Tag Archive: content


Content is King

Filed under: Business — Leave a comment
November 9, 2011

Content is king. If your content is good then users will return and they will bring a friend.

SEO can drive users to your site in droves but unless the content is good they won’t stick. Don’t get me wrong, SEO is big, but it’s not the answer. It’s like a restaurant that caters for one-time tourists rather than repeat-custom locals.

Sometimes content is just filler. A story is created out of nothing. Everyone does it. But wait! There is a new kid on the block. It’s name is crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is superseding the need to write filler.

@Jamiewaltz blogged about how evolving your product is good. Crowdsourcing applies the same principles to content. Let’s rewind for a moment. The principle of evolution is this: variation and selection.

Crowdsourcing is getting the public to create diverse content (variation) and having a mechanism to promote the good stuff (selection).

Why would Joe Public write content for you? Because he wants his name in lights. Just look at X Factor.

It’s why app stores are dynamite. It’s easy for the public to create a million diverse apps. The store promotes the most popular and highest rated. There may be filler but it will languish in the shadows (and it’s long tail traffic).

There will be less filler than you might think. Building an app involves effort. People will only do it they really believe in it. People will only do it if they are passionate about it. It’s self-selecting.

Passion does not mean opinionated. Jamie Oliver is passionate about food. Mailonline is opinionated (about everything). There’s a difference.

The key is having a big enough crowd but you can start off small and build momentum. You can start with people within the company and satellite offices, expand it to friends and other companies you work closely with. If you’ve baked in viral then it should snowball.

Even without crowdsourcing, tools such as AB testing can help content and authors evolve.

Seems like a good experiment to me.

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Using the Metro API – a guide for newbies

Filed under: Atom, JSON — Leave a comment
October 11, 2011

I’m going to show you how to use the Metro API.

This post is aimed at javascript beginners but i recommend you try out this fun interactive introduction first - http://www.codecademy.com/

Step One. Create a  file on your computer. Call it something like “metro.html”.

Step Two. Copy the HTML below into it. Open the file in a browser and it should say “My metro articles”. (Not very exciting yet, i know).

<html>
<body>
<div id="myElement">My metro articles</div>
</body>
</html>

Step Three. Use the Metro API. You can see what the API looks like here.

Copy the following code before the </body> tag…

<script>
// This function will process the data
function init(apiData) {
  // Init variables
  var myHtml = '';
  var article;

  // Loop through each article in the feed, generating html as we go
  for (var i = 0; i < apiData.entries.length; i++) {
    article = apiData.entries[i]; // Get the relevant article
    myHtml  = myHtml  + "<a href=" + article.alternateLink + ">" + article.title + "</a></br>";
  }

  // Insert our html into the page
  document.getElementById('myElement').innerHTML = myHtml;
}
</script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.metro.co.uk/api/articles/?page=news&callback=init"></script>

That’s it!

Refresh your browser and you should see a list of metro links. If you have any problems (and there usually are)…  just shout. To experiment more try our API Explorer (beta).

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