////See website for some excellent graphics/ charts/ tables
We need to start thinking about content as a separate entity unto itself, not beholden to one platform but rather extendable across platforms. We are moving into an increasingly mobile environment, especially during evening hours. In fact, 22% of web content is now consumed via mobile. What people are doing on them varies by category and type as well, with games and social networking winning out but entertainment and lifestyle (and other, which does not have an explanation) both have enough of a percentage to be cited: 39% games on smartphones and 67% on tablets, 24% social networking on smartphones and 10% on tablets, 9% entertainment on tablets and 3% on smartphones.
The biggest change, though, is a mindset shift from content created for a platform to content that lives outside of platform and moves across platforms. It’s marketing in a loose, wide sense. We’re talking here about content accessibility, which is content marketing. Here are a few ideas for how content should work:
Videos are made to be consumed on the desktop. Video on mobile feels like it has been retrofitted to the device, and it never works quite well. Either the video won’t render well because of slow 3G, or it doesn’t work for other people around because the person watching the video is not using headphones. What is the alternative? Simply, transcripts. While transcripts are not ideal from anyone’s perspective, including one at least allows content consumers to read what is happening in the video and know if it is worth their time to go find the video once they have an Internet connection again.
Responsive design: I recently switched my personal photography site over to a responsive design. For the past year, it was pretty much impossible to navigate on a smartphone, and a tablet was not much better. Doing this has improved every key metric on the site.
Different headlines for different devices: What I would love is the ability to push, from the CMS, different titles to different platforms like social, apps, and RSS. This implementation will be tricky, and will involve more work for the writers, but as Karen says we’re getting back to the essence of journalism where you write multiple headlines depending on the publication and audience. This is the new direction of web publishing, I think. While print tries to move to digital, digital cannot throw the baby out with the bathwater. Best practices are best practices for a reason! Each title will be saved in the database in a separate field and pulled as needed. The RSS/App title will be pulled by apps like Pulse or Flipboard. We may need a new standard for app publishers for this to work well, though.
We also have a social problem. Currently, the way social works when content is published sucks. So Twitter doesn’t do what we want, and Facebook doesn’t do what we want without manual input. I hate that every time I publish a post, I then have to go to Buffer or Tweetdeck (since I can’t pick times for posts to publish from within Twitter.com for some dumb reason) to then manually write out the tweets I want.
What if, when you published a post, you could also specify the tweets (and the number of them), the time, and also specify how a Facebook update will look?
From Desktop to Mobile: We’re talking about publishing content that is then pushed to, and optimized for, mobile devices as well as desktop.
We are currently encountering the problems with cross-platforms. The mobile-first idea neglects the desktop users, of whom there are still many. But equally, desktop-centric ignores mobile. We cannot forget either.
There has to be a better way. And this involves:
Desktop and mobile-optimized titles
Desktop and mobile-optimized images that scale up or down for the platform
Removal of links (with a notice that a link has been removed) when read within an offline app
Ability to save a piece of content to be read on a different platform to get the full experience. I picture something like how Netflix works across Apple devices. I can flick a movie from my iPhone to my iPad Mini to an Apple TV easily. Content should be so easy to use!
We’re getting the same content (so we have to produce less of it) in front of new people (a new audience) in a way that is user-friendly and increases our serendipity with our users. And because we’re doing a little bit more work on the front end, we ultimately get to do less and can either enjoy more free time or be able to do more in the same amount of time.
The Future of Cross Platform Publishing John Doherty Jan 8, 2013 http://www.johnfdoherty.com/future-of-cross-platform-publishing/
////See website for some excellent graphics/ charts/ tables
We need to start thinking about content as a separate entity unto itself, not beholden to one platform but rather extendable across platforms. We are moving into an increasingly mobile environment, especially during evening hours. In fact, 22% of web content is now consumed via mobile. What people are doing on them varies by category and type as well, with games and social networking winning out but entertainment and lifestyle (and other, which does not have an explanation) both have enough of a percentage to be cited: 39% games on smartphones and 67% on tablets, 24% social networking on smartphones and 10% on tablets, 9% entertainment on tablets and 3% on smartphones.
The biggest change, though, is a mindset shift from content created for a platform to content that lives outside of platform and moves across platforms. It’s marketing in a loose, wide sense. We’re talking here about content accessibility, which is content marketing. Here are a few ideas for how content should work:
What if, when you published a post, you could also specify the tweets (and the number of them), the time, and also specify how a Facebook update will look?
We are currently encountering the problems with cross-platforms. The mobile-first idea neglects the desktop users, of whom there are still many. But equally, desktop-centric ignores mobile. We cannot forget either.
There has to be a better way. And this involves:
Desktop and mobile-optimized titles Desktop and mobile-optimized images that scale up or down for the platform Removal of links (with a notice that a link has been removed) when read within an offline app Ability to save a piece of content to be read on a different platform to get the full experience. I picture something like how Netflix works across Apple devices. I can flick a movie from my iPhone to my iPad Mini to an Apple TV easily. Content should be so easy to use!
We’re getting the same content (so we have to produce less of it) in front of new people (a new audience) in a way that is user-friendly and increases our serendipity with our users. And because we’re doing a little bit more work on the front end, we ultimately get to do less and can either enjoy more free time or be able to do more in the same amount of time.