commbasics

Much of what is happening in media, both in independent publications and in-house publications, is focused only on a single perspective and the financial investment in producing a multi-faceted approach is not welcome. In this third part of our series on truth and trust in content, let’s get down to some nitty gritty and see how stuff is playing out in B2B tech media.  In the first two installments on this series I talked about the importance of finding truth in coverage, which requires a multi-faceted approach, not just truth from one perspective.  Unfortunately, much of what is happening in media, both in independent publications and in-house publications, is focused only on a single perspective and the financial investment in producing a multi-faceted approach is not welcome.  Let's take the gorilla in the room (IBM Tech) as an example. I’ve written extensively on the changes at UBM Tech this past year and, most recently, some of the blowback I’ve been hearing...

hat you have to realize is that to your customers, your view of the truth is nowhere near as important as theirs is to them. That seems like such an obvious statement, and I bet you think you actually know what your customers consider to be true. But from what I hear from customers and from advertisers and from readers, very few companies and publications actually have a clue regarding what those audiences consider to be truth. In my last post I talked about the importance of understanding truth from other perspectives, rather than focusing only on yours.  Today I want to give you a specific example.  Dan Lyons over at Hubspot wrote a blog post last month about the use of content to build trust and relationship by demonstrating truth... even though it was complete fiction. You can see the video content produced by Google India on the blog, but briefly it was about how two young people in Pakistan and Lahore transcended national bigotry, politics and xenophobia using tech...

For our second part of the series on truth in media I think it’s important that we define the term.  Truth is multifaceted and largely determined by perspective.  This is a crucial understanding of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity , which says what you perceive from where you stand may not jive with the perception of someone standing right next to you.  Media, from the beginnings of the oral tradition to mass media of the 20th century was designed to create a common perspective for large groups of people and take away some of the debate over what is true. The media of the of the 20th century was controlled by a relatively few corporations and individuals and reached millions of people.  That made it possible to maintain a certain control over a specific message and establish a few facets of truth as common to the masses.  This was the basis of McLuhan ’s concept of the “media is the message.” Large groups of people could be convinced of a particular facet of...

Recently read a post over at Hubspot (that I can't find right now) about how companies are lowering their investment in communication tactics because they are disappointed at the  results.  The author blamed the decline not on the efficacy of the tactics, but on how poorly they are implemented by the companies. I can't say I disagree with him entirely.  Most of the marketing communications plans I see are more checklists than plans (press release, check; trade show booth, check...) While there is tremendous investment made in the marketing infrastructure, I see almost no investment in content and content is the gas that makes the marketing machine go. Few companies I talk to believe they have great content, and when we review what they have we tend to agree.  It’s the same press releases, the same marketing brochures, the same white papers, and the same contributed articles that everyone else produces... and they read almost identically to every other co...