Digital Insanity Magazine by Bruno Amaral

Having control over your own content

Sat, 08 Dec 2018 13:45:37 +0000

I have been putting together the loose bits and pieces of this blog into the archive page, articles and posts dating back to 2005. Earlier stuff from 2004 has been lost long ago.

In total, 2 378 different posts. Not including their respective translations and the content that I have chosen to keep as drafts or unlisted parts of this website. Instagram photos that I have imported account for 1 495 pages.

Moving this content from the old blog also meant setting up 654 redirects to avoid broken links, and setting up a new update process on Disqus to make sure old comments are also migrated.

Because this is a reflection of who I am and how I have grown up. It’s a diary in more ways than one. It’s also my way of sharing and trying to build for the sort of society and web that I want to be widespread.

A word of advice, own your content

Blogspot, Tumblr, Facebook and Flickr. Every service that does not charge to host our content is a weak spot. If they disappear, our content may go with them. At least here, I am free to host it, share it without having to abide to what is considered proper, and I am responsible for what I write and show.

As an example, an illustrator I follow on instagram had one of her drawings reported and removed because it was too explicit. You can click here if you want to see it. This way I can share it with you, and you know straight up that it is questionable by Instagram’s standards.

This being my own website, I am personally responsible for what I publish and its effects. Today this is important, even more than when I started blogging back in 2005.

Cara.Trancada on Instagram

simson petrol

Influencer Marketing in 2019: How to Create an Influencer Marketing Strategy That Generates Results

Wed, 14 Nov 2018 09:07:38 +0100

Twitter: @nealschaffer

Website: https://nealschaffer.com/

Neal has been working in social media for ten years and focused on “The Business of influence”.

Social Media is a mindset

A new way of thinking about who can be an influencer and many ways of working with them.

https://twitter.com/TineSorensen/status/1062641422560645121

Attending #Spark conference pic.twitter.com/TiwfWMdKGw
— Tine Sørensen (@TineSorensen) November 14, 2018

Why is there still so much budget in traditional marketing? In other markets, small business does not have a website, but they use their instagram account and WhatsApp.

Influencer marketing should be a focus for 2019.

https://twitter.com/delay1/status/1062640675299176448

Budgets are not #digitalfirst @nealshaffer #spark @falcon pic.twitter.com/quJrEFtoBU
— Matthias «Delay» Göbel (@delay1) November 14, 2018

https://twitter.com/robertavaleria_/status/1062641147116429314

Go “people first”. Leverage people power to enhance organic reach @NealSchaffer @FalconIO #spark
— Roberta V. Cianetti (@robertavaleria_) November 14, 2018

Social media was made for people and not for business, that is why personal profiles get more traction than business pages.

Today everyone is a publisher. On instagram, twitter, etc. There is a democratisation on how information is communicated.

In this new age, everyone can be an influencer because people tell stories that brands can’t.

Generating Content is one of the greatest resources when working with influencers.

https://twitter.com/FalconIO/status/1062641796285689857

“How do you defeat the social media algorithms? You leverage people power." - @NealSchaffer on #InfluencerMarketing at #Spark pic.twitter.com/CJyxOMsu7a
— Falcon.io (@FalconIO) November 14, 2018

Rethink who an influencer can be

Influencer marketing is about community

Your community is always a smaller subset.

An influencer can help you reach a community that doesn’t trust you at the moment.

We should start with the publics closer to us, like employees and customers. Treat them like an influencer.The hard part is that it takes time to know people and being able to keep historical data on your relationship with so many people.

Start by mapping out this community.

Evaluate an influencer

Reach
Relevance
Resonance
Cultural fit
Relationship

Do an influencer audit.

https://twitter.com/MrsSchaerer/status/1062642999736328192

Totally agree with @NealSchaffer "Working with #influencers is not a one-night-stand, it's truly a marriage" - or at least it should be! #spark @FalconIO #InfluencerMarketing #influencerrelations
— Bianca Schärer (@MrsSchaerer) November 14, 2018

Content-centric influencer marketing

For B2B the focus is on building content

90% of the content that brands create is about themselves, not about their publics.

Events can be very powerful to engage with influencers. Have them as speakers or moderators, make them a part of the event and don’t just expect them to take interesting photos.

https://twitter.com/sabrodriguez1/status/1062646542358724608

There are 15 types of #influencer programmes according to @NealSchaffer - which are you adopting right now? #FalconSpark @FalconIO pic.twitter.com/bXdJEqjvmd
— Sabrina Rodriguez (@sabrodriguez1) November 14, 2018

The end game is to create a product. In china, the future seems to be having influencers collaborate in building products.

There are two ways of thinking, you can Buy influence, or you can BUILD influence. It comes down to “what’s in it for me?” So what can you provide the influencer? Not just money, it could be other resources or access to products. Help them grow their community for example, or give them a unique experience.

Don’t encourage cut and paste.

https://twitter.com/Jvesterager/status/1062649363497996290

“Working with influencers is to empower them to be authentic. They are NOT programmable marketing units.” @NealSchaffer #spark
— Jakob Vesterager (@Jvesterager) November 14, 2018

https://twitter.com/TineSorensen/status/1062650701539631104

... replaces nothing ... yet 😉 #spark @NealSchaffer Thank you for an interesting #Influencer talk pic.twitter.com/qC1cywMzWf
— Tine Sørensen (@TineSorensen) November 14, 2018

How to Build a Content Machine Without Spending a Cent

Tue, 30 Oct 2018 18:05:58 +0000

Lisa Toner

https://twitter.com/lisatoner13

https://ettch.org/

Bad news, money does not grow on trees and people who have it spend it on absurd things, like a diamond encrusted mouse. The same happens with marketing, where ad space is bought at thousands of dollars.

The good news is that we don’t need to be doing this. Smart marketeers think differently and know it’s not about the budget but using the resources you have to create value for your audience.

Your brain will get further than your budget.

https://twitter.com/NikitaSmits/status/1062677914666315776

Packed room @LisaToner13 : your brain will get you further than your budget #spark pic.twitter.com/A6JBaRRNvw
— Nikita Smits-Jørgensen (@NikitaSmits) November 14, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6zVzWU95Sw

Website grader generated 500 000 prospects: https://website.grader.com/

1. Right goals and right time

The last examples were very focused in one goal.

2. The value was greater than the required commitment

3. They knew how to reach the buyer personas

4. Optimising every bit of content to get the most out of it

These 4 are the keys for successful content.

We need to invest in the right goals and that means understanding the funnel and pin pointing the right places to act on.

tips for great content

1. Buyer personas

Know their goals and challenges and how they match your company’s offering.

2. Build a pilar and cluster content strategy

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-marketing-strategy

BusinessBrew used a pilar page and all their content was driving traffic there.

3. See what’s working for the competition using Buzzsumo

https://buzzsumo.com/

4. Add a meeting agenda item for the hot topic of the month/week

5. Create a blog post for each FAQ your customer support team receives

6. Use the hub spot blog ideas generator tool

7. Identify hot trends via influencers with buzzsumo

https://twitter.com/NikitaSmits/status/1062680553521065984

@LisaToner13 explains how we leveraged #pillarclustercontent to boost our organic growth result #spark @FalconIO pic.twitter.com/raPkbyzzac
— Nikita Smits-Jørgensen (@NikitaSmits) November 14, 2018

8. Figure out what you can automate for your potential customer (for free)?

9. Build a User Generated Content strategy

Example: Starbucks got customers to tweet a photo of their doodles on the paper cups. The customer had a reward at the end.

10. Get creative with video

11. Add structure to your content ideation process

Make a scorecard for what matters in your content.

Reach your audience

Experiment with different formats of content. Micro pieces of content can drive people to your pillar page.

Create a promotion template, a scale of how you wish to promote each piece of content.

Buffer got 60 guest posts and that helped them grow to 100,00 customers.

75% of hubspots blog views and leads are from old posts. That is a strong argument for optimising old content.

structure your experiments

PIE

Potential for change that the experiment has.

Important metrics that we can change, are they relevant?

Easy? How easy is it to run the experiment.

Vital Relationships: Content Producers and Brands

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 09:13:09 +0000

One of the things that makes the web amazing is that anyone can create content for it. Whether it is a news video for YouTube, a blog post, a set of photos or a tutorial on how to build toys. If you can imagine anything, you can share it on the web in one of these forms.

Right now, you can even build a small work of art that anyone can print in 3D.

And then there’s social media. Those online channels where these content producers (authors, musicians, thinkers and tinkerers) share their work and even let others comment and contribute with ideas. With or without a copyright claim.

These are the people who make the web great, because they take their time and effort and accept the risk of sharing it expecting little or no compensation.

In such a trove of content, links, mixes and remixes, authorship is in serious peril of getting lost. Pinterest recognised this problem and did what was in their reach to fix it. Facebook also started giving more credit to outgoing links as a result of the changes in the Edge Rank Algorithm.

Let’s jump back for a while now. Among the web brands are trying to find their place in the dialogue, trying to be close to their stakeholders, to stay interesting and relevant in their lives.

For Brands, Facebook turned out to be the channel where this communication could take place. Soon brand and marketing managers came to realise that being a part of the web means producing content. It can range between a simple photo of your product, taken at the right setting and with a clever remark, or it can be much more elaborate as an info graphic or extensive white paper.

Building great content takes time but it’s worth it. That’s usually where some agencies step in, helping their clients set up an interesting content plan.

When the setting is right, this content plan includes searching the web for User Generated Content that is valuable and can be shared with the brand’s community of users.

But can we? Just because something is online, it doesn’t mean you can just take it as your own. If you’re just another user, someone like you and me, chances are that you can just add a small caption stating who the original author is. I do that all the time on my blog, finding photos tagged with a Creative Commons license and linking back to the photographer’s flickr account.

On the other hand, Brands need a stricter approach. It doesn’t matter if something is under a creative commons license, it is still good practice to check with the author and explain how they would like to use that image or video in their Facebook Page for example. Given Facebook’s limitations in design, it is also important to look for ways to award due ownership with a ribbon or small mention in the photo saying who the author is. This way, other users can either search for the person online or look in Google Images for the original version.

The alternative is to pick up something interesting online and publish it as if the brand itself had created that piece of content. Most often than not, brands are going to get away with it. Every once in a while however we find situations where the author sees the miss-use of their content and demands explanation, showing that the brand or community manager is speaking to the community from the top of a soap box, not really respecting them as important stakeholders.

In a nutshell, instead of nurturing a community, of building a setting where people feel motivated to work and produce content on their own for nothing else than the recognition for a good accomplishment, we set up an auditorium where people feel they have been robbed or that their peers are being treated unfairly.

A constructive approach to this problem is to develop a community outreach plan as part of your content strategy. This plan will aim to motivate the community to build content on their own and be rewarded for it in some way, not just by seeing their work shared and recognized.

The benefits to this approach are many, one of them being that Brands can reduce the amount of budget they spend on producing content on their own and, as an outtake, gain reach within a user’s own social network. For agencies, developing these outreach plans is a clear business opportunity.

And after all, don’t we all stand by a social approach to how brands communicate ? Don’t we all want to see the web as a place of conversation and lasting relationships? For that to happen it is of the utmost importance to find middle ground between brands and stakeholders and to have a strong backbone in dealing with situations where we may be pushed towards a less ethical approach.

Sure, saying “no” comes at a risk, but what is is truly important is never easy to do.

Photo by Armando Alves @ Flickr.

How and when do you read longer articles?

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:15:48 +0000

This is a real question, not just a teaser title.

Think about it for a while, now that RSS is not the only way to pull your favorite content to a single location and that tools like Instapaper and Pocket have become so useful, when do you actually take the time to read and get informed?

I tend to look through my reading list during the weekend or during the week at the end of the day if I have nothing else to do.

Update

Over at linkedin, where there isn’t a clear way to link to updates, João Pedro Pereira added two interesting bits. One is that tools like Pocket and Instapaper take away the guilt of not reading something. The other, is that we can publish longer content “Thursdays and Fridays. Then hope for people to save it for weekend reading”.

On the offline world, Armando Alves added that Nielsen Ratings are now calculated on a weekly and monthly basis and not just daily.

There is no doubt that the way we read or watch content changed, from the TV to the Computer and Mobile screens (tablets included). Companies and brands are not taking this into account when they publish content. Procedures and daily routines are so fixed and crystalized that we see numbers dropping and pay no attention to it.

For a good perspective on this issue of dealing with multiple screens in your communication planning, read Shel Holtz blog post: Communication planning must now account for the use of multiple screens, says Google study

On filters, Facebook and the lack of critical thinking

Mon, 21 May 2012 08:37:12 +0000

Foto por Ricardo Bernardo

“When we change the way we communicate we change society.” — Clay Shirky

I have always liked this quote and saw it as being true and positive. After all, our way to communicate can only get better, right? Wrong.

Just because we find new ways to communicate, it does not mean they are better or more effective.

But lets clarify. We are talking about new channels of communication and not just the improvement of existing ones. The Internet is a platform for a wide range of communication channels of this sort and they have changed society: The Web holds information that we can access in real time and thus guide our decisions, email changed the way we work and do business, twitter altered the way we coordinate small and large groups and the way we broadcast information.

Facebook changed the way we communicate with friends, family and co-workers.

What Clay Shirky fails to mention is that there are two types of filters at work in the web. Filters we control and filters we do not control and have no knowledge on how they work. Lets call them visible and invisible filters.

More so, from the little I know on usability and user experience, it is clear that the way in which we structure a website and its features conditions the way it is used. Think craigslist versus ebay for example.

Lets take this step by step starting with filters.

Whenever we search Twitter we are building a filter that will show us the most up to date tweets which include certain words and characteristics. It is a visible filter and you know you are applying that filter to the toatlity of tweets.

A Google search is another way by which we filter information. Only this time, we know Google will rank the information based on what it thinks we are looking for. Google’s search algorithm is an invisible filter, but one I can live with given the fact that as far as I know it will not keep information from me, allowing my search query to be adjusted until I find what I am looking for.

In both cases, it is up to me to decide how much or how little I trust the information I find. For every link or piece of information from a Tweet, or every search result I get from Google, I am forced to stop and think on how reliable that information is. This is an old discussion, so we won’t get into that. It is suficient to say that our own judgement plays an important role in these two examples.

Lets jump to Facebook. This is a communication channel which is closed by nature, as a means to protect your privacy and allow you to communicate freely with your social circles. (How much we agree or disagree on how this is accomplished and to what extent is not the question. Stallman has a very long post about this issue, some of which I don’t agree with.)

Everytime I login to Facebook it will show me the “Top Stories” and there is no way to ascertain how it selects these items. It is safe to say that the number of interactions in each post plays a big part in the way it selects the top stories. So everytime I login, I make sure that I only see the most recent posts from my network.

But what is bad is the way Facebook facilitates meaningful interactions while at the same time removing any judgement from the user. In a macabre example, I have seen posts on Facebook mentioning the passing of common friends with others clicking the “like” button. Of course they do not “like” it. Had a millisecond been given to thought and instead they would comment “that is terrible, my condolences”.

The same irreflected act is seen when people find a piece of information. It is normal and expected to see people sharing infographics or photos just because they thought it was interesting. But Facebook as a communication channel removes a great number of clues for us to ascertain how reliable and trustworthy that information is. Those images or posts rarely contain links or lists of sources, and sometimes the origin of a photo is completely lost in the numberos shares, thus being stripped of context and judge with little or no research on the subject.

Facebook is a channel that changed the way we communicate and is thus changing society. The way this channel works seems to favor quick reactions and little thought, not to mention that less savy users will be blind to the “Top Stories” and privacy filters.

I don’t mean to say Facebook is evil and should be erradicated, merely to state that we need to nurture and reward critical thinking when using any communication channel. That effort must be kept as an aim by a wide number of people. From developers to designers, including of course Public Relations and other communication professionals.

Because in the long run, we all want to build a society of new ideas and cooperation and not one that merely reacts to problems without offering any shred of insight or acting towards a solution.

Strangely enough, moments after writing this last paragraph I came across a post on my to-read list. It is written by Lucy Pepper and talks about this exact problem from a more human and social perspective.

The 3 Areas of Search Engine Optimization

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 22:02:28 +0000

When managing a website, one of the goals is to be listed as high as possible on Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) ). Working towards this goal is what is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO.

In Public Relations we need to divide the practice into three areas, Programming, Content and Relationships.

Programming

I do not mean that we as communication professionals should take charge of programming a website, or even optimizing the software on our own.

I do however mean to say that it is important to have a small grasp of the technology which powers a website, how it works and what alternatives are available. There are also several features of a website that make it more accessible to search engines, such as readable URLs, sitemaps and a careful semantic structure.

Content

Most of the time, PR practitioners will focus on building good Content. In fact, great content is still of the utmost importance. We can divide this area into two main concerns, one is providing Content with a good structure and organization, in which case Matt Cutt’s videos on SEO are a great help in understanding how content must be written for the web.

Another concern is in building relevant content. This means first and foremost to be aware of the publics that surround us and what their interests are. The next step is in finding common ground, and if it doesn’t exist we must take charge in building it.

Only we know to whom we are reaching out can we look into ways of building relevant content and becoming relevant to them.

Relationships

We build relationships of all forms and sizes, some positive, others neutral or negative. And the truth of the matter is that the Web was built to allow relationships to form, specially those relationships that lead to collaboration and cooperation.

When we create a website and publicize it, it ripples through the web resonating to a greater or lesser extent with its constituents. If the content is actually useful and valuable, it will be linked too, and while it is being linked to, in an underlying and sometimes unconscious process it is being given a set of psycho-sociological values.

We can reinforce this effect with advertising, relevant link exchanges, sponsored links in SERP, or any other artificial means. However, these tactics will prove less successful if our online discourse lacks relevance to a number of publics and to a certain context.

A SEO plan will only prove effective if it includes these three areas, focusing on just one of them or simply not taking the time to coordinate efforts between the PR department and the Webdesign team will result in erratic results.

What the web is made of (and what that means for PR Strategy)

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 23:36:50 +0000

If we would ask David Phillips or Philip Young what the web is made of, they would tell us about Platforms, Channels and Context.

When we talk about the Internet we are talking about a series of technologies that indeed communicate among themselves, things like satellites, routers, servers and other infrastructures. Information can travel across the Internet in a number of ways, and to access it we refer to communication Platforms such as computers, mobile phones and tablet computers.

But Platforms are simply the objects we use to access information. We can access the same file through an Hypertext Transfer Protocol using a computer or a mobile phone, and we can do the exact same thing using a File Transfer Protocol that will in addition allow us to edit the file. We can also exchange messages through a number of ways, from Instant Messaging to email and twitter, using facebook or any other social network. These are Channels or as I prefer, online communication instruments.

Depending on the circumstances, we use different combinations of platforms and channels. Search engines offer maps that adapt to mobile devices because we look for directions and places to stay while traveling and companies look for ways to access updated information at any time. These are Contexts in which we use the Internet.

To the elements proposed by David Phillips and Philip Young I add Content, which can be seen as the sum of data to obtain information that will be applied to a Context. This post is content because it contains a number of data (ideas and concepts), organized to become information (given a logical line of thought) and given context to become content (Thus a post on Online Public Relations is born).

But what does it all mean?

Nowadays we use information and content in a number of ways and we want it to travel across platforms and channels as best as possible. That is why we have things like XML and Open Document Formats, mobile phones and laptops. We don’t just use these things because we want to work and collaborate in a more efficient and effective way, they are also a means to reach out to friends and relatives.

Building relationships is part of our nature and is one of the reasons that led us to spend so much time and effort developing Communication Technologies. And to communicate we share information and content with those that for some reason are close to us.

Thanks to the Internet we have produced more information and content that we can ever hope to be able to organize, that is why we are slowly moving to a Semantic Web. Simply put, we are finding ways for computers to understand that 9 digits form a phone number and that an address is composed of a street name, house number, region and country. In short, the semantic web is a way of telling a computer what that data you just entered is.

Before you let yourself be dragged by the current hype of the Semantic Web, take the time to read this article from December 2000 describing how Tim Berners Lee himself explained the concept.

So, we now live in a world where a wide variety of communication platforms allow us to use a number of channels to access and share information and content in a number of different contexts (at work, while traveling, at home…). The semantic web will allow us to use that information with even greater ease, but that is a subject for a future post.

Where does Public Relations fit?

We can use these four elements that make up the Internet and the Web to understand the changes in our way to communicate and to relate with one another. In the past we had access to a telephone and a fax machine, today we have a computer and a mobile phone and a number of other platforms to communicate. And if before we used these platforms in a work context, today we can use them in greater number of daily contexts.

When building a strategy we need to take into account which platforms and channels will our publics use to communicate and in what context. Each of them will impose challenges. Intranets may be used on-the-go and therefore require a mobile-friendly version; corporate websites need to be indexed by search engines and therefore must not use flash; our publics demand quick updates so we must opt for a microblogging platform; etc.

These questions will impact our budget, the way we measure and evaluate success as well as the procedures we apply to manage the different communication instruments at our disposal. But it does not end here.

Different communication instruments imply their own set of constraints, both in the way they work and in regards to the social contracts that we must adhere to in order to use them effectively. A clear example would be twitter and facebook, while twitter asks us to limit our updates to 140 characters, facebook asks that we respect the privacy of others.

The content shared across these instruments is also somewhat different, while twitter allows for text and links, facebook gives us the possibility of posting videos, photos, notes and even to play games. One can argue that twitter can also be used to share the exact same content as facebook, but it will always require an additional communication instrument such as posterous, a blog, or a youtube/vimeo account.

Even if we do not outline the scenario which is composed of platforms, channels/instruments, context and content, it is good to keep these concepts in mind as they will surely be useful to identify changes and to adapt our strategy.