Digital Content: What Do You Use Each Day?

A lot has changed in the last four years since I started covering manufacturing for Automation World, in terms of media. Back in 2008, there wasn’t an iPad, Facebook “only” had a couple hundred million users, Google didn’t “plus” and Twitter was not a “social signal” for news and events. The multitude of ways to receive content and the media tools surrounding our jobs are staggering.

Grant Gerke

March 8, 2012

In 2011, Dave Newcorn, VP of New Media, pushed a survey to you, our audience, on how you specify systems and machinery and, specifically, how you start gathering information for the buying process. The results showed that search engines, trade magazine web sites/newsletters, automation supplier web sites and industry expert blogs ranked quite high during the Status Quo stage—defined as no immediate project, just keeping current on industry trends.

As evidenced from this survey, digital content is ingrained in your job workflow. So how do you start your day in terms of digital content related to your job? Do you look at industry newsletters first or do you have the iPad app “Reeder” that aggregates all of your RSS feeds into an easy-to-read format by category (that’s my favorite).

Visit Automation World’s LinkedIn Group, bit.ly/awsurvey010, and participate in our poll on digital content behaviors.