How to Improve Content? Follow the (social) Media.

Bashing the "mainstream media" the last few years has become a sport of sorts. Everyone jumped in with their own predictions of doom. And the numbers are there to back it. Web bubble or no, print readership, subscribers, and circulation have all trended down since the dawn of the information age.  For much of this time, media companies were in some form of denial.  But with the resurgence of the Web often called "Web 2.0," for the first time in a long time, the outlook for the media industry isn't filled with gloom and doom.  In fact, the convergence of multi-channel communications and the explosion of "community" or "user generated content" is fueling a new found sense of opportunity that at least blunts the fear associated with such dramatic change.  

Visit your local online news site, and chances are, there's a lot more there than articles filed by reporters.  A recent study of news sites detailed the importance of rich media and other channels, such as Video, RSS, Blogs and Podcasts as the main driver of Web site traffic.  Use of video content was up 30% or more, and almost all had some form of user interaction such as comments on Blogs or stories.  The success of these new channels is not simply driven by mobile devices or other technical changes, but by a recognition that the Web as a communication medium is fundamentally interactive.  Indeed, the authors of the study had this piece of advice for news sites: "steer away from AP and generic content and instead offer unique, hyper-localized information that is difficult to find elsewhere."

Some media commentators have suggested going that one further, not just utilizing, but relying on so-called "user generated content" as a primary content generation mechanism.  It's an intriguing way of turning a negative into a positive. The high cost of generating content and holding onto visitors is transformed into a highly interactive and participatory subscriber base.

For those not in the media business, now might be a good time to stop the bashing and realize that many of these problems are headed your way as well.  While retention of paid advertising or a subscriber base might not be a universal need, every Web project today is under increasing pressure to deliver measurable return on investment from site visitors, and all under the increasingly constrained budgets for content generation and production.

Leveraging user generated content, embracing new channels and rich media, linking, syndicating and otherwise blending your own site content with community sites and other external sites have become a critical new means for meeting these challenges.  If the surge in demand for our own Community Marketing Solution is any indication, this is one trend the market is not waiting to adopt.