Taptu CEO Mitch Lazar has a guest post on TechCrunch discussing four major errors that publishers make when importing content to tablets. These mistakes include developing their own platform rather than using one that other companies’ development teams have already made, not enabling social network sharing of their content which could expose it to a wider audience, not creating new brands for their digital content, and concentrating on traditional SEO rather than trying to appeal to new social methods of search (such as, for example, Taptu).
It’s interesting just how much emphasis experts are placing on taking advantage of social media to reach a wider audience. Of course, you’d expect it in this case from someone with a vested interest in social media distribution, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad advice. Yet at the same time, publishers get upset about social media “ripping off” their content, as seen with Pulse, Flipboard, Zite, and now Pinterest.
I suppose it’s the same as the old dichotomy of cable carrying broadcast television, in which an argument raged for years about whether the cable networks benefited more from being able to offer broadcast stations to their subscribers, or the broadcast stations benefited more by reaching the cable-subscribing audience. Are social media making a profit from other people’s work, or helping more people find that work? Looks like both from here.