Has Social Media Helped or Hindered the Publishing Industry?

When social media began to emerge many thought that it would destroy the publishing industry. But, actually, social media brought new sets of tools that 'matched content to reader likes, helped build communities and even build brands.'

It turns out, these social media inherent tools actually aided the publishing industry as a whole by providing springboards for distributing (and redistributing/re-posting by blogs and other communities) cool and in demand content.

Just how this is done is described in tonight's research/resource article written by Joe Hyrkin, the CEO of Issuu, a growing digital-publishing platform that delivers content across 18 million magazines, catalogs and newspapers:

How the Publishing Industry Has Learned to Thrive With the Social Media Industry

The conversation about how social media is changing publishing has been going on since the dawn of social media. Ten years ago, prognosticators were sure social networks would usher in a new era for publishing. Five years later, social media spelled doom for the industry as a whole.

Yet, instead of transforming publishing into a mass of niche blogs and feeds or bringing about the end of the business, social media has become a set of sophisticated tools for matching content to reader interests, growing communities and building brands.

1. Matching content to interests.

It is tempting to think of social media as a generic channel for broadcasting to the world. In actuality, social media enables the formation and maintenance of an almost limitless number of smaller communities, each organized around a relatively narrow theme. It empowers publishers by enabling them to market relevant content to these communities more effectively.

Instead of relying on a single front-page spread, for example, traditional publishers can tune their content for several different Twitter streams. By sharing  the right content to thoughtfully selected audiences, publishers can pique their followers' interest and increase traffic.

2. Social means community.

Another common misconception about social media is measuring the impact only by generated traffic. A great social media strategy certainly includes getting more visits, but the goal has to be about creating a vibrant and engaging online community. It is this community that will do the sharing that is critical to success.

Each social channel, from Facebook and Tumblr to Pinterest, has its own style of engagement. By optimizing content that best fits the community on each channel, a publisher can keep readers talking and engaging with content and drawing more attention.

3. A great brand requires great social.

You cannot measure the effectiveness of a brand with a simple cost-per-click metric, and you can’t easily evaluate your social media community this way either. But brands increase reader loyalty, enhance the efficacy of acquisition strategies and keep customers coming back for more. Publishers can leverage social tools to strengthen their brands and increase awareness; this requires consistent messaging and engagement with readers and viewers wherever they may be – exactly what is now possible with social media.

4. Another tool in your toolbox.

Has the death knell been rung for publishing? Far from it. The best distribution channel on the web is still more porous than the content it carries. Social media has led to significant consolidation and increased competition for eyeballs.

Publishers may no longer own both content and distribution, but content is still what matters.

This article was published in various online resources, including Entrepreneur 

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Research/resource article: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/242595

New Publishing Model: The Latest News is Being Distributed on Social Networks and Consumed on Mobile Devices

Traditional, established media such as the Washington Post and the LA Times are being out covered and out valued by technology upstarts like BuzzFeed that 'uses technology to help come up with ideas for articles that will attract readers, and it has connected with advertisers because it creates sponsored stories for their brands—promoting Pepsi, for example, with animated images about staying cool in the summer.'

Seems to me, and some others, too, as reflected by my research, that there is a chance of mashing up advertising with legitimate news and other reporting. But, this may be the trend of the future and will bring in tons of revenue.

There are literally billions of dollars being created and attracted to the newer tech-laden publishing platforms that cater to the latest technological devices.

Tonight's post gives insight into some of the money valuations and exploding expansions coming into play --- especially Re BuzzFeed. 

Pertinent excerpt from tonight's research source: "BuzzFeed said Monday that the funding will let the company expand to Mumbai, Mexico City, Berlin and Tokyo and convert its video division into BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, which will focus on everything from animated online images to feature- length films."

This from Bloomberg news as reported in Crain's New York Business:

BuzzFeed's $850M valuation tops Tribune's

The site's $50 million cash infusion is a bet that the site can be more valuable than top traditional news media.

BuzzFeed, Inc. raised $50 million on a bet its mix of everything from animal lists to serious news is more valuable than the coverage produced by established media like the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.

The investment from venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz propelled BuzzFeed's valuation beyond those traditional big-name publications to about $850 million, according to the New York Times. While that's about half the market capitalization of the Times itself, it's in line with other Web startups at about seven times annual revenue, according to Paul Sweeney, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

Andreessen Horowitz joins BuzzFeed investors Hearst Corp., SoftBank Corp. and New Enterprise Associates in wagering that the site can rank among the titans of media. BuzzFeed uses technology to help come up with ideas for articles that will attract readers, and it has connected with advertisers because it creates sponsored stories for their brands—promoting Pepsi, for example, with animated images about staying cool in the summer.

"There's a lot of potential for BuzzFeed, and it's well positioned to move into a lot of key areas," said Peter Krasilovsky, vice president of BIA Kelsey, a media research company based in Chantilly, Virginia. "They've put a lot of their money into figuring out which stories are being read. I can understand why you would want to invest in BuzzFeed."

BuzzFeed said Monday that the funding will let the company expand to Mumbai, Mexico City, Berlin and Tokyo and convert its video division into BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, which will focus on everything from animated online images to feature- length films.

'Effectively unbounded'

"We are very excited to work with everyone at BuzzFeed to help them realize their dreams of a profoundly important new media institution," Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, said on Twitter. The company's opportunity is "effectively unbounded," he said.

At the end of last year, the company had forecast revenue of as much as $120 million in 2014, people familiar with the matter said at the time. Ashley McCollum, a BuzzFeed spokeswoman, said she couldn't confirm the valuation.

The startup, which has more than 500 employees, is profitable, Chief Executive Officer Jonah Peretti said in September 2013. With the new investment, BuzzFeed has garnered almost $100 million in funding since the company debuted in 2006.

"The investment from Andreessen Horowitz really validates BuzzFeed, as a company and as an entity," said Mr. Sweeney of Bloomberg Intelligence. "BuzzFeed has really proven itself as a business."

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The New Social Culture Will Market Your Book - Learn It

Social Media Power is
Worldwide!

Social media (SM) as a marketing tool began rather inconspicuously. At first SM was a loose and rather disjointed platform where people just kept in touch with friends and family and exchanged pictures.

But, as most now realize, it has exploded into a genuine news and marketing goldmine as well as a conduit to keep in touch.

Per Wikipedia: Social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue between organizations, communities, and individuals. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Social media is ubiquitously accessible, and enabled by scalable communication techniques. 

Classification of social mediaSocial media technologies take on many different forms including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. By applying a set of theories in the field of media research (social presence, media richness) and social processes (self-presentation, self-disclosure) Kaplan and Haenlein created a classification scheme for different social media types in their Business Horizons article published in 2010. According to Kaplan and Haenlein there are six different types of social media: collaborative projects (e.g., Wikipedia), blogs and microblogs (e.g., Twitter), content communities (e.g., YouTube), social networking sites (e.g., Facebook), virtual game worlds (e.g., World of Warcraft), and virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life). Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms.

The honeycomb framework defines how social media services focus on some or all of seven functional building blocks (identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups). These building blocks help understand the engagement needs of the social media audience. For instance, LinkedIn users care mostly about identity, reputation and relationships, whereas YouTube’s primary building blocks are sharing, conversations, groups and reputation. Many companies build their own social containers that attempt to link the seven functional building blocks around their brands. These are private communities that engage people around a more narrow theme, as in around a particular brand, vocation or hobby, than social media containers such as Google+ or Facebook.

Patents

There has been rapid growth in the number of US patent applications that cover new technologies related to social media. The number of published applications has been growing rapidly over the past five years. There are now over 250 published applications.^[4] Only about 10 of these applications have issued as patents, however, largely due to the multi-year backlog in examination of business method patents.

SM has indeed exploded!

Newbie (and not so newbie) writers are always asking "How do I market my book?"

SM is the new and future blueprint for moving all types of publishing and building your audience for even better success in the future.

Bob Cohn, editor of Atlantic Digital, gives us a great looksee into the growth and technical use of SM to master marketing for publishers:   

Welcome to the Sharing Economy

A year ago, the main sources of referral traffic to our flagship site, TheAtlantic.com, lined up in this order:

• Typed/Bookmarked (readers who type our url into their browsers or follow their pre-set bookmark);

• Links from aggregators and other content sites;

• Search engines;

• Social media (a roll-up of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, and LinkedIn)

Then something interesting happened. The social line began rising, first passing Search and then flying by Other Sites and finally, in late 2011, moving beyond Typed/Bookmarked. Now, TheAtlantic.com receives more than one-third of its referrals from social media, topping all other sources.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not long ago, optimizing your site for search, and for the algorithms that determine which stories get featured on Google News, was thought to be the key to generating audience. As a result, Web editors were learning to parse metadata and resigning themselves to writing headlines for machines. Companies like Demand Media were on top of the digital world, suggesting a future in which search requests would replace journalists as arbiters of what stories to publish.

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Publisher Results: Better on Facebook or Twitter?

When we set out to market our newest published work online, does Facebook or Twitter really deliver? Which of these deliver the most exposure, internet buzz and actual sales?

Vadim Lavrusik, of Mashable.Com, has made a study on how these two internet venues delivered results for Mashable...And, although the study had to make certain assumptions...the methodology, parameters and calculations involved are explained in some detail.

By Vadim Lavrusik in Mashable.Com:

Is Sharing More Valuable for Publishers on Facebook or Twitter? [STATS]

In the age of micropublishing, how many people are actually reading what you tweet or share on Facebook? And more importantly, how does the click-per-share ratio compare between the two very different social platforms that are utilized by millions of users every day for consuming and sharing content?

These are questions that keep social media strategists awake at night (or maybe just me). So at Mashable, we decided to take a look at our own data and see how user behavior compares between Facebook and Twitter, the two social media sites that generate the most referral traffic to Mashable.com.

After pulling three months worth of our social data and calculating the click-per-share (CPS), it appears that users on Twitter are more likely to share an article rather than read it, whereas users on Facebook click on more articles than they share. According to our social data, Twitter received roughly 0.38 clicks per tweet, whereas Facebook received 3.31 clicks per engagement (the number of times people posted a Mashable link to Facebook through an action on a social plugin or through a Wall post). This would mean that a Facebook action gets roughly 8.7x more clicks than a tweet.

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Who Controls Social Media?

From outside the publisher's world, no one should control social media from my blurred point of view. Speaking just as an outsider (my specialty) and everyday web surfer, I like to think everything "internet" is open and free with no underbelly of strategic plotting behind every damn piece of content to "hook" me into doing something that I probably really don't want to do in the first place.

Just let social media develop naturally and be formed (and, yes, controlled...if there must be any control) by those visiting for their own enjoyment and seeking like-minded folks.

But, realizing that many things (if not all) on the web are free due to a secret source of monetization coming from some damn hidden place, I have to put on my magic pragmatic glasses and peer into the sucky-sucky world of internet control for money, money, money. You know, advertising and marketing...with actual content coming in last most of the time.

So, going undercover inside the publisher's world with my magic glasses, I found some interesting insights into this topic from Matt Kinsman, executive editor at FOLIO magazine...Insight further honed from his attendance at the MPA's (Magazine Publishers of America) Social Media conference yesterday:

For Publishers, Who Are the Gatekeepers of Social Media?
Who gets the keys to the engine, edit, sales or marketing?

Ten years ago, as the prospect of monetizing Web sites started becoming a reality for publishers, different departments butted heads over prime real estate: editorial wanted it for content; sales wanted it for advertising; marketing wanted it for promotion.

Today, as the emphasis shifts away from publishers serving their audience on their own Web domain into places that are daily destinations (such as Twitter and Facebook), publishers are again faced with the question of who controls what (and it's even more important today because social media offers the chance to directly engage with--or alienate--your audience).

That was a key debate at MPA's Social Media conference yesterday. "Should all stakeholders be given the capability to tweet?" asked Matthew Milner, vice president of social media at Hearst, and moderator of a session called Who Controls Social Media at Your Magazine Brand? "And is the ultimate stakeholder necessarily editorial, or marketing, or could it even be the technology department, which may ultimately own the cost of social media?"

For Time Inc., social media is very much an editorial enterprise (last fall, a survey by The Wrap found that five of the 10 magazines with the most Twitter followers were Time Inc. brands). The publisher even maintains a team dedicated to fine-tuning Twitter captions. "Social platforms can be remade in your own image," said Jim Frederick, managing editor of Time.com and executive editor of Time.

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