Digital Discourse / Archives for analytics

10 digital media trends you cannot ignore

September 13, 2013 By

Digital Content & Media Summit

As traditional publishing transitions to digital content, whether web, mobile, social, video, data, events or communities, so the rules of the game are changing. Publishers need to look outside their own experience and industry and learn new skills from technology and entertainment businesses.

In the last two weeks, I have spoken to twenty media and technology innovators, who are all speaking at the forthcoming  SIIA Digital Content & Media Summit, taking place 23-25 Sept in London.

These are ten digital media trends that they are already exploiting and that publishers cannot ignore.
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Filed Under: Content Events, Digital Content & Media Summit, SIIA UK Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

SIPAlert Daily – For Voci, analytics and engagement are team tasks

September 12, 2013 By

“Are you still interested in ‘Detroit’?” the subject line flashed on my screen. Detroit is a Pulitzer Prize-finalist play now in Washington, D.C. I had checked out ticket prices yesterday. “We noticed that you viewed ‘Detroit,’ but didn’t finish your purchase. The good news is, there are 8 dates available.”

Marketing of this type is pretty standard now, and it does make you look at your “destination” again. But in the current world of analytics and engagement—authentically voiced at SIPA’s recent Conference by Valerie Voci (pictured here), vice president, marketing, for CQ Roll Call—it’s just the beginning.

“We’re always looking to decrease the people who just leave,” she said. “We’re looking when they abandon, where they go when they abandon.”

Voci made clear that it is increasingly a team effort. “Some of the things the editorial team does [now] used to be on the marketing side. Editorial is looking every day on their most read stories. They’re looking at who’s referring [their readers] and where content is being shared. They’re learning from it and they’re making some changes.

“They’re certainly not going to change what they’re writing about. They have their goals as well. But they’re starting to see [that] this works a little bit better. They’re even going so far to look at placement on the site, how they’re creating images for their blogs, also looking at social measurement tools, so we have a lot of tweets from our Roll Call editors. [There’s a] Roll Call handle that our marketing manages; we’ll put some promotional things there. But mostly it’s about our content.”

Voci is happy to let the editorial people be the stars. Her job revolves around lead generation, so if social media can bring the audience closer to the reporters they follow, all the better. “We’re looking at our reporters and editors who are industry experts, to use them in different ways,” she said. “I didn’t know if this one great reporter would be good on TV and he’s amazing [in two-minute videos].”

CQ Roll Call has topic-specific Twitter handles, and reporters also have their own handles. “We’re looking at the activity—who’s following them, are they being retweeted, how many mentions?” Voci said. “Are they really engaging? So it’s changing from just looking at raw numbers to really analyzing it. You can see why that takes more than just a Webmaster and a marketing person.”

It takes an audience engagement team, collected from various departments. Listening to Voci—and you need to be attentive to do so; she talks qualitatively and fast—leaves you feeling that the ball is in your court. “We know who’s on our site,” she said. “We know what device they’re using. Mobile early, then desktop, then iPad usage around 10 o’clock at night—really people! 10 o’clock? But that’s what happening.”

She said they even know that people are illegally sharing passwords. “We’re not trying to be cops but trying to understand how people use our data and our content and their subscriptions so we can be better informed and we can better inform our sales team when it comes time for renewal. We’re looking at all the referrals.”

Speaking about renewals, Voci said, “We’re looking at critical points in the subscription cycle, 30 days [in], 60 days, 90 days and we’re starting to map now when people don’t renew. And seeing what their traffic was. We’re using a couple pieces of software for that and creating retention programs that kick in automatically when we reach these critical points. I like to fail fast and learn quicker… When they reach a threshold [of contact points], we’re scoring them. [Maybe they] filled out a survey, read a special report, read stories.”

She said that her team’s main job is to “nurture, nurture, nurture”—meaning that the leads they give to sales should be strong. “That forces the marketing team to think differently, a little more logically. [But you] have to put a lot of stuff in to get a lot of stuff out.

“You know how your prospects find you,” she said. All the information is there to track their behavior on your site. If you need more information, she suggested sending something out that you know your audience will value and respond to. CQ Roll Call is a thought leader when it comes to Congress, so when they sent out a survey based on their knowledge, it got a 71.7% open rate. And that gets them clean data.

They have gone as far as creating personas based on how people use their site. “Sometimes the mythology is that the person who reads free stuff will never buy paid stuff,” Voci said. “And in marketing we’re all about measuring. I want to prove that true or false. Because that will change what I do [and] will also help with product development—you need to constantly be developing.”

 

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”

Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

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Filed Under: Content, SIPA, SIPA Con, SIPAlert Daily Tagged With: ,

Meet New SIIA Member – Content Analyst

June 20, 2013 By

cac_logo_img

Meet Content Analyst, the innovators behind the powerful CAAT analytics engine and a new member of the SIIA’s Content Division. We sat down with Content Analyst’s VP of Marketing, Steven Toole, to learn more about this unique company as well as emerging trends in analytics.

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Steven Toole

Steven Toole, VP of Marketing, Content Analyst Company

Kathy: Tell me about Content Analyst Company. What do you do?

Steven: Content Analyst Company provides a powerful and proven Concept-aware Advanced Analytics engine that exponentially reduces the time needed to discern relevant information from unstructured data. CAAT®, our dynamic suite of text analytics technologies, delivers significant value wherever knowledge workers need to extract insights from large amounts of unstructured data. Our capabilities are easily integrated into any software solution, and our support strategy for our partners is second to none.

Kathy: What kinds of companies does Content Analyst look to partner with?

Steven: We license our CAAT advanced analytics engine to software companies, information services providers and systems integrators that are looking to dramatically improve their end customers’ ability to find, organize and discover relevant information among large collections of unstructured data.

CAAT is proven effective with dozens of software product companies in the areas of e-discovery, US Intelligence and several

Kathy Greenler Sexton, VP & GM, SIIA Content Division

other markets involving vast amounts of unstructured documents and emails.

We partner with companies in the areas of information services, email and enterprise archiving, compliance, web content management, social media, and other markets defined by unstructured content in great volumes.

Our ideal partner has a customer-driven need to better organize unstructured data, a development team to work with our Product Solutions Group to integrate our software APIs, and a vision to address end customers’ need to organize unstructured data more effectively.

Kathy: Who does Content Analyst sell to?

Steven: Content Analyst Company licenses our proprietary CAAT concept-aware advanced analytics engine to software companies, information services companies, and systems integrators looking to provide their end customers with more effective ways to find, organize and discover relevant content amidst large volumes of unstructured documents, email, and web content.

Kathy: What is unique about what Content Analyst does?

Steven: Unlike Boolean keyword search, or other natural language processing technologies, CAAT uses concept-aware advanced analytics.  CAAT does not require the use of any dictionaries, thesauri, ontologies or libraries in order to derive conceptual meaning from a set of unstructured content.  Rather, CAAT uses example documents or sections of text to define a category.  CAAT then identifies conceptually similar content among millions of entries, regardless of misspellings, acronyms, abbreviations, etc.  In addition, CAAT’s capabilities can be applied in any language – again, without any cross-referencing, dictionaries or word libraries.

The CAAT suite of full capabilities includes example based auto-categorization, conceptual search, content summarization, dynamic clustering, email threading, text near duplicate identification and conceptual near duplicate identification.

In addition, Content Analyst Company is committed to developing mutually successful, long term partnerships with the companies that license our technology.  Content Analyst provides advanced analytics training and certification, code reviews, and full integration support of our CAAT advanced analytics APIs.  Content Analyst continuously innovates our CAAT advanced analytics engine, with a semi-annual product release schedule.  ContentCare® is Content Analyst’s partner support program, providing comprehensive resources designed to ensure partners’ success with the CAAT advanced analytics engine.

Kathy: What do you see as the biggest trends in the industry in the next 12-18 months?

Steven: Software companies whose applications manage unstructured content know that Big Data is very real, and the need to manage and effectively use the data provides an opportunity for all of us.

Software companies and information services companies are starting to realize that semantic advanced analytics  technology can understand the ‘meaning’ of unstructured documents, and is a key in the drive to taming the unstructured content of big data.  Software companies that have products for enterprise content management, archiving and compliance; social media monitoring, and human capital management – all face the challenges of managing vast amounts of unstructured content.  By taking a small number of documents as examples, and using concept-aware auto categorization to say “go find more like these,” the potential impact on taming big data is amazing.

Despite the hype around big data, few will disagree that it poses challenges and benefits if managed properly, and fewer still will disagree that it’s going away anytime soon.  Relying on manual taxonomies is simply not practical, as the volume, velocity and variety of content comprising big data accelerates virtually at the speed of thought.

Concept-aware auto categorization has proven itself as a highly effective, extremely fast and incredibly precise approach in legal e-discovery and US intelligence.  The possibilities are endless for applying this technology to address the major obstacles big data poses, while simultaneously harvesting the broad benefits big data stands to offer.

Kathy: What does Content Analyst hope to get out of its SIIA Membership?

Steven: Content Analyst believes that software and information services companies can drive strong incremental value for their customers through the concept aware auto categorization technology that CAAT has long provided in e-discovery and US Intelligence.   Content Analyst joined SIIA to help educate members about game-changing advanced analytics that can help differentiate software and information solutions dealing with large amounts of unstructured content, documents and email.  We invite all SIIA members to take a look at CAAT by Content Analyst and schedule a live demonstration at www.ContentAnalyst.com.

Kathy: Is there any recent news that you’d like to announce? 

Steven: For nearly 10 years, Content Analyst Company has focused heavily on providing advanced analytics to vendors in the e-discovery and US Intelligence communities.  We joined SIIA in early 2013 to expand on our proven success in these markets, and forge technology alliances with software and information services companies looking to provide robust text analytics capabilities for their customers, in any language.

In June 2013, we introduced CAAT Definer 1.0, – the world’s first GUI-based concept-aware utility that facilitates the process of identifying the highest quality conceptual auto categorization examples – in any language.   Quite simply, CAAT Definer helps users define high quality example sets for maximum accuracy and precision in concept based auto categorization.

Kathy: What is the best way for people to get in touch with Content Analyst?

Twitter handle:  @Content_Analyst
Email:  info@ContentAnalyst.com
Company URL:  www.ContentAnalyst.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Filed Under: Content, Content Events Tagged With: ,

Getting attention in an on demand world: tips for editors and publishers from SIPA

June 17, 2013 By

How can you engage an audience that is overwhelmed with noise and suffering from attention deficit disorder? What are the tactics that editors and publishers must employ to cut through? And is there any proof of measurable business benefit from doing this? Val Voci of CQ RollCall, Luis Hernandez of Thompson (TIS) and Charity Sack of American Academy of Actuaries provided some guidance at the SIPA conference in Washington DC….

Breaking through the noise

Breaking through the noise

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Filed Under: SIIA UK, SIPA Tagged With: , , , , ,

20 new insights for publishers from PPA Conference

June 2, 2013 By

The magazine industry seemed less defensive about print and more open to new ways to expand media brands onto web, mobile, events, retailing and more at the PPA annual Conference on 8 May.  Carolyn Morgan shares her top 20 insights from the day.

Nial Ferguson Future at PPA Conference

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Filed Under: SIIA UK Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

AATC Speaker Profile: Mark Cunningham, Founder & CEO, Indicee

March 15, 2013 By

SIIA AATC Speaker Profile

Name: Mark Cuningham
Title: Founder & Cheif Executive Officer
Company: Indicee

 

Bio:
Mark Cunningham is a thought leader and entrepreneur with more than 20 years’ experience in the business intelligence (BI) industry. He has been on the founding team of four successful startups, including his current role as Founder & CEO of cloud BI company,Indicee. As a strong advocate for cloud computing and social business, Mark is passionate about bringing greater insight and data-driven decision making to the new breed of social enterprise.

Mark began his entrepreneurial career in 1992, when his family company began building the world’s first Windows-based reporting tool, Crystal Reports. Crystal was later acquired by Business Objects for $820M.

Home town: Vancouver, BC.

First job: Well, it depends on how far back I go! I collected golf balls from the water hazards and resold them to the golfers during my years in elementary school. I painted fences in high school. I worked as a bike courier during university. I guess my first real job was working on the team that created Crystal Reports.

What are you currently reading? I just finished reading Neil Young’s autobiography and now I am reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, and Social Business by Design by Dion Hinchcliffe and Peter Kim.

All-time favorite music: I am a guitar player so I can’t answer that question. There are too many to choose. But I play rock, blues and jazz with a few of the bands that I’m in.

What is the best meal you have had recently? I had a great pork loin dish at Bix in San Francisco recently.

What is your next (dream) career? Vintage Cars and Guitars….buy, sell…whatever. I just like being around them. If I can make money along the way too, that would be cool.

Hobbies: Guitar, photography, kitesurfing, aviation, vintage cars, cycling…the list is long.

What do you think is the hot button issue for the software & services industry in 2013?
2013 will be all about “social business” and the advancement of technologies to support the new, collaborative way of working. This trend has seen many ISVs build social elements into the core of their applications over the last couple of years; in some cases, completely overhauling product suites or building new apps from scratch. This year, I expect to see greater sophistication in the tools that are helping to drive social business performance, including an increased demand for analytics. Businesses now want empirical evidence on the effectiveness of their social activities and the technologies they are using to support it. The need to link social strategies to business objectives is something we’re hearing all the time right now at Indicee and for that reason, I think 2013 will be a big growth year for social business analytics vendors.

What are you looking forward to most at AATC?
Can I only pick one? In that case, I’d have to say that I’m most looking forward to joining the panel on Selling More with Sales Intelligence. We have an interesting take on this subject at Indicee as we’ve been working with customers to prove, with real data, that using social channels internally to grow collective sales intelligence has a positive impact on sales performance. It should be a great conversation. I’m also excited to hear about this year’s NextGen companies, as we were winners last year. Oh, and the speed networking sounds fun. Ok, so that was three things…

Why is your company a member of SIIA?
We’ve been SIIA members for almost two years now and really value the networking opportunities that come with our membership. All About the Cloud is a great example of this!

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Filed Under: All About the Cloud, Software Tagged With: , , ,

Beware the Business Intelligence Bigot

January 3, 2013 By

Today’s guest post was contributed by Steven Schneider who is the contributor to Slinging Software, a blog focused on the adventures in scaling a business, selling software, and the business intelligence market.  To read further contributions, check out the blog at SlingingSoftware.com

One of the key successes in working with large enterprises is understanding the different types of prospects that one encounters, and segmenting them based on the level of experience with BI products.

Through this effort, we have developed a system that will tell us, in the early stages of an opportunity, if we have a good fit, if it is going to take some work, and when it might make sense to walk away from an opportunity.

Check out the rest of Slinging Software’s blog here.

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Filed Under: Software Tagged With: , , ,
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