Social Marketing & Digital Agency

An interesting survey of journalists has given a stark picture of how rapidly media is changing around the world.

770 journalists from 15 countries including the US, Brazil and Europe were interviewed by Oriella PR and the findings were very interesting – or potentially worrying if you are a journalist!

Looking at it from a client or agency perspective though it gives a fascinating insight into what is actually happening in the media and how rapidly it is changing. Some of the findings include:

• 40% think that the web will provide more opportunities
• 41% of publications run Twitter feeds
• 1 in 5 publications has a mobile app (rising to 1 in 3 in Germany, Italy and the US)
• 1 in 4 publishers are looking at paid-access models with 30% looking at paid-for websites and 22% looking at smart phone apps as a revenue stream

Clients must embrace these new changes into their PR and marketing plans and almost certainly use an agency with digital expertise to advise on the most appropriate strategies to leverage optimum results.

Ignore digital at your peril.

You can read more findings from the survey here http://bit.ly/ad1Fj4

According to recent research by content management association AIIM, on average 51% of the paper documents scanned by user organisations are born digital, having been output directly from a computer application.

The survey also found that 25% of scanned documents are photocopied before
being sent for scanning, and that only 31% are destroyed after scanning,
indicating a reluctance by users and organisations to lose sight of mission
critical documents. On balance, however, the number of users who reported a
decrease in the volume of paper and photocopies as a result of scanning was
the same as the number who reported an increase.

The AIIM report compares strategies for outsourced, centralised and
distributed scanning, and concludes that there is a move back to
centralised scanning operations, along with a greater investment in capture
and recognition software to automate data capture and document indexing
processes. Although outsourcing delivers cost and management benefits,
quality of indexing and difficulty of integration back into electronic
archives are given as the biggest disadvantages.

Doug Miles, Director of Market Intelligence for AIIM, comments, “We have
seen a steady increase in the use of scanning and capture as an input to
business processes, with 42% of documents now being scanned-to-process
rather than scanned-to-archive. Proximity to the process, and the level of
integration with other enterprise systems become more important in these
applications. Users find that distributed processing with departmental
scanners and MFPs improves ownership by the process owners, but office
staff and knowledge workers need training and encouragement to ensure
accurate indexing.”

The AIIM survey also found that 46% of users report payback on their
scanning and capture investments within 12 months, with two-thirds seeing
returns within 18 months. These returns are consistent across many types of
content and process, with invoices, contracts and application forms being
the most popular.
Based on over 850 responses, the AIIM research report is entitled
“Capture: local, central, outsource – what’s working best?”  Part of
the AIIM Industry Watch series, the full report is free to download from
the AIIM website. It is underwritten by Abbyy, Autonomy, EMC Corporation,
Epson, Image Source, and Visioneer.

Independent News & Media has partnered with iome to launch the first white-labelled social event planning tool on The Independent newspaper’s website. The service creates new web and mobile revenues for the publisher, as part of its 2010 digital media strategy.

The free-to-access service provides the 10 million* monthly visitors to the
Independent’s website with a useful tool that helps them plan their social
lives and make savings via discount vouchers.  In this socially-connected
world, with demands on people’s time and money, consumers want to easily
discover new things to do and places to go, find offers and share that
information with friends; until now, no one service has been able to
provide consumers with an easy way to do so.  The iome white-label service
fills this gap.

The Independent will generate new revenues through the service, on
purchases made through the portal (such as theatre tickets and restaurant
bookings) in addition to advertising and sponsorship.  And, by partnering
with iome, the Independent has been able to go to market with its new
branded service in less than three weeks from inception of the project,
enabling readers to start using the service in time to organise their
Christmas events.

Bill Swanson, managing director (Digital), Independent News and Media (UK)
said: “We are very excited to be the first business to launch this service
in the UK.  It not only enables us to extend our reach to readers, but also
to create new revenues via web and mobile.  We recognise that consumers are
hungry for new ways to organise their social lives through the web – this
service is the first of its kind to enable people to organise themselves,
make savings and interact with friends in a single location.  Plus, the
service has the ability to learn behaviour including likes and dislikes,
giving us the opportunity to deliver highly targeted services and offers.
This is a significant step forward with our digital media strategy for
2010.”

Added Phil Eames, CEO, iome: “People like to share information online and
there are a plethora of sites out there that help with individual elements.
The iome service lets people not only identify what’s going on near them,
but also access discounts, make bookings, create plans and share them with
friends via Facebook and other such sites.  It gives businesses the
opportunity to develop a better understanding of their consumers, allowing
for greater targeted services, content and advertising to be offered in the
future.”