Matt Gee appointed Newscounter director

Matt Gee has been appointed as a director of Newscounter.

I'm really pleased that the shareholders have appointed Matt who I've met a few times over the last six months. He is very enthusiastic, very sharp and incredibly driven. He will bring valuable marketing expertise to the group and has significant experience to help us expanding Newscounter overseas.

Matt Gee says:

I have over 15 years’ experience in strategy, marketing and proposition
development roles, both on the client side (Channel 4, Five, Guardian Media
Group) as well as in the role of a consultant.

As a consultant I originally focused on the broadcast, film and telecoms sectors
providing board level advice to a range of clients including Discovery, ITV plc,
Warner Bros, RTE, Groupe Lagardere and UKTV. I have also advised a film finance house that successfully raised over £50m against a portfolio of Warner
Bros films. More recently I have spent increasing amounts of time working with
VCs, investment banks and start-ups.

In October 2008 I established an online business that aims to replicate the
success of moneysupermarket, with a focus on emerging markets.

The importance of news in blogging

A regular reader of this blog emailed me this weekend to ask:

"As Matthew said in his last entry, however, timing is everything. Unfortunately, at at the moment, my work isn't structured to be able to strike while the iron is hot. This makes it difficult to get engaged in a debate and then try to lead it. There do seem to be other "thought leadership" blogs that don't seem to engage in a debate. Are political blogs different I wonder? Anyway, these are some topics that we could pick up when hopefully we get around to meeting.

This is a really familiar challenge that lots of our clients face. I firmly believe, having done it myself and with the benefit of working for lots of others that the following is important:

- if you can't blog frequently, write posts that you have 'in the locker' which you can post (automatically if necessary) when you can see the diary is busy. You can quickly top and tail these to make then topical.
- when you want someone to read your post, you have to sell it to them. An important part of sales is timeliness - why read it now? If you could read it tomorrow, you would then (but end up not doing so). If you want readers, the post has to be timely. Even if it's a personal blog (I had a nice weekend) it should be too late to read it five days later.
- all blogs should engage in a debate. If you're not situated in a community of blogs then the chances are you are either to successful to need it or too unsuccessful to deserve it.

I suppose it is possible to not be in a newsworthy debate with a group of other blogs. But if you're not you need to:
- really understand what interests your audience
- know where they currently congregate and how to attract them to your post
- be able to draw them back to your blog again and again
- give them incentives to tell their friends about your blog

So if you're blogging for your friends or a limited group of people (your staff?) it might not be necessary for your blog to be newsworthy and part of a debate. But if you want to use it to:
- establish your expertise
- retain existing relationships (clients?)
- develop new relationships
- broaden your networks

then I believe our advice is important. Challenge me, if you disagree.

The Pope backs Counterpoint

The popularity of Counterpoint is increasing. Word reaches Newscounter towers that even the Pope understands its significance.

"I hear that it was possible to access various excerpts of the news on the internet and to have got knowledge of the problem," he says.

"I learn from this that we in the Holy See must take notice of these news sources in the future."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7938827.stm

Timing is important for blogging

Over the last week or so, I've learnt just how important it is to blog at the right time.

I've posted twice on my personal blog in response to recent news stories - this in reaction to Tom Harris MP and this on increasing anger in society. Neither post was as successful as it should have been because I didn't post at the right time.

This wasn't as complicated as posting at the right time of day (which people often ask about). Whilst this can be useful (first thing at the morning, as Americans are logging in etc) it's mostly of marginal benefit to really good bloggers. My mistake was to publish over a day late. What that meant was that:
1. Lots of people had already had their say so I had less to say
2. When I promoted my post on other blogs, the comment was lower down so got less click-throughs
3. When I promoted my post, I didn't influence other bloggers because they'd already written about it

If you're going to react to an issue, do so early and amend your post as you go. There will be more opportunities to promote it on other sites the longer the issue continues, but your comments will be more prominent and more influential.

LFCTV use of Twitter

My favourite TV channel has joined Twitter. I was interested to see what they had to say, over and above the content of the website, TV channel and what I'd pick up through the fans websites. LFCTV is currently using Twitter really well.

I started following the channel the day before the Real Madrid game and it was interesting to read 'behind the scenes' glimpses of the club. It wasn't just that you could follow the flight into Madrid and found out that they drank too much that night - but that there was an insight into the operational side of the channel too.

When news broke of Rick Parry's departure, LFCTV were first to confirm that a statement would appear on the official website.

The good things about the use of Twitter are:
* additional content over and above the day to day
* regular but not over-intense use of the channel
* the variety of content from match news to channel operations
* the personal element which came through strongly in the post match reaction to the Middlesbrough defeat

However, there are a number of areas where they could be still more engaging:
* they recently Tweeted that they were off to interview Rafa Benitez. They could have asked for questions to put to Rafa. The incentive would be seeing your question put to Rafa live on LFCTV - certainly an incentive to pay the subscription
* they have started responding to questions but it is still too much broadcasting and limited interaction
* advertising upcoming programmes. Twitter gets boring if it's just a series of commercials but for particular programmes or interviews on the channel this could help demonstrate the commercial value of Twitter
* match news (rights permitting). Twitter updates from the academy games which aren't shown live would be particularly uesful.

Overall, the Newscounter verdict is: great start, the content, tone and style is great; Now try to interact more with the community and use it to add commercial value.

Dare to Act - website evaluation

Dare to Act is a new website campaign launched by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union. There are lots of strengths in the website that other campaigning organisations can learn from. However there are also some areas where Newscounter would advocate a different approach.

A clear call to action

There are three clear calls to action on the site: get to know the case, dare to act and keep yourself updated. The user can understand completely what to do and how to use the site. The information is informative and entertaining and motivates users to take action.

A range of different actions

The motivated user has a range of different actions - sending an email is easy enough (although would be aided by a single point of contact and the urge to CC the UN secretary general seems a little implausible to be effective. Interestingly, they enable users to send a fax, as well as share the site with friends.

Good integration of multimedia content

The video is neatly embedded in the site and it's easy to navigate between the different sections.

However, there are a number of weaknesses to the site which may hinder the effectiveness of the campaign.

The site isn't well optimised for search engines

The site lacks a meta description or clear page titles and there are few internal links. It is hard to find the site on a search engine unless you have already heard of the campaign.

Content can't be linked

By building the site in flash, each page doesn't have a separate URL which makes it impossible for other websites - and bloggers in particular - to link to relevant parts of the content. Yahoo currently records just 27 websites linking to the domain which is far fewer than you'd expect - particularly given the quality of the website and its content. However, publishing the videos on YouTube was a sensible way of compensating partially for that.

There's no community dialogue

The website won't build a community because it doesn't allow any dialogue between the users.

No capacity for updates

There doesn't appear to be any capacity for regular updates from the campaign (also a missed opportunity for better SEO). A campaign blog, forum or Twitter account would provide a capacity for the campaign to provide regular updates to engage users on the development of the campaign.

Lessons for other campaigns

There are some critical lessons for other campaigns:
* ensure that the structure of a website is usable for different levels of users - those who will just engage but also those who want to participate and lead a campaign
* if you choose to build a website in flash, provide alternative ways to help bloggers and others engage with the campaign
* blog if at all possible to provide regular opportunities for users to engage with the progress of the campaign. Even if the campaign doesn't change regularly, the policy and political context in which you are operating changes weekly and probably daily.

Labourlist: on course to be a top political website

Labourlist has been so successful in its first five weeks that it is on course to be one of the top political sites in the blogosphere. How have they done it?

It has certainly been controversial and site editor Derek Draper's conduct occasionally aggressive and even offensive. But whether you like it or not, it's working.

Building links

Last week I noticed that it had attracted a significant number of links into the site. This was particularly surprising as some of the biggest right wing bloggers have refused to link to labourlist.It isn't yet competing with the biggest sites but is growing at a significant rate and if it continues, won't be far behind its main rivals before long.

Generating traffic

I then noticed how much traffic it generated to some blogs that Newscounter helps. It's not a huge amount of traffic in absolute terms, but far more than I expected for a site of that age and which had attracted that volume of criticism.

There is also some interesting traffic data from Alexa which suggests that its traffic is already in the same ballpark as Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes. At Newscounter we no longer put any faith in Alexa stats because the data samples aren't properly weighted to reflect reality (at least in the UK). However, as the Manchester Evening News blog points out, Labourlist is already out-performing Conservativehome.

It's still early days for Labourlist and it's difficult to compare with other months and other websites because it's only been live for a few weeks. However, people who have seen the stats (and our subsequent analysis) has suggested that in the first five weeks it's already on a similar scale to where the right wing sites were after several years. I predict that if it continues on its likely growth trajectory, it will be one of the biggest political sites in the UK blogosphere.

Using social networking

Although he's still finding his way around Twitter, Labourlist editor @derekdraper has been named as the third most popular political twitterer.

Labourlist key achievements

There are a number of key achievements on Labourlist in its first few weeks:
1. It has set the agenda on bigger blogs. A crude search suggests that Iain Dale's blog has mentioned Draper up to 1900 times whilst Guido Fawkes has referred to Draper on 9000 occasions.

2. It has ignited a chain of conversations on multiple websites - one key criteria for a successful blog - evidence by the rapid growth of sites linking to labourlist.org

Challenges for Labourlist

There are a number of further challenges facing Labourlist, particularly if it is to fulfil Draper's ambitions for a site that speaks to the population rather than the Westminster village.

1. Can it provide unique content sufficiently frequently to keep users and deepen their relationship with the site?

2. Can it provide the mix of content necessary to be controversial enough to get online attention but informative enough to keep users returning?

3. Can its posters provide more provocative and thoughtful articles which increase the number of comments - and demonstrate their authenticity by re-engaging with those comments?

4. Can it be sufficiently generous with its success so that it increases the infrastructure around centre left bloggers, which in turn will lead to the long term success of Labourlist?

I've deliberately left off any measure of electoral impact from Labourlist: even Iain Dale hasn't achieved demonstrated a clear relationship between a good blog and electoral success. When he stood for parliament, the Conservatives actually lost votes on the previous election, bucking the national trend.

As Labour used to say: a lot done, a lot more to do.