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October 27, 2005

Tampa's multimedia hurricane coverage ...

From TBO.com ...

Tracking Wilma: On The Road With Bill Ward

Tampa Tribune reporter Bill Ward is traveling the Tamiami Trail and the eclectic beach communities of Florida's southwest coast. In this exclusive TBO.com report, follow Ward's journey as he captures the sights and sounds through his online journal, photographs, 360-degree panoramas and video postcards.

Posted by Bob Benz at 08:05 AM | Comments (2)

October 23, 2005

Adsense "Advertise on this site" in Beta

Cool news to share:

My employer is in town for the Communication Career Connection tomorrow at OU and I had lunch with him today. Like any lunch with Tim, he was bursting with Google news - he's headed out Tuesday to California for the Google Zeigeist conference and in the meantime has been beta testing a very exciting new feature from Adsense.

Read more technical info at Google.

One of Tim's pals, Dave Taylor, wrote a brief demonstration of how this new "Advertise on this site" link is working for Tim.

This has incredible potential for sites like Athensi and Speakeasy. Major localization of advertising on both fronts - Adwords and Adsense. Can't wait to see this feature rolled out.

Posted by Caren Baginski at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)

Online journalism ... done right

With Hurricane Wilma heading head-on for the Florida Gulf Coast, Rob Curley's team is hitting on all cylinders.

Curley, you might remember, is the genius behind Lawrence.com. He now works for us in Naples and has been doing incredible things there. I'd strongly advise you to stop by the site and check it out this week. The video they're doing is phenomenal and they're doing a good mix of hard-hitting journalism and fun/interesting stuff as Naples battens down the hatches.

Here are a few lighlights:

Posted by Bob Benz at 03:21 PM | Comments (1)

Multimedia assignment 2

All:

Please post links to your second multimedia assignment in the comments below. Remember: The first assignment was to be personal or first person. This one should be more of a "traditional" news story, though in a multimedia format.

I spent Sunday looking over your submissions for the first assignment. Overall, you did a great job. Impressive. I sent each of you comments on your work. Let me know if you didn't get a note from me. I look forward to seeing the next round ...

Also, a note about this week. I hope Jay Small's lecture last week was enlightening. This week, Rich Lacy, our director of online marketing, will be talking about Guerrilla Marketing Tactics. This is a great chance for you to pick Rich's mind about how to market your websites.

Sorry I've been scarce lately. It's budget season for us and I'm spending a lot of time on the road. I was on the West Coast last week and am in Texas all this week. But I'm still checking e-mail, so if you need something or have questions, just give a shout.

Posted by Bob Benz at 03:17 PM | Comments (16)

October 18, 2005

Discussion outline for 10.18

Gang, here's the discussion outline for this morning (10/18):

http://smallinitiatives.com/present/j415.html

Looking forward to our discussion!

Posted by Jay Small at 09:17 AM | Comments (6)

October 13, 2005

Tuesday 10/18 (Week 7, I think) readings

Hi, gang ... Jay Small, guest discussion leader, reporting in with a few suggested and brief readings to prep for our class time on Tuesday, 10/18.

On the syllabus, the scheduled subject for discussion is Guerrilla Marketing, and we'll definitely hit on that. But I also want to touch on other product development and marketing concepts that may help you: identifying target audience segments, setting your content "filters" right, why less-and-lighter trump more-and-heavier.

Nuggets to get you thinking on these concepts:


The 10 Faces of Innovation

Less as a competitive advantage

Saving Newspapers I: Focus on customer experience

QuickMBA.com: Market Segmentation

(Logistics for Tuesday: When it's time to start, you all can call me at my office number, 865-560-3546. Looking forward to it!)

Posted by Jay Small at 03:19 PM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2005

Week 6 Assignment: Advertising

Here is the assignment for this week:

For Thursday’s lab, do the following:

1. Go to Google AdWords and AdSense and read how these two programs work.

2. After reading, go to Google and search for one of the following terms:

Athens Ohio
Ohio University
OU Bobcats
Athens Ohio Apartments

Who has the top sponsored links in the results of the term you chose? Based on what you’re seeing, do you see an opportunity to buy a campaign that might drive traffic? What kind of site would use this campaign?

3. Bonus points: Set up an AdWord campaign for keywords for your publication. (You can do this for as little as $6. Go ahead and give it a try. It’s a great way to see how this works.)

4. Bonus points II: Set up an AdSense program for your site.

5. Post your answers to No. 2 to the blog. If you do either of the bonus items, post to the blog and let us know how it goes and what you learn.


Posted by Bob Benz at 12:53 PM | Comments (14)

Week 6: Advertising

Here's a link to this week's lecture.

Posted by Bob Benz at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)

Post links to your assignment here ...

Use this thread to post a link to your "me" multimedia assignment. Just post a link to it in the comments below.

Posted by Bob Benz at 08:51 AM | Comments (16)

October 08, 2005

Cool tool for building multimedia presentations ...

If you're using a Mac, this application might be worth looking at for your multimedia assignments. It makes it insanely easy to create a slideshow with sound that plays in the background.

Posted by Bob Benz at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2005

Final project groups ...

Don't forget to post a comment listing the members of your group for the final project (or a note saying you intend to fly solo, if that's the case). That's due today (10/5). Post those notes here.

Posted by Bob Benz at 09:06 AM | Comments (3)

October 04, 2005

Newspaper audience ...

The Newspaper Association of America has a database with a lot of interesting details about audience, both online and in print. This is definitely worth a look in light of our discussions this morning. Let me know if you have questions about any of the stuff on this site ...

Posted by Bob Benz at 04:42 PM | Comments (0)

October 02, 2005

Week 5: Audience

This week, we'll be looking at one of the most critical elements of running a successful news site: knowing your audience. Your assignment for this week is at the bottom of this post ...

Intro: Whom would you rather be speaking to?

207.203.254.110

or

Bob Benz, 43, resident of Knoxville, TN, who is interested in alternative country music, literature, dogs

1. Targeting your audience.

Whom does Speakeasy target? The Post? AthensI?
Think about the various audiences in and around OU ...

It's critical that your site home in on a specific audience. The more general you are, the tougher it is to provide a satisfactory experience to everyone.

Remember: Department store vs. boutique
Fragmentation

Long tail phenomenon

Now let's assume we've targeted the audience we're seeking. That's only the beginning of the job. One of the major advantages of the Internet is that it allows you to get very 1-to-1 with your audience. TV and newspapers have a very tough time doing that.

2. The basics: data you can easily glean from the web server

3. Getting personal: Ways to enhance user information

Audience management -- i.e. Tacoda

user: bbenz62@yahoo.com
pass: ohiouniversity

Now let's see what it looks like when we start pulling various data points together ...

4. The End Game: What you do with the data
We'll discuss this, and other strategies, during next week's discussion on advertising.

5. Assignment: Pick one of the following:

And analyze the site from an audience perspective.

Post your answers in the comments to this post. As always, the key is what you say, not how much you say ...

Posted by Bob Benz at 02:49 PM | Comments (12)