Every so often we find ourselves negotiating the digital side of media partnerships and sponsorships as part of a larger deal. What is it that we want out of them? My rough thoughts and notes are below: I’d be grateful if you’d add your own ideas in the comments.

Mobile first

Requirement: Guaranteed performance on mobile devices. This means not only that all content must be visible on mobile devices, but that a smooth mobile U/X must be provided (e.g. no tiny buttons, no graphical text, navigation elements placed so that there’s no danger of accidental mis-keying)

Note: This is just a straightforward requirement these days, and we shouldn’t have to negotiate on this point at all. It’s not just about ruling out Flash, it’s about ensuring that audiences have as good a mobile experience as possible. For more on this, Luke Wroblewski’s "Mobile First" presentation and book are essential reading.

 Search engines

Requirement: The index page of the content partnership must be linked from the appropriate section heading page; and both the section heading page and the link to the Digital Content Hub must be search engine crawl-able (i.e. no robots.txt exclusions, no nofollow links). The section heading page itself must be accessible through the global navigation.

Note: This is more about making sure that the content can be crawled by a search engine. We’re not asking for the link to the content partnership to be above the fold, just that it be in readily crawl-able .

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