Live Wire: The Field Guide to Creating Digital Content

To really understand what it takes to do digital journalism today, you should brush up on digital content editing, because it’s where much of the professional learning is happening. Unlike standard journalists who may focus on their beat story until there’s a story for them, professionals who want to build their careers in digital journalism are stepping into the role as digital content producers.

We’re not just content producers anymore. Rather, we often find ourselves challenging and reinventing the process of developing news articles, taking shortcuts into more original, compelling and unique ideas for unique stories. And it’s challenging to do this when the nature of our work and our learning haven’t kept pace.

For too long, our professional field of journalism simply took the conventional narrative approach to developing news stories and stories that could be published online. But the tools we use to produce digital content today don’t work the same way.

In our new book, Live Wire: The Field Guide to Creating Digital Content, we call it “Breaking the Digital Presentation Mold.” To create and share digital content that hits the ground running, professionals have to dive deeper and figure out new ways to find, create and “retouch” stories, while incorporating, as best they can, professional tools.

Like traditional reporters, digital content producers use narrative techniques to use hard-earned skills in a professional environment: gathering, filing, writing, editing, blogging, producing, and publishing. But we do so in digital formats. Using these more digital tools can help us move faster, longer, more efficiently and with fewer errors.

That’s why digital content producers need to understand digital editing and materials management. These tools help manage the creative workflow and practice of creating and distributing digital content with high levels of digital file and format security, ease of production and decent cost.

According to a new report from Forrester Research, digital news professionals—those who influence and act on digital news production processes, define the content template, manage and distribute content and have the ability to record and archive content—will grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 13.6 percent from 2015 to 2022. The report details top five digital news professionals: social media editor, TV newscaster, social media editor, web producer and web design coordinator.

Consider a TV Newscaster, who posts on social media and gets tracked down by customers at home, and a social media editor, who posts on social media and gets tracked down by social media editors and reporters working on news stories.

While this trend continues, skills to support digital news professionals’ careers continue to evolve. Courses like Live Wire provide content producers with training in essentials and advanced skills they will need to succeed. Our core course is designed to help these digital content producers establish the skills they’ll need to control and manage digital content they produce. And our Advanced Digital Content Ethics course will teach people what they need to know to support this move into the role as digital content producers, including ethics of ethical sourcing, research, research methodology, ethical data collection and analytical analysis.

Here are some of the skills and approaches we’ll teach in our course:

Advanced Digital Content Ethics

Sharing Content Across Platforms

Social Media Marketer

Web Producer

Social Media Editor

Live Wire: The Digital Presentation

For regular readers of Digital Content Hub, I know that this piece is going to be appreciated. For those who may not know me as an editor, though, my original title is editor at a digital news organization. To you, I may not be the editor your family and friends are used to, but perhaps the path to the master class is shared by someone you know from your college days or your digital news community.

Having worked on digital or mobile news over the past 15 years and with 10 of my former colleagues at Hearst Corp. for over a decade as one of the founding members of the Digital Content Hub, I believe we have a special purpose in the way we live, breathe and learn about digital journalism. Many of us have daily routines of dealing with social media or have developed strong relationships with groups on social media.

And though we may not be the traditional news media, we’re interested in good stories and that’s why we’re seeking writers and producers who think about digital content, but who are also interested in news, and who have been asked to share something so they feel connected and empowered to respond to readers.

The ideas and tips provided in Live Wire will help any individual or organization think about producing their digital content in a way that is both professional and engaging. That way, they can follow the passion they have for what they do every day.

Content Automation Content Marketing Marketing

Content Engine Content Marketing

Content Marketing World 2019: Best Use of Blog, Facebook, Twitter

Read here to learn how to achieve an industry-centered strategy that gets the most out of your content marketing spend. In this way, content marketing becomes a case of knowing where the opportunity is and are you going to give it to the public. In the world of digital marketing, where speaking the language of the crowds has become an almost essential skill, getting noticed as a content creator isn’t always easy. With those Community Managers engaged on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit – they can spread the word on Google: and that sounds like a pretty big advantage. As much as we would like to think that a strong buy-now strategy will push us to purchase in the moment, the reality is that it won’t. Instead, you can segment your broader userbase with the right messages and offer a discount only for C2 customers, for example, a discount or a purchase promotion that only reaches the most likely buyers.When you combine lead scoring and personas with data analytics, buying intent should be kept simple. It is only part of a larger buying scheme, which consists of your most valuable content, offers, and marketing campaign data. When you collect the correct data, you can show the audience in the correct manner the content and offers they want to see in the relevant channels, at the right time. Unless you are a creative production company that actually spends their time creating things from scratch, writing and delivering a few thousand words of content for publication every day, you are likely to have a manageable percentage of publishable content on your blog or webpage. Not only is this the evidence in front of you, but also in front of the customers (who generally like to read content that is relevant to them and works for them). Marketers that value their branding and reputation will invest time in producing specific content for specific audiences, places, and occasions. As marketing transformation takes off, these are the types of things you will see getting organized – a stream of content, so to speak. When you have a lot of content and focus on producing compelling content, you will be able to reach the right audience in the right place at the right time, when they are ready to buy. And here’s the thing – the content marketers who are prepared to master the art of testing, and learn how to listen to their audiences, can earn some pretty big advantages in terms of their bottom line. Content Marketing World is an opportunity for you to stay up-to-date and learn new things, and to run towards the opportunities that will keep your website updated with high-quality, relevant content that will keep people coming back.

Content Engine

Jan 23
5 mins read

Content Engine Content Marketing

Digital Advertising Agency Kyobri Releases Data Driven Media Report

Global digital advertising agency, Kyobri, recently published a report that discusses the Content Marketing Service Industry, and helps guide a better understanding on what the future holds. The Data Driven Media Report was developed by Kevin Motts, Director of Competitive Intelligence at Kyobri, working with the analytics team led by Ariel Wilkerson, in collaboration with external editors from Kyobri and Deloitte. “Marketers need to consider this higher investment in content marketing services as one of the different ways to allocate marketing budgets. The data generated by content marketing services also helps a lot in showing the digital consumer when consumers have interest in a product, and when they don’t. By not only providing great content, but also by working with local leaders to the content itself, technology partners can expand into content services, and stand in the way of the bigger giants, such as Google. Once you have worked to understand content marketing and content marketing services, new opportunities will present themselves. This is why Co-grow with Gartner is discussing the technology uses in the content marketing space. Q&A: Motts Provides Tips on Successful Content Marketing Service Delivery Q: What are some of the biggest challenges to running content marketing services business? A: If you can find a content marketing services provider with a very engaged team, it will be easier to manage everything, including monitoring. When you sign up with a content services provider, you need to take the time to take a hard look at them and get to know them. There is another big thing that everyone in marketing knows is essential to building a company that sticks around over the long term, and it’s alignment between the people, strategy, and processes. Right now, the biggest technology I’m using is Google Analytics, which is a tool to measure the performance of a company’s efforts in multiple areas, both inside and outside the company. Although data is used to make decisions about creating content and how you will reach them, social listening and information sharing is also a key part of this: You need to know what’s happening on other channels, especially Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, so that you’re not missing out on important conversations that people are having about the organization. In marketing, it’s a lot about trying to connect to people through the various ways they are consuming information. Both inside and outside the company, technology is your gateway to delivering high quality content in a way that people want to hear. I also see a lot of companies using surveys to get a better understanding of the people working for them.

Content Engine

Jan 23
5 mins read