Required reading of publishers, content marketers, and social media dorks
Every once and a while I’ll share an article on the Offbeat Empire’s Slack, and tell everyone that they need to read it. It’s usually something about the future of publishing, or content marketing, or social media. I find all these things fascinating (if a little cynical-making, sometimes), and that in mind, I thought I’d re-share a few of the things I’ve made staffers read recently…
Pinterest vs Facebook: how different algorithms encourage different publisher behavior
While both Facebook and Pinterest traffic are hugely important to me, I interact with the two networks very differently. As a publisher, Facebook has me trained like a dog: we post all day, every day on our Facebook page because we see an immediate, real-time traffic boost when our posts go out. Meanwhile, I have very little control over the traffic Pinterest sends, even though I also post there all day every day. So why do I keep pinning?
Let’s talk about clickbait
I think of clickbait as manipulative and forcing your hand (ie “This bride got left at the altar — YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT SHE DID NEXT”), but the truth of publishing is that a huge portion of a publisher’s job is what’s known as content marketing.
How do you make sure that people who are interested in your content A) see it and B) are interested enough in it to click through to read it? People do NOT want to leave Facebook, so it’s a significant challenge.
Facebook’s great attentional party
Weeks ago, The Atlantic published an article called What Blogging Has Become. Theoretically the article was about Medium.com, but really… it was just about the reality that digital publishers are dealing with these days. The reality called Facebook.