Agathon Group is a web development and cloud hosting company with a passion to serve Christian ministries. Other services they provide include programming, print design, branding and development. “We help you reach your audience by building and hosting web applications that solve your thorniest problems,” says CTO Peter Green. “Many website owners spend too much time […]
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A lot of people want to use Facebook to generate sales, donations, and new business. While Facebook can work marvelously to accomplish these objectives, it is rarely a direct transaction. In order to leverage the promotional power of Facebook, you need to adapt your promotion and probably your sales process. Why are They There? People […]
Continue ReadingPublications have rushed to embrace social media, and it’s become commonplace for a periodical’s website to include invitations to “Follow us on Twitter” and to “Like us on Facebook.” You’ll see these icons on the EPA website, along with one for joining the EPA group on LinkedIn, a social media platform which tends to be […]
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If you tried to follow every Twitter user, you’d be wading through 125,000 tweets a minute. During that same minute, the half-billion members of Facebook post about a million new photos, wall posts and status updates (including such newsworthy gems as “Eating pie now. Yum.”) YouTube receives 48 hours of video every minute, meaning that if a person spent every minute of their life watching YouTube they could get through about 10 days worth of uploads.
We live in an age of communication overload, where everybody is a content producer. But what the web really needs is a good editor. While people in the Christian periodical publishing industry have traditionally focused on creating content, today there’s a growing need for “curators” of content—-people who stand in the fire hose of fresh content and carefully pick out the refreshing glass of water that audience members are looking for. A content curator is a sort of “information wrangler,” looking through the herd of content and roping exactly the right critters.
Great piece in AdWeek, released Aug. 9, on the state of content management systems. If you’re like me, you’ll find it simultaneously encouraging (I’m not alone!) and discouraging (there’s no great solution).
“There’s no such thing as a CMS success story,” writes Erin Griffith. “At least, successes are elusive, which is a problem for anyone in media, as content management systems—the software used by writers, editors, and producers to create digital content for websites—have become as essential as oxygen.”
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As periodical publishers are moving toward offering digital distribution of content, we’re discovering that a financial model that works for print often falls short in the virtual world. Online advertising doesn’t bring in the same level of revenue as print, and readers are resistant to the idea of paying for content. So when analog dollars turn into digital dimes, what’s a publisher to do? Start stacking dimes!
That’s the advice of Journal Register Co. CEO John Paton. In an interview with the industry journal News & Tech he said, “If a digital ad is worth a dime, then find a cost-effective way to get those dimes. Look at it this way: Adobe spent millions of dollars to develop Flash and Acrobat, but they give those apps away for free, because free is the market. We have a similar situation. If the audience you have is only worth dimes, then you have to find a cost-effective way to create and deliver content to that audience.”
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by Mark Winz
A few weeks back I won a Kindle e-reader in a drawing. I didn’t use it much until about a week ago. I was preparing to spend between 36 and 72 hours at a hospital accompanying my wife while she underwent surgery. I knew she would be in at least three places in the hospital for tests, medical procedures and recovery. I wanted to be nearby or with her during that time. Waiting in thus-named rooms, sitting with her while she slept and conversing briefly when she awoke would fill both days and nights.
Continue Reading“Ask Doug” is an advice column written by EPA Executive Diretor Doug Trouten, using questions he encounters during the course of his duties.
Dear Doug:
I’m wondering if I should jump on the bandwagon and pay somebody big bucks to write an iPad app for my publication. What do you think?
–Apple Envy
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The Internet is a great resource tool, but how to you separate the wheat from the chaff? Find some practical guidelines here.
