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The second of our video series explaining serial content strategies.

Here is a complete transcript of the video:

The Double-Value Curve

Last AmokTalk, we described the Long Tail and the things you need to think about with respect to your marketing strategies. With that as our foundation, let’s look at the data another way. Let’s change this axes from “downloads” to “value” – meaning the value that a particular piece of content means to an individual looking for that content.

And here’s how it works. When you first release your serial content, it may or not have any value to your customer. It depends on whether or not they need that particular information at that particular time. Let’s look at three scenarios:

First, we have a content-consumer who is looking for “timely” content. Perhaps they like trying new restaurants, and their favorite restaurant-blogger has just published a new review. In this case, the information is timely, and so the value to the content-consumer is high.

But what about another content-consumer, someone who has no persistent need for new restaurant reviews? In this case, when the review is fresh, it has no value to her. But then, at sometime in the future, let’s say that she’s looking for an opinion on that new restaurant that she just drove by. Well, at that Moment of Truth, this review will be very valuable to her.

And lastly, there’s is a hybrid example, formed by combining both scenarios. Let’s say that a content-consumer reads our restaurant review the day it’s released, but he does nothing more with the information than tucks it away into his memory. And then, at some time in the future, when his girlfriend talks about this restaurant that she just drove by on the way home from work, he remembers the review, and finds it for her. In this case, the review is valuable at two different points in it’s lifetime — forming what I like to call as the double-value curve.

Newspapers have built a revenue-stream around the double-value curve. Have you noticed that fresh content is free – yet if you need to go into their archives, you’ll need to pay for it? It brings up an interesting question. How come people will pay for information that used to be free? The answer’s simple, because the value of information is directly proportional to how much you need it at any given moment.

Now, I’m not saying to go out and create a pay-for-use model for your company’s serial content. But it’s important for you to remember that the value of your serial content has less to do with you and more to do with the immediate need of your customers. And by understanding the power of the double-value curve, you can build complete marketing strategies around it.

In the next AmokTalk, I’ll share some real world data with you that illustrate the power of combining the Long Tail with the Double-value curve.

Tags: ronamok double-value curve marketing serial content serial content strategy amoktalk

The first of two videos that I’m creating to explain Serial Content Strategies:

Here is a transcript from the video:

Serial Content — information that is released periodically, like newspapers, magazines, blogs or podcasts, has a consumption curve that looks like this:

• This is time
• This is the number of times your content is released
• And this is the number of times your content is consumed

And here’s how it works. At first, when your content is fresh, it has the most downloads or views. And then, over time, the content drops off in popularity. Chris Anderson has written an entire book on this subject. It’s called The Long Tail and understanding the concepts in this book is very important when crafting your company’s serial content strategy.

One of the most interesting observations of the The Long Tail is the number of content-hits never goes to zero, meaning that there is a small but constant demand for the each and every piece of serial content in your back-catalog of information. And here’s where it gets even more interesting. The amount of content consumed in this Tail, swamps the amount of content consumed in the head.

A solid understanding of the Long Tail is important when developing a Serial Content Strategy for your company. You need to think through the information that you are publishing. Is it more important to come out with one, blockbuster piece of content, tracking it’s downloads for the few months it’s popular, or is it more important to publish smaller, bite-sized pieces of content, spaced out over time, like in that of a blog, a podcast, or perhaps a series of white papers?

Tags: Chris Anderson The Long Tail Serial Content Corporate Strategy ronamok

Although video is easier to produce than audio, video causes all sorts of problems for companies. If your company is thinking of adopting video as a communications medium, here are some technical things to consider.

Fie size. Video files are big. It’s common to have a 320×240 pixel 5 minute MP4-encoded video that is 20MB in size. And I bet that your IT department really hasn’t thought through the infrastructure required for employees to start stuffing 20-100M files into the system.

It is highly likely that your corporate infrastructure is build for text-based databases and email, thus has no capacity to be sending large video files around the company. You have two options:

1) Don’t tell your corporate IT folks; post the video, and see what happens

2) Call your IT department and have them tell you “No.”

Although dealing with the “accommodating” and “pleasant” nature of the traditional IT department, I recommend option #2 for the following reason: You are making a request to an internal service provider. If they say “No,” then you have every right to ask “when” they’ll be able to service your request. In the mean time, you can use an external hosting provider.

But even an external hosting provider won’t help you with another problem…moving large video files behind your company’s firewall.

One of the first problems that you’ll have with video is figuring how to get rendered files from Point-A to Point-B. For example, lets say that your colleague in another office has created a video for you to post externally. They aren’t video-savvy, so they have an uncompressed AVI file for you..which is about 1GB in size — too big to even fit on a CD-ROM.

By their very nature, video files are large, but they don’t need to be unnecessarily large. Therefore, I recommend creating a set of corporate guidelines for rendered video. If video content is produced using these guidelines, you’ll at least have the best quality video at the smallest file size.

Of all the options, let’s just focus on three…which will produce the smallest file with the best video quality: Video Encoding Format, Video Bitrate, and Audio Encoding Parameters.

• Video Encoding Format
• MP4, MPEG4 (DivX, Xvid, etc).

• Bitrate:
• Choose a “bitrate” of somewhere between 700kbps and 1000kbps. The lower the number, the lower the quality and the file size. The higher the number, the higher the quality and file size. There is no magic bullet here…you may have to experiment.

• Audio: The goal of audio is to think about where the video is going to be viewed. It is likely that it will be on a screen, with teeny tiny loudspeakers, or less likely, on a portable device with ear buds. Either one does not need theatrical-quality sound, and therefore, we can trade-off quality (that would essentially be wasted) for a reduction in file size.
• Use the MP3 or AAC audio codec (Continuous bit rate…aka: CBR)
• Sample Rate 22KHz
• Bit Rate: 22Kbps
• Mode: Mono

But even with proper encoding on the producer’s end, the file size will still be too big to attach to an email. Here is where an IT department can help. See if they can setup a a centralized area where people can drag and drop files. The benefit to the IT folks is twofold: you are helping them keep the email servers from being overwhelmed, and they’ll also have an opportunity to monitor how much video is being produced. Such information is valueable as they put together their future hardware/software/service-provider plans.

Video is a very powerful way for the new Marketing Department to present information. But it comes with some technical issues that must be dealt with. My next posting will give you some things to think about when choosing an external hosting company.