AdPerfect Blog

AdPerfect Adds The Seattle Times to Its Growing Customer List

Mon, 19 Oct 2020 14:36:13 GMT

AdPerfect Adds The Seattle Times to Its Growing Customer List

AdPerfect, one of the leading obituary platforms used by media companies across North America, will provide its technology and expertise to The Seattle Times, the most read local news and information company in the Pacific Northwest.

The AdPerfect Obituary platform provides readers and customers with an exceptional experience for sharing the life and memories of a loved one who has passed. The platform provides a modern user interface and an efficient self-serve option for funeral homes and private parties to place obituary notices.

“We’ve worked closely with AdPerfect for a number of years on other products and their customer service, attention to detail and willingness to be a true partner is second to none”, said Gary Smith, VP of Advertising – The Seattle Times

AdPerfect was acquired by Tribute Technology last August, a company that provides funeral management and website software to 70% of the funeral home businesses in the U.S.A and Canada. Today, with a direct connection between AdPerfect’s obituary software solution and local funeral home’s software, this never-before-seen opportunity is quickly being adopted by hundreds of local media outlets.

“We’re ecstatic to have The Seattle Times take advantage of our obituary platform, as the devotion and admiration they enjoy from informed readers throughout the Pacific Northwest demonstrates how committed they are to their customers. Being able to provide The Seattle Times and funeral homes in the Seattle area with a fully integrated platform will mean better service for families” said Jim McIntosh, Executive Chairman of AdPerfect.

About AdPerfect

AdPerfect is the most trusted provider of mobile-friendly self-service advertising solutions for publishers and newspapers. We build reliable online platforms and engaging interfaces focused on attracting advertisers, driving user traffic and growing print and digital revenue. For more than a decade, we have always been, and continue to be, committed to designing technologies that support the evolving needs of the media publishing industry. For more information, contact Jim McIntosh, Executive Chairman, AdPerfect at jim.mcintosh@adperfect.com or phone 604.760.9039.

About The Seattle Times

The Seattle Times serves the Northwest with independent, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism, as the region’s most trusted news media company, dedicated to public service. The Seattle Times is the second largest newspaper on the West Coast and the most-visited digital information source in the state. Founded in 1896 by Alden J. Blethen, The Seattle Times is now led by the Blethen family’s fourth and fifth generations. It also owns the Yakima Herald-Republic and The Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

About Tribute Technology

Tribute Technology is the leading technology provider for the funeral and death care industry. Tribute Technology provides website design and development; online obituary applications; case management software; extensive funeral payment technology including credit card processing, ACH payments, crowdfunding, financing, and life insurance assignments; floral eCommerce solutions; digital marketing services; and personalization software for keepsakes, funeral stationery, and video. Tribute Technology's goal is to be the turnkey funeral technology solution for funeral homes and publishers across North America.

AdPerfect Discusses the Company's Obituary Platform & Freemium Model on Guaranteed Digital: The Podcast

Tue, 08 Sep 2020 14:38:39 GMT

AdPerfect Discusses the Company's Obituary Platform & Freemium Model on Guaranteed Digital: The Podcast
August 10, 2020

In partnership with the Local Media Association’s Digital Summit, Daryl Hively of Guarantee Digital conducted podcasts with each of the Association’s many Research and Development partners prior to the start of the conference. In this episode, Daryl sat down with Matthew Ipsan, to learn more about the AdPerfect freemium model, how the company is focused on helping the industry find new and sustainable business models and how the acquisition of AdPerfect by Tribute Technology is a game changer for local media companies.

Listen to the Podcast episode below:

AdPerfect Participates in Local Media Association Panel Discussion: Look Globally, Deploy Locally

Fri, 04 Sep 2020 18:23:34 GMT

AdPerfect Participates in Local Media Association Panel Discussion:
Look Globally, Deploy Locally Roundtable
August 14, 2020

As the media industry continues on the path of digital transformation, the increasing need to focus on the customer journey, by leveraging data and consumer insights, will be imperative. Kirsten DiChiappari from BlueVenn and Matthew Ipsan from AdPerfect moderated a roundtable at the Local Media Association’s Digital Summit, on how companies outside of the media industry are having huge success focusing on enhancing every step of the customer journey.

Kirsten and Matthew were joined by guests Ashley Montroy, Executive Vice President of Tribute Technology and Nancy Davis from the Arbor Day Foundation. Both companies have seen tremendous revenue results by harnessing the power of data to make the customer journey both enjoyable and efficient.

Watch a recording of the panel discussion below:

AdPerfect Introduces Keynote Speaker at 2020 Local Media Association's Digital Summit

Fri, 04 Sep 2020 18:18:42 GMT

AdPerfect Introduces Keynote Speaker at 2020 Local Media Association's Digital Summit
August 10, 2020

At the Local Media Association’s Digital Summit in August of 2020, Executive Director of the LMA, Nancy Lane, asked AdPerfect to prepare the opening remarks and introduction to the Keynote Address on new business models, such as philanthropy, to support and sustain local journalism.

With nearly 600 people in attendance, virtually, Matthew Ipsan of AdPerfect explained how the AdPerfect freemium model is a perfect example of a new business structure - one designed to provide local media companies with two essential elements for sustainability - significant expense reduction and new incremental revenue through e-commerce.

Watch the recording here:

Tribute Technology Acquires AdPerfect

jgreen@frontrunner360.com — Sat, 15 Feb 2020 17:58:40 GMT

Tribute Technology Acquires AdPerfect

Leading funeral home services and technology provider adds media platform Tribute Technology, the leading provider of funeral management and website services, with cutting-edge personalization and technology solutions used by more than 70% of the funeral home businesses in the United States, has acquired AdPerfect, one of the leading obituary platforms used by media companies across North America.

The acquisition will deliver online and self-serve obituaries at no cost to local publishers, while also providing publishers of all sizes and platforms with significant revenue-driving products, such as the Tribute Store.

“We’ve had unprecedented growth in the funeral home technology space over the last several years, so acquiring a company with AdPerfect’s reputation in the media industry is a natural addition to our mission -- providing unparalleled service and technology to funeral homes and families in the communities we serve,” said Matt Frazer, CEO, Tribute Technology.

Jim McIntosh, Executive Chairman of AdPerfect, said, “We’re ecstatic to be joining the Tribute Technology team, as the devotion and admiration they enjoy from funeral home directors across the country demonstrates how committed they are to their customers. Being able to provide funeral homes and local media outlets with a fully integrated platform will mean better service for families and communities.”

About Tribute Technology

About AdPerfect

Online Conversions in 2019

jgreen@frontrunner360.com — Mon, 22 Jul 2019 06:00:00 GMT

Online Conversions in 2019

The primary goal of online marketing and content is to attract leads and lead them to make a decision. Online conversions are now the ROI of every company. To keep up, every company needs to be aware of new automation options and technology to accomplish wider online reach. Here are some stats to consider.

The New Social Paradigm – Distribute Information or Provide Value?

Thu, 20 Jun 2019 22:57:00 GMT

The New Social Paradigm – Distribute Information or Provide Value?

Communicating with customers and prospects are spanning to wider applications. Just calling a phone number is no longer enough. As customers are more aware of their options, they want more robust and agile services and the content of your message needs to be multifaceted and provide value.

In comes social selling, using your brand and message to listen and engage with decision makers and consumers on social media to answer questions they search for. Now your salespeople need to be digitally minded and use your brand on social to connect, reach and grow the right community, insights and connections.

Your Brand Helps You Stand Out

Nothing really has changed about the importance of branding. The game is the same; just the rules keep evolving. Perception is everything when it comes to your publication value in the eyes of the reader. You can train and equip your sales team to use best practices and respond timely to all questions and needs; but if you brand does not built the right and trustworthy perception, your team will reach a cap at their efforts.

There are some important areas to consider to work on your branding, which is not just designing a new logo or website. Those are helpful to provide a visualization for your readers, changes have happened. But you also need to offer tangible options to close the gap of your brand perception.

One option is looking at your service levels and packages. There may be areas you no longer need to offer, combine options into one, while other areas you need to develop and grow. You can differentiate your brand to provide a higher level of service by analyzing how your customers and readers value that option. This will become easily identified by looking at customer service comments, and listening to your sales team commenting on their daily interactions. Also looking at a heat map of your website and analytics, looking at areas that draw more browsers to click. Your services can present a tiered approach, based on the frequency and amount of services used. Even if it means creating a services that a handful will use; this can in time create a niche not thought of before.

Many consumers are driven to get a more premium access to services that are a necessity. Perhaps a more sophisticated service level can include dedicated phone lines and personnel for annual print or digital service holders versus shorter term. The focus is on a more personalized and premium service as a value added introductory component. Especially when it comes to dedicated personnel or account managers, equipping your team with staff closely familiar with accounts, and have easy access to all details add value to your brand. Personalization does not come only in marketing communication, but in other service areas as well.

Provide Information, Not Sales Pitches

While branding is all about providing the service and value, another aspect of social selling is generating content that educate and not sell. We can see this play out with a lot of digital advertising and their perception as unnecessary noise by many consumers. The best way social and value-based selling works is starting off as an educator. To build trust and get engagement your brand needs to become the approachable expert in published local or national news.

Freely answer questions that affect your local audience, while discussing the challenges of industries, as well as relevant international topics that might not be your regular focus. Sharing knowledge that many might not think of but would raise interest, without promoted content can instill confidence that this independent sharing and encourage for repeat visits. This helps build online social relationships. Let’s be honest, most people come to your website to read your quick comments on political issues or sports results but there is no guarantee they come back again. They are looking for answers, gathering options, ideas, stories and shaping their perspective for what is right for them. So mainly focus on providing your content in the most convenient and helpful way as possible.

But let’s also be real, you have to build your services and team to be better than your competition. To be better does not mean you need a big team or revamp everything from scratch. This means you have to make those specific tweaks on your website that make sure your profile actually shows up when your readers are looking for expertise and information. Maybe you hire part time social media gurus; summer student interns that would love to get their hands to test and try things. So in time, your readers will see you as a valuable contact and option in their daily browsing.

Some small changes in how your profiles are viewed online; maybe that very long ‘About Us’ page can be more visual about your staff and the new interesting topics you cover seasonally. Adding some valuable details about your editor and writers backgrounds and links to popular articles they have written, will help present you as a credible publisher who has shared and will continue to contribute valuable insights for your local audience. Try to make sure you have a consistent tone across all your print and online platforms.

Artificial Intelligence Marketing

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 19:51:00 GMT

Artificial Intelligence Marketing

With Google and Amazon investing more and more in artificial intelligence, there is still a lot of expectations and hype around the upcoming developments in technology. Although no one for sure can confidently forecast or speculate where the industry stands on this, we looks at some interesting numbers and stats.

Ethical Advertising in the Intelligent Era

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 21:23:00 GMT

Online interactions are not only redefining how we receive and gather information, but also our definitions of ethics online are also being redefined. Majority of consumers now believe that using data to personalize ads is unethical. According to research, 59% believe that personalization to create tailored newsfeeds — precisely what Facebook, Twitter, and other social applications do every day — is unethical. Not only that, 91% of people find online ads more intrusive today than they did just a couple of years ago.

As we can notice, regulations such as GDPR are now being enforced to bring some boundaries and tracking. These shifts are making sure the advertising industry clearly differentiates editorial and news content from paid ads for transparency and less confusion of the public.

Transparency

Between the years 2016 and 2018, the once cheered for internet and social media platforms being a safe and happy space no longer exists. The internet is no longer an ethical place to share and connect without data being exploited, the way it was dreamed of in the 90s.

This has pushed many consumers to take “breaks” from their phones and social media accounts to alleviate the stress. The more informed millennial consumers are now shifting the arena of transparent advertising, where they want the opportunity to “opt out” of advertising tracking methods. There is a rising popularity of ad blockers more than ever before. Over 45% of users are using ad blockers to stop ads being displayed; many users are opting to pay the ad-free premium services. Transparency in advertising will inform consumers if tracking practices are being implemented and make the decision if they want to participate. Without this option, users are more and more are unforgiving to the services they use, such as Facebook.

On the other hand, many marketers and publishers have allowed agencies to autonomously buy ad space, granting them a lot of freedom. Especially with Google, Facebook and other advertising programmatic exchanges do not provide much transparency in the selling process. Now is the era of the sophisticated and automated decision making, pouring advertising budgets into the vortex of digital advertising. So transparency is not only needed on the consumer end, but also on issues of brand identity safety, looking closely where your brand ads are hosted and their context. In this way, many fraudulent digital ads can be easily spotted and dealt with. The more personal interactions in booking ads are now gone, the focus being on overall reach.

A specific way to address both issues is moving all display advertising in-house; using digital platforms and services to execute your projects while still managing all the decisions. This will give priority to your ad inventory quality and lessening the noise users feel when browsing online. Creating more control over digital advertising will be key for all digital marketers to move closer to greater transparency.

Personalized versus Contextualized

Both personalized and contextualized ads have emerged with their own benefits, mainly being used as separate strategies. While contextualized ads use content to determine insights about their audience interests, personalized ads focus mainly on the user profile data to enrich the audience experience. Today the online noise cannot be muted without using both approaches together to strengthen your ad value.

Personalization takes the first step to take into account what your audience would like to see as they are browsing. But contextualization in digital also provide additional insights into the why they are browsing for information. Using both methods in research and gathering data will better help meet exact requirements and improve user experience one step further. And in this manner, your marketing efforts and tools will be used to its full capacity and bring higher ROI.

Another important point to make sure is monitored continually is updating customer profiles with the latest information from various touch points. The more updated the information, the better and more current detailed view of your audience. This will also help create new niche content ideas as well as promotions for your publication. Mixing behavioral targeting and contextual advertising, helps the reader to find what they are looking for and ensure engagement. The higher the ad relevancy, the less noisy and the more valuable it becomes to the individual. As you manage and regulate your digital advertising, the relationship between your content and ads become as one unit and bring a sense of trust and quality to your brand.

As the consumer perceptions keep shifting from personalized content and protection of their profile data, there is now a need for a new standard for digital businesses. At each level of revamping, modernizing and growing their business offerings through emerging technology, every publisher need to consider their consumer’s right to privacy, as well as using this data ethically.

Online Classifieds in 2019

Wed, 05 Jun 2019 16:15:00 GMT

Online Classifieds in 2019

According to recent research from the Online Classifieds Industry Report, 56.9% of companies are confirming that they plan to launch new products or services, while 58.6% planning to hire new staff in the next year and even, 38% plan to modify their business model in the next 3-5 years. This shows an optimistic and healthy industry for online classifieds. There are many opportunities for many sectors and we took a look at the current pulse among home buyers, job seekers and car shoppers, that can impact your plans for 2019.

Classifieds isn’t dead, it’s getting smarter.

Mon, 27 May 2019 23:29:00 GMT

Classifieds isn’t dead, it’s getting smarter.

Online classifieds advertising, although mostly under-appreciated, is now a dynamic category with constant challenges for the future, such as rise of new players and big data. Traditionally newspaper publishers would provide the bulk of all classifieds advertising, especially the employment, automotive and real estate advertisements. But following the shift toward online, classifieds have become somewhat unnoticed, or even invisible.

This new online pressure has mainly resulted from companies outside the industry, such as Google and Facebook, stepping in and establishing their own services and products. Current strategies of publishers, with 56.9%, seem to concentrate on revamping their offerings and/or launching new services.

Reshaping Classifieds

The classifieds category was always owned by publishers and the competition was always from within the industry. With the growth of the digital sphere, other brands took charge to dominate the online display of classifieds ads. From horizontal and vertical models, selling and buying items has become more and more streamlined. And now, internet companies that dominate all social and search communication, are stepping into the classifieds world. Facebook Marketplace is already launched in over 30 countries and reaching many locally and nationally. Google and Amazon are slightly more focused in their approach. While Google is mainly focused in the recruitment category, Amazon has started some regional testing for consumer to consumer advertising verses business to consumer.

This signifies a very strong shift in classifieds advertising. Some interesting statistics show 75% of consumers when searching for second-hand merchandise across most categories turn online first; specifically 28% of consumers go online first when searching for a used car. But there is a margin of opportunity, as classifieds is not brand specific. If your results show up first and you offer a good local variety of options, your site will be within their radar. Closely monitor trends locally and nationally to notice what growth drivers can help diversify your offerings.

Just having a modern site that is mobile responsive to reach growing numbers of smartphone users might not be enough. Maybe creating social media pages with content that are displayed and link to your classifieds page and your advertisers website. This can include having an Instagram page of online ads that have photos and adding the link to your classifieds site for more details. Another options can be retail business ads are your article links for your classifieds branded site Linkedin account. Adding social media boosting and promotion budgets into your digital plan for your classifieds ads, will provide a better local engagement, as part of your online upsell opportunities. Building a solid team that will focus on these opportunities will help make or break reshaping your classifieds.

Social Media Classifieds

Let’s consider social media classifieds a little closer. Although Facebook is building a more specific online marketplace experience for its users, other social sites also have integrated business posts from “click to find more” to “click to buy”. Social media is now the center of all communication and access to information. From news to live event updates, our social media accounts provide a very personalized experience and now businesses can use these trusted mediums to actually sell their services and products.

Social media post content is no longer just limited to an advertising tool to create awareness and building brand personas to resonate with audiences. Now most social media sites provide layers of functionality according to the brand requirements – if services, in app videos and testimonials and if products, a nice spread of sale items pop up, and all link to the brand website for more details. Users are taught that once they see something they like about a brand, they can just get it. They can save posts and links to their account and always go back to get more and share with their friends. In this way, their social accounts become a valuable source of collected information for further research and in some way, an assistant to keep track of things.

Compared to the way the classic classifieds websites are configured, social media sites offer mobile experiences in a nicely designed structure. Most classifieds solutions mainly provide an online photo and text and contact information. Not only that, the search results are just filled with lines of text and prices but not providing enough differentiation and engagements. Classifieds sites now need to learn from social media sites as they are dominating the online display standard for browsing and reading information – full of photos, short and clear information and visible buttons with quick website linking.

Clearly that old-fashioned classified ad never really went away. It is continuously evolving into new forms in the online environment.

Live Online Engagement in 2019

Fri, 10 May 2019 00:01:00 GMT

Live Engagement in 2019

Online engagement is now instantaneous and live, and here to stay. All stats show where the industry is heading and what we should be on the lookout for down the road. Publishers and small businesses alike, need to consider live online engagement as one of their main strategies.

3 Revenue Strategies to Try in 2019

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 23:07:00 GMT

3 Revenue Strategies to Try in 2019

With the second quarter of 2019 well underway, there’s still an opportunity to develop additional growth strategies for this year, but it will take a well thought out plan to execute. There are several areas you can choose for growth, however this article covers three very specific steps that can prove to help generate increased revenue for the businesses that consider and implement them.

Build out a formal referral program.

A lot of data suggests that customer referrals are a significantly effective, but extremely underutilized. Specifically, 91 percent of customers would give a referral, but only 11 percent are asked. As consumers are offered different subscription model services, referral programs allow your customers to help you grow by becoming a brand ambassador for your company. It might seem to take time for the program to catch on, but our current culture likes to get insights from family and friends, before anyone else.

When building out this new program, there are some important considerations, such as the main benefit of referring. You can offer a free classifieds ad to be used within the next 3 months for Garage Sale or Services categories or first access to popular local summer family event coupons. This can also include offering local partnerships with floral businesses to offer a free bouquet for Mother’s or Valentine’s Day or even discounted dry cleaning, and your advertisers can choose the option according to the quota available. Another benefit can be offering a free one month print subscription for current digital subscribers that referred their family and friends. Similar to cell phone companies, you can alternate benefit options according to higher and lower seasons.

Once the plan for the referral program for the sales team, a very important aspect for sustaining the program is balancing the load with part-time or seasonal staff to help verify the details of the referral benefits confirmed and solidify customer relationships by dealing with calls and emails. Make sure that your staff offers mainly one benefit for each period of the referral program. If you offer all options at once, it would be harder for the customer to make a decision or not see the clear value.

Streamline your signup process.

The more technology gets into our every day lives, the more streamlined we want all processes to be. Many users want websites to easily recognize their access and just login to get their needs done. A single fingerprint tap, and the world is literally at your finger tips.

One of the main things you will want to try to do is reducing the amount information you require and collect during sign up. Initially test all your marketing and trust-building messaging and see which welcome page gets better results. Do not treat your sign up form as a database to capture a lot of demographic, interest and behaviour data. Once you get the customer in, using your services and getting access to information, you can always send reminders to build out their profile for better customized flow of information. This can be offering sports pages first before editorial, if they consider themselves to be a sports buff; while other customers might want the crossword to be one of the first pages. Allow digital previews to be customizable in the PDF version and allow customers to save their selection. Above all, do not forget to include security badges throughout your website, which will improve your sign up rates. Data protection and site security are high ranking for all customers.

A new take to your sign up process can be to integrate a live chat within your website. Depending on the length of inactivity, this can mean that the customer needs helps or advise. Live chats are now a must for many service providers, as it is less intrusive and less work than contacting your company over email or phone call to speak to a representative. This strategy can be combined with your referral program team. Customers can easily close the window or actually chat with a live representative and ask any question.

Other options to include in your sign up can include offering different pricing options, such as only weekend or morning/night time access to your digital content. Maybe some customers only have time to read in the morning and do not login again till the next day, this can be a way to get their interest to sign up for a specific package. With many digital books and reading material, you now have audio options. While driving or on the train to work, some customers might want someone to read out the article that interest them from the editorial. If you have a newspaper app, this might be an easier option to add to the features.

Consider a broader geographic reach.

This might be a very straightforward strategy but sometimes many publishers might miss to reach some smaller areas in their community. Without doing a new research about your local neighborhoods, specifically trends and changes in the current demographics, can impact your revenue growth. Many publishers just keep everything in a manageable territory, while focusing on other things within their marketing and sales budget plan.

Tasking some of your staff to look into expanding your current distribution channels might be a more beneficial step than you think. Some of your direct competition might not be giving some local areas much thought, but looking at the bottom line to cover the additional distribution cost, might be worth the cost to double potential sales. Do not assume anything, until proper investigation has been done and potential evaluated. Once possible opportunities are assessed, a phased approach to ensure that all facets of requirements are addressed and tested.

Your geographic reach can be offered both in print and digital options. Your website articles and classifieds SEO description or keywords can also include geographical locations in smaller areas that you want to reach. It can also include looking into tourism trends and offering special digital subscription discounts to out-of-state areas that might be interested in following your editorial and news. Utilize social media to tag geographical locations in your posts and comments, to be able to link to possible travellers about upcoming summer events happening in your local area. This can also be achieved by editing your digital reach profile.

Whether your print and digital projects are newly launched, ready for grow, or mature and steady, a thoughtful implementation of these growth strategies can help you succeed well into the future.

Current Trends in the Digital Culture

Fri, 05 Apr 2019 20:24:00 GMT

Current Trends in the Digital Culture

In the current highly saturated digital and technology landscape, many trends are constantly declared radical and innovative in hopes that it gives market advantage. But maybe sometimes they are just old ideas that are revamped for changing needs. Here we consider some current trends that demand our attention in 2019.

The Digital Culture Matters

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 18:52:00 GMT

The Digital Culture Matters

Many publishers are now in a race to digitally transform their businesses to better meet the changing needs and demands of their advertisers. Although there is a lot of enthusiasm, the challenge is not about getting the mobile devices, software or platforms, but how newsrooms and teams process and adapt to the new digital culture. A recent survey from Couchbase showed that 9 out of 10 digital transformations didn’t meet the needs of the business.

Servicing advertisers will always require human interaction. Technology can’t replace the human touch and with this comes the need to combine human and digital elements to communicate together.

Define the New Culture

Access to technology is not limited to the big companies and professionals anymore; thanks to software businesses, many companies are integrated in the digital world. With these developments and innovations, new strategies come into play. Company strategies also need to form updated characteristics that this new digital culture should embrace for a successful company shift. Some of these components include ensuring your staff understands being customer-focused, collaborative and transparent, responsive and agile, as well as risk-taking and innovative.

While most quote that one of the main barriers for effective digital implementations is a lack of understanding, many key decision makers actually state that culture is the most significant barrier. To remain competitive and agile in this new corporate world, developing and cultivating a digital culture is the main integral piece of the process. This new system needs to encourage information exchange, engagement and empower the team to build an in-house digital mindset. This can be accomplished by facilitating marketing and sales teams to work closely so that company messaging and engagement is consistent. At the same time, customer support and IT teams should use one feedback system to record and process how improvements could be made.

Research, Testing, Training

Many publishers sometimes might miss the importance of taking an extensive research-based approach to their digital transformation. The research approach needs to focus not only on the platform functionalities but also on the company supplying the software. As part of providing services, tech organizations ability to develop, test, improve, and deploy continuous software feature updates is increasingly important for publishers success. Imagine if payment processing failed each time an advertiser placed an ad, this would not only affect your team’s effectiveness but also significantly disturb your customer experience. Without recognizing the priority the software company gives to their platform maintenance and new investments, publishers might miss choosing the right fit within the current dynamic digital culture.

Working with companies that focus on continuous innovation is not about taking risks, but that technology allows for experimentation and in turn provide great rewards. But another effective way to research your options is to look at the knowledge, learning and training programs the company provides. Each system feature is implemented with a purpose and its necessary documentation provided for the publishers team to be comfortable in testing and trying all the options available to them. This also only works if the admins that use the platform in their daily routine are encouraged to take advantage of the insights provided to them to grow.

Technology and Communication

As much as advertisers use smartphones and mobile devices to access publisher services, so do all the employees in a company. This means that collaborative apps, such as CRMs and note taking systems, can be incorporated into the every day workflow. Allowing a centralized flow of communication and recording of data, allows to break down any hierarchical barriers between staff protecting their knowledge and position in the company. But also cultivate, through technology, a more open and transparent environment and culture.

On the one hand, internet connection is everywhere from coffee shops to general stores, which means employees can work remotely and are easily reachable if there is an emergency. This can allow for more flexible work schedules and immediate assistance to advertisers needs and inquiries. While on the other hand, if not recognized, staff will be overworked with an “always-on” mentality that technology proliferates. It is important for managers and their teams to discuss and support a healthy work-life balance as per department needs. Using technology to ask for assistance and shift changes or confirming time off days, to better monitor everyone’s work hours, will better impact attrition rates.

No matter how technology changes and grows its reach into our lives, it is still only a tool and it can have positive and negative affects into the work culture. But companies and publishers alike, need to have a clear strategy and roadmap for navigating the technology disruptions in the workplace, especially as millennials are becoming the main workforce. Mainly habits that encourage teams collaborating and using technology to efficiently communicate and try new things with positive direction, will increase the successful transitions from legacy to newer management platforms.

Millennial Online Preferences

Tue, 19 Mar 2019 06:30:00 GMT

Millennial Online Preferences

From this year forward, Millennials will form the largest generation in history and they are in their prime stage of spending and investing in their lives. Reshaping many industries, from online shopping to learning and accessing information, Millennials will force companies and governments to revamp and reevaluate how they communicate and do business. We took some time to look at some statistics on millennials online preferences.

Millennials News Consumption

Tue, 12 Mar 2019 20:28:00 GMT

Millennials News Consumption

Access to news is uninterrupted and constant for everyone, not just millennials. But the important differences that publishers and marketers need to focus on are the mindset and consumption patterns. An important observation is 84 percent of millennials simply don’t trust traditional advertising. While the bigger players for their attention are YouTube, Netflix and Facebook. According to research, YouTube ranks the highest, with an average of 8.1 hours spent per week, followed by Netflix (7.4 hours) and Facebook (7.3 hours).

Use data and values

In recent years, audience values have started to more directly guide online engagement parameters. From online and digital access, to personalized and relevant content, and even using short form content, easy to skim. This is all to help your brand speak the language of your current audience. By looking at the way online topics trend up or down, how and when information is communicated, there are some tips you can apply. Be very visual in every aspect of your communication. Not only that, gather data on interests and values, to appeal in a transparent manner. Do not view online interactions as transactional but cater your messages and posts to an interactive board of discussions. Seem more approachable and open to examine and consider comments and direct messages.

In addition, across generations from one third to one half of respondents said journalism isn’t relevant to them – 44% of Millennials, 41% of Gen X, and 39% of Gen Z. This might be mainly due to the fact that the word journalism is limited to newspapers and print products. While in the past, journalism was viewed as a pillar in providing true facts and information to guide decisions; nowadays other characteristics define good journalism.

Transparency is ranked as a very important quality for any media outlet. The growth of fake news has created a layer distrust across all generations. Marketing and advertising is now based on manipulation and bias, using data and values to trap and sell information. Catchy and outrageous claims that speak to audience values, get more attention but push readers to dislike the actual information provided. While creativity is another emphasis on online news for engagement, a true representation and transparency need to be in the forefront for any news media communication plan.

Attention spans are focused on specific interactions depending on the topic of interest. One of the main things to note is that two-thirds of our generation now watch or listen to news more than they read. This does not mean that they do not read at all – when purchasing items or making decisions on services to use, many go online to product reviews and trusted sites that have industry expertise. Rather this means, that visuals such as videos, GIFs, photos and emojis – better guide the rating for what is read and looked at first. If more bonus data is presented to provide transparency and depth of engagement, it is more believable and more important. So follow the different mediums of communication where they are online – Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Lean into video and social channels

More and more all young adults are visually minded, as most have had access to and grown to learn through mobile video in every area of daily lives. We can watch recipe videos, we can work out with trainer videos, we can do our hair or nails with tutorial videos, we can even learn how to build websites or play the guitar through educational videos. In fact, 29 percent of millennials prefer video content over text or voice-based messaging, followed by case studies at 19 percent, white papers at 16 percent, webinars and infographics, each at 11 percent. Just uploading a video does not make the cut anymore. All video data has to be rich in information and engaging.

This does not come as a surprise, the smaller the screen, the more individual and distinct the information is demanded to be. The domination that TV used to enjoy is taken over by digital and online platforms, giving the audience more control and leadership. The same is true for social media. Don’t just see online interactions as casting as wide a net as possible, and capturing as many fish as possible. As social media helps to lessen the distance between companies and customers, bridge the gap by growing consumer interaction and engagement with mainly relevant content that does not stretch into more than one or two complementary industries. This can also be achieved by following and connecting with other organizations that provide expertise in the same industry, with different services.

Videos online are now more transparent, real and truly live. Social media platforms and technological advances now working together in unison, from instant wifi access in every country to smart phones, everyone can make their own following and group. Brands can follow this trend by using some popular video content alternatives. One option is to send welcome videos, instead of welcome emails and messages. This adds more depth and care to engage more personally with new subscribers; include a short video clip to extend a warm greeting and thanks. Another option to add is special message videos, with messages from publishers or journalists, as a great engagement booster. Similar to what tennis players, olympians or actors send out when they have received an award or receive birthday messages; taking the time to share thanks for the continued support, bring people in. And not in the least, use live videos as many chances as you get. The culture of not missing out on things and connecting digitally, has opened a space to share dynamic, in the moment information and make it freely available.

All these online engagements are mainly to allow the main value of millennials to want to voice their opinions. Online sources allow audiences and readers to share what they feel about the news and open discussions with other individuals in the comments section or on their social media feeds. News are all about bringing the right topics to the table and discussing the impact and driving our local communities to real change.

Email Marketing Trends in 2019

Fri, 08 Mar 2019 07:00:00 GMT

Email Marketing Trends in 2019

With so many digital advancements and new marketing tools and strategies coming out every year, is email even worth it anymore? Our short answer, Yes! Many still believe that email is just a way to send advertising messages to individual inboxes. But there is even more to consider, as some recent stats show.

Email Newsletters are still around in 2019

Tue, 05 Mar 2019 20:15:00 GMT

Email Newsletters are Still Around in 2019

With so many options of new digital tools and platforms, many marketers and publishers easily miss and overlook one of the basic channels available – email newsletters. Although still mentioned as a digital marketing strategy, it is not always on top of the list. While research still shows that email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. So what are the great benefits for using email newsletters?

Email newsletters are the icebreaker

Nowadays social media is where the main flow of all the discussions and sometimes it can be too cluttered with too much noise. Using your email newsletters wisely can be where you initiate the conversation with your customers, before taking them to your website or social media. They will also provide a depth of knowledge about your customers and show their preferences as they engage with your brand. Not only that, email newsletters can also gather details on behavioural metrics and click rates on your important content.

With all the distractions from ads and sponsored content, readers want to see more authentic storytelling. Now this does not mean all your emails need to be crafted individually for each reader, but they can still have a personal touch and help your brand to connect in an emotional level by directing them to news and updates that matter to them locally, as well as nationally. Storytelling can include behind the scenes information about how the most recent article details were gathered. This can include bloopers, to how information was connected and verified. Include different photos or video links, as well as external links to add more details and depth to the initial information provided. This will also build your linking capabilities between your email newsletters, website and social media profiles.

Send tailored messages to new and existing customers

There are many ideas on personalization, and most include adding a subscriber’s name to the subject line or in the email introduction. But email automation is mainly to be used to personalize the message and content, as well as triggering a set schedule of interactions based on behaviour. Pre-making emails are not just to send a blast of general information with your branding but to offer more value-added benefits.

One of the main ways this is achieved is micro-segmentation. Your subscription list is not just a contact list, but a group of diverse users that have an interest in what you have to offer. It is very important how you segment, and artificial intelligence helps improve the split into specific and niche segments for campaigns. Some of the general segments include gender, location, age, but the idea is to break these filters even further via preference centers. Do not always focus on the number of email touch points to all subscribers, but ensure that emails are also allocated according to high quality (existing) versus low engaged (new) subscribers. Depending on your segmentation, engagement will play a big role for personalization. Data hygiene and email verification are also very important steps to consider before revamping any of your email communication.

When it comes to specific content for added value that engage include whitepapers, research reports, infographics (statistics) or online courses. For consumer goods or services, discount coupons and free sign ups for webinars also provide value for browsers or subscribers.

Drive traffic to your website

Although the main purpose and strategy of email newsletters is to engage and grow subscribers interest in your brand, the secondary outcome is to direct to your website. Many will not just end up on your site organically, like when driving around and you end up at a local coffee shop. At the same time, emails help filter out many browsers that just bounce off your landing page without looking at any content. You can easily send long-form content with teasers and links that help track behaviour and grow engagement on your website.

Although it seems counter intuitive that attention spans will not last on long-form content, we notice many articles and reports are still some of the biggest engagers and affect SEO the most. There is a reason why Twitter keeps increasing their character limit. Even with video engagement, binge-watching is now the norm and is changing the media industry. Attention spans are not necessarily shorter, but now our brains are better wired in filtering and choosing which way to direct our attention.

From selfies and social media accounts to virtual assistants, customers want to be tailored to. Do not forget that your subscribers are actually in a very clear way telling you what they want to see and read. Group your website blog with your email newsletters and social media. Use all your engagement data to continuously grow content and your subscriber lists.

How do you get your news?

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 06:30:00 GMT

How Do You Get Your News?

News consumption habits are constantly changing over the years. With the advancement of technology and the new habits building around access to internet and information, here are a few of the most influential stats.

News Consumption in Social Media

Fri, 22 Feb 2019 23:26:00 GMT

News Consumption in Social Media

Social media is not just a source of status updates on the latest issues and affairs, but nowadays it is also a mostly reliable source of news. Actually, 68% of American adults say that they now get at least some news coverage from social media. Social media is one of the main platforms how people get their news content. But this does not mean that people are not also becoming more skeptical – 57% of social media news consumers now also believe the information that they see on social media is ‘largely inaccurate’.

This is the dilemma with social media news – although some of the information is ‘inaccurate’, it seems to still help provide information and everyone is ok forming their opinions this way. So even is a report or article is not 100% right, even the smallest amount of truth is enough to guide decisions. This is a concerning trend.

Serious news is replaced with the Viral and Trendy news

With unlimited access to news, people have to find a way to process the information. With many sources online, there has been a decrease in how much of editorials and commentaries are read. Most just scroll through their newsfeed and only stop to look at topics that are relevant to their current situation. Not only that, they prefer to watch short video clips that provide main headlines and brief conclusions. According to general statistics, an average visitor will only read an article for 15 seconds or less and spare 10 seconds video watch time online.

The success of social media reach is mainly due to algorithms that match interests and likes with user feeds. So when it comes to news, social media platforms feed more and more content that aligns with the interests and views of the individual. This creates a damaging bias when it comes to understanding changing policies and government reports. Supporters on either side of the coin are dragged deeper and indoctrinated into a limited set of views and perspectives.

In many ways, social media has a somewhat powerful control over what information we see. Our profiles and friends have become the “editors”, picking what we see and read. The more likes and shares of articles, the bigger the probability we will see it on our feed. Most people do not seem to care what they get in contact with on social media, because it is just fun engaging with others. Most times without checking facts, articles get shared because of popularity and a catchy headline that they seem to agree with. This signals the reality that authentic and real content is pretty hard to come by. If these trends are not taken seriously, more fake facts and news will spread over the truth.

The news cycle is now 24/7

Although getting news from social media is actually seen as not accurate, people still quote convenience as the most common reason why they still use this platform. As we are more mobile than before, content and information that is available at a touch of a button, easily accessible without going to look for it, get consumed first. Recent numbers show, 67% of Facebook’s users get news there, as do 71% of Twitter’s users and 73% of Reddit users.

Now that we reach the world through social media, there is no limit to the reach of fake news, as well as truth. News happens instantaneously now. What happens today is forgotten tomorrow. We now miss stories and the fast turnaround of news, does not help us remember any of the details. While this flow of constant information is great and seems to provide transparency, without proper fact checking and focus in the details, truth becomes prejudiced and open to personal opinion. Now that social media is our news editors and managers, without conducting our own fact checking, we will never find or better yet forget that there is a needle in the haystack.

Artificial Intelligence Impacts in 2019

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 07:00:00 GMT

Artificial Intelligence Impacts in 2019

Artificial Intelligence is quite the buzz in the last few years with many reasons to count. It has become more evident now in every day business tasks, but AI has actually been an integral part of business practices for the past six years. Its impact continues to spread, providing an entirely seamless process to all marketing and sales strategies.

Keeping up with Artificial Intelligence

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 07:00:00 GMT

Keeping up with Artificial Intelligence

Some say with the introduction of AI, we have entered the fourth industrial revolution era, defined by extreme automation and connection. According to data, in 2015 AI was a 5 billion USD industry, and by 2020 it is expected to double and become a 12.5 billion USD industry (a 20% annual growth rate). Software development and start ups will charge ahead and continue to push the barriers in digital sales and marketing automation, online search and social media. AI will be the main feature that will create business opportunities and value for software.

Not only in software, but also virtual assistants, smart robots through AI will offer expert assistance, instantaneous research or findings, and even assist with diagnosis. Self driving cars, taxis and trains are also making tremendous leaps in progress. The list goes on as AI slowly penetrates into our daily lives. It is changing every facet of how our work is done and affecting the role of people play in driving growth in our society.

AI replaces tasks, not jobs.

It is a common discussed reality that using software to automate tasks that rely on basic analysis and daily processes, is seen as a threat to routine jobs and positions. This is what keeps many companies from being able to make changes to their structures and workflows. But with the rise of AI in aiding office productivity, there is wealth of opportunities for employees to actually upgrade their skills. The introduction of apps, sharing software and full connectivity provide a higher level of task personalization and creativity, which still demand the need of a person to handle.

S ome of the popular ways AI influences the publishing industry are online content creation and social listening and monitoring. Especially when news, trends and information are instantaneously being updated, these tools prove to help arrange and distribute relevant data to stay relevant and ahead of the game.

AI in Content Creation

When it comes to attracting and engaging your audience online, content is one of the main ingredients that digital marketing requires. Many companies are finding insufficient to hire more staff to scale and track their content operations and are turning to AI as a possible option. To keep up with competitors, early implementers of AI can gain real advantage by investing in it and learning faster. It is one of the ways the key struggle for personalized content creation is eliminated.

According to recent data, Twitter is in the process of using AI on every one of the 456,000 tweets users send each minute of the day. Not only does the same algorithm gather data on trends and buzzwords, it can also generate simple content stories such as stock updates or sports. With these AI bots, just like reporters cover event updates through their notes, publishers can more efficiently and in scale convert facts and data into articles. Bots can even write these articles in different languages to target all demographics in their communities.

It is not easy to collect proper and true data and then with the same ease draw correct conclusions. This is one of the biggest struggles in personalized marketing. Social media networks use AI to easily customize their users’ news feeds and in this way personalize the only posts they would want to see on their feed. These AI bots actually analyze hundreds of variables from the data, and can predict with some accuracy the posts the users will like, comment or hide. This also applies to ad serving as well – users will only see the ads they might have interest in.

AI in Social Media Listening & Monitoring

Gaining a detailed understanding and scope of customers guarantees an efficient social media marketing plan. AI plays a vital role in marketing by providing this understanding by social listening and monitoring. The process mainly involves seeing what customers are saying about your brand, but also tracking specific phrases or words. Then brands can leverage the data gathered to find that niche communication and create specific content for specific audiences. It is vital to have real-time interaction with your audience, as in turn you can have a better familiar brand voice and create a stronger connection.

Social monitoring is a closer look at what people are saying through incoming issues or comments, and sorting through the feed of notifications to provide the right answer or connect them to the correct department for further assistance. On the other hand, social listening has a wider look at how the brand is talked about and identified by customers. It does use the data from social monitoring and other interactions online to build a detailed report on what key points clients talk about and suggest how your brand can provide solutions and address these topics.

Other perks in using AI based software tools and bots combine alerting when important conversations are happening around your industry and reporting these insights as recommendations and opportunities. Setup alerts to cover competitors, industries, groups, and online influencers and create a wholesome perspective of your online landscape. It is important that after all this data is gathered and sorted, the software you use will help to efficiently distribute these content recommendations at the right time and place locally and regionally. AI equips companies with informed marketing capabilities for executing and completing improved strategies for business growth and success.

Top Digital Trends in 2019

Wed, 30 Jan 2019 00:27:00 GMT

Top Digital Trends in 2019

This year seems to signify the burst of everything AI. It is not just a buzzword and getting its way into all business processes; from big topics at conferences to acquisition goals with big companies. It has also weaved its way into the daily tasks of consumers. So we take a look at the most discussed trends for 2019.

Combine Digital Solutions to Increase Revenue

Mon, 21 Jan 2019 22:36:00 GMT

Combine Digital Solutions to Increase Revenue

Most companies are now aware that it is easier than ever to automate most of the daily processes with digital solutions. From CRM platforms to billing and pagination systems, technology offers some pretty smart options. Just in one year, from 2017 to 2018, there were about 2000 new solutions presented to the market, that is a 27% increase. With so many alternatives, the main question to ask is can we combine and optimize the solutions we use?

Customer Relationship Management Platforms.

One of the main things that all experts always comment on is being customer focused. This is not just a marketing buzzword or an idea to put on a plan and never look at it. Rather, when selecting your platform options consider how your staff acquires and records information from customers and how is it better translated to a digital solution. Look at how the data is transferred from the call center to the CRM and billing systems. Create automation strategies that include setting up templates, custom weekly admin reports, standard customer follow up and engagement campaigns, as well as training documentation and centralized support contact lists.

As your implement these automation tools and strategies in place, don’t just use them to make your tasks easier. Look into ways it helps you track and measure results. For example, your reporting process should include details about usage of functionalities. If you are no longer using certain components or services, then remove them or reevaluate the value of the system. You do not need to be locked down for several years to realize that you need to upgrade your platform. In the end, digital solutions help you serve your audience well, be one step ahead of your competition and grow your revenue by lessening waste of time and resources.

Content Management Systems.

More often than not, using digital solutions frees up time to be able to add new, simple but important processes to their daily work. This could include, utilizing additional online resources to grow knowledge base or doing more industry research and building new content and communication projects. The more you are engaging with your online industry, the more valuable and useful your digital solutions become. Although this is obvious, most teams do not use their platforms to full potential.

Constant communication and reiteration of your brand is key to attract more attention and grow your reach. Use your blog as a platform to educate on industry trends, invite guest writer or build a podcast, take photos of local events and popular spots, retweet and share articles and content that build links. All these small and big components in creating and growing your content, allow you to gain thought leadership. This allows your audience to trust the information you provide; and without trust your online presence adds no value.

Many content management systems should allow you to easily post your articles on several social media accounts simultaneously, offer polls, provide popular topics to cover, and provide easy to access statistics on the performance of your content.

Accounting and Billing Systems.

One of the most important things to managing your revenue is to easily see your expenses, loses and profits. Without keeping a close track of what value each of your clients bring to the table and the effort you spend versus the ROI, puts into perspective how much waste is occurring. More often than not, marketing and sales is tasked with bringing in new business, but no one stops to think if the current structure and workload can properly handle and satisfy the needs of more customers. Decisions are usually made without much clarity.

If accounting systems are setup correctly, companies should easily see who their top clients are with regards to ROI and which ones require minimal expense and still profitable. Customer accounts should not only be evaluated on the revenue they bring in but also the maintenance and upkeep their services require from your team. It is acceptable and welcome to say ‘No’ to customer that might seem fully aligned with what a new one can bring in. Recently, we have heard of one company ending their partnerships with 16 medium size clients in one day, and signed with a single big customer instead. Sometimes that is the difference between growth and chasing after revenue.

Ad Management Platforms.

Among these solutions, many publishers also use ad management systems. It is important to make sure to consider which ad processing solutions can properly match your business setup. Consider if all your data can easily be imported and match with your account records, and also how the new account data would be transferred to your CRM and billing system. Do not forget to ask if you own your own data! This is very important when you decide to archive and want your data to be also be stored for your records. You can learn more about what AdPerfect offers when managing your ad data.

When it comes to combining these solutions, it is not too hard to recognize that all of these components make up the basis of all business processes within a company. Always look at how the exporting of the data happen. As you discover what file formats are available, make sure all your other platforms and systems support them. If plugins and widgets exist, use those to link all your accounts and systems together and do not settle for anything less than full efficiency.

Digital in 2018

Fri, 04 Jan 2019 16:42:00 GMT

Digital in 2018

Another new year has begun and digital providers of all kinds – bloggers, companies, social media platforms and e-commerce brands – are gearing up for a brand new year to make it the most successful yet. Here are some important data points to consider as we enter another long marathon of digital marketing!

Tribute Technology Acquires AdPerfect: Press Release for LMA

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 22:06:20 GMT

Tribute Technology Acquires AdPerfect

Leading funeral home services and technology provider adds media platform.

Tribute Technology, the leading provider of funeral management and website services, with cutting-edge personalization and technology solutions used by more than 70% of the funeral home businesses in the United States, has acquired AdPerfect, one of the leading obituary platforms used by media companies across North America.

A member of the Local Media Association, t he only organization that brings all media together for the purpose of sharing, networking, collaborating and more. With more than 3,000 newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, directories, pure plays and research & development partners, AdPerfect is excited to share the news of this acquisition and its impact on the local media landscape.

“Revenue growth, largely through diversification isn’t a nice-to-have for local media companies. It’s a must! The obituary category, and related funeral home technologies, presents significant untapped opportunity for local publishers,” said Jed Williams, Chief Strategy Officer of the LMA. “Tribute Technology now controls 70% of the funeral home obituary market and with its recent acquisition of AdPerfect, local publishers have an unprecedented opportunity in front of them.”

About Tribute Technology

About AdPerfect

Tribute Technology Acquires AdPerfect: Press Release for LMC

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 21:59:28 GMT

Tribute Technology Acquires AdPerfect

Leading funeral home services and technology provider adds media platform.

A partner of the Local Media Consortium, a strategic alliance of leading local media companies, AdPerfect provides LMC members with AdPerfect Obituaries, a platform for hosting online obituaries and self-serve obituary placement for funeral homes and private party customers.

“We are excited about the merging of AdPerfect and Tribute Technology, which will bring greater cost benefits to our local media members,” said Fran Wills, CEO of the LMC. “Helping local journalism thrive in a changing media environment is our goal, and this acquisition will help local media increase their revenues, lower their costs and incorporate both print and online into one platform with one vendor.”

About Tribute Technology

About AdPerfect

About the Local Media Consortium

The Local Media Consortium delivers economic value through strategic partnerships on behalf of nearly 90 local media companies in top markets across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, and includes more than 3,300 outlets. By harnessing the combined volume and scale of its members, the LMC reduces costs and increases revenue with technology and service providers like Google, Facebook, Admiral and others. The aggregated LMC audience footprint spans 1 billion unique monthly visitors and its member companies serve more than 6 billion page views to consumers. More information is available at http://www.localmediaconsortium.com/ .

Smart Options to Grow your Online Credibility

Sat, 29 Dec 2018 07:28:00 GMT

Smart Options to Grow Your Online Credibility

Creating empathy online is key for building your brand an online personality and character. When your audience has a relatable and even humorous online interactions with your brand, they will perceive your brand in a positive light. Daily notes of company achievements and team growth or project developments, open a way for your users to gain trust in your company. The usage of digital solutions enables a company to display an image that can be layered with several types of content the audience needs to see. It does not have to be only company related.

Create with your Tone and Style

Content creation and consumption has changed and evolved over the last few years. Google constantly rewarding and expanding their criteria for who gets better search results spots and credibility, has helped to outrank relevant content distribution through company blogs over other traditional content marketing methods. This also provides a way to build online networking through trustworthy and relevant article topics.

Not only that, leveraging content topics and series that your audience is engaged in, provides a strong, yet personable tone and style for your brand. This will give a boost to your online credibility. This will mainly be achieved by posting frequently, for small businesses this is at least once a week and follow a planned pattern – specific days for articles, ebooks, podcasts and infographics. Your audience can look to receive and see certain content material with expectation. Furthermore, within the content it is always important to use keywords for search engine rankings. Strategically place them within your blog posts, which will increase the chance for your audience to find you online.

Discover and Connect with your Circle

When it comes to online credibility, no company can escape the power of social media. Some might say it is free brand advertising and others, a great way to monitor and research about your competition. But most importantly, if used correctly, your brand can connect directly with and also understand your target audience’s needs and wants. Discovering and connecting with interested users is one of the first steps in social media.

Similar to your blog efforts, it is a continuous process of engaging your followers. Some of the daily interactions, which need to be focused on by teams include providing immediate personalized responses, following up with them, recording and learning from the feedback received. In general terms, social media is a tool small businesses and individuals alike use to engage and connect. Finding a balance through a combination of informative and valuable content, with a human connection goes a long way. Social media is made for shorter and smart interactions, compared to long form blogs. Adding photos or visuals with a link to longer content, makes it easier for users to preview and consume the information.

Point to your Expertise

All in all, no matter if you use blogs, social media, email marketing or online networking, you must know your stuff. It is now easy to validate who you are or your references, so faking it will not last long. Everything you create and share, should always point to achieved results and success. The proof of your claims should be easily accessible within a couple of clicks on your site. No one should need to dig or triple click to find the details, or you lose your audience.

Using industry jargon alone, is not always beneficial when it comes to establishing your expertise. Not all jargon should be a part of your keyword selections either. If you don’t audit or review your messaging on a regular basis, which should clearly express your company identity, online persona, and business processes, it might not be apparent what you can do specifically for your audience. Your company brand and its offerings or service successes will be its own social proof and need no other explanation.

Make sure you have implemented some practical options on your website, such as blog share buttons via social media or email, blog commenting sections, contact forms, pleasant colors and actionable menu sections. All your online entry points should display helpfulness, engaging conversations with inspirational and relevant content. Not only these, but look for credible affiliations to belong to and add their icons on your website for boosting credibility. You have to combine all these options together, as online interactions require quantifiable information to build trustworthiness. The more evidence you can display that you’re an authentic company which is active online and in the physical world, will boost your credibility.

Digital Game Changers 2018

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 19:07:00 GMT

Digital Game Changers 2018

As we close another year of online and digital growth, it is important to take a quick look at some of the game changers that will impact 2019. It was shared by many industry leaders that social analysis would be big as access to data and data driven marketing would be vital for growth and customer engagement. We see this shift to affect the active adoption of Artificial Intelligence, Smart Speakers & Chatbots, Visual & Voice Search and Virtual Reality in consumer and business spheres. These industries seem to still be in the development and growth stage, but it seems their full advancement and maturity is just around the corner.

Leverage digital platforms like an expert

Sat, 15 Dec 2018 00:41:00 GMT

While technology developments have now been around for some years and new upgrades are constantly on the rise, consumers are also getting better and faster in keeping up. Some of these developments include blockchain technology, predictive consumerism, artificial intelligence, retail in the age of everything Amazon and augmented reality.This marks the importance that businesses must efficiently use technology platforms to stay agile and relevant.

Build a Digital Platform Strategy

As part of integrating technology into your business rules, a strategy must be put in place that involves business and IT needs, which will guide the leadership and management vision. Company decision makers must make sure all the business goals make sense for their organization for long-term success. For example, there needs to be a consideration on how the media and news ecosystems will evolve in the future from business and IT perspectives. Not only that, discuss what is more likely to happen and review what could be possibly constraints, issues raised by your audience, and any risks by taking on the digital platform and starting a new service for your brand.

When it comes to the process of implementing digital solution, companies think about all the opportunities it will bring to reinvent their brand and current business models. Others look to leverage this new technology to optimize their current operations. No matter the ambition behind the digital change, most companies usually play it safe and invest incrementally. There always needs to be a timeline for testing industry standard models, as well as finding ways to reduce risks and resistance to change. In the end, the digital platform strategy needs to include the first reaction of employees and the fatigue. Gartner researchers discovered that highly stressed employees result in a 9.1% reduced productivity and 5.7% reduction in revenue.

Your strategy and desire for change should not only be about automating your processes or doing what others are doing, but also being able to translate what parts of your business models need digital offerings and which ones still fit the needs of your clients.

Choose the Right Marketplace Focus

One important thing to remember about online marketplace is that the website does not own any inventory but they only present the inventory of others to facilitate a transaction. As long as people still to search for services or items locally, online classifieds sites still have a place and future in the internet. Some practical ways platforms are utilized in certain industries:

E-Commerce: The new standard of the ease of shopping online and the streamlined product delivery systems to the doorstep, create the perfect space for e-commerce marketplaces to flourish. Why spend so much time trying to find an item you need, just to find out they are out or they don’t have your color. Online sites help to easily sort and filter options that is needed and quickly show that options best match.

Travel & Accommodation:Another category that digital marketplaces have impacted is travel and accommodation search. Travellers do not want to go to travel agencies or call to get cost details but want direct access and plan the trip themselves. This is as personalized as it gets. So sites like Airbnb are a famous marketplace in the travel and accommodation industry to list, discover, and book accommodation from around the world. Other sites also offer residential apartments for rent or sale, as well as cars for sale or services around local travel services.

Service: An important category for publishers to consider again is building options for local professionals and experts to share their services on their online marketplace. The better local opportunities presented, the better online reputation that provide benefits compared to the Yellow Pages. Offering contract accounts helps service providers also register and get better rates and fulfill the needs and requirement of the customer.

Entertainment: The current millennial culture is built around experiences and memories, it is fuelled by celebrations and attending events. These societal changes have given rise to sites like Eventbrite, where events can be marketed to users for booking tickets and sharing with friends. Whether it is offering ad space for event manager to showcase the event, or linking to booking agencies through your marketplace to get tickets, there are many ways online marketplaces can collaborate together.

No matter the marketplace options and industry categories you want to employ for your brand, connecting with business providers and communicating to your customers how they access your marketplace is key. You can offer a subscriber list with a coupon opportunity, reach them through Facebook groups or other digital channels. Your options will differ as you focus on what are the main influencers for your target customers and make those influencers your ambassadors.

Reach your full online potential

Now that you have a strategy and focus for your marketplace, there are some main tools to use with it to meet your revenue and digital performance expectations. These tools include but not limited to website maintenance, content creation, SEO, social presence, and brand reputation management. If one of these tools is missing or not performing, your potential is not being met. SEO works because keywords help your organic ranking in search results and good content needs to be rich in the keywords about your services and brand, without being overwhelming.

Just having a website is not enough anymore. As customers get access to the internet from multiple sources for different needs, social media presence helps you to engage your audience but it also helps your audience to form a relationship with your brand. Use social media to answer their initial resistance and questions, while also building your reputation. Managing your online reputation, does not mean just making sure you can hide negative feedback or focusing on just fixing issues, but making sure that your company is mainly perceived in a positive light.

All of these tools focus on the main battle to be won online – engagement. Once you have your audience’s attention, and they subscribe to your services, they are 5 times more likely to open and click on emails sent from your brand. You can use most of these tools as early engagement strategies to promote new information about your services or organization and provide valuable information even if no direct result comes out of it.

Growing and leveraging a digital platform and online marketplace is not a one-time job. Getting the platform and implementing it is just the beginning and it will be an ongoing project. These different tools, as well as doing the prep work to translate your brand and audience needs into your platform development, will go hand-in-hand to produce promising results for your business.

Local Storytelling with Online Obituaries

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 20:41:00 GMT

Local Storytelling with Online Obituaries

Celebrating the life of a family member or friend is the last parting gift we can offer. There are many ways to honor and celebrate, including private family events or spreading the ashes at sea with a boat party. Writing and sharing their life story with communities where they have lived through local newspapers is still chosen by many. Publishing obituaries online now provide many new options to bring more engagement and community connection.

Provide Prominent Positions Online

AdPerfect Obituaries has been working on newer ways for obituary stories to be shared online. There is a desire within local communities to be able to know the passing of dear friends and be able to share their thoughts and condolences. Not only does the homepage feature recent obituaries that have been placed and shared, but it also features individual notices on the top left corner.

This spotlight position is dedicated to families and friends to use as a way to inform everyone they know, that someone loved and cherished is no longer part of their community. This highlight box will display a photo, name, dates and the funeral home handling the passing and rotate all the local stories that chose to be displayed in this position. This helps to provide a quick snapshot of who, when and where the funeral will take place.

Support Events & Family Memories

As part of celebrating and commemorating the life of our family or friends that have passed away, online obituaries also announce events that have been organized. These events can be easily published online, alongside the obituary details and be used as a way to invite local friends and family that can attend. The event announcements include the event name, date and time, place and location address. For ones that cannot attend or will miss the date and time, can send flowers which will link to the funeral home address details from the obituary notice.

Family and friends can also grow the obituary story and expand on the celebration of life, by sharing photos and memories from the past. Guestbooks are not only used for expressing grief and condolences, but are also used to share the final memories via photos of family and friends gathered together at the funeral events. Photos, stories and favorite quotes are just examples of what people can share in guestbooks.

Display Online Forever

All online published obituaries can be easily searched and found through the top search bar and the advanced search option. The obituaries and in memoriams will stay online forever on the website for family and friends to update and continue to share. All published notices can be sorted and viewed from past weeks, months and years. Some of these will also be archived and always owned by the newspaper, as well as the funeral home or family member that submitted it.

O nce shared online, obituaries become a way to commemorate and not forget the person that left a legacy behind through the life they lived. Every year a reminder email will be sent from the date the obituary was shared online, to also create an in memoriam of remembrance. Family and friends can continue to look back and recall the good memories. Each in memoriam notice will also allow for sending flowers to the family.

Many Uses of Stories Online

Thu, 08 Nov 2018 18:39:00 GMT

Many Uses of Stories Online

Social storytelling has evolved in the last year. Nearly all communication and social apps are now offering options for any user to share their moments and events throughout the day. There are now also several ways even companies can tell and narrate their brand story in a more personable way. We took a look at the most popular social storytelling options online and found some interesting stats.

Storytelling in Brand Communication

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 06:30:00 GMT

Storytelling in Brand Communication

It is interesting that no matter how many changes and advances our culture goes through, the fact that stories still resonate the most with every person has never changed. Every human decision, no matter how logical or practical or systematic, is always influenced by emotion. Numbers and statistics show what the facts are and validate; but stories will show us why it matters.

One recent study revealed that adding an artist’s or painting’s story beside the art, made the value of it to go up by 11%. Not only that, businesses that focus on their key differentiators and display the story behind it (such as ethnically-made or locally-sourced products), will actually be able to affect the perceived value of their brand.

Websites

Nearly all communication nowadays happens online and company websites are now a basic necessity for consumers to interact with your brand. Every marketing plan will always tell you to audit your website, your online presence, your brand perception. As fast as new products come out, in the same way marketing strategies, designs and processes update and change.

It seems that, our products and solutions and benefits have nothing different to offer, until it is put into context. What differentiates brands is the story behind how it was created and how specific customers use it. So maybe, it is time to update and transform the standard ‘About Us’ page from what a company does, to share a story about why a service or product exists. Take the customer through the hero’s journey – from when did the first problem arise to what needs to be done now.

Now websites also give your content a home. This can be a blog or article section that provides updates and industry awareness, as well as educate and provide thought leadership. Not all stories are one time discoveries, but grow from one chapter to the next. Use different blog series or podcasts to explore multiple layers of a certain topic and its implication in specific areas. Making it look nice helps and attracts the user but relevant and useful content will drive your website to be an online machine to create and stimulate referrals.

Social Media & Videos

Anything shared on social media via photos or videos is basically the start of a long conversation. Inviting users and viewers in, they are asked to play with the story you have just shared. Without the playfulness, good creativity is lost and no motivative impression is left on the consumer. Especially when the message is short and simple, successful posts show how their brand is necessary and believable. In every social media interaction, your brand should not be an afterthought.

Social media, as well as videos and podcasts, provide a way to continuously contribute to your brand image overtime. Videos are more engaging and provide very easy ways to be shared and distributed via embedding and popular platforms that use for your business. Using your videos to also create a series of podcasts on relevant and important topics, also add to your value proposition. Using video and podcasts need to be more than just stating what you do and what your mission statement is. Start creating conversations around the things that you and your company care about and can impact. Don’t forget to add a little playfulness in your videos as well.

Events

As much as online interactions have grown for networking and communication, still attending conferences and events have a place in all business and social interactions. Maybe it has made attending events more valuable. The most important aspect in all interactions and communication is consistency in messaging and design. Managing and attending events help build additional cues in the consumer’s mind that are not directly related to your product or service.

Some events will include speaking engagements, where you can sponsor a certain session or seminar, while others can also be working alongside local events that your community regularly attends. That’s why banks sponsor Jazz festivals and concerts that bring local communities together; building a broader brand image and expanding beyond their industry category. This is also part of building and developing narratives for your brand. Every story, whether with a positive or negative tone, are effective and memorable.

Blurring lines between Blogs and Video

Fri, 21 Sep 2018 22:46:00 GMT

Blurring Lines Between Blogs and Video

We don’t get information just from one source and depending on the content, blogs or videos are preferred. From relevant and professional content to product and how-to videos, here are some statistics to consider.

Video & Audio Journalism – the Instant, Omnipresent Journalism

Wed, 19 Sep 2018 22:30:00 GMT

Video & Audio Journalism – the Instant, Omnipresent Journalism

Since the invention of televisions, visual consumption of news and stories has never ceased to engage audiences. With technology, all screens and devices from cell phone to tablets to watches, now offer photo, video and audio engagement at the reach of our fingers, at any time. Video content is becoming the main form of communication that viewers rely on for information and knowledge, as well as entertainment. Not only that, online search engines give top spots for new highlight and breaking news videos.

Smartphones

Phones now offer affordable and easier ways to communicate via video. With even the basic offerings, it is possible to produce news quality live recordings at the scene of an event. The use of tripods and selfie sticks, as well as external microphones help improve the details and quality for better editing and adding final touches. Not only that, with wifi and high bandwidth speeds at home, videos are instant and easy accessible by anyone.

One of the most important ways smartphones have benefited the journalism industry is providing better ways for sources and interviewees to remain anonymous and be able to remain in undisclosed locations. Reporters have more freedom to be able to work remotely and be able to tweet photos, embed videos on social media platforms, so that people will get immediate content and be connected at all times. Consider utilizing mobile devices in more facets of your daily work and connect them with your online blog, website and social media sites. This can mean being the first to inform your audience about a local event or national news and increasing your reach.

Podcasts

Most blogs or articles include the audio or video recording of the content for easier consumption for mobile users. It is more intuitive for users to watch or listen to a sixty second video, rather than read a whole article. This content can also get used for podcast interviews and series, which help build brand loyalty for news organizations and companies alike. Podcasts can be used as follow up pieces on breaking news stories and become the biggest traffic winners online.

Podcasts are very inexpensive to produce and allow a more relatable audio format discussion on current news topics.

M ost of our smartphones, as well as tablets, provide quick and easy ways to listen and follow our favorite and popular speakers, writers and bloggers. The informality of podcasts, allow the audience to draw closer and get a better understanding of a brand. Many publishers strategize to constantly increase the amount of content, without putting too much thought to quality as they cope with the digital world. With podcasts, the content can be more unique, personal and grow brand loyalty.

Smart Speakers & Virtual Assistants

Talking to technology has been a natural instinct for a long time, but without any expectation that it would talk back or do tasks. Since the launch of Siri in 2010, now anyone that has a smart speaker or smart watch or phone can interact with a virtual assistant. As an assistant, it can provide information about the weather, set alarms, play music, read audiobooks and play videos, just to name a few popular features. And all this without looking at a screen; mainly using voice commands, users can access information and news.

In journalism, news briefings are one of the most popular ways users get their information and also how newspapers build their brand. Most assistants allow consumers to organize the options and order of news outlets they want to hear from. Still playing music and checking the weather are more popular uses, compared to listening to the latest news.

W hile newer functionalities are still being developed and improved upon, it seems obvious publishers that have missed the initial train need to consider virtual assistant and smart speakers as one of the mediums in which they can build credibility. It is an actual new voice that newspapers can opt to use to engage and attract consumers. But as you consider this option, be aware of the need to adjust the content for the virtual assistants. Specifically focusing on how the content is being consumed – shortened versions and quick snapshot information. As users get more familiar with their smart speakers and its responses, there is a factor of empathy and connection with the consumer. According to the Netpop Research principal analyst Josh Crandall, “In the future, news organizations will deliver the depth of coverage that’s of interest without limitation to a specific mode of distribution.”

Drone Technology & Usage

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 05:30:00 GMT

Drone Technology & Usage

Over the next few years, it seems commercial and consumer demand will continue to build around drone usage. From taking photography for hiking trips to weddings; from aerial shots and damage assessment to natural disasters, drones seem to offer great benefits. We gathered some interesting insights from industry research.

What about Drones and Newsrooms?

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 23:09:00 GMT

What About Drones and Newsrooms?

Discussions around drones entering the journalism industry has been around for a while. The shift in using different tools to capture and share news instantaneously, as the online experience evolves, has been rapid in the last few years. Utilizing social media, live video posts and artificial intelligence seems easier compared to using drones.

Drones: Immersive storytelling

Journalism and news has always been about being at the right place at the right time to report on real stories, statements and events locally and nationally. However, the medium in which news is being reported has changed and is constantly evolving with technological advances. Technology helps news become multi-dimensional and provide more depth and perspective.

Specifically the usage of drones in more newsrooms has opened ways for reporters to capture more details than ever before. They can survey the damage of an explosion or a disaster area by documenting and showing still images and videos. Live streaming of events and stories, such as annual festivals, concerts, local press conferences, to affects of hurricanes and natural disasters in communities. Drones can capture high resolution images and videos from multiple perspectives and offer a better analysis for viewers.

Drone Regulations

Before considering to incorporate the usage of drones in your newsroom, however, some important restrictions, regulations and certifications need to be evaluated and established. There has been long discussions on how the usage of drones violates many privacy considerations, as well as safety issues regarding the handling of the equipment.

The FAA has deemed the usage of drones in newsrooms as commercial use, although the debate has also brought up the First Amendment free press implications around this definition. This has provided specific restrictions and certifications to include journalists. The Small Unmanned Aircraft Rule – known as Part 107 – is an operator’s certificate and requires that the journalists pass a test covering basic of airspace. This has also brought about specific restrictions, which provided are followed, allow newsrooms to consider drone flights in reporting.

Operational Limitations – (taken from the FAA website)

Unmanned aircraft must weigh less than 55 lbs. (25 kg).
Visual line-of-sight (VLOS) only; the unmanned aircraft must remain within VLOS of the remote pilot in command and the person manipulating the flight controls of the small UAS.
Small unmanned aircraft may not operate over any persons not directly participating in the operation, not under a covered structure, and not inside a covered stationary vehicle.
Daylight-only operations, or civil twilight (30 minutes before official sunrise to 30 minutes after official sunset, local time) with appropriate anti-collision lighting.
Must yield right of way to other aircraft
Maximum groundspeed of 100 mph (87 knots).
Maximum altitude of 400 feet above ground level (AGL) or, if higher than 400 feet AGL, remain within 400 feet of a structure.
Wildfires, major league sports and national parks are off-limits.
No careless or reckless operations.
No carriage of hazardous materials.
No person may act as a remote pilot in command or VO for more than one unmanned aircraft operation at one time.

An important procedure to consider as part of using drones for reporting and providing guidance to your readers, is to create an “About Drone Usage” section on your website. You can also have a pdf file upload that readers can read at any time. This should include your decision process and reasons for using the drone device. Specifically on the information gathered via images and video, who get to see and vet the data is important. What internal reporting and monitoring systems are place with certain sensitive information, as well as the boundaries set for when it should not be used or aired. Do not forget to regularly audit and track any new developments you have in place for using drones.

Drone Pilots

Careful employment and examination of the remote pilot candidates is vital to the success of drone usage in newsrooms. When providing direction to the pilots, newsrooms should consider obtaining adequate insurance for any damage or injury that may result during drone flights. Make sure that the drone is registered with the FAA at a cost of $5, which is valid for 3 years. Do not forget to obtain any necessary licensing for commercial use; which includes shooting photos and videos for a story.

R emote Pilot Certification and Responsibilities – (taken from the FAA website)

Demonstrate aeronautical knowledge by either:
Passing an initial aeronautical knowledge test at an FAA-approved knowledge testing center; or
Holding a part 61 pilot certificate other than student pilot, complete a flight review within the previous 24 months and complete a small UAS online training course provided by the FAA.
Be vetted by the Transportation Security Administration.
Be at least 16 years old.
Requires preflight inspection by the remote pilot in command.
A person may not operate a small unmanned aircraft if he or she knows or has reason to know of any physical or mental condition that would interfere with the safe operation of a small UAS.
A person operating a small UAS must either hold a remote pilot airman certificate with a small UAS rating or be under the direct supervision of a person who does hold a remote pilot certificate (remote pilot in command).

Pilots should have autonomy in their work processes and if certain flights are unnecessarily unsafe or questionable, the newsroom should follow the pilot’s decision. They should also be encouraged to keep track of any new regulations and requirements that might have been updated by the FAA. This can include the changes that occur in the sectional maps and flight restrictions. Specifically on the usage of the drone, pilots should be asked to make sure that they have completed their pre and post-flight inspections, inclusive of checking aircraft body, batteries, and motors. If any parts need to be replaced, original parts need to be used for keeping the safety and quality requirements.

The FAA will continuously find ways to regulate the new “Drone Age” as new technology develops, while discussions on the ethical usage of drones in newsrooms will persist. “There’s no shortage of negative headlines about drones. A lot of it is related to fear. But there’s so much potential good for what these things can do. There are clear advantages to using them.” – Greg Agvent, CNN AIR

Marketing and Sales Automation

Tue, 21 Aug 2018 16:40:00 GMT

August 21, 2018 Most businesses handle marketing and sales on their own, internally. Resources are stretched thin when all aspects of the business have to be covered as well. It seems technology can do more to multiply your efforts than we think. Here are some interesting statistics on CRM and sales technology.

Newsrooms and Technology

Fri, 17 Aug 2018 05:30:00 GMT

Newsrooms and Technology

Within the last 3 years, our online interactions have experienced a big shift. The rise of machine learning and personal assistants have changed the expectations for online access to information and news. Users now expect that their online experience will be fully personalized. They want to know trends and news that are important to them and expect that what they consume online will be relevant directly to their daily lives. Anything outside of their interest zone is irrelevant and a waste of their time.

This main shift has introduced newsrooms to a reevaluation stage, where the usage of digital solutions and technology is the focus. In recent research, 72% of newsrooms now post all their stories in social media. Not only that, 83% of newsroom journalists check social media for any breaking news locally and globally and 45% use social media for conducting source interviews. Journalists now have to consider knowing and utilizing a variety of tech skills and technology within their workflow.

Artificial Intelligence

When it comes to the daily workflow in newsrooms, digital teams have a completely different processes than their broadcasting counterpart. This uncovers a communication and collaboration breakdown as the technology used for creating content for each is still diverse and unconnected. While the line between consuming news online or from television is more blurred than before.

Not only that, but many journalists are now freelancers that work with more than one news organization for different sections. Most newsrooms will also have many remote journalists that create hyper-competitive content in real-time. For the workflow to be efficient, a dynamic editorial approach need to be employed. The main purpose is to accelerate the content process of sorting and researching the news data; eliminating repetitive tasks that most journalists have no time to do anymore. By providing quick fact-checking opportunities, artificial intelligence saves time when eliminating any fake news, by analyzing word patterns. The focus is to discover angles and insights to publish timely newsworthy stories. This not only helps to scale the reach of the content, but also to boost engagement by enhancing the article content.

In this real-time industry, artificial intelligence can also offer more personalized content and improve content recommendations for readers. This is mainly accomplished by looking at reading preferences, time spent on an article, and location of the individual.

Integrated Team Messaging Apps

To publish local, national and even international news, many newsrooms will have remote work environments. This is true for many industries as well. Hopping over to someone’s desk to ask a question or run something by them is no longer the same time zone. This has also lead newsrooms to consider specific apps and solutions around a reliable communication system.

Adopting integrated messaging tools that can link to documents for editing and allow commands to automate the publishing process have been key in a more synchronized work environment. Rather then sifting through emails and looking for attachments, communication solutions can offer a centralized space where edits, recommendations and angles to consider between remote teams. Teams working on different stories can quickly collaborate by creating story chats and jump from one to the other as tasks get completed.

Robots and Automated Journalism

The growing usage of artificial intelligence has lead to a new wave in journalism within the last year – “robot generated stories” or automated journalism. These “robots” utilize preprogrammed article templates and process data to generate content copy and apply it to the template with more details. In basic terms, it is allowing a bot write your content for you.

Associated Press, as well as Washington Post has been experimenting in this area. There has been quite a buzz and the results seems to prove that generating articles through automated journalism can help keep on top of fast paced news developments – such as sports and finance. The Washington Post kept on top of the game statistics and updates for the Rio Olympics by analyzing the data and generating relevant phrases in their preconfigured story templates, equipped with their editorial standards and rules. Associated Press was also generate narratives for their website from the data provided through financial reports for quarterly recaps with a 12-fold increase.

A rtificial Intelligence, Messaging Apps and Automated journalism systems basically assist journalists to pursue less mechanical stories and speed up their workflow to produce more real time content. To implement this system to more complex article topics could mean that there is less depth and complexity, while also not taking into consideration bias. Although there is a case to be made for these technology tools to be implemented in every newsroom, there are still many limitations and we will have to wait and see what new developments will surface.

The online Guestbook – features and benefits for obituaries

Fri, 10 Aug 2018 20:27:00 GMT

The Online Guestbook: Features and Benefits for Obituaries

Publishing any news or story online is always met with comments and sentiments by friends and strangers alike. Some stories go viral and all remain online for family, friends, acquaintances and others to marvel at. But when it comes to publishing obituaries online, the guestbook serves a deeper purpose than just comments. It helps to connect memories, share photos and bring the life story more depth.

Connecting Families and Friends

AdPerfect Obituaries has updated the online guestbook to offer several ways to share memories alongside the obituary story. As part of the improved user experience, the guestbook is placed on the same page as the obituary story and provides more depth and insight about the deceased. This helps build a community with family and friends, and also provide a connection for anyone that reads the obituary story details.

The guestbook also provides a way for people to impart their appreciation to the family for sharing the life story. Most obituaries impact readers to live a better life, to take consideration for their own actions and remember that their family cares for them. AdPerfect Obituaries offers guestbook sharing without an account requirement. Simply type in your name and share your thoughts and tribute with emblems, photo attachments and milestones with dates.

Real time monitoring of posts

When family is involved, the life story of a person has many facets. Online guestbooks help to unravel some of the hidden layers as those closest share many things. AdPerfect Obituaries monitors and manages all guestbook posts. With the use of pre-moderation, all submitted guestbook posts are queued in our platform to be approved. Most posts are evaluated within 20 minutes.

Funeral homes or private parties that submit the obituary also can monitor the guestbook posts with their online account. They can delete any comments and posts that do not add to the life story of the deceased. AdPerfect Obituaries also allows for the obituary owner to invite specific family members and friends via their email, to share any memories and final farewell alongside the obituary.

Keep a record

AdPerfect Obituaries was designed to make sure the family can keep a record of their story, after it is published online. With a simple click the family will get a printer preview of the obituary and all the guestbook posts. This allows for the family to have a way to go back and read all the great memories the deceased shared and lived. It can also be shared at the funeral service with family and friends.

F uneral homes that own the obituary stories published online, can also take advantage of the print preview feature. It can be easily used with any browser and provides an easy way to prepare a funeral service package with the obituary story and guestbook details. With its modern and clean look, the preview also emphasizes the newspaper and funeral home logo.

Digital Era of Storytelling

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 20:09:00 GMT

The Digital Era of Storytelling

Stories have been around a long time and have always been used to share information and knowledge before writing came along. Everyone had to be a good listener to remember and recall the details. Stories travelled with them everywhere and passed down from generation to generation. Now being able to record stories, they can be posted and stored. With the internet, stories are everywhere in everything we interact with.

How to avoid Fake News

Fri, 27 Jul 2018 15:54:00 GMT

How to Avoid Fake News

More links online are being distributed that seem questionable. Most people do not necessarily check what they are sharing. In increasing numbers, social media posts are full of misleading information through simple content and catchy images. Not only that, readers tend to easily accept articles that are in line with their own bias and assumptions. These red flags should push every online browser and reader to look out for specific details and elements to avoid fake news altogether.

Spot the common features

It is a proven fact that when we read a word, we mainly look at the first and last letter. We might miss the mistake on the spelling or actually read a similar word that has the same letters and confuse ourselves for a split second. The same is true when reading and sharing fake news online. The name of the website looks similar enough to the news sites but with one difference, the website url ends in “lo” or “.com.co”. Look out for some of these strange urls.

Other important components include poor grammar and countless typos. If the publisher of the content did not take the time to use a basic spell check, it is one of the sure signs they also did not take the time to properly research their news article. Not only that, be aware untraceable quotes that cannot be corroborated in Google or other online sources. If the article seems to only support one point of view, with all the supporting data focusing on one alternative – this dictates that the quotes and sources might not be easily found. Beware of content fallacies and inconsistencies.

Above all, images posted with news articles attract our attention. We have seen too many links on social media where celebrities are used to promote products or services. The same is true for false news. Photoshopped pictures are designed to grab your attention as you browse and scroll, with the intention that you click on the link. Take the time to review the photo with a longer glance before reading news information that is misleading.

Burst the bias bubble

Just because we have instant access to the internet through our cell phones, does not mean we know everything. Most news is actually researched and evaluated before publishing because reporters and publishers will be asked to show their sources. For every claim there is needs to be supporting evidence. When readers evaluate their options, their own bias and ignorance might lead them to wrong information, dismissing anything that is not right in their own eyes. Make sure to be more critical about everything you read and hear.

A practical way to avoid your bubble is to consider the opposite argument. Taking the time to think through the data provides a better guidance to judge the news shared. This can include also talking to people with opposing views and see their point of view. The facts that seemed very clear might not be so, once you gather more information to reexamine and possibly reconsider your thoughts.

Another point to recognize is curiosity. When a child, curiosity helped bring new discoveries in life. While in school, curiosity was the fuel to always ask questions about new information. In a way, being curious helps to overcome the short-sightedness all humans have towards opinions and alternative ways of thinking. As we grow older, most things in life become concrete and we lose our imagination for alternative options. Try to always keep an open mind as you read news and do some research before making a final decision.

Stop spreading it

Especially when it comes to sharing something on social media, no one takes the time to read the whole article and just looks at the headline. Most likely, just looking at how many people commented and shared it, provides a basis for why we just click to share. Ask yourself if you are only adding this to your profile just because it shows others that you care about this topic or you are actually adding to the conversation. No matter if you are sharing something on your blog, social media accounts or via email, always know what you are spreading or you might have to delete posts, provide a defense and recall emails.

W ord of mouth is still the most popular way to share news; 85% to be exact. Basically, all of us online users are in a way reporters and publishers. We share our photos, thoughts and activities of the day. All your friends and followers actually read and consume what you share. They trust that you are giving them something valuable and worth looking at.

As consumers, with each technological innovation, we are becoming smarter and our habits are changing. People are looking for quick but worthwhile reads, useful information and a lot of visuals. Everyone is hoping someone will explain the details to them so they make their decision without too much work. So all our facts are based on the article title or subheadings within the article. Let’s stop allowing anyone to be reeled in by untrustworthy sources.

Online News Consumption

Tue, 24 Jul 2018 15:17:00 GMT

Online News Consumption

With technological advancements, news quality, consumption and distribution are also being influenced. Any kind of information is shared instantaneously online in social media or via email through simple links, most times without showcasing the publisher. How does this affect the news industry? Take a look at some important traits and habits on today’s modern news consumer.

Spot Fake News Better and Faster

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 05:30:00 GMT

Spot Fake News Better and Faster

Fake news such as propaganda, hoaxes and misinformation has been around for a long time. While the way we consume information and news has continued to change and evolve with the rise of portable device penetration and usage. According to Pew Research Center, people under age 50 get half of their news online. And for those under 30, online news is twice as popular as TV news. We get instant access to every question or need we require an answer to. The first link option in the search results, becomes our main source. This has made the spotting of fake news and accounts harder for online browsers.

The power is yours

How confident are you that you can spot fake news? There is a lot of content shared online every hour and it is the responsibility of the reader to be attentive and careful what they read and accept as credible. There are some strategies you can use to become a smart media judge of online news or when looking at social posts as well.

Vet the publisher’s credibility.

Just like when picking up a book to read, each reader looks at the author’s background and also reviews of the book. This helps build an understanding of what to expect and if worth reading. In the same light, when reading any information online always check the ‘contact us’ page on the website. If possible, look even further in the ‘about us’ page and links of staff writers and editors. Any additional background information you can get will provide a better context if this source is trustable.

Another option that helps if you cannot find much information about the author or website, look at the ads that they feature. Taking the time to look at what they are trying to sell while you browse the content, shows the care they take on the quality. If the ad has nothing to do with the news information being shared, it should raise a question mark. On the other hand, if the ads showcase additional support or information on details shared within the article, then it should speak to the credibility of the website and author.

Pay attention to timeliness.

When it comes to news, whoever gets the first foot in always gets the most viewership. The timing is everything. This means that some news information could not have checked all their facts before sharing the details or providing false headlines to get more clicks online. Definitely look at the date and time of the post before committing to all the information and data being shared.

Another important action you can take is using search engines and double-checking if any other sites are reporting the same thing. This might seem like the most logical thing to do, but sometimes when the information is seems believable enough, no one thinks twice to see if the details are fully correct or distorted. Make it a habit to reference general search tools to check that you are not blindly accepting the initial reports that show up online. Especially when it comes to social media posts – it is harder to verify where the information came from as there might be 10 shares between friends whom want to believe the post is true.

Check the sources and citations.

Many readers cannot fully differentiate between facts and opinions. The nature of the article might not properly differentiate the details and it might be on purpose. One of the best ways to understand the difference is if only one perspective is being portrayed or other viewpoints are also highlighted. The author can have their own opinions but should without bias report all the facts regarding a specific topic.

Not only that, but check the sources and links that are being provided within the article. Be aware that sometimes sources are being paid or paying to be featured. This kind of promotion takes away from the credibility of the website and author, looking to mainly endorse and support versus report and inform. By checking the citations and sources, readers can define the purpose of the content and better evaluate if this piece of information is fake or real.

In between all the important news, fake news sneak in and capture some spotlight. They analyze target audiences and filter their biased information to reach as many people as possible. It is up to the reader to learn smart ways to verify facts before any action is taken. The fact that anything bad goes more viral online than good, every reader needs to take more care before adding more fuel to the flame.

Online Sharing and Blogging Trends

Mon, 09 Jul 2018 05:30:00 GMT

Online Sharing and Blogging Trends

The internet is big and vast. Online sharing is massive. Blogging is very popular. Below we put together some main statistics and trends that show how important and powerful online sharing and blogging has become.

The Evolution of Online Obituaries

Thu, 05 Jul 2018 05:30:00 GMT

The Evolution of Online Obituaries

When we think of the last words we would want to describe our loved one’s life or our own life story, the focus is to be on celebrating piety and good character. But with the turn of the new century, life stories are being described by verbs and adjectives as the main highlight of obituaries. The way we remember is constantly evolving and the language we use is changing.

Technology has directly impacted the memorialization of a person’s life. Obituaries have developed into capturing the whole story from all sources with intimate details, versus just a formulated account of connections with family members and information of services to come. This shift is mainly seen by people sharing obituaries on their social profiles, having comment sections online and stories going viral for good or bad reasons. Not only that, but stories have become more meaningful, fun and interesting to read as family and friends try to capture the essence of the person within the words. Hundreds of people might read an obituary of a person they have never met before and be inspired.

Newspaper Media Outlets

Publishing obituaries in newspapers was and is still the main way for funeral directors and families to inform others about the person that has passed and also encourage better attendance to the funeral service and celebration. This also involves sharing the details to the friends and family in the place of birth but also providing the information to others in the place of death. Using newspaper media outlets also makes sure to cover everyone, especially if their contact information is not easily available.

Newspapers also give prominence to local stories of families that have made an impact to their community. The newspaper staff take time to speak to the family and learn deeper details to share and formulate a local story to inspire readers. These become trusted sources of knowing good and bad stories in communities and remembering the legacies passed on, which get built upon by others. For newspapers, obituaries are not just announcing the death of someone but also commemorating the life lived. People researching their family’s genealogy — now a billion-dollar industry — depend on newspaper obituaries to discover important pieces of family history.

As online trends keep changing, publishing obituaries online now have basic requirements from families and funeral homes. This opens up ways for newspapers to improve their offerings and work with other technology companies to improve their processes or build their own solution. Customers want mobile-responsive memorial pages that allow for family and friends to add the event to their calendar, RSVP for the service, guestbooks and messaging, genealogy and life timeline options, seamless social media sharing, and even document storage for wills and death certificates. But it seems that providing ad-free spaces for families to share and inspire their community is now the main value for newspaper to focus on while providing other services and features.

Funeral Home Websites

The job of funeral directors and homes is to serve their community. Usually they get to meet families and friends in their worst time in life. Not only that, but usually they also know the family and their community very well. They are active in the leadership or attend and organize many events that also prepare them to know what actions to take around the celebration of life.

When it comes to writing an obituary, funeral directors have also taken on that role for families and ensuring it gets published and announced online and in print in a timely manner. Newspapers and funeral homes work together to make sure the family’s wishes are met. But as budgets are a factor in the decision, families will either spend more on the funeral service and just make a small announcement online and in print or choose a basic cremation, to spend a larger sum on having a well thought out and prepared obituary in print and online.

Although it may seem that funeral homes are looking for ways to build their brand online, making sure the obituary is noted through the funeral home helps make the confirmation process easier. It also provides a way for family members to send flowers, donations or condolence messages to the funeral director to give to the family directly. Funeral homes help manage everything in between the service for families, and this includes handling the online obituary.

Online Memorial Sites

Although the obituaries section is still misunderstood, there is a growth of wanting to explore our family history. The fear of talking about death is now shifted to learning more about where we have come from and how we connect with the world around us. Obituaries are becoming stories to share and lives worth writing about.

Online memorial sites such as Legacy, Tributes, Beyond the Dash and even Facebook have come into this space, where family stories and legacies help form a connection and community online. We are all looking for inspiring stories all around us. Many TV shows, such as Ellen and Good Morning America are mainly focused on bringing to light how simple acts of kindness, family stories of love make the world a better place and inspire us to pay it forward.

No matter if someone has impacted a whole community or just their own immediate family, there is something to say about their life. Online memorial sites help to provide a personal touch when sharing family stories. The design usually focuses on the person’s image and personality with their family and friends adding more personal memories. The main focus being celebrating the life lived together, put online memorial sites in a position to serve families and guide them to choose what they best way to present their loss and remember with comfort and delight.

Perhaps obituaries should be kept private or maybe sharing them online for everyone to read and be inspired by is actually the best we can do to honor the deceased. There is no one right way to process grief and there is definitely not one and only way to share a life story. Anyone placing an obituary should think through all the options available for announcing the news and remember that obituaries preserve the memory of the deceased that anyone can come back for encouragement and inspiration.

Personalization in Customer Experiences

Tue, 19 Jun 2018 15:59:00 GMT

Personalization in Customer Experiences

Personalization seems to a new buzz word around marketing to hyperconnected consumers. The statistics focused on in this infographic zero in on points that showcase the success, frustration and failure of marketing campaigns when it comes to reaching your audience and their expectations. Take a moment to see what can make a difference for your business in 2018.

Trends in Real Estate Classifieds

Fri, 15 Jun 2018 21:04:00 GMT

Trends in Real Estate Classifieds

Renters and home-buyers more than ever research and learn about the real estate industry online. This means that realtors and property management firms need to spend more of their marketing efforts and energy on digital advertising solutions and tools. This will ensure a more increased return on their investment. When deciding on these tools, some important features need to be highlighted which seem to be the future of the real estate online.

Enhanced Images and Videos

When it comes to online advertising, great photography and videos help buyers to make a confident decision. Now, because of digital cameras with high resolution features to drone technology, anyone and everyone can list ads with photos and videos. With listings becoming easily available online through MLS and other listing sites, buyers and renters alike want visual details that help narrow down choices quickly and not miss the best option within their budget.

Specifically videos have a stronger emotional impact in online search, as it provides audio and visual engagement which help the viewer to remember more details. While photos are easier to be shared with everyone as it offers smaller sizes and fully supported on all social and digital outlets. But depending on the focus of what you want to showcase, photos and videos have their own pros and cons. Photos have a lower production cost and can be processed quickly, versus videos do have a higher production cost and requires higher-end technology while still stronger at building a story.

Drones fit right in the middle category of photos and videos. Compared to cameras and video equipment, the usage of drones does not require a lot of technical knowledge. They can be used to take photos and videos, which are eye catching without the real need of a professional photographer. Drones also offer the “wow” factor companies are looking for and dramatic aerial views providing an impactful impression for your audience. Especially when videos increase online engagement, using drone footage on your website and social media sites also increase your brand image.

Responsive Tools

When it comes to online engagement, new forms of information sources and processes are emerging and taking the center stage in how consumers complete their needs online. There are several specific types of tools that directly will impact the real estate industry.

Rating sites and online reviews have become more of a basic requirement for all service and retail companies. Actually now 92% of consumers read online reviews before they make a decision. Also, 57% would use a business with a 3 star rating and up to 94% would use a business with a 4 star rating. These tools have turned into a new form of word of mouth and providing objective knowledge, helping agents to be one step ahead of their competition.

The rise of transaction systems such as PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Wallet, are pushing more industries to offer easy to process payment options online. Most everything can be processed online now – health bills, online food orders, tax payments and even real estate management companies are offering online credit card payments. There is a trend rising for consumers to use their credit cards or payment processors for rental payments not only for short term rentals but also for long term apartment rentals.

As the digital world is connecting the world with all the data possible, trends for localizing and personalizing the information has been necessary. This same trend has allowed the real estate industry to offer website portals for their listings to preview offerings and send applications. The same information is also shared with platforms that cover multiple industries or exclusively on the real estate industry, such as Zillow and Trulia. Local agents have also connected their listings with local newspapers that offer strong branding in their communities. Property data has become one of the most sought after online which makes portals and platforms as key digital hot spots.

Advice Content

Marketing real estate listings is not so easy anymore. There are multiple websites that can offer the same listing details so it is very tough if marketing disciplines are not executed. Some of these marketing practices include blogging, SEO, social media and video. These all need to work together with focus on specific topics and themes that provide guidance to the buyer.

One of the big discussions recently have been around tax bill-related advice. Laws and regulations keep changing which the buyer would want direction and suggestions on. According to recent research by Realtor.com, 43% of buyers this year say tax changes will influence their decision and approach. Consumers need more information on what the bill is and it seems real estate agents and firms are perfectly qualified and positioned to fulfill that need.

When blogging and using SEO with social media, making sure the content is hyperlocal and targeted is very important. This means writing and delivering the right articles to the right people. Consumers are interested in specific locations and neighborhoods, so having content that is narrowed down to the issues and reports for the area, meets needs. With regards to demographics, the rise of Millennials has also some impact on the industry. Realtor.com forecasts that 43% of them will take our mortgages in 2018 and the largest cohort will turn age 30 in the next 2 years. Advise specific to Millennials and their home buying concerns and preferences should also be addressed, which seems will direct the industry for the years to come.

The Influence of Video

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 16:25:00 GMT

The Influence of Video

Online marketing is growing and advancing to find ways to provide simple yet strong messages in the digital jungle. Relevant content and the use of graphics and visuals has lead the industry to also embrace video as a vital marketing tool. Let’s look at how video is taking marketing into a whole new level.

The Expertise of Car Classifieds

Mon, 28 May 2018 17:00:00 GMT

The Expertise of Car Classifieds

Buying a car used to be a long process and limited to going to one or two local car dealerships. Price comparison and having to see multiple options was non-existent – you only got what the dealer had to offer. With the rise of information technology, the process of buying a car offers more choice, benefits and provides more power to the buyer.

When considering classifieds, the car category seems to be a great fit as it requires less burden from the seller to reach a wider audience. At the same time, it offers ample opportunities for buyers to compare and gain negotiation power. The benefits offered for both sellers and buyers by using an online classifieds site improve the whole experience around buying a car.

Transparency

With the rise of the internet and online advertising, the ad content needs to be clear and organized. Online car classifieds help to provide an easy way to research and learn what options are available depending on budget, car make, and features. Not only that, but now online ads feature 360 videos, more than 10 photos and even aerial shots that engage the buyer to consider one car over another.

When considering that people still take on average up to 3 months to research and decide on the car that they want, car classifieds ensures that the right information is available during this process. Price details are upfront, as well as model information and even brand articles and statistics right at the buyer’s fingertips. This provides a better transparent experience, which in turn also provide a way for car brands and dealers to step up their game.

Convenience

All traditional advertising has been modernized and moved online, this is true for cars as well. When it comes to bigger item purchases, buyers are learning the importance of the big business strategy – research. Access to information online has provided many great opportunities to educate and provide convenience to buyers and sellers alike.

When consumers are time-pressed to make a purchasing decision, they look for transparency and efficiency, executed with intuitive systems that offer convenience. The seamless purchasing experience is here and modern platforms are allowing brands to play a more direct role in consumer journeys – before, during and after they moved from the digital jungle to dealerships.

From the comfort of their homes, buyers can ask questions, read reviews and comments, and easily browse through all car options available to them. Without the feeling of pressure, buyers can take their time making sure they have found the car they are looking for. Some classifieds sites go further to support the search process and offer daily or weekly email updates on the car model or prices, through search filters specified by users. Together with social media and online search engines, car classifieds offer ease of access to local dealerships while making sure the buyer is educated and ready to make their purchase.

Intelligence

According to recent research, there are an average of 24 touchpoints before someone buys a car and 19 of them are digital touchpoints. With one of the first touchpoints being a Google search, followed by watching YouTube videos and visiting brand sites via display ads targeted to the buyer experience online. Other touchpoints include reading professional and buyer reviews, using loan calculators, and going to a newspaper site to review their car classifieds. These all are vital pieces to putting together the big puzzle of gathering car intelligence online.

Car classifieds play a big role on the online search process as trusted sources of information, such as newspaper and third party sites, provide the confidence a buyer needs to make sure they are making the right choice. With so many options out there and constant car innovations, the instant connection with online information relieves the frustration that the buyer might be missing something or looking at false advertising. Car classifieds can provide details on all the car options that are available, the budget the buyer needs to be considering and where to buy the car that is closest to them.

The Contrasts of Digital and Print Advertising

Wed, 16 May 2018 17:54:00 GMT

The Contrasts of Digital and Print Advertising

When it comes to advertising online or in print, there are many strategies, ideas and concepts on ROI and measurement. But before you start putting together a plan, take a moment to look into the good and the bad for either advertising option.

Boost advertising attention through digital and print

Fri, 11 May 2018 20:12:00 GMT

Boost Advertising Attention Through Digital and Print

No matter which way you look at it, advertising still holds a ton of potential. Be it print or digital, it is still one of the most effective ways to get your service or product in front of readers and users. The challenge becomes which advertising option will work best for your service or product. Take your time to consider the details for each advertising medium. This will affect the measurement and success of your project.

Compelling Messaging in Print

Although digital is the new hype in the advertising world, print still plays an important role in providing the story for your brand. Print advertising still has a personal impact on customers as people can touch and feel the ad, resembling an experience close to fine art. Not only that, but print advertising when used correctly and strategically can generate as much of a buzz as digital advertising.

Advertising aims to provide a direct emotional response, which call the reader and audience to action because they have identified with it. But triggering this emotional response has become a complex process. Humans have become the ultimate multitaskers, with less and less attention span. This is especially true for digital content, when every second something else grabs our focus and draws us to another option. Not only that but when adopting digital advertising, one can never be quite sure if your message reached the audience at the right timing.

When it comes to print advertising, your message is situated in the most relevant editorial content because newspapers take the time and resources to work on the specific details of how information is consumed. Traditional print advertising is often more effective at driving business at a local level, which in turn eliminates the unnecessary strain from the online competition which casts a wider net for the same audience. What is more, print advertising conveys a sense of credibility and respectability compared to digital. Studies show that print and TV ads are still the most trusted sources of advertising channels.

It is also important to note that print does drive online search. Speak to your audience clearly through storytelling. Stir up some emotion that identifies your brand and helps it stand out. Make it easy for prospects to contact you and reach the information online, once they are engaged in print. Above all, make sure your advertisement is structured to generate qualified leads.

Effective Online Pages

Digital advertising has in many ways saved marketing and sales teams from a lot of legwork and waste of resources. Compared to print advertising, the reach opportunities are endless and the ability to have a good amount of control over who sees the ad, less money and resources are wasted. At the same time, digital advertising is served best when filtering and sorting options are properly configured within the search process.

Most advertisers either choose the horizontal model, where the website presents a range of categories, or the vertical model, where the website is centered on one main category. Some areas that do not have strong general classifieds, vertical platforms will fill the void. The option that you choose will depend on your local needs and demands. An important point to consider when formulating your model to reach advertisers, consider if someone was selling an old futon or services, their ad does not become a message in a bottle within the vast online classifieds sea. Be sure to offer features that include selecting prominent sponsored positions, as well as displaying more similar ads below ad content for continued browsing.

Compared to print, digital advertising is better at gathering useful market information as most systems, such as Google Analytics, offer additional information about user trends and referral successes. To grow the opportunities to generate market information, your online pages should integrate social media sharing and linking. Location maps can also be linked to the ad details, as well as offering directions and a simple click to call the business from a cell phone. This will offer advertisers important information that your online pages are helping to generate leads for them.

Tactics to Boost Advertising Share

Monitoring users and advertisers in print or in digital is becoming increasingly more complex. As technology is becoming smarter and offering constant engagement, users are browsing and exploring the digital world through several screens. This offers several profiles for one user that is harder to track. On the other hand, print products focuses on circulation through specific local locations and can also offer creative and original influence through touch and feel.

Although the situation might seem challenging for print and digital advertising, there are some specific actions that be considered throughout your pricing to website structure. This will improve and facilitate a process to pursue accounts that are inactive for more than 6 months, as well as promoting options from advertisers using competitors.

When it comes to online, always display your classifieds categories on top within the menu bar for easy navigation. It might not be a bad idea to position the sections above the news categories as it shows there is value for them to be seen first. Even if your current model is horizontal, it does not mean you cannot break out your categories into navigation items that leads to your classifieds site. It will add value to browsers looking for apartments for rent and having one classifieds link might be speak as loud as having a rentals link in the top-level.

Improving the discovery and growth of your advertising, also includes the specific action of adding the “Place an Ad” link or button in a contrasting color that draws attention. For better results, place the link in the top menu bar, where users can quickly spot it. Develop package rates for print and digital combinations that deliver value. Print ads will be priced higher because of the cost and resources needed for producing them. While digital ads need to be priced in such a way to be competitive and not diminishing the value of print. If your packages do not appeal to your advertiser, then make sure your online offering is pitched well to call them to action.

The Value of User Interface and Design Layout in platforms

Tue, 01 May 2018 00:02:00 GMT

AdPerfect has been serving the media and publishing industry for over 14 years. The knowledge gained from working alongside newspapers have resulted in tested and proven features within our platforms. Developing software is a dynamic cycle but there is one main component to consider before anything else – the user.

Focus on the user experience

When we talk about the user experience, it does not only mean how easy or pleasing it is to use your website or platform. But the focus is on the end-user’s interaction with your company as a whole – your services, departments and products. As you choose your platform and features think about what they need, what they value, their abilities, and also their limitations. According to Econsultancy, 95% of website visitors agreed that good user experience is everything that really matters.

If the feedback from your users is having a way to place ads directly from online and have access to your services on weekends, then that is the main value proposition. Now you have to align this request with your business model and goals. This is where you should have a list of objectives. Most common business objectives for online platforms AdPerfect addresses:

Submit ads in print and online
Display online ads for mobile devices
Offer online payments or account billing
Allow user accounts
Provide admin accounts for ad approval
Support reporting for billing team
Third party integrations

Direct users through the easiest path

We have some good news. 70% of customers now expect a company’s website to include a self-service application. Also 40% of consumers now prefer self-service over human contact. But at the same time, around 55% of customers find web self-service portals difficult to use. That’s a little more than half of users!

When evaluating your options, consider the platform that offers a more intuitive process. The steps of the process need to be clearly defined and also easy to navigate. Users are getting trained to use systems online from small screens and clicking on options. Make sure the typing options are minimal and there are more ways to select preferences and choices.

AdPerfect has developed the self-serve process to include smart ways to select upsells, add ad details with check boxes, confirm dates by clicking on the calendar and pre-populate user contact information. These features make the ad creation process simple and quick, ensuring the user easily completes the task they came to do. If the user experience is satisfying and positive, users will not forget it.

Smart design for better user engagement

According to Adobe, 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content/layout is unattractive. Furthermore, 48% of the visitors voted website design as the number one factor in affecting the credibility of the website. As the saying goes, the first impression is the last impression.

When developers and product managers think of design, the focus is on the purpose and intent behind every single step and event. The same is true, when researching and reviewing platforms. If certain functionalities within the design just look good but have no functionality, then the design is not fulfilling its purpose.

The AdPerfect platforms focus on showcasing the most important tasks in a prominent position that is intuitive for users. No space is wasted. The portal is specifically configured to offer digital revenue with specified ad tags positions, while also displaying the newspaper branding without overloading the user. Important sections of the ad details are formatted to be easily read and seen by users, thereby eliminating the need to review the whole page before getting to the information desired.

AdPerfect provides value and return on investment by tracking industry trends and filtering the features that produce the most benefits. By analyzing what makes the most sense for the user and what your brand wants to accomplish, we build reliable solutions that help your business grow.

Data is the new Power Play

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 05:34:00 GMT

Data is the New Power Play

Today data is everywhere. All online interactions are being tracked and compiled and analyzed so users can get the best online experience possible. Here are some important statistics and trends to consider for 2018.

Strategies to turn your data into insights and revenue

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 05:30:00 GMT

Strategies to Turn Your Data into Insights and Revenue

The word data has become one of the buzz words in marketing and advertising. In the past, companies researched industry trends and used analysis by industry experts. Now, all departments play a role in collecting data about customer to help customize the online experience.

This is mainly done by being intentional in tracking your customer journey across team interactions and various newspaper platforms. To better track your user experience and journey, develop a set of rules to help mark the data points you need to capture. These data points will help establish common traits and values, which will create original and specific avenues to monetize your data. Learn to see your data as one of your main assets that will have a measurable impact on your bottom line.

Analysis Over Reporting

There are two ways to look at your data – numbers or insights. Many times just the numbers themselves do speak volumes about the success or failure of a project. But usually you really need to work with your data. This is where your insights come in. Use your data to answer what the numbers mean for your newspaper and what specific actions you need to take to change and improve the metrics you are measuring.

As you establish the context, there will be more buy-in from all departments to execute the action plan presented. Discuss and show how this will affect your business and the importance these actions will carry for each department. Consider using real examples from accounts that have benefited from slight changes in marketing projects and how your customer service has helped provide better service options that also drove increased customer spend.

Analysis will also include evaluating visitor expectations. When you review what content was most viewed and how that content was accessed, the visitor’s decision to click your link can be evaluated. Even your bounce rates inform your team that the topic is of interest but the content did not meet the expectations of your audience. This is an opportunity for your team to generate a new direction or revise some of your main points.

Data Insights Form an Action Plan

Data insights come from the right analysis, and the right analysis comes from your measurement criteria. Your measurement criteria is driven from your main business questions and objectives. Your data might challenge or change your business objectives as you discover certain user behaviour that might not match up with your business questions.

Make sure you have segmented your data correctly. As you group user behaviour data that share the same criteria in common, this will help narrow down the information and make it easier to dig deeper. But if your initial assumptions are wrong, do not hesitate to go back to the beginning. Remember that interesting findings do not always translate into actions.

Your action plan needs to include specific problems that you are solving. Maybe more than one major problem will pop-up from the data about your content and site. The important step is to prioritize them and focus on the top of the list. Take your time to quantify your actions with number and deadlines. If there is no way to keep your team accountable, the plan will not accomplish its purpose. Do not miss to make your plan easy to monitor and help your newspaper to achieve a higher level of performance.

Use Data Visualization to Back Actions

After the initial stage of executing your plan, you need to account for all the effort taken to complete these actions. Your data story needs to convey the positive improvements that have been accomplished. Do not forget to include how and why, with focus on what actions will still be used moving forward.

The best way to illustrate how valuable your actions have been, is to use visualization. Sometimes data can be harder to describe because it is just numbers on a page. For example using progress charts can help show the actual change that has taken place from simple percentages to actual relationships and patterns between your measurement criteria. Not only that, you can use visualization to identify emerging trends for your brand.

meaning to the data by using correlated visuals to help your team discover the solution all together. The main focus is to extract the potential value of the data that will translate into revenue growth. Relevant and profitable patterns can remain hidden in between the numbers and columns of your analytics.

Simply collecting the data is not why analytics is so popular. Data helps to provide an overview of why something is not working and ways this can be improved. Your initial data will help you gain insights and put together a strategy for where your newspaper is heading. Activate your data to optimize the information to drive true business value and turn it into revenue.

The Strong and Valuable Brands of 2017

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 17:43:00 GMT

The Strong and Valuable Brands of 2017

When we think of a brand, the first thing that comes to mind is the logo. But branding is so much more. It takes years to develop with no guarantee if it will sustain itself. We have taken a moment to look at which brands are still strong and valuable in the eyes of consumers and small facts that show their success.

Grow your audience through strong digital branding

Tue, 27 Mar 2018 16:00:00 GMT

Grow your audience through strong digital branding

We have all heard the saying, the best things in life take hard work and time. This is no less true for branding. Although the digital world has made the speed in reaching and communicating information easy, branding develops and evolves over years and decades, instead of days or weeks. Building a trusted brand is not about your product or service alone, but also all the pieces in between – social engagement, sales and marketing process, customer support or call centers.

In digital branding, the focus is on managing your brand in digital media solutions and platforms. By strategically employing its capabilities, brands can be built over time to be the top of their industry.

Focus entirely on branding, not conversions

The main shift that happens when teams become brand-focused is creating a singular strong online value proposition. The message needs to be clear, consistent and relevant. Your service or solution should not leave any doubt as to how and what problem it will solve.

When you combine your branding message with data, things get a bit blurred. Teams start compromising on the direction of their brand campaigns, focusing on the metrics for conversion instead. For branding to work, the feeling of urgency or quick momentary gains need to be off the table. The world’s most effective brands like Coca Cola or Apple, don’t need to push you to buy anything. They only need to direct a specific association or feeling to their brand, which then translates into something more permanent in the consumer’s mind.

This is mainly why, you will see companies rebranding or looking to bring their back in the game, with a fun twist. Sometimes this is inevitable but most times, if branding campaigns are individually assessed, without the push from conversion numbers, the value will be achieved over the long term.

Create an integrated unified message

Trust is the most important glue that keeps any bond together. Consistency in communication and action are key to form that trust and grow it with time. The same is true for branding as it involves creating loyalty and improving on the service or product offered. Take time to match your brand with your content in tone and subject matter. It’s unlikely to create any type of trust or connection with your audience otherwise.

Great branding depends on your message being consistent with your brand image, every single time. When using digital advertising, social media, and traditional media adopt tactics that work best for each channel with your audience in mind. Using images, videos (webinars and demos) and catchy headlines are always important. Treat all your messaging as part of the customer experience from start to finish, providing confidence by persisting in what you believe your service or product provides.

Start small and steady to sustain your branding efforts over time, publishing new content alongside ads, videos and marketing messages with a carefully planned schedule. As your audience becomes familiar with your brand messaging, increased website traffic and conversions is sure to be seen.

Speak to your audience in their language.

Building your brand voice online can seem like a daunting process. There is a constant flow of ideas, comments and opinions. Consider that every minute there are 448,000 tweets, 66,000 Instagram posts and 317,000 Facebook status updates. This information is easily accessible and a good monitoring process needs to be in place for getting the best value.

Narrow down your audience search by looking at your followers and search through their hashtags or photos of interest. See what conversations are happening in between and use those keywords and phrases when you speak to your audience. Also notice what your other competitors or local services are doing and see how your audience is engaging with them. Find out the words and comments they are using when they comment about them.

Get a pulse of your industry by looking at trending topics on Facebook, Google +, Linkedin and Twitter. These will provide great discussion topics, which can grow into a series of articles. Combining hot industry themes with your audience comments and discussions, will guide your brand voice to be heard and be in on the conversation.

Become the content authority in your industry

Pushing digital content is a long-term endeavour and it will always be driven by your brand image and voice. Leverage the information you collect from your marketing channels and focus on developing unique ways to connect with your audience. This can be in the form of weekly live videos on local updates, webinars with experts, or perspective talks and debates on hot topics and trends.

Your content needs to be unbiased and focused on helping your audience learn new and important facts at no cost. This will be a key way your brand will start to stand out. Create an unified message that reflects each marketing channel and the wants of your audience. Test and try again, because it takes time to get it right. It definitely works, because some of the most popular brands tend to have a lot of engaging and authoritative content under their belt.

Content authority does not mean selling what you do, but using your brand to create and share engaging messages that demonstrates an unique understanding of the challenges faced by your industry. Within your blog message include direct helpful advice with supporting data, that can be easily put into action. For SEO purposes, create content that is current and ripe for the picking by your audience and industry. When it comes to your industry and promoting your content, be aware of all the big and small players and create a solid network. Engage with trusted voices in your industry and send them your content as comments.

Be a constant online observer, listener and learner. These are the major legs your digital brand will stand on. You can’t just copy and paste the same message and information, and expect your audience to engage. Every marketing channel and touch point needs to have its own personal messaging. Once your brand voice is recognized and listened to by your audience, your message will not easily be forgotten.

Top Online Search Statistics for 2018

Mon, 19 Mar 2018 05:30:00 GMT

Top Online Search Statistics for 2018

Search engine optimization is now the big buzz word in marketing. Although it involves both technical and creative tactics to improve rankings, drive traffic, and increase awareness in search engines, it is also dependent user experiences. Here are some valuable statistics to keep in mind for 2018.

3 New ways to adapt for better Online Content Discovery

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 05:30:00 GMT

3 New Ways to Adapt for Better Online Content Discovery

Just 5 years ago, mobile browsing barely had a presence in market share. Now the tables have turned, with mobile on top with 52% market share and desktop at 44%. What’s more, 20% of all mobile searches is voice search. Not only that, about 4 billion devices will carry AI-powered voice assistants this year and this number is expected to hit 7 billion in 2020. These changes offer several new developments in the SEO world.

Mobile-Indexing

The golden rule of marketing, identifying what your customers want and offering them the solution that best meets their needs, still rings true in the digital sphere. The main tools include identifying buyer personas, building a customer journey and creating a plan to meet those needs. The same is true for Google. From developing an enhanced search engine to offering devices, Google’s main focus has always been for their users to receive experiences tailored to their needs.

This is where mobile-indexing comes in. The focus is offering a responsive design and making sure Google crawls your mobile site first. This mobile version will be considered the primary version of your website. Again, it’s all about offering a unique experience to each user.

Let’s be more clear, this does not mean taking your desktop website and using the same content and structure. To be ranked higher and provide better user engagement, think like a mobile screen. Let the main information you provide be exactly what your customers usually want to do when they come to your site. The faster a customer resolves and completes their desired action, the more they will trust and rely on your service.

How can this be achieved? Here are some examples.

Provide one thought per page. Offer succinct information that summarizes your service and provide links to more information as needed. Develop your search bar on mobile, as it will help develop a better user experience by seeing what the top searches are within your website.
Prioritize navigation. Mobile menu options and quick links need to be aligned with why your customers come to your website through their mobile. They wanted to know the score from last night’s game, the latest discussion on local politics or see the weather forecast. Offer those sections first through tabs on top.
Think Like a Search Engine. Page speed, site errors or missing links, text size and reading features – these are some ways search engines rate your website and user experience. For example, all your web pages should load in two seconds or less. Users won’t wait for your web page to load, especially if there are missing links and errors, which multiplies into customers moving away from your brand.

Bottom line, if you have a website that has a responsive design then you have no big worries. If you still only have a desktop-friendly site, now is the time to make some upgrades. This also includes other engagement-heavy pages like your classifieds, obituaries, and contact pages.

Context Matters

Search engines are becoming smarter with every year. Not only that, but consumer behaviour is dictating how search engines need to respond to queries. Gone are the days when search only allowed keywords. Nowadays, consumer are comfortable and want to pose complex questions and expect accurate results.

Search engines can now recognize connections from queries. Algorithms now actually perceive the context and intent behind the search and using similar past search data, deliver results that best answer the initial query.

So what does this mean for content? Newspapers actually know the strategy from long ago – produce online content like a publisher. Use online social listening tactics and tools to find stories, topics and trends that resonate with your readers now. Online content needs to help respond to questions and problems in the moment.

The main benefit newspapers have in the content development circle is their brand. It is not only when something is mainly published in print that it becomes authoritative and trustworthy, but also the source it is coming from. Newspapers value real news and provide information without bias. This is the shift that Google wants to take place online, as trust is lessening online.

Evaluating your online content strategy through the lens of search engine optimization (SEO) and top search results only, does not lead to success anymore. Rather, the focus needs to fall on the content experience analysis first, which focuses not on the quantity but quality provided for the user journey. The new partnership of SEO and content marketing allow for an enhanced strategy, focused on intelligent content creation and content performance.

Voice Search Optimization

Alongside the growth of mobile, intelligent agents (chatbots and personal assistants) are creating a new niche market in communicating and accessing information on our devices. We are now in the post-mobile world and many tech giants have made the shift from mobile-first to AI-first. AI revenue will reach $36.8 billion by 2025, a significant increase from the $643.7 million mark in 2017.

Moreover, approximately 55% of teens and 41% of adults are using voice search at least once a day. This means SEO needs to be more conversational. Do not focus on blocks of 2 or 3 words alone, but consider full sentences for keyword strategies. Think chats, think talks, think conversations. Your content needs to include natural language, expressions and focused on questions that you already hear being asked about your brand. Long blogs and informational articles with simple and conversational headings or sub-headings are some examples to target conversational queries and become more discoverable.

Joining the voice-enabled search circle will also include harnessing your reviews section. The more satisfied and happy customer you have that leave positive reviews, helps you rank higher and come up at the top of search engine recommendations. Online reviews help answer your audience’s most common questions, but with the transparency that guides them to their decision.

of marketers have no plans to begin preparing for it. All the while, Google allowing featured snippets to provide answers to voice queries. It reads the snippet and highlights your company name for brand awareness, so with your new keyword strategy, you could become Google’s only search result.

No wonder browsing and accessing information is becoming ever more instantaneous, affecting every facet of our lives. Consumers expect search engines to answer their direct questions, offer the best options, remember their profiles and connect them to the world around them right at their fingertips. Only the brands that join in on the online conversation can actually be seen and heard. Audit your content, consider voice search optimization and design your website mobile-ready.

The Power of Good Customer Service

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 05:30:00 GMT

The Power of Good Customer Service

Differentiation in a world of constant change and update is becoming harder and harder to define. Industry experts are signalling that price and quality are not enough. Take a moment to explore some key findings on the power of Customer Service, and how we believe it will shape the way we do business in 2018 and onward.

Recruiting the Right Classifieds Salespeople

Fri, 23 Feb 2018 05:30:00 GMT

Recruiting the Right Classifieds Salespeople

For the success of any company sales teams make the difference between a good and bad reputation, as well as growth and loss. They are the first contact with a potential client and a valuable source on the needs and demands of customers. Beyond the obvious reasons and motivations for hiring a sales team, publishers need to consider a specific approach to building their team that will translate into success.

Practice a solid HR vetting technique.

Like with any relationship, people are more than the sum of their resume. It is easy for any employer to look at basic information about a possible employee’s experience in years, completed projects and connections in the industry. This perspective only takes into account a checklist of what their capabilities are.

Consider a different perspective with focus on their character and personality. Instead of only thinking about the training time needed to grow their technical skills, analyze things that will represent your company in the correct light. Salespeople represent the living image of your brand to your readers. Some of your vetting factors should include – passion and drive for their work and community, consistency in performance, strong prioritization, and also the ability to build and grow relationships. Pursuing salespeople with these skill sets will not only positively impact your sales but also your brand loyalty in your local communities.

Search for people with a passion for your industry.

There are many ways to evaluate if someone is a good fit for your company. Sometimes having someone fresh in your industry might bring about new ideas and possibilities. Other times, it is vital to have someone more experienced and knowledgeable with the nuances of your industry and clients.

No matter the background of your salesperson, to evaluate their passion level you should look out for some of these qualities – coachability, competitive nature, communication skills, competence in building rapport, rejection tolerance, ability to take initiative. They have to easily adapt and learn new processes and new technology as you automate and grow your work flows. They have to equally grasp the vision of your newspaper to reach your local community and be innovative in providing the right service. They have to take ownership of their work and see themselves as the main piece to complete the big picture.

Interview with your sales DNA in mind.

Customer retention is achieved by the value they receive from your company. When your service run smoothly, your customers and staff are happy. It is mainly when unplanned errors and setbacks occur, the true strength of your team is tested.

You cannot prepare for events that happen out of your control, but you can plan for a good interview system, to make sure your team is selected right. This matters because every time an employee leaves, it can cost a company 30-50% or as high as 1.5x that person’s annual salary.

The main ingredient for seeing the sales DNA fit in any interview is keeping your questions open-ended. This can include testing their commitment by asking if they see anything that can be improved within your brand, or asking about a current job-related book they are reading, or actually testing if they know what the job entails. Even go further to ask them about a technical area or tool they want to learn about. These example questions dig deeper to evaluate the person that might be a long or short term employee. Listen for clues in how they answer, making sure they are not just patting themselves on the back but also crediting outside people in their lives. Also look if they have done some research, asking questions about your current work and even offering future projects to consider.

Some companies go deeper on their screening processes. This can include requiring a candidate to provide sample work from prior jobs and/or create new work for a current or past company project. Other evaluation criteria include interviewing with multiple departments present that might impact the sales process. For many localized teams, having the current team directly interact with the candidate at the final interview stage will help make-or-break your decision.

Invest in the proper tools early on.

Today many companies struggle to retain their salespeople. One of the main reasons remain the implementation of new technologies and providing opportunities for personal growth. Sure company events and benefits offered do attract future employees, but building your company culture around more flexible and adaptable processes by using the right technology offers lasting advancement options.

This keeps your company ahead of competition in the eyes of your salespeople. Especially when it comes to technology, it provides ways to help focus your energy on the things that make a difference in the sales negotiations. Instead of staying in the office to take a call, managers can be on the go and respond to calls or emails. Travelling is easier because all your documentation is accessible at your fingertips so your company sales pitch is always at hand.

Technology is not only beneficial when your sales team is outside the office closing deals but also when working at their desks. For retail or business account contracts and ad placements, call center and self-serve portals help in automating the back-and-forths between emails. Utilizing sales CRM systems, centralize client data to help improve customer service and increase ROI. Your team can delegate tasks, track when someone needs help to complete their work and easily process the data between your team departments. Managing your classifieds becomes easier, training new salespeople is faster and more work is being completed.

With each passing year the generational gap keeps growing, and companies are realizing that the recruitment process, especially for salespeople, needs to be revived and refreshed. By taking the time to evaluate who you want to attract to your team, you can better improve your sales package. This is mainly achieved by making sure you are sticking true to your sales DNA.

Self-serve Portal Basics – Value and Benefits

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 05:30:00 GMT

Self-Serve Portal Basics - Value and Benefits

AdPerfect is a Canadian-based software company that has been servicing the publishing technology industry since 2004. Our expertise stems from our deep understanding of the print and digital publishing demands and developing modern, intuitive self-service platforms. Our solutions that offer an enhanced self-serve portal include Classifieds, Obituaries, Celebrations and Employment.

The rise of the digital and mobile access to content and services, has pushed businesses to take their place in the digital world. Self-serve portals are not only designed for newspapers to maximize their resources, but also to build a stronger brand in the online sphere. Self-service allows publishers to showcase their shift in focus from the revenue first to the customer service first direction. As the advertiser is becoming more educated on using digital publishing services, newspapers can level up their offerings by making ad submission easier.

AdPerfect self-service portals have allowed publishers to increase their overall classifieds self-serve revenue by 35% and a 28% increase in their total transactions. Not only that, the number of first time users have increased 29%. This breaks the myth that advertisers are not ready nor willing to use online self-service portals. Some standard features that help produce success include a passive login process, real-time cost and print ad preview, easy online and print scheduling, and easy to select upsell options, configured specifically from individual newspaper specifications.

Emails are a precious commodity in the online world. Advertisers are more protective to how direct an access they provide to their inbox and daily life. By not asking for an email to create an account, it removes the stress for a new advertiser to explore what you offer and see the value in providing their contact details to track their account.

Print and online upsells allow advertisers to customize their ads, yet still be within the newspaper requirements so the ad will be easily processed and approved. As the upsells are being selected and applied, the ad preview and cost details update in real time, so the advertiser has confidence in their placement. Once the upsells are approved, the advertiser can also download a proof sample for their records.

The continuous platform updates on the design and self-service process, provide fast and measurable opportunities for publishers. Just by updating our print and online scheduling preview, we have provided 46% more web ad day upsells and about 21% more print ad day upsells within the last period alone. We track our usability effectiveness with heat maps and thanks to our user interface experts, enhance any area that does not meet our standards.

AdPerfect self-serve platforms offer a better way to engage advertisers and offer them value. By removing the long forms and sign up requirements, the user is allowed to complete the process they mainly want to accomplish. Newspapers can finally take advantage of a technology solution that puts their brand and advertisers first.

Content Marketing – The New Online Strategy

Mon, 12 Feb 2018 05:30:00 GMT

Content Marketing - The New Online Strategy

Nowadays, if you want to make an announcement, all you need to do it send a tweet, update your Facebook status, or share a post on Linkedin. But without a targeted approach to your online communication, your content is just nice images and words that do not resonate with your audience. In comes, content marketing. Take a moment to see how it is affecting the online marketing sphere.

Increase circulation and revenue at your community newspaper

Tue, 06 Feb 2018 05:30:00 GMT

Increase Circulation and Revenue at Your Community Newspaper

Newspapers have access to valuable consumer information about their readers. But many fail to put that information into use, which could be used to segment their readership to help target content and advertising. The ownership of information and news delivery has slipped from the hands of newspapers to digital publishing brands. But all is not lost. Two can play this game.

Make the Shift

One thing is certain, everything is going digital and constant access to information is paramount. Community papers have to decide between a digital only or print-first and mobile-second direction for news delivery. Many newspapers have decided to cut down on their print circulation from daily to 3 days a week or some have gone completely digital. There is still a large number of the population that prefer to get the print option but delivering short-form content and/or video in mobile is what will make the community newspaper stand out. This will also impact the increase of your circulation and reach.

As an illustration, Tronc, which by emphaszing digital innovation and changing its name from Tribune Publishing, reports a 8% decline in advertising revenue, a 4% decline in total revenue, but a circulation revenue increase of 5%. Compared to The New York Times, recording a year-over-year decline of 9% in advertising revenue, an overall revenue decline of 2%, but a 3% rise in circulation revenue. For the industy, digital circulation sales are projected to lead the way compared to print circulation sales, with a 5-year gain of 300%.

Many local papers utilize what technology is readily available to them. Some use Facebook Live to chat to locals and talk about a new spot that is opened for promotion. This helps your community connect in a more personable level with your brand. Twitter can be purposed for instant traffic, sports or even disaster update reporting. Utilize Instagram for weekly shots of community events and have locals tag their friends and family to the photos. Join in on finance and business conversations by featuring your articles in Linkedin groups. But to be on top of the social media game, there needs to be a centralized process for developing content and posting it online at the right time.

One main platform many businesses use to manage and preschedule many of their planned social media posts is Hootsuite. They offer up to 3 free accounts for scheduling posts and also offer automated posting for when each social media is most active. This helps automate the process and stops the worrying if the post was sent or not.

Offer “News2go” Memberships

It should come as no surprise that with the growth of news and information consumption online, many subscription models have changed. Recently, we talked about how the new generation of Millennials have brought forth the new way of having access to our needs. Platforms such as Spotify offer music sharing for a low monthly cost, Netflix displays commercial free tv shows and movies, or Zipcar hones in on car sharing, where the need for having access to a vehicle without owning it, solves a need.

The same is true with accessing news and content from newspapers. Smaller screens and limited time, require that information is short and grabs attention. This also includes reducing page load time by focusing on cleaner content and article pages with quality photo galleries. Each access to an article needs to be captured and studied, so that the reader behaviour dictates what the next article or topic of focus should be within that section.

While focusing on how readers interact with news and content, other important engagement points to be considered include, how to offer a continued interaction service and pricing it right. Nowadays, few plan for anything longer than 2 weeks. So when you have engaged readers, it is now or never to get their attention and also display the value you offer. As the saying goes, “The cost is long forgotten but the quality is remembered forever.”

One way newspapers have found that sweet spot was conducting a basic poll project with their readers on how much they would pay for a monthly subscription. The sweet spot for their digital subscriptions were $5 per month. Take time to see what your customers have to say about costs.

An additional step is actually focusing on when certain topics are popular and presenting a “news2go” program. If it is sports season, make sure you offer a sports reporting program for the whole week. If it is graduation season, focus on the finance or work content and send bi-weekly newsletters with catchy infographics.

Create a Local “Groupon” Space

With access to products and services online, readers take more care when selecting what to buy and where to go eat or go on holiday. Online recommendations are key when completing any transaction online. This trend has also given rise to building trusted brands and e-commerce sites where buyers and sellers are confident in their transactions.

Platforms like Groupon, offer value by negotiating a good deal locally or internationally for a certain period which provides urgency and desire. Amazon is another great example, where a brand can dictate how certain holidays and seasons affect user behaviour and cause buyers to plan their calendars around their special events.

In the same way, newspapers are a trusted brand for their communities, where there is an opportunity to plan activities and events in advance and know what services or products will cause excitement with their readers. This could include negotiating with a local restaurant a set meal and a set of tables reserved for Valentine’s day. Another option could be a package of 5 classes from a local gym or dance studio for New Year resolutions. Make it more exciting by offering the deal codes in print and announce the dates of publishing on social media for each month.

Partnerships are another way to go on certain topics that are important to your community. From plant care to animal care, partnerships with a local floral or pet store to deliver kits that provide weekly supplies would create additional value and linking them online with newsletters on how to use the kits from their local experts. As an example, The New York Times launched a meal delivery kit in partnership with a start-up called Chef’d. Subscribers got door deliveries of portioned ingredients to create a meal from one of the newspaper’s archive of recipes.

Take advantage of the Internet

In many ways, local brand names can reach the national news and at the same time national brands can reach the international news stage. Specifically for local communities, any story can instantly become viral and connect with millions of readers.

There are big and small ways to take advantage of the data internet provides. Segment your homepage by short and long reads or offer 5 minute articles versus 40 minute reports. Showcase which article is being read the most right now, depending on the newspaper section the reader is in. This will allow first time visitors to easily choose how long they can spend on your website or what topic is hot right now. Connect one article that has a similar content with another article through defined categories. Offer a newsletter on your blogs that contain certain topics from your popular writers and reporters. Go a little further and link your staff social media accounts with their newspaper profiles and allow your readers to connect with your newspaper in a personable way.

Make use of your digital display ad space. Banner ads are one of the largest segment of this space with about 20% growth in the previous years. Although video and rich media ads have a higher revenue growth percentage year over year, making sure you target your ads according to the content being read, makes the difference from an engaged to a disengaged reader.

A Look Back at Marketing in 2017

Wed, 24 Jan 2018 05:30:00 GMT

A Look Back at Marketing in 2017

2016 forecasted several marketing trends that included embracing the customer experience model, the rise of ad blockers and their effects, virtual reality and use of AI, the rise of social media as a channel, the importance of marketing automation, and the value of real-time, meaningful communication. These trends helped define marketing in 2017. Let’s see what we need to know for 2018 to build stronger brands.

Marketing Strategies for Social Brands

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 17:13:00 GMT

Marketing Strategies for Social Brands

Marketing has evolved from catchy tunes and short announcements on radios or TV to digital messaging and links on emails, websites and social media. The scale of reach has also changed from local to global. Today, we have over 5000 marketing technology solutions and applications to help us gather data and reach millions of people online.

The rules for marketing are constantly evolving, pushing publishers and brands to come up with newer ways to get their message across. Building trust with consumers is near to impossible, when you are racing with thousands of brands offering the same thing you are. Whether you are an online retailer, newspaper or a fortune 500 company, there are essential marketing strategies to always keep in mind:

Know your customer

All of us have new year resolutions and every year we reevaluate our habits and lifestyles. Actually 41% of us make a decision to change something or add a new habit in our lives. This means that about half of your customer base are looking for an improved or new way to do a task or habit every year. It is important to take a look at your customer habits regularly and aim to refresh your communication every year.

Don’t assume what your customers are thinking but build a system to connect with and survey your customers on a regular basis. 52% of organizations say that they rely on educated guesses or gut feelings to make decisions based on their data. This may result from the fact that 39% cannot confirm that their data is fresh. Schedule a quarterly time to read through and evaluate the information gathered from your website or social media outlets. Look beyond the answers and create customer personas to help prioritize the communication.

Improve your social media accounts

Success in any type of activity requires consistency and repetition. This includes managing your social media accounts. Currenly about 54% of B2B marketers said they’ve generated leads from social media, with nearly half (44%) of all B2B relevant leads coming from LinkedIn. Simplifying the process by automating your posting capabilities will increase your reach. One of the first steps is to make your profile photos consistent across all your live social channels. You can then use this as your branding guide for any new accounts you engage in.

Another important step is to insert your popular SEO keywords in your social media profiles by integrating them into your company bio, photo names and even your job descriptions. This will keep your communication more consistent and help in organic search results. Do not forget to untag your handle or delete old posts that are no longer relevant.

Build your reputation and trust by adding endorsements or pin positive posts to the top of your account feeds. You can also use this to promote services your current clients love or share important company updates, ensuring that all your social touchpoints communicate the same information. It is also very important to test and verify all the links included in all your posts and profiles. In this way your social sites correctly direct your traffic to your funnels.

Have a master plan

Whenever we start any new project or task, we consider the timeline, budget, materials and parts needed to succeed. Without a plan, many projects do not succeed. Streamlining the plan is very important or it will miss the mark.

There are many goals a plan can focus on, so we recommend shifting your objectives on 3 main targets that will help make the most impact. They have to capture your company goals and also help provide direction to your social media strategies. According to a research conducted, the top 3 goals companies have when engaging in social media are brand awareness (85%), followed by community engagement (71%) and content distribution (61%). While the top 3 company challenges face are driving traffic to their website (58%), followed by generating leads (49%) and defining what to measure (42%). The most effective way to communicate your plan is to have an additional social media budget in place for boosting important posts or announcements, as well as promotion through platform ads.

Essentially, social media accounts are an additional tool that will help measure how you will accomplish and measure your goals success. However, your social media plan will help you find your voice and tone by coordinating what, when and how often content needs to be shared, and always testing to find that sweet spot.

Go the extra mile

Every day more customers are learning the importance of doing research before buying products or services. This means your online presence and social media accounts will inevitably be a part of their research. Your online accounts will their source of understanding your brand by monitoring how you interact with others.

This might not be a surprise, but 90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business and of them, 84% trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Comments and reviews online now make or break a brand. Customer support departments are more important than ever and choosing the right employee is also very vital to your success.

Some timeless qualities in going the extra mile include listening, empathizing, apologizing, responding in real time. If you receive complaints on social media, respond by asking them to contact you via direct message and make sure you are already investigating the issue. Live chats on Twitter or adding a customer feedback tab on Facebook also help with this. Do not just try to take them offline but offer a more direct and personal communication option. On the other hand if you get positive posts, add extra delight by offering them account perks or incentives. Do not forget to gather the data on social media accounts and make good use by noting possible new features to consider or taking out services that are causing more harm than delight.

Ultimately, social media complements all the background work that your company performs day in day out. It should not be a secondary communication plan, but should be considered one of the main ingredients for your marketing success. By being focused and planned in your approach to tackle the online social hurdles, your brand can stand out. Cultivate a marketing and social culture that will not gain clicks and followers but loyal promoters online.

The Millennial Perspective

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 06:00:00 GMT

The Millennial Perspective

Millennials are one of the most studied and talked about generations to date. While every generation has its unique defining characteristics, they are the first generation in history that have grown up totally immersed in a world of digital technology, completely shaping their attitudes. We decided to take a look into some of their habits and values, shedding some light on their unique traits that make them different from their predecessors.

Millennials in the Workplace

Tue, 02 Jan 2018 06:00:00 GMT

Millennials in the Workplace

The cycle of generations is an inevitable process that can cause disruption to the routine of a working environment. Differences in personality types, individual values and work schedules can create conflict among employees and management. Understanding and empathizing with other generations is vital to a healthy work environment. As the millennial generation begins to enter the workforce in a prominent way, coworkers and managers are trying to find ways to adapt while still attracting the most talented individuals. Every worker is different and it is impossible to predict exactly how one will behave, but a variety of studies show that millennials possess traits that all hiring managers would benefit from knowing.

Good leadership is a key part to any employee’s happiness and if a valuable connection between management and employees is there, it can contribute to a very successful environment. An overarching rule tends to be that people respond well to confidence and this doesn’t differ among generations. Decisions must be made proactively, however millennials feel that they should be a part of the decision making process more than Generation X. Whether it be a large or small contribution, that is an aspect that is highly valued among this generation. A very noticeable difference is what millennials look for in a leader’s attributes. According to a Deloitte study, today’s Millennials place less value on visible (19%), well-networked (17%), and technically-skilled (17%) leaders. Instead, they define true leaders as strategic thinkers (39%), inspirational (37%), personable (34%) and visionary (31%). This is shown in a number of political elections, most notably the 2012 US Presidential vote. Barack Obama appealed to youth with a clear vision and a personable demeanor, even though Mitt Romney was older and had more experience in the political scene. Obama received 67% of the 18-29 year old bracket nationally and eventually won the election. The inspirational, long-term vision and electric personality that Obama based his campaign around is an approach that many business leaders can learn from.

Generation X and Baby Boomers have typically valued career advancement in the workplace very highly. The ultimate goal tends to be to push profits, grow the business and end a career at the highest position in an organization. This school of thought is something that millennials do not share; they want to feel like they are really contributing to the business and society as a whole. Rewards are based upon seeing tangible progress from their work for the business, as opposed to promotions and working up the hierarchy. This is one area where the federal government of America successfully hooks young workers: 80% of millennial employees say they can see how their work contributes to their agency’s’ goals, and 86% say the work they do is important. From a management perspective, it is very important that when tasking younger employees, you should show them where their efforts are going during and after the process. This can benefit managers in the long run as it ultimately hands over more responsibilities to workers for their actions directly benefiting the organization. The methods used in the past of telling employees to get the job done and don’t ask questions should be abandoned when dealing with millennials.

A notable reason for millennials signing onto a particular company is a sense of purpose the organization has in society. This generation wants to feel like they are a part of a bigger cause than just making money and surviving. A company must have values that line up with the millennial employee, almost like a relationship. The organization is perceived as more than just the place they go to work; it is a part of their self-identity. This explains why for 6 in 10 Millennials, a “sense of purpose,” is part of the reason they chose to work for their current employers. Founder and Chairman of PrimeGenesis, George Bradt explains that, “for Millennials, work must have meaning. They won’t commit to you or to the organization. They will commit to a meaningful, good for others cause.” A way many companies are adjusting to this trend is through increased pro bono or charitable work. Setting aside time at scheduled intervals throughout the year to perform these good deeds have been proven to improve employees perceptions with upper management and the company as a whole.

T his ties into the work-life balance differences among generations as well. Gen Xers typically developed an attitude of ‘clocking out’ and beginning their free time once their shift ends. However, if millennials are working for a company that matches their morals and values this distinction between work and home life is blurred. An example of this switch is shown by employees integrating their personal mobile phones with a work plan, also called BYOD (bring your own device). If this age group is happy working and identifying with a company, then there is much less of a concern having work updates at home. Due to this work-life merging, millennials now expect employers to provide opportunities that improve their life away from the office; which is in the form of ‘perks’. Other generations place more value on a position based on the salary earned but according to a Glassdoor study, 89% of employees aged 18-34 prefer benefits or perks to pay raises. These perks range from optional time off, dental and medical plans, a company car or an occasional free lunch. This generation strives for the feeling of their company really caring about their well-being and wanting the best for them.

For every experience that a Millennial exposes themselves to, it is expected that they will want to gain something from it. This is common across human nature, but managers should expect to nurture and train a millennial throughout the time they are with a company. Experts have attributed this to a parenting style where younger millennials were showered in compliments and self-confidence was built up from a young age. These young professionals look for guidance from their elders and there is no exception in the workplace. A company culture must have growth opportunities for a millennial to strive as, 76% of millennials think professional development opportunities are one of the most important elements of company culture. A tactic that managers can take is to understand the expectations of a young worker arriving to a company and providing them with a clear outline on how they will develop their skills.

It is important for every business to attract and retain talented human resources in order to strive. Millennials have recently become the most prominent generation in today’s workforce and it is important for the business world to understand how they think, feel and work effectively. How to lead individuals is a dynamic and complicated process but it is an ever changing method that must be adjusted to the age group one is dealing with. Seeing the end result from work efforts and being involved in decisions are all noticeable changes from the newest generation to the last. A company culture is increasingly more important and millennial employees seek a company they can associate with. All of these studies can be used to enhance the performance and attract millennials, however the most concerning statistic is that 41% of millennials expect to be in their current job for two years or less (compared to 17% of Gen X and 10% of Boomers). They simply are not as committed to the long term future of their companies as much as their elders and this must be a piece of information to take note of. Understanding millennials and using the techniques described, managers can maintain workplace happiness and hopefully create long-term careers.

Discover 3 ways to increase digital revenue with AdPerfect Obituaries

Thu, 21 Dec 2017 06:00:00 GMT

Discover 3 Ways to Increase Digital Revenue with AdPerfect Obituaries

AdPerfect is a Canadian-based software company who creates comprehensive advertising solutions for the publishing industry around the world. The three main products offered are Classifieds, Obituaries, and Celebrations platforms. These mobile-friendly solutions have been implemented by Miami Herald, Seattle Times, New York Daily News and approximately 1,000 other newspaper titles. With the direct-to-print features and self-serve order entry, AdPerfect is proving to be the option that newspapers can rely on to promote their brand and provide a high quality digital platform for customers.

The clean, white label platform has an excellent user interface and the homepage contains areas to produce revenue. There are a number of strategic ad tag placements on the homepage that newspapers control and sell using their ad ops teams. They keep 100% of the ad tag revenue generated from these positions, which is a boost for digital revenue. AdPerfect offers these high-potential positions for newspapers to have full control over their ads and to maximize their CPM.

The obituary platform allows customers and communities to interact, engage, and share online in the story of a person’s life. As part of this, users can send flowers directly from the platform to the deceased’s family or have them delivered to the funeral service. This flower service is fast and easy to use providing assistance to family members, friends, and acquaintances who want to send their condolences.

Self-serve order placement reduces burden on call centers and provides a number of opportunities for upsells. Once a customer begins to create an obituary, they are given ways to add more value to the story such as adding a photo or emblem. This allows the user to include more detail about the deceased’s life and make the design more pleasing to the eye. While these updates are being processed, the customer is being shown real-time pricing throughout the experience. One of the digital upsells is extending the guestbook sharing and commenting options for 1 or 5 years.

AdPerfect’s obituary platform is an excellent way for newspapers to improve their user experience, better utilize call center resources but most importantly – drive digital revenue. The aesthetically pleasing platform makes the user feel confident when creating their story. Keeping 100% of ad tag revenue, commission sharing on flower sales, print and online upsells all contribute to newspapers being able to grow digital revenue, while maintaining their brand.

How People Buy Online

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 06:00:00 GMT

How People Buy Online

It’s easier than ever for people to buy all their necessities online as businesses have a digital presence across a variety of channels. Below, you’ll find online buying trends, data and statistics reporting on exactly how and why people shop online.

The Evolution of Classifieds

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 06:00:00 GMT

The Evolution of Classifieds

If you wanted to buy a second hand car 25 years ago, the most common and efficient way to do that would be by collecting the local paper from the doorstep, sitting on the couch and browsing the classified’s section until a particular Ford Mustang caught your eye. The process would then involve calling a phone number or visiting a house address to go purchase the car. Buying from print classifieds was always a slow and tedious transaction and it was just a matter of time before someone would reinvent the market. In 1995, Ebay and Craigslist created innovative products that would change the internet forever- online classifieds.

The two major entrants

Craig Newmark founded Craigslist with no ambition to grow it into a vastly successful business, he simply wanted a way to organize San Francisco’s hectic arts and technology scene. However, due to its simplistic and non-commercial approach to private buying and selling, the website attracted 1 million site visits a month by 1997. The website has maintained the right for regular users to post their items for free but as the company continued to expand, fees were introduced to cover the costs of a business license. These include a $25 fee for every job posting in a major US city ($75 for the San Francisco area) and $10 for every New York apartment posting. The company’s revenues ballooned because of this and it was estimated that in the early 2000’s, Craigslist was making $40,000 a day from the San Francisco area alone. The founder, Newmark, insisted that the website would not include banner ads and Google pop-ups to keep the customer experience in tact. Craigslist receives over 50 billion monthly page views and is one of the most popular websites online, spanning across 70 countries using over 700 local sites.

Craigslist was created with the basic buy and sell concept; users pay the price that is listed. In September 1995, Pierre Omidyar decided to create an auction approach to online Classifieds. While coding on his personal computer, Omidyar invented “AuctionWeb” (now known as Ebay) and the first auction was for his broken laser pointer. After clearly explaining it didn’t work, he listed it for $1 and bids rose until someone bought the faulty item for $14. Users fell in love with the idea of bargain hunting and selling their unwanted items for more than expected. Similar to Craigslist with its user friendly platform and minimal ads, Ebay expanded rapidly and by June 1996, $7.2 million worth of goods had been sold through the website. Ebay was put on the stock exchange in 1998 and was expected to trade around $20 per share based on the IPO, but surprisingly started trading at $53.50 per share on the first day. After a number of acquisitions that included Paypal, StubHub and GumTree, Ebay has become the commerce leader in classifieds with the company producing revenues of over $8.9 billion last year. Ebay also created ‘kjiji.com’ as a classifieds site with marketplace-style postings in order to directly compete with Craigslist.

Newspapers take a hit

Before 1995, classifieds were the main money-maker for newspapers; they would make up 40% of their revenue and drive their readership. People would call into customer service and pay $15 to $100 to place ads, and thousands of people would do this every day. When these new websites were created, newspapers were surely expecting to take a hit of some sort, but no one could predict how damaging Craigslist, Ebay and other classifieds websites could be to their success. The Management Science Journal predicted that from 2000 to 2007, Craigslist alone cost US newspapers $5 billion in revenue and shrank their classified ad rates by 20.7%. Although these statistics sound damaging, another perspective would be that Craigslist has saved the American public billions of dollars over the years. Newspapers were widely criticized in the 80’s and 90’s for poor customer service and raising the price of classifieds unnecessarily. In 1981, a line of classifieds in The Washington Post was $2.85, by 1984 they had upped the price to $3.65 and by 1996 a line was $7.93. This wasn’t adjusting for inflation; newspapers were operating at a 30% margin and had so much money they could buy out other newspapers and invest in TV stations.

The emergence of the digital age punished newspapers for a dated business model and has forced them to adjust their strategy. However, newspaper classifieds are not dead because it is hard to compete with the security and trustworthiness of having a 3rd party look over private transactions. Fraudulent postings were rare through newspapers but due to the anonymous and fast paced process of Craigslist and Ebay, this is now a serious issue. The attraction of using these platforms is because of the vast selection of items and finding interest for them within minutes. Although screening is set up for Craigslist and Ebay, it is very hard to catch scams when users can post instantaneously. Most papers have turned to a similar free self-serve model for classifieds but they have staff on hand to approve postings and systems can flag unwanted content. This is a major advantage newspapers can now offer over their competition; they have a legitimacy and security in their classifieds. Robert Seamans, a business professor at New York University and co-author of the Management Science Journal study, explained that “we don’t believe newspapers are dying or that Craigslist is leading to the death of newspapers. Newspapers are changing their business models.”

Facebook enters the market

One aspect of private online buying that creates insecurity for most people is anonymity. The major platforms require none or very minimal information about the individual that is selling- usually just an email address is accepted. In October 2016, Facebook added its ‘Marketplace’ feature to the app and website. This is a very mobile-friendly classifieds feature that allows users to buy and sell by linking their Facebook profile to every posting. The primary way to communicate about the post is through Facebook Messenger, which is already an extremely popular app. The new feature has been a growing success, with many attributing this to the personalized ‘social selling’ approach to classifieds. People feel much more at ease when they can message a real person, with a profile picture and an address. After the first year, Facebook tested its feature with smaller retail items, but as of November 2017 the app now allows apartment rentals and car ads to be posted. Emarketer claims that by 2021, smartphone retail sales will make up 80.5% of all retail e-commerce. Due to Facebook’s unrestricted reach across the globe and its influence in so many people’s lives, this could be the most disruptful move the classifieds sector has seen since 1995.

Classifieds will continue to be a high-growth market across the world as more people become comfortable with technology and the availability of goods expands. New entrants have always made an impact by creating a rapid-fire, mass posting platform. As the issue of scams developed, users will deviate away from this in search of a platform that resembles a person-to-person deal more closely. If newspapers can create a process that replicates Facebook’s ‘social-selling’ by linking posts to an instant messaging service and involving personalized profiles for sellers, then they will have a good chance of staying afloat in the ever-changing environment that is classifieds.

The Rise of Artificial Intelligence

Mon, 20 Nov 2017 06:30:00 GMT

The Rise of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence has arrived, and most people are adopting it into their lives. Most likely, in some capacity, you’re probably already using it. Whether you’re asking Siri to play your favourite songs or Alexa to tell you the current weather, AI is there in the background, thinking about things so that you don’t have to. We have looked at some interesting statistics around the growth of AI and what to expect in the coming years.

Will Amazon Echo, Google Home and AI impact the journalism industry?

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 06:30:00 GMT

Will Amazon Echo, Google Home and AI Impact the Journalism Industry?

Demand has been rising over the last 5 years for a personalized computer you can integrate into your home to help you with chores, queries and even conversation. Hollywood has always promoted the idea; ‘Her’, ‘Ex Machina’ and ‘2001: Space Odyssey’ all highlight the benefits of having the perfectly intelligent robot to guide humans through their lives. Due to the prominence in popular culture and the technology becoming rapidly more accessible, a race is on to become the market leader for digital assistants.

Apple’s ‘Siri’ was the first assistant to make its way onto user’s iPhones, but this was restricted to handheld devices and received mixed reviews. According to HubSpot, 19% of Apple customers use Siri, and The Business Insider says that only 3% of American Apple customers use Siri in public due to embarrassment.

The act of having a conversation with the integrated software has been described as uncomfortable in a number of customer surveys. Talking to a device in the comfort of one’s own home seems to be a much more natural act for people and Amazon have been the first to reap the rewards from this. The thousands of skills the Amazon Echo is capable of include creating a grocery list, listening to music, ordering a pizza and even turning your house lights on and off. Simply saying “Alexa” from an impressive distance will activate the system and the ease in which you can interact with the soothing female voice is remarkable. The popularity for this product has soared, with The Business Insider claiming that there are 35.6 million users of voice enabled speakers in the US in 2017. Amazon’s Echo claims 70.6% of that.

Amazon and Google are two of the most competitive forces in the technology industry. Because Google has always played in the advertising revenue space and Amazon in online retail, this meant that their products were never directly matched up against each other, until recently. Google has responded to Amazon’s capture of the digital assistant market by introducing the ‘Google Home’ device. The Home has similar features to the Echo but according to CNET, it outsmarts Alexa with its conversational intelligence by storing a question one just asked which allows it to understand the subject of the follow up question. Google has created a product to compete with the Echo. However, it simply can’t match the 15,000 skills that the Echo possesses as well as the first mover advantage and these seem to be the reasons for Amazon dominating.

Emergence of the ‘Flash Briefing’

Due to its cloud-based technology and conversational tone, a feature many are using voice assisted devices for is the news reading. The ability to wake up in the morning and simply ask the machine “what’s the news?” has captivated users. Business Insider reports that 66% of Amazon’s Virtual Assistant users have taken advantage of the Flash Briefing feature. While skipping the steps of opening your phone, finding the app or folding open a newspaper, Alexa also reads you the news in a calm and logical way. These pre-recorded stories update you from a range of outlets such as BBC News, Accu Weather and NPR.

A reason that the Echo and Google Home are differentiating away from radio stations or podcasts is due to their ability to pause and simply ask a question about the story or anything in general. For example, a story states that the President of Malta has been elected. You can interrupt the devices when the story is being told and ask “What is the population of Malta?” or “How many votes did they win by?” This unique way of hearing the news could impact the journalism industry greatly. The conversational way of interacting with the media is very hard to compete with for newspapers and radio stations because none of them have the technology or resources to create their own back-and-forth relationship with listeners. One could argue that this isn’t much of an upgrade from simply typing in questions to Google search while listening to the news but the convenience factor has been driving sales in the tech industry for years.

Experts are predicting that this isn’t a temporary trend either. RBC’s Capital markets are claiming that by 2020, Amazon and Google will collect $10 billion in revenue from Voice Assisted devices, which means Amazon alone would have 500 million active customers globally. The investment bank described the technology as a “material opportunity with the possibility to be a mega-hit”. Due to Amazon rising as a main source for people to online shop, their possibilities to advertise the devices on their website are endless. Advertising and promotion is another area that they have a significant advantage over the newspapers and radio stations.

The new version of the Amazon Echo includes a 7-inch touch screen which gives users the opportunity to view displays of the weather, read recipes, and watch videos. The Flash Briefing of the morning news now includes short video opportunities. News networks and magazines were quick to adapt to this advancement and have started creating daily video recaps so they can be featured on the Echo Show. CNBC, CNN, and People magazine have all launched flash briefings featuring their main news anchors in an attempt to become a reputable name on this increasingly popular feature. This could prove to be a trend that may now emerge in journalism; news providers adjusting their content and means of communication to accommodate to Amazon and Google’s technologies.

Google’s big investment

Artificial intelligence may not only be revolutionizing how the news is read, it could be changing how stories are written too. Google’s Digital News Initiative, which was a partnership set up to promote innovation through technology in the news industry, handed out its first grants in July 2017. One of the largest was for the Press Association to run a service with computers writing localized news stories. According to The Guardian, humans create story templates for a range of topics, then Natural Language Software (the same software used in Siri and Alexa) will create multiple versions of the story to increase content distribution. PA will use Radar- Reporters and Data and Robots- to boost distribution up to thousands of stories a month. Radar will also auto-generate graphics, videos and pictures for the stories. This is a huge statement from Google showing how they are very serious about impacting the journalism industry through funding Artificial Intelligence Systems. The PA’s Editor-in-Chief, Peter Clifton claims that “Skilled human journalists will still be vital in the process, but Radar allows us to harness artificial intelligence to scale up the volume of local stories.” These bots are not yet capable of completely replacing human labor in the newsroom but surely this will make certain positions expendable. There is no sign of AI technology slowing down its capabilities and if it is going to affect journalism, newspapers must use it to find ways to differentiate away from competition such as the Echo and Google Home.

The age of AI is one that will catch a number of industries by surprise in the coming years but journalism is already showing signs that reform will be forced upon it. More and more consumers are introducing AI into their lives based on convenience, the unique features and the interactive approach these technologies possess. Due to dwindling attention spans and limited time for individuals during the day, news has become a rapid fire service where the majority of people demand the key details presented in an easy manner. Alexa, Google Assistant and other Natural Language Software are providing for these demands with a personalized tone. Journalism will be faced with the decision to fight against AI or to incorporate it and welcome it into their processes. The power of Google and Amazon in today’s markets show that the decision might already be being made for them.

The Power of Social Media

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 17:44:00 GMT

The Power of Social Media

Each social media platform is different and we took a step back to examine 3 specific platforms that play a strong role in news and information consumption. Whether it be videos, photos or content, Facebook, Youtube and Twitter have some interesting statistics.

How fake news is creating profits

Thu, 26 Oct 2017 16:08:00 GMT

How Fake News is Creating Profits

During the Presidential Election of 2016, the term ‘Fake News’ emerged as one of the biggest threats to modern journalism to date. Donald Trump brought the issue into the public eye during his campaign by attaching the label to both CNN and The New York Times after allegations of coordinating with Russia during the election. One would think that after the President of the United States denounces an institution for unverified reporting, its readership would plummet and revenues would follow suit. This wasn’t the case for several reasons, and the result of the Fake News controversy has caused a number of newspapers to rise up and bolster their profits.

Many have said that Donald Trump is guilty of describing anything that challenges him as Fake News, most notably because the Russian claims are an ongoing FBI investigation and worthy of inclusion in a national newspaper. However, during the campaign a wave of non-legitimate, unverified articles poured into social media, mainly through Facebook and gained a vast amount of attention and readers. According to the Pew Research Center, 44% of Americans get their news from Facebook, which is a huge number considering how Facebook has minimal regulation on what can be posted as ‘news’.

Articles about the Pope endorsing Trump, Ireland accepting Trump refugees and Hillary Clinton arming ISIS, all received over 700,000 engagements at crucial times during campaigning. These headlines are all entirely false, but the ease in which individuals can build a website portraying a broadcasting group, create a headline full of flaws, then manipulate Facebook’s algorithm is shocking. The consequences are these stories featuring on the ‘Trending’ section of millions of feeds.

Due to the availability of so many free online sources for news, a critical issue newspapers have been dealing with for over 10 years, has been their profitability. With only 20% of Americans getting their news from paper copies, digital news has been the dominant force that has been deteriorating newspapers profits at a rapid rate. The solution many companies turned to was to maximize advertising revenues by shifting into the digital advertising space.

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, digital ad revenue grew to $72.5 billion in 2016, which is up 22% from the year before. Unfortunately for the newspaper industry, Google and Facebook are absolutely dominating, taking 71% of the market and 99% of the yearly growth. Google’s AdWords and Facebook’s targeted advertising has created an unstoppable duopoly that rakes in over $15 billion between them per quarter.

Newspapers push back

As a result of Facebook and Google controlling the online scene and limited restrictions being put on what can be posted on these platforms; newspapers are claiming that fair competition is not being promoted for news providers. On July 10th 2017, this caused News Media Alliance to seek an antitrust exemption from Congress in order to negotiate collectively to share revenue and data more fairly. The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are all among those banding together to join the appeal so that quality journalism can gain back market share. This is a huge step for the industry, as most of the participants in the appeal are fierce competitors and this proves how tackling the surge of Fake News and regaining a name for newspapers is of utmost priority.

More and more people are becoming wise to false journalism and are calling out for facts and reference-based reporting. Trump has consistently berated The New York Times for not being a reliable source, but in response the newspaper gained 308,000 new digital subscribers and its share price rose by 11% after the election. Now, subscription revenue accounts for 63% of The Times’ revenue share, and advertising only 33%. A trust and security is being instilled in paid journalism that will maintain the future of newspapers. The revenue models should be based around customers paying for their services, as opposed to advertisers. Warren Buffett predicts that The Times and The Washington Post are bound to survive because “they have developed an online presence that people will pay for.” – Warren Buffett

After a frenzy of untruths, that recent studies have shown affected the result of a presidential election, a substantial amount of Americans are looking for an outlet they can depend upon to keep them updated on the world’s events. Creating a relationship with readers and finding new ways to provide valuable information must be the strategy for building profits.

How the strategy unfolded

Newspapers have been experimenting with paywalls and micropayments to regulate how many times users can view articles for free. This has been accompanied with varied success and presents the question of whether they should be promoting a full subscription model or a pay-per-read situation. The Economist, the British business tabloid, reported a
$60 million profit in 2016 due to its push for premium digital subscriptions. Chris Stibbs stated that “discounted copies have been largely eliminated and are being replaced by paid subscriptions. As a result, our circulation profits grew 31% year on year to record levels.” The Economist offers expert advice and analysis on business stories and has built a well-renowned name for itself in Europe.

The Winnipeg Free Press was the first in Canada to shift to the pay-per-read model and after a year of implementation, 35,000 paid digital readers signed up after 2016. To view an article, a 27 cent fee is attached or a $16.99 monthly fee for unlimited access. This newspaper, reporting in the 7th biggest city in Canada, shows how much success can be seen from papers with a fraction of the population of New York.

Local community papers have the capability to achieve successes that the large national papers have seen by creating niches and a local reader base as well. Because there are less outlets for small communities to receive updates about their city or town, many find a certain attachment in their community paper as opposed to a national one. A study done by Morning Consult/Politico conducted for the News Media Alliance revealed that 41% of registered American voters trust their local paper, as opposed to 27% for national papers. There seems to be a head start for local papers for loyalty and and trust; now creating unique and valuable stories worth paying for is how to increase profits.

Fake News has been described as a disease of modern communication; manipulative individuals trying to achieve their own selfish goals by prying on the gullibility of the masses through social media. When it doesn’t take much to sway one’s opinion in a presidential election or a referendum, the public deserves to get facts and truths from their news outlets. The majority of Americans now believe that articles should only present the facts and not include interpretation or opinion, according to Pew Research. Newspapers can take advantage of this new wave of thought and create a resurgence that provides the North American public with the consistently genuine journalism that they desire. After a difficult decade for the newspaper industry, this looks like an opening into renewed profits and attention. Using a unique approach to reporting, reasonable pricing models and exquisite investigation of the facts, digital newspaper stories could be the cure to a disease of modern communication.

AdPerfect™ Announces Partnership With Local Media Consortium (LMC)

jgreen@frontrunner360.com — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 16:58:39 GMT

AdPerfect™ Announces Partnership With Local Media Consortium (LMC)

AdPerfect partners with nationwide media network Local Media Consortium to offer four innovative products

New Westminster, BC – September 14, 2017 – AdPerfect™ announced that they have been accepted by the Local Media Consortium (LMC) as a preferred partner. The new partnership makes AdPerfect’s technology platform available to 75 local media companies and more than 1,700 sites in top markets across the United States and Puerto Rico. AdPerfect will offer four key products and services via the LMC; Online Obituaries, Classifieds and Celebrations platforms, and Retail Ads.

The LMC focuses on increasing member companies’ audience reach and profitability by pursuing new partnerships with leading technology companies and service providers. The Consortium maintains the highest quality service providers through extensive vetting of new partners, and ongoing polling to understand the needs of current media members.

AdPerfect’s core competencies promote self-serve ad placement, mobile responsiveness and a great user experience which aims to reduce costs and increase revenues for newspapers.

Jim McIntosh, Executive Chairman of AdPerfect said, “We are looking forward to working with the Local Media Consortium member companies as a true partner to deliver valuable services in key advertising categories. We already work with a number of LMC members and look forward to working with others to assist them in providing a high quality, modern online experience for both advertisers and readers.”

Said Rusty Coats, Executive Director of the Local Media Consortium, "AdPerfect is a natural fit with the LMC. With their leading technology platform enabling enhanced print and digital revenues for the publishing industry, and LMC’s focus on creating an efficient marketplace for solutions providers and media companies with our agreements across both print and digital networks, the relationship creates mutual benefits."

The AdPerfect Obituaries platform incorporates online obituaries, self-service for funeral homes and individuals, and the ability to add memories, milestones and condolences all via one platform. LMC member companies have their own brand front and center, own their transaction data, and keep 100% of the revenue from digital ad tags decreasing costs and increasing revenue.

AdPerfect Classifieds provides both marketplace and self-serve capabilities in a single platform for all classified categories. The self-serve capability, mobile responsiveness, and modern user interface provides newspapers with a high quality digital presence that features their brand and enables them to strengthen their local presence.

The AdPerfect Celebrations platform provides LMC members with a platform that is integrated with print and online, allows self-serve advertisers to place ads for anniversaries, birthdays, birth notices, marriages and other categories in a single, easy-to-use interface, for a modern online presentation.

About Local Media Consortium

The Local Media Consortium is a strategic partnership of leading local media companies focused on increasing member companies’ share of digital revenue and audience by pursuing new relationships with a variety of technology companies and service providers. The LMC was founded in 2013 to address the needs of advertisers seeking to reach high-quality audiences on brand-safe local digital properties at scale. In addition, the LMC provides members with access to leading technology and content solutions by fostering key partnerships with companies including Google, Monster, Yahoo and others. LMC membership encompasses 75 local media companies in top markets across the United States and Puerto Rico, and includes more than 1,700 publications. The LMC audience footprint currently spans over 155 million unique monthly visitors and its member companies serve more than four billion page views to readers. More information is available at www.localmediaconsortium.com .

About AdPerfect™

AdPerfect™ is the most trusted provider of mobile-friendly self-service advertising solutions for publishers and newspapers. We build reliable online platforms and engaging interfaces focused on attracting advertisers, driving user traffic, and growing print and digital revenue. For more than a decade, we have always been, and continue to be, committed to designing technologies that support the evolving needs of the media publishing industry.

Legacy and AdPerfect Announce Partnership

jgreen@frontrunner360.com — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 16:58:38 GMT

Legacy and AdPerfect Announce Partnership
October 20, 2016

Integrated Platform Simplifies Print Obituary Placement for Tributes.com Funeral Home Partners

Evanston, IL – Oct. 20, 2016 – Legacy.com, the undisputed leader in the digital obituary and memorialization space, today announced a partnership with AdPerfect, the most trusted provider of self-service advertising solutions, that streamlines the placing of print obituaries in newspapers for funeral directors. The partnership integrates AdPerfect’s technology platform with Legacy.com’s Tributes platform and allows funeral homes to leverage the content they input into their online memorials to purchase corresponding print placements in one or more newspapers across the U.S. and Canada with as little as a single click. The integrated platform includes support for over 6,000 newspapers in North America.

"We’re excited to partner with AdPerfect and believe that this integration will benefit all of our channel partners. We want to simplify and streamline the process of placing an obituary with the newspaper and reduce redundancy so our funeral home partners can spend more time with the families in their care," says Elaine Haney, Chief Operating Officer at Legacy.com.

Jim McIntosh, Executive Chairman of AdPerfect states, "Our companies have similar goals – to share life stories and communicate service information via print and online obituaries. Our technology simplifies the process of placing a print obituary in one or many newspapers and is a perfect fit for Legacy.com’s newspaper and funeral home partners."

The integration will be made available to Tributes.com funeral home partners at no additional charge in January 2017. To see the integration at NFDA, visit the Legacy.com booth (No. 4338), just inside the entrance of the expo hall. To learn more, contact media@legacy.com.

About Legacy.com Inc.®

Legacy.com is the global leader in online obituaries with over 39 million visitors each month and ranked as a Top 40 domain in the U.S. by Quantcast. Through the Legacy.com and Tributes.com brands, the company provides support and obituary-related services to more than 1,500 newspapers and 3,500 funeral homes in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, U.K., and Europe to help people express condolences and share remembrances of loved ones. Legacy.com’s partners benefit from unparalleled scale and expertise that enables the delivery of industry-leading products, innovative e-commerce solutions, and award-winning customer service. Legacy.com is headquartered in Evanston, Illinois.

About AdPerfect

AdPerfect is the most trusted provider of mobile-friendly self-service advertising solutions for publishers and newspapers. We build reliable online platforms and engaging interfaces focused on attracting advertisers, driving user traffic, and growing print and digital revenue. For more than a decade, we have always been, and continue to be, committed to designing technologies that support the evolving needs of the media publishing industry.

AdPerfect Blog

AdPerfect Adds The Seattle Times to Its Growing Customer List

AdPerfect Adds The Seattle Times to Its Growing Customer List

AdPerfect Discusses the Company's Obituary Platform & Freemium Model on Guaranteed Digital: The Podcast

AdPerfect Participates in Local Media Association Panel Discussion: Look Globally, Deploy Locally

AdPerfect Introduces Keynote Speaker at 2020 Local Media Association's Digital Summit

Tribute Technology Acquires AdPerfect

Tribute Technology Acquires AdPerfect

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Tribute Technology Acquires AdPerfect: Press Release for LMC

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