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Niklas Myhr, Ph.D.

The Social Media Professor | Digital Marketing Strategies

Content on Demand

February 4, 2013 by Niklas Myhr

Tonight, we discussed the Harvard case study on Demand Media (of eHow.com fame) in my Social Media Marketing MBA class. It is a fascinating story about how content can be systematically produced on a vast scale and result in almost guaranteed demand from viewers and consequently also in profits for the advertisers.

The controversy regarding so-called “content farms” revolves around the opportunistic creation of content to meet current demands but doing so in a way that compromises content quality some claim. For example, Jeff Jarvis called Demand Media on this as he stated that they “create crap just good enough to fool the algorithm.” Google’s search algorithm, that is. Clearly, Jeff Jarvis has a point in that somewhere, a line in the sand has to be drawn, and it is also clear that Demand Media is not striving toward writing dissertations on the topics they address.

The idea to develop and publish content that is likely to be searched has now been gaining traction for a number of years with bestselling books such as “Inbound Marketing” by the cofounders of HubSpot. What strikes me with this case, though, is the level of sophistication that seems to lie behind the proprietary algorithm used by companies such as Demand Media as they try to expedite the statistical analysis of search trends, paid ads, and statistics from social networks to get the order for the right content out there as soon as possible. See how Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt defends his model:

Then, of course, someone has to produce the said content and the identification and recruitment of a vast stable of relevant content creators clearly represent another necessary strength needed in this space. It becomes clear that for one’s own postings to be noticed for popular keywords, one has to be both fast and clever in terms of how posts are tagged and outlined 🙂

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: #blogg100

About Niklas Myhr

Niklas Myhr, PhD, CSP, The Social Media Professor, is an international TEDx and keynote speaker serving as an advisor to HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco. Dr. Myhr is a CSP® (Certified Speaking Professional™) and a Certified Virtual Presenter offering keynote presentations, talks, workshops, and executive education programs at conferences, businesses, public sector organizations, and universities. Dr. Myhr has spoken in Europe, in the United States, and in Asia, and his expertise on social media and digital marketing has been featured in BBC, The Washington Post, ABC, CBS, and NBC. Dr. Myhr is Google’s #1-ranked “Social Media Professor," and he teaches at Chapman University in California. Niklas Myhr holds a Ph.D. in Marketing from the University of Virginia, and an MS from Linköping University in Sweden.

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Niklas Myhr, Ph.D.

Please email me at niklas [at] thesocialmediaprofessor.com if you have any questions!

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