The International Digital Media Arts Association Conference 2010

The International Digital Media Arts Association Conference 2010 (iDMAa 2010) is happening November 4 - 6 at Emily Carr University. This year’s conference will focus on the subject of The Digital Narrative: Pushing scholarship, creativity and imagination.

Monique is speaking on a social media panel with Alexandra Samuel, the Director of the Social and Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University and Adrian Allene, Chief Technology Officer at United Media Partners.

From the iDMAa 2010 website:

Leading academics, professionals and artists will gather at Emily Carr University of Art and Design for the International Digital Media and Arts Association’s 8th annual conference to explore the world of digital technologies with a focus on the subject of The Digital Narrative. The conference will include workshops, keynote speakers, “extreme close-up” guest panels, paper presentations, networking, discussions, and social events as well as opportunities to explore Emily Carr’s state of the art facilities

New digital technologies and mediums are informing, challenging and reinventing our notions of narrative structures and storytelling. Non- linear, virtual, artificial, interactive, and cyber culture have become common terms and concepts when describing the emerging integration of science, art, and sociology. The Digital Narrative explores ideas of how storytelling and communication is influencing and influenced by new and emerging technologies.

Details:
November 4 - 6, 2010
Emily Carr University
If you register before October 20th, a member ticket costs $289, a non-member ticket costs $395 and a student ticket costs $89.
See the list of speakers.
Register here. 

BookCamp Vancouver 2010

The second BookCamp Vancouver is this Friday, October 1. BookCamp is a conference that brings together 250 members from the technology and publishing industries to talk about digital aspects of book publishing and how online media is changing the game.

The early days of the internet brought to publishing:

• Credit card payments
• Shipping trackers
• Inventory counts
• Reviews
• Buy and recommendation engines
• Communities and tribes

Sharing, collaboration, organization and knowledge exchange were reinforced through easy tools, search and recommendation engines such as those available through YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, iTunes and Twitter.

With the social web, fresh insights into the community are possible. A publisher can:

• Listen and learn: identify influencers; build up reputation and leadership
• Build awareness: create compelling campaigns and, more important, movements
• Facilitate participation: Contribute to the community, provide tools that empower others to speak on their behalf, and create connections
• Support purchasing: Accommodate individuality (customizations), provide service on-demand and support multiple payment methods
• Re-engage and empower: provide social rewards for positive behaviours that support the community and, with permission, encourage repeat behaviour

Ebook readers bring new insights to reading preferences, as well as a shift in reading from a linear model to an interactive one.

Big questions are forming. How long will we be in a transition from printed books to digital works? Will publishing houses continue to exist as they do today or will light-weight publishing condos develop instead (where a core group handles finding, making and marketing)? Will price points reflect more points along the demand curve? How will people behave in a market of infinite choice? What will they want to pay for, who will make money and how do we finance publishing new works?

Seth Godin says that publishers have done an excellent job for 100+ years. As curators, they pick the winners. As producers, they create and manufacture the works. As financial risk takers, they make the initial investment. As distributors, they manage inventory and shelf space. And as promoters, they disseminate press releases, earn publicity and buy advertising space.

His challenge to the industry is to focus on curation, leadership and connection.

This Friday, we’ll do just that. We’ll look at digital sales to libraries, ecatalogues, ebook production and the reading practices. We’ll explore how literary communities are supporting new works and the discovery of amazing authors. We’ll talk strategy, tools and tactics for fostering community and dialogue within and between online tribes.

All of this happens daily on the web, but BookCamp is a chance for us to have an in-person literary salon where innovators and problem-solvers in the technology space interact with risk takers and trendspotters in publishing to explore how digital technology continues to amplify and extend the discovery, production and delivery of new works of fiction and non-fiction, whether they be in tree format or pixels and bits.

CBC Interview with Benjamin Rivers: The Future of Publishing is Small and Light

This month, the CBC Book Club is exploring the future of reading. Here’s an interesting interview with Benjamin Rivers - an independent game developer, comic artist and web designer - that looks at the interactive and cross-media opportunities that are now available with books. In his words, if you’re a publisher today “you should be thinking small and thinking light.”

Read the full post on CBC. 

Tools We Like: Chapters Indigo’s eReading Facebook App

Chapters Indigo has a really neat eReading app on their Facebook Page that we haven’t seen done yet anywhere else. If you click on the eReading tab on their Facebook Page, this is what you see:

Why We Like The eReading App

It encourages avid readers to explore ebooks in a comfortable environment. Fans of the Chapters Indigo Page are, presumably, book lovers and the eReading app provides information about ebooks where they are already hanging out online - Facebook.

It engages the community. Fans can submit the latest ebook they read and be featured on the Kobo Reader of the Week. There’s also trivia questions that fans can share with their friends.

It’s great for beginners or people just starting out with ebooks. With explanations and videos about ereading and the Kobo eReader, fans can research if ereading is right for them. And if it is, they can buy the Kobo eReader by clicking on the links to the shopping cart.

eBooks are still new territory and it’s engaging, explanatory apps like Chapters Indigos’ that may push people to explore ereading.

What do you think about the eReading app? Have you seen any other apps that do a good job of marketing digital books?

Google Instant: Search and SEO

Last week Google announced the launch of its new search function, Google Instant. It is currently only available in the US but will be added to international searches within the next few weeks. Google Instant’s features include predictive text and streaming search results. While Google already lists search suggestions when you type in a search query,

with streaming search results, the results of these suggestions are instantly displayed below the search box as users type.

Almost immediately after the announcement, marketers started wondering if this makes SEO irrelevant or not. To find out, I attended Webmarketing123’s webinar Google Instant & How SEO is Affected. This is what I learned.

What Changes with Google Instant:

• The User Experience
• Impressions and Click-Throughs

What Doesn’t Change with Google Instant:

• Google’s Organic Ranking Algorithm

What Google Instant Means for Search Marketers

Keyword Optimization

Marketers will need to optimize for broader, general “headmatch” terms - keywords that appear near the top of the predictive text box. For example, if you sell flower girl dresses you will need to optimize for “flower” and “flower girl” as well as “flower girl dresses”.

Marketers will need to optimize for both short and long tail keywords. Short tail keywords will get even more impressions because they will be the first to appear in the predictive text box. While long tail keywords probably won’t be in the first page of search results anymore (the predictive text drop-down box moves everything down on the search results page), the quality of search terms will improve as users are given more long-tail suggestions. This means that long tail keywords will get less impressions but more relevant audiences.

Marketers will need to focus on brief, attention-grabbing title and meta descriptions. Searchers will be scanning faster than ever and the text that is shown in search results will need to attract attention.

Impressions and PPC
According to Google, with streaming search results, ad impressions are now counted in these situations:

• The user begins to type a query on Google and clicks anywhere on the page (a search result, an ad, a spell correction, a related search).
• The user chooses a particular query by clicking the Search button, pressing Enter or selecting one of the predicted queries.
• The user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of 3 seconds.

These changes to impressions are not just for PPC. Google Keyword Tool shows search volume by impressions so this affects keyword data as well.

Webmarketing123 predicts that impressions and cost-per-click for headmatch terms will increase. They also predict that the quality of clicks will increase as users learn to search using more relevant terms.

Overall, SEO seems as important as ever and it will be interesting to see how Google Instant is going to ultimately affect user behaviour - including search queries, click patterns and page-scanning.

Email Marketing Still Matters: Gmail Priority Inbox and Permission Marketing

Despite the growth of social networks, email is popular as ever. A recent survey found that 72% of respondents check email during their time off,19% check email in bed and 50% check email while they’re on vacation or during days off.

Last week Gmail released it’s Priority InBox, which has some marketers declaring the death of email marketing and others trying to figure out ways to get past the Priority Inbox filter - like adding “Important” to their email subject lines.

But these marketers are missing the point. Gmail’s Priority Inbox gets us back to the basics of email marketing. Email marketing is effective because it’s based on permission and, as Seth Godin states,

the future of marketing is based on permission. It’s based on sending messages to people who want to get them, who choose to get them, who would miss you if you didn’t send them. It’s not easy and it’s not cheap to earn permission, but so what? This is my attention, not yours, and if you want to use it for a while, please earn the privilege.

If you’re sending your newsletter to people who want it then you shouldn’t be worried about it getting lost in their inbox - people will look for it if they don’t receive it.

We like email newsletters because they’re:

• A proven way to communicate with your audience.
• Easy and inexpensive.
• An opt-in way to send information to those who are most receptive to your message.
• Effective. Everyone has email and is comfortable with email. People understand how to subscribe and unsubscribe.
• Measurable. A newsletter subscribe button on your website is a measurable call to action. In addition, email newsletter software has analytics that measures how many people are reading and clicking through links within your newsletter.

So if you have a newsletter, keep sending it out and if you don’t, we recommend starting one. Make sure your newsletters include a clear call to action, an unsubscribe link, and effective copy - strong email subject lines, headings and opening paragraphs. Also make sure to use a service dedicated to email newsletter distribution, like Campaign Monitor or MailChimp to manage your list and get metrics on your readers’ behaviours.

More email resources:

• Stop Yourself From Making Egregious E-mail Errors
• The Three Key Elements of Irresistible Email Subject Lines
• Gmail Priority Inbox: 5 Tips for Better Productivity 

SFU Pub 355: Online Marketing for Publishers

Starting Friday, I’m teaching at Simon Fraser University.

PUB 355-4 explores online promotion and marketing in the creative economy with a focus on publishers.

Students will learn about the formulation and analysis of marketing strategy, approaches to measurement (key performance indicators and return on investment), tactical implementation and campaign management, finding and nurturing audiences and conversations, branding, forecasting and budgeting.

Here’s a look at the course outline:

Anything missing? Different approaches? Want to contribute?

Feedback is welcome.