It's taken a while, but I think most news executives have caught up with the idea that they need to publish to the various platforms that consumers now use -- print, the web, e-mail, RSS, mobile, etc. -- and treat new platforms as equally important as print, even though the legacy operation may for the time being still bring in the most revenue. But that's old news.
What newspaper people now need to understand is that not only are they publishing content to all the relevant platforms under their own brands, but they also need to adapt to publishing everywhere that they can under others' brands: blogs, social networks, news aggregators, map mashup sites, community sites, business' websites, personal websites, etc.
They have to embrace a profound change in media. What they produce can no longer exist as an island online, where they use marketing and hope to get people to come view the content that they produce, or sign up for e-mail, phone or RSS delivery. News organizations must develop strategies that pump out their content -- in bits and pieces -- to anyone who's willing to run it.
What's Wrong Here?
Here's an example of a mainstream news organization missing out. Take a look at this video from NYTimes.com and see if you can see what's wrong.
Click here
Here's a hint. Take a look at this video from MSNBC.com, which does one thing right that NYTimes.com chooses not to do.
Click here.
Did you see what I'm talking about?
OK, so I have a blog. I want to let my readers know about those videos. NYTimes.com gives me no option other than to put a link to the video (which it does provide) in my blog item: "Go watch this video I spotted over on NYTimes.com; here's the URL." Frankly, I'm unlikely to bother. I'd much prefer to keep people on my blog than send them away. I want my readers to have the ability to view this video on my site. (After all, I've been trained by Youtube that this is the new way of the world; if I can insert any of the many thousands of videos from Youtube on my site, why can't I do that with NYTimes.com videos? And note how smart Youtube is about this: At the end of any Youtube video embedded on another site you'll see links to additional Youtube videos. While those can be viewed also on the external site, another reasonable strategy is to develop a system where additional related videos link back to the home media site, rather than continue to be shown on the external one.)
So MSNBC.com at least gets this right by publishing "embed code" for its videos, allowing anyone to place one of its videos on their own website or blog, viewable on that website without having to go back to MSNBC.com. It's still missing out on some other opportunities for spreading the video around, but I'll get to that a bit later.
Why, if you're MSNBC.com, would you want this video that you've worked so hard on to escape the confines of your branded online properties and be viewed on other websites? It almost feels too elementary to have to explain it, but since many news organizations aren't yet allowing sharing of content across the web like this, perhaps it deserves a few words.
Assuming that you keep attached to the video your brand name, links back to your site, and advertising (like the pre-roll ad on the NYTimes.com video above), there's little reason not to share. You're simply employing smart marketing techniques to get your content viewed by a potentially huge audience of people that otherwise may not come to your website and don't subscribe to your e-mails and feeds.
Here's yet another compelling reason to open up to out-of-your-box publishing: A recent study of teens (14-18) by Northwestern University's Media Management Center found that this group is unlikely to follow serious news online (no surprise there), but they will click on news stories that appeal to them when they find them on other websites, social networks, blogs, etc.
MMC executive director Michael P. Smith was quoted as saying, "Teen after teen told researchers that they'll view news stories 'if something catches my eye.'"
I'll make an educated guess that such behavior applies to young people over the age of 18, as well. Since folks in their 20s are not exactly flocking to newspapers and their websites, it makes sense to put newspapers' content where they are spending time online. The MMC report recommends that news organizations devote time to creating widgets that pump fresh content out to the places where young people spend time online.
(What's a widget? ESPN just opened up WidgetCenter, which lets anyone put ESPN content on their own websites. It's a great example.)
Share It: Free Marketing
OK, so the MSNBC.com example above was a bit better, but it still misses an obvious opportunity to spread the word (as does the NYTimes.com video example). Both those video pages should have "share this" functionality, so that a user can easily add a pointer to the video at social networks and other websites that they routinely interact with. (Oddly, articles on NYTimes.com do feature a "share" link in a related-tools sidebar box, but not videos.)
There's no need to spend too much time on this, because most news websites now do include "share this" features on their articles, at least. NYTimes.com, for example since I've focused on them, has share links for articles to Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, and Newsvine. A reader of a NYTimes.com story can quickly alert his Facebook friends, for example, about the article. Other news sites seem to vary on the number of external sites that are supported with share links. SeattleTimes.com articles, for instance, only support share links to Digg and Newsvine.
This is an area where the blogging community is leading the way, and traditional news organizations lag a bit. Many bloggers use services like ShareThis and AddThis to support a long list of social networks and websites where users can promote (to the content owner's benefit) content that they like from a website. AddThis currently has a list of 35 services that a user can promote a piece of content that she finds interesting to -- from the biggies like Digg, Facebook and Newsvine, to lesser known ones like LinkaGoGo and Mister Wong.
My feeling is that this is all free marketing, so you should support your users in promoting your content to whatever service they happen to use. The more the merrier.
Wait A Minute!
Of course, there will be those reading this who worry about their content showing up in inappropriate or "bad" places. "If I allow anyone to post my video, I'll lose control. What if it shows up on the blog of some pornographer or hate group? Won't that damage my brand?"
That's a legitimate concern to think through, but frankly I think it's an outdated one. NYTimes.com may well have one of its videos turn up on a hate group's website, but it's reasonable to assume that online users in 2008 are savvy enough to understand that the Times didn't place the video there. I don't think that worrying about the extreme case is reason enough to toss out the model of sharing content in this way and foregoing the significant benefits of publishing everywhere.
For content like videos that are allowed to be on others' sites, you as the content owner have control over that block of content. So if you're worried, include some brief language disavowing connection with whatever site is displaying the content. Establish a terms of use that permits you to block "bad" websites from showing your content -- which of course assumes that you'll monitor where it's turning up and take action against abuses.
Publishing On The Social Networks
This could be the topic of another long column, but I'll just treat it briefly here. Select some of the most important external sites and publish there. Given the size of the user bases at MySpace and Facebook, it's logical to have presences there, publishing content that would appeal to that audience. MySpace is obviously a younger crowd, so a newspaper might establish some niche content streams for MySpace pages it sets up. Here's the New York Times' MySpace page, which only features videos that might appeal to a younger demographic. The BBC just entered into a content agreement with MySpace, demonstrating that it wants to be where people are congregating online.
Facebook is also worth your time in publishing selected content. Here's the Times' Facebook page, which features only limited content, such as Most E-mailed Articles and its Facebook News Quiz. Micro-blogging site Twitter continues to grow in popularity, so publishing a Twitter headline feed can make sense.
With now hundreds of social networking sites in existence, the issue becomes the workload in publishing to lots of them. Each is a marketing opportunity, but for now at least, each takes some work to feed fresh content. So take a look at the resources you can afford to use to feed content to social networks and related sites, and select the ones you can afford to support and will get the most bang for the buck.
This is turning into a significant issue for publishers, since sites like MySpace don't support exporting the content you post there and the comments that MySpace users add to your content. In other words, you're putting in a lot of effort for content that you don't really control. That doesn't mean you shouldn't publish specific content to MySpace. It just means that it's not easy to publish to a lot of social networks and related sites just yet.
Longer term, publishers should be able to have one place to publish their various flavors of content which then gets syndicated out to all the relevant social networks, et al. Instead of maintaining individual presences on MySpace, Facebook and a bunch of other similar social sites, we'll be able to publish once and distribute out to many sites, setting content parameters for each site we're pushing content out to. That's coming, as is explained in this article: "Why Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter Hurt Publishers." But we're not there yet.
A New World Of Possibilities
We've entered a new era in publishing. Publishers now have the ability to interject themselves and their content into other websites. That can be a great thing, but of course you have to move through a change in thinking and accept that the days when you had absolute control over your content are gone.
A good exercise is to think about all the content that your news organization produces. I've used video as an example of content that's worth sharing, but why not do it with other stuff as well? Every photo could have embed code that a blogger, website owner or business website could include -- with your branding and links, of course.
Here's an example to get you thinking: What if the owner of a local auto dealer has a website, and is allowed to use your auto-related content -- like car reviews, auto videos, and automotive news -- to make his own website more attractive to customers and potential customers? It's good for him, obviously. But it's also good for you. That dealer's customers when they come to his website will be exposed to your content. They may click through to your news site, or they may view the content within the confines of the dealer's site, where they'll still see the advertising message you probably placed there.
There's even the opportunity for a newspaper publisher to establish a relationship with that small business owner by publishing ads to his website in exchange for a share of the ad revenue. That can be the topic of a future column -- the move toward local ad networks that feed ads onto websites of many local businesses.
There are many possibilities opened up when you make the commitment to freely sharing your content.