Translating from journalism to advertising

This week's readings were all about the uses of online technology--blogs, websites, RSS feeds, etc.--in the field of mass communications.  An interesting point that I have noticed in these readings, as well as readings for other classes, is that in many texts for mass communications classes, the emphasis is usually put on the career of journalism. As a student of advertising, this adds another element to my analysis of these readings.  Not only must i consider the ideas presented in the text, but I must also translate these ideas into a format more suitable for advertising, and I have tried to do this as well as I could for this week's post.



One concept presented in the readings was the use of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to organize information that an online user is interested in.  In Briggs' book, he suggests that the use of RSS is important for journalists to find an abundance of information in a quick and organized manner.  But how can the use of RSS benefit advertisers?

One idea, which was actually mentioned in the reading, is that advertisements could somehow be incorporated into the RSS feeds themselves.  Right now, the problem with RSS is that it compiles information from many sites into a central location, thus taking traffic away from the original sites and, consequently, lowering the potential for ads to be seen on these sites. This is the reason that some sites only allow a small portion of the information from their sites to be seen in the RSS feed and make the user click through to the actual site to view the article.  However, this somewhat defeats the purpose of RSS, which is supposed to make it convenient to access the information you want without having to go to multiple sites. One way of incorporating advertising into RSS would be to embed advertisements pertaining to the topics, or the advertisements from the websites subscribed to, right in the feed as if it is another article.

Blogging was another topic of interest in these readings, as it seems to be most weeks.  Blogs have proven to supply supplement information to news stories for a few years now.  Most big time (and even many less main stream) reporters write blogs in order to explore more in-depth points to already broadcas/published news stories.  These blogs allow readers to find out more information on a news story and to share their own thoughts and comments with the journalist and other readers.  Again, i must as, how can blogs be beneficial to the advertising industry? The first idea the comes to my mind is that blogs can be used to achieve the same goal as in journalism: they help to get closer to their audience.  Tin the same way that blogs help journalists connect with their readers through their interactive capabilities, they can help  advertisers connect with their consumers. Companies can, and should, write blogs to inform their consumers about new products, events, or any other information of interest. It can also benefit the companies by allowing them to instantly see consumer feedback and respond to that feedback sooner than if they had to conduct research surveys.

Coding was another point brought up in this week's readings. Although it does not pertain to the subject quite as much as blogs or RSS feeds, it is something of which I wish I had more knowledge.  I have been exposed to some coding through websites that I have worked on in the past such as Airhard and Terriflix (in a class about using social media to promote, I figured I would take the class's advice and promote other projects), but I do not claim to be at all knowledgeable in the area and I believe that more knowledge of the subject could help maximize the potential of any online endeavor