Falling Off A Blog

Will marketing go social?

Two reports out this week predict fast growth in social media marketing.

The first, from Forrester, forecasts US social media marketing spending will reach $3bn in 2014, up from around $700m in 2009.

The second, from eMarketer, predicts that, after a small dip this year due to the recession, spending on social media marketing will grow fast, reaching $1.4bn in 2011.

It is taking marketers a while to get their heads around social media, and to overcome their natural aversion to the anarchic nature of the environment. Marketers like to have total control over "the message" and you just can't do that with social media.

But I think that social media marketing could become a major source of revenue for publishers and others who find themselves running sites with significant social elements. That's because there are two aspects of social media that are potentially very attractive for marketers.

Today's workstation

Not my usual view when working (which is of Croydon, out of the 8th floor window in Quadrant House, Sutton). This is where I'm working (yes, I AM working) this afternoon - the balcony of my hotel room near Athens in Greece.

For the next 2 days I'm at the Woodwing Publishing Conference. Tomorrow morning I sing for my supper, giving one of the keynote presentations.

Print ad decline continues

B2B magazine ad pages in the US dropped by more than a quarter in the year to January, according to research by American Busienss Media. B2B magazine ad revenue was down 21%.

My place of work

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Speaking in East London in the morning

Off to speak at a "What Works Online" seminar for customers this morning at the e-Rejuvenation Centre in Commercial Street, Tower Hamlets. Thanks to Google Maps adding the Street View functionality for London I can now show you where that is:

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To sub or not to sub?

Judging by some of the comments under my last post, I wasn't entirely convincing when I said that, in some circumstances, introducing a subbing stage into the journalistic process can damage the user experience.

Let me try to explain what I mean.

The circumstances I am thinking of are those where the journalist and audience are interacting in a conversational way, in real-time (or close to it) - for example in a discussion forum, a live chat or a blog discussion. In these circumstances, having every word the journalist writes checked and possibly re-written by a sub can interfere with the dynamic.

The Web Production Desk

I’ve been giving some thought recently to the online equivalent of the magazine production desk.

We've done a lot of work with our writers over the past couple of years, helping them to transform themselves into digital journalists. And there is a reasonably clear digital migration path for our art editors/designers, taking responsibility for the look-and-feel and usability of our websites. But so far we haven't talked very much about the future for the people who work on our production desks.

Heroes of the hour

Adam Tinworth (right) and Nick Booth relax with a well-earned plastic cup of champagne, after RBI successfully went live with Moveable Type 4.1.
You can get a flavour of what they went through to bring this project to completion on Adam's blog.

Vertical search is hard

I just checked out yet another search engine, SiloBreaker, on the recommendation of information industry analysts Outsell.

Their gushing report, about SiloBreaker and another search specialist called Collexis, said these tools "take vertical search to the next level and show the way forward for value-added search services."

You can see why I thought it was worth a visit. So how did it do?

Caroline Slootweg, new media marketing director, Unilever

Caroline's presentation is titled: "Beyond banners - an advertiser meets web 2.0"

"The web is inherently female. These days its about shopping, chatting, sharing - these are things that women do"