The 5 Types of Online Content
There are five types of content that we as publishers and editors can leverage to provide the best resource for our readers, generate the most traffic, and thereby create the most revenue potential:
1. Editorially generated content (EGC) – This is much more than just taking the content from the print magazine each month and putting it on the web. And it’s more than making sure you have good titles, keywords, and meta data. It’s also about the type of content you generate, the frequency, and even the workflow. Perhaps some content should flow to the web first and THEN to print. Ask yourself the question, if we didn’t have a print magazine, how would we want to create and manage editorial content?
2. User generated content (UGC) – UGC is the big buzzword right now in online media and it should be. We can only generate so much content and cover so many topics no matter how big our editorial staff. How can we as editors tap into the expertise and passion of our readers to help solve problems and generate more content than we could by ourselves? How can we host the interaction between members of our community? The approach you take may vary depending on whether the market is collaborative or competitive, but regardless, find a way to help readers talk to each other (forums), talk to you (feedback, polls, article comments) generate unique content (blogs), or help you and your readers find good content elsewhere on the web (social bookmarking).
3. Advertiser generated content (AGC) – Advertisers have a wealth of information that can help your readers: whitepapers, case studies, research, scientific data, etc. Granted, this information can be biased and self-serving, but readers aren’t stupid. As long as they know who created the content they will take it in context. But why deny your readers access to vaulable information that could help them? And don’t think that you have to charge advertisers for every single whitepaper they post on your site. Maybe you could make more money by aggregating all of that on your site for free, creating an invaluable knowledge base for your readers, then monetizing the traffic through sales of advertisements over that content.
There are two more types of content — databases / tools, and competitive / web — that I’ll describe in my next post.
2 Responses to “ “The 5 Types of Online Content”
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Eric,
I would add a 6th — or at least expand upon one type of content that falls between types 1, 2 and 3 (and I don’t think falls into your titles of 4 or 5)
I might call it something like Staff Edited Content or sometimes called Contributed Edit.
This type of content will edited/reviewed by a member of the publication’s staff, but would carry the byline of the actual author. It could take the form of single articles being contributed, and editorial feature/series or and could also be a non-staff blogger (I would consider a staff blog part of your item 1) who has a regular blog on your site. (I don’t really think the blogs fit in #2)
Its not really user generated content since there is a production/review process in place for it, but it isn’t editorially generated, at least how you’re defining the term.
Thoughts? Or would you combine this in one of your existing categories?
Hi Frank. I would group that together with content type #1 — editorially generated. Even though articles and blogs may be written by authors not on the publication staff, they are still commissioned and/or edited by publication staff. In essence, they are contributing authors and adjunct staff to your magazine. I also agree that blogs don’t really count as UGC with the exception of the abilities for readers to comment / feedback … just like you’ve been doing on my blog.