Cross-promoting your content on various social media sites is a great way to build your audience and drive traffic to your best content. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the Big 3 of social media marketing and content cross-promotion, but what about Tumblr and Pinterest? These are the two hot social sites that have everyone talking, and they can both be effective tools to expose your content to wider audience.

In Pinterest vs. Tumblr: Which Is Better for Brands, I outline the differences between the two tools as well as the audiences that currently use them. Did you know that Pinterest skews more heavily to a female audience and Tumblr is popular among younger audiences? Clearly, these two sites might not be right for every content publisher, but for some niches, they’re perfect.

Pinterest is a visual social bookmarking site where users save images and videos that they find online on virtual pinboards. Tumblr is more like a multi-media microblogging tool where people publish images, audio, video, quotes, or text in a blog style. Both sites allow sharing and both offer a method for commenting, although Pinterest’s commenting tool is more robust than the one found on Tumblr.

You can use Pinterest to share images from your articles and blog posts that link back to your original content. Create pinboards categorized by the type of content you publish. For example, if you write a blog about state politics, create pinboards for images from events, pinboards for specific political parties, pinboards for areas of government, and so on. Get creative in how you repurpose your content to expose a new audience to it on Pinterest.

On the other hand, Tumblr is handy for publishing multimedia content. For example, you could publish a full article on your website or blog and then share an image, video clip, or quote from that article on Tumblr with a link back to your complete article for people who want to read it. If you publish a podcast, share an audio snippet on Tumblr with a link to the complete podcast for those who want to listen to the entire thing.

It’s important to keep in mind that Pinterest is still very new and you still need to get an invitation to use it. Tumblr has been around for a longer time and already has established its place in the online content and social media world. Both offer great opportunities to spread your content, so request an invite or create a free account and start poking around. Both are easy to use and can be addictive.

You can get all the details about Pinterest vs. Tumblr for brands on the Sprout Social Insights blog, and you can check out my pinboard of brands doing cool things on Pinterest for inspiration. For Tumblr inspiration, SocialFresh put together a list of 60 brands on Tumblr.

The annual Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) Information Industry Summit conference wrapped up last week, and several mobile apps and companies were recognized during the SIIA Previews where early stage content companies and mobile app developers were given an opportunity to present their offerings to a panel of industry leaders.

Mobile App Previews

This year marked the first time SIIA Previews included a separate mobile apps category. Scott Livingston of LexisNexis presented the LexisNexis Legal News app, which was developed by Newstex. You can get all of the details about the presented mobile apps here.

Scott Livingston, LexisNexis

The full list of the apps presented during the Mobile App Previews included:

• Lexis Nexis Legal News (developed by Newstex)
• PR Newswire for iPad (developed by Newstex)
• Dow Jones Investment Banker for iPad
• Pubget for iPad
• Factiva for iPad
• Nexis New Search

Company Previews

The SIIA Previews for content industry companies celebrated its sixth anniversary in 2012. Larry Schwartz, Newstex President and SIIA Previews Chair, was on hand to participate in the sessions and to present the “Most Likely to Succeed” award to BestVendor  — a company that helps business people make smarter and faster purchasing decisions through social recommendations. You can get all the details about the presenting companies here.

Newstex President Larry Schwartz presents "Most Likely to Succeed" Award to BestVendor

The full list of SIIA Previews presenting companies included:

• BestVendor
• Crowd Fusion
• Narrative Science
• Reportlinker
• Praetorian Group
• First Stop Health

You can view videos, see the complete presentations delivered by each company, and read interviews with the preseners on the SIIA conference website. Overall, the SIIA Previews were a success once again. Next year, the 100th preview presentation will be delivered at the 2013 SIIA Conference!

Each month, Nielsen tracks U.S. internet usage as well as the top U.S. web brands. Taking a look at the results of the Nielsen analysis and comparing January 2011 data to December 2011 data, there are a couple of things that stand out. First, internet usage continues to grow. Second, the top online brands are sitting pretty in their leadership places with little threat to their web dominance.

Let’s take a closer look.

First, in January 2011 and December 2011, the top 6 U.S. web brands stayed the same. Of the bottom four U.S. web brands that made up the top 10 list in January 2011 and December 2011, only one brand dropped off the list and was replaced. The others simply shuffled positions. Both top 10 lists are shown below with the number of unique U.S. people who visited each site and the average time per person (hh:mm:ss) spent on each site.

January 2011

1. Google = 153.6 million (1:21:00)
2. Facebook = 135.6 million (7:24:12)
3. Yahoo! = 130.9 (2:20:10)
4. MSN/Windows Live/Bing = 121.0 million (1:26:39)
5. YouTube = 103.9 million (1:21:54)
6. Microsoft = 90.2 million (0:41:53)
7. AOL Media Network = 76.2 million (1:58:31)
8. Wikipedia = 65.7 million (1:15:31)
9. Ask Search Network = 65.5 million (0:10:40
10. Apple = 63.3 million (1:18:48)

December 2011

1. Google = 173.3 million (1:36:42)
2. Facebook = 153.4 (6:51:09)
3. Yahoo! 144.2 million (2:17:14)
4. MSN/Windows Live/Bing = 128.8 million (1:28:20)
5. YouTube = 128.1 (1:37:51)
6. Microsoft = 99.7 million (0:44:43)
7. Amazon = 87.9 million (0:42:10)
8. AOL Media Network = 84.0 million (2:51:19)
9. Apple = 79.1 million (1:08:28)
10. Wikipedia = 74.4 million (0:17:36)

In December 2011, Amazon rose up the charts in dramatic fashion while Ask Search Network dropped out of the top 10 list. It’s important to point out that Amazon naturally sees a lift in traffic in December thanks to the holiday shopping season, so the brand’s dramatic leap to 87.9 million in December 2011 is inflated for those holiday-related visitors. More interesting in these results is the fact that every brand saw an increase in traffic during 2011, but that’s not the case for the amount of time individuals spent on each site.

Every brand on the list saw an increase in time individuals spent on their sites between January 2011 and December 2011 except Facebook, which experienced a decrease in time spent on the site of approximately 33 minutes per person. Of course, Facebook does blow every other site on this list away in terms of the amount of time people spend on the site with nearly twice as much time or more spent on Facebook than any other site in the top 10. Clearly, Facebook is succeeding in keeping visitors engaged, but a 33 minute decrease in time spent on the site is a trend that should be raising some concerns at Facebook.

These ten brands dominated the web among the U.S. internet audience in 2011 with nearly every brand enjoying steady growth in unique visitors and time on each site. That’s not surprising given the steady growth in online internet usage overall in 2011. Take a look at the January 2011 and December 2011 metrics below to see what happened.

• Sessions/Visits per Person: January 2011 = 59; December 2011 = 62
• Domains Visited per Person: January 2011 = 99; December 2011 = 94
• Web Page Views per Person: January 2011 = 2,750; December 2011 = 2,803
• Duration of a Web Page Viewed: January 2011 = 0:00:58; December 2011 = 0:01:00
• Number of People Who Actively Went Online: January 2011 = 197.8 million; December 2011 = 211.9 million
• Number of People Who Had Internet Access: January 2011 = 243.0 million; December 2011 = 273.3 million

According to the numbers above, the number of people who had internet access grew by 12.5% between January 2011 and December 2011, but the number of people who actively went online during that time period only grew by 7.1%. The number of sessions per person went up by 5.1% in 2011. However, the number of web pages viewed per person only increased by 1.9% and the number of domains visited per person actually dropped by 1.9%.

What do you think about the future of the top ten U.S. web brands and the continued growth of internet usage? Is there any chance for other brands to topple Google or Facebook? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: stock.xchng

Despite what might be happening in the lead-up to the 2012 U.S. Presidential election, there is one thing Americans agree on regardless of age, race, gender, or political party. They think 15-seconds is the acceptable amount of time to be required to view an online ad before they can access free content.

According to a poll of a representative sample of Americans, Poll Position found that 54% of Americans think 15-seconds is the sweet spot for online advertisers and publishers to deliver ads without losing content views. Specifically, survey participants were asked, “When you go online to view free content, what do you think is the acceptable duration of an online advertisement you must view before seeing free content?” The breakdown of results is as follows:

• 54% believe 15 seconds is acceptable
• 12% believe 30 seconds is acceptable
• 4% believe 45 seconds is acceptable
• 3% believe 60 seconds is acceptable
• 27% have no opinion

Poll Position cross-tabulated the results by age, gender, race, and political party, and 15 seconds came out on top for every segment of the survey respondent audience (you can see the poll cross-tabs here).

It’s important to point out that 15-seconds was the shortest duration offered as a response to this poll. It’s safe to assume that had 10-seconds, 5-seconds, and 0-seconds been included, the results would be more interesting. However, for authoritative content publishers, the results of this study are important. If you want people to see your content but also want to put a monetization barrier in front of that content, make sure that barrier is one that visitors are willing to accept and wait through.

How many times have you been on a major media site, found a link to a video that looks interesting, clicked on that link, and been presented with a 30-second or 1-minute ad? It happens to me all the time, and you better believe I need to be extraordinarily interested in the video behind that monetization barrier or there is very little chance that I’m going to stick around. The publisher might make some money, but they’ve lost the chance to keep me on the site, further engage me, and improve long-term results.

Of course, major media sites need to make money, and smaller publishers do, too. The trick is finding the right balance between monetization and continued visitor engagement. What’s the opportunity cost of showing that 30-second ad before the clip of the cute kitten playing piano? Would a 15-second commercial deliver better all-around results? These are the questions publishers should be asking.

With that said, the problem falls back on advertisers who prefer to keep costs low and simply repurpose ads from other media. Until advertisers realize that they’ll get a better return on their investment by changing their ad content to match the online audience behaviors related to pre-roll video ads and other barriers to free content, publishers that need to make money from ads will still display those 30-second ads.

What do you think? How long are you willing to watch an online ad before accessing content that you’re lightly interested in? How about content you’re heavily interested in?

Here’s my answer — if I can Google the topic and get the information faster that way than watching a 30-second ad, you better believe I’m not going to watch that ad just to see the content behind it. 5-seconds, I’ll definitely watch it. 10-seconds, I’ll probably watch it. 15-seconds, I might or might not watch it. 30-seconds, I’ll very rarely watch it. More than 30-seconds, forget it.

Image: Flickr

In a new article, marketing speaker and author David Meerman Scott (whose content is syndicated through Newstex) discusses the practice of “buying” content when its “price” is low and re-selling it at a higher price in what he calls content arbitrage. David defines content arbitrage as follows:

“Content arbitrage involves finding information in one place and revealing it in another to take advantage of temporary differences in the knowledge level of people in those two markets.”

To further explain the concept of content arbitrage, imagine you find breaking news in your industry on a blog. You can quickly write about that news on your own blog, add your expert viewpoint and opinion to it, and share it via Twitter, Facebook, and so on. In other words, you used another person’s content as a tool to communicate and support your own opinions and knowledge.

People do this all the time — both online and offline. Whether you’re verbally sharing a piece of news you heard with friends at work and add your opinions into the discussion or you’re sharing online content in a blog post or other social media update and add your opinions to it, you’ve participated in content arbitrage.

David warns there is a catch when it comes to profiting from content arbitrage. He explains, “With all forms of arbitrage, the potential to profit only exists as long as there’s an exploitable difference between simultaneous markets. It’s real-time data.”

When you think about it, isn’t that how news organizations work, particularly 24-hour cable news networks? They all hear about a breaking story either from mutual sources or through each other’s news reports. The content arbitrage profit for these news organizations comes from adding more details using their journalistic resources or spinning the story to appeal to their specific target audiences. For example, when one news organization breaks a story from the White House,  you can guarantee that all news networks will carry that story, but Fox News will put a very different spin to it than MSNBC will. There is an exploitable difference that news organizations use to their advantage.

Most content publisher leverage content arbitrage opportunities, but as David explains in his article, timing and differentiation are key to getting positive results from it.

What do you think about content arbitrage? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: stock.xchng