The business of display advertising can be fiendishly tricky. A recent report in the Telegraph revealed that even the all conquering social networks are finding it difficult to engage users attention with advertising clients.

Liane Dietrich, managing director of LinkShare, the affiliate network which conducted the research, said:

“Less than 10 per cent of our respondents are interacting with adverts across social networking sites…Online users are information shoppers – they are looking for buyer reviews – so adverts need relay more information to cater for this need”.

This serves as a good reminder to all that at its heart the internet is a service led business. The most successful sites are those that are consistently providing useful information to their customers.

This obviously is easier said than done and even Google can sometimes get it wrong. Recently I’ve been exploring their Ad-sense channel via YouTube and came across this particularly illuminating comment.

“Hey Google instead of these ads for your Google products how about you give instruction instead. That’s what people search YouTube for, not to see an ad”.

Wouldn’t it be great if more people actually searched for ads. Perhaps a good lesson for us all, remember advertising needs to be useful!

In response to declining footfall and sales BestBuy have adopted a interesting Twitter strategy to take their in-store expertise online. Quoted In a recent Bloomberg article, BestBuy CMO Brian Judge said,

“The old paradigm is you open your doors and hope someone comes in. In the new world, you can go out and find people that are talking about technology and what they’re interested in buying, and be generous with your knowledge”

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I’ve spent the last 15 years pretty much reviewing stuff – the last 10 years of which have been solely in the mobile field. I like hardware and picking things to pieces, that’s what I like to do for a living. I don’t get too hung up on what OS it has, as long as it works, and I don’t get a tingle in my belly just because it has a spec list that looks like it fell out of a death-star. What I’m most interested in is getting behind the hype and seeing whether it’s fit for purpose.

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As soon as I tell one of my friends that I work in social media publishing, the brow creases and the inevitable question is formed, what exactly is Twitter?

My answer never seems complete, perhaps because I always feel like the question should be what does Twitter do for me? Why should I use it? In a reply to James’ story on changes to the Twitter service, @Liz explains just why Twitter is so important too her.

‘it’s that I want to see everything that @BarackObama tweets, no matter who it’s addressed to. I can already do that on the web interface by looking at their profile page but by choosing all @replies, it meant that they came directly to me in my Tweetstream. Now, I have to go out and search for them’.

At Republic we encourage our clients to think about social media as a set of tools. For the end user they can be tools that enable greater understanding and communication with the world around them. Once you know why you want to explore social media platforms, services like Tweetdeck and Newsmap can help you to organize the information you receive into manageable chunks.

We believe that harnessing social media tools in tandem with an clear and concise editorial strategy, forms an instant and accessible way for brands to hold direct a dialogue with their customers.

So what does Twitter do for me? I’m a bit of a world news addict. I started using Twitter’s real time search function around the time of the Mumbai tragedy. I found it a fascinating and easy way to discover real time local opinion and reaction to global events. In a small way this service delivered something that before was hard to access though mainstream media.

David Hepworth (one of the magazine geniuses behind The WORD magazine) once described “content” as a term non-editorial people used for the words and pictures that editorial people produced. He painted pictures of a world where content could be bought “by the bucket” on the back of the fact that “content is/would be king”. He was of course, taking the piss. But he was bang on.

Too often we see the word “content” bandied around describing some sort of commodity that can be picked up, duplicated and sold on at will. Us editorial types like to think of what we produce as considered, carefully crafted editorial (described by the dictionary on my Mac as “relating to the commissioning or preparing of material for publication”).

And it’s that last bit that matters. “content marketing” is a term used chiefly by those across the pond and increasingly by those working in the public relations industry. In fact, in his eyecube blog, Rick Liebling talks about content marketing in the context of Public Relations, and what it means to PR agencies. The sentiment of what he’s saying makes much sense. Consider his “five reasons for doing it”

1. Content marketing is constant
So often traditional PR relies on a “big launch” then it fades away. Strategic content marketing is ongoing, with a focus on keeping the consumers engaged beyond ‘opening weekend’ or the ‘Big Game.’

2. Content marketing is authentic
Content marketing isn’t about synergistically leveraging the best-in-class this, or the enterprise-wide, value-added that. It’s about providing consumers with information they want to share and engage with.

3. Content marketing is through-the-line
Audio, video, text, images - all of it can be repurposed to extend the life of the content across multiple platforms.  People don’t find news anymore, news finds them. The brands that break through are the ones that strategically leverage content by serving it up to consumers where, when and how they want it.

4. Content marketing is self-propogating
A traditional PR program involves hiring a celebrity spokesperson, setting up interviews and then recording audience figures. Content marketing involves repackaging the interviews, hosting them yourself across multiple platforms, but also encouraging others to host and publish additional content based on the original.  When your content generates related, original, organic content you win.

5. Content marketing is cost-effective
You’ve already hired the spokesperson, created the event or filmed the commercial. Your sunk costs are just that, so for a relatively minimal investment, put some additional muscle behind the initiative and extend the length of the program indefinitely. Or, if you can’t afford the $600,000 broadcast commercial, put a fraction of that money towards initiating and supporting direct consumer interaction via Social Media platforms (that’s content too).

But it’s the content bit that bothers me a little. A cohesive content strategy needs to be editorially, not “content” driven so that consumers and readers will be engaged, no matter what is going on in the world, or with the brand. We hear much about viral content, particularly in the realms of social media. And, whilst very clever, it’s little more than advertising.

Think about it, what are the best ads you can remember from TV? They’re the same kind that if a link to one on YouTube popped into your inbox, you’d be inclined to pass it on. But those aren’t necessarily the ones that get the most hits. For that you can’t beat solid, exclusive, “stop press”, “we got it first” juicy editorial. Be it a news story, a first snap of a new product, or a video showing the bits the photos didn’t. And that’s just to grab people’s attention. Implementing a solid editorial strategy can bring brands and consumers closer together, be it through aggregating reviews, providing tutorials or just highlighting stuff those consumers will be interested in.

Much of what Rick says is spot on. Save for one bit. Content on it’s own won’t win the day. The editorial process that delivers that content will.