technology

Why the Fate of Your Website Will Be Decided in Less Time Than it Takes You to Read This Sentence

Why the Fate of Your Website Will Be Decided in Less Time Than it Takes You to Read This Sentence

Speed kills on the web. The same people who a decade ago would wait patiently through the screeching greeting of a dial-up modem are now frustrated when the homepage of CNN doesn’t refresh as quickly as a wiper blade across a windshield. Consider the following:

A Magazine is Not a Broken iPad (No Matter What Your Baby Says)

broken ipad, not a magazine

Homer Simpson understands children. Well, his children. All right, maybe just Maggie because she rarely speaks. But he knows enough about the relative predictability of kids to have once uttered, “You couldn’t fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.” Bravo, Homer. This is why you [...]

5 Things I Learned at the FOLIO Show

folio show

Earlier this month a group of us traveled from TMG in D.C. to the Marriot Marquis in New York to “join the media revolution” at the FOLIO: Show. The event had tracks on monetization, content, management, and marketing—and great key notes from the likes of Mashable’s Pete Cashmore and Time Inc.’s Fran Hauser. Here are [...]

QR Codes: Misunderstood? Or Are We Missing the Point?

qr codes: are they misunderstood?

Until recently, I didn’t have a smartphone, so I never paid much attention to QR codes since I wasn’t able to scan them anyway. But now I’ve finally joined the ranks of 72.5 million (and growing) smartphone owners in the U.S. and I downloaded a free QR code scanner from the App store so I could try [...]

7 Tips for Developing Your Webinar Strategy

developing a webinar strategy

As a content marketing strategy, webinars can be highly effective – positioning your organization as a thought leader or the go-to resource of valuable information. According to a recent B2B content marketing survey, nine out of ten B2B marketers are using content marketing, and of the ten content marketing tactics rated for effectiveness, webinars rated [...]

5 Future-proof Ideas For Your Website

future of websites

Predicting the future of the web is nearly impossible. Ever-changing technology provides fodder for our imagination to run wild. And it typically does. Imagination outpaces invention. And invention outpaces convention. Which is why we should focus less on technology, and more on human nature when we’re future-proofing our websites. If we bet on technology, we [...]

Why Distractions Mean Failure in Football and Marketing

distractions and content marketing

Once, after a loss, former Tennessee Titans’ coach Jeff Fisher made this statement to the media about his team’s effort: “I think you have to be able to deal with distractions, put them in perspective and move on. Distractions are the primary reason for losing football games. ” He didn’t chalk up the loss to [...]

3 Questions to Ask Before Jumping on a Marketing Bandwagon

3 Questions to Ask Before Jumping on a Marketing Bandwagon

It’s tough not to fall victim to me-tooism in our competitive media landscape. There are oohs and ahhs to reap, awards to win, client and board expectations to exceed and egos to stroke. So we see something shiny and we chase it. We see a toy and call it a tool, and make it part of our marketing [...]

Magazine ‘App’-titude

Magazine ‘App’-titude

When CNN announced plans earlier last week to acquire Zite, an upstart creator of magazine apps for Apple’s iPad, it wasn’t exactly Earth-shattering news. The East Coast was still sweeping up after Irene. In the wake of a disaster that almost was, the acquisition caused nary a ripple in the blogosphere. Understandable. The announcement didn’t [...]

4 Tips for Developing a Blog Comment Policy

soap in mouth

If you’ve spent much in social media, you’ve probably been warned not to “feed the trolls.” Trolls, as Wikipedia will tell you, are defined as “someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into [...]

Lessons Learned from a Twitter Robot

lessons learned from a twitter robot, contentasaurus pictured

A robot didn’t write this post. But if technology continues at the current pace, a future with bot-authored posts may not be too far off on the horizon. Depressing? Definitely. Crazy? Maybe not. Automation is alive and well in the world of social media and the debate rages on whether social media automation defeats the [...]

If This Post Were a Search Engine Results Page

search engine result page

And each phrase was a result (18.2%) With a percentage next to it (10.1%)

Should This Blog Post Have Been Written in Cursive?

cursive writing

I recently learned that Indiana, my beloved home state, is no longer requiring schools to teach cursive writing, focusing instead on printing and typing. I remember struggling to perfect my cursive writing in Mr. Biltz’s fifth grade class. But I never came close to the beautiful script of my teacher. If there were an Olympics [...]

Content Design for the Digital Reader

terry pittman, content marketing executive

I was sitting on the bus on the way to work a few mornings ago when a thought suddenly struck me: “Where’s all the trash?” Washington, D.C., where I live, is a city known for its appetite for reading. On any given morning, the downtown line is a gray hue of policy wonks, academics, financiers [...]

This Blog Post is Brought to You by Paper…Mostly

crumbled paper

This blog post was written mostly on a blank piece of paper. Yes, actual paper, with ruled lines and everything. I can’t remember the last time I sat down and scribbled away until I figured out what on earth I was writing about.

The Next Big Thud

next big thud, betamax tape

When it comes to gadgets and tech, I used to be a late adopter. I didn’t own a cellphone until 2000. Even four or five years ago, I would choose a cheap model and tell myself I really didn’t need a phone that took pictures, played music or even included a texting plan, for that [...]

Solve Problems for Your Customers with Content, Don’t Create New Ones

don't create new problems with content

We in marketing love us some big ideas. Attention-getting, jaw-dropping, breathtaking ideas that captivate our audience and sway them into taking action. It’s how we get noticed. It’s how we win awards. It’s how we achieve ROI. Or so we think. On paper, the ideas we come up with are brilliant. The storyboard is compelling. [...]

The Physical Fitness of Content

physical content versus virtual

Hey, sexy. Wanna get physical? No, no, I don’t want to make out with you (though that new haircut really is stunning). I’m just wondering if you’d rather have the game / program / book / magazine / newspaper / CD / DVD you’re about to buy in some sort of physical form, or if [...]

Me Data, You Jane

data rules everything binary code

James Gleick has a big, beautiful brain. It’s like a triple-decker cruise ship of mind-blowing philosophies that finds ports of call in areas such as the rise of technology and its tanned, bikini-clad sister, communication. In his new book “The Information,” Gleick saves the most colossal party for the island known as data. In fact, [...]

The Tao of Quality (Or, What I learned from Auto-Tune)

tao of quality

If you’ve heard any pop music at all over the past several years, you’ve probably heard Auto-Tune, seasoning and sometimes overwhelming the performances of the gifted and mediocre alike. It forces sounds to conform to a particular musical key, eliminating the hundreds of deviant microtones that distinguish the human vocal instrument—which may be why digitally [...]

I Stream, You Stream

content stream

Gary Shteyngart’s recent best-selling novel, “Super Sad True Love Story,” is set in an absurdly distopian but sadly plausible future where the information age has reached maximum insanity. Everyone obsesses over their “äppäräti,” geniusphone devices that constantly send and receive massive torrents of information. These smartphones-on-steroids allow for real-time broadcast of anything that crosses their [...]

More Please: Why I Welcome the Technology Overload with Open Arms

technology overload

I had my MacBook open on my older brother’s couch one lazy afternoon, busy browsing the Internet for nothing remotely important. My iPhone happily chirped that I had a message. I found my phone wedged under some couch cushions, and fired back a response within moments. I picked up my Kindle, downloaded a book, and [...]

The Charge of the iBrigade

power thirsty devices need outlets

I need juice. Constantly. Well, not me. Rather, my devices. All of those magical toys that keep me informed, keep me Tweeting, keep me listening to podcasts and watching YouTube and catapulting Angry Birds. They’re thirsty, demanding little electronic vampires. They need constant attention.

Gestures Above the Fold

extension eye above the fold

Back when wombats roamed the earth web pages were lengthy. Content flowed freely from top to abyssal bottom, tremendous grey trunks of text broken but rarely by an image or block. This was when “hypertext” was still the paradigm, when every term and notion merited a bit of blue underline guiding the patient reader to [...]

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