Australian Media Five Years On

Malcolm Farr from News Limited

Question three respected Australian journalists about the future of Australian media and you'd be surprised how similar their views are.

IABC Canberra recently hosted a discussion with News Limited's Malcolm Farr, Karen Middleton from SBS and ABC Political Editor Greg Jennet.   The three Canberra Press Gallery veterans shared predictions about the media in the next five years, with communicators at the National Press Club.

The media landscape may be changing but all agreed newspapers will remain important and be influencing opinion well into the medium term.  Viewers will have less appetite for traditionally scheduled news bulletins and will press TV networks to deliver a great variety of news formats via their digital channels. And new technologies will allow Australians to self select information and build their own news pipelines.

ABC TV's Greg Jennett and SBS' Karen Middleton

Which means fresh challenges for PR professionals.  How do we reach our audiences when the media landscape is so fragmented and how do we judge success?

Farr, Middleton and Jennet were unanimous that tomorrow's reporters may use different technologies, yet their journalistic instinct to seek out information and hold institutions accountable will be as strong as ever.  

Get Content Get Customers: Book Review

Get Content Get Customers: Turn Prospects into Buyers with Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett

 

‘Content is king’ is an old marketing maxim.  According to US authors Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett, content is now the undisputed monarch when it comes to successful marketing.

With so much choice and so little difference between many product and service offerings, the best way to engage and keep customers is to give them valuable information that will enrich their experience with your organisation.

Internet-savy customers look everywhere for information before making their buying decisions.  Selling to them has become more difficult and traditional media channels are less influential.  Pulizzi and Barrett are urging companies to take advantage of new digital technologies to become their own publishing houses and deliver high quality editorial content to the people who matter most – clients and customers. In over 250 pages of delightfully simple to understand language they show the reader how to develop and follow through on a content marketing mindset.

A content-based approach starts with knowing what customers want, similar to traditional marketing.  Who are my customers and what do they need from my product now and in the long-term?  What and when is the best way to engage them are questions that demand better answers than merely reaching in the bottom drawer for another tired advertising schedule. In today’s environment it is totally about ‘them, not me and you.’

Pulizzi and Barrett identify how companies can deliver information straight to customers.  Their communications menu includes websites, on-line forums, social media, e-books, white papers, webcasts, digital magazines, blogs, podcasts, videos, road shows and face to face contact.  Corporate magazines and newsletters get a new lease of life under a content marketing strategy and the authors identify 15 tips to repurpose information from a traditional company magazine to increase the return on investment on each story.  

One of the book’s real strengths is the 15 case studies showing companies in different industries using content marketing to drive sales and increase market share. They include a couple of Australian examples, a rare find in US marketing books. It seems Melbourne-based, website developer Bitemark is using content marketing to create leads and drive sales and giant American manufacturer has strengthened ties to Australian customers through a print and on-line program that bridges business cultures.

Marketing instinctively know the importance of credible information.  Get Content Get Customers shows how to develop that information and deliver it directly to customers to get short and long-term impact.   

Get the book because this is a worthwhile read.

Are We The First Connection Generation?

I have just finished reading the recently published book Connection Generation.

Iggy Pintado, a former IBM and Telstra heavyweight, looks at how Australians are taking to new communication technologies and their impact on our personal and professional lives. The book is a clear, simple read and valuable for those after fresh insights into how people are using social media.

Pintado starts by identifying a number of "connector profiles". These are drawn from his own extensive marketing experience plus personal research he undertook for the book. He claims Australians - and this probably applies to those elsewhere - fall into one of five categories when it comes to using new media:

• Basic Connectors are people with low levels of technological take-up. They can be any age but are united by their disdain or fear of technology. They need to be thoroughly convinced that new communication platforms can improve things and it often takes a tech-minded family member or friend to guide and encourage them to venture into online media.

• Passive Connectors have a basic understanding of the new technologies but choose not to make it a priority in their lives. When it comes to online action they observe rather than participate. This is hardly surprising because many people in this category have traditionally consumed passive media such as print, radio and television. In marketing terminology they could be classed as the "late adopters" in the digital era.
  

• Selective Connectors understand new communications technologies and use it to share experiences and maintain their family, friendship and business networks. However they stop short of expanding the range of their connections which limits their ability to take advantage of business and other online opportunities.

• Active Connectors appreciate and use the new technologies to develop and maintain contacts, assertively share their thoughts and routinely use platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked-in for commercial and personal benefit. They are the marketing equivalent of "early adopters", people willing to try new things and take on fresh thoughts.

• And finally there are the Super Connectors. These folks are digitally light years ahead of the rest of us and on the bleeding edge of technology. For them an online life is as fundamental as using running water or electricity.
  

These categories may define groups but they do not necessarily limit people. It is possible for individuals to move from one group to another as their circumstances and interests change. Perhaps Basic Connectors are the most digitally vulnerable because the trend is for Australians to increasingly go online to connect their lives and that sea change is unlikely to reverse anytime soon.

And what exciting times we live in when initiatives such as the Australian Government's National Broadband Program, the schools laptop program and first stirrings about Government2.0 have the potential to transform us into Australia's first connection generation.

Fun But Pointless Advertising

I've just come across a very effective viral marketing campaign. It's creative, cleverly executed and finishes with an unusual flourish.

The pomegranate mobile phone video ad shows a mobile device that does everything: as well as the normal phone functions it brews coffee, shows movies and comes with an in-built language translation service.

Sound too good to be too true? Well it is. In fact the ad is a hoax that leads to another online ad promoting the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.

There's probably a clever Canadian ad director (dressed in the ad industry's obligatory black jeans and T-shirt uniform) counting clicks to the ad and reporting to clients even Australians have viewed the ad.

Like a lot of advertising today it holds out the promise of one thing but fails to deliver. So how effective is it if it fails to do the real job of promoting Nova Scotia? I might have started out interested in next generation phones but I finished up definitely not interested in Nova Scotia.

At the end of the day, are more people interested in Nova Scotia? If not, what's the point? It is easy to be clever online but it's much harder to be effective and deliver real world results.

Am I being too precious? Should I just sit back and enjoy it? Watch the ad and tell me what you think?

Where Australians Go Online

Last week I attended a presentation by Hitwise Asia Pacific on where Australians go online for information, particularly which government sites they visit.

March 2009 data shows the most popular online destinations for Australians are search engines and social networks. Australia has around 6500 government websites and these account for 2.4% of all Australian online visits - higher than the US (1.7%) and the UK (0.9%).

Federal Government websites account for 60% of all visits, State Government websites accounted for 29.7% visits while 6.2% of visits went to Local Government sites.

In March 2009 the most popular Federal Government websites were:

• Bureau of Meteorology
• Centrelink
• Australian Taxation Office
• Australian Job Search
• Australian Taxation Office - Tax Agent Portal

The most popular State Government websites were:

• Victoria Country Fire Authority
• CityRail
• Roads and Traffic Authority NSW
• Better Health Channel
  
• Transport Infoline

With the top Local Government sites being:

• ourbrisbane.com
• Brisbane City Council
• Gold Coast City Council
• City of Sydney.
• City of Melbourne
  

As well as their own online efforts, social networks could provide a key opportunity for Governments to share information with Australians. Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Wikipedia all ranked in the top 15 websites that Australians visited this past March .

Referrals from social networks sites to government information are up 16.1% in the last 12 months.

Get the full report from Hitwise