| BEYOND
ACCESS COLUMN
Content Is (Still)
King "Content Is King" is the familiar mantra that drives many decisions throughout the info-entertainment industry. For Broadband Service Providers (BSPs) and property owners, aggregating excellent website content is a strategy used by the best of class ISPs to provide an enhanced customer experience. An enhanced user experience results in improved customer satisfaction and loyalty, which mitigates voluntary disconnects, assists customer acquisition efforts through viral - or word of mouth - marketing, and encourages customers to linger at the BSP's website, which results in increased advertising and ecommerce revenues. Using
Website Content to Reduce Churn, Enhance Customer Acquisition Efforts,
and Increase Revenues Weather
is a killer content application for all BSP websites, and www.Weather.com
and www.AccuWeather.com both offer an excellent selection of free content
in their "affiliates' section." For those BSPs with a legacy
video product that includes The Weather Channel, using www.Weather.com
will help customers feel comfortable that broadband is an acceptable product
extension of the video service. However, AccuWeather's affiliate section
provides more free weather content and also offers a compelling array
of weather maps that can be inserted directly into the BSP's website.
Also, www.It-News.com has an especially wide range of content - from business,
to entertainment, finance, industry specific, society, top stories, cartoons,
and sports product. The site also offers an interactive element for customers
- content relevant chat rooms. Astrology content is available on many
sites, but one of the best free sites is www.Scopes-mart.com. A good site
for locating lifestyle content is www.Certificate.net. This site offers
"auto" (or self-refreshing content) tools for parenting, at
home working success tips, pets, hobbies, technology, and information
about life in the "new" lane. Beyond Free Content. BSPs can expand their free content offering to include other related Internet services. Websites like www.4FreeContent.com offer a headline wizard, an abbreviated search section, digital post cards, bulletin board and chat functionality that can be inserted into a BSP's website. To add games to a website, many find AddictionZone.com to be their favorite "game portal." This site boasts of an inventory that exceeds 650 games and trivia puzzles. Newsletters allow customers to receive regular information updates about the information most relevant to them, and www.It-Net.com/newsletter offers newsletters that range from stamp collection to kids, and from freebies to business intelligence. Digital post cards are popular way to use the Net to keep in touch - and www.All-Yours.net offers a free post card service that BSPs can integrate into their own website. For those seeking to include a classified section, www.LinkBank.com offers BSPs a good service. To many, the Internet is about "free stuff" and www.AskForFreebies.com enables BSPs to add free contests, winners, competition, sweepstakes, and prizes to their website.
Free
Local Content.
Often times, BSPs can differentiate and customize their offering from
large national BSP chains via the use of local content. By integrating
local content into a site, customers feel that the site and service is
particularly relevant to them, and many will spend more time on the BSP's
website. As an example and to those customers served by a multiple dwelling
unit or a multi-tenant unit complex, a calendar of the complex's activities,
frequently asked questions, and property owner notices can be integrated
into the website. Additionally, community governments, chambers of commerce,
local broadcasters and newspapers are generally interested in establishing
website linking relationships with BSPs. Asite like www.LocalCalendar.com
allows websites to establish local calendars within a pre-specified radius
of their zip code. Everyone appreciates a bargain and www.CouponFeast.com
and www.CouponPages.com allows users to generate a list of coupons by
zip code or community and by the product or service that they are interested
in. Also www.ValuPage.com enables users to search for grocery coupons
by zip code and the supermarket they prefer. Content
Sydicators that Offer Services for a Fee.
Some BSPs may seek a more substantial mass of content, be interested in
outsourcing their content aggregation management to a third party, or
including premium content on their site. Content aggregators, including
Screaming Media (www.ScreamingMedia.com), Moreover (www.Moreover.com),
NewsEdge (www.NewsEdge.com), Comtex (www.Comtex.com), and YellowBrix (www.YellowBrix.com)
offer various solutions. A comparison of some of the major product attributes
is depicted below:
Note: the above information is believed to be accurate but should be verified since changes occur regularly in content syndication industry. No two web based content syndicators are alike - and there are many important questions to ask when conducting due diligence. As an example and when comparing pricing, BSPs should ask if the syndicator's pricing is priced based upon the number of "hits," or if unlimited user access is provided. Some syndicators use an "all you can eat" model and provide a substantial amount of content for one price - while other syndicators allow BSPs to craft the amount and type of content that meets their individual requirements. Depending upon the BSP's content strategy and the amount of content that they seek to aggregate on their site, one pricing structure may be significantly more efficient than the other. Some syndicators tend to front-load some of the costs with more expensive "set-up" fees, while other syndicators will allow the "set-up" fees to be waived but may charge a higher monthly rate. While most syndicators provide a single source of contact during the implementation stage - this is an important item to verify. After the launch, most syndicators typically provide a "team" of customer service and help desk support personnel to assist their clients. All syndicators offer BSPs content indemnification, but some don't have direct contractual relationships with the content providers or use other syndicators that have executed written agreements with the content providers. This is an important element to thoroughly investigate so that the potential of being included in copyright litigation is minimized. Indemnification or not, being named in a lawsuit can be expensive if it distracts senior management. Another
element of the due diligence process should be a review of the syndicator's
financial staying power. This vertical is not immune to the dotcom fall-out
and several months ago, iSyndicate - a large and well-funded syndicator
- discontinued its operations. Filtering for content duplication or similar
stories is a critical issue and should be included in the due diligence.
Some syndicators rely on software and linguistics or statistical inference
software solution to filter duplicates, while other marry software and
human review to ensure the relevancy of the content and eliminate similar
stories. One approach may be best to meet a BSP's specific content requirements.
All syndicators indicate that they offer 24 by 7 live technical support
and extensive technical manuals and product documentation, but it's worth
verifying this information. If the BSP is planning to allow the syndicator
to host the content, a Service Level Agreement (SLAs) is an especially
critical issue. But in any event, the BSP must be comfortable that the
syndicator's content will be available the vast majority of the time (99.8%
or greater) and should include minimum level guarantees of uptime. Most broadband enhanced content websites welcomes BSP links because this relationship helps drive traffic to the content providers sites. Some content providers offer free content that can be directly embedded into the BSP's website. However, the ownership rights of all content providers should be respected. If a BSP is uncertain as to what relationship is permissible, the best course of action is to send an email to the content provider and ask them directly. Broadband Guides. There are several streaming media guides that BSP can link to or incorporate into their site. These guides include the Real Guide at www.RealGuide.Real.com and www.Yack.com. Streaming audio is also compelling broadband enhanced content and many Netizen's favorite form of streaming audio are Internet radio sites - websites that simulcast their signal over the Internet as they broadcast it over the air. In addition to the two streaming media sites described above, www.Live365.com is one of the best streaming audio guide sites. This site offers 30,000 channels of audio and includes radio stations to personalized radio channels created by its members. Broadband Entertainment. Streaming media and conventional television converge on several websites - www.Now.com and www.Television.com are two sites that offer Netizens video clips and other converged content. The granddaddy of the downloadable movie trailer clip website is www.Hollywood.com - and is indispensable for movie lovers. In addition, www.On2.com offers users the ability to watch movie trailers, behind-the-scenes footage, interviews with celebrities, and original content. Another great addition to any broadband website is www.IFilms.com that offers links to over 10,000 Internet movies. At www.HiSpeedZone.com, users will find a good source for broadband entertainment, music, video, and games together with a substantial amount of Flash movies and video. Websites www.AlwaysI.com, www.CenterSeat.com/networks, and www.AtomicFilms.com are also well worth a link to offer broadband richness to any BSP's website.
Broadband Sports. At www.FoxSports.com, there's a substantial amount of audio and video footage of recent sporting events. Also, www.MountainZone.com offers streaming media coverage of high-country expeditions, snowboard tours, and other mountain sport events and www.ESPN.Go.com provides Netizens streaming radio broadcasts of their favorite teams. If a BSP is interested in linking to specific sport sites, many are available to choose from, including:
Broadband Finance. Rarely is there a site that is substantially better than the rest - but Yahoo's FinanceVision (Vision.Yahoo.com) is a site that is rich with broadband enhanced content. It includes interviews from CEOs (many of which are available through FinanceVision's achieves) and live market coverage from 9:00am to 5:00pm. It's an indispensable tool for broadband empowered investors. Other excellent sites include www.Bloomberg.com with Bloomberg TV's streaming video that serves as a reputable and trusted source of financial information. Finally, www.JAGfn.com offers a steady stream of financial and marketing research and commentary - visitors that click to go to the site immediate receive a stream of summary market highlight information.
Broadband News. www.CNN.com/video offers users the most up to the minute news clips that is available on demand 24 hours per day. CNN also offers a selection of streaming audio, available to Netizens at www.CNN.com/audio. NBC and Microsoft combined to create the broadband enabled website, www.MSNBC.com, which offers a wide variety of both audio and video clips. Netizens interested in viewing their local weather in a streamed format can view www.AccuWeather.com or www.Weather.com - both offer streaming video weather reports for most major metropolitan cities. Looking Before You Leap. Content providers are businesses and prior to establishing a partnership, a BSP must carefully investigate the content partner and make certain that the relationship will be a success for both parties. Careful due diligence should be conducted to determine how long the company has been in business, if there business model viable, and to ensure that the partnership will not generate copyright exposure for the BSP. Other factors to consider include:
Additional
Resources. What other resources are available to the company interested
in adding content to their website? First, BSP can gain information by
subscribing to magazines that focus on content and other Beyond Access
topics, such as Private & Wireless Broadband. Next, companies can
attend "Beyond Access" trade shows to gain information and discuss
content issues with industry colleagues. Three examples of excellent shows
are the upcoming Private Broadband Show (see below), the Beyond Access
Show (you just missed it - it was sponsored by National Satellite Publishing
last July) and "Digital Hollywood." Some of the advantages of
attending a show include the opportunity to hear industry experts, listen
to other attendees' questions, and network with fellow industry colleagues.
Conferences, such as the Private Broadband Show and "Digital Hollywood"
also provide attendees solutions to content related questions - including
new tactics about how to market their services or additional revenue streams
to help their company along the path to profitability. Other resources
options includes retaining a consultant knowledgeable in this gene if
the content requirement is more of a short term project - or BSP's seeking
to make website content an important differentiator can hire a content
savvy industry expert to work as a fulltime employee in their organization.
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