Content Strategy for the Masses

Dear Urban Outfitters,

Thanks for providing 26 songs for free to highlight the upcoming Pitchfork Music Festival. Your site, however, is downright horrible: Urban Outfitters – Features – Pitchfork Playlist.

Now, I know the garish stuff from the ’80s and ’90s is a popular fashion comment today, but let’s keep it to only clothing, ok?

Please, oh please, let us not soon see the return of the dancing baby, or anything resembling a GeoCities site from the late ’90s in the name of irony. We can do it for fun using the GeoCities-izer online. It shouldn’t be part of your online strategy.

Thanks,

Lianne

Via TheDailyWhat

I recently had to book some flights for business travel and the online landscape has changed. Did you hear the one about American Airlines not appearing on Expedia? Back in January, American Airlines has its second falling out with an online airline sales website due to contract issues, namely the airline wants to pay these sites less money and have users book directly on their own website.

Airlines and hotels are increasingly encouraging the public to book directly on their corporate sites rather than through third party aggregators to offer additional buy-ins like hotel room upgrades and airline seat choices to the consumer. This trend could force Expedia, Travelocity and others to change their business models slightly in order to stay in business.

While Global Business Travel Assn says booking directly with the airline and the hotelier may increase costs for the customer, other sites are popping up to help you compare prices and make sure you’re getting the bang for your buck. Here’s one to show your colleagues: Hipmunk.com is a very easy-t0-use site that organizes its search based on time, price and agony. It doesn’t support all airlines, yet. Toronto’s Porter Airlines for example, wasn’t appearing in any of their beautiful charts.  Upon chatting with their very helpful live help chat, they thanked me for letting them know the airline was missing. How nice!

Bonus: OK, so say you’re flying to the U.S. and you want to check up on an airport’s hands-on TSA review process, look no further than this TSA Status site, created and updated by its users.  This heavily rainbowed site doesn’t have the cleanest of interfaces, but it is handy. It’s also a great place if you feel a compulsion to complain about a TSA agent online.

So next time you need to book a flight for work or pleasure, impress everyone with your knowledge of these two handy sites. Got others?

This site is awesome for anyone who works in the online world with advertisers.

While I do enjoy Foursquare for its multitude of uses, from a social game to a cool app for instant tips from locals, I do understand why people roll their eyes at me when I insist on checking into a place. For those people, they don’t see a purpose to this app. Their iPhone probably has a weather app, maybe a to-do list and maybe a news feed: all solid, informative apps that turn their phone into a tool of function rather than a tool of fun.

Well, here’s an app that puts the fun in function. Yes, I just wrote that. Marco is technically a game of Marco Polo, except this time you access the app to find out where your friends are located. Say you’re waiting for your friend to arrive for dinner. You access the app and enter your friend’s name – it sends a text message (using your address book) that says “Marco! Show (the sendee) your location on a map” with a link. Click the link, and your friend is taken to the Marco website, where he/she taps a button to send an SMS “Polo” back. You don’t need to have the Marco app on his or her phone for this to work. From there, you receive the SMS “Polo,” which tells you how far away your friend is from arriving.

Similar apps already exist. The most popular one is Loopt, which has partnerships with most U.S. mobile carriers as a social mapping device, that also works as a loyalty service. Yet it isn’t yet available outside of the U.S.

Marco Polo is technically a game, sure – but the developers have created an app that can appeal to those users who dislike social gaming.  And those who do like gaming can redefine their usage of this game at their own leisure.