Infinite Path » Content

News of the World joins ranks of paywall flops

admin — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 10:45:20 +0000

I’ve discussed the merits, or otherwise, of paywalls in the past and although I wouldn’t want to question the business sense of Rupert Murdoch, the early evidence suggests they just don’t work.

The Times got off to an inauspicious start when it began charging for content, and now the News of the World has followed suit. According to a report in New Media Age figures released by ComScore show the Sunday paper’s website has experienced a 40 per cent drop in visitors after putting up its paywall.

In September it had around 1.56 million unique visitors, but in October this dropped to 0.96 million. Even more worryingly for News International, the site currently offers a four week free trial for anyone who registers, meaning the number of visitors could fall again in November if people decide they don’t want to start paying.

And who could blame them if they don’t? At present one of the site’s top stories is the date of the Royal Wedding, hardly a thrilling exclusive and certainly not something you need to pay £1 to find out.

Of course, Murdoch’s aims may not be to up the number of visitors to the NOTW site, he may be looking to protect or increase the circulation of the print edition, which is fair enough.

However, it seems pretty clear that charging for news online doesn’t have much of a future. Content is still king, but if you want to make money from it you’ll have to think of another way to do it.

Times paywall a turn off for readers

admin — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:50:19 +0000

It’s too early to brand the Times paywall a failure, but even the most optimistic reading of figures released by News International show it’s got a long way to go before it can be considered a success.

According to the firm, 105,000 people have paid for access to the Times website since July. Figures from Nielsen suggest pre-paywall the site was getting 3.10 million unique visitors from the UK alone each month. That’s a fall of more than 96 per cent. Of course, both sets of figures are open to interpretation but even taking that into account things don’t look good.

It gets worse when you start to crunch the numbers, as the Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh has. He concluded that the paywall is currently pulling in around £5.5 million a year gross. If we are to believe reports the Times lost advertising revenues worth up to £20 million, then the sums clearly don’t add up.

For its part, News International seems determined to push on and says it will look to build a loyal digital customer base, but if it is to succeed the firm will need to think of some new ideas. News is not a saleable commodity online, the vast majority of it can be found for free somewhere. Presumably, the Times will look to offer a wider selection of content and rely on the strength of its columnists.

However, it still has to deal with the issue of getting people to sign up in the first place. Special offers will help, but asking people to pay less for a product they can largely get for free elsewhere isn’t a great incentive.
While they consider the issue, News International executives should ponder another figure – £40 million. That’s how much the Guardian makes from online advertising each year by giving its content away for “free”.

Content of Content is King

Infinite Path — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:16:10 +0000

Everyone is a publisher. Everyone wants their content to be seen. Everyone thinks that lots of content will eventually lead to lots of conversions which in turn will lead to lots of money.

In most cases, this isn’t true. Publishing a lot of content on a regular basis will undoubtedly get traffic to your site. However, if the content isn’t what people want to read, or it doesn’t satisfy their query, they will most likely bounce straight off your site in search of an answer elsewhere.

The content of your content is what will lead to conversions; and quite possibly improvements in search engine rankings. If you are writing “search engine copy”, you will most likely alienate users once they hit your site as they will recognise the content to be content for content’s sake.

Content doesn’t just have to be words. Content can be videos and audio and as long as that content is relevant to the user, that’s all that matters. Even though a search engine can’t necessarily read video or audio content, it will still recognise that if certain content is popular, it will class it as important. And we all know what happens if a search engine thinks your content is important…

Content and publishing are hot topics at the moments, especially as Rupert Murdoch is trying to pave the way for monetising content online. The importance of content has never been under-estimated, but maybe the quality of content is now going to become much more of a concern.

Conversion Rate Optimisation

Infinite Path — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:27:27 +0000

There is an element of online that many ignore. Or, if not ignore, don’t pay enough attention to. This element is Conversion Rate Optimisation. The aim of SEO is to drive traffic to a website, but once the traffic is there, then what? Many ignore the crucial requirement of converting traffic. To some, traffic is everything – they think it’s all a numbers game. When you get eyeballs on your site you want to convert that traffic into sales, or whatever it is that your site is designed for. To an extent it is a numbers game. But imagine if you could get more sales and conversions from a lot less traffic. You could save a lot of money on the techniques employed to drive the traffic there in the first place.

On this basis, it is crucial that your site is geared up correctly to encourage action from the viewers. The last thing you want is to get lots of traffic to your site, only for the people visiting to bounce straight off the site because they don’t like the look of it, or they can’t figure out how to use the site. Usability comes into this a lot too. If your site is hard to navigate, and people can’t find what they’re looking for they will often go elsewhere.

If you are selling on your site, it makes no sense to have poorly performing products on your front page. If you are trying to direct people to the front page of your site then you are best off having your top sellers on there waiting for them as soon as they hit the site. Calls to action on the site must be very prominent also. It must be easy for your users to do what they came to your site for. Because the internet offers so many options, there is no need for people to waste their time going through a site trying to find something when they could go elsewhere and find it quicker. You must connect with your target user immediately and give them what they want before they know they want it.

Remember that your website is for the user, not for you. Just because you know where everything is – and how easy it is get the information/buy the product – does not mean everyone else will think the same.

You could spend thousands of pounds on SEO and other techniques to get traffic to your site, but if you haven’t put enough time and thought into conversion rate optimisation then you may find that your traffic generation efforts are entirely wasted.

Content Creation Warnings

Infinite Path — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:35:49 +0000

You may decide that it is easier and quicker to find content from elsewhere to include in your website, rather than writing it yourself. This is fine in theory but in reality, you could find yourself in deep trouble by taking content from external sources. Outlining all the potential pitfalls of taking external content would provide enough content for an entirely new website. For this reason, it may be advisable to employ the services of a professional content optimisation company. Here at Infinite Path, we are familiar with the problem areas in which many people encounter issues. However, there are several main tricky areas which you should keep in mind:

If you hire someone to write content for you, make sure you draw up a contract stating that you are purchasing all rights to the created content. If you don’t do this, you will not be able to use the article on an unlimited basis. If you have paid someone to create a really interesting and informative article, you want to be able to use it without restrictions
Always ask for permission before using an article you find on a website. If you do not do this, you could run into trouble with copyright law. Remember that copyright is a process which occurs as a natural process. You don’t need to register something as being protected by copyright or stamp a big copyright notice across the article. Always assume that you will be breaking some kind of copyright law if you take content without gaining clear and thorough permission
Rewording the content written by other people is fine if you provide an original slant. However, if your new content is practically a copy of the original but with a few words changed here and there, you could be punished. This is a complicated topic because it is hard to draw a line between something being a copy and something being original. For this reason, many companies choose to hire the services of a content optimisation company in order to avoid the worry of potentially losing valuable money
There are exceptions to copyright rules and these include government sources (although there are still some exceptions to this rule, so it is important to assume that you don’t have the right to take a source until you have researched it thoroughly).

Quick and Easy Ways to Create Content

Infinite Path — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:56:25 +0000

The best way to fill your site with content is by writing it yourself. Alternatively, if your talents do not rest easy in the world of content optimisation, you may decide to pass the writing duties on to somebody who can create unique articles quickly and efficiently. However, in reality, there are instances in which neither of these options seems appropriate. You may simply not have the time to be writing new, original content on a scale which is large enough to make an impact with the search engines and you may not be able to afford to pay someone to create content on your behalf. If this is the case, do not despair. There are easy (and free) ways to create content for your website. The most popular of these methods are:

Asking the author of another site if you can use some of their content. Although this sounds a bit cheeky, you will probably get some positive responses, since there are benefits for the site owner. Remember that it is best to put a unique slant on the content so that it does not look like outright duplication. For instance, you could provide a quirky comment at the bottom of the article or write a short article about the author of the original content. Make sure you keep the importance of relevance in mind at all times. Only think about asking for content that relates to your website in an interesting and informative manner.
Visiting content syndication sites. This is sometimes an easier method than the one mentioned above but it follows a similar pattern. Instead of approaching an individual website author, you simply visit a content syndication website. Authors post their content on here with the knowledge that other website owners will use it on their own pages. The potential downside to this method is that you will need to provide links back to the original website, so make sure you check where you will be sending traffic!
Finding government sources. It’s surprising what governments spend their time writing about. You may think that the subject of your website is too obscure to be considered for content creation by the government but in many cases you will find that you’re wrong. Spend some time looking on the internet for good government sources and include them in your website.
Tracking down (or creating your own) press releases. These can be found by looking on a search engine. Make sure you keep relevance in mind once again when looking for informative and useful press releases.

Social Media Brand Building: Where to Start?

Infinite Path — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:45:20 +0000

An effective social media brand building campaign will allow you to identify and interact successfully with your target market. It is becoming increasingly important for companies to be seen to be encouraging feedback, whether positive or negative, from consumers. If done properly, a social media campaign can significantly increase the incoming traffic to your site and positive brand awareness will multiply rapidly. Through social media websites, your company will be able to gain maximum exposure and organic link building should also be a natural result of this process. You may want to consider the following social media services:

Article submission to social news/bookmarking sites: e.g. Digg and Reddit
Group and fan page creation on social networking sites: e.g. YouTube and Twitter
Posting content to social media technologies: e.g. blogs and picture sharing websites
Participation on social media online communities: e.g. targeted forums
Thorough monitoring of all these services to assess which work best for your brand

Depending upon your individual requirements, it may be best to market existing content through social media or it may be more appropriate to create entirely new content with the aim of spreading it far and wide.

Assess the success of your blog

Infinite Path — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:57:46 +0000

If you have been writing a blog for a while, you may be wondering how it is being received across the web. There are, of course, several obvious ways to find out how your opinions are being received, including reading any feedback on your blog and keeping a close eye on changes in traffic. However, how else can you make sure that you are providing your loyal followers with what they really want? The answer is not simple and, to do this properly, you would need to spend a considerable amount of time planning a complex strategy. However, luckily for you, there are several obvious and easy steps which can be followed to give you a brief idea of how well your blog is performing:

Monitor how someone is viewing your blog: This is a simple yet potentially effective technique. Ask someone who is unfamiliar with your blog to take a quick look at it. Allow them to spend five minutes browsing your blog as if they had come across it on the web naturally. After this period of time has elapsed, ask them some basic questions. Target these questions to help you find out more information about specific parts of your blog that are worrying you. For instance, how easy did they find it to access related blog posts from your main page? Did they even think about doing this? How did they find the usability of your site? Did they find it easy to navigate or did they become frustrated trying to perform a simple action? This technique is not at all representative, since the opinions of one person may be the opposite of another. However, it does give you a quick idea about what needs to be improved and what already works. If you want to make this technique more representative, simply ask a few more people to do the same thing. Encourage honesty from the people you ask to take part. Make it clear that you won’t be offended by their input!
Spend some time conducting research yourself: It may have been so long since you made your blog that it is now slightly out-of-date with regards to formatting and style. Dedicate an hour or two of your time to having a close look at other blogs which are ranking highly and performing well on the web. Is there a common style of formatting that they are using? After you have done this and provided yourself with a general idea of what works and what doesn’t work, take a fresh look at your website. This can be hard because you know your site like the back of your hand but try to put yourself in the shoes of someone who has never seen your site before.
Write a blog post: Outline your concerns in a short blog post and encourage input from your readers. Ask them what they like and what they aren’t so keen on at the moment. If you have a particular area of concern, ask your readers how you could improve it to make their experience of your blog stress-free.
Email your loyal followers: If you are able to find an email address (or several) used by your loyal followers, ask them individually for their opinions. Ask for active input from them and make them feel as if their opinions will make an actual difference to you in the long-run. This technique can be particularly useful if you know that one of your readers is involved in a profession which could work to your advantage. For example, is one of your readers a professional web designer? If so, ask them targeted questions about how you could improve the layout of your blog in order to attract more readers and keep the ones that you currently have, happy.
Insert a poll on your blog: Inserting an obvious and easy-to-use poll on your blog will encourage input from visitors who do not usually come across your site. It is all very well encouraging debate and input from people who are familiar with your blog but new visitors may not feel comfortable providing you with personalised opinions. It is much easier for these people to spend a few seconds clicking on a poll anonymously. Make sure you do something with the results. It is all too common for blog authors to conduct polls, some on a large scale, and then ignore the results.

Content Optimisation

Infinite Path — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:26:31 +0000

A large part of search engine optimisation involves fairly technical work, particularly with regards to link building and assessing the value of websites which may provide links back to your site. However, with regards to managing a company’s online reputation and attracting potential customers, content optimisation is equally, if not more, important.

It’s all very well attracting proportionately more visitors to your website as a result of gaining a high rank in search engines but, ultimately, it is the content that will either make them stay or look elsewhere.

Style

Companies often make the mistake of believing that the best way to attract new business is to sell themselves through clichéd corporate talk. These companies will think nothing of boasting about their previous successes and promoting themselves as the best in their field in a shameless, and frankly embarrassing, manner. Far from attracting new customers, this technique only serves to disenchant people, who do not want companies to preach at them about how great they are.

Good copy should be written in as natural a style as possible. After all, websites are viewed by real human beings. They should therefore be written in a manner which appeals to real human beings. The concept of conversational economy should be followed at all times. Individuals want engaging, down-to-earth copy that does not stick to a preconceived formula.

It is actually more difficult to write in corporate speak than it is to write in a more natural style. The key is to be yourself. Don’t think that your personality is split into two, with one part suitable for life outside the office and the other suitable for life inside the office. Write in such a way that would make you feel comfortable if you were visiting your website. Cut out the jargon and write in a relatable manner. Visitors to any site are far more likely to stick around if they actually understand the content.

As a general copywriting rule, it is better to use shorter words rather than rambling phrases. This not only makes the copy easier to read and scan through for important information but will also make it more memorable. Short and snappy buzz words stick in the mind. Long, elaborate phrases do not.

Avoiding deception

Whilst it is important to speak on a personal level with visitors to your website, it is also important to remember that you are trying to sell or promote a product or service. As such, it is not appropriate to ramble for several paragraphs about your latest night out in the pub. Rather than appealing to visitors, this could introduce an element of dishonesty into your relationship and this, obviously, is not desirable. Instead, be upfront about what it is that you are trying to convey. Honesty is key in this context.

Make your copy relatable

In your written content, you should try to make your service or product as relatable and practical as possible. Talk candidly about the potential benefits of your service or product and the ways in which it could directly impact upon the everyday life of a typical website visitor. You can talk about the features and individual aspects of your service/product later in the copy.

As a general rule, consumers are far more likely to be interested in products which are presented in a practical manner. Products which are discussed in a theoretical or abstract way will not appeal as much as products which are described as being directly beneficial in the real world.

The same rule applies to language in general. Using confusing concepts can make language lose its original meaning. Try to make what you say accurately reflect what you think. Abstract concepts can make companies seem remote and inaccessible to the average website visitor.

Structure

Long, uninterrupted paragraphs intimidate visitors. Make sure you make your website as user-friendly and aesthetically attractive as possible. Use obvious and clear sub-headings, bullet points, lists, and highlighted excerpts of text. Visitors to the website will be far more inclined to read the entirety of your site if it is easy and manageable to do so.

Furthermore, individuals will be more likely to revisit your site in the future if they think they will be able to find important information quickly and easily. Your website could easily become a reputable authority on your given subject if you make it easy for visitors to find important information time and again.

Interaction

Encourage interaction in your written content. Include questions in your copy and actively ask visitors to leave comments and feedback. Do not ignore this feedback. Instead, provide useful answers and solutions and make it seem like you care. Do not be afraid to admit that you and your company are fallible and can be constantly improved by the input of other individuals.

Blogging: The Key Components

Infinite Path — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:58:25 +0000

Blogging is an activity carried out by many yet perfected by very few. The web is full of blogs which offer little value, useless information, and which exist solely to stroke the author’s inflated ego. However, occasionally you may be lucky enough to come across a real gem of a blog, one which offers you unique information and viewpoints, makes you think about a new topic in a completely new way, and ultimately excites you enough to make you talk about it either virtually or face-to-face. Many people think that writing a good and interesting blog is akin to understanding rocket science but this is not true. Stick to these simple guidelines and you will be giving yourself the best chance of blogging success:

Make your opinion know: Nobody wants to read a blog where you sit on the fence concerning a controversial topic. Make your opinions clear and exaggerate them if necessary. Blogs are all about subjectivity and being controversial (without being offensive or disrespectful) is very important
Write well consistently: Reading a clumsy blog with several spelling mistakes or grammatical errors can be an extremely painful experience. The level of authority imparted by your content will automatically decrease if you make just a few basic mistakes. If you have something important to say (and you really should if you are writing a blog), make sure you don’t undermine it by being careless with your style
Keep it short and sweet: Your readers won’t bother trawling through several laborious introductory paragraphs to reach your interesting content. Keep each blog post short (with 250 words acting as a general guideline) and to the point. You can follow your blog post up with another if you want to make further points but make sure each one is compact, relevant, and cohesive.
Involve your readers: Encourage feedback, comments, and debate on your blog. Nobody will respect you if you think that your viewpoint is infallible. If someone spends their time writing a comment and leaving feedback, make sure you do not ignore it. Their opinion deserves to be recognised, even if it does annoy you.
Remember that frequency is key: If you want to become an authoritative, popular blogger, who is lucky enough to have an army of followers, regular posting is simply essential. Spending an hour of your time creating a controversial, interesting blog is pointless if you then lose the followers who loved your initial post by failing to write anything new for another two weeks. Remember that blog followers will build up certain expectations of your blogging activity. They will not only expect a certain viewpoint and writing style from you. They will also expect you to respect them enough to remain regular and reliable with regards to your posting.