Content Insights Blog

Years ago, I attended a lecture at UNC-Chapel Hill where the featured speaker was Noble Prize winner, James D. Watson. He told the story of how a textbook and a chance encounter led him to a historic scientific discovery.  

I remember the date of his discovery well. It was February 27, 1953 and he was very close to solving a long-standing scientific riddle. An error in his nucleic acid textbook had him running in circles to place hydrogen atoms in the right order. Then, by sheer luck, a visiting professor from Caltech pointed out to Watson the textbook he was reading was wrong, and a day later Watson discovered the structure of DNA is a double helix.  Read More >

Naturally, when I think about a Friday that falls on the 13th I remember the tall, dark, and hangsome villain—Jason Voorhees—of the movie franchise Friday the 13th. The camp-kid with a heavy hand and a nose for trouble isn't just skilled at his work (killing immoral camp-goers to avenge his mother's death), he has an unquestionable work ethic: always on, always killing. It's impressive. 

Some of his many talents include surviving: drownings, stabbings, beatings, and even a nasty fall off a wobbly chair—all within the first movie! Over the decades Jason has been known to travel (outer space) and make new friends (a telekinetic ingénue who raised him from the near-dead), but he always has time for his fellow monsters of the silver screen (he beheaded his BFF Freddy Krueger). Aww.  Read More >

By now you’ve heard of Pinterest, the virtual pinboard that lets you share and organize images on the web. You may also have read various articles on Pinterest’s policies that have recently come under fire and prompted the company to rewrite their Terms & Privacy statement. (It goes into effect April 6, 2012.)

There’s still a great many unknowns about Pinterest’s value to individuals, companies, and industries. One area that is largely unaddressed is the process of ensuring your website is pinnable, meaning: your is site chocked full of images or video that can be detected and bookmarked on Pinterest.com.   Read More >

Product content is some of the hardest working content online. It has to tell a consumer what the product does, what it doesn’t do, how much it costs, who should buy it, and so much more. This is true for any company because most customers do their shopping research online. In fact, at Atlanta Content Strategy last week, content strategist Katie Riddle explained how important product content is to Target.com's online sales.

But, it's especially true for companies whose products are purely digital and available only online. For them, product content on the web is essentially their advertising, packaging, marketing, and sales—combined. Product content often is the difference between making a sale or not.  Read More >

Last week, we reported the results of our Content + Credibility Study and some key findings on perceptions of credible web content in the U.S. and U.K. We also mentioned the results of this first phase were gathered from 1,600 people surveyed in those countries.

What we haven’t written much about—outside of the report itself—is more on our methodology to create, publish, and manage the survey.   Read More >