweeting. Perhaps you could do something that ties into those hashtags or popular stories. Either way, you know you'll be delivering a product that your readers will actually want.
3. Encourage Your Writers/Journalists to Use Twitter - It's important for news organizations to showcase a personal side as well, and your writers and journalists are some of the best people to do that. Let them share their stories (and the stories of other journalists and news organizations). Let them share tidbits from their lives and to have conversations with followers over the platform. Not only is this a little more personal, but it's also one more way for your followers to engage with your online publication or news agency. Make sure to encourage them to do more than just tweet their own stories, but to engage with their followers and to share the content of others as well.
4. Have a Strategy - Simply tweeting links for the sake of tweets and having a presence isn't going to help you. It's easy to get carried away with tons of accounts, and tons more tweets. You need a bigger purpose than that. What sort of news will you be tweeting? Who are your readers? Who's your competition? Will you have other Twitter accounts working in conjunction with this one? Answer those questions, and then you can tweet with purpose.

If news agencies and online publications make a switch in their Twitter strategies and make an effort to include follower engagement, then they could pull ahead of the pack on social media. Social media is not longer perceived as an untrustworthy source, as something that only jokers and teenagers do for fun. Social media sites like Twitter provide a lot of opportunity for news agencies and online publications to find news, to improve the news they deliver, and to deliver the news of others (news that otherwise wouldn't have been covered by your organization).