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Determining a publication's contents: a thought experiment

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:10:00 +0000

The thought experiment:

Imagine you're responsible for determining the content mix for a regional general-interest newspaper. From reader surveys you know their main interest is sports and local news. International news is (say) fourth on their list of priorities.

You know that a major national newspaper covers international affairs far better than you ever could. Should you abandon coverage of international affairs?

What if you know that 95% of your readers also read the that national newspaper? Presumably they're reading both your insipid rehashed coverage and their far superior coverage. Should you abandon your efforts?

Now, what if you know that only 5% also read that other paper. Does that change your mind?

Another thought experiment:

Instead of international news, let's think about gadget news: phones, tablets, exploding pens, that sort of thing.

There are five million or so news and review sites that cover these items in excruciating detail. Your paper will never be able to compete.

Should your general-interest newspaper cover this field? Your readership is interested in the subject, but it's not the main reason they read your paper.

Once again, assume that you know for sure that 95% of your readers also read one or more of these gadget sites. Should your paper cover the same material? Now assume only 5% also consume the good gadget media. Thoughts?

One more thing: what if you discover that although it's not the main reason they read your paper, your readership reads everything they can about gadgets. They'll read 20 reviews of the latest gizmo, regardless of quality or how much they've already read.

The train story:

Apparently there was a train enthusiast magazine that discovered that one thing their readers really like were photos of classic engines.

To cash in on this they created a calendar. Twelve months, 12 train pictures. It was a huge success. And yet, they weren't in the calendar business. There was no way they could compete with calendar companies. But they had an audience that loved train pictures.

They created coffee-table books, models, and all sorts of things. All were successful, because the company offered products that these people who love trains were willing to pay for.

They didn't branch out to create car or plane magazines; at least not with this audience.

What's the lesson?

That every paper should have a train section? Maybe, but perhaps more importantly is to understand what people are doing with the publication. If it's read because it's a general-interest publication there should probably be a mix of content, even if someone else is doing it better. Or does it mean everything should be really specialized, in which case there will be no more general-interest publications.

How useless is Twitter for politicians?

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 17:59:00 +0000

Another municipal election has come and gone.

This year, 2011, was the first year that social media tools had enough oomph to be considered as part of the media strategy for politicians and groups seeking to influence. How did that go?

Not so effective, based on monitoring Twitter feeds and conversations for the Surrey election.

The background
Surrey is British Columbia's second largest city. The mayor is very popular, so popular in fact that the main opposition, the SCC, didn't even try to run a candidate. They concentrated instead on trying to win Councillor and school board seats.

As part of my experimental site South of the Fraser I was collecting tweets that mentioned Surrey and posting those daily. It's through this monitoring of conversations about the city that these observations are drawn.

A few difficulties
It's taken several months to come up with the tools and methods to collect a reasonable sampling of mentions about Surrey. Here are some of the challenges:

There's a Surrey in England. Tweets had to therefore be geographically based.
Originally I started with just the hashtag #surreybc, but this is not consistently used. Many people don't use hashtags, and some will use #surrey. The search therefore was for surreybc or surrey, based on an area of 65 kilometers centred on Whalley.
I don't know how Twitter finds out where the user is located, but some accounts will not show, even though they must logically be within that range.
A few weeks before the election the hashtag #sryelxn started to be used. Because my main concern at the time was looking for mentions of "Surrey" I didn't monitor this tag until quite late.
Twitter is used by different people for different purposes, from personal communications, through sharing, to outrageous spamming. The variety of uses creates a lot of noise. It's because of this noise that I limited searches to items that specifically mentioned the city's name.

The observations

The frequency and number of posts mentioning Surrey by name increased significantly during the election. If a typical day would have 120 posts (after various filters have been applied), a pre-election day could have 300-400 posts. Politicians, supporters and interest groups used it. Quality of posts (by my standards a quality post should tell me something new, or direct me somewhere) varied significantly, from shrill POSTS IN ALL CAPS to informative details.

Worth mentioning were live postings of all-candidate debates. Two or three journalists (whether professional or otherwise) took up this interesting exercise.

Which politicians tweeted, and how?

The medium is still new for most people, and different people used it in different ways. Bob Bose, for example, didn't appear on the radar until a week or so before the election, publicly thanking each new follower with a standard message that there were 13 other candidates in his slate (SCC). Many candidates didn't tweet, didn't use the word "Surrey", or use the hashtags "Surreybc" or #sryelxn. The Mayor, Diane Watts, for example only appeared on my records twice, even though I know she uses the service. Her communications officer did show up consistently.

There were a few politicians that did use it often and in a manner that was personable, showed up on searches and provided information that put them in a good light, but in a non-pushy manner. Stephanie Ryan and Paul Hillsdon are active users. After a few months of seeing their tweets I feel I have a sense of them as people. Tweets included personal commentary, but not the excruciating minutiae that invites toggling that "follow" button to "don't follow". They also consistently used terms that would show up in searches, not just #surreybc and #sryelxn but also #bcpoli and a few others.

If the politician's challenge is to meet people, convince them they are their friend, are hard-working, competent and can be trusted, then these two people used Twitter most effectively.

But did it matter?

No.

Neither Stephanie Ryan or Paul Hillsdon were elected.

Here are a few numbers:

Total voters: 70,253 (25% of the 279,140 total numbers of possible voters)

For mayor

Diane Watts: 55,826 votes (2997 followers on Twitter)

Ross Buchanan: 6267 votes (48 followers on Twitter)

Councillor:
Judy Villeneuve: 45,514 (174 followers on Twitter)
Stephanie Ryan: 11,781 (612 followers on Twitter)

School trustee:
Shawn Wilson: 41,900 (can't find him on Twitter)
Paul Hillsdon: 15,451 (1,009 followers on Twitter)

Watts' Surrey First team swept council and school board, even though they were largely invisible to searches about Surrey.

What are the lessons for politicians, special interest groups and political junkies?
The major outlines of the election were a foregone conclusion, but for people who live by what they consume through online activity the numbers are out of sync with what could be seen online. Obviously, Twitter is not a major media for politicians to reach constituents.

However, it is a medium that potential voters could be using, and deserves some attention, both for developing a personal brand and communicating with people. What can politicians do to increase their exposure, authority and likability?

Become familiar with the tools and standard best practices. There are 5 millions blogs out there all telling you what and how to develop your 'personal brand'.
Think about how users will search for topics of interest to them. Use those exact term in your posts. For Surrey politicians for example, every post about Surrey should either use the word "Surrey", and/or the hashtag #surreybc. Sometimes it's easy to forget this one if you have a post about incinerators, for example.
During an election try to use the hashtag that's being used, in this case it was #sryelxn. Bear in mind, the people monitoring specialized hashtags are probably news or election junkies. People who follow tags, or search key words are likely to retweet content (your content!) if it's informative or considered worth sharing.
Monitor the tags and words that your constituents will be using and searching for. You can then respond directly to posts as they appear, or retweet them.

A few items that fall under the rubric of best practices:

Don't use ALL CAPS.
Make sure your picture is good, that you don't have red eye, and that your face fills the frame.
Make sure your profile links to your personal site, and has as much information as possible on it.
For content, don't forget that Twitter is like a conversation at a party: you don't know who is eavesdropping!

Online marketing for a magazine launch: an example

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:11:00 +0000

I thought this was interesting. A series of magazines are launching. How do they present themselves online and entice people to get a subscription?

First, the email invitation:

The four magazines are ostensibly about using social media for business, but the copy of the email reads more like a breathless b2c (I've changed the font size, but not the bolds, etc):

We've got the TOP MINDS in business and social media today collaborating together to create the definitive magazines on leveraging social media for business.
CLICK HERE to get full access to ALL FOUR magazines -- GRATIS!
Here are just some of the more useful articles and stories our staff loved from the premiere issues -- available to you right now:

The New Rules of Social Media

A Look At How Politicians Use Social Media To Gain Mindshare--and How You Can Use It, Too!

How To do It RIGHT--Instructions On Over 14 separate Social Media Topics

How The Social Media Revolution Directly Effects (AND BENEFITS) Your Business

How To Harness Grass Roots Energy For Your Business

How To Best Use Social Media As A Mass Marketing Tool

Why Most Small Businesses Are Failing With Social Media and Five Tips For Better Success

10 Ways To Market Your Company On Twitter

Google and YouTube: Overrated Deal Or The Marketing Synergy Of The Century?

The Outstanding Advantages of Google+

Truth and Facts About SEO and Internet Marketing

All this information, all these ideas, all these answers are awaiting you--the moment you CLICK HERE.

Want to read on your smart phone or tablet? No problem. The magazines are "smart" and know which device you're accessing from and will automatically display for you in the proper format. Try it out now, CLICK HERE and get started!
Want to read on your smart phone or tablet? No problem. The magazines are "smart" and know which device you're accessing from and will automatically display for you in the proper format. Try it out now, CLICK HERE and get started!
A Favor...
While I've got you, let me ask you a favor. I'd really like to know what you think of the magazines and hear your suggestions on ways we can improve. If you'd take a minute write your thoughts in the comments section below each magazine, I will not only read your feedback, but in all likelihood will begin acting on it before your virtual ink is dry.
Thanks so much for being part of our launch!
All my best! Larry

Click through to the landing page:

Link: http://socialmediamags.com/customissues/ad/gsg-worldmedia/premiere-issue/?utm_source=oct11in&utm_campaign=gsg

Note their main sponsor, Office Depot, is on the top right.

Open one magazine for a sample:

This screenshot doesn't do it justice, but I wanted to show the whole page. In reality your screen will be taken up by the digital "flippity-flip" edition, with just a bit of the content below peaking up from below the fold. Note Office Depot is the only large online advertiser. Is this because they are the primary sponsor?

When we clicked on the magazine on the landing page previously we don't go to the homepage of the magazine, we go to the "multi-media" page. The flippity-flip book shows us the magazine in the usual flash format. Traditional publishers go nuts over stuff like this because it looks interactive and shiny. Comments are allowed below. Heavy use of sharing icons on top, very prominent. The only potential downside is there is no immediate call to action, like "subscribe now". I have to look for it -- not that it's hard to find -- but I have to want to subscribe.

OK, I'm curious. Maybe I'm willing to subscribe. But first, let's see what else is on this site. I'll click the home page.

The home page:

http://liandbusiness.com/

Once again, I wanted to show the whole page. The initial screen ends around the bottom of the Office Depot ad.

This is the home page, and presumably where most people will land from regular internet search or links. It looks like the now classic blog format: header, a splash bar for featured items to scroll across, content down the left, other stuff down the right.

I tend to look for the call to action on the top right, or maybe the top left. Here the top right is the picture of the latest magazine, with links to: 1) the multi-media version (which we saw first), 2) the text version, and 3) the subscribe page. Subscribe is also the link on top.

Below is the newsletter, two small ads, and invitations to their linkedin page and their facebook page. After that are their "top stories" and a request for contributions.

If they are ordered by priority, we can assume they're pushing for the reader to become familiar with the magazine and it's content. Presumably enough desire will build up to subscribe.

But first, let's check out the content some more.

The text page:

What's the difference between this view and the home page view? The articles are different. Perhaps this view is the magazine's content, while the home page's content has been optimized for search. These are the real articles, the home page is bait to pull in potential readers. That's just a guess.

Ready to subscribe?

I didn't bother with the full page screenshot for this. All they're asking for is your email address. This is an introductory offer. I'm not putting in my email address because I'm afraid, despite their assurances that they respect my privacy. But see how easy it is! If I really was even mildly interested the friction to try it out is very minimal.

How about advertising?

It's a fair guess they want more advertising, and that's why it's one of the main navigation links at top.

This leads to another site that's geared towards the marketer.

Lessons learned?

The point of this exercise was to follow a campaign and see what people are doing. I'm not going to draw any best-practices lessons out of this. I don't have access to their numbers, and I won't know how well it succeeds. And that's the only metric that matters.

With that caveat, it appears this publisher has created an email campaign that leads to a specific landing page that leads to individual magazine sites. Each magazine presents its content as a flippity-flip book and as a traditional web page. But... their home page has been optimized for web traffic, including either different articles, or articles that have been re-ordered and/or reworked for this medium.

Readings of note October 24

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:37:00 +0000

Only two, well, three links this time.

One: tools for "better" writing:

Content Development using Inbound Writer | Velocity PartnersAmusing post about using software to improve your articles for search.more from www.velocitypartners.co.uk

Two (and three): more on paywalls and the idea of a subscription. The Day is working to more of a loyalty program.

From "Money for nothing" on Newspaper Death Watch (third item down):

It’s Not a Paywall, It’s…

Paywalls continue to sprout like crabgrass, but publishers are beginning to show some creative thinking. The Day of New London, Conn. will now charge between $9.99 and $22.99 per month for access to its online content, archives and mobile versions, but subscribers will also become part of a brand loyalty program called The Day Passport, “which features rewards, events and giveaways to local businesses, entertainment venues and cultural institutions.” We were pushing this idea two years ago. Publishers need to expand their revenue base beyond advertising and subscription fees. Affinity programs for local businesses are a natural extension.

We also like what the Richmond Times-Dispatch is doing: Instead of firewalling its content, it’s creating premium content packages such as this one on the Civil War sesquicentennial. The Civil War feature combines historic pages from the newspaper archive with original new material. Pricing begins at $1.99/month, though it’s not clear what other premium packages are planned. We like the concept the concept of charging for added value, and we’re particularly glad to have the chance to use the word “sesquicentennial” in a sentence.

The Day is also mentioned in Niemen Journalism Lab's "The newsonomics of 100% reach":

You won’t find a “Subscribe” top-level link on The Day’s home page. Rather a top right link offers “Join” and takes you to a membership page offering four pricesfrom $9.99 a month (digital access only) to $22.99 (7-day home delivery plus two digital memberships), with authentication done by Clickshare. There’s also the increasingly common in-between alternative of a Sunday print paper plus digital the rest of the week.

5 articles about publishing and marketing worth reading - October 16, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:47:00 +0000

A few items that have appeared over the past few weeks worth reading.

Cornered shop: future of regional media

"Arguably the smartest commercial move that the regional media has made in in the last 30 years is selling reprints of photos. A single photo of the football team guarantees numerous sales to proud parents.

If social media proves anything it is that there is a clear demand for local content but regional media simply isn’t applying itself commercially to the communities it serves."

I Think We Need a Break: It’s not me, it’s you

Why people disengage from companies on Facebook and Twitter. It's a gap between what the company thinks the person wants, and what's really going on. "If you ask consumers why they interact with companies in social networks, they’ll tell you it’s to receive a discount (61%) or to make a purchase (55%). If you ask a business why they think consumers follow them in social networks their response is likely to mirror IBM’s results. 73% believe that consumers wish to learn about new products and an additional 71% connect to receive general information."

Why Your Marketing Needs Real-Time Data

Uses data from IAB people to show the gap between what we think a demographic likes or talks about and what's really going on.

The Capsule’s Price

"Do encapsulated digital editions make sense? Is the notion of having a “news container”, similar to a newspaper or magazine, a relic of the past or is it still associated with quality journalism? In an era of instant information, is it worth proposing a self-contained, stop-motion shot of the news cycle?" - Compares ARPU of print and app versions of Bloomberg BusinessWeek

more from feedproxy.google.com (Monday Note)

It’s Called Google Propeller and It’s Aimed at Flipboard (and Facebook Too, Natch) - Kara Swisher - Media - AllThingsD

Google is working on it's own version of Flipboard - a personalized news aggregator. The lesson here is that content is further splintered from its container, the website. This means the website's ads are useless. The challenge is then to provide value to clients within the body of the article.

Your purpose: to match buyers and sellers

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 19:03:00 +0000

Yeah, that's over-simplified, but as a starting point, a jab, a jostle, a jarring to get to that epiphany and a state of clarity.

The job is to match buyers and sellers efficiently, with as little friction as possible.

Friction includes things like cost, time, bureaucratic hassles, ability to change the message, and reach.

It used to be a no-brainer. Traditional commercial publishers (ie, they made money from advertising) were the only people who could do it, and high production costs kept it to near monopolies. Craigslist, dropping production costs made previously necessary frictions a liability.

So, with this insight, what can you do?

Don't sell an ad, sell a service

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:28:00 +0000

Not convincing? What more information do you need?

For this business-to-business publication thought experiment let's start with a few assumptions:

It doesn't make decent business sense for a company to sink significant resources into print advertising: response is difficult if not impossible to measure, the medium is over-priced compared to alternatives, decisions aren't based on the material presented in the advertisement, the list goes on and on...
As more and more businesses realize the above point revenues from ad space sales will continue to shrink.
Businesses still need to let other businesses know they exist, have solutions to their problems, and can help them in their endeavours.

And here's a question: why is advertising sold as a measured space bounded by a half-point rule and separated by the publication's content?

There's probably a lot of good historical reasons for that. Do they still stand? Is the constant tug between the prigs in editorial and the reptiles in sales still valid? Does anyone besides people in the industry care or even notice? I can give plenty of examples that the hallowed separation of church and state exists only in the minds of publishing companies.

Here are a few notional ideas for moving from selling neatly parcelled spaces in a print publication to helping clients understand their message, who their clients are and how to reach them with compelling information that educates them about what the client has to offer.

Offer editorial services that present the client's story and message. Include an option for professional photography. To keep it simple and logical create a list of types of story: new product, case study, profile of success, event, etc. This will focus the story into something that is interesting to other people, and not just the client’s marketing department. The client may need education on what is a story and what isn’t.
Offer a medium for these messages, but also training on how the client can use them on their own channels.
Some articles may lend themselves to an appended offer. Thinking like internet marketers, the reader should be encouraged to do something further than a "Hmph. That's nice."
Offer training for the client to better develop their marketing efforts through different media

In short, the publication becomes one arm of a multi-faceted marketing consulting company.

More work? Yes. Better future? It's too early to tell, but at least it's a plan.

What if your print product didn't have ads?

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 04:11:00 +0000

Can you measure success?

The future of the news organization may depend on weaning itself off of the advertising model.

The problem is print advertising, especially for business-to-business publications, seems less and less viable.

Print is too expensive, compared to other methods of delivery. It's effectiveness can't be measured, unlike other methods. It's not even clear how it can work, especially for complicated sales.

Print advertising has bad connotations. It's not clear why anyone would choose a print campaign unless (1) money was no object; (2) the client doesn't know any better; (3) it's what they've always done; (4) it's tied in with some other program, like an event.

So, for this exercise, let's assume that clients realize they have better options and stop advertising. I'm going to re-examine what that word (advertising) means to clients and how it can be reworked in another article. But for this thought experiment, let's re-invent our business-to-business publication on a subscription model.

We won't want to do this, since circulation revenue will not make up what is lost from advertising. What can be done to mitigate the losses, keep the operation going, and hopefully keep profitable?

A few notional ideas:

Lose the office. Rent is expensive. People can work from home. Lose most of the infrastructure and rely on services like Google Docs or one of several competitors.
Lose the staff. Use freelance or some sort of part-time structure. Rely extensively on free expert columnists looking for publicity.
Focus tightly on the value of the content: the package has to be worth your subscription price. How are subscribers benefiting from this story? Make sure you tell them.
Sell more content. Upsell subscribers other items that tie in with your core product. Reports, special features, customized reprints. Package items into stand-alone e-books for sale. Think like those scammy internet marketers!
The circulation people have to be marketers. They have to be in charge of the website. Your real content has to be locked away, but your marketers need to be able to sell it effectively.

It would probably be easier to start from scratch.

Marketing and publishing links September 12, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:36:00 +0000

The changing dynamics of news

Elias Bizannes blog: "The audience starts with the aggregators for news and the articles whereby the better headlines tend to perform better

News in its barest form is making awareness of an event (data); anything additional is analysis (cultural) which is to shape understanding around the event

The rise of 'scientific journalism' and social media allows society to discover and share information without a third party (due to technology tools). Press releases are an invention to communicate a message so reporters can based their writing on, who often just copy and paste the words.

Some thinking about the future News should be stripped to its barest form: a description of the event."

One idea is that the news article doesn't necessarily have to exist -- the story could just be the headline. Or the twitter feed.

tags: journalism publishing work

Why Good Advertising Works (Even When You Think It Doesn't) - Nigel Hollis - Business - The Atlantic

Advertising works for long term results, not short "buy now!" Article is about TV advertising. Implies a longer view. Implies national. Interestingly, the writer's anecdotes proving that advertising works are instances of advertising becoming a cultural artefact, ie, memorable over decades. I guess that's 'top-of-mind', but doesn't necessarily prove they've improved sales.

tags: advertising marketing publishing work

Innovation in turbulent times

Monday Note's Frédéric Filloux. "News organizations have an innovation problem. Especially print media. As they gingerly wade into digital, their ability to foster innovation becomes more critical than ever. In today’s fast-changing landscape, they should view innovation as their main weapon against direct competitors and emerging players such as tech startups,.Unfortunately, print media appears ill-equipped to innovate. The reasons are many."

tags: work publishing innovation

3 articles worth reading: Newspaper DNA, the smart press release and tips for getting coverage (from a publisher's viewpoint)

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 03:46:00 +0000

There seems to be a huge amount of untapped potential in press releases, both for the companies churning them out and the companies that collate and publish them (publications we know and love).

Reflections of a Newsosaur: Newspapers need a jolt of Silicon Valley DNA

"Newspapers are all about faithfully and efficiently producing a well-defined product according to time-honored standards and procedures. In other words, the culture values tradition, consistency and predictability, which, by definition, are inhospitable to change – particularly the sort of disruptive change that the web, mobile and social media require."

tags: work publishing

The art of the smart press release - The Globe and Mail

more tips on creating press releases, from a publishing perspective, including tips on hosting them on the client's site.

tags: work journalims pr

Pitch perfect: A startup’s guide to getting coverage

Tips for companies looking for press coverage, from a publishing company.

tags: work journalism pr marketing

4 articles worth reading: apps, digital books, comments on websites and the perfect pitch

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 21:47:00 +0000

Pitch perfect: A startup’s guide to getting coverage

Tips for companies looking for press coverage, from a publishing company.

more from feedproxy.google.com

work journalism pr marketing

63% of Readers Don't Care if Your Site Allows Comments | Ad Age Stat - Advertising Age

How Publishers Are Tackling the App Question

"When PW approached large and midsize publishers to find out about their app programs, we discovered that many houses don't have "programs" per se. Questions loom about what content is best suited for apps—though overwhelmingly it seems that reference and children's are sweet spots—and how best to look at apps."

How to price an article

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:25:00 +0000

What is the value of an article from a newspaper or magazine, or even a website? How do you measure it's cost?

Traditionally this question is never asked. We've been trained to see an article as part of a subscription. An individual article is worthless, a year of articles is worth... a one-year subscription, which has a variable price depending on discount rate. It's sort of like a buffet.

The article is also never measured because it's bait. It's a cost of sales for the advertising that pays most of the bills, salaries and the boss's new Lincoln Continental.

As well, we recognize somewhere deep inside that not all articles are of equal value. Some are short, some long. Some fluff pieces, some reprinted press releases. A few, a very few, will change the world and win prizes.

But maybe it's time to change that. With the advertising model disappearing, paywalls re-appearing, and the circulation manager dusted off and sobered up, maybe it's time to consider what sort of metrics would be useful, and how they could be arrived at.

What's the goal?
The goal is to come up with a cost per word. Multiply this by the average words in the different types of pieces published (briefs, news items, features), and ask "Would I pay $X for this?" And, if the answer is no, why are we writing it?

The primary value is for subscription-based publishing models, where the circulation department has to convince people that what they will be paying for has value for them.

As well, a nascent trend is publishing or republishing reports and long articles as stand-alone ebooks. This method will help determine appropriate pricing and value of that product. Or if it's even worth producing!

A few formulas

The raw cost per word (RCW) = (salary + benefits + expenses)/total words for the year. Multiply this by the average number of words in each type of article for an average cost per article.
An extended cost per word (ECW) would add the salaries of editors and copy-editors, divided by the total number of writers they manage, to the (salary + benefits + expenses) before dividing by the total number of words. This is more accurate, and the formula could be refined to weight certain writers (ahem) with more editor time.
Just for fun, let's take the space in the building occupied by editorial and allocate the fixed costs associated with rent, electricity, heat, etc, not to mention corporate overhead (that Lincoln Continental). Compare the resulting number with the freelancers. Hmmm.

The break-even point
What to do with this price? There are two possibilities: divide the cost by the number of existing subscribers for a look at what each person would have paid. This assumes they all are willing to buy it (and that's why they have a subscription, right?). Or, arbitrarily decide what that article could sell for on Amazon or iTunes (your gut reaction: 'what would I pay for this?'), and then work out the break-even point: how many would you have to sell to make up for the costs sunk into it?

The goal, again
It's only an exercise. The value of the article has more dimensions than pure reading delight: it provides PR for the publisher, it supports the advertising, it fills space that would otherwise be obnoxious house ads.

But, with a hard cost directly associated with it, an article suddenly has to perform. Was it worth the time put in?

5 articles about publishing and advertising worth reading this week

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 03:17:00 +0000

The theme this week is news organizations pulling out reports and packaging them as ebooks -- one-subject in-depth explorations of some topical relevance.

Guardian Enters E-Singles Space With Phone-Hacking Scandal E-Book

"The Guardian is the latest news outlet to get into e-singles publishing with “Guardian Shorts,” a series of “detailed guides to topical news stories, public policy, sports and cultural events” for sale on iTunes and Kindle. Several e-singles will be published each month. Not surprisingly, the first title in the series is Phone Hacking: How the Guardian Broke the Story."

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Rupert Murdoch, The Master Mogul of Fleet Street—Vanity Fair’s Latest E-Book

No, the article is really about "Package your best stories about a given topic as an e-book, a Kindle Single, a PDF download, with a short design cycle and potentially, a big return on a small investment"

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Report: The Rise of the Social Advertising

Banner blindness is everywhere. "For social advertising, the new opportunity for engagement lies in and around the new attention dashboard—the social stream." Pivot report

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16 articles about marketing and publishing worth reading, June 15-August 8, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 14:16:00 +0000

08 Aug 11

TRY HELVETICA

a tumblr blog of 'before' and 'after' - the afters being the signage redone (tastefully and effectively) in Helvetica. Amusing and instructive.

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14 Jul 11

Email Marketing - Email Open Rates Down, Click Rates Flat : MarketingProfs Article

"Email open rates fell to 17% on average in 2010, down 9 percentage points from 26% in 2009"

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Newspaper Map: The coolest way to visually surf newspapers

"quite possibly the coolest way to visually surf newspapers online"

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Twitter for Newsrooms – Twitter Media

"Welcome to #TfN. Inside, you’ll find resources to help you and your organization at every step of the reporting and publishing process."

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B2B Buyers Research Like Rabbits. Is Your Content Keeping Pace?

"what must a B2B marketer do to respond quickly to the research habits of these information-seeking influencers, decision makers and buyers?"

How to Ask Management to Reduce Traditional Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 02:30:00 +0000

If people are saying the truth, they will admit that they do product research through search engines and social networks. And that will be the perfect transition to the question, “Then why are you making me do direct mail?” - Promotional brochure

from DSxxxx DSxxxx@xxx.com
to XXxxxx
date Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 12:43 PM
subject "How to Ask Management to Reduce Traditional Marketing"

Hi Marketing Director of our publishing company,

I'm sure you've seen this stuff before.

Go to page 12, where they tell their potential clients how to squeeze more
money for their online marketing -- by taking it from print.

It's a little obnoxious and unsettling because it's not unusual, and -- to
be brutally honest -- not totally wrong. You've pointed out to me before the
lack of retail or "things for sale" ads in the paper. It's just not how
people do research or make buying decisions any more. Especially
business-to-business buying decisions.

I bring this up because I believe that unless our sales people start
muscling their way into providing more 'consultative' services, and more
marketing options to clients, where our branded items (print, web, email, or
events) are only one option, our business will gradually dry up into
something like those 'supersaver' coupon books -- a tiny marginal marketing
ploy of interest to only a small group of advertisers.

Anyway, I guess that will be the new Sales Manager's problem.

-d

"How do you keep up with news?" answer on Quora worth repeating

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 03:19:00 +0000

This answer not only answers the question but points to where the value of news creation is.

Here's the URL to the question: http://www.quora.com/Time-Management/How-do-people-keep-up-with-reading-The-Wall-Street-Journal-Financial-Times-New-York-Times-etc?__snids__=22063395%2C22107773#ans548444-ans612125

The question was:

How do people keep up with reading The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, etc?
It seems like too many periodicals to keep up with at once.

The response in full:

Michael Sinanian, Writer, Student and Startup Addict
12 votes
I'm a recovering newsholic so I've got a lot to share on this subject.
First, a couple principles:
There's just simply too many articles and things being written to make productive use of even a fraction of it. You'll thus be splitting what time you make available for news between direct relevance (local news/specialty information) and indirect relevance (national-global events/general interests). The latter must never take up more than 10-15 minutes of your day at most. Learn to accept this early on.
Most "news" is simply link-bait: a majority of headlines (particularly from blogs) are tailored to catch your attention, even if the content is of little importance. In other words: you could do without it. Learn to just grasp a headline and maybe a few lines down if you absolutely have to. (especially if you're cruising an aggregator).
Ask yourself: how much "news" will realistically directly affect you? The answer would probably be close to zero. Here's a good case where it would: you're a Greek citizen in 2011 and your government is enforcing austerity measures and you need to know the implications of that for you and your family. In this case, you should probably follow the Greek dailies. But do I need to know that Mississippi River is flooding right now, considering I live in LA? Probably not that relevant.
Avoid Twitter for general news capture. It's just too much to make sense of. If you have a directly relevant, domain-specific Twitter account you follow for updates you must urgently receive, fine. Everything else: inefficient.
Avoid "news" about things that will or could happen. Read the news that is actually happening. For example, "Hilary Clinton Flying to Mid-East to Negotiate Peace Talks" is to be skipped in favor of "Hilary Clinton's Trip to Mid-East Results in Positive Peace Talks." Stick with the stuff that's actually happened to avoid wasting your time. (Note: there are exceptions to this for investors/scientists/academics/etc who need to stay on top of things in the future (trends, etc), but for general use, this rule definitely applies.)
If you don't follow these guidelines, there's nothing stopping you from spending hours reading "news" and "articles" and "catching up with things." It's seriously endless.
Develop a workable strategy and go from there:
News is like a river. If you're looking for more domain-specific, niche content, you must travel further up the stream to the source. (And in an era where most people are Specialists and not Generalists, you are one of these people.)
Pick a few specialty news sources (blogs, journals, etc...) that are of direct relevance to your field. The authors of these sources must be well-placed and deliver news that, if important for "the world" the other major publications will turn to. This is the first cornerstone of your news system.
For example, I'm interested in Technology Law, so I'll give Ars Technica's Law and Disorder section some dedicated time. Later on, I'll be checking the ABA Journal for even more domain-specific news.
If you're a curious science follower/VC, the MIT Technology Review will cover real news out of actual research labs. If you're an actual scientist or researcher, you have your own journals and periodicals you follow.
If you're doing any type of investment, go to the consulting firms and investment advisory firms that are putting out quality economic analyses if you absolutely rely on this information. Every other source is just regurgitated dribble.
To sample the rest of "the world"... use aggregators to sample the length of your river. For the tech industry, there's Techmeme, for media, there's Mediagazer, then of course there's also Hacker News and Google News.
These aggregators let you mix-and-match and not rely on one source. If you're time-pressed anyway, you won't have time to dig into articles, as the earlier principles apply strongly here: lots of scanning, minimal "digging down" into articles.
You're still going to need to keep your "finger on the pulse" vis-a-vis a "trusted publication" with major branding power and influence. For these, you should subscribe to one of:
The Economist
The Financial Times
The New York Times
The Wall Street Journal
Paywalls are coming up and it's becoming expensive to "pick a side" so choose wisely (unless you fit in the case mentioned below).
As Marc Hoag mentioned, the weekly thorough Economist rundown is a wise strategy.
At most, you may want something like The NYT + The Economist to get good daily coverage supplemented with strong weekly cover
If you're playing the markets and must absolutely need every angle to a story, then you're a special case that justifies paying for different news sources like:
FT (good finance / econ analysis) AND...
Bloomberg (good per-company analysis) AND...
The Economist (good macro /international / political analysis)
Lastly, round off your news system with a local component. This can easily be integrated into your general aggregator like Google News. This way I can quickly see which teenager got shot at a nearby public school or which freeway will be closed next week. These are, of course, more relevant than some natural disaster happening halfway around the world.
Remember, I'm not advocating ignorance. I'm advocating a rational approach to managing our time. If you manage your time right, you'll be giving yourself more time to be productive in tasks that will help others. Simply reading about others will not solve their problems. Catch my drift?
Last but not least, as others have mentioned, using a time-shifting read-it-later system is critical to staying on top of things. Instapaper definitely comes to mind here. More and more publications allow direct saving of articles to Instapaper from their own apps, so that's improving as well. Speaking to The Economist's digital team, they agreed such functionality would be useful.
So every person's case will be very different. Every professional has to rely on their own river, and know how to best exploit that river's natural resources. Or else you'll get swept downstream, washed up and wasted in a barrage of news that, frankly, just doesn't matter.

I like the concepts of "direct relevance" and "indirect relevance". Also the point of relevance and usefulness, and skimming no more than the headline and maybe the first line.

Compiling reports and offering them as value-added items

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 13:22:00 +0000

The thing here is putting together three articles that probably already existed, with an executive summary that focuses on some sort of takeaway "in this report you will learn..."

The word "report" has a resonance to it. Connotations include "quality". Roget's synonyms are "chart, chronicle, describe, narrate, recite, recount, rehearse, relate, tell".

Who doesn't like a good story?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sherpa <reply@reply.marketingsherpa.com>
Date: Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 6:03 AM
Subject: Get the CMO perspective on social marketing, complex sale and email deliverability
To: ds@gmail.com

| View with Images | View Mobile Version | Forward to Colleague |

Special Combo Offer:
Purchase all three for only $199
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CMO Perspectives on the Complex Sale

Dear Reader,

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In this report you'll learn how CMOs overcome the challenge of social media monetization, their perceptions of social marketing's ability to produce ROI, and how they are measuring it. Here are a few highlights from this exciting 13-page report:

Achieving (or increasing) measurable ROI from social marketing programs
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This report shows which tactics CMOs use to improve email deliverability, such as removing inactive subscribers, monitoring and lowering complaint rates and modifying email templates. Learn about segmentation, triggers, preferences and relevancy. Here are a few highlights from this 16-page report:

Improving email deliverability starts with removing inactive subscribers
Relevancy is driving deliverability
Tactics CMOs use to improve relevancy: Segmentation, triggers, preferences
Recommended actions on expectations, content and complaints

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In this report you'll find in-depth strategies that CMOs use, including lead qualification, scoring, nurturing and defining the funnel for the complex sale. Here are a few highlights from this 14-page report:

Combating the complex sales with cross-functional strategies
Accelerating sales pipelines: Lead qualification, scoring and nurturing performance
Defining the B2B funnel stages and time frames
Recommended actions on lead scoring and nurturing

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Senior Director of Content and Business Development
MarketingSherpa
Todd.lebo@meclabs.com

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Articles worth reading, June 1-12, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 01:09:00 +0000

I've been spending more time reading the Economist, at least the free stuff, and less time on "linkable" items.

10 Jun 11

5 Tips to Improve Your Headline Click-through Rate

A title with eight words, pictures, odd numbers, a question mark, a colon or hyphen.

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08 Jun 11

Why newspaper paywalls are still a bad idea

...the counter-argument. Basically, a paywall gives an opportunity for 'free' competitors.

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05 Jun 11

Analyzing the metered model

"Let’s try back-of-the-envelope calculations. A site gets 5m UVs and 100m page views per month; its yearly ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) coming from advertising is $3. This results in a yearly revenue of $15m. Now suppose only 20% of its audience reads more than 15 stories a month and one out of ten such readers are willing to pay $10 a month. The additional revenue will be: 5m UVs x 20% hitting the paywall x 10% willing to pay $100/year (discount included) = $10m in additional income — without depleting its advertising revenue. Actually, experience shows advertisers are now paying roughly 30% more for readers reached behind a paywall. All this before the 20% cut taken by Press+."

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marketing links, May 16-29, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Mon, 30 May 2011 01:32:00 +0000

4 Key Recommendations for B2B SEO in Industrial Markets - Search Engine Watch (#SEW)

SEO Must Take Place at Multiple Content Locations on the Website - Optimize Landing Pages for New Content Marketing Initiatives - Get Links Through the Development of Industry Expertise - Get Links by Providing Content that Helps Your Prospects Solve Problems

tags: work b2b webdesign
Landing Page Basics: Making Your Content Marketing Convert

Pitch the offer, not your company - No distractions - The visitor knows where they are in the process - Forms are the right length - Only ask for information you will use

tags: work b2b webdesign
Advertising - Online Ad Targeting: Who's Most Likely to Act? : MarketingProfs Article

"Business professionals working in the legal, retail, and software industries are most likely to take action—such as download a whitepaper, start a free trial, or make a purchase—after clicking on an ad, according to a study by Bizo. Those working in certain job functions, such as operations, legal, and sales, are also more likely to act on display ads."

tags: work b2b sales
Will Publishers Choose the Open Web Over Apple’s Walled Garden?

HTML 5 and Apple's "Faustian bargain" may make the open web more appealing.

tags: work publishing
The Second Question You Should be Asking about Your Website

"It’s also a bit awkward because sometimes the answer to the question about what you want your website to do might be different than what your customers want."

tags: work b2b website
The Ultimate Guide to Twitter Marketing

The title says it all. Tons and tons of links to tools and resources around Twitter.

tags: work b2b tools resources
Please Like Us on Facebook

Only 10 out of 46 brands gave a reason why. Fail.

tags: work b2b marketing
The newsonomics of old dipsy-doo

"News companies have always taken their selling too literally. They thought they were selling news, when in fact they’re selling currency, shopping deals, and packaged convenience."

tags: work publishing
Vadim Lavrusik: How journalists can make use of Facebook Pages

How journalists can create and use a "professional" page as a sort of shareable notebook.

tags: work journalism tools
Headlines and Deadlines: An attempt to turn a newspaper inside-out

Sort of an experiment in transparency of planning. "These accounts aren't about pushing links to the website or giving cryptic hints followed with a 'buy Sunday's paper'; I want them to be about what we're doing. Or about what we should be doing as far as our audience is concerned. "

tags: work journalism
Storify: The Pros and Cons - 10,000 Words

"Storify also makes it simple for journalists to aggregate and re-distribute news, with pictures and comments from citizen journalists."

tags: work journalism tools
Social Media is not a Magic Hammer
" the time it takes to properly utilize that account comes with a cost, as does the most often overlooked area of constructing a presence: advertising."
tags: work b2b socialmedia

Dangerous Blend
The state of modern journalism. A review of the Columbia School of Journalism released "The Story so Far". "an interesting light on where digital medias are heading. Their economics are in such disarray that publishers are desperate for new revenue models. In this evolution, ethics are likely to suffer collateral damage."
tags: work publishing journalism

marketing links from April 9-15, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Tue, 17 May 2011 02:48:00 +0000

How to Build a Free Social Media Monitoring Dashboard
Use an rss reader to compile feeds monitoring web actions. Some of these are already dated. Twitter, for example, no longer offers a rss feed off search.
tags: work b2b socialmedia
10 Things You Never Knew You Could Do On LinkedIn
tags: work b2b socialmedia

Publishing links (and one marketing link) for April 2-8, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Mon, 09 May 2011 02:14:00 +0000

Publishing, traditional publishing that is, is the theme for this week. In particular, the first story looks at something not normally broken out into this fine detail: the cost of an individual story. At first blush it seems that there should be too many intangibles, but a proper analysis could lead to a more rational approach to managing story generation, a COGS approach.

The newsonomics of story cost accounting
What’s a story worth? Depends who's writing it. Story cost accounting, and division of types of content (ie 1/3 professional journalism, 1/3 commentary, 1/3 curation)
tags: work publishing journalism

MEDIA CAFÉ: To compete in the advertising market newspaper needs to enter the ROI battle field
"Newspapers are in the advertising business, with on average 80 to 85% of their revenue coming from ads (in North America). They are facing five major issues with this business"
tags: work publishing advertising

Hard economic lessons for news
Notes. "Tradition is not a business model; “I want to” is not a business model; Virtue is not a business model" It goes on and on. Love it.
tags: work publishing

3 Ways To Get Qualified Sales Leads Using LinkedIn | Marketing Ideas You Can Copy
1. Nurture Your First-Degree Network - 2. Use Advanced People Search - 3. Participate In Group Discussions
tags: work b2b sales

Infographic: How Print Vs. Online News Consumption Compares

"in 2006, the average time spent reading a newspaper was 29 minutes per day, while the average revenue per user was just under $287. In contrast, in 2010, the average time spent reading online news was less than 1.2 minutes and average revenue was just under $29"

tags: work publishing

Marketing and publishing articles of interest, April 25-May 1, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Mon, 02 May 2011 01:49:00 +0000

I keep these bookmarks in Diigo --I switched over when it looked like Delicious was on its way out-- but the auto-post unfortunately doesn't include the site's name.

On the other hand, most of these are culled through Google Reader, and often the site isn't obvious from the feed's name.

The best one is the last one, from Monday Note (always a good read). Once again, the theme is how a better reading experience is obtained through third-parties whose main interest is in the aggregation of content, not the advertising or clever design.

10 Great Community Manager Tools Worth Checking Out
from listening tools to aggregation tools to goofball tools
tags: work b2b Social Media

Top 14 Things Marketers Need to Know About QR Codes - Search Engine Watch (SEW)
Common sense items to temper your enthusiasm.
tags: work b2b
Who Needs Video? 5 Strategies for Making Text Testimonials Sell
Text testimonials can still work. 1. Ensure Clear Benefit Statements - 2. Give Your Text a Facelift - 3. Get Testimonials onto Every Page - 4. Pack More into the Same Space - 5. Make Testimonial Relevant to Each Page
tags: work b2b sales testimonial
Results of the 2011 Richardson/McCord Training Social Media in Marketing and Sales Survey
1. Both salespeople and companies, whether they currently use social media or not, are struggling to figure out how to use it effectively. - 2. To date, social media has been pretty useless in generating actual sales.
tags: work b2b sales
Read, Share and Destroy
A variety of applications find ways to reprocess site's feeds to provide a better reading experience... one without all the other stuff on the publisher's site.
tags: work publishing rss

Marketing and publishing articles of interest, April 18-24, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 02:51:00 +0000

Re-packaging old content creates fresh revenue possibilities
"But could we as newspaper editors and aggregators pull together comprehensive story and photo packages, post them on our news company’s Web site storefronts , buy search words to guide traffic to our Web stores and sell downloadable packages for a price that would be worth it to many, many customers? We can, and should."
tags: work publishing
10 Quick and Easy B2B Blog Post Ideas for a Thursday Afternoon
1. Comment on an Industry News Story - 2. Highlight a New Employee - 3. Answer the Most Common Customer Question - 4. The Most Outlandish Customer Service Story - 5. Call Three Customers and Ask One Question - 6. Discuss a Competitor’s Product or Service - 7. Review an Upcoming Industry Event - 8. List Your Favorite Industry Publications and Websites - 9. Provide a Step-by-Step Guide - 10. Share a Wish List of Product Features
tags: work b2b writing
6 Ways to Use Curation for B2B Social Media
1. Create a Blog Post of Favorite Articles from the Week - 2. Create a Twitter Feed of Relevant Links - 3. Share Articles Regularly in a LinkedIn Group - 4. Create a Regular Email of the Best Posts - 5. Share Articles with Your Sales Team
tags: work b2b writing
Step-by-Step Templates for Mapping your B2B Content
oooh! charts! diagrams! forms to fill out! it seems so, so, scientific!
tags: work b2b content marketing
How to Create a Google Map With Excel Data and Fusion Tables
tags: work mapping
Why Do We Love Pie Charts?
...because that's what we've taught is the right way to present information
tags: work design data
Flipboard: Threat and Opportunity
"Flipboard is THE product any big media company or, better, any group of media companies should have invented." Could it be... readers don't want to look at ads?
tags: work publishing

Marketing and publishing articles of note, April 10-17, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 01:21:00 +0000

Lots of articles worth reading this week.

Great Email plus Landing Page Marketing Campaign
"the landing page coordinates with the email campaign to provide a consistent user experience."
tags: work b2b email
No Budget and Less Time? Lead Nurturing in Five Simple Steps
1. Set up your nurturing database. - 2. Review your database - 3. Decide what information would be most relevant to them. - 4. Email prospects this relevant content, but whatever you do, don’t pitch - 5. Follow up with a human touch
tags: b2b work sales
Reflections of a Newsosaur: Newspapers get 3x too many ad dollars, says study
"Because the allocation of ad-market share is a zero-sum game, print has to be benefitting at someone's expense. And two notable victims, in this case, are Internet and mobile advertising."
tags: work publishing newspapers
Using Twitter as a Pulse, Not a Firehose
Using twitter to listen tips: Start general, search specifics. - Track hashtags and conversations - Find influencers, find their friends - Check often, vary times. - Ask questions
tags: work b2b twitter pr
13 tutorials to bring your Facebook presence to the next level
"Following are the top 13 tutorials from the Nonprofit Facebook Guy that I think are especially useful for nonprofits, foundations and NGOs"
tags: b2b work facebook
Is Your Web Content a Marketing Liability?
"What often happens – soon after LAUNCH COMPANY WEBSITE is crossed off the corporate to-do list – is that companies don’t apply the same standards of excellence or levels of scrutiny to the content generated post-launch that were applied during development of the website’s original core content. "
tags: work b2b web
Globe Life Reveals Redesigned Online Platform
It's a Facebook app that's all "lifestyle" stuff... ie what the FB audience is looking for. Press Release.
tags: publishing work
Newspapers and Social Media: Still Not Really Getting It: Tech News and Analysis «
It's us vs. them.
tags: work journalism publishing
5 Things a Bad Dog Can Teach You About Writing Good Copy
1. Get their attention - 2. Make a promise - 3. Lead them where you want them to go - 4. Have a call to action - 5. Reward good behavior — ignore bad
tags: work b2b copywriting
Deliverability.com: Fishbowls Aren't Always As Transparent As You Think...
What is opt-in? Different people have different expectations. Does a business card in a draw (the fishbowl) give permission for emails about another product?
tags: work b2b email

Marketing and publishing articles of interest, April 4-10, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (waferboard) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 03:07:00 +0000

I was so busy reading Influence: Science and Practice by Robert B. Cialdini (I highly recommend it) that I neglected the usual posts. There's only one:

Show Up Prepared (aka How to Use LinkedIn to Make Selling Easy)
Check for: How you're connected to your prospect. - Previous employment. - Education - Websites - Twitter - Status - Recent activity - Interests - Groups and Associations - etc etc

tags: b2b work sales